Lords Sitting of 25 February 1987

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Carlisle.

Bypasses
Lord Elliott of Morpeth: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many towns have benefited from the completion of bypasses since 1979.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, between 1st April 1979 and 1st February 1987 Her Majesty's Government completed 67 bypasses or relief road schemes on trunk roads in England, 25 in Scotland and 13 in Wales. Some of these have provided traffic relief for more than one community. Other completed schemes also have a bypassing effect.
Lord Elliott of Morpeth: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer, suggestive as it is of considerable progress. However, as there are still quite a number of areas in all parts of the country that have enormous congestion, can he say whether bypasses have priority in the national road plan and how many schemes are in the current programme?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. Bypasses are indeed one of the main priorities in the Government's trunk road construction programme, bringing as they do relief to residents from traffic noise and fumes and contributing to improved road safety. In England, for example, over 50 per cent. of planned trunk road schemes are bypasses. At the present time there are 19 trunk road bypasses and relief roads under construction in England, three in Scotland and three in Wales, and a further 133 schemes in England, 39 in Scotland and 26 in Wales are in the forward programme.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, although the information given by the Minister is encouraging, I wonder whether he recalls that we had a debate on a civic trust report dealing with the Armitage package three years ago, and at that time some 1,200 villages and towns had not been bypassed. It was said that hundreds would not have a bypass plan by 1991–92 and nor would one-third of the historic towns. Has the Minister figures to show whether there has been a great improvement?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I regret that I do not recall the debate mentioned by the noble Lord as it was three years ago. However, when the current
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programme is completed very few communities in the trunk road network will not have been relieved of through traffic. There are also local bypasses to be taken into account and we have a very good record in completing those. I am afraid I cannot give a total figure relating to the one which the noble Lord gave.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, will the noble Lord assure the House that when the question of bypasses arises in national parks or areas of outstanding natural beauty such as the New Forest, the Government will continue to be guided by the recommendations of his noble friend Lord Sandford in the Sandford Report of 1974?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, in mentioning bypasses in the New Forest, I presume the noble Lord is referring to the debate that will take place tomorrow. That of course does not concern a national road: it is a local road. But in general terms we shall continue to be guided by those recommendations.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, may I ask the Minister how long it takes for a bypass to get on to the list and from the list on to a programme?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord specific details as I suspect that it depends on the planning process to a certain extent and on how much of an inquiry needs to take place. But in general terms I think the time is too long.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that in the cases I referred to there was heavy lorry traffic? Some of the roads were trunk roads and some were not, but there was heavy lorry traffic. Does he think that the ministry could get some figures and possibly write to me?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I can certainly try, and I shall do so.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, can my noble friend expand a little bit more on the local bypass position?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, so far as local bypasses are concerned, we give every encouragement to local highway authorities to build new bypasses and relief roads. That is a principal feature of the new capital only transport supplementary grant system. For instance, for this coming year we have announced support for 257 bypasses or relief roads, of which 183 are in progress and 74 are new starts.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord about the bypass at Haltwhistle in Northumberland, which is well known to the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Morpeth, and myself? Is he aware that the scheme put forward by his department is quite unacceptable to the local people? Can he say anything about this scheme?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I have details on the scheme for the A69 Haltwhistle west of Haydon Bridge. We intend to go to public consultation on the scheme as soon as possible.

Enfield Health Authority: Hospital Sites
2.42 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why the Enfield local health authority has received no reply to the scheme which it submitted to the DHSS 14 months ago for the sale of the Highland Hospital site and the development of the Chase Farm Hospital site as a district general hospital.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, I am pleased to inform the noble Lord that the department has now given North East Thames Regional Health Authority approval in principle to proceed with the development at Chase Farm Hospital.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Is she aware that it was given to me by my local press in exactly those words this morning? Now that the Question on the Order Paper has promoted such a speedy reply, will she be able to satisfy the community health council in Enfield that it will be consulted at all stages in the planning and preparation of the development? Also, will she give an assurance that the resources released by the land upon which housing will be built are used in such a way that there is no duplication of services and that patient care takes priority?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on the timing of his Question. Community health councils will naturally be consulted.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is it not fascinating to see the number of occasions when the Answer to a Question put down in your Lordships' House suddenly emerges a day in advance? We are however grateful for it. Is it not true that too often there are very long delays in taking fundamentally important decisions, and also long delays before answers to correspondence are received from health authorities in such situations?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, there are two reasons why this approval has taken longer than we would normally expect. First, the health authorities concerned applied to the department for a central grant towards the medical teaching aspects of the scheme and it has taken a considerable time to secure evidence that such a grant could be justified. Secondly, the department has also had to be satisfied that approving this scheme would not prejudice the outcome of another current proposal for a hospital development in an adjacent district health authority.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I am sincerely grateful to the Minister for the tenor of the reply. But I hope she will understand that delays of this length cause havoc to the morale of the staff in hospitals whose future is being determined. Will she
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try to ensure not only that there is less delay, but also that staff are kept as fully informed as possible, even if no progress at all is being made?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am a great believer in liaison with staff over any developments in their districts and regions.
Lord Swinfen: My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House whether there will be a spinal injuries unit at Chase Farm Hospital?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, there are two main acute hospitals, Chase Farm and the Highland. Both provide a range of general acute services. Accident and emergency services are available at Chase Farm which will also provide the district's maternity services. Acute surgery will be provided in the new teaching hospital.

MRSA: Extent of Spread in Hospitals
2.46 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government to what extent multi-resistant and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) also known as Super Staph, has spread in hospitals in London and throughout the United Kingdom.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, MRSA has spread widely throughout hospitals in London and to a much lesser extent elsewhere. For the edification of your Lordships, I have placed a copy of a fact sheet on MRSA in the Library today.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that worrying Answer. May I ask whether she is satisfied that infection control throughout our hospitals is good enough; for instance, nurses and doctors washing their hands between visiting each patient? Also, is she aware that MRSA puts great additional strain on wards serving surgical patients and other at-risk patients?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, high standards of hygiene for both patients and staff are very important for control. All staff and patients moving between hospitals known to have a current outbreak of MRSA should be checked to see whether they are carriers. Thorough cleaning of infected wards is an important preventative measure. Infection control nurses have an increasingly vital role to play in the maintenance of hygiene standards. Their primary duty is the prevention of infection in hospitals through effective liaison with all levels of hospital staff, including the organisation of training programmes for health care workers.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, may I ask the Minister what part is played in a matter such as this by the Health and Safety Executive?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, your Lordships will, of course, be aware that the law on Crown immunity has been changed. Environmental health officers will be visiting hospitals as they have always had the right to do in the past. But it would be only sensible for hospitals themselves to take all possible precautions and, of course, to accept any expert advice that is offered to them.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, can the noble Baroness confirm that 32 London hospitals have been directly affected by MRSA? I wonder whether she can say how many people have died across the country in the last three years or so—or any other period that it suits her to tell us about—from this very disturbing infectious disease.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the present position is that 70 hospitals have reported isolated MRSA. About 12 hospitals have a continuing and serious problem. Although MRSA has spread, it has done so fairly slowly and some hospitals appear to have been able to contain and eradicate the strain. Sporadic MRSA of other types continues to occur at a low frequency.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, may we know the number of deaths?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I do not have the exact number of deaths. If the noble Lord wishes, I shall write to him. However, I believe that there were very few.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether she can tell us the symptoms of this disease?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, perhaps I may write to the noble Lord. Alternatively, I suggest that he looks at the fact sheet.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, is it the case that MRSA can transfer its multi-resistant properties to other bacteria?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I can tell the House why some strains have become resistant to antibiotics, if that is helpful. A naturally occurring strain of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus was identified in 1960, sometimes in populations that had not been exposed to methicillin. Many staphylococci produce enzymes which destroy antibiotics. A few of these have altered cell wall structures, which makes them resistant to antibiotics such as methicillin. Once again, let me refer the noble Baroness to the fact sheet, which I believe she will find to be very useful.

Economic Growth Factors
2.53 p.m.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether their attention has been drawn to the increase over the past two years of house prices in the South-East of England, the Financial Times ordinary share index and the higher range of salaries as against the increase in the same period of the retail price index, and whether they have drawn any conclusions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Skelmersdale): Yes, my Lords. However, over the years the relationship between the factors in the noble Lord's Question has not been consistent.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Was he in the House on Monday when his noble friend the Secretary of State for Employment told me that, if we were to have continued economic growth, it was essential to restrain industrial wage costs? May I ask towards what sort of society the Government think this economic growth is leading us, if we are to have restraint on industrial wages and on essential services such as hospitals and education and yet have crude inflation in the stock market, property and top salaries?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I was not in the House on Monday when my noble friend made that remark. However, I have heard him say that on many occasions. House prices are determined by agreement between private individuals, and no government, including that of the noble Lord, have ever attempted to dictate to ordinary people the price at which they may sell their property.
Lord Renton: My Lords, whatever the statistics show about the matters contained in the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, is the important point not whether at various levels of society the standard of living has risen, fallen or stood still during the past two years?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, because of lower inflation and because of other measures taken by this Government, the standard of living in this country has risen over the last two years. The Question of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, prompted me to investigate the situation as far back as 1972, which is why I gave my original Answer. That information is contained in a graph which is very complicated, and I shall put it in the Library.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I own my own property and I am seriously concerned at its inflated rise in value? Is he further aware that the rise in house prices in the London and outer London areas in the South-East is nothing short of a downright scandal, and that it is affecting very seriously the social life of many people and particularly young people who wish to get

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married? There is an answer. The Government know the answer, but they fail to take action.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Lord. The percentage of mortgage advances made to first-time buyers in the South-East is very close to the average for the country as a whole. In Greater London it is well above the national average. Over the period from the last quarter of 1985 to the third quarter of 1986, 71,220 first-time mortgages were issued. In the rest of the South-East the figure is 126,130.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, that is all very well. How many of those mortgages were granted to young people, the payment for which will depend upon a husband and wife working? If by chance a child comes along, it is an economic disaster. In how many cases have there been defaults on mortgages, with a building society calling a house in?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, as I pointed out earlier, people's affairs are their own. If a husband and wife wish to take the tremendous step—and we know from building society figures that they do—of joining together to own their own home, I cannot see that that is wrong.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, is the Minister aware that in the area from which I come 97 per cent. of the property is owned by the local authority? When we started building houses for sale in Docklands, people queued up all night to buy them, irrespective of price.
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes, my Lords. I have heard the noble Lord say that before. That is why the Government's right-to-buy policy has excited so much interest.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that one conclusion that can be drawn from the statistics is that it is almost impossible for anyone from the North to move South to take up a fresh job unless the job has a very high salary indeed? That takes into account the fact that over the last two years house prices in the North have risen by 7.7 per cent, compared to a rise in the South-East of 36.8 per cent. The wages earned in the South, when set against the low sale price of houses in the North, would probably not qualify such people for a mortgage.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, apart from the fact that the Question on the Order Paper refers to the South-East, I think that most people would accept that the main determinant of house prices is the real income of house purchasers. I do not think that there is anything either surprising or revolutionary about that.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that when I moved South in 1975 the situation described by the noble Lord, Lord Dean, was exactly the same?
Lord Skelmersdale: No, my Lords. That is a personal circumstance of which I was not aware.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that because of the escalating price of housing, the number of people who default on mortgages is rising? Those people cannot keep up with their mortgage payments, which are determined by the price of the house.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the Building Societies Association has just published figures for the end of 1986 as regards that matter. They indicate that the rising trend of arrears in recent years may be reversing, although I accept that it is too early to be certain that that is a permanent change.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the circumstances mentioned are a result of the collapse of the regional policy of the Government? Some restoration of a sensible regional policy would prevent the excessive pressure on land and housing in the South-East and would enable us to utilise the infrastructure which is available in the North.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, again I do not think that there is any relationship at all. I do not accept that the Government's regional structure has collapsed in the way in which the noble Lord suggests.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to return to another aspect of my Question? Does he recall that once upon a time the Top Salaries Review Body dealt with top salaries? Last year that body recommended that the heads of the Civil Service, the defence services and the judiciary should be paid salaries of the order of £60,000 or £70,000 a year. That figure represents only one-fifth of the salaries which are now the going rate for certain people in the City. Is this the sort of society which we wish to build?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, "going rate" is a very wide term. I do not have any comment to make on the Top Salaries Review Body, especially as I know that it determines my salary!
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that if he took action to restrain the top salaries paid in the City so that the most able men, both young and old, who worked there did not receive top salaries, we should simply lose them, mainly to America and perhaps also to Japan? That earning power would therefore be lost to this country. There could be no more short-sighted a policy than that.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Nugent is absolutely right. We all know the effects of the brain drain and we want to do everything we can to avoid it.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, will the Minister perhaps confirm that the Government's attitude is that all is well, that there are no problems and that they view the extraordinary rise in house prices with total equanimity?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, for the people in those houses it is clearly a good thing. For those who want to buy them, especially young people and first time buyers, there does not appear to be any problem.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I am sorry to rise again. Is the Minister aware that his colleague behind him, the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, is quite wrong? As late as 1982, increases in house prices in the North and in the South-East were almost the same.

Business
3 p.m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, after the end of the short debate on the dangers of the extremes of unilateral disarmament and escalation and before the short debate on prison conditions, my noble friend Lady Trumpington will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is being made in another place on health development, cancer screening and AIDS research.
I should like to say a word about the arrangements for this afternoon's two short debates standing in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Mayhew and Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge. As is customary in short debates, the mover is allowed approximately 15 minutes, and the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate. In the case of both short debates this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of eight minutes. If any noble Lord should speak at greater length he would do so at the expense of subsequent speakers in the debate.

British Railways (Stansted) Bill
Read a second time, and committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.

Cardiff Bay Development Corporation (Area and Constitution) Order 1987
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
This is a hybrid order. There was one petition against it and so it went before the Hybrid Instruments Committee which considered very carefully whether it should be referred to a Select Committee. We considered detailed representations in writing and we also had the benefit of hearing the agents for both sides. As the report makes clear, we came to the conclusion that the petitioners had substantial grounds for complaint and they had not failed to avail themselves of opportunities to have the matter properly inquired into. In those circumstances the Hybrid Instruments Committee recommends that the order should be referred to a Select Committee so that the matters complained of in the petition may be investigated. I beg to move.
Moved, That the First Report from the Hybrid Instruments Committee be agreed to and that the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation (Area and Constitution) Order 1987 be referred to a Select Committee.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Defence Options: Dangers of Extremism
3.2 p.m.
Lord Mayhew Lord Mayhew rose to call attention to the dangers of the extremes of unilateral disarmament and of escalation of thermo-nuclear weaponry; 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. The future of the strategic nuclear deterrent, as I am sure we will all agree, is a matter of first importance to our country and to its relations with its allies and possible adversaries. It is also a matter of importance—again, I think we will all agree—to the fortunes of our respective parties at the coming general election. The Alliance policy has been plainly set out in the agreed policy document of the Alliance, The Time Has Come. But since attempts are still made from time to time to misrepresent what it is, not least on the front page of The Times on Monday, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if, once again, I quote the exact authoritative statement:
"In government we would maintain, with whatever necessary modification, our minimum nuclear deterrent until it can be negotiated away, as part of a global negotiating process, in return for worthwhile concessions by the Soviet Union which would enhance British and European security.
"In any such modernisation we would maintain our capability in the sense of freezing our capacity at a level no greater than that of the Polaris system … We would cancel Trident because of its excessive number of warheads and megatonnage, high cost and continued dependence on US technology … There are a number of possible options including different ballistic and non-ballistic air and submarine launched systems. A final choice could not be made without access to classified information and the advice of the Chiefs of Staff available only when in government".
That is the policy on the deterrent, quite plainly stated, of the Alliance parties. Briefly, as long as there is a question mark over whether the United States guarantee to Western Europe will remain indefinitely, we believe that the British deterrent should be maintained and if necessary modernised pending disarmament. In this we differ strongly from the Labour Party. At the same time we oppose the escalation of the deterrent, and in this we differ strongly from the Conservative Party.
Naturally, our policy has been attacked by both sides. To begin with, Labour argued that our policy will in practice turn out to be much the same as the pro-nuclear policy of the Government. The Conservative Party has argued that in practice our policy will turn out to be much the same as the unilateralist policy of the Labour Party. But these lines of attack have been changing recently. For example, on 3rd December last year during a debate on defence capability and nuclear deterrence the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, informed us:
"This policy amounts to nothing less than one-sided nuclear disarmament".—[Official Report, 3/12/86; col. 848.]
But this month the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Mr. Stanley, was saying in another place:
"We welcome the commitment of the Liberal and Social Democratic Parties to the continuance of the British strategic deterrent".
One reassuring feature of a democratic assembly such as this is that if one continues patiently explaining one's policy then eventually one limits the scope of one's opponents for misrepresenting it. One subjects

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them to what might be called the law of diminishing mendacity. This law is operating exceptionally well in connection with the new defence policy of the Alliance parties.
Our opponents are changing now and are arguing that the trouble with this policy is not that it is unilateralist or that it is the same as the Government's but simply that it is not practicable. A few weeks ago the Government issued an entire open information document purporting to demonstrate this; to prove that the Alliance policy will not work because there is no practicable alternative to Trident. As I shall try to show, the document proves no such thing. It proves in fact that there are alternative options, that the choice between them is complicated and difficult, and that the Alliance is right not to decide on them until, hopefully, after the election, we have access to classified information and the advice of the Chiefs of Staff.
The main burden of this document is that Trident cannot be replaced by cruise. The main reason given is that as cruise has only one warhead, too many of them would be needed and too many submarines or aircraft would be needed to carry them. The key passage is in paragraph 7:
"Our assessment is that Britain would need at least 400… cruise missiles of the type currently available to provide an assured minimum deterrent equivalent to Trident".
Paragraph 11 says:
"To achieve the deployment of the 400… cruise missiles … would require a force of five Trident submarines on patrol at all times, assuming 80 missiles per submarine".
Finally, the document argues that to keep that force at sea, 11 Trident submarines would be needed with 800 cruise missiles. Noble Lords may feel that this puts cruise out of court as a possible option for the Alliance. But, of course, there is an obvious fallacy in this argument. Alliance policy is not directed to replacing the capacity of Trident but the capacity of Polaris. When the noble Baroness comes to reply, perhaps she will give us the correct figures of this equation because she, I am sure, will have spotted the fallacy in the paper.
This error invalidates a good half of the document but it also argues that cruise would be too vulnerable—too vulnerable to interception and too vulnerable because, owing to its shorter range, the submarines carrying it would have to operate closer to the coast. But here again, there is an obvious fallacy. I read that quotation once again:
"Our assessment is that Britain would need at least 400… cruise missiles of the type currently available".
I repeat again,
"of the type currently available".
That means that the Government are assuming that for the next eight years, until the mid-1990s, there will be no improvement in cruise missile technology. That is all it can mean. At the same time the document assumes that Soviet defence technology will increase by leaps and bounds. Intense research and development on cruise are going on in the United States for longer range, greater accuracy, electronic counter measures and guidance systems, but according to the Government all that is going to fail. They give not reasons whatever for supposing that it will. That is
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one reason why, by the time Trident is operational, there will be 101 United States submarines equipped with cruise and 82 surface vessels equipped with cruise; and why long before Trident comes into service there will be 180 B-52s equipped with cruise.
There is another point in that connection. It may well be that by the time Trident comes into service in 1989 the Americans will have decided that with the advance of technology cruise is a better bet than Trident. If that happens the British Trident project is sunk. No one will then remember the promises made by Mr. Reagan, the former President, to Mrs. Thatcher, the former Prime Minister.
The final argument against cruise in this extraordinary document is that there will be less sea room available because of the short range of cruise missiles. That may be so, even if the range is extended. But if those submarines are vulnerable what about the cruise missile sites at Greenham Common and Molesworth? The Government are enthusiastic in establishing cruise missile bases there, but if the submariners are vulnerable what about the inhabitants of Berkshire? Or is it the Government's belief that the Russians can pinpoint a Trident submarine in the North Sea but have no idea of the whereabouts of Berkshire? Is that the Government's argument? That argument, too, completely falls to the ground.
The final piece of misinformation in this document is that it grossly understates the degree of escalation involved in the Trident project. We all know that the Government are not proposing to deploy the full capacity of Trident. If they did deploy the 14 warheads on each missile—bigger warheads, greater accuracy, independently targeted, with longer range—the degree of escalation could be assessed at not less than 10 or 15 times. Therefore, the Government are not going to deploy the full capacity but only eight warheads per missile. Trident has turned out to be too big for the Government and too big for Britain, as from the start its critics always said it would be. Moreover, the Government will be paying large sums of money for a capacity that they are not going to deploy, which is breaking every rule of cost-effectiveness.
What justification is there for any escalation at all? The Government make no pretence that international relations are changing or that they will change by the mid-1990s in order to justify escalation. They fall back on the one argument that the missile will become increasingly vulnerable to Soviet interception. Ironically, they use the same argument to defend Trident as they use to attack cruise, but in both cases their statements are totally unconvincing and are not supported by facts or figures.
Since there is no official information, we have to fall back on other sources. The best source seems to be the very authoritative American journal Scientific American, which reported in August last year that, after allowing for improvement in Soviet defences until 1990, a Trident project with a government ceiling of 518 missiles would be capable as follows:
"Britain would be able to inflict between 24 million and 68 million Soviet fatalities and to incapacitate up to half the Soviet production base.".
Further improvements in the Soviet defence may in the long run materialise and they will come more readily. I may add, if the Government fail to prevent

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the Americans from destroying the ABM Treaty, which it looks as though they are about to do at present. But it is plain that the degree of escalation in the Government's plans is far in excess of that needed to inflict unacceptable damage on the Soviet Union.
The special pleading in this document, and its obvious political purpose, raises the question of the legitimacy of using public money for publications of this kind. We agree that sometimes it is necessary to use public money to inform the public of the impact of decisions by the Government or local authorities; but it is always wrong to spend rates and taxes on propaganda. Just as it is wrong for Labour-controlled borough councils to spend ratepayers' money on tendentious attacks on the Government, so it is wrong for the Government to use taxpayers' money to make tendentious attacks on the Alliance.
Indeed, the offence committed by Conservative Ministers is worse. The emblem on this document is not that of Camden borough council or Conservative Central Office; it is the emblem of the Defence Council. It is a particular scandal to drag the armed services into propaganda on behalf of the Conservative Party. I am afraid that defence Ministers need reminding that their duty to the services comes before their duty to the Conservative Party.
In the time still available to me I turn briefly to the Labour Party's policy of unilateral abandonment by Britain of all nuclear weapons and nuclear bases. I shall be brief because there are so few supporters of that policy in this place, or, indeed, anywhere else. Labour policy does not deny that while the Russians have nuclear weapons the West must have them, too. It does not explicitly deny that. How could it? How could even the Labour Party advocate a policy which would present on a plate to the Russians military and, therefore, political domination worldwide?
However, once having accepted that, there follow inevitable and awkward questions. For example, if it is right for the West to have a deterrent, why is it wrong for Britain to help with it? We have never had an answer to that question from the Labour Benches. If it is right for the West to have a deterrent, does not it follow that a nuclear deterrent can sometimes deter and that the possession of nuclear weapons is not necessarily futile or immoral?
Finally, I think we all agree that on questions of national security such as the British deterrent political parties should be willing to lead public opinion rather than to follow it. Nevertheless, it is gratifying when one discovers that the policy one is accepting on its merits also proves to be popular.
I should like to quote a Gallup Poll carried out a few months ago which asked people to choose among three different policies on the deterrent which corresponded—unlike The Times on Monday—to the policies advocated by the three parties. The question was:
"If you were planning Britain's defence strategy for the next 10 to 15 years, which approach would you be most inclined to follow?".
Three choices were given:
"Britain should get rid of all its nuclear weapons and require the Americans to remove theirs from bases here".
That is Labour Party policy. Thirty-three per cent. agreed.
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"Britain should maintain a nuclear deterrent as powerful as the weapons we have now".
Broadly, that is Alliance policy. Fifty-four per cent. said yes.
"Britain should have more powerful nuclear weapons".
That is the policy of the Conservative Party. Seven per cent. said yes.
We salute the courage of the Conservative Party, going into an election with a policy on the deterrent which is not only manifestly wrong but grossly unpopular, too. We salute its courage. That is the fate which was predicted for the Alliance parties by some noble Lords opposite.
I recall the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, to whom I have given notice of my intention to quote him today. Last December he said:
"Maybe that is why we see the Alliance backing in the most recent poll yesterday slumping to only 18 points. I suspect that it may well end up at 12 or 14 points if it goes on the way it is going at the present time in its attitude to its nuclear and defence policy".—[0fficial Report, 3/12/86; col. 877.]
For my noble friends these were chilling words indeed. We anxiously await the results of the by-election in Greenwich tomorrow, hoping against hope that, despite the fact that he supported Trident, we shall defeat the Conservative candidate there.
However—and I end on this note—the fact is that the voters now have three choices: they can escalate the deterrent; they can scrap the deterrent; or they can maintain the deterrent pending disarmament. My noble friends and I are entirely confident that the policy that we are recommending is the one that is the best for Britain and the one that the British people want.
3.21 p.m.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, I should like to start my eight-minute contribution to this debate by saying that on all sides of the House we must be very excited about the changes that are taking place in the Soviet Union at the present time. Any remarks that I make today will certainly be conditioned by the fact of the efforts that are clearly being made by Mr. Gorbachev, and I think that all of us have to make sure that we discuss disarmament again and again in order not to discourage these exciting changes. A cautionary word must be added, however, that not only since the revolution but before it the people of that great country have never had freedom as we understand it with the power that comes from freedom of expression. One must watch with bated breath to see how far the changes go and one must realise that there are enormous differences still existing.
Let me waste another moment by apologising to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, whom I see in the Chamber, for an inaccurate statement that I made during a debate on 3rd December when I said that he had been the Chief of Defence Staff until 1978, the date at which the then Labour Government approved the development of Trident. That statement was inaccurate. The noble and gallant Lord resigned in 1976. I have apologised to him and I have already written to everyone who took part in that debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, has followed an attractive political line in the terms of the Motion.

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Nobody claims to be in favour of extremes. It is nice for the Alliance to end up in the middle. That is a nice posture. The reality of the situation is that until 1978 the two main parties of alternative government in this country worked on a broadly agreed bipartisan policy. In 1978, after approving the development of Trident, the Labour Party moved away from that position to a major extent.
Lord Mulley: My Lords, if the noble Lord will permit me to interrupt, I should like to say that the Labour Government did not approve the purchase of Trident in 1978, or at any time at all. The question was open, as was made quite clear in the 1979 election manifesto.
Viscount Trenchard: Development expenditure, my Lords. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Mulley, for whom I have the greatest respect, that design and development expenditure was approved in 1978. It was no great amount but it was approved under the Labour Government. The truth of the matter is—
Lord Diamond: My Lords, will the noble Lord correct the statement that he previously made?
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, that is the truth of the matter, as we shall see later. Sadly, the bipartisan policy that existed all through the post-war years has now ceased to exist and the latest policy statement from the Labour Party, which the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, mentioned toward the end of his speech, entitled Modern Britain in a Modern World, departs from almost everything that the Labour Party has believed in for a very long time. Not only have we departed from a bipartisan policy as a result of a movement in the Labour Party but we have also started to present different impressions of the facts about the defence situation.
At this point I must comment on the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, that the Government should not produce open documents on defence issues with public money. Foreign affairs and defence are matters upon which in the past the electorate has, quite naturally, found it pretty hard to make a judgment. It is quite difficult for an ordinary British citizen to be aware of what the Russians have and to know what the Foreign Office believes may be threats from around the world. That is why in the past it has been very important to have a bipartisan policy and a common presentation of the facts, and in the past government documents have not been seriously challenged. I hope that there will be a return to that situation. I do not believe that the parallels or the comparisons that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, mentioned have relevance.
Moreover, I do not believe that the Government since 1979, or NATO, or the USA have adopted an extreme position such as the terms of this Motion suggest, either in actions on armaments or in their statements. I shall not weary your Lordships with the facts culled from any source of statistics that one wishes to take, including the International Institute of Strategic Studies, to prove that the conventional
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balance has not improved since 1979. If anything it has got worse and we have lost our technical edge to a greater degree, as was said in the institute's last two technical publications. The chemical balance has become infinitely worse and the tactical nuclear balance has worsened substantially, which is particularly important when one talks about the removal of intermediate-range weapons such as the SS.20 and cruise, and Pershing. These things have not been extreme.
While I do not agree with quite a lot of what the United States has been saying lately, I cannot accuse it of being extreme. If agreement had been reached at Reykjavik—and I shall come to star wars in a minute—we should have moved on a pretty fast path toward the removal of intermediate-range ballistic missiles while the conventional chemical and tactical weapons balance remains as bad as I have just described.
While there is much propaganda about star wars, it is not disputed that the Soviet Union has an ABM system. It is not disputed that the Soviet Union is far advanced in the production of satellites, and, at the moment, larger satellites than in the USA. It is said that the Soviet Union has been working and researching on lasers for a long time. Taking just those three areas, I do not think that either side can hold the position that it has taken up on the star wars issue. In free democracies we find ourselves continually guilty of using our freedom to criticise our own stance, and that makes negotiation very difficult.
Let me end with one other main point on deterrence which I have mentioned before. I feel that there is a bit of a muddle, not only in the minds of well-meaning organisations such as CND but even in the minds of professional military men between the long history of the rules and experience of war fighting and the modern politics of deterrence, including nuclear weaponry.
Most of us believe that the weapons today are so awful in their destructive power, and so relatively economical in terms of cash and people, that the possibility of their use is, in most of our minds, credited with giving us the long period of peace that we have had in Europe since the Second World War. It is becoming agreed between all of us, including the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, and myself, that there can be no winner in a nuclear war. Surely that fact, if it sinks into the head of a potential aggressor, will show that the threat of the possible use of nuclear weapons may be of use in advancing the cause of either a potential aggressor or of democratic defenders. Bearing in mind that there can be no winners, and that an aggressor presumably wants something, the actual use of such weapons is of no use to an aggressor.
If such an aggressor miscalculated, the use of nuclear weapons could, in some circumstances, be of value to a defender. That is logic. It is admittedly theory because we have never had a situation where both sides have nuclear weapons and one has used them; nevertheless, if that situation is logical and it is believed that a defender will use such weapons or could or might use them, then no aggressor, knowing that there could be no winner in a nuclear war, will aggress. That being the case, we will keep the peace. We shall keep the peace if there is more than one worry

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in a possible aggressor's mind. Our independent nuclear weapon, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, must be an effective deterrent. I am delighted that he will keep an open mind until he can consult the service experts and others who raised no point—
Noble Lords: Order!
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt my noble friend when he is winding up his speech, but we must keep to the arrangements which were made. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, went slightly over time and I think that my noble friend has done so. Perhaps we could now try to stick to the timetable.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, may I finish my sentence?
Noble Lords: No.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, the finish of my sentence is that in my time in the Ministry of Defence no service chief or civilian quarrelled with the open documents on Trident that we produced.
3.34 p.m.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: My Lords, several years ago the late Lord Mountbatten made a powerful and much-remembered speech about defence in which he drew attention to the fearful consequences if the human race were to become involved in a nuclear war. That part of his speech is often quoted and used as an argument one way or another. He then went on to ask what in those circumstances we ought to do. He then immediately said, in effect, that one thing we must not do is to upset what is called the balance of terror that exists between the two great power blocs in the world.
It is as well that everyone who quotes his speech also remembers that part of it. I am convinced that that is true. There has been a good deal of argument about what it is that has kept the peace for these many years. One reason the peace has been kept is that both the great power blocs know that if they went to war they would suffer unspeakable damage. The fact that that is true of both sides and is known by both sides to be true is what has helped to keep the peace. There are other reasons at work, but that is a powerful one. If that balance and mutual knowledge of possible destruction disappeared, the danger of war would be much greater.
If this country is asked to pursue a non-nuclear policy, does that mean, as I am told it is supposed to mean, that we should be not only non-nuclear ourselves but should endeavour to persuade NATO to be non-nuclear? If we produce that result and NATO has no nuclear arms but the Warsaw Pact still has, we shall have a recipe for disaster or surrender. One must turn that aside.
If that is not what is meant, if what is meant is that this country should be non-nuclear but should still be part of NATO and that NATO should still have nuclear weapons, let us notice what follows from that. First, as we pointed out last time we debated this
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subject, it would put British troops in Europe in great danger. They would be alone among the troops on the Western side unprotected by the nuclear umbrella. I do not think we can put our troops in that position.
Secondly, it would deeply upset the whole organisation, and the set-up of nuclear power and weapons in NATO. It is sometimes said that Denmark, Norway, this country or the other in NATO has no nuclear weapons, so why should Britain have them. The answer to that of course is that we are not Norway or Denmark; inevitably we play a great part in the North Atlantic alliance and if we became nonnuclear and refused to give nuclear facilities to the United States it would inflict a fearful twist on the whole structure of NATO's defences.
There is another moral reason. I am always a little hesitant to bring that word into the argument because one should try to credit everyone with good intentions in this matter. What would be our position if we said that we were going to be non-nuclear but were still going to be a member of NATO? Trade unionists have long been acquainted with the man who is glad to draw increased wages won for him by the strength of his trade union, but does not join the union. He has never been regarded, except possibly on the Benches opposite, as an admirable figure. If we say, "We are going to remain in NATO, but we are not taking any of the risks that may be involved in having nuclear weapons anywhere near us", we are saying something new. We are saying that we want to belong to the union but we do not propose to pay the subscription. That is not a credible or creditable stand to take.
If we believe in defence, and if we believe in NATO, we must accept that this country continues to play an active part in it, not only by having nuclear weapons of our own—though that I think is not the most important issue—but by resolutely co-operating with the United States in the preparation of the nuclear part of NATO's defences.
I agree therefore with what is said in the Motion about the undesirability of the extremes of unilateral disarmament. But what about the other extreme that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, mentioned—the extreme of excessive nuclear weaponry? I am not sure that I was fully convinced by his argument about Trident, but I think that he put it forward very powerfully, and I shall listen with great interest to see what answer the Government give.
The danger of the world loading itself with so much nuclear weaponry as to threaten the peace will not come about as a result of anything that this country does; we are not large enough in the whole pattern to have that effect. The danger of excessive piling up of nuclear weapons or excessive threats of nuclear power comes from one or other or both of the two very great powers. Our concern therefore with the United States must be, through the ordinary channels of diplomacy, to try to wean it away from policies that will involve the excessive piling up of nuclear weaponry. But let us notice this. If we hope to have any influence in that field, it is no good beginning by telling the United States to take all its nuclear weapons out of this country and not to expect any co-operation from us in nuclear matters in the future. We can say that if we like, but we cannot expect after that to have any effect at all on United States policy.

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If the situation remains so that we may have some effect on United States policy, I would suggest that we should concentrate on these things. First, is it necessary for it to proceed from the testing and development of SDI to its deployment? There seems to be a difference of opinion in the United States on that question. I hope that we shall be able to keep it on the right side of deployment. Secondly, let us hope that there will be no more rushing into summits with inadequate preparation, leaving a result where nothing practical is achieved and a number of ingenious journalists are writing articles to prove that it has been one of the major successes of this generation. I hope that we shall not have repetition of that kind of unreal thing. Thirdly, I hope that the British Government will continue to press on with the question of verification in every field of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons because the more efficient we can make the methods of verification the greater chance there is of genuine reduction of armaments.
Bearing in mind what has been said about previous speakers and seeing what the time is, I propose to leave the matter there.
3.43 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I too am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for tabling the Motion, though discussion of thermonuclear weaponry has a certain nightmare quality about it when one talks about the number of casualties or the number of warheads that each side possesses. I should like to focus on the word "dangers", thinking of dangers not only as physical dangers or the dangers of an outbreak of this terrible conflict but as dangers to our consciences.
There are many people in the country who ask: can it possibly be morally right to possess and threaten to use these frightful weapons of mass destruction? It would be a pity if in a debate of this kind that particular note were not heard. Many people in my own diocese find it difficult to understand how I as a Christian leader am not prepared unequivocally to condemn any possession or threat to use thermonuclear weapons. Some of those who take this view are of course pacifists, and there is a long and distinguished tradition of pacifism in the Christian Churches. Perhaps it may find some expression in the speeches to follow this afternoon.
There are others who criticise the Churches and their leaders for not coming out more strongly against the possession of nuclear weapons who are not pacifists. They believe in conventional deterrence, but they feel that nothing can possibly justify the use of such terrible weapons. They must be taken seriously, I submit to your Lordships. To them the danger is to conscience and they are prepared to accept other dangers in unilateral disarmament rather than go against conscience in this matter.
There are some people who argue that nuclear weapons are really no different in principle from other conventional weapons. They point to the horrors of the bombing of Dresden or of Tokyo during the last war when 200,000 people were killed largely as a result of fire. But they are different in extent. Consider that
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the tonnage equivalent in explosive power of what fell over Hiroshima was, I believe, 12,000 tonnes, and we have now more than 9 billion tonnes equivalent in explosive power represented in nuclear weapons. It is not only that, but we are aware that we are talking about the potential end to civilisation as we know it. I know that that is a hackneyed phrase, but after Chernobyl and what that represented who can doubt it?
However, those who protest against the way in which the Christian Churches accept the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrence do not represent the mainstream Christian thinking in the country at present. Most of us are prepared, sadly, reluctantly, with tortured consciences, to accept that there remains some place for a nuclear deterrent.
Troubled consciences were evident in the debate that we held in General Synod across the road back in 1983. Your Lordships will remember that this was as a result of the report of a debate chaired by the Bishop of Salisbury under the title The Church and the Bomb.. It was not, I hasten to say, a completely unilateralist report as it was represented. It accepted continuing membership of NATO armed with nuclear weapons. I take the points that the noble Lord, Lord Stewart, was making on this matter, and of course the report was tackled on those grounds.
It called for the phasing out of Polaris, the cancellation of Trident, a discontinuation of all nuclear weaponry independently possessed by Britain itself and the negotiation of an end to nuclear bases on British soil. The recommendations were defeated in General Synod by 100 votes to 338. In their place there was passed a motion calling on the Government to make a clear declaration that in no circumstances would they use nuclear weaponry first in any conflict—no first use.
We may perhaps argue that that debate was a few years ago and we are now in a changing situation, yet the debate continues not only in Britain but throughout the world. If one looks across the Atlantic to the United States, one finds that the Catholic bishops have taken an increasingly strong stand against the possession by their country of nuclear weapons, something that goes against some words that the present Pope has himself spoken.
The point that I put in front of your Lordships is that we must go on agonising in our consciences about the possession of nuclear weapons. From the point of view of a moral theologian, one of the most effective contributions was made in the debate by the present Dean of Durham, who pointed out that there have always been two types of ethical theory in the Christian Church, one of which says that any act, no matter what its consequences are, if it is immoral should not be engaged in. The other tradition says, no, one must take account of consequences of any act. That type of ethical theory is the one that would justify the continued possession of nuclear weapons because we cannot agonisingly see any way out of our present dilemma without possessing them.
The Dean of Durham said at the end of his speech:
"So long as we keep the threat to the minimum that we can keep it to, then we can take into account that end; namely, the preservation of peace, which the threat is intended to secure. It becomes then justifiable to do something which is unjust".

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I personally accept that second ethical theory, to which the dean referred. The possession of and threat to use nuclear weapons is, I believe, utterly inconsistent with a religion of love, yet it becomes justifiable to do something that is unjust if the aim is to preserve the peace.
I take also the words of Professor Michael Howard:
"to concern oneself in ethical values to the total exclusion of any practical activity in the dimension of power is to abdicate responsibility for shaping affairs".
I believe that the Christian tradition in this country must continue to try to play its part in the shaping of policy in this terrible and distressing field.
I come back to the moral argument—"as long as we keep the threat to the minimum". British possession of an independent nuclear deterrent does not in my opinion do this. It adds to the dangers of proliferation. I hope that when the noble Baroness comes to sum up she will say something about proliferation.
I do not take the point of view of a former Government Minister whom I heard on radio one day saying that it was perfectly all right for a civilised, organised country such as Britain to possess these terrible weapons but that every effort must be made to avoid their going to others. What is sauce for the goose is surely sauce for the gander if needed for our defence. It adds to the enormous waste of resources on military expenditure. Mutual deterrence is becoming less stable year by year, and we make our own contribution to that.
What we now see is an escalation in the form of the strategic defence initiative known as star wars, which seems to me to be a thoroughly dangerous fantasy. Nor do I believe that parity of weaponry is the name of the game, because this is also dangerous and leads to escalation.
Where do I stand on this spendidly moderate, mediating Motion put before us by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew? I believe that the main view taken by the report The Church and the Bomb is the correct one, though I can see the problems and that we ought indeed to move to the abandonment of the British independent nuclear deterrent in consultation with our allies but still with continued membership of NATO and reluctant possession of a nuclear deterrent there.
3.50 p.m.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, I believe that many people in this country are at this moment rather confused and indeed rather apathetic about defence, which is thought to be terribly complicated and controversial. No doubt it is. The fear of nuclear war is less than it was. Even CND seems to be losing some of its emotional appeal. Like my noble friend Lord Mayhew—whose excellent speech I warmly support—I do not mind if CND loses its appeal. But I worry about existing apathy, for I feel the situation is now much more dangerous than is commonly thought.
What is the danger? It is not that war is likely to result from some excessively provocative action. No—that is possible but still unlikely. I do not believe, for instance, that the Soviet Union will regard almost any action by the United States in Latin
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America—apart perhaps from Cuba—as a reason for even breaking off talks on arms limitation. Both sides will do their utmost not to get involved in local wars, more especially in the Middle East. Both will continue to put up with the patrolling of their coasts by potentially hostile nuclear submarines. Nor will disregard of human rights—where, incidentally, the Russians seem to be making very considerable progress—do more than put some strain on normal East-West relations. No; I believe that the danger—the not so very long-term danger of war—lies in a very different direction. In other words, it lies right overhead, in space.
Many people in America, perhaps some in Europe and no doubt the Soviet Union, nevertheless feel that the two super powers are set on a collision course: one philosophy, or Weltanschauung, must prevail, the other being abandoned or gradually renounced. This might, so they would say, take place without a world war but one could well occur as a result of the one side being about to possess a vast preponderance of power which, if ever it had to be employed, might possibly result in what they call "victory". Alternatively, it is imagined by some that if the West spends vast sums on nuclear armaments it will oblige the Soviet Union to follow suit, thus resulting in the collapse of the Russian economy. I believe that to be a very dangerous delusion.
At Geneva both leaders said that in their joint view no nuclear war could be won and therefore must not be fought. Nevertheless, an appalling arms race still goes on. Perhaps, apart from its cost, even this might not matter so much provided it was clear that neither side could conceivably knock out all, or nearly all, the offensive nuclear weapons of the other, as it were, in one fell swoop; in other words, that each side retained the assured capacity to inflict unacceptable damage on the adversary on what is called a second strike. This is the old doctrine of MAD, or mutually assured destruction. Unfortunately MAD has now apparently been replaced in America by the novel doctrine of MAS—mutually assured security—as a result of this disastrous project called star wars.
Why is it disastrous? It is because, whatever may be said in its favour, star wars is clearly, in effect, a conscious attempt to occupy (before the other side occupies it) what used to be called the high ground in space where, it is thought, the United States can be largely protected from nuclear bombardment and whence it could also, if necessary, destroy or threaten to destroy with comparative immunity the Soviet Union itself. Evidence of such intention, I believe, even if unacknowledged, can be found in the latest Weinberger plan for permanently stationing a large number of so-called killer satellites over the Soviet Union.
It is only natural therefore that unless the ABM treaty of 1972 is abided by, in the sense of agreement on what exactly is implied by research, and not effectively repudiated by what is called the broad interpretation, the Soviet Union will take such precautions as are open to it, none of which, to say the least, will be consonant with any possible agreement on the limitation of nuclear arms. The outlook therefore at the moment is sombre. But that is not all. As has already been said by a speaker, the SDI

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research may well be useful in preparations for the destruction of the satellites of the adversary. All ASAT—anti-satellite activity—therefore should, consequently, by agreement henceforth be banned. I think that the Soviet Union would agree to that. Observance of such a ban could easily be verified.
What conclusion do we draw from this deplorable situation? The first is that the Russian leadership under Gorbachev will not prejudice Soviet claims to be what it thinks is an equal super power and thus a potential rival of the United States. A kind of modified cold war, and in any case the maintenance of some kind of Soviet empire (short of an unlikely internal collapse), will therefore continue. We must assume that that will be so. But the time has now come when there simply must be agreement on arms limitation if the danger of war and mutual destruction is to be averted and, indeed, if the maintenance of the Western alliance is to be assured.
Gorbachev is at least right on one essential point. If nuclear tests now take place in space we shall all be in some danger of annihilation. Her Majesty's Government therefore must make it absolutely clear that they are entirely opposed to what is called the broad interpretation of the 1972 treaty and, in principle, opposed also to any efforts to prepare for the holding of nuclear tests in space. They must say that they are totally opposed on both those issues. If we publicly take this line we shall not be simply siding with the Russians but trying to keep together the Western alliance which otherwise Mr. Gorbachev one day—perhaps with the assistance of Left-wing governments in Europe—may have a good chance of breaking up.
A really first-class book has just been published by an American professor called Seweryn Bialer. It is entitled The Soviet Paradox, External Expansion, Internal Decline. It analyses with great objectivity the problems posed by the existing Russian empire. Towards the end of this work, he says:
"The time for fundamental decisions with regard to arms control has been reached, a time which may only last a few years … the central decision has to be taken by the United States which … has two options. The first is to press for mutual, verifiable and equitable reductions of offensive weapons. The second is to press forward with unilateral plans of missile defence—the SDI. These cannot be reconciled".
I repeat those words: "These cannot be reconciled".
Mr. Bialer prefers the first option. He says:
"A commitment to SDI will both intensify the arms race and preclude terrestrial arms reductions, carrying with it an unavoidably dangerous destabilisation of the nuclear balance".
In the light of these wise words what general line will the Prime Minister take in Moscow? Unless she favours the broad interpretation of the treaty—which I should have thought was inconceivable—she can, while still remaining a devoted member of NATO, hardly avoid being to some extent an intermediary between the two super powers. She will presumably have to listen to what Mr. Gorbachev has to say about the concessions he may make on arms limitation, always supposing that he agrees with her that the broad interpretation of the treaty must be abandoned, and she might well ask him whether he can make further concessions as well.
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If this should annoy some members of the tottering United States Administration, well, that just cannot be helped. However, it would surely appeal to a majority in Congress, and it is on that that we must now rely if the ailing President is to be persuaded, possibly to resume the summit talks but at least, by reverting to the narrow interpretation of the treaty, to further the negotiations at Geneva, on the success of which the future of all of us in the Western hemisphere now so obviously depends.
4 p.m.
Lord Soper: My Lords, I am attracted to the Motion on the Order Paper for a number of reasons, not least that it takes place at a time when there is obviously movement in the international sphere. That is true not only in Russia—as regards which it would be excellent if we tried to support the Russian situation as it is now developing—but also in the chaos which is likely to emerge on the other side of the Atlantic.
However, it is for a much more important reason that I believe this debate is timely and imperative. As I listened to what was said I had the uncomfortable feeling that it was largely a discussion by a number of prisoners in the condemned cell, occasionally visited by the prison chaplain. I honour him for the candour, if he will allow me to say so, and the sincerity of what he said, but I do not believe that an agonised conscience is the only factor that can contribute to practical conversation in the condemned cell.
My problem is a moral one and I share with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester the apocalyptic nature of the threat which now faces us all. It is a threat which is not confined to the deliberate actions of super-powers. As a result of the proliferation of nuclear capacity, there is the prospect of terrorism using nuclear powers to its own advantage, to say nothing of another matter which I believe must find some inclusion in an informed debate this afternoon. I notice—and I hope it is a calculated noticing—many people today, young and old, becoming increasingly cynical. They are finding it very difficult to put up with the kind of world in which they live, except by escaping as best they can from any commitment to it. That is a very dangerous situation and the danger is likely to increase.
The Motion on the Order Paper concerns three kinds of danger. There is the apocalyptic danger to which reference has already been made and I shall not repeat what has been said so eloquently on the matter. We are in imminent danger of a collapse which is far greater than even the scientists have recognised. The Chernobyl catastrophe is only partial evidence of something which goes far deeper; it is the capacity which we now have—the do-it-yourself capacity—to destroy almost anything in this world that can be destroyed.
The second danger is that it would he foolish to assume that in the present situation there is some kind of practice and programme which will be without danger. I speak professionally and I know that my ecclesiastical friends will agree with me when I say that if one persists in things which are wrong for sufficient time, one will lose a measure of the capacity to put them right and there will be a danger in whatever one

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endeavours to do. I believe that must be reconciled with the present situation. I am prepared to recognise that there are innumerable dangers facing those who seek peace in this troubled world today.
There is a third danger to which the Motion makes reference, but it is not dealt with in any composite degree; namely, the danger of unilateral excessive or extreme action. There seems no purpose in unilateral action which is not sufficiently powerful to do any good. The Russians unilaterally halted their tests but they started them again because it was a comparatively trivial unilateral action which carried no real punch behind it.
It will be no surprise to those who have suffered such speeches as I have tried to make previously that I believe that unilateral action is the only course reconcilable with the Christian faith to which I should like to adhere. However, there is no virtue in saying: "I will if you will". We must make sure that the result of our common action produces something agreeable to both sides. There is now paramount need in view of the increasing danger of the present situation to face a unilateral action which, in my judgment, must go further than a diminution of offensive weapons or the nuclear threat; I am referring to its abolition.
I know that I speak for a small minority in this field, but it would only be honest to say that I am more convinced as the days go by that the essence of the Christian faith finds no substance whatever in the idea of privatisation in economics—to which I shall not refer now—and the idea of the deterrence of terror. There is not place in the Gospels for the deterrence of terror; no place at all.
It seems to me that unless we are prepared to renounce the whole concept of the Christian faith we must take it as intrinsically it is rather than water it down or develop it in terms of what would be suitable or what we think would be practical. I hope that I shall not be accused of arrogance when I venture to say that the essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is obedience rather than the calculation of results which may follow from our own interpretation of what we think would be better for the world and what apparently is the purpose of God for it.
I therefore make my witness very briefly, and I shall not take up the whole of the eight minutes which I have been allocated. I make my witness as clearly as I can to the possibility of one country taking the initiative and believing that by a renunciation of its capacity to take part in the deterrence of terror that will open the door to all kinds of new approaches which I believe are burgeoning within the peoples of the world and are to some extent represented in Gorbachev. Above all, they are represented in the hope, which is now being threatened; that we live in a world where, by the grace of God, we can have peace on earth and good will among men.
What I have said may sound a little like a sermon, but this is the kind of contribution which must be included if we are rigorously and realistically to approach the forthcoming problems which seem to increase in their intensity and in the dreadful consequences that they prophesy. It is in the context that I invite your Lordships to consider again within the framework of this Motion not some kind of partial
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deterrent which flows from a unilateral renuciation of certain weapons, but that one country—and, please God, it will be this country—will be prepared unilaterally to translate the Gospel of non-resistance and the profession of the love of God. In my estimation that is an infinitely greater opportunity. Whatever the dangers I believe that it would be guaranteed finally in its success in the very nature of the world as I believe it to be.
Therefore I advocate again that the consequences are of secondary importance to the commitment. The commitment to violence today is a commitment to death; a commitment to unilateral and total disarmament is the bellwether of life.
4.8 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, the debate today was originated by the Alliance for a special reason; namely, to make quite sure that people understood the important policy on defence and where we stand. It was reinforced in my mind at a recent NATO briefing I attended for delegates to the Western European Union Assembly where a Conservative member asked the American chargé d'affaires whether he was aware that two of the main parties in Britain advocated unilateral disarmament and the removal of American bases and what effect that would have on the alliance. I hope that the noble Baroness on the Front Bench will assure me that Conservative Back Benchers are informed of the policy of their opponents. The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, certainly appeared to be informed upon it. He criticised it. He said that we are in the middle—not a bad place to be—but he did accept that the policy was different from the Labour Party's.
This piece of misinformation in the Conservative Party is, to put it mildly, not very good for democracy. You can criticise an opponent's policy on the technical details and on the alternatives to Polaris. But it is quite wrong to equate it with Labour Party policy which that party can defend. Labour's policy is not our policy. I hope that the Conservative Party will take this on hoard. In any democratic system, you really must criticise your opponent's policies on the facts and not on misinformation. The noble Baroness smiles which I take as a very good sign.
I am not going to take up the whole of my time. Most people who say that go on to exceed their time. I would like to say, however, that I was desperately pleased with the briefing that we had with the leaders of NATO. I am not giving away any secrets when I say that the general line there pleased me. It was the policy we are adopting. It was, "Keep up your guard but take advantage of the tremendous internal changes which are going on inside the Soviet Union which might" —and indeed, I believe, must—"lead to a change in its foreign policy and attitude to disarmament."
It was Goering who said that the German people preferred guns to butter. But once you actually give people butter—which, of course, we in the EC do—they begin to prefer it. It is, quite seriously, foolish of us not to recognise that great changes may be taking place inside the Soviet Union. We must stand with our guard up but ready to reassure the Soviet Union in respect of the paranoia it has about security, and to make genuine advances in disarmament.

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That is, briefly, the policy which we in the Liberal Party and in the Alliance as a whole have had since the unfortunate defeat or stupid mistake at Eastbourne. We have gone round the country. We have gone to the sources of democratic power in the party. In each and every one—in Scotland, for example—we have received backing for this sensible policy set out for everyone, including the Conservative Party, to read. I have the honour to be president of the Scottish Liberal Party. At the council meeting where we passed this policy, the votes were 110 for and 6 against. This was repeated in the Welsh party and repeated in the English party. Our opponents should recognise that we have a sensible policy, one which will work in the modern world, one which is backed by the Alliance—both parties—and one which is practical. It should not be misrepresented.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the first point to which I want to draw the attention of the House is that if this Motion is aimed first at the Labour Party, it is quite inaccurate. The Labour Party does not stand for unilateral disarmament. The Labour Party stands for the removal of British nuclear weapons, for an increase in our conventional weapons and an increased influence in NATO.
It puzzles me, particularly listening to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, as to who the members of the Alliance are, and who they are speaking for. Are they speaking for the SDP? Are they speaking for the Liberal Party? Are they speaking for the Liberal Assembly? Are they speaking for the SDP Liberal Defence Commission report which has been rejected? Who are they speaking for? Where is this Alliance? Surely there are more divisions between members of the Liberal Party and the SDP than there are even in the Labour Party or the Conservative Party.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, we are speaking for the Alliance, the policy of which is set out in the document named by my noble friend, Lord Mayhew, in his opening speech.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, that is dependent on whether one can recognise an alliance between two sets of politicians who constantly disagree with each other and who have been represented at the Liberal Assembly by a resolution which is much closer to the policy of the Labour Party than it is to the document that has been referred to.
We have weekly seen Dr. Owen—who is supposed to be one of the leaders of the Alliance—staking his political future on the continuation of the British bomb. What is this policy? It is a contradiction of the resolution passed at the Liberal Assembly. It seems to me that the only description that fits the defence policy of the so-called Alliance is that it is a marshmallow policy occasionally spiced with Dr. Owen's brimstone.
Where do the Government stand? The Government stand apparently four-square behind Trident. I would like to ask the noble Baroness who is to reply whether she agrees that the possession of Trident would greatly escalate the nuclear power that has been centred on
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Polaris. I asked a member of the Government whether the logical conclusion of their policy was that, whereas today's nuclear warheads could obliterate the whole human race, by the 1990s, with the possession of Trident, the human race could be obliterated five times. I was told by the member of the Government, with his normal inflated pomposity, that it was a question not worth answering. Is it the policy of the Government that deterrence needs the human race to be obliterated five times?
I wish to deal for a moment with what is happening in Europe. It is not just the Labour Party that is under attack. We have seen the defence policy of the Labour Party under attack by General Rogers. Now we understand that General Rogers is to be replaced by General John Galvin who has made no secret of his belief that the world is polarised and that policy must be geared to the acceptance of that polarisation. We do not accept that polarisation. I would remind noble Lords that when the Danish right-of-centre government unilaterally decided to move to a more defensive nuclear policy it was immediately under pressure from the Americans.
When the Right Wing Dutch coalition government unilaterally decided to scale down its nuclear tasks, and when it reopened the issue of its acceptance of cruise in the farce that followed Reykjavik, it was under attack by the Americans. Now when the Canadian Liberal Opposition supports the ban on United States testing of cruise over its territory and declares that it believes that Canada should be a nuclear-free zone, once again that pressure is brought, just as it is now being brought on the Labour Party because of our defence policy. Since Chernobyl, the exposure of star wars, the attack on Libya and also the sinking of the Soviet submarine in the Atlantic, opinion in Europe and all over the world is changing. This can be shown from public opinion polls sponsored by the United States.
The polls show that in Western Europe opinion is rapidly changing in its attitude towards the whole nuclear issue. We on these Benches believe that the bomb has never been a ticket to any top level conference—that is a pose or a macho policy. We are a middle-strength state and we should recognise that fact and act accordingly and act constructively, as do Norway and Canada, who are both members of NATO. Neither countries have nuclear weapons. Our action should be through the United Nations, the EC, or the Commonwealth. We do not believe that the Soviet Union, with its ramshackle economic system and grave internal and external problems, would be so mad as to even contemplate absorbing 300 million Western Europeans.
We demand and will demand the removal of Soviet nuclear weapons and occupying forces from Eastern Europe. We support and shall continue to support those struggling for their freedom in Eastern Europe. But we reject the deception that British nuclear weapons can in any way influence the Soviet policy. Such weapons can only threaten the survival of the British people.
Our policy is to concentrate and extend the use of diplomacy, discussion, increased trade and above all international institutions to encourage the liberalisation of the Soviet Union. This can be

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achieved by setting an example from this country together with the increasing number of Europeans and peoples of other continents who are rejecting nuclear weapons as a solution to the human problem. We believe in setting an example. There is a distinct and coherent policy of defensive deterrence which can reduce the possibly fatal European tensions. That is the clearly worked out policy which has been laid before the country by the Labour Party and is the policy which we believe will be supported by the people of Britain.
4.23 p.m.
Lord Rodney: My Lords, in the limited time available I should like to confine my remarks to a few observations on unilateral nuclear disarmament, and then to consider the Alliance's bargain basement alternative.
First, I should like to say that as Parliamentarians it is our duty to support policies most likely to prevent another world conflict, and to ensure that if ever one should erupt that our country is as well prepared as possible.
If those proposing universal disarmament, namely, nuclear disarmament, were only from the loony Left, as it has now become called, I might be able to sympathise with them—if not to absolve them. But, I fear that there is an element among the advocates with much more sinister motives. I am sure that many members of CND are sincere in their beliefs, however misguided. But there is also a cynical element using these idealists for their own ends. However, if we stay simply with these idealists, how short are their memories? Are they not advocating very similar policies to those that prevailed before the last war? We buried our heads in the sand then and we very nearly lost them.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way for one moment? Was that not the policy followed by the Conservative Government?
Lord Rodney: That is quite correct. We have learned by our mistakes: hut, unfortunately some other people have not. I thank the noble Lord for that intervention, I was waiting for it.
My Lords, the name of the game then was appeasement from all sides. I was rather young in those days, but if I remember rightly it was from all parties. The policy was: do not do anything to upset the Nazis. Now the policy is: get rid of all our nuclear armaments. Rid our soil of these nasty things and any nuclear bombs or rockets flying around the place will not come our way. What a pipe-dream!
Following the same line of reason, if we had scrapped all our bombers during the last war the enemy would not have bombed us. But, we go further still now—we have nuclear free zones. I admit that I have never had a lucid explanation as to how one maintains such zones, although I understand that some councils are spending quite substantial sums of money in promoting them. Surely, if we have learned nothing else from the Chernobyl catastrophe, we have come to realise that nuclear clouds are no respecters of frontiers, or even of council boundaries. The whole
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concept of unilateral nuclear disarmament, which to me is today's equivalent of appeasement, appears so illogical that I find it hard to believe that anyone who subscribes to such a concept really has the interests of our nation at heart.
I was happy to note from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, that at least we have one point in common: we both disown and condemn unilateral disarmament. But I think that is about as far as we can go together. I referred earlier to the Alliance's bargain basement policies. As with many apparent bargains, I think they will not turn out to be such a great bargain. As I understand the matter, they have cobbled together a plan which at least has resulted in some agreement among themselves, but which really seems to give us the worst of all worlds. The plan would mean continuing with Polaris beyond its effective lifespan, using cruise missiles and French ballistic missiles, which possibly will not be technically compatible.
I do not wish to be disrespectful to the noble Lord, but when he was speaking there was a little jingle going through my mind:
"If 'if's and 'ands' were pots and pans
we wouldn't need a tinker."
If I may say so, the impression I had was that we wait and see. But how long can we wait and see? Surely decisions have to be taken now. We cannot wait until the opportunity arises, if ever, of getting the information from the right sources. A decision has to be made now.
In contrast, this Government have adhered to a logical and rational plan of maintaining Britain's own effective independent nuclear deterrent, which they are now proposing to up-date in time for the 21st century. They are not proposing to wait and see. How is it possible to put a value on national security? Our present policies have secured us against world conflict for over 40 years. Should we now put all this at risk and follow the Opposition's plans for scrapping our whole national deterrent, and that of our allies on our shores, in exchange for some increase in conventional weaponry which has never proved to be a deterrent to an aggressor in the past? Or, should we follow the Alliance's policy of a nuclear deterrent on the cheap, which to me seems to me to be neither fish nor fowl. I think not, my Lords. I believe that the very finality of a nuclear war, even to the most aggressive, is its greatest deterrent. With conventional weaponry, wars have always existed. With the ultimate in destruction, which regrettably nuclear weaponry is, I believe that we have a means to eliminate world conflict—that may sound slightly high falutin'—but we have to maintain our position or we will lose that deterrent.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, I am concerned with nuclears, not as weapons but as deterrents. I wish nuclears long life and success as a deterrent, for the continued survival of the human race depends upon the success of the nuclear deterrent. That is what we have to face up to.
If one believes in a deterrent one must also believe in being deterred. I hereby declare that I am deterred, and so I believe is every sane man and woman in this country, because we are totally indefensible. The Russians know that very well. We could never in any

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circumstances use the deterrent for the simple reason that we live in a glass house, and the Russians know very well that we live in a glass house.
When I was spokesman for my party, I went as the guest of the American Air Force to the Rand Institute of Strategic Studies. One of the things they studied was the amount of nuclear attack capable of killing a nation. By killing a nation they meant the same definition as we have of killing a human being; so injuring the brain that all control of the body ceases, and ceases permanently.
What is the scale of the attack that can bring that about in each nation, my Lords? I said, "What about England?" They gave me a figure. The other day I told this to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, and I asked him, "What do you think the figure will be?" He said, "About 10." Actually the Rand figure was 11. That is the degree of our vulnerability: 11 nuclear bombs—and those were bombs much smaller than existing ones—from which we have no possible defence. This would make us cease to be a unit as a nation capable of management or capable of government. Who can accept that?
The condition of a deterrent is that it should be credible. If we seriously want to make our deterrent credible, the only thing we can do is to send for the Yorkshire Ripper and make him Prime Minister, because only a well-established homicidal maniac could possibly use the weapons when we are in a position of vulnerability.
What then is the deterrent? In my view it is in fact NATO. But not NATO as a military alliance. As a military alliance it is a joke. The Americans are drying out; the Belgians and the Dutch are home at weekends; the French have gone home altogether. We are the only effective army there. Nobody who seriously studies these matters imagines that NATO, if it were attacked by the Russians, would be out of the bag for more than a week.
But what happens then? What do the Russians do then? What do they do when they get to the coast? They find themselves at war. At war with America; at war with the great god Poseidon in all the seas of the world around them. Is that a position the Russians want to get into: a hostile population; no trade; a perpetual blockade? China is a bit of a menace there. It is a formidable deterrent. It is that threat that there will be a war in which America and all the seas are against them.
What do we do about this? What is the sensible position for us to take? I certainly do not think that it is to spend our money on a weapon that we cannot possibly use. But unless we have a homicidal Prime Minister nobody could believe that we could use it. I certainly do not think that the wise thing to do is to say, "Now we are in government, Americans get out". That is a nonsense. Of course it is.
I personally believe that it would not be all that difficult to negotiate with the Americans and say, "Is it really sense for NATO to have its nuclear weapons in an indefensible position? We cannot defend them here. We cannot defend you here. We must really spread further off". I think that would be sensible.
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I have also always believed in conscription. I just do not think that it is healthy for a society to have three generations which have never pulled a trigger. When you get into that sort of state, nations do not live long. People ought to have a responsibility, and sense of responsibility, for defence within their country.
I also believe that it is perfectly good sense to say, "We are a far more effective partner in NATO if we have in fact a unit which cannot, unlike the rest of you, be immediately overrun; which is firmly defended by forces organised very much on—what is the word for it, my Lords?—formal lines. There is much prospect there of convincing the Russians that we can give them at least as much trouble as Afghanistan—and they have not liked that at all. That seems to me to be the sensible way in which we should be thinking.
4.38 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I always listen with fascination to the orations of the noble Lord, Lord Paget of Northampton. I did not quite gather whether he regarded conscription as the ultimate deterrent or not, but I entirely agree with one point he made. Any defence policy must necessarily be credible. The real issue before us is: what is a credible policy for our time, our age, given the differences that have now arisen?
It is now 42 years since the end of the last war. Given the aggressive policies of Stalin, the very dubious greyness of Brezhnev and the erratic era of Krushchev, it is almost certain that Russia was prevented from expanding into Western Europe by one thing, and one thing only. That was the existence of NATO, backed by the American deterrent.
It may be one of the regrettable facets of life—and although I so much admire him I disagree entirely here with the noble Lord, Lord Soper—but I believe that we have had 42 years of peace in Europe because of the existence of the alliance, backed by the ultimate deterrent. It was not regarded as a weapon. It is only in recent times that people have started to talk of the nuclear weapon. It was always the nuclear deterrent, the possession of which made the use of other weapons inconceivable because it might have led to the use of the deterrent.
A credible policy for our day has to pay regard to what has happened since that time. Clearly, the first requirement is to guarantee, so far as we can, the security of our country and of Western Europe. Therefore, it is very important to consider what has preserved peace. Secondly, it is equally important to make sure that our defence position is not so hidebound as to prevent progress from a state of collective security to one of common security for which the whole world yearns and which Russia needs as much as we need it.
I believe therefore that the Alliance defence policy is credible for our time. We have to pay regard to the fact that you cannot have massive armaments for 42 years without building up in our country, in the United States, in Russia and in every other part of Europe, whether to the east or to the west of the Iron Curtain, powerful vested interests in the armaments industry, in the armed services and so on. I have no doubt that Mr. Gorbachev, whatever efforts he is making to change the approach of Russia in foreign affairs, just as

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he is trying to change Russia internally, is faced with enormous reactions from vested interests within his own country. Likewise, we know that in the United States there are very powerful vested interests in armaments, and so on, as there are in our own country.
What, then, is the right posture for a country like ours to take at the present time? First, I think that most of us believe in collective security through NATO. It is impossible to subscribe to NATO and refute our obligations as a member. NATO is the best guarantee of our security. But the obligations—and here I speak to the Labour Party—include acceptance of the allies' bases on our soil; that is American bases. We should insist on full consultation and joint decision-taking with regard to the use of those bases.
How is it possible for a country like ours, which has sheltered behind NATO and the American nuclear deterrent, to say, "We will clear out your bases from the United Kingdom: we want your deterrent and we want to be part of NATO, but we do not want to be sullied in any way by having your bases on our land"?
That is an impossible position. It would lead to the break-up of NATO. This policy threatens its very existence. I am sure that the Labour Party policy, by its extremism, threatens the very existence of NATO. That could produce the most enormous consequences in the USSR as well as in our country. It could change the balance there and lead to the emergence of hardliners dominating Gorbachev. And it would mean changes certainly within the United States.
On the other hand, it seems to me—I am trying to keep my remarks very short—that the danger of the escalation of thermonuclear weaponry is enormous. I deplore the present lack of leadership in the United States. I think it is shattering Western Europe and faith in the alliance. The deterioration we have seen in the last year or two in European-American relations, particularly in regard to American pressure for wide interpretation of the ABM Treaty to enable the deployment of star wars, as well as its research programme, is reprehensible.
If the cry should go out from Western Europe to the United States for positive, more sensible and more enlightened leadership there and the cementing of the alliance, then this country should not go along with the United States. We are in a position to have enormous influence on the United States at the present time and I think we could take the lead in Western Europe. Surely, it is high time that the western pillar of NATO—the European pillar—pulled itself together and had a common policy, a common attitude. The Alliance policy in time leads to that.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I wish I could believe what the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, quite sincerely believes: that it is the nuclear weapon that has kept the peace. Quite other factors have preserved us from war, and we might perhaps remember in passing that in this so-called peaceful era 40 million people have been killed in wars all over the world—
A Noble Lord: Not in this country.
Lord Jenkins of Putney:—and that the nations participating in those wars, in spite of the fact, if I may refer to the seated interjection, that some of them have been armed with nuclear weapons, have not used them. They have not stopped the wars and they have not stopped the killing.
The notion that nuclear arms, by themselves, will keep the peace has not been borne out by the facts. All that has happened is that we have been fortunate enough in Europe not to have a third world war. But the situation is getting more and more dangerous all the time, and most people who have mentioned this point agree. They do not dispute that we are getting more and more weapons and are reaching a situation in which, if we move into star wars, we shall probably be unstoppable. They recognise this.
I extend my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, on introducing this Motion. I applaud his courage for doing so in the circumstances in which we find ourselves this evening. But my congratulations are modified by the fact that the Motion talks about "unilateral disarmament". Nobody in this House, with the sole exception of the noble Lord, Lord Soper, believes in unilateral disarmament; and that is what the Motion says. If the debate is between the noble Lords, Lord Mayhew and Lord Soper, I must regretfully tell the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, that I think he has lost it.
However, most of us are not arguing about what is in the Motion: what we are talking about is unilateral nuclear disarmament. This smudging over, this moving to the idea that the nuclear weapon is different from anything that has existed before and must be treated as the special weapon that it is, and because of that one automatically does not want any weapons at all, is not Labour Party policy. Therefore I venture to say that in introducing a Motion which seeks to suggest that it is, the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, is not acting with that standard of accuracy with which I have always credited him in the past.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I should just like to say that this is a drafting error, for which I apologise.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I am most grateful but it is an unfortunate drafting error because it seems to me to have spiked the noble Lord's argument. I am sorry that in introducing the debate he did not make it clear, at any rate to me, that the Motion contained a drafting error. He seemed to me to go out of his way to emphasise the error and to talk about Labour Party policy and about the Labour Party as though it believed—and perhaps it would be a good idea if it did, but it does not—in the policies advocated so eloquently and movingly by the noble Lord, Lord Soper.
I am sorry that we are not that kind of party, but we are not. We are a party which believes in strong conventional armaments in this country and in maintaining our position inside NATO. If my noble friend Lord Stewart wants to know the answers to his questions, curiously enough, the questions set out in the latest Labour Party defence policy are almost precisely those which he asked. Why does he not read the document issuing from Walworth Road? When he has done that he might dispute the answers; then we

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should hear a very interesting speech from him, and I look forward to it.
During our last discussion on these matters the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, referred at col. 901 of the Official Report of 3rd December to what he called my "usual scaremongering efforts". In that debate the case against Trident was put most effectively by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce-Gardyne, from the Government Benches. I followed the noble Lord in pointing out that beyond Trident was the case against nuclear weapons as a whole. I referred to nuclear weapons as a means of terminating our civilisation. This is what the noble Viscount called scaremongering.
But if he wants more effective scaremongering than I have been able to produce, let him look at what Lord Mountbatten of Burma said. There, indeed, was effective scaremongering. The fact that Lord Mountbatten was not a unilateralist, and I never suggested that he was, does not affect the fact that he recognised—and carried that out in what he was saying—that we were in the face of something which was no longer a weapon. We were in the face, for the first time in human history, of the means of totally destroying ourselves and all that we have done and represent, and of reducing this earth to something like the moon. That is within our power.
If we go on saying, "We recognise this but are not going to do anything about it, like the Alliance. We are just going to qualify it and try to carve up an agreement which will bring the policies of the Alliance together. We will try to get it together and push something over which does not mean anything but will somehow please the public", it will not please the public. It will not achieve the object which is sought and it will destroy the credibility of both members of the Alliance if they go on like that.
It was reasonable at one time to do this counting, which the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, is fond of, to add up how much we have on this side and how much there is on that side. When the things being counted were Messerschmitts and Spitfires I was very interested in that count, and I think it was entirely valid in the war that we were carrying out then. But it is absolutely useless when what we are counting up is whether we can destroy the world five times over or 10 times over. We have reached a stage of total nonsense and the danger is that, when we have it in our power to destroy mankind and all that we have done, we are messing about with the detail of the matter and forgetting about the situation which we are truthfully in at this time.
I have more that I could have said, but I say only this. I do not think there is a perfect policy capable of being carried out by any party under the sun in this situation. All I would say to your Lordships is that the calm factual policy now being put forward by the Labour Party is the only one which seeks to carry into practice the recognition of the special lethality of the nuclear weapon that I have talked about. It is because of that that I commend the Labour Party's policy to your Lordships.
4.53 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, today Mr. Perle and Mr. Nitze are in London for the inside of a day to consult us on the reinterpretation of the ABM treaty. They are to report back on Monday. A week or two ago, the State Department was to take six months over this work. We must wonder what is now the great hurry. Last week, Mr. Weinberger said to Congress
"We should try to develop … and deploy strategic defences as quickly as possible".
He must be understood to speak for the Administration. He is talking about a space-based weapon known now as a kinetic kill vehicle. The way to deploy these would be to garage them in armed satellites over Soviet territory or indeed ours. The preliminary system would comprise some 11,000 weapons. These or others could of course in time be able to strike down to earth as well as into space.
Deployment is obviously against the ABM treaty and so is testing. The Foreign Office lawyers cannot be telling the Government anything else. Senator Nunn has said that there will be a great constitutional crisis in the US, if the Administration tries to reinterpret the treaty to allow testing. It cannot do this: neither the Russians nor Congress will agree. Breaking the treaty would signal to the world that the United States will deploy its SDI or such part of it as works. It would follow on the breach of the SALT II terms, the mining of the Nicaraguan harbours, the contempt of the World Court's ruling on that, the betrayal of the West's anti-terrorist policy, the reported attempt to kill a head of state with bombers based in this country and the illegal gun-running by companies funded under the so-called democracy programme launched by the President in this building.
It would signal an arms race in space. It would also cause the Soviet Union to respond far beyond its present research. It is most unlikely that this response would not put paid to the deterrent effect of any ballistic missile system this country might have. Lastly, reinterpretation would destroy the disarmament negotiations. President Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev agreed at Geneva that these should cover three things: strategic nuclear weapons, intermediate nuclear forces and preventing an arms race in space. The US negotiators in Geneva have already been ordered to cease negotiating on space.
Why the increased haste? Come to think of it, why the sudden imposition of General Galvin of Central America fame to replace General Rogers? The Pentagon used to think that they could get an irreversible momentum behind the SDI before the end of President Reagan's term. They now understand they will have to do it quicker. And all along for three years now our Government have been dragged along behind the SDI, weakly producing agreed statement after agreed statement with President Reagan, which he then tears up. Will today be the day they speak out? Now more than ever it is urgent for us to change the system whereby the United States, whatever it does, formally negotiates with Russia for the whole of NATO. We must now join the negotiations. I wonder whether the Minister of State will be able to give us some news of this morning's talks in Downing Street.

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So much for the ABM treaty and SDI. Now for our own so-called independent deterrent—so-calleder and so-calleder; that is, if we ever get it at all. We are discussing defence and that means worst case analysis. That the United States is what our own Minister of Defence, Mr. George Younger, calls "Our greatest and closest ally" does not absolve the Government from responsibility for Britain's national interest. We on these Benches have often expressed our doubts about Trident II. The Government once had their doubts, too. The open government paper of 1982 said they were going to build hulls larger than required for the Trident I which they had earlier intended to buy,
"in order to retain the flexibility to switch, if necessary at some later stage, to a later missile whether it be Trident II or some successor system".
So at that time anyhow they were not all that sure themselves about what to get. Now in the most recent open government paper they say that they are building a warhead that can only fit Trident II.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic various events are taking place. The Government should be considerably less sure about Trident II than they were five years ago. There is the United States internal budget deficit, put at 169 billion dollars this year, and there is "Gramm-Rudman". The congressional budget office is already looking at alternatives to Trident II for America, including reliance on Trident I up to 100 per cent. It is clear where that would leave us. Trident II is too many eggs in one too vulnerable basket.
What is the legal standing of the agreement between the Prime Minister and the President for the sale of the Trident II missiles to us? It is in fact just an exchange of letters between the Prime Minister and the President. It has no Senate ratification. It is no more than an executive agreement in United States law. What, anyway, is United States law for this President? And if there is anyone here who does not know what happened to the Hyde Park and Quebec agreements after the Second World War, and to the agreement to sell us Skybolt, all of which were executive agreements, they should not be responsible for the defence and independence of this nation.
There was no historian of nuclear affairs on the small group of defence experts who advised the Prime Minister to opt for Trident I and then for Trident II. Had there been the Government would have been reminded that our nuclear weapons were developed as much to establish our independence of the often oblivious US decision-making as they were against Soviet threats. Nor was there a lawyer to guard against the possibility of reinterpretation of our agreements.
The Government do not have Trident contracts with US firms. They rest on the good pleasure—and good faith—of the United States Administration only. The Government are presumably thinking about that every day now. Yet they sail on regardless, as if they are not putting our national security in the hands of others whose extraterritorial claims are often excessive.
Then there is what happened at Reykjavik. Her Majesty's Government must also be thinking of the bright idea of two quite subordinate US officials. Mr. Perle who is today's visiting advocate of the breaching of the ABMT was one of them. This bright idea was
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passed up the table to President Reagan and put straight to the Russians, without the least attempt to contact the United States chiefs of staff, the allies, or anyone else. The idea was that all ballistic missiles should be abolished by 1996. If Mr. Gorbachev had not saved the Government by his opposition to SDI, we would not have Trident II. Moreover, the President has said that everything he proposed at Reykjavik remains on the table. But perhaps he misspoke.
The Government have, I think, welcomed the proposal for a 50 per cent. reduction of ICBMs. Is any such agreement conceivable without a no-transfer clause? The latest Trident open government document is very poorly argued indeed. I believe that my noble friend Lord Mayhew has dealt with that matter sufficiently. The only point I should like to make is that the new Soviet sea-launched land-attack long-range cruise missile—the SSNX.21—has a 3,000-kilometre range. There is another missile on the stocks which is half as big again. Yet the Government are still judging cruise missile technology by the present 500-mile standard.
To expect the future of strategic weapons to stay with ballistic technology and with that only for the next 30 or 40 years is absurd. That is what the Government are doing and that is what we refuse to do.
5.3 p.m.
Lord Irving of Dartford: My Lords, I also wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this subject today. There are 50,000 missiles in the world, equivalent to 1 million Hiroshimas. The Home Office has estimated that if ever such weapons were fired, 29 million people would die in the United Kingdom alone. We believe, as do many people who have looked at the subject, that we cannot continue, as Henry Kissinger said in 1979, to base our security upon the credibility of mutual suicide. What we attempt to answer with our policy is the question of what we in Britain can do about it as members of NATO, which is, and which will remain for the foreseeable future, the only possible basis for our defence and security.
For us, the biggest threat to peace lies in overwhelming dependence on nuclear weapons which are sustained at the expense of our conventional forces. NATO strategy is increasingly based on untenable assumptions. The chief among these is the strategy of flexible response, which obviously includes the readiness to make first use of nuclear weapons. This means the acceptance of a strategy of limited nuclear war. This arose from the laudable desire to prevent massive or early use of nuclear weapons in a European conflict by introducing the threat of gradual escalation, which would be stopped by a cry of, "Enough", from the enemy. That has been erased by the fact that the electro-magnetic effect of nuclear explosions would completely disrupt command control of communications and by the recognition that the strategy of deploying sub-strategic nuclear weapons in the front line is inherently unstable because it would require a first use of them or to lose them action in any European conflict.
It is also clear that for us in Western Europe proximity and population make the idea of limitation

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a fantasy in any case. The tragic example provided by Chernobyl was, to say the least, disastrous. But the discharge of even a tactical nuclear weapon in Europe would be perhaps even more devastating both to the population and to our troops. Even if a nuclear war could be confined to Europe, it would still be an irreversible cataclysm on a continental scale.
It is not surprising that Henry Kissinger and others have called the NATO threat of the early use of nuclear weapons suicidal. It has long been obvious that limiting a nuclear war is extremely unlikely. Many people have concluded that the doctrine of first use is flawed and must be rejected in favour of a doctrine of no first use. Our policy is to get rid of British nuclear weapons and of American weapons in Britain, to cancel Trident, to decommission Polaris and instead to make qualitative and quantitative improvements in our conventional forces. The policy is deliberately to combine nuclear disarmament with increased conventional credibility. That would provide a non-provocative defence policy.
We give the highest priority to nuclear disarmament. We believe that it would be a tragedy if we failed to respond to what could be one of the most dramatic changes in history taking place in the Soviet Union. We are not talking about taking unacceptable risks with our security. Arms control must be accompanied by proper verification, and the Soviet Union will have to learn that lesson if it wants its changes to be accepted as genuine.
We are pleased that Mr. Reagan has confirmed that the proposals of Reykjavik are still on the table. We believe that the threat to progress comes from Mrs. Thatcher's unwillingness to support total nuclear disarmament and her determination to keep a British independent nuclear deterrent.
First, it is highly questionable, despite the promise made by Mr. Reagan (which contradicts his statement), that the proposals made by him are still on the table, that we should get such a deterrent anyway. In the view of Professor Laurence Friedman, who is an adviser to the Select Committee on Defence in another place, the prospects of Britain getting Trident if the Americans agree to a cut of 50 per cent. are, in his words, "dodgy". Few people other than the Prime Minister believe that the Americans would stand by placidly and allow Britain to increase its nuclear capacity by 800 per cent. while over five years they were engaged in a cut of 50 per cent.
The noble Lord, Lord Carver, has said more than once that he can see no conceivable circumstance in which a British nuclear deterrent could be used without the concurrence of America. The combination of the cut imposed by the cost of the Trident programme and the effect of other reductions in spending mean that between 1985–86 and 1988–89 spending on non-nuclear equipment will be cut by 30 per cent.
In 1986, the Labour Party Conference once again committed itself by an overwhelming vote of five to one to our country's membership and participation in NATO. Not only shall we direct the money saved by cancelling Trident but we shall also spend what is
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necessary in order to maintain our conventional commitment. We stand for strong national defence and for a strong contribution to NATO. Ninety-five per cent. of our defence spending is in NATO and 5 per cent. of our gross national product is committed. It could not be said that a government with the firm intention of continuing this level of spending, while also devoting the money saved from the cancellation of Trident, are not seriously committed to NATO.
Adam Roberts, Professor of International Relations at Oxford, although he does not accept Labour Party policy, has nevertheless said,
"complaints about … Labour's proposals do not mean that the extreme charges so often made—that they might wreck the whole structure of NATO—have any validity. An alliance that could withstand de Gaulle's headlong assault in 1966, not to mention all the ructions of the past decade, is not likely to collapse because of what Labour proposes".
As to the suggestion that the United States could decide to pull out of Europe, our decision to maintain a high level of spending on defence will be most welcome to many Americans.
We believe that the facts will speak for themselves. Poseidon is being phased out and its removal is only a matter of time. But when American nuclear weapons have been removed, that will still leave 135 US military facilities in being or planned in Britain. There are other facilities in Britain of even greater importance to America. The assumption of a conventional role for the F-111s will strengthen our security in Europe. Nor will American nuclear warships be excluded from British waters.
Labour is far from being alone in wanting a fundamental review of our defence programme. The leader in The Times of 11th December 1986 said:
"There of course exists a respectable case for cancelling the Trident missile. We do not accept it—but those who do include a number of senior officers and politicians of all parties".
In his article Professor Roberts went on to say:
"Many have rushed in with criticisms of Labour's proposals. But whatever faults there may be in their formulation they represent a response to real problems. One is that NATO is far too heavily committed to the first use of nuclear weapons in the event of a major attack by the Warsaw Powers. Labour is facing up to the over-extension of limited defence resources by putting its emphasis on conventional forces and it is responding, however inadequately, to public concern about nuclear weapons and bases".
Our proposals are a serious contribution to a debate which has not taken place for 40 years and which is now urgent.
Mrs. Thatcher and the Conservative Government not only are doing no new thinking; they are taking action which is an obstacle to full nuclear disarmament, which Mr. Reagan and many others would like to see; which provides an incentive to the proliferation of nuclear weapons which could be made more difficult to control; and finally which is weakening the defence of Europe by failing to meet our full NATO conventional commitment.
5.10 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, nuclear arms control is an aim we can all endorse in one form or another. No one questions the catastrophic effects of the use of nuclear weapons, a point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Mancehster; no democratic state would wish to spend money unnecessarily on

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escalating thermonuclear weaponry, a point made by my noble friend Lord Trenchard. But there are some forms of nuclear disarmament that are wrong. This would certainly be the case if Western nuclear powers were to be significantly cut back unilaterally. There is no reason to suppose there would be any response. The Montebello decision of 1983 led to overall reductions of a third in NATO's stockpile of shorter-range nuclear warheads in Europe. There was no Soviet response. The United Kingdom has not produced chemical weapons since the late 1950s. This has not deterred the Soviet Union from building up a substantial chemical weapon stockpile.
Unlike the unilateralists of the Labour Party, we do not believe we can change the world by opting out, by washing our own hands of nuclear weapons and asking others to do likewise. The fact is that we face nuclear weapons across the East-West divide in Europe. We need to ensure that neither nuclear blackmail nor nuclear weapons themselves are ever used against us. The fact is that they do deter, contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Paget, said.
Given present military realities, which of course include the Warsaw Pact's superior numbers of conventional forces and substantial stockpiles of chemical weapons, nuclear weapons are an essential element in the NATO strategy of deterrence and in the United Kingdom's contribution to that strategy. European security is inconceivable without them. But this is a factor for stability, not instability.
Since the possession of such weapons by both super powers, Continental Europe has enjoyed one of its longest periods of peace in recent centuries. It is no accident that there have been recent signs that the Soviet Union is willing to consider a significant scaling down of nuclear stockpiles. I doubt whether this is a result of a sudden conversion to the principles of unilaterism. On the contrary, I believe it reflects evident Western readiness to maintain effective defences. Without INF deployment we should not be so close to an agreement to remove SS.20s from Europe. Perhaps I may say how glad I was to hear the wise remarks of my noble friend Lord Rodney, who set out this argument.
This Government, unlike noble Lords on the Benches opposite, are not prepared to undermine Western security on the hazardous and uncertain byways of unilateralism. We believe that security is achievable at lower levels of armaments. We remain committed to reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world through significant, balanced and verifiable measures of arms control. I listened with care and interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham. I shall read it with interest tomorrow and draw it to the attention of my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lords, Lord Hatch and Lord Jenkins of Putney, that they might, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Soper, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it. It would be good for them.
That is why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister agreed on a number of arms control priorities with President Reagan in November of last year, including a 50 per cent. cut in strategic weapons and an INF agreement. These priorities are both radical and sensible. What such an agreement would do—and
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it would be an historic agreement of the greatest significance—would be to reduce the existing levels of the super powers' nuclear arsenals to a much lower level. Contrast this with the agreements of the 1970s which sought simply to control permitted increases in nuclear systems. In the present circumstances the Government believe that the approach now envisaged is the correct one to adopt.
This is an immensely ambitious and difficult undertaking. But the priorities of 50 per cent. cuts and an INF agreement are built on areas of convergence in United States and Soviet thinking. As such they are infinitely more realistic—and thus more important —than more distant goals such as the complete elimination of broad categories of weapons. On that, it is clear that the positions of both sides are far apart. The strategic implications require careful thought. The basis of this Government's approach has always been to pursue what is practical and achievable. Significant progress has been achieved, in part as a result of the two meetings between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev. We look to the two sides, in a practical but far from unambitious way, to build on the progress achieved and to turn it into concrete results.
What can Her Majesty's Government contribute? First, we are in close and regular contact with the United States Administration both bilaterally and within NATO. Secondly, we have also maintained a dialogue on arms control with the Soviet Union. Thirdly, but not least, we continue to play an active part in the multilateral negotiations on disarmament, including chemical and conventional weapons, which are a major factor in the overall strategic equation; and in the work to maintain and strengthen the nonproliferation regime.
My honourable friend the Minister of State, Mr. Renton, visited Moscow in January and had extensive discussions on a wide range of arms control issues. No doubt arms control will be one of a number of subjects which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister will discuss during her forthcoming visit to Moscow. As a major member of NATO and of the European Community and as a nuclear power, our views carry weight and our opinions are sought—something which, if I may suggest to the Labour Party, is unlikely if the Americans are asked to leave Britain and we disarm unilaterally.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble Baroness give way?
Baroness Young: My Lords, no; I am not giving way. I listened with great care to others and time is limited.
The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, asked a number of questions. He referred to killer satellites, which is totally irrelevant to the debate, if a fascinating subject. The Camp Daivd discussions identified priorities for arms control. The noble Lord will be aware of them: first, an INF agreement with restraints on shorter range systems; secondly, a 50 per cent. reduction in strategic nuclear weapons over the next five years; and, thirdly, a complete ban on chemical weapons—all with effective verification. These have now been endorsed by NATO Ministers at their December meetings. This is an illustration of the influence that

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my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has had in her conversations with President Reagan when she has met him.
The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, also asked me about views on SDI and the ABM treaty. I can do no better than quote what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in another place on 19th February:
"First, we have no locus in interpreting the ABM treaty. Secondly, deployment is clearly a matter for negotiation, as we have agreed. Thirdly, we have received satisfactory assurances from the United States that there will be consultation about any significant change of policy in relation to SDI research. Fourthly, the Government fully support the SDI research programme, which is permitted by the ABM treaty. It is vital to our defence that the West should always be at the forefront of new technology.".—[Official Report, Commons, 19/2/87; col. 1054.]
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, asked me what consultations there might be, with the visits of Ambassador Nitze and Mr. Perle. I know that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary had good discussions this morning. These form part of continuous consultations which stem from the Camp David meetings. We look forward to pursuing this over the next few months at the Geneva negotiations and as the United States strategic research continues.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, also asked me about the position of Trident. The most helpful thing I can do is refer him to the policy statement which came out on 15th November 1986 following the second Camp David meeting, in which:
"The President reaffirmed the United States intention to proceed with its strategic modernisation programme including Trident. He also confirmed his full support for the arrangements made to modernise Britain's independent nuclear deterrent with Trident".
Why Trident? We think it pitches our deterrent at the right level for the period during which Trident will be operational. It is no escalation of our relative nuclear capacity; that is, in relation to the threat we face—a point which the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, did not make. The number of warheads carried by Trident compared with Polaris when it entered service will be increased by two-and-a-half times at most—not eight times, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, or fourteen times as its opponents like to claim.
By comparison, notwithstanding its superiority in conventional forces, the Soviet Union has increased the size of its vastly superior strategic arsenal fivefold since 1970. Trident is the minimum force which will be required to maintain the deterrent which has been supported by all governments of the past two decades. It is a deterrent which if left to Polaris—and few dispute this—would become increasingly ineffective and more expensive to run.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, quoted from a poll, but I notice that the questions did not include whether we should let our deterrent become obsolete or whether we should seek to preserve its capability in relation to what others are doing—two crucial questions. By contrast, Trident's technology will last well into the next century. It has a greater range, giving submarines more sea room and offering greater flexibility in the number of warheads and missiles. Trident is also cost-effective. At an average of only 6
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per cent. of the defence equipment budget it represents outstanding value. Put another way, over the life of the programme only three pence out of every pound spent within the total defence budget will go to pay for Trident.
Let me answer in more detail the points which the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, made in his opening speech. He began by quoting his party's statement on defence. He said, "In Government we would maintain with whatever necessary modernisation our minimum nuclear deterrent until it can be negotiated away". Even though the leaders of the Alliance claim to be keeping their options open, the Liberal/SDP pact has decided in advance that it would cancel Trident. It has managed to do that although it says it cannot make up its mind about anything else until it has had access to classified information. Dr. Owen seems to think that French ballistic missiles might be adapted to British use. I am not sure how the French or indeed the Liberal Party would regard that, but the system could not be developed in time to replace Polaris in time for the mid-1990s.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, floated the idea of a sea-launched cruise missile to replace Polaris; but cruise missiles have a more limited range, as I have already said. Furthermore, they are more vulnerable to the existing and potential air defence system of the Soviet Union. In fact, in an exchange about Trident in your Lordships' House on 19th February the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, used an analogy involving a motor car. I shall continue it. One can say that the Alliance's policy of extending the life of our existing Polaris deterrent would be like keeping an old car; it would be ever more expensive to run and ever less effective. In practice, does not that amount to unilateral nuclear disarmament by the back door?
Those who claim that Trident has had or will have a negative impact on the arms control process are deluding themselves or allowing themselves to be deluded. Mr. Gorbachev acknowledged at Reykjavik that the United Kingdom and French deterrents could increase and be further improved. He was right to conclude that they constitute no obstacle to a substantial programme of nuclear disarmament by the two powers whose armouries are preponderant.
There is a long way to go before that will be significantly less true. But also we have never said that we would never participate in the nuclear arms control process. This would be conditional on substantial cuts in the arsenals of the super powers and no significant change in Soviet defensive capacity. I should remind the noble Lord, in case any doubt remains, that even if 50 per cent. cuts in the super power arsenals were achieved Trident would still represent a smaller proportion of Soviet strategic warheads than did Polaris in 1970. Those noble Lords who are mesmerised by the simple increase in the numbers of British warheads should look at the increase in the numbers of Soviet warheads. In that light, increase does not mean escalation since the increase in Soviet warheads has been even greater. What matters in deterrents is capability against threat.
Armaments would not exist in an ideal world; nor perhaps would the need for insurance policies. But we are where we are and we live in a world which remains full of risks and where the need for insurance policies

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remains. That is why it is prudent for the Government to maintain an effective deterrent. This leaves us with no better option than to pursue nuclear arms control but not at the price of laying ourselves open to aggression; and to maintain our own deterrent but not above a level dictated by prudence. The arguments may not be comfortable ones but I believe they are compelling, that they are responsible and that this Government's policy rightly reflects our awareness of the two theoretical dangers to which the noble Lord's Motion calls attention.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down may I put this point? She made great play of the effect of British possession of nuclear weapons on American policy. Can she say how it has affected American policy towards, for example, Nicaragua, SALT II and Libya?
Baroness Young: My Lords, if the noble Lord had followed what I was saying—and from his observation it does not appear that he did—he would realise that the point I made is that nuclear weapons have made a contribution towards giving us the longest period of peace in Europe this century, and indeed in Europe as a whole for centuries.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords—
Baroness Young: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will not interrupt me and will let me finish my argument. That is apart from the fact that America is within NATO. That is what I was talking about and that is what I was referring to. Nuclear weapons of course have not been used in Central America or anywhere else.
5.26 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this interesting debate. On these Benches we have listened with the greatest care to the arguments used on both sides about the Alliance's policy towards the deterrent and particularly to the noble Baroness the Minister. I think we can say that the nature of the arguments used and not used has been a source of great encouragement to those who sit on these Benches. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Cancer Screening and AIDS Research
5.27 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend.
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement concerning cancer screening and AIDS research.
"The Government attach particular importance to reducing deaths from breast cancer and cervical cancer. In both cases early detection can lead to successful treatment. Breast cancer is the commonest form of cancer among women in this
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country. Each year there are something like 24,000 new cases, and 15,000 deaths, from the disease. In July 1985, the Government appointed a working group under the chairmanship of Sir Patrick Forrest to consider the position. I am today publishing its final report and I would like to express the Government's thanks to the group for its work.
"The report has concluded that screening by mammography—X-ray of the breasts—will enable us to reduce deaths from breast cancer. The Government accept the proposals made in the report and accordingly have decided to implement a national breast cancer screening service. This will provide for screening every three years for all women between 50 and 64 throughout the United Kingdom. My colleagues, the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, will be putting into effect proposals broadly similar to those I am announcing. We are determined that breast cancer screening should be implemented as efficiently, as effectively and as quickly as possible. This will need careful planning to ensure that all the necessary back-up facilities, as well as the screening centres, are available. It will mean assessment and diagnostic facilities, treatment facilities, counselling and after-care, and training for key groups of staff.
"We have, therefore, decided to provide additional funds for each regional health authority to have at least one centre in operation within the next 12 months. The funds will also enable four of these centres to provide a training facility for the whole country. We shall expect the locations of the first centres to be announced by May of this year. An extra £6 million will be provided in 1987–88 for the first centres.
"In addition, I shall shortly be sending to the professions and to health authorities a draft circular containing my detailed proposals for implementing breast cancer screening in England. I shall be calling for plans before the end of this year from each region to extend the service over the next three years to cover all women in the age groups concerned. The report envisages that up to 100 centres are likely to be needed in England. I shall also be setting up an advisory committee to advise on the development of screening and to monitor its effectiveness and efficiency. Breast cancer is a major scourge. We believe that these measures will achieve a substantial reduction in mortality from this disease among women of this age group.
"Cervical cancer kills 2,000 women each year and we are no less committed to reducing that figure. The great majority of these 2,000 deaths are among women who have never had a cervical smear under the existing screening programme. We have already taken urgent steps to increase the effectiveness of that programme and, in particular, to increase the proportion of the population at risk who are being screened. Computerised call and recall systems should be operating in 109 health authorities in England by next month and in the remaining 82 over the next 12 months. These will enable women to be sent personal screening invitations, usually from their own general practitioners.
"Our first priority is to persuade more women to come forward for screening. We shall closely

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monitor the success of the system and we shall keep under review ways of making further improvements. In addition, I shall be asking health authorities to make two specific changes.
"First, since the number of cases among younger women has been increasing, health authorities should rationalise existing arrangements for screening women under 35 by ensuring that the call and recall system begins at the age of 20. Secondly, I shall be asking each health authority to make a specific, named individual responsible and accountable for the organisation and effectiveness of screening.
"Our proposals for both breast and cervical cancer screening take account of the wide range of evidence available from other countries. I am convinced that these proposals will make a substantial contribution to the cause of women's health, which is a key priority for the Government.
"Turning to AIDS research, as the House is aware, there is at present no vaccine against the virus or cure for AIDS itself. It is for that reason that the Government have mounted their major public education campaign. It is also important, in addition, that we in this country should make an effective contribution to the international effort to develop a vaccine and a cure.
"In recognition of this need, the Medical Research Council has recommended a new directed research programme aimed both at developing a vaccine which will prevent infection and also at new anti-viral drugs to treat people who are already infected. The research would be directed from the centre by two scientific steering committees which will consist of some of the country's leading scientists. There will be two specially appointed full-time directors and the programme will be built up by letting specific contracts to the most appropriate laboratory, public or private. This proposal goes beyond the usual approach of research initiated by the investigator.
"The Government are extremely grateful to the MRC for taking a lead in formulating these proposals, which are based on wide consultations among outstanding British scientists, by Sir James Gowans, the Secretary of the MRC, with Sir David Phillips, the Chairman of the Advisory Board of Research Councils. This country has scientific strengths which should enable it to make a distinctive contribution to these important lines of research. The Government commend the readiness of the scientific community to collaborate in tackling this major problem.
"Accordingly, the Government welcome the proposal and accept it in full. We will therefore launch in 1987–88, through the Medical Research Council, a new directed research programme on the lines the council has proposed. For this purpose my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science will increase the grant-in-aid to the MRC by £14½ million over the next three years. The grant in aid will go up by £2·5 million in 1987–88, by £5 million in 1988–89 and by £7 million in 1989–90. The programme will be closely
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monitored by the council, with my department and the Department of Education and Science. This will enable us to review progress against results. I should make it clear that the directed research programme will not affect or hinder any research initiatives by pharmaceutical companies.
"This new programme should not be seen as an isolated venture. It is not. It will be part of an international research effort. We will build on the work already done, especially in the United States, and in turn contribute to the international body of research information that is being built up. In the United States all the medical scientists I met in my recent visit were unanimous in their view that the United Kingdom could indeed make a distinctive contribution to AIDS research.
"The House will appreciate that it is impossible to predict the progress of this research. I have made it clear in earlier statements that we cannot expect a vaccine or cure to be generally available within five years. But this programme will help us to make progress in three ways. It will enable this country to make a full contribution to AIDS research. It will mean that we are better placed to collaborate with, and benefit from, work that is being done in other countries; it will increase the chances of developing a vaccine and finding a cure. I hope that the House will welcome the new proposals."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, may I first thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend in another place. At the same time I should like to thank Professor Sir Patrick Forrest and his colleagues for their report, which I have not read in full but which is obviously an outstanding document. Thanks should also go to the Medical Research Council for the advice on which the Government are acting.
The three subjects in question have aroused a great deal of interest in this House from which a great deal of pressure for more action and resources has come. The pressure has been to provide additional resources for vital research into AIDS and HIV infection, to proceed with the organisation of an effective call and recall system for cervical cancer, particularly for women aged between 20 and 35, and to tackle the very high death toll from breast cancer in older women.
We naturally welcome the progress that has been made in each of these fields. It indicates the value of repeated and persistent pressure from your Lordships' House and from another place. The announcement has been a long time coming. It has come the night before a by-election, which is natural. Good news is welcome at any time. In a grey world, good news will always he welcomed by your Lordships' House even if that good news seems in some cases to be a little late and its content perhaps rather small.
May I put some questions to the noble Baroness? My first question is about cervical screening and breast cancer. We know that about 2,000 women in Britain die of cervical cancer each year and that 60 per cent. of them have not been screened. In almost all cases the deaths could have been prevented by an effective call and recall system. The last time that I asked the noble

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Baroness from this Bench about a call and recall system, she said that by 31st March 1986 only 33 health authorities had put such a scheme into operation.
In view of that rather slow progress, is the noble Baroness confident that 100 per cent. of the health authorities will have come into line within the next 12 months? I hope they will. The department promises screening every year for breast cancer. If effective, that could save the lives of more than 3,000 of the 15,000 women presently dying each year from breast cancer. I am pleased that there is to be an extra £6 million. Will the money simply be for the four centres that will be established in different parts of the country? Or will part of that £6 million go to finance the work and responsibilities of health authorities in setting up a call and recall system?
Can the call and recall system for cervical screening be used for older women affected by breast cancer? Within an effective computer system, the two call and recall systems may well work to good effect for women of both age groups.
Your Lordships will remember that in October last year my noble friend Lord Rea asked the noble Baroness about payments to GPs, seeking to know why, if they were to be paid for screening women over 35 they were not to be paid for screening women under 35. The noble Baroness may be able to answer that question. My noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs asked about a screening service in the Palace of Westminster. I wonder whether there is news from the Administration Committee about that.
I turn to the second half of the Statement which deals with AIDS. We naturally welcome the additional funds. Deep concern is felt in the country about cuts in research funds. It is good to see that in one field we are moving forwards rather than backwards. Even now, the sums referred to by the Secretary of State and repeated by the noble Baroness are, in many respects, small for research on a subject as vital as AIDS. It is a minute proportion compared with that available in the United States. It is less than one-twentieth of 1 per cent. of the general cost of the health service.
Can the noble Baroness indicate the Government's thinking on three areas of research? Can she say where she thinks the priorities lie? The discovery of an effective vaccine is clearly the highest. No one doubts that it will be some years before that is available. It is a high prize if it can ever be won.
There is a second stage. What priority will be given to those people who have already contracted the infection, have the strain within them but have not developed the disease? That is an important group of people, first, to identify and, secondly, to help. Bearing in mind that there is a five-year incubation period front contracting the infection to the onset of the disease, that would seem to be acutely important. I wonder whether the noble Baroness has any information as to whether the MRC will be looking at matters such as diet. Some pilot research projects have dealt with the effects of diet on this group of people. That seems a possible field for research, but there may be others. It is an important area of research because there is no way in which we can stop the many hundreds of thousands who already have the infection
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from contracting the disease. Vital research is needed to ensure that they do not contract the disease.
It would be helpful to know whether the Government envisage research in other fields such as the sexual behaviour of, and HIV transmission among, prostitutes, and the various types of homosexual behaviour. That would be studying preventive measures.
We welcome the Statement. It is a positive one. I have my questions and doubts as to whether the resources are adequate for the task but, for what we have and are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful!
5.45 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, I should like to join with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in thanking the noble Baroness for repeating this important and welcome Statement. Like all Gaul, the Statement comes in three parts. The first relates to screening for breast cancer; the second, cervical cytology and screening for cervical cancer; and the third is the need for reources for research into AIDS.
On these Benches we warmly welcome all the steps that the Government have announced with regard to screening for breast cancer. We shall support them in every possible way with, perhaps, one proviso. It is one that is referred to in the Statement and in the report of Sir Patrick Forrest's working party. We too should like to add our thanks and congratulations to Sir Patrick Forrest and his colleagues on the working party for producing this admirable report on breast cancer screening. The proviso is that we should like to underline the need for monitoring so as to validate, or otherwise as the case may be, what is being done.
It is unfortunate that medical progress is such that once one introduces a new procedure, it is liable to enter medical practice and become like some form of ritualistic religious observance, and stay there for all time. Once there, it is difficult to remove if we later find that it has not proven to be cost-effective. I hope that there will be proper monitoring.
That leads me to the second part of the Statement with regard to cervical cytology and screening for cervical cancer. We warmly welcome the steps that are being taken. We welcome what is said about computerised call and recall systems, the recognition that the number of cases among younger women has been increasing and that the call and recall systems should begin at the age of 20.
I note that the Statement says that each health authority will be asked to make a specific named individual responsible and accountable for the organisation and effectiveness of the screening. I hope that the names will be made known to all those to whom they may be useful. That includes many noble Lords and many patients. I again underline the importance of monitoring and validation. Hitherto, there is no doubt that we have wasted resources because of the way in which the screening programme has been conducted. As the Statement emphasises, those women who are most at risk have never had any smears while those women least at risk have been having smears with almost clockwork-like regularity.

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That has been wasteful. The proposals in the Statement I believe promise to bring that to an end.
I come now to the important part of the Statement on the funding of research into AIDS. That is very welcome. As your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology has shown, the funding of scientific research in Britain has been deficient for all sciences, and medical science in particular. There is no doubt that it is desperately needed for research into AIDS. I am glad that it is now being provided in the way that it is, and not with kind of strings that some doctors would have regarded as unacceptable.
Referring to priorities, as did the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, I personally believe that it may be 20 years before we have an effective vaccine in force and in use. It takes a long time to prepare a vaccine. However, I believe that there is hope of establishing and developing an effective therapeutic agent that might render patients non-infected as soon as it is taken, as in the case of tuberculosis years ago. When that happens we will indeed have made progress.
So far it seems that progress has been made by the Americans who, I venture to suggest, have proceeded with some of these substances on a scientific basis that would not have been regarded as wholly acceptable by our own scientists. In that connection, what is needed here is not merely the funds but the skilled manpower. In my experience, since most of the cases of AIDS occur in London, most of the clinical work in caring for those cases has been undertaken by academic clinical staff. They are the very people who should be doing the research but who, up to now, have not had time to do it.
I believe that Britain leads the world with its virologists and microbiologists. I hope that we shall see British scientists in those fields taking as full a part as possible into the research of this very worrying condition. We regard the Statement as very welcome and should like to make that absolutely clear.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and to the noble Lord. Lord Winstanley, for their welcome to our initiative.
I wish first to answer the point concerning the money spent on breast cancer and whether it would cover the call-recall system. The money is for all facilities for 14 centres, one in each region, including the four training centres, as I said in the Statement. The call and recall systems require only a small modification to the system, and the costs should be covered by the £6 million for these 14 centres in the first year. The GPs are remunerated for general medical services, including cervical cancer screening, out of the generality of their fees and allowances.
Women aged 35 and over, among whom 94 per cent. of deaths from cervical cancer occur and who are generally less likely than younger women to come forward for screening of their own accord, remain a priority. General practitioners will continue to receive an item of service payment as an additional incentive to them to persuade these women to be screened.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, surprised me when he spoke of little money for AIDS research. It is very
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important that your Lordships take on board that we have agreed every penny that the Medical Research Council has asked for—approval of its proposals for direct research into vaccines to prevent AIDS, and the drug therapies for those who are already infected. The money additional to the MRC existing grant-in-aid to permit this was £2·5 million in 1987–88, as I have said then £5 million, and then £7 million, totalling £14·5 million. The MRC, the DES and the DHSS will monitor and review progress, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and possibly the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, asked me.
There is at the end of the day no guarantee of success. One has only to think of the money that has been spent on the common cold, yet that remains a baffling situation.
The plans that we have made will put Britain in the forefront of international action to tackle breast cancer. We take our commitment to prevent this disease, as well as looking after the health of our women, as of paramount importance.
The new returns completed by health authorities should provide a range of additional information on cervical screening programmes, including numbers invited for screening, numbers who accept and the proportions of each five year age group that have been screened within the recommended period. These returns will be introduced in 1988 as part of a broader improvement in NHS information. Following completion of implementation of computerised call and recall systems, similar arrangements will be introduced for breast cancer screening. The Medical Research Council has consulted eminent United Kingdom scientists working in fields of research relevant to drug development for AIDS patients. They are very enthusiastic about such a programme of research. and see no difficulty in pursuing it or in gathering together teams of scientists who will work in a collaborative fashion.
As to the 1988 deadline for the call and recall remit, we are confident that the whole country will be covered by call and recall systems by March of next year. They have already been implemented in 49 out of 90 family practitioner services, as I said. By March this year 109 of 191 districts will be covered, the remainder by March 1988.
As to whether monitoring of the breast cancer screening programme will be undertaken, it is proposed to appoint an advisory committee on breast cancer. The terms of reference will include monitoring the programme. The final point concerns the Palace of Westminster screening facilities. I suggest that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness may like to consult my noble friend the Chairman of Committees about this point.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, I do not wish to appear ungrateful in speaking, but I wish to draw your Lordships' attention to something that I think is vitally important.
This morning Sir James Gowans came and addressed Sub-Committee II of the Select Committee on Science and Technology. He was talking about these various matters. One thing that he said with certain pride was that in this country we have young

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people who have been able to serve and rise to this emergency because they exist in the MRC and in the universities. Thus they can be brought together to work on the problem of AIDS. That is the programme the Government have decided to support.
The point that I wish to make—I hope that it does not seem uncharitable—is this. Unless the Government pay attention to the advice that the research councils have given, that the ABRC has given and that the Royal Society has given as well as the Select Committee of your Lordships' House—that we must keep the research base of British science in the universities and in the research councils—when something like this happens again, the young people will not be here. I therefore draw attention to this point.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington. I will make sure that my right honourable friend is informed of this aspect. I have a feeling that the noble Lord's worries are needless.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I can welcome without hesitation the first and third parts of the Statement on breast cancer and AIDS, although I share the doubts about the Government's willingness to maintain the funding and standard of medical research.
It is three years since I raised in this House the question of cervical screening. It has been pointed out this afternoon that 2,000 women a year die unnecessarily from cervical cancer. I asked at that time whether the Government would take a lead in reducing the recall period from five years to three years, at least for women between the ages of 20 and 35, and to increase the facilities for women over 35. It seemed to me that the Statement was much vaguer on its proposals for cervical cancer than for breast cancer or AIDs research.
Will the Government now pledge themselves to take a lead in this matter? Will they use all their influence throughout the country to reduce both the recall period from five years to three and to increase substantially. radically and quickly the whole policy of encouraging women to take advantage of the smear facilities? Will they increase those facilities in order to bring down this tragic annual loss of life?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, we have considered reducing the period for screening. At the moment we are not convinced that this is necessary. The most important factor is that GPs invite their patients to be screened. The best way that this can be done is on a local basis. It is extremely important that women take up the offers and facilities which are already available for them for screening.
The major number of deaths are among older women, but we have reduced the age at which cervical cancer screening will be done. We accept the Forrest conclusion on research. We accept that determining the optimum interval between screening is a high priority.
On breast screening, we also recognise the importance of the other Forrest suggestions for further research. I am picking up the former point of the noble
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Lord. Lord Hunter. The DHSS, the MRC and the UK co-ordinating committee on cancer research will be considering how these research proposals may be included in future research programmes.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I have two brief questions. Taking up the cervical cancer point, it is very welcome that the Government have recognised the spread of the disease in the earlier age range, towards 20. But whereas the figure of £6 million is attached to the breast screening proposals, there is no figure in the Statement attached to the action which is recommended for cervical cancer screening. Perhaps the noble Baroness will say a word about that.
On the research funding, are the tranches given here—£2·5 million, £5 million and £7 million—Treasury dictated or will the Government respond to the MRC's assessment of the lumps in which they will need the money? In other words, is it demand led?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, on the last point, extra money comes from the allocation from the Department of Education and Science. As I said in the Statement, both the DHSS and the DES will be monitoring what goes on in the MRC research. However, the funding has been provided on the basis that the MRC asked for it. It has obtained what it wants and there is no question of any Treasury input into the "ifs" and "buts" of the sum of money which I have announced.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, will the noble Baroness accept from me that millions of women will find great relief from the announcements that have been made this afternoon? However. does she recall that some time ago I urged upon her support for the initiatives that are increasingly being taken by trade unions—in particular by the Union of Shop, Distributive, and Allied Workers—to try to ensure that screening facilities are made available in workplaces, offices, shops and commercial premises? Will the Minister again consider whether it is possible to encourage more women to take advantage of the facilities? They may for some reason or another be inhibited, but might be encouraged to do so in a workplace. Certainly the union to which I have referred, and many others, have good arrangements with large employers and these should be encouraged.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I well remember the exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Graham, and myself on the matter. There is no reason, if it suits local authorities—for instance in rural areas—why screening could not be done by mobile vans. There is no reason why the mobile vans should not call at places of work if it was so wished. It is up to the local health authorities to work out the best plan for the people who live in the area. All areas vary.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, the noble Baroness did not answer the question about additional funding for the cervical cancer programme.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, it was about extra money. The changes needed in cervical cancer screening are mainly organisational: a matter of making the best use of health authority resources.

Prison Conditions
6.7 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge rose to call attention to the deterioration in prison conditions as recorded in various recent reports; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My purpose tonight is simply to press for action. I believe that the conditions in our prisons have deteriorated steadily and dangerously over the past three decades and have now reached a critical state which cannot be allowed to continue, not only because they are dangerous but because they are a disgrace. I believe that there is one basic cause for this trouble; namely, prolonged overcrowding. Many other things are wrong and need changing but none, I believe, can be successfully tackled until this basic fault is dealt with.
I believe that there is one quite quick remedy; that is, the immediate use of the Secretary of State's powers of executive release which were given to him in the Criminal Justice Act 1982. I shall therefore use my 15 minutes' introductory time to expand these propositions and to demand action. I hope that other noble Lords will take up and discuss all those other serious things which need to be done. However, I do not want to waste the impact of my demand that something should be done about overcrowding.
My approach is not party political. I have not agreed what I propose with my colleagues, but only with NACRO. However, I am confident that on these Benches, on most of the Labour Benches, and indeed on some of the Tory Benches, my general proposition will be thought sensible though there may be criticism of detail.
We have had half a dozen governments in the past 20 years, alternating between Tory and Labour. Each one has done a number of things which had to be done, but always too late and too little. Not one has made a head-on attack on overcrowding. The British people have for far too long allowed their governments to evade adequate remedies, not exactly through callousness but through failure to spend money where there do not seem to have been many votes. Each government has inherited a very difficult situation and each has left it worse than before. Therefore when I attack the conditions I am not attacking this Government, nor indeed the Minister who has to reply, beyond the fact that nobody else but them for the moment can do anything about the situation.
I shall not spend long demonstrating how bad things are. Last week no fewer than 393 prisoners could not be squeezed into any prison and had to be housed in wholly unsuitable police cells. Report after report and book after hook come out saying that they cannot go on much longer without explosion. NACRO's 1986 report; the Howard League and Prison Reform Trust reports; the report of the AGM of the prison governors a week or two ago; V ivien Stern's excellent book which every noble Lord should read entitled Bricks of Shame; Andrew Rutherford's very thought-provoking Prisons and the Process of Justice, to name the most recent, all say the same.
Perhaps I should refer especially to the Chief Inspector of Prisons' report for 1985, from which I shall quote one or two frightening statements of fact.
He says:
"We were driven to the inescapable conclusion that parts of the system were wholly preoccupied with survival … There is little new to say about overcrowding, except that it worsened considerably … the surging numbers were so rapid that an already overstretched system came perilously near to breaking point. The Home Secretary's attention was drawn to the inadequate supply of lavatories, baths and showers, the severely curtailed use of workshops, the prolonged periods prisoners spent locked up two or three to a small overcrowded cell, and the enormous pressure on visiting-rooms, even when visits were restricted to the statutory minimum of 15 minutes because of numbers … If the prison population is not reduced by the use of alternatives to custody and if drastic inroads cannot be made into the time defendants spend in custody awaiting trial, then new ways of coping with the prison population will have to be found".
Those are strong words and they are difficult to laugh off.
The background to all that sad history is, I repeat, overcrowding. The inmmediate pressure on the administrators and the service has been so great that in all this time they have never caught up with themselves. As a result, useful innovations are eventually ruined and scrapped in favour of basic necessities. I suppose that the worst feature is the pressure on staff which has led to officers being used in a way which is quite unreasonable, but without which harassed governors could not cover their duties at all. At last, as the department's newly published paper A Fresh Start shows, a really serious effort to sort matters out is being made and is, not unexpectedly, meeting the kind of difficulty which is always met with when abuses are allowed to settle into accepted customs.
The whole system depends on overtime in a way which is plainly indefensible. One of the side problems is that those training and dispersal prisons which are not overcrowded have their staff constantly borrowed to meet emergencies in the local prisons which are overcrowded. Therefore the good facilities which some of them have for work, education and recreation cannot be properly used for lack of supervision. I praise the Government's initiative and hope that all parties will strive for agreement.
My noble friend Lord Harris will deal more fully with that issue later, but I must add that a prison officer's job is difficult and may be dangerous even in good conditions. However, it can be really rewarding. In conditions of the kind about which we are talking it is wholly frustrating and the prison officers have coped with remarkable patience.
I shall repeat my three propositions: first, the conditions in many of our prisons are no longer acceptable; secondly, they cannot be made acceptable until overcrowding is tackled; and, thirdly, there is an easily understood and quite simple administrative manoeuvre which could relieve the pressure and give time for longer-term remedies to do their work. I believe that most people will agree with the first two propositions. We must try to convince the Government of the third. However, first I shall elaborate a little more on the realities of overcrowding.
Over 20 years crime reported has risen by 75 per cent.; prison capacity has increased by 9,000 places to 42,000; and the actual prison population has increased from 33,000 to 47,500. I believe that this week the figure is 48,000, but I do not insist on that. The overcrowding factor—and this is what I am talking about—has increased from 5 per cent. to 14 per cent.

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(in other words by 300 per cent.) and the number of prisoners two or three to a cell has trebled from 5,540 twenty years ago to 17,000 today. That last fact is the worst feature of all.
The slopping-out routine is a blot on our civilisation, but applied to two or three to a cell it is a disgrace which our grandchildren will look back on with incredulity. It derives directly from overcrowding, because even if the money for integral sanitation were available the pressure on space is such that wings cannot easily be closed for renewal. A complete end to it is not even planned. Under the present very major building plans we are told that there will still be from 10,000 to 20.000 prisoners subject to this humiliating routine when the present plans are completed in 1991.
I said that that was the worst feature of all, but perhaps even worse is the deprivation of those diversions which make confinement tolerable; namely, visits, work, physical training, recreation, education, the library service, wing meetings, and "Any Questions" sessions. All those are curtailed or dropped one after the other due to staffing chaos, which is itself due to overcrowding, so that the unfortunate man or woman, boy or girl, is left locked up often for 23 hours a day.
The way forward was first mooted in the May report in 1979 (I have forgotten the paragraph but I can look it up). It was subsequently made possible in the Criminal Justice Act 1982. The debates in Committee on Clause 32 of the Bill made it clear that its use was envisaged in just such a situation as exists today—a situation of severe crisis. When the Home Secretary came to see some of us in July, he said that he thought it would be prudent to regard executive release as a measure of absolute emergency. I wish to tell him this evening that that is exactly what faces him today.
We suggest that a limit should be set to the number of prisoners that may be admitted to prison and that the intake should be regulated by executive release. If the number of people that the courts send to prison exceeds the agreed limit, places must be made for them by releasing some of those already there. The limiting figure would be based on the certified normal accommodation—which we call CNA—which is now 42,000 as against an actual daily population of 47,500, which is what the Minister told us last week.
Obviously, the huge excess cannot be put right in one go. We recommend its gradual reduction down to the CNA level within two or three years. That could be done by knocking, say, one, two or three weeks off the sentences of all prisoners due out in the coming year. That is a figure which, in relation to a sentence of six months or more, is quite irrelevant to the punishment side of the sentence. It would exclude those sentenced for violence and those on very short sentences—say, up to three months.
We calculate that a two weeks' reduction of this kind would reduce the average daily population by some 2,500 places. As these prisoners would have been released anyway by the end of the year, the reduction would be only temporary but would have substantially eased the pressure during the 12 months. The same or more would need to be done for one or two years in succession. However, at the end of that
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time one could reasonably hope that other methods, to which I shall refer in a moment if I have time, would have begun to work.
There are far more short-term prisoners than long-term prisoners and they are mostly kept in the most overcrowded local prisons, so the relief would come where it is most needed. Like the Garter, there is no damned merit about this proposal. It is an administrative device to deal with an intolerable situation. The point is that the arbitrary and temporary administrative procedure would reduce pressures in a way everyone, particularly staff, could see was a genuine effort to cope with the evils we have been discussing. and would change the widespread feeling of frustration in the prison world to one of hope for a real improvement.
I would hope that if some such scheme were adopted the Lord Chancellor, the Home Secretary and the Lord Chief Justice perhaps would explain it to all judges and magistrates and ask them to give the new temporary arrangements their blessing and not feel it necessary to increase sentences to meet it. I believe courts know very well that present conditions in prison are shamefully bad and could very easily be persuaded to go along with any expedient which looked likely to ease a dangerous situation.
I said I would refer to many other intractable problems. I am not going to; I do not have time. Such questions as remand, bail, hostels, blacks in prison, women in prison, AIDS, new ideas from America such as the offenders' tag and privately-run remand homes, could all be looked at, could be introduced, and some changes would actually be effected. Above all, the important thing is now to send less petty offenders to prison in the first place. Andrew Rutherford is especially interesting on this subject in the book I have already mentioned. He analyses periods of growth and decline in the use of prison in different countries and divides them into expansionist and reductionist periods.
The last reductionist Home Secretary we had was Winston Churchill who in 1910 used executive release freely during his time in office with the result that the prison population remained around 12,000 until the early 'forties. Since then the mood has changed and the population had grown by almost 80 per cent. by 1947 and has been expanding ever since.
I am not here to discuss these fascinating long-term theories today. I am trying to persuade the Government that they are sitting on a volcano, that there is only one way of avoiding further explosions, and to beg them to use it. Before I sit down I want to say how pleased I am that a Law Lord is going to take part in this debate. We have not had that honour in the past six debates on this subject and we are extremely pleased to welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, tonight.
I want to be proud of our prisons, not ashamed of them. What I am suggesting is a necessary first step in that direction.
6.23 p.m.
Lord Rhodes: My Lords, I have one point only to make. It concerns the prison visitors' centre at Strange-ways Gaol. First, may I give some background. We have two sorts of prisoners at Strangeways Gaol:

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convicted prisoners and prisoners on remand. The prisoners in the gaol total 1,707—many, many more that the place was originally designed for. The important question at the moment, because of the growth in their numbers, is that of remand prisoners. We have 578 remand prisoners and 1,129 convicted prisoners. In the case of prisoners held on remand prior to trial, a percentage will not be found guilty of the crime of which they are accused; and a percentage will not be imprisoned even though they are found guilty.
Remand prisoners have as many visitors as can be crammed into a quarter of an hour every day, morning and afternoon. The convicted prisoner is allowed approximately one hour for visiting every four weeks. The growing number of prisoners held at Manchester has increased the number of visitors. It is our treatment of those visitors about which I want to speak. For 17 years I have led a charitable organisation set up to relieve social deprivation among clients of the Greater Manchester probation service and to assist that service in the rehabilitation of offenders, which we do—so successfully, in fact, that we increase our boundaries every year.
We were alerted by a girl working in the probation service inside the prison about the conditions that had to be endured by visitors. We did not believe her; so we went on several occasions to see for ourselves. She was right. The prisoners' families—men, women and children of all ages—were squatting in the streets for up to two hours in all sorts of weathers. It was a scene of absolute degradation. There were no toilets within half a mile. We wanted to do something about it.
It so happened that the guest speaker at our 1958 annual general meeting was the right honourable Willie Whitelaw, who now sits on the Front Bench opposite. He was able to do something for us later on through first-hand knowledge. When he comes to open a prison visitors' centre in a fortnight's time he will see a fine place where people are able to keep dry and where they can have a cup of tea in peace. He will be pleased with it.
We decided to go ahead with the visitors' centre despite the fact that we had no idea where the money was to come from. We felt it brooked no delay. The bodies that we roped in to comprise the management committee were Save the Children Fund, NACRO, the probation service, the social services, the area health authority, the WRVS, and my own organisation, Selcare, which was given the job of heading the project and being responsible for the management of it. Of course, we needed funds. We were very fortunate in being able to persuade the residuary body of the Greater Manchester Council to fund us up to £185,000 in order to start. That was a good helping hand forward. So was the help that we received Iron the ten metropolitan boroughs which constitute the Grants Committee of the Greater Manchester area. We have now a first-class visitors' centre with a creche for children. There are four employed paid staff, one seconded by the probation service and one by the Save the Children fund. There are four voluntary WRVS helpers on duty at any one time. We are indebted to them, too.
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There are funds for a limited period that we have found ourselves. This is a centre where visitors can be treated with dignity while they wait. They do not need to trail their children into the prison; the children can be left in the creche in safe custody. We can fund the place until March 1988. After that, we believe that it should be the responsibility of the prison service.
The place is now well run. It is well worth a visit by any Member who is interested and who wishes to see for himself what can be done with a little effort instead of talking about it so much.
The present management committee is quite prepared to take on the job in the future but has to know, in order to plan for the future, who will be responsible for funding after March 1988. Perhaps the noble Viscount will help us again when he comes along because then he will see what it is possible to do. With his help. I am perfectly certain that it can be managed.
6.30 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for introducing this debate, and for his most timely speech upon it. I hope that I may be excused if I do not stay until the end of the debate, but I have some duties over the road to perform in connection with the General Synod.
Christians have plenty of reasons to be concerned with prisons, whether they think of the parable of the sheep and the goats: of a clause in the Litany; or what is written in the Epistle to the Romans, concerning the duty of the state in punishing offenders. Incidentally, there are only two secular priviliges known to me that remain to a bishop. One is to enter your Lordships' House, and the other is to visit at his pleasure a prison establishment in his diocese. There is no need for me to emphasise the escalating rates of crime in the country—they are terrible. Perhaps it should be pointed out that violence against the person accounts only for 3 per cent., and sexual offences for only 6 per cent., whereas offences against property comprise 95 per cent.
It is interesting that in his recent working paper on criminal justice the Home Secretary associates crime with wider problems, such as the weakening of the family and a decline in standards of conduct and respect for authority. But whatever are the causes of crime, I cannot help but recall the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones in his response to the gracious Speech from the Throne. He said on 18th November, 1986 (at col. 144 of Hansard):
"The United Kingdom now sends more people to prison, both in absolute numbers and relative to its population than any other major West European country."
That must give us pause for thought.
The number of prisoners on remand clogs up the whole system. The awful consequence of being a prisoner on remand is that one in three of the prisoners will be pronounced innocent—one in three may have been in prison for nothing. If one is found guilty, one might not be given a custodial sentence, which in some ways is worse. A further injustice is that whereas the time spent on remand may be counted against a custodial sentence, it does not count towards the minimum for parole. Parole is given to some 73 per

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cent. of prisoners. But if a prisoner is on remand with a short sentence he may well serve longer than he considers to be just.
Prisoners on remand have to be taken to and from the court by prison officers. By 1985 prisoners on remand comprised 21 per cent. of the entire prison population. If the number of remand prisoners. exceeds the number for which provision is made in a local establishment, the whole system is then under strain. Prison officers have to be taken off their normal duties. Then activities for which special policing is needed tend to suffer; namely, education, workshops, physical education and even the use of the library. This is the main reason why inmates have to spend so much time in their cells. Prison officers are drawn off to act as guards for remand prisoners going to and from the courts.
Last week at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham the number of remand and unconvicted inmates was 423. The provision is for 300. Winson Green is 22 officers under establishment and last week the average overtime was 17 hours, 35 tasks had to be dropped every day. The number of inmates on remand is not the only problem. At Winson Green the prison officers consider that 900 is the right figure for inmates. The prison authorities consider that they can cope with 1,100. but that 1,150 and over present real problems in matters such as sewage and kitchen capacity. Yet, the numbers exceeded 1,150 on two occasions last week, and on one night the figure was 1,170. The average number of inmates was 1,131. When police cells are being used in London as the noble Lord mentioned, congestion is caused all the way down the line. Extra inmates are posted to Bedford, and thence to Winson Green and so it continues.
There are two urgent problems. First, how to cope with this explosive short term problem of some five and a half thousand inmates above the certified normal population. Secondly, what should be done in the long term. The policy of building more prisons is already seen to be failing. They are not keeping pace with the increase in the number of people being sent to prison. As the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, said, obviously we need less prisoners.
I do not think that the parole system can be further extended. In any case it is rather objectionable because the judges have ruled that the rules of natural justice do not apply to parole, it is a discretion. There is not much more mileage in remission—one third of the sentence is already remitted unless there is bad conduct. To increase remission would make a nonsense of the length of the original custodial sentence. There remains, as the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, said, the executive release. I shall not repeat what he said, but hope that note will be taken of it in places where decisions are made.
A form of prison-capping already takes place in the state of Minnesota in the United States. Indeed, the French Minister of Justice threatened to use prison-capping in France last year. It is vital that the judiciary should be separate from the Government. It would be appalling if that were not the case. But the Government can and should insist that the prison population does not produce what the Parliamentary All-Party Penal Affairs Group has called conditions that "are intolerable in a civilised society".
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The Church of England's Board for Social Responsibility recommended prison-capping in a statement they issued last year and I hope due note can be taken of what has been said in this debate.
I do not wish to criticise the judiciary to whom we owe great respect. But they ought not to pass so many custodial sentences. I know that restraints on custody are written into the law. I know that the Court of Appeal and the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House should influence the number of non-custodial sentences. But, the fact remains that we have a higher proportion than other comparable countries. Whenever I personally tackle a member of the judiciary on this matter I am told that they have to reflect public opinion. I do not believe that this is public opinion, except in the case of violence and sexual crime which, as I have said, is a very small proportion of the whole.
The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote some wise words in his introduction to Breaking Out, a report of the British Council of Churches Penal Working Group. He said:
"We treat crime both too seriously and not seriously enough. Too seriously in that we often impose conditions of imprisonment which are. by most people's reckoning, too harsh;…not seriously enough in that the policies to 'deal with' the problems caused by crime are too often piecemeal and provisional".
Breaking Out rightly states:
"Imprisonment is at present a practice without a clear policy".
I hope that we can have a clear policy which keeps our numbers within bounds.
The Minister of State, Home Office (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, perhaps I may answer one point raised by the right reverend Prelate as he will be leaving, but I hope he will read Hansard. I was informed at the administrative officers' conference last week, that last week they unlocked exactly the same number of people at Birmingham as they did at the end of the war, with one-third less staff at the end of the war, and provided a better regime.
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I hear what the noble Earl has said but I am merely recalling the figures which I have been given officially by the Prison Authorities.
6.38 p.m.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, the subject of the debate, as your Lordships know, is the deterioration in prison conditions, but it is axiomatic, as my noble friend Lord Donaldson said, that the root of the problem is overcrowding. We are speaking against a background of prolonged and growing crisis due to overcrowding—overcrowding which has been with us for at least two decades and which is growing progressively more acute.
I can speak with some authority and knowledge on this matter. That period of 20 years happens to coincide with the time during which I have been involved in our penal policies and criminal justice system, since I became the first chairman of the Parole Board in 1967.
We have been warned repeatedly of an increasingly "explosive situation"—words which have been used

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twice in this debate. We have been warned most recently by the Prison Governors and the POA of an impending breakdown in the system of control. We were warned by the Prison Governors' Branch of the Society of Civil and Public Servants as long ago as 1976 of the shape of things to come. Only last month it told us that the riots of 1986 were, "but a rehearsal". In the words of one prison governor, "We may not be able to cope with the next one".
On the other hand—and this is the burden of my few words this evening—over all those years we have repeatedly received constructive recommendations for resolving the crisis. Reports from every committee—committees of inquiry, and others—which has addressed the problem, from the Advisory Council on the Penal System under Sir Kenneth Younger in the 1970s onwards, all show a remarkably consistent accord on what is needed. The All-Party Penal Affairs Group, to which the right reverend Prelate has just referred, adverted to two of the recommendations in a 10-point programme for reducing prison overcrowding which it submitted to the Home Secretary in April last year. We did so in two previous reports—one in 1985 entitled The Rising Prison Population, and a report in 1980 entitled Too Many Prisoners.
The two recommendations were these: to lower the maximum length of sentences right across the board, except of course for the very serious crimes such as those excluded offences in Schedule 1 to the Criminal Justice Act 1982. Those found guilty of crimes of that order account in any case for, at the most, one in five in our prison population. If we subtract those approximately 8,000 remand prisoners referred to by the right reverend Prelate and 10,000 juveniles and young offenders, we are left with some 80 per cent. of the prison population who clutter up our local prisons.
They have been referred to as ordinary prisoners; as non-violent offenders. Many of them—in fact most of them—are petty, persistent and inefficient offenders who number about 10,000. For the most part they are dealt with in the magistrates' courts. For all of them research findings over many years have indicated that much shorter sentences than currently permitted and imposed are no less effective than longer ones. The latest authority for this is that excellent document, Sentence of the Court.
The other measure has been recommended on a number of occasions under one title or another. It was aptly entitled in 1977 by a Conservative Party study group set up by the then shadow Home Secretary (now the noble Viscount who is the Leader of our House) and chaired by Sir Edward Gardiner, Custody and Control. It was favourably commented on when I raised it five years ago in the House in a debate in which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice was taking part. I was glad to see that, until a few moments ago, he had found time to come and sit with us.
The measure would consist of a two-tier sentence served partly in prison and partly in the community under certain prescribed conditions of control and after-care. The whole length of the sentence need not be less than the total general run of current sentencing
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practice. If it were applied only to ordinary offenders—those who are non-violent, petty and persistent—I understand that it would have the effect of reducing the prison population by some 5,000.
The sentence would, in effect, be equivalent to the application of the parole principle to all such offenders, with two important differences. First, it would be the courts that would apply it. Secondly, the tedious parole assessment procedures would be dispensed with, saving much time and money and also saving much anxiety on the part of prisoners themselves. I say that in the knowledge that the present chairman of the Parole Board is with us, and I have the greatest admiration and support for the system so long as we cannot get it better.
It has the proven benefit of supervision and support in the community. It would meet a popular—and proper—demand for retribution. It would provide the shock effect of imprisonment without the damaging effects of prolonged incarceration. Therefore, I ask how else a policy of shorter sentencing, called for by so many authorities and expert committees over so many years, is to be achieved.
Exhortations, in particular to the magistrates, by the Lord Chief Justice himself, and I think the Lord Chancellor. appear to have had little effect. Drastic action is urgently needed. But either, or both, of the measures to which I have referred would require legislation, and the situation is now so critical that crash action is called for.
It was precisely for such an eventuality that executive release, so called, was placed on the statute book in Section 32 of the Criminal Justice Act 1982. That would provide the necessary breathing space while legislation for shorter prison sentences is enacted. My noble friend Lord Donaldson has already made a powerful case for that step to be taken.
These are radical changes in our whole approach to penal policy. They would get our criminal justice system out of the groove in which it has been grinding on for far too many years. They are not put forward by people who are soft on crime or sentimental towards criminals. There is ample evidence that shortening the periods spent inside our prisons would not—with exceptions which would rightly be made by the courts—weaken the impact of imprisonment on criminal behaviour.
Nothing less will suffice to change course from the unending and growing crisis which can only lead to disaster. Therefore, I beg the Government to look again at all the advice they have had—the constant advice on this subject—to heed the warnings they have also had and to act courageously without delay.
6.47 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I make it a rule to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, almost blindly—except of course up Everest or other dangerous mountains—and I find it easy to follow him this afternoon, and to follow the other eloquent speakers. It seems to me that there are two broad ways of assessing the present situation. One is the way that has been brilliantly explained to us—if I may use that word about an old friend who does not like compliments; (well at any rate he pretends not to like

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compliments)—by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson. The other is the way summarised, I hope not finally but perhaps provisionally, by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who is much respected already in his office.
I must comment on one thing he wrote recently, which I hope does not represent his final opinion. In reviewing a remarkable book—I gave him short notice of this question, and it was very courageous of him really to set an example to other Ministers—by Vivien Stern referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson (which in my eyes is the best book ever written on prisons; and I have read a great many) the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, wrote this in a review in The Times:
"much has been done to improve the situation in recent years."
One would not think so from hearing the earlier speakers.
"We want to continue this policy."
That would be bad news if it was the last word that the noble Earl had to say on the subject. I hope that at least when today's debate is over he will reconsider that position in conjunction with the Home Secretary.
The last time I spoke on prisons in November, in the debate on the Queen's Speech, I drew attention to what I am afraid one can only call—I do not want to use extreme words—the very unfriendly attitude taken at the present time by the Prison Officers' Association towards the Home Office. I should like to see the Ministers coming forward a little more in these arguments with the prison officers and not so much left to the officials. They should not be left in the firing line to the extent that they are. There is this unfriendly attitude. When I indicated that to certain officials they told me that unfortunately the leaders of the prison officers would not talk to them. I shall leave that to others to sort out.
Leaving out all the diplomacy, the tactics and the improvements that I hope can be effected in the mutual relationship, there is no doubt whatever—and here I speak with knowledge—that the prison officers will remain very critical indeed of the Home Office and the Ministers who preside over it while this overcrowding continues. There is really no doubt at all about that, however much one tinkers with it. You can have a fresh start or do similar things under other names, but until you deal with the particular issue that has been concentrated on this evening there will be no improvement whatever in the very bad relationship which exists today between the Prison Officers' Asociation and the Home Office and its Ministers. The conclusion, after studying the views of the prison officers, must be that from their point of view and the point of view put by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and other speakers, the two points of view are identical.
The question is: what can be done about it? We have many times here pleaded for alternative remedies and there have been explanations about how these remedies could be applied. That cannot be said too often. But in these few minutes I am going to do nothing more than express my strongest possible support—I have no authority to speak for my party but I should be surprised if I were out of line in this matter—for the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, about executive release. I think the message ought to go out from this House that that is
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what the House of Lords is standing for today. I cannot expect the noble Earl to announce this evening that a completely new policy has been adopted between 6.15 and 8.45 p.m. but I hope he will say that he recognises the strength of feeling; and it is not just emotional feeling but a feeling that springs from expert knowledge.
The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, mentioned Winston Churchill. I will quote what he said on 20th July 1910 and then draw to a close. Winston Churchill (then Home Secretary)—he was a Liberal at the time, which ought to appeal to noble Lords on the Liberal Benches; but he became a Conservative later, which ought to appeal to noble Lords opposite—said that the Government had,
"made a general pro rata reduction of sentences over the whole area of the prison population. The remissions which were granted on this occasion affected 11,000 prisoners, and at a stroke struck 500 years of imprisonment and penal servitude from the prison population. I am glad to be able to tell the House that no evil results of any kind have followed from this".
I am certain that no evil result of any kind would follow from the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and that much good would come about as a result of them.
6.54 p.m.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, it is about the remand prisoner that I wish to speak, following up what was so eloquently referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham: the 24 male prisoners and Holloway. I initiated a debate in this House on the same subject in 1980 on the May Report. The May Report had described the situation as a scandal and the conditions as degrading. There were then 6,500 remand prisoners, 14 per cent. of the total prison population. Today, seven years later, there are 10,000 remand prisoners, 22 per cent. of the prison population—a situation described by the Home Affairs Committee as completely unacceptable, and later as an affront to human dignity.
At that time prisoners waited 25 days on average for trial. Today they wait for 55 days and in London they wait for 100 days. Half the men will receive no sentence of imprisonment when they come to trial. Two-thirds of the women will be released when they come to trial. The 8,844 untried yesterday are innocent in the eyes of the law, and waiting to hear the case made against them. Every day last year, 60 women—yes, my Lords, women—on average were locked up in police station cells, while over a hundred beds in Holloway were empty. That is a brutal anomaly which for some reason the Home Office is incapable of solving.
In 1980 the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said that the figure of 6,500 must cause all in this House the greatest concern. What concern should we feel tonight over 10,000? Last week, as has already been said, the Minister wrote an article for the Guardian. The word "remand" appeared nowhere in the article. He spoke, as we have heard, of a strategy to reduce demands on the system; yet the most acute of all demands got no mention at all. The reason, I fear, is that the position today is worse than it was seven years ago and that nothing has been achieved during those seven years. If I am wrong I am sure the noble Earl will tell the House what he failed to tell the readers of the newspaper.

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The £360 million programme paraded in that article (and no doubt to be paraded tonight) will not solve the problem. It is the policy towards local prisons which is the mischief: it is the manner in which the money is spent which is the mischief. Local prisons are starved of capital investment and crammed with untried and short-term prisoners—significantly the least articulate and the least likely to rebel—and so we have the creation of what a recent governor of Wormwood Scrubs described as, "the dustbins of the system".
Let me spell out once again, and perhaps for the last time, what could be done with political will and dedication. First, we should re-categorise these prisoners. Half receive no prison sentence and many of those who do go straight to a category C or D prison; yet all on remand are put in categories A or B. The majority of them do not need the high security of local prisons, of hand-cuffs and black marias. They do not need the intensive level of escort, the banging up in cells and so on.
Secondly, we should build, take over or convert less secure buildings and create remand hostels near main court centres. We should get these remand prisoners out of the local prisons and reduce the mad merry-go-round of escort duties. I should like to emphasise the lunacy of women travelling from Holloway over a hundred miles to court and then a hundred miles back around the South of England. The prison officers could then return to their proper job of caring for the prisoners in the prisons.
Thirdly, we should take in hand the whole bail operation in the main magistrates' courts. This could and must be a structured operation, embracing the duty solicitors, the CPS. the probation service and legal aid arrangements concentrated in one bail court. Information units could be set up to provide the justices with the facts on which decisions could be properly made. Outside agencies, particularly those dealing with ethnic minorities, should he brought in. The Nottingham justices' decision should be repealed and bail hostels provided in the right places, and used. Applications for bail could be fixed and repeated if necessary at fixed periods, and the results could be monitored and published.
Fourthly, a code of minimum standards should be established. Mr. Leon Brittan has also burst into print lately in an article in The Times on 17th February. He said:
"Minimum standards would be a mere symbolic statement of aspirations and would not help to achieve them.".
There, if I may say so, are political complacency and despair.
Sir James Hennessy, our admirable Chief Inspector of Prisons, has been asking for a code in report after report and now he has lost patience with Ministers and set up a study to formulate his own code. A code, as Sir James knows well, would be an incentive to force the hands of sleepy bureaucrats and rudderless politicians to give some basic rights to those locked-up men and women, lost behind prison walls.
Finally, there is a passage in Mr. Brittan's article with which I wholeheartedly agree:
"Increased dialogue with the judiciary is certainly essential and should not be regarded as an attempt to encroach on the independence of the judges".
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I should like also to welcome the presence here tonight of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, and, if I may say so, it is typical of him that he is the first learned Law Lord to attend such a debate.
Is it not astonishing that, whereas, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is responsible for the appointment of magistrates, for their necessary qualifications, for their conduct in court and for their training, when we discuss their performance on the job, the sentences that they pass and their bail decisions the noble and learned Lord plays no part?
I end by asking the Minister, who is, if I may say so, a man of humanity and good sense, how much longer he is prepared to tolerate the internationally recognised disgrace of the remand situation in this otherwise civilised and caring nation of ours? Can he continue to permit the trauma suffered by the majority of these 8,000 persons who are freed from custody when they come to trial, with the broken homes, lost jobs, debts incurred, families devastated to no purpose and without justification, with the ensuing bitterness and disillusionment with the processes of the law which merely breed contempt and criminality? I hope he will cast aside his official and, no doubt, complacent brief and give the House a fair and direct answer to this the crucial question which underlies my noble friend's Motion before the House.
7.3 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I should like to avail myself of the opportunity which the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, has given us by this debate to raise again the theme of a debate which I introduced here last year about the problems of women in prison and the conditions that they suffer. But this time I do so with the support of a report which the TUC produced earlier this month, and which concentrates on different ways by which conditions for women and their whole position within the penal system could be improved. There is little doubt that much of the anxiety and many of the recommendations which are put forward in this report and in this debate echo my debate in 1985, so I hope very much that this time the Minister will look carefully at what the TUC has said in its discussion paper and take heed of some of the recommendations it has made.
First, as a background to its paper the TUC gave some of the most relevant statistics concerning women in prison and crime. It pointed out the important fact that as women represent such a very small proportion of the prison population—only 3 per cent.—very little research has been carried out about women in the penal system and indeed about their conditions in prison. Very little research has been done on the effect of imprisonment on women; what conditions in prison would be best for them; whether they need a different sentencing policy and what alternatives to prison might be more appropriate for women.
The most recent figure of the number of women and girls in custody was for 31st December 1986, when it stood at 1,573. Over half of those women were there for stealing in some form or other, and the rest were there for offences such as not paying fines, drug offences, offences relating to prostitution—mainly as a result of fine default for soliciting—and the remainder, just under 400, were sentenced for violence against the

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person. The report went on to say that the proportion of women offenders receiving custodial sentences has risen from 2 per cent. in 1974 to 6 per cent. at the present time. The TUC also made the point that in 1984 as many as 17 per cent. of women imprisoned throughout that year had no previous convictions.
The paramount conclusion that the TUC came to was that women should be sent to prison only as a last resort and when no non-custodial option is available to the courts. It said:
"The probation order could be used for the overwhelming majority of female offenders, except those whose offences are of such gravity that the public needs to be protected".
I do not think there could be any better way of relieving the situation in prisons than to follow that overriding conclusion and recommendation of the TUC.
It came to this conclusion, first, through examining the kind of crimes that women committed and deciding that a custodial sentence was in most cases inappropriate. It also examined how prison affects women in their dual role of offender and mother. It is surely true to say that special regard is paid to the dual role that women play in every other area of their lives, such as when a woman combines being a paid employee and a carer of children or elderly relatives. So it should be logical to pay the same regard to women who unfortunately are fulfilling this dual role of being a mother and a carer of elderly and dependent relatives while in prison.
The report points out that a 1982 survey showed that of the women prison population of that year, which was 1,288, 56 per cent. had a total of 1,649 children. So there were 1,649 children who were deeply affected by the imprisonment of their mother. Here, quite rightly, the report stresses that imprisonment for a woman, besides being a loss of freedom, has an extra dimension, which is the intolerable anxiety and trauma not only through being separated from her children but also through worrying about what is happening to them. So it seems right that the report should stress that insufficient account is taken of the problems that affect women who have family responsibilities.
In this respect the report advocates that, besides women being given bail whenever possible or being released on parole, more experiments should be carried out as they are in other countries about their visiting conditions in prison. It argues that to help a woman keep contact with her family, and to remake contact as a constructive woman and mother, she should have the use of the telephone, unsupervised visits and so on. I do not have time to point out any of the other recommendations, but I should like to touch on areas in which the report particularly concentrates, such as the number of women who are in prison through committing offences because they were mentally disturbed. That aspect has already been touched on. There is no possible doubt that there are more women in prison, and it is a hard problem to deal with women who are in a prison environment which is detrimental to their particular mental state.
The report also touched on the whole question of mothers and babies in prison, and on the numbers of drug offenders and disturbed women in prison. It pointed out the need for therapeutic units to help
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women to overcome drug or alcohol problems while they are in prison, rather than allowing them to come out into the community in the same state in which they entered prison.
The TUC discussion paper contained many other ideas and recommendations. They all pointed in the same direction, which was the need for change in policy and attitude away from regarding it as essential for women to be punished through the use of custodial sentences rather than having a more humane way of dealing with the problem by taking into account family responsibilities and more appropriate and imaginative methods which are remedial rather than punitive.
I have saved my last half minute to put a question and suggestion to the Minister on another subject which I think is extremely relevant to the Motion on the Order Paper today. I should like to ask the Minister whether he thinks it may be a good idea, which would assist our prison service when formulating policies, to ask prison governors, on their retirement, to write what I should like to call valedictory reports. It seems amazing that all the wisdom and experience which our prison governors have acquired during their careers should not be drawn together and put into a document which could then be channelled into the thinking on how to improve conditions in prisons. I hope that the Minister will look favourably on that suggestion. What made me think of that idea was the much-respected valedictory dispatches which ambassadors write on retirement and which presumably help the Foreign Office to formulate foreign policy.
7.15 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I should like to apologise to your Lordships' House for popping in and out of this debate. Unfortunately, the timing clashed with another commitment. I wish in the short time allowed to add a few remarks on the subject of women in prison. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, has already spoken on the subject.
I do not think that there is necessarily a case for dealing differently with men and women who are offenders. However, I suspect that a great many of the points which I wish to make about women will apply equally to men. My personal experience is limited to women, however, and that is why I wish to talk about them.
I had the privilege of doing a short study on the subject, and I was struck forcibly by the fact, which I think that no one denies, that a great many women (and I suspect men as well) are in prison who ought not to be there. I have had discussions with a number of people and with the highest in the land in connection with imprisonment. They all agree that there are a great many people in prison who ought not to be there. Since there is such widespread acceptance of that fact, I find it hard to believe that it is not possible for us to do something about it. When I discuss this matter with people in the Home Office, they say, "Yes, certainly something should be done", and then nothing happens. Perhaps it is unfair to say that nothing happens; very little happens.
I hope that we can be practical and not simply talk in general terms. We all know that over half of the

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women who are in prison on remand do not ultimately receive custodial sentences. It seems extraordinary that we should hold women in prison who are ultimately either not sentenced or, when they are sentenced, receive non-custodial sentences. That must be wrong. Think of the disruption caused by taking a woman from her home and putting her in prison, only to find, after weeks and sometimes months in prison, that that is not where she ought to be.
Why can we not have more bail hostels? We are spending an enormous amount of money on building new prisons. Why can we not divert some of that money in order to build more bail hostels? I am told that many of those women have to be in prisons because they might escape. Most of the women of whom I was aware when I was doing my study were not the sort of people who were going to take a private plane to the Caribbean; most of them would have got no further than Fulham. In addition, many of them had nowhere to go. If one or two such women escaped, would that really be as serious as continuing the horrible practice of holding people on remand whose offences are afterwards found not to warrant imprisonment?
I ask your Lordships to think for a moment of the disruption this causes in homes and also of the cost. If a woman with children is in prison on remand, something must be done about the children. If they are put into homes or into care, that is an added expense and an added disruption. We should have a drive to get more bail hostels or to get more supervision through the probation service so that tabs can be kept on those women at home to ensure that they do not disappear between the time that they have been arrested and the time that they are sentenced. Surely that is a practical step which could be taken.
At the other end of the process, a very large number of women (although not such a high proportion of women as of men) return to prison after release. As several people, including probation officers have said to me, many of those women return to prison because they cannot cope outside. They have had a prison sentence; many of them are rather inadequate people to begin with. Often they are unskilled, with no training to sell when they leave prison. With the present level of unemployment, it is very difficult indeed for such women to re-establish themselves and live on what they can earn. If the families of such women help them and welcome them back, that is one thing. But a great many such women do not have families to go back to, or their families do not want to know. They then attempt to cope in run-down lodgings on social security benefit, and sooner or later they run into debt or go out on a desperate binge and they are back in prison. In many cases, they simply cannot cope outside prison.
Surely we can have better after-care arrangements than we have at the present time for such women. They need someone who can see, during the early weeks when they first come out of prison, that they are helped to readjust by close contact. That system would not be anything like as expensive. We would need an increase in the probation service. However, it would not cost anything like the money we spend on prisons and on women who return to gaol, as a large number of them do.
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Reference has been made to psychiatric cases. The days are past when people think that any woman who has offended must be a psychiatric case. That is of course not true. However, it is true that there are women who are psychiatric cases either because they were psychiatric cases before they offended or, as appears to be the case, because some women react to imprisonment differently from the way in which men react. It is said that men externalise their anger and violence and that women tend to internalise such feelings. That is a generalisation. But it is an opinion which is widely held.
Surely prison is not the place for genuine psychiatric cases. Why have we not developed secure units in hospitals? I have discussed that matter with senior members of the nursing profession who say to me, "We need resources to build secure units and it is taxing on the staff, but it could be done". If hospitals were given resources to build secure units within the hospital and if they had adequate staffing, I suggest that they should not then have the right to refuse to take such women. I know that the medical profession may not like that suggestion. When I made the suggestion to the governor of Holloway Prison concerning one particular case, and remarked that she was surely a medical case, he said, "Of course. I tell the courts that such a woman should not be here, but they say to me that there is nowhere else that she can go because hospitals can refuse to take her but prisons cannot".
Surely that is wrong. If we had secure units in hospitals, why should the medical profession have the right to refuse to take such cases? The National Health Service is a national service, just as the Prison Service is a national service. Given the proper resources that surely is the right way to deal with it.
If we could deal with the people on remand and have much better after-care services, and deal with psychiatric cases through secure units in hospitals rather than retaining them in prisons—and admittedly this will take longer—it would make a sizeable cut in the total female prison population. None of this is too difficult to do. We can all see how it can be done.
Finally, for those who are not violent—and the great majority of women offenders are not violent but just an intolerable nuisance—surely better organised, rigorous and vigorous community service is what is required rather than prison. Here again if we gave our minds to it, it could surely be done.
7.20 p.m.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, I crave your Lordships' indulgence. It was only yesterday evening that someone thought fit to suggest that a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary might take part in this debate. As noble Lords will know, we have been somewhat unusually busy in the Appellate Committee over the past day or two, including today.
I suppose that a speech from a Lord of Appeal is thought to be relevant becaue he at least has probably been one who has contributed in the past to the prison population. I hasten to say that in my appellate capacity in the Court of Appeal I have also removed those who have been sent to prison. It is not a one-way traffic. When addressing sentencing conferences of

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circuit judges I have urged upon them the appalling difficulties of the present position. I was stimulated into breaking the ice and taking part when I knew that the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, a fellow bencher of mine and granted silk in the same year, would be taking part in the debate. I know his particular affection for the judiciary and I wondered what he might have in store for us.
I was very anxious—and I think the anxiety was unnecessary—that someone should be present to repel any suggestion that the judiciary is not deeply conscious of the present position. If I may go back to the judical career of the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, about 25 years ago, I remember it well because he was the recorder of Devizes and I was the recorder of Swindon.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: Bath.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, I always noticed that he fixed his sessions immediately after I had held mine so that there was no work left for him to do and he could return to his highly lucrative practice. Even among the few cases with which he was prepared to deal I am sure he will accept that the sentences that he and I imposed in our capacity as recorders for burglary, theft, dishonesty and fraud were considerably higher than they are today.
The reason for that is simple. Twenty-five years ago we were told by the experts, the penologists, that there was a high reformative content in the prison existence and that people should not go in for short sentences as the opportunity for this reform would be denied to them. I remember the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Parker, addressing a number of recorders and impressing upon them the dangers of undersentencing. That was factor one. Factor two was that the prisons were not then as appallingly overcrowded as they are now. In the past decade the misconceptions of the criminologist have been thrust to one side and we know that the reformative content of prison is minuscule. Secondly, we are aware of the appalling dangers of the present overcrowded system.
Perhaps I may indicate how this has been reflected. The Lord Chief Justice, who has recently left your Lordships' House, said in 1980 in the case of Regina v. Bibi:
"This case opens up wider horizons because it is no secret that our prisons at the moment are dangerously overcrowded. So much so that sentencing courts must be particularly careful to examine each case to ensure, if an immediate custodial sentence is necessary, that the sentence is as short as possible, consistent only with the duty to protect the interests of the public and to punish and deter the criminal.
Many offenders can be dealt with equally justly and effectively by a sentence of six or nine months' imprisonment as by one of 18 months or three years. We have in mind not only the obvious case of the first offender for whom any prison sentence however short may be an adequate punishment and deterrent, but other types of case as well.
The less serious types of factory or shopbreaking; the minor cases of sexual indecency; the more petty frauds where small amounts of money are involved; the fringe participants in more serious crime: all these are examples of cases where the shorter sentence would be appropriate".
The final excerpt from that judgment to which I would invite attention is this:
"What the court can and should do is to ask itself whether there
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is any compelling reason why a short sentence should not be passed. We are not aiming at uniformity of sentence; that would be impossible. We are aiming at uniformity of approach".
That case has been constantly referred to and is before every sentencing conference that takes place with new judges.
I referred to the position of those who break trust. Another case in 1985 called Barrick was the subject matter, again, of guidelines from the Court of Appeal on this very subject. The Lord Chief Justice said:
"It was not long ago that this type of offender"—
in relation to an offence involving fraud by an accountant, a solicitor, a bank employee or a postman—
"might expect to receive a term of imprisonment of three or four years, and indeed a great deal more if the sums involved were substantial. More recently, however, the sentencing climate in this area has changed.".
The Lord Chief Justice went on to deal with the various categories of case. He said this:
"In general a term of immediate imprisonment is inevitable, save in very exceptional circumstances or where the amount of money obtained is small.".
The Lord Chief Justice then dealt with various categories. He went on to say:
"Where the amounts involved cannot be described as small but are less than £10,000 or thereabouts, terms of imprisonment ranging from the very short up to about eighteen months are appropriate.".
That is quite startling if one compared the position ten years previously. It has had this effect. It has resulted in sentences for theft between 1979 and 1985 coming down significantly. In 1979 the average sentence was 12.7 months. It was down to 10 months in 1985. For burglary it was 18.2 months; down to 15 months now. All indictable offences: average 18.6 months; down to 16.6 months. So the first point I am anxious to make is that there is no question of the judiciary being other than deeply conscious of the situation which exists now and anxious to try to assist in its alleviation.
One does not need to go far to find the reason for the increase in the prison population. First, it has gone up very significantly so far as concerns the Crown Court. In 1982, 80,700 persons were sentenced. Three years later that number had increased to 89,085. Of those, 50 per cent. do not receive an immediate sentence of imprisonment. That, again, is very significant because it is only the more serious offences that come to the Crown Court.
Secondly, there has been an increase in drug offences. I imagine that all your Lordships approve of the policy of stiff sentences for those particular offences. Thirdly, the parole restrictions on sentences of five years and more in certain categories have had the inevitable result of more people staying for a long time in prison.
The overcrowding is in the local prisons. Dr. Thomas, the penologist at Cambridge on whose works many of us relied when we were sentencing and on which those who are sentencing still rely, having made a study of this subject, concluded that the overcrowding in the local prisons is due in the majority of cases to young offenders; that is, under 29 year-old recidivist burglars. For those who say that there should be fewer sentences of imprisonment I think the judiciary is entitled to ask: in the course of our

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obligation to protect the public what exactly are we expected to do with them? Sixty per cent. of young male offenders have at least three previous convictions. Sixty per cent. of the adult male prison population has at least six previous convictions. That is the sort of situation which we have to deal with and against which the public are entitled to receive protection.
The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, referred to executive manoeuvres. They exist. Let me tell your Lordships of one. Of all sentences between nine months and 18 months, and indeed two years, where there has been time spent on remand nearly 80 per cent. of prisoners are let out after six months. That is a disquieting fact to some members of the public. The suggestion that the judiciary must be asked to co-operate with executive manoeuvres is clearly one which can receive an optimistic answer. Judges go on conscientiously and with anxiety asking themselves, "Do I send this person away for nine months, 15 months, 21 months or two years knowing full well that it will not make a half-penny worth of difference because he will be out after six months?" It is suggested that there will be an improvement with a lower maximum. It is rare indeed that the maximum is used. When it is, it is usually with the full support of the public.
I have trespassed on your Lordships' time and I am conscious of that fact, but since you have all said it was high time that a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary spoke I plead that immediately in mitigation. I really arrived here to repel an attack which I am delighted to say was never made.
7.34 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House is grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, for his speech even though he sentenced us to 13 minutes. It was very well worth it. He made a point which is absolutely right. The problem that has arisen in our prisons and the deterioration of them is due to the increase in crime.
Although we find it reprehensible that there are more of our citizenry in prison, on a proportionate basis, than in any other country in Western Europe, to put the matter in its correct perspective, it is right to say that there are as many people in prison in the state of New York this evening as there are in the whole of England and Wales. The Lord Chief Justice said that judges and magistrates should not send people to prison unless it is absolutely necessary. I do not believe that they do send them to prison unless they consider it absolutely necessary.
It so happens that I find myself in agreement with every speech that has been made this evening. That is very difficult. I do not want to follow any of them. I suggest however that we need basically to re-think the general efficacy and the cost-effectiveness of our present prison system. Are we really getting value for money? Are our thoughts about this whole matter conditioned by the stern Victorian prison and the ethic that it served in its way? After all, the Victorians had a penal policy. Are we now conditioned by that inheritance? Is it not time that we thought in different terms?
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The noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, rightly pointed out that the greatest single problem in the prison population at the moment is the 60 per cent. burglary recidivists—youngsters under the age of 29. What is the best way of dealing with them? I suggest that we turn our backs on the old concept of the stern Victorian prison and think in terms of prison camps. We are told these days that land is no longer absolutely essential for agriculture, as it once was. We are told that there is a great need to improve our environment. We believe, I think rightly, that one of the great problems in local prisons, where there are these large populations, is that the prisoners are kept in idleness. Nothing is worse for the hope of eventual reform, or changing a person's attitude and bringing him back to the path of the observance of the law, than is idleness. The real criticism of the British prison system is that it makes it very difficult indeed for a person who has been in prison to return to the life of a law-abiding citizen. That is because of conditions in the prisons and the difficulties of aftercare, and so on.
There is great scope for new thinking. Why should we not have much cheaper edifices built in the countryside, not far from the centres of crime? Why should we not have prison camps for the under-29 recidivists who are not regarded as dangerous and some of whom are in need of training? Why should we not have prison camps for those offenders in need of training? Why should we not have prison camps for those many offenders who need treatment? Why should we not have them for high security prisoners of a certain category. Modern electronic devices would enable such camps to be as secure as many of our top security prisons. They would not perhaps be suitable for all prisoners because we must have regard to the fact that there is internationally organised crime with a great deal of money behind it. All I suggest is that there is scope for a great deal of re-thinking in this matter.
We cannot go on stuffing prisoners into local prisons. They are often recidivists and the judges or magistrates do not know what on earth to do with them. Judges sentence them for as short a sentence as they can, knowing perfectly well that they will probably end up in a local prison. But what else can they do? Is it not time that we rethought this whole matter?
In suggesting prison camps, one of the problems is that people who were involved in the last war immediately think of concentration camps. Others would think of holiday camps. People think of Russian prison camps. In fact we should think of an environment in the open air where prisoners can be kept at work for at least eight hours of the day. They would be in a different kind of environment. Nobody knows better than the Minister all the in-built problems that exist within the prison service today. They will never be resolved within the confines of the old Victorian prisons.
Many of the problems in our prisons could be solved if one took a different kind of approach. I am certain of only one thing; that the prison population of this country will not fall. We have to find different ways of dealing with it. Even if we take every single step that has been advocated here this evening—and I agree with all of them, including executive release—the problem will only be solved temporarily.

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We seem to be following the example of the United States in many areas. With the kind of society that we have today, we must look to the United States for an idea of where that society will take us. I think, regrettably, it will take us in the direction of much fuller prisons than we have today.
7.40 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, like other speakers, I should like to begin my contribution by offering the warmest congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, not only for having initiated this debate but also for the comprehensive and excellent way in which he dealt with the subject. The noble Lord tackled the problems in a very fair and humane way.
Anyone who has waited for as long as I have in the queue to speak must find himself bound to echo my sentiments when I say that I have been deeply moved as well as heartened by the depth of knowledge and experience that has come from every single speaker in the debate. Everyone has had a significant contribution to make. I am sure that the Minister will be glad to know that everyone has taken the opportunity offered by this debate very seriously indeed. At the end of the day we want the Minister to indicate that he too takes it seriously.
I want to declare two interests. First, I represent in Parliament the interests of the Prison Officers Association. As part of my credentials may I say that in the past 12 months I have visited prisons at Bexhill, Bristol, Maidstone, Lindholme, Bedford, and Wakefield as well as the Maze and Magilligan in Northern Ireland. I am therefore not unfamiliar with the conditions in prisons although I am not an expert on them. Like everyone else I must rely on reports from a range of people and acquaintances in this House. in the prison service and elsewhere. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, also made that point.
Reference has been made to the article by the Minister. I want only to say that I believe that it was truthful but, just like another gentleman we know, I think that he was being somewhat economical with the truth. He did not complete the picture that he was drawing. I want the Minister to be open and frank with the public. Conditions in prisons are not related simply to one side of an argument which rests upon the description of prison staff as the greedy, grasping, overtime-happy prison officers that they have often been called.
We have heard tonight some very relevant remarks about the other side of our prisons. It must be understood that the living conditions of prisoners are the working conditions of prison officers. There have been appalling, disgraceful, and I think the House will agree, shameful episodes. No one attaches blame to any one particular cause. We hope to get out of this situation. The Minister ought to tell it as it is. He ought to remind the public of the conditions that exist in our prisons.
A document has been sent to me by the Howard League for Penal Reform and I should like some of its observations to be put on the record. Perhaps they can also be given publicity in other ways. Recently the Chief Inspector of Prisons is reported as saying:
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"When the time for slopping out comes the prisoners queue up with their pots for the few toilets on the landing. The stench of urine and excrement pervades the prison. So awful is this procedure that many prisoners become constipated—others prefer to use their pants, hurling them and their contents out of the window when morning comes".
In its report last year the Social Services Committee remarked:
"We are astonished that there are not regular outbreaks of disease in prisons".
We know that such conditions exist. I think that it is time for the Minister to be prepared not merely to acknowledge them but to tell the public that such are the conditions under which prisoners are serving their sentences.
Much has been said about the harm that is done to men and women by living two and three in a cell rather than in three cells. What I meant to say was rather than each living in one cell. That was a cell out! The point needs to be made that, in general, prison officers take the view that many of the problems are being marginalised. It is not that they are not taken seriously but that they are not given the highest priority. A high degree of priority is given to such schemes as Fresh Start, but I shall not discuss that tonight. Too little attention is paid to tackling the underlying problems. I have heard more than one noble Lord say that until problems such as those that have been paraded before the House tonight are tackled vigorously, other problems will remain even more difficult to deal with.
I should like to tell the House some of the solutions that have been put forward by the prison officers. I quote from evidence that has recently been given to the Select Committee:
"The first and perhaps the most important initiative we would suggest is that steps should now be taken to substantially reduce the prison population. There are without doubt many people within our prisons for whom such sentences are unnecessary—minor offenders who, at worst, are only of nuisance value to our society. Fine defaulters, civil prisoners, prostitutes, shoplifters, etcetera, could effectively be dealt with by the imposition of non-custodial sentences. That measure alone would provide enormous relief to the system… There are a number of other aspects of our prison system which give us cause for serious concern. Our experience illustrates clearly that young offenders must, where at all humanely possible, he isolated from the undesirable influences of' mature adult offenders. In order to achieve this situation we would recommend the immediate cessation of the detention centre system. Detention centres have now become an ineffective and under-used (by the courts) part of the prison system. The 'short, sharp shock' regime has been proven to be a dismal failure; it has little or no effect".
Time is pressing and there is a lot that I wanted to say.
May I just refer to the recent report of the Chief Inspector of Prisons. I was struck by the amazing number of problems that he came across in eight prisons owing to the wrong use of staff; that is, staff who should be used for certain duties having to undertake other duties.
Paragraph 2.02 states:
"Local factors also affected the quality of life of prisoners. For instance, in a number of the establishments we inspected the arrangements made for the supervision of workshops and education classes were such that a diversion of discipline officers from the classrooms or workshops to other duties inevitably resulted in prisoners being locked away in their cells".
In paragraph 2.08, he adds:
"At Lincoln, a modern and well-equipped three-storey workshop, capable of employing over 200 prisoners, was operating on average for a mere eight hours a week, primarily because of a shortage of disciplinary officers to supervise inmates".

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Paragraph 2.11 goes on:
"Overall, however, work opportunities for prisoners were poor … partly because the workshops themselves were not kept open, or were only kept open for reduced periods, when discipline officers were called away to other duties".
At paragraph 2.15—
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord. I have to reply to the debate at 17 minutes past eight at the very latest, and there are four more speakers.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I was under the impression that I had taken less time than others but in deference to the Minister I shall sit down now.
7.50 p.m.
Lord Wilson of Langside: My Lords, there have been two references to Winston Churchill during the debate. I venture to quote him again. When he was Home Secretary and was addressing those responsible for law and order, he urged them to remember that there was treasure, if only they could find it, at the heart of every man. I refer to that for no reason other than that it focuses on the different climate in which we work in this context today.
I have been asked to speak, and I shall do so briefly, upon the Scottish dimension of the problem. The Scottish dimension is in almost all respects about twice as bad as that of England and Wales. I am disappointed that the Minister's colleague from the Scottish Office has left the Chamber, but no doubt what is said in this context will be passed to him.
We are grateful to my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge for giving us the opportunity to discuss this matter. But it is past time for talking, is it not? We know that the situation is explosive. We know that it is scandalous. All that has been said this afternoon. No one has denied it. There are too many people in prison who should not be there. No one denies that. The situation is about twice as bad in Scotland as it is elsewhere. It is explosive. We have had some little local explosions in Scottish prisons of late. We had the unrest in Peterhead among the prisoners who took hostages. They set fire to part of the prison. Shortly afterwards, that behaviour was emulated in Barlinnie, Glasgow's enormous old barracks of a prison.
The timing of the debate is a great tribute to my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge. This week, prison vans taking prisoners to Barlinnie have been turned back. The prison officers are refusing to accept them. There is no room at the gaol, to the immense hilarity of course of the prisoners, who apparently cheered until it echoed. Let us think of the disruption that causes the unfortunate police who have to take Barlinnie's wretched rejects into the local police cells.
The time for talking is over. It reflects no credit on successive governments that, after all these years, it should be urgently necessary to direct attention to the problem. It has all been said so often over the years. There is no simple solution. There is no perfect solution. The problems are so intractable because for some 30 odd years governments have neglected them.
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For too much of that time I was involved, not in prison administration but as a lawyer in various guises, in the criminal courts. At one stage, I was a civil servant trying to reform the courts through which most of the criminals in Scotland had to pass on their way to prison, in the hope, which I am afraid was rather a vain one, that a little more speed and efficiency there might help to brighten the scene.
I said that the problem was about twice as bad in Scotland as elsewhere; that is true. I was always aware of that. That was confirmed by the careful and detailed information I received today from the Scottish Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders. Because time is so short, I shall not detain your Lordships longer.
I hope that the Minister will accept the urgings of my noble friend Lord Hutchinson, throw away his brief and tell us what the Government propose in order to prevent in the short term a recurrence of the little local explosions in my neck of the woods and in the mid-term their re-emergence in the years to come.
7.55 p.m.
Lord Young of Dartington: My Lords, I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for initiating this debate and giving me a chance to say a few words about a problem that has been only touched on so far—the new disease of AIDS in prisons. I do not want to level criticism at prison officers, governors or anyone in prisons, but rather, if any criticism is justified, and I think that it is, at the Home Office and the Government behind it for not making enough resources available to deal with that dreadful new problem.
The epidemic highlights how difficult it is to take on board a new problem such as this when the prisons are already so overcrowded and overstretched. The case for doing something about it, perhaps along the lines that have already been suggested by several noble Lords, will become that much stronger if it is recognised that the fate of the rest of us depends upon what happens in prisons and, above all, what happens to drug misusers who are perhaps the most important group at risk from the disease. That is because one of the chief routes along which the virus can travel into the general population is via drug injectors who share needles.
The most crucial group is comprised of men and women who obtain the money to support their drug habit by prostitution. If they are infected they are liable to pass on the virus in that way. No one knows the exact number of drug misusers, but it is clear that it is large. The report recently published by the Parole Release Scheme, which is supported by the Home Office, points out that 3,500 people were sentenced to imprisonment in 1984 for offences involving controlled drugs. The Parole Release Scheme interviewed a number of drug dependents and found that about half were in prison for offences other than drug offences. That may suggest that the total number could easily be approaching 7,000 or going above that figure. The number of drug misusers in prison is on the increase.
That is not altogether surprising, because many of those people are addicts and without help they cannot

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kick the habit. Unfortunately, as things are, the prisons cannot give them much help. If society cannot do better than it has been doing, not just those people will be punished; we shall all be punished for our neglect. It will not do to go on putting thousands of drug addicts into prison every year and then to toss them out again without any decent after-care. To them, prison gates are revolving gates and that constitutes a grave danger to the rest of the population.
That same report estimated that the reconviction rate among drug dependents may be over 70 per cent. The prison authorities have already done a great deal of commendable work training their staff to deal with the epidemic. There is still a gap—it is a grievous one—in what is being done for the education, re-education, treatment and rehabilitation of drug abusers.
I suggest that the need is very great, a need for a determined effort to make sure that all prisoners know the facts about AIDS and can get counselling if necessary. More important, an effort is needed to set prisoners, including remand prisoners, on the road to rehabilitation in a period when they are withdrawn from drugs.
Any good work done in prisons will be nullified unless more attention is given to after-care, which means more resources, including more voluntary agencies like Narcotics Anonymous working both in and out of prisons. Unless an energetic attempt is made to rehabilitate drug users from a starting base given by the prison, I dread the consequences for the whole populaton of these islands. If we do not act, on our own heads be it—and that is certainly not meant to be a metaphor alone.
8 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, the House will be gratified to learn that this will be one of the briefest speeches that I have made in the Chamber, given that we have over-run our time in a fairly spectacular manner.
I put on one side the issue of Crown immunity in prisons, which I told the Minister I intended to raise, and come to the second point with which I want to deal, the question of remands in police custody, which was referred to by my noble friend Lord Hutchinson of Lullington and my noble and learned friend Lord Wilson of Langside.
The problem began in 1981 in the course of a dispute with the Prison Officers' Association. It was then a short-term crisis. It was dealt with efficiently both by the prison department and by the chief constables of the forces concerned. It was then unavoidable. Since then, as a result of the acute overcrowding in prisons, we have witnessed the creation of what is a second prison system in this country.
We have all complained about conditions in remand prisons, and that has happened again tonight. The conditions are deplorable, but in police cells conditions are abominable. It should be remembered —my noble friend Lord Hutchinson made the point, and it is self-evident—that these men have not been convicted of any criminal offence and a significant
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proportion of them, even if convicted, will not be sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
Let me quote from the Police Review of 15th August last describing the situation in one set of police buildings in London:
"The Metropolitan Police opened up their doors to the press. It wasn't their fault that they couldn't match the facilities of remand centres. At Arbour Squre, prisoners were cooped up in twos in cells smaller than the standard prison cell. The prisoners' main complaints were that they had to defecate in the same room as their cell mate and were handcuffed together in groups of three or four, sometimes watched by police dogs, for as little as 20 minutes exercise a day".
That is wholly deplorable. What we want to know tonight is what the Government propose to do to deal with the situation.
We have in the House constantly complained to the Government about what has been going on. The present Home Secretary, I am sure wholly sincerely, has told us how concerned he is about it. That is of course exactly what his predecessor said.
Let me quote what Mr. Brittan said on 4th January 1984 when he wrote an article in The Times:
"I have repeatedly said that the practice is highly undesirable. Police cells were not built to hold such prisoners. Their use causes hardship both to the prisoners and to their visitors, especially lawyers. Valuable police resources are tied down. That is why I decided last July that the practice should cease and set the end of 1983 as a target for bringing it to an end".
He went on to say:
"by last Friday, all police cells were cleared of remand prisoners committed to prison custody by the courts. How was this achieved?"
He then made some self-congratulatory noises about the prison building programme. Mr. Brittan's promise lasted for precisely three days. Three days later the prison cells were once again being occupied by prisoners.
That was bad enough. But the situation is now getting a great deal worse. In January last year an average of 11 prisoners a night were in police custody. This January it was not 11 prisoners a night but a minimum of 67 prisoners a night. The figures ranged from 67 on 2nd January to 348 by the night of 30th January. By 10th February it was up to 362. Not only are these prisoners being held in shameful conditions but they are being deprived of proper opportunities to consult their legal advisers—a point made consistently, as the Minister will be aware, by the Law Society.
The Metropolitan Police can hold only around 260 a night; otherwise they would not be able to hold the ordinary prisoners whom they arrest in the course of an evening. As a result prisoners are being dispatched to police stations in Kent, Hertfordshire, Essex, Hampshire and Sussex. Think of the problems, not just for the prisoners and the prisoners' families, but also for the prisoners' legal advisers when they are attempting to discuss with their clients a proper criminal defence.
Many chief officers of police have expressed to the Government, in the clearest terms, their concern about the situation. I repeat that what we want from the Minister tonight is not a further expression of concern, which I am sure will be sincerely meant, but some indication that the Government will take action.

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The situation as regards remand prisoners is wholly outrageous, and action must be taken at once to deal with it.
8.6 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I express my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for introducing this vital matter and a word of apology to the House if I have to leave—I hope that I will be forgiven—immediately after concluding my speech as a result of a long-standing engagement, for which I am already late.
We have heard, and heard eloquently time and again over the years, those of us who have participated in debates on prisons, the complaints renewed tonight about prisoners on remand, a point eloquently repeated by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich. We have heard about psychiatric patients in prisons who ought to be removed to hospitals in every single debate that I can remember. We have heard about the executive action under Section 32 in nearly every debate that I can remember. We have heard in nearly every debate that I can remember about the need for bail hostels to be increased.
Thus we come to a very definite crisis point. The Motion introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, referred to recent reports. I could not find a more recent report than that of the Prison Reform Trust dated 24th February. It gives the figures up to last Friday. They are as follows. On Friday, 20th February there were 48,181 people in prison in England and Wales plus a further 393 untried prisoners held in police cells. The report states:
"This is the highest number on record, exceeding the previous all-time high of 48,200 which was reached in August 1985."
It goes on to say that, because all these are seasonal figures—in regard to the winter months, for some reason the figures are usually lower—we can anticipate that it will soon exceed the 50,000 barrier. The report continues:
"The population has increased by over 1,000 in the last three weeks. This is equivalent to three new prisons the size of Albany."
If we are not in a crisis now, I do not know when we expect to be.
That having been said, there is one thing that I tried to do. Another report that reached me only this afternoon is most interesting. It is an extract from a book written by Dr. David Downes, a Reader on Social Administration at the London School of Economics. He has been kind enough to send it to me, with permission to quote, provided that I say from where the quote comes, as is proper. There is a chapter in the book entitled "The Depth of Imprisonment: an Exploratory Study in England and the Netherlands."
Let me say at once that if my time is cut short I cannot think of a nicer person than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, to be responsible for doing so. We were all delighted to hear what he had to say.
The article deals with a comparison with which he dealt in a most detailed way between the prisons in the Netherlands and British subjects who were prisoners over there, and prisoners who were Dutch prisoners in our prisons over here. In the couple of minutes that I have at my disposal I shall deal with a matter which I regard as very pertinent. If other people have
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overcome problems one can see how one can do so and one can always learn. I quote from this study:
"The contrast between the British and Dutch penal systems is usually drawn in terms of the length of sentences of imprisonment. The average Dutch sentence of three months or so is far shorter than the average British sentence of roughly 10 months, a difference which principally accounts for the much smaller proportionate size of the Dutch prison population relative to that of Britain."
He says furthermore in his book (at page 19 of this interesting extract):
"Another prisoner sentenced to four and a half years in prison for armed robbery"—
that is in Holland—
"thought he would have received a 15 year sentence in Britain. Estimates of the difference were roughly in the range of English prison sentences being three times as long."
This is a current analysis. In spite of all the lectures which take place, all the wishes that are expressed to the judiciary, and with the judiciary acting with the best of good faith, the fact seems to remain that our sentences in this country for comparative offences are much longer and more severe than elsewhere. We have talked about prison conditions and everything has been said about overcrowding that ought to be said. However, perhaps I may draw attention to a few other factors.
On accommodation, obviously in Holland, as one would have expected, they have a very much better system than ours from the point of view of accommodation per cell. The commitment to one-to-a-cell rule was sharply expressed in resignation terms by a senior member of staff in an Amsterdam prison. "If two go to a cell", he said, "I go." That is the attitude in Holland. Look at the accommodation we have here, my Lords. Consider what we could do to encourage prisoners not to become recidivists—and it is the recidivists again who are filling our prisons. What do they do in Holland? I learned from this book that apart from anything else they pay four times as much a week to a prisoner as we do, with the result that that prisoner is able, as a result of his work, to get necessities, including postage for his letters and tobacco. The amount that a prisoner receives in our country makes it absolutely essential that he choose between tobacco, essential toiletries or letters to his family. That is literally the case and it is brought out in this book.
What do we do to encourage our people when they are in prison to find work afterwards, and to be rehabilitated? I have been reading what they do in Holland. By way of comparison, we are far behind them. It is summed up in one sentence with which I shall conclude my remarks. In other countries—not in all other countries, but in those that we ought to be imitating—they have the maxim of prisons as punishment. We appear to have the maxim of prisons for punishment. That cannot be right.
8.15 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity which the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, has provided for this interesting debate on prisons. Because prisons are a closed community, with which the vast majority of the public have no contact, there is all too little public knowledge or debate about them. I am therefore grateful to the noble Lord for the chance to set out for the record how the Government

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see the future of our prisons and the conditions of those who live and work in them.
The noble Lord's personal commitment to prisons and the welfare of prisoners is of course well known to me. As president of NACRO he is closely associated with an organisation which carries out much good and practical work in this field, and I should like to pay my tribute to that organisation.
Noble Lords have had much to say about adverse conditions, overcrowding and impoverished regimes. I accept of course that these problems exist and I shall have a good deal to say about how they are being tackled. But I want today to correct the impression that the House may have that all prisons present problems of the kind described in this debate. It depresses me that so much of the criticism that is being voiced about the prison service is solely negative, often emotional, often ill-informed and in very general terms. I am sorry that some of your Lordships have followed that path today. That criticism ignores the many positive initiatives that our prisons are involved in and denigrates the good commitment of the staff, both in headquarters and in the establishments.
"Prisons are overcrowded" is an oft-repeated criticism. That is not universally true. I readily accept that some are, but well over half of our establishments are not overcrowded. Overcrowding has been with us for years. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and the Labour Party, with Liberal support, had a very good opportunity to do something about it before we came to power but they blew their chance. I shall have more to say about that later on.
The training prisons and young offender establishments provide good conditions for both staff and prisoners, and positive regimes. In the short time since I have taken on this responsibility for prisons I have visited a wide range of establishments across the prison system. I can therefore speak from my own experience of some of the excellent work that is being done.
On a recent visit to Featherstone, for instance, a training prison in the Midlands which opened in 1976, I found good conditions and no overcrowding. The regime provides a full daytime and evening education programme, physical education and excellent workshop facilities, and the majority of prisoners are fully occupied. During my visit I was told that 23 per cent. of inmates on a recent light engineering vocational training course had obtained employment in this line immediately on discharge. Turning to the education side, it is to their credit that that department had one inmate who was recently awarded an Open University degree.
Noble Lords may say that this is the exception rather than the rule, but that is not so. Many other establishments have similar regimes with equally positive features, including work for the community, often for the disabled. May I cite just two further examples. At Cookham Wood, a female prison, prisoners attend a local swimming pool each week to help with swimming lessons for the disabled. And at Long Lartin, a top security prison, a group of prisoners, under the guidance of the education officer, undertake a project each year in support of a charity. Last year they produced an illustrated diary for 1987 and donated the proceeds of £2,500 from sales to a local hospice for children—all good work, my Lords.
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There are also positive developments to report on the workshop front. It has been suggested that the rationalisation of prison workshops has led to a deterioration in regime provision. That was not the intention and it has not turned out to be so in practice. A good example of progress is at Lincoln, where three shops which were recommended for closure have been reinstated as a result of local initiative and agreement to reduce discipline cover to one workshop patrol. At Liverpool, workshop hours have been doubled in a number of shops by, among other things, the use of shift systems, and at Bristol workshop performance has improved to such an extent that better quality products and quality control to British standards are being considered.
Having tried to lighten somewhat the unrelieved gloom of the picture painted by some of your Lordships, let me return to the very real problems confronting our older prisons. Those particularly affected are the Victorian local prisons which, because most of our London prisons come into this category, are the ones which will be most familiar to the House. The problems of overcrowding, outdated facilities and limited regimes which your Lordships have so graphically described have their roots in the years of neglect by successive governments. No new prisons were built in England and Wales between 1918 and 1958, and the level of investment in refurbishment and maintenance was entirely inadequate until this Government took office.
The other major cause of the problem is the rise in the prison population. The 1985 summer surge in the population to over 48,100 which put heavy demands on the capacity of the system to cope was not repeated during the early part of 1986. Unhappily it has now climbed again and last Friday the number detained in prison establishments was again over 48,100.
Overlaying these problems, and constraining measures to tackle them, are the inefficient management systems and inflexible working practices which have for too long placed a straitjacket on progress in the prison service. I know that when the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, had this job he did so much to try to improve the situation. I am grateful for his support for the actions which the Government are now taking.
So, what are the Government doing about the problems we have been debating this evening? We have a strategy which is now well established for bringing about the improvement all of us with a concern for the prison service want to see in prison conditions and the way the service is run. This will be familiar ground to some of your Lordships. Nevertheless, it needs covering again because too often people speak as though the Government were taking no action at all to bring about improvements.
Before I outline in more detail the measures that are being taken I want to say a word about minimum standards. It is sometimes argued—as it has been today by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson—that a code of standards would help to identify areas of need. But as I have indicated, the areas of need are well know; the problem lies in finding and implementing the solutions. The Government are not persuaded that the development of a code of minimum standards

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would contribute to the search for improvements. It would certainly not be helpful to those establishments which, because of physical constraints on the rate at which progress can be made, would not be able to comply with some of them. It is action, not words, that is needed, and that is what we are providing.
There are, I know, many people who would put the emphasis in improving conditions entirely on reducing the number of people in prison. This is not a practicable way forward. The size of the prison population is directly determined by the remand and sentencing decisions of the criminal courts. The courts in turn have to deal with the cases which come before them; their decisions must reflect the seriousness of the offences and have regard to public feeling especially about some particularly unpleasent types of crime. The courts are rightly independent of the Government.
The noble and learned Lord, in what I thought was a brilliant speech, explained the current thinking of the judiciary and answered many of the points raised by others of your Lordships. It is entirely right for the executive to set the parameters, including non-custodial sentences, but it is up to the judiciary to decide what the right sentence is, taking into account each individual case. It is the duty of the Home Secretary to house someone who is remanded or convicted to custody when sentenced by the judiciary.
However, what the Government can do and have done so successfully is to provide the courts with a range of alternatives to custody which are suitable for all but the most serious offender so that prison places can be reserved for those from whom the public needs to be protected. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, will be pleased to hear that we have given the courts the best range and flexibility of non-custodial sentences in any country' in Western Europe. The Government have given high priority to expanding and strengthening alternatives for more serious offenders, particularly community service and the probation order.
Some 13 per cent. of those convicted of indictable offences now do community service or probation. We have enlarged the attendance centre system for the under-21s. We ensure that fines are pitched at a realistic level and fine enforcement is swift and effective. We have established compensation as a sentence in its own right. We are experimenting with reparation schemes. Nevertheless, we are still examining new non-custodial options, tough and demanding ones in which the courts and the public can have confidence, because we wish to increase the range further and encourage the further use of our existing ones.
It is also the Government's job to ensure that the courts are kept fully informed of the aims and availability of alternatives to custody, and their relative costs. It is vital that those who take the decisions should base them on a full appreciation of the resources involved.
A large part of the recent rise in the prison population is attributable to those awaiting trial or sentence. This group has increased by more than a third over the past five years—faster than any other. The Government are taking vigorous action to tackle
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this aspect of the problem by encouraging the courts to grant bail wherever appropriate; increasing the resources of the Crown Court and improving the management of court business; and providing additional courtrooms and circuit judges. Also, following field trials permitted by the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 we shall shortly introduce regulations applying statutory time-limits in some areas of the country governing the periods during which people awaiting trial may be held in custody. It is our intention to extend the scheme across the country.
Turning to the prison building programme, this Government have reversed the decline of the earlier part of this century by establishing a programme for building 20 new prisons. Three of these opened in 1985 along with RAF Lindholme, which was converted and brought into use to cope with the 1985 population surge. These new prisons, together with 17 more which are being built or planned, should provide a further 10,600 places by 1995. These will be places with integral sanitation in prisons offering a full range of facilities. A major refurbishment programme is under way to provide another 6,600 extra places—a total of 17,200 new places in all. Priority is being given in the refurbishment schemes to improving access to sanitation. By the end of 1990 some 28,000 prison places will have access to sanitation.
This Government have made a similar investment of other resources in the prison service. Between 1979 and 1986 the annual average number of prison officers has risen by nearly 20 per cent. while the annual average inmate population has risen by less than 11 per cent. Over the same period expenditure on the service rose by a third in real terms and is set to carry on rising. This compares with an increase of only 12 per cent. in real terms under the previous administration, and a cut under that administration of 35 per cent. in real terms in expenditure on prison building. That is where the Labour Government, with Liberal support, blew it.
No one can doubt the Government's determination to devote the resources and manpower necessary to improve the prison service. Another essential ingredient in our programme, without which the looked-for improvements will not materialise as expected, is the package of proposals known as A Fresh Start. They are the latest, most far-reaching and significant measures for improving efficiency and securing the best value for the greatest ever amount of money being spent on the service.
Some of your Lordships are already aware of the details of the proposals. I do not have time to go into them today except to say that they involve changes in pay, complementing and working arrangements for prison officers. The aim is to allow staff to be deployed more flexibly and to better effect, thus freeing valuable manpower to pursue improvements in regime standards for prisoners.
Before leaving the subject of A Fresh Start I should like to welcome the POA's national executive committee's decision to allow its members to participate in the development stages of A Fresh Start. As a result they can fully appreciate the benefits of the proposals we are offering.

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The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, mentioned the number of people who were being held two or three to a cell. The number being held three to a cell is at the moment less than it was in 1976. Naturally, some of them have been moved and are being held two to a cell, which we believe is a better option than having them three to a cell. However, that does not solve the problem of overcrowding, which we are tackling by other means.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, asked about the percentage of those remanded in custody who receive non-custodial disposals, and he gave some figures. About 70 per cent. of those remanded in custody and whose cases are disposed of by the Crown Courts receive custodial sentences. That proves—although they are not held for some of the time in conditions which we would like—what difficult decisions the judiciary must make when remanding someone to custody.
The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, said that it is all the fault of an increase in crime. If the noble Lord has looked at the facts, he must know that the annual increase in crime has not changed much since 1950. He cannot suddenly blame it on an upsurge in crime now. The figures in this country are comparable to the rest of Europe. Let us just pause a moment to consider Europe. There has been that often quoted and very misleading statement that we sentence more of our population to prison than any other country in Western Europe. That is utter rubbish, whether it be the total prison population or the detention rate per 100,000. We do not sentence more than any other country in Western Europe, let alone the EC.
Let us also compare our growth in prison population with that of Europe. There are only three countries in the EC whose population from 1st February 1983 to 1st February 1986 actually grew at a slower rate than ours. That of Holland—a well quoted example—grew by 24 per cent., whereas in England and Wales it grew by only 5 per cent. in that period. The building programme in Holland proportionately is much greater than the vast building programme that we have in this country.
The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, also asked about prisons in the countryside: why do we not turn agricultural land into prisons? A great number of complaints 1 have received from penal organisations around the country say, "Do not build any more prisons in the countryside because of the difficulties in visiting, particularly for the remand people. You must build prisons in town centres which are close to courts, and that will save all the problems with escort duties". I am afraid we have a conflict of opinion on that front.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, asked whether governors should not have a chance to write a valedictory report when they left. We would welcome that. It is an excellent idea. Some already do that and they are not slow to let us know their views. Some have joined voluntary organisations to very good effect. We would encourage that, because when we have a difficult situation in certain areas of the service we welcome constructive comments.
As for the TUC Women's Conference, it would be premature for me to comment on a comprehensive document containing some 52 recommendations, if I
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remember rightly, before there has been a chance to debate it over the next couple of weeks. I am sure that it will be brought to my attention, and I shall give it the utmost consideration.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, mentioned bail hostels. The department has no evidence of serious difficulties in finding places for existing bailees. We do this a lot of the time in co-operation with the Association of Chief Officers of Probation where necessary, and we are extending a number of hostels. I should like to consider the point further, because if it can help to relieve the situation so much the better. The probation services in various parts of the country is currently experimenting with court-based schemes which it is hoped will reduce the remand population. The effect of the scheme is to raise the courts' awareness of bail accommodation. That just illustrates how important it is to keep the judiciary informed of all the various alternatives. The noble Baroness mentioned, as did several of your Lordships, after-care, but I do not think I have time within the remit of this debate to go into that.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, mentioned detention centres. The few that I have managed to go to so far I have found very impressive. They have very good regimes and particularly good training and educational programmes. I remember going to one at Usk where a class was being taught and those present did not have a clue how to speak English when they came in. The prison service is providing a great educational service, and it is sad to see a lot of the detention centres not being fully utilised. The noble Lord will know that we are taking certain steps within the Criminal Justice Bill to try to get detention centres used more.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, raised what has unfortunately become the annual problem of prisoners in police cells. I share his concern. A lot of the problem is because we were short of prisons when we came to power. The rising trend was there to be seen and he must regret, as much as we regret, that more money was not spent on prison building in his day, which would have helped to solve the problem.
What are we doing about it? One of the important things we can do is to optimise the use of the existing prisoner state, where necessary, by changing the functions of establishments to match functions which have occurred and which are projected to occur in the nature of the prison population. I found the rigidity of our prisons one of the difficulties; I should like to see them much more flexible. This is one area in our new and refurbishment schemes where we are concentrating on trying to make sure that they are implemented as soon as possible to be of maximum benefit to the remand population.
The noble Lord, Lord Young of Dartington, went fairly wide on pure prisons when talking about AIDS and drug misusers. From what I have heard all round the service, a great compliment must be paid to Dr. Kilgour, who is head of the Prison Medical Service, for the enormous improvements and the enormous trouble it has gone to to inform prisoners and staff alike of the consequences of AIDS and drug misuse. We realise that there are problems in some areas of the prison service, but by no means all.

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I hope that it is clear from what I have said so far that the Government see the strategy I have outlined as a means to an end. That end is the provision of an improved regime for prisoners, a more satisfying role for prison officers and better conditions for both.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, it is lucky that I have no more than a minute and a half to reply becaue I feel almost speechless at the reply that the noble Earl has given. He knows that I respect and like him, but, quite honestly, nobody in the prison service hearing his speech would recognise what he was talking about.
Of course there are good prisons. We all know that. We are not talking about them. I acknowledged them to start with. I said that above all things I am not attacking the Government. Other governments have done just as badly. The noble Earl has simply defended himself in a way which is almost unnecessary—
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe): My Lords, I must now ask the noble Lord whether he wishes to withdraw his Motion.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: The answer is that I do. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Employment Guarantee Bill [H.L.]
8.37 p.m.
Lord Jacques: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Long-term unemployment—that is to say, unemployment of more than one year—is at an unprecedented scale in our society. It is much higher both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the labour force than it was between the two world wars. For example, in 1933 long-term unemployment was approximately half a million. It was equal to 3·3 per cent. of the labour force. In 1986 it was more than one and a quarter million and it is 4·9 per cent. of the labour force. That is the problem we have to face—not unemployment as a whole, but long-term unemployment. That is what causes both the poverty and the demoralisation. Detachment of so many people from the daily discipline of having to go to work and receiving an income at the end of the week inevitably has far-reaching effects, both social and economic. When a worker is unemployed in the first place he has some clothes in the wardrobe, some food in the pantry; he has some savings, he has a tax refund, he gets some redundancy pay and he gets unemployment benefit.
However, in due course that all disappears, the clothes get worn, the foodstock, savings and redundancy money are depleted. There are no more tax refunds and unemployment benefit is withdrawn after a year. Many people are dependent upon the Social Security benefit that they receive. It is long term unemployment which is causing the severe poverty that we are experiencing.
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Unemployment also has a severe effect of demoralisation. The first effect of unemployment is boredom, but in time that boredom becomes increasingly burdensome. The unemployed person thinks that it is his own personal failure and begins to lose his self-respect. He loses the self-discipline which is associated with going to work every day. In some cases there is an erosion of the skills which he used in his work. His own health and the health of his family is affected. He finds it increasingly difficult to get work because money is needed for stationery and postage for job applications, and the fares to go for an interview and also to be decently dressed for that interview. If someone has been unemployed for years then he probably does not have that money.
Unfortunately, the employer is prejudiced, and one can understand this. Employers feel that a person who has been unemployed for so long must be inadequate, or may have lost the discipline of work, and is more likely to have had an erosion of skills. Employers feel that taking him on involves an additional unnecessary risk. Employers have plenty of risks without taking on any more with their eyes wide open. Consequently, the long term unemployed have fewer and fewer interviews for employment and then begin to lose hope.
It is very easy to get into long term unemployment if you are made redundant at the same time as many other people, as occurred for example, in 1980–82. When many people are made redundant at the same time and the upturn comes very slowly, then there is a far greater likelihood of becoming long term unemployed than if you had been made redundant at some other time. It is easy to glide into long term unemployment, but very difficult to get out of that situation because of the natural prejudice of the employer. My Lords, help is needed. The long term unemployed have to be helped if there is to be any future for our country. If no help is given, then it is upon our heads because there will be serious economic and social repercussions.
In January 1986, a little more than a year ago, the House of Commons Employment Committee reported that the case for special provisions for the long term unemployed was completely unanswerable. They set forth recommendations that there should be a job guarantee scheme. They outlined the scheme that they recommended. Since that time the Employment Institute have published a pamphlet by Richard Jackman and others, spelling out in detail the problem of the long term unemployed, and putting forward remedies. In that latter document there is an account of the way in which Sweden have guaranteed employment for some years. In Sweden the unemployment benefit is roughly about 80 per cent. of earnings and is payable for 10 months. Before the period of benefit expires, the labour marketing board contacts the recipient of the benefit and interviews him with a view to offering him either training or a job. He is guaranteed either training or a job. If he completely refuses training or a job then he loses his benefit, but not the benefit for his dependants.
I may be criticised, but I can see nothing wrong in that provided that the job which is offered is a suitable one and is paid at the usual rate. If the recipient is of the opinion that it is not a suitable job, there should be

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proper machinery for him to appeal. Provided there is such machinery for appeal, I can see nothing wrong in stopping the recipient's benefit if he refuses both the training or a job. In Sweden employment is guaranteed largely in three ways. The labour marketing board uses local authorities and other public bodies. They are asked to suggest suitable jobs which need to be done. In so far as that public body employs long term unemployed nominated by the marketing board, then the labour marketing board pays 75 per cent. of the wages for six months. In the case of private employers, the board pays 50 per cent. of the wages for six months. For those who need and are offered training the recipient receives full employment benefit which, in Sweden, is 80 per cent. of earnings or thereabouts. In that way there is guaranteed employment. For example, in 1984 unemployment in Sweden was recorded as 3 per cent., but they had 5 per cent. in special schemes, as I have explained, because they had guaranteed employment rather than guaranteed benefit.
I suggest that we should have a similar scheme. Noble Lords who are interested should look at the House of Commons Employment Committee report where the scheme is outlined. Richard Jackman's pamphlet published by the Employment Institute gives a further scheme in much greater detail. For my part, I should adopt a very simple scheme. I would finance the Manpower Services Commission and expect it to guarantee the employment. It would say to public bodies, "If you employ long term unemployed such as we recommend to you then we will pay the whole of the wages to that individual for one year".
The kind of schemes that I would look for are these. Where there is the least unemployment, where there are new jobs available, I want to see hostels built so that workers from other areas can come and spend a little time in the hostel while they find a job. I want to see flats built. When a worker and his family have a job and cannot buy a new house because the amount they have received for their old house is so small, I want to see them get a flat which they can have for a couple of years until they find their feet and can get a place of their own in their new place of abode.
I want to see those authorities which are paying out huge sums for bed and breakfast accommodation to their citizens who are without homes build suitable hostels using the long-term unemployed to build them. I would expect the Manpower Services Commission to pay the whole wages for one year of such of the long-term unemployed as were used for that purpose. The cost of materials and the cost of supervision I would leave with the public body as its expense.
In the examples I have given the charge would be to the housing account. For example, at the present time we are told by the Audit Commission that 85 per cent. of local authority housing is in need of repair. There is a job for the long-term unemployed. It is calculated that for every seven workers who would be employed in that kind of job, five could be from the long-term unemployed.
The local authority would only have to find the supervision and the materials. The wages of the long-term unemployed would be paid for by the Manpower Services Commission. I would expect the same with
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schools. Where the local authority has schools that need repair, it should set about repairing them and the Manpower Services Commission should pay the wages of the long-term unemployed who are used for that purpose.
I would expect the same with the health authority where there were hospital repairs to be done or even hospitals to be built. I would also expect health authorities which because of lack of money cannot employ sufficient orderlies, cleaners, catering staff or laundry staff, to go to the Manpower Services Commission to get the labour from the long-term unemployed, and the Manpower Services Commission should pay the full wage for one year. I would hope that the training would be such that many of them could be absorbed to take the place of the usual wastage that we get.
I would expect the same with the water authorities and the highway authorities. Let them find the jobs, and let the Manpower Services Commission pay the wages of the long-term unemployed for one year. By doing that you are bringing the long-term unemployed back into the labour market. So long as they are long-term unemployed and are outside the labour market, the employers are not interested in them. But by bringing them back into the labour market by giving them work for one year, they increase competition within the market, and consequently, if anything, it is anti-inflationary and not inflationary. I would expect the private employer to be subsidised to the extent of £40 a week, or £2,000 a year, which was recommended by the House of Commons Employment Committee.
Now let us look at the cost. Assuming that we have to get 750,000 re-employed in a year, which is the number generally agreed as being necessary, I would take 400,000 to be drafted into the public service—the local authorities, health authorities and so on. I would expect them to be paid the rate for the job. The rate for the job I would estimate to be about £120 a week or £6,000 a year. That cost would be £2·4 billion.
If the other 350,000 were in private employment and the private employer was subsidised at the rate of £2,000 a head a year, that would be £0·7 billion, so the total gross cost would be £3·1 billion. But there would be enormous savings in benefits. Seven hundred and fifty thousand people who had been receiving benefit would no longer receive it. If the whole range of benefits, including housing benefit, were no longer payable and were equal to £3,000 per head a year, that would give a saving of £2·25 billion. There would be a tax flow-back. Not merely tax but also national health contributions would be paid which had not previously been paid, and that would amount to £0·75 billion. The savings and the tax flow-back would amount to £3 billion against a gross cost of £3·1 billion. That means that the net cost would be £100 million per annum. To save us from the problems that we are going to have if we allow this long-term unemployment to continue, that is a cheap price.
I speak from personal experience. I have a relative who through no fault of her own was thrown out of work in the 1982 depression. She was fully trained, but because public bodies were taking on less staff she was unable to find work except temporary work. After a

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year or two of unemployment she applied for a job for one year that was financed by the Manpower Services Commission. It was a job for the local authority but financed by the Manpower Services Commission, which paid the wages.
She did that job for a year. Unfortunately it was a one-off job, but within a matter of weeks, because she had come back into the labour market and was no longer in long-term unemployment, she was in good employment. After doing one year probationary service in that new employment she was confirmed in it and congratulated on the way she had learnt the job. There is an example of what the Minister did, and I want him to do the same on a much bigger scale than he has in the past. I also want him to pay the rate for the job.
I come now to the Bill itself. There are two substantive clauses. Clause 1(1) says:
"The Secretary of State shall by order made by statutory instrument require the Manpower Services Commission … to arrange that an offer of suitable employment be made by an employer",
to those who have been out of work during the relevant period and are available for employment and make application in the prescribed form.
The second subsection says:
"The relevant period is three years … The Secretary of State shall consult regularly with the Commission with a view to reducing at the earliest opportunity the relevant period".
The idea is that he will gradually reduce it to two years and then to one year, so that it covers all the long-term unemployed.
The second substantive clause says that the Secretary of State will make a report to Parliament annually. This is a problem we have to face up to. I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Jacques.)
9 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I should like to give general support to the Bill the Second Reading of which has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, and the terms of which are in many ways in line with proposals which have been put forward by the Alliance parties.
The reason I support the Bill is that we have to face the fact that actually there is not one unemployment problem in this country, but two. First, there is the problem of the very large number of people who enter the pool of unemployment but who move out again in a relatively short time. It may be two months, three months or four months. It is a disagreeable experience. It is wasteful, but it is not disastrous or tragic. That of course represents the great mass of the unemployed and we sometimes forget that a very large number of people, even when unemployment is at its worst, are in fact getting jobs. As is frequently pointed out to us here, there is reason to suppose that the position may be improving at the present time. One very much hopes that it will continue to improve.
But those people are quite different from the long-term unemployed; and the serious unemployment
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problem in this country is undoubtedly that of the long-term unemployed. That represents a quite different type of problem from that concerning those people who move into the pool and then move out again in relatively short periods. Among the long-term unemployed there are again two quite different groups—each very important in its own way but quite different in the problems it presents and each needing to be tackled as a matter of considerable urgency.
First, there are those under 25. As we know, the people between 18 and 25 have really carried the brunt of unemployment in terms of percentages. There is still something of a legion of the lost between the ages of about 19 and 25—the people who were too old to have taken part in the Youth Training Scheme and so get the advantages offered, and who now, having got beyond that age, increase very rapidly the numbers of unemployed in that age group.
They are of course a particularly serious and threatening group because unless they are either got into training or employment fairly soon the chances of their having any kind of a satisfactory working life are pretty dim. Something is being done—and we must be glad of that—by means of the job training scheme, which is particularly geared to deal with this group. It is a beginning but it is a very small beginning. It reflects the fact that the problem is being recognised, but I would suggest that it is not being dealt with, as yet, on the scale which is necessary.
The other group who make up a large number of the long-term unemployed are of course the people over the age of about 50, who have very little in the way of skills or competences to sell in the labour market and who, once they have lost a job, have very little chance of getting back into employment.
These two groups in their different ways present very serious challenges to all the rest of us in human, social and economic terms. In human terms, the kind of additional problems experienced by people suffering from long-term unemployment are familiar to the House but they should not be minimised. We have to remember the problems they face. Inevitably young men under the age of 25, with nothing whatsoever to do and very little money to spend, are liable to get into trouble and to cause society trouble. They probably add to the groups of people who fill the prisons, as we have heard in the previous debate. It is almost inevitable (is it not?) that if you have large numbers of young men—and young women too: but this affects young men more—in that position they are going to find something to do. and that is not likely to be very satisfactory to society.
So far as concerns older people, as the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, said, we know the kinds of consequences that flow from long-term unemployment. Your Lordships may recall a study that was done, which showed tragically that these people were those who in a way were life's non-survivors in many different spheres. They were the people who had never acquired skills; they were the people who had not done much at school; they had never taken any training; their health record was below standard or below average; and, sadly, they were also people who were to a disproportionate extent living alone and whose personal relationships had been less successful than those of most people.

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So you have this group of people with very little hope and very few resources. They present a problem in human terms and in social terms. I am sure that nobody in this House would wish to ignore them. I do not pretend for one moment that it is easy to deal with them, but I think we would all agree that the situation is serious.
In economic terms, I should like to pick up a point touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, and which in fact has been highlighted by the London Business School report either earlier this week or at the end of last week. It is a point which has been made by other people too: that in reality the long-term unemployed are not in the labour market. They do not compete for jobs. When it is asked why unemployment has not had the effect of controlling wage increases the answer seems to be that a considerable number of the unemployed simply are not in the labour market and therefore the normal market forces are not working in having the effect of restricting the power of labour to push up wages.
These people—they are a considerable number—simply are not there applying and competing for the jobs that are available. Therefore those who are in the market competing are in a stronger position to push up pay than would otherwise he the case. If, by encouragement and training, people can be brought back into the labour market they contribute to the general market position of labour, which is very much healthier than having them excluded in the way that they are at the present time—and excluded in social terms. If we continue in this way and do not take some quite specific action to deal with the problem we shall develop this under-class of people—such a class has already developed in the United States and is developing in parts of this country—who simply do not feel that they belong to our society at all. In many ways, they have been excluded. They feel excluded; they feel that they owe nothing; and they behave as if they owe nothing. That is not a healthy state of affairs.
I should like to take up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jacques—it is the central point of this Bill—about the kind of employment that should be offered to the long-term unemployed. The MSC has already done a very considerable amount through the community programme. I would not however advocate that we extend the community programme for this purpose—for one very important reason. I am connected with the working of the community programme. I am deeply concerned, because of the no-substitution conditions which attach to the community programme and because work can only be done on the programme which would not otherwise be done, we are reaching a point at which we shall have the tidiest towpaths and the cleanest graveyards that anybody could possibly imagine, while houses badly in need of repair and school roofs that are falling in are not being attended to. I beg your Lordships not to accept the easy option of wanting to expand the community programme unless you can change the conditions under which it operates.
It is surely vital if we are to do this that, as people are brought back into effective employment, it is employment that meets real needs. I am not saying
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that the community programme does not meet real needs but many activities are of very low priority, and there are many other things that need to be done. There are housing repairs, hostels, the sharp end of the social services—let us remember that women should be included in this as well as men—and work connected with community care on which I do not wish to expand. Those are high priority jobs. Inevitably, after a number of years of the community programme and with its extension, jobs that are not now of high priority will become lower in priority rather than higher. So, using the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, would be very much better.
In passing, may I just underline the point that there are women in this category as well as men. They are often concealed because they are not drawing unemployment benefit. Many older women, in particular, never paid their contributions—because they were not permitted to—and therefore they are not eligible for benefit. This has come up in connection with the job training scheme and with the extension of the community programme. These women are genuinely looking for work but they do not rank as unemployed. Therefore, they are excluded from both the job training scheme and the community programme, because to rank as unemployed they have to be eligible for benefit.
If we continue with that restriction we shall be excluding from the labour market a number of women who really are seeking employment. We shall be excluding women who could be drawn very usefully into a number of aspects of the work which is plainly needing to be done and for which they would be well suited, if the conditions could be so laid down that it was not rigidly tied to the necessity that they should establish that they are unemployed by virtue of being eligible for benefit.
9.13 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, despite 19 changes in the criteria of the unemployed since 1979 which have removed 463,000 from the register, we still have admittedly well over 3 million unemployed in this country and probably 4 million. If we compare the percentage of unemployed in this country, which the Government admit is over 11 per cent., with any of our competitors—as I have put it so often to the Secretary of State—we are top of the league of unemployment and bottom of the league of those who are employed.
Of those 4 million, we are talking tonight particularly of 1·334 million long-term unemployed. Is this not a disgrace in this country? They are the people who have been unemployed for more than a year and, as the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, has pointed out—and I shall be interested to know whether the Minister agrees with him—it will take the creation of 750,000 new jobs a year if we are to reduce the number of long-term unemployed.
Among those long-term unemployed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, has just pointed out, there are different groups, and I wish to mention two which seem to me to be worthy of particular attention and for whom we must take particular responsibility. In the group composed of those who are under 25 years old,

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there are 1·333 million who are calculated to be unemployed. Those people are at the age when they are able to acquire the routine and practice of work. They may never do so because they have not had a chance at the time when they are most easily influenced.
Perhaps the Minister has seen the report of the charity Youth Aid which has analysed the new part-time workers. It points out that those workers are increasingly people under the age of 25 or even under the age of 19. It also points out that we are forcibly creating a new breed of journeyman who moves from one temporary job to another. What are the prospects of those young men and women in their future lives? What are their prospects for having a job of work or a profession which will give them a foundation for satisfaction throughout their lives?
The second category of which I shall speak is the older men and women who have given their lives to producing the wealth upon which the British people have depended throughout the century. They are then cast off. They are called redundant, and the Minister well knows that they have very little chance of ever getting a job again.
I should like to ask the Minister to reply to two specific questions. The first concerns the Restart programme which was announced by the Secretary of State. In that programme, what happens to the man or woman who is brought in for counselling, goes through the Restart programme as one of the long-term unemployed and then at the end of that period
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does not get a job? It may be that the Government have already announced that. If so, I plead ignorance. However, I should like the Minister to make clear tonight what the position is. Does such a person return to the long-term unemployed list or is he then removed from it, thus reducing the proportion of the long-term unemployed? Are such persons still counted as the long-term unemployed or are they counted as short-term unemployed?
My second question was raised by my noble friend Lord Jacques during his opening speech. It concerns the rate for the job. In the Restart programme and in the Government's other programmes for providing employment, can the Minister say specifically that only the rate for the job will be applied? Can he guarantee that those who go into such schemes are entitled to the rate for the job?
We in Parliament have a responsibility for those people—young people, old people and middle-aged people. However, we have a particular responsibility for the young people whose prospects are so grim and who form so large a proportion of the long-term unemployed. We also have a particular responsibility for older people who have given their lives and contributed throughout their working lives to the creation of the wealth which we enjoy. I suggest that that responsibility, resting upon us in Parliament, can only be carried out through legislation such as the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Jacques, which I wholeheartedly support. We must bring a little more dignity and a little more justice to the people of this country.
9.19 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I should like to begin by congratulating and complimenting my noble friend and colleague Lord Jacques on introducing this short but important Bill. I have known of his special interest in the unemployed of the United Kingdom ever since I began to cover employment and unemployment problems from the Front Bench of my party. I do not remember any occasion on which the subject was raised, by question or by any other means, when the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, was not involved.
In fact, one of the first major debates in which I took part in your Lordships' House was a two-and-a-half hour debate initiated by the noble Lord which he devoted with great fervour and passion to the subject of unemployment. It comes across from listening to the noble Lord that he has a special interest in the unemployed. I am not saying for one moment that other noble Lords do not have the same feeling, but the noble Lord has been able to manifest it on a number of occasions. I noticed that in moving the Second Reading of this short Bill he did not for one moment apportion political blame for the position in which we find ourselves. Part of the blame can be apportioned to the international recession over the past few years. Depending on one's political view, one can argue about how much of the present unemployment one can lay at the door of government, but I do not think that that is what the Bill is about. It is about trying to deal with the problems and here I must say that we differ a little from the Government.
I have had to say from the Front Bench on more than one occasion that though I and my party welcome the training initiatives, whether they are for young people or for mature people, they are not a substitute and never will be a substitute for real employment. For someone to be trained for two years and then go back to the dole queue is a cruel hoax and can have a terribly detrimental effect on the person involved. Very often we talk about the unemployed in terms of numbers, units and percentages; but to every person who is unemployed but wants to be gainfully employed his is 100 per cent. unemployment.
Some years ago, because of electoral consequences, I had the misfortune to be unemployed for a number of weeks. After leaving school at 14 years of age and never being unemployed before, I found myself in that position. I can tell noble Lords that it was a terrifying experience because up to that point I was not aware that I would be joining your Lordships' House. I can cite my own case as a mature person who up to becoming fully engaged in politics in 1974 was a highly skilled engineer—as good as anybody in my trade. I had spent my life at it and I never had any difficulty in earning a living or finding a job.
The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, touched on an important facet in his speech when he talked about mature people who lost their jobs and after a period of time lost motivation. That is the saddest part of the whole business. When a person has been used throughout his life to being employed and he is suddenly cast to one side through no fault of his own—it may be no fault of his employer or no fault of government because people have become unemployed
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under various governments—it is a terrible situation. In most cases we are talking about the family breadwinner. Without being a male chauvinist pig, as it is termed, we are talking about the main wage earner or breadwinner.
I remember meeting some of my former bosses when I became a Member of another place. They said they would like to take me back into engineering because they had just invested £1 million in one machine at my old factory. It was the type of machine that in the days I was working I could have operated. Sadly, however, I had to say that in the two or three years between the time of my leaving engineering and becoming a full-time politician, technology had so leapt forward that I would have had to be retrained to work the machine. It was a different ball game. There is no point anyone trying to view it as anything else.
What worries and frightens me most about the unemployment figures—and this has been said in the Chamber by noble Lords on all sides of the House and by my noble friend Lord McCarthy who has just come into the Chamber—is the continuing decline in our manufacturing base. As I said, I place no political responsibility for that on anyone as the position stands at present. One could go back over a number of years and refer to the failure to re-equip industry 20, 25 or 30 years ago, but that does not answer the question. It is a sad fact of life that the manufacturing base is still in decline. I have to say here that a main component of that is not—I repeat, not—high wages. By any standards we still have considerably lower wage levels than our competitors.
My noble friend Lord Jacques mentioned various ways in which this problem can be tackled. There have been a series of debates over the years, motivated by reports from non-political or non-politically motivated bodies, regarding the infrastructure, about what has happened and is continuing to happen to our housing stock and on the deterioration of the fabric of our schools and hospitals. Most of them came to the same conclusion.
There was a debate only a few weeks ago in this House on Faith in the City, the report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission. It came to the same conclusion as the Duke of Edinburgh's Commission almost two years ago. More and more responsible people who have no political axe to grind are saying that there is a case for using substantial additional sums of money to halt or correct the deterioration in the fabric of our nation in a physical sense.
The document from which my noble friend quoted is yet again from another non-politically motivated group of people. It is from the Employment Institute, and is based on a very wide political spectrum. There are an ex-Conservative Prime Minister, an ex-Labour Prime Minister, ex-Labour Members of Parliament, trade union leaders and people from industry on it. A whole variety of people across the political spectrum have helped to produce the document or given evidence for it. It is produced by Richard Jackman and, as it states, by others. It comes to the same conclusion as have speakers in debates in your Lordships' House. It says what we have been saying for

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two or three years—that we ought to be making a start. The waste of resources that is occurring when the money is available and could be used is absolutely appalling.
My noble friend Lord Jacques in his very interesting speech referred to the Swedish experience and the scheme there which has worked. It may be said that the situation in Sweden is not the same as in this country. Nevertheless, by using an agency—something like the Manpower Services Commission—Sweden has to a great degree eaten into what would have been a far more substantial and undesirable reservoir of unemployed people. I go along with him when he says that their system is quite correct in that after a period, when a person is interviewed and he refuses to take training or accept a reasonable job that is offered, there is a stipulation that he must take that employment. i was glad to hear from my noble friend something which I did not know before; namely, that that person's dependants are not deemed to be at fault and they continue to receive the benefit of government support in those countries.
My noble friend also referred to the House of Commons Select Committee and its report. It is late and I do not want to go too much into the details of that report. Nevertheless the Select Committee published an all-party report which indicated a course of action whereby, with government initiatives, a substantial impact could be made on reducing the number of unemployed from the present figure of over 3 million.
Training schemes are necessary. We have said that not in an over-political sense, because I do not think that it does any good whatsoever and only wastes time when one harks back to say that it was the last Labour Government's fault that these things happened; then one can say that it was the previous Conservative Government under Ted Heath that was at fault. One can go back to the Boer War and to the Crimea if one wants to lay the blame upon someone and knock down skittles.
However. I have said, and this has been emphasised by our chief spokesman on employment in a number of debates, that we totally accept that training schemes are necessary and fulfil a purpose. I end my speech as I commenced it. As far as I am concerned the hole in the fabric is that after two years a person can walk out of the door without having a job. It is a most difficult situation trying to explain to someone why that has happened.
Let me cite one industry as an example of what I mean. A few weeks ago in your Lordships' House an order was laid respecting the construction industry training board. I am talking off the cuff but I think I am correct in saying that the original scheme was lengthened from 12 months to two years. Caveats were entered by some of us who said that two years was not long enough. In a totally non-political sense, some of us said—and this was also said by Members on the Government Back Benches—that two years was not a sufficient time to produce a skilled craftsman in the building industry. Those comments have now been underwritten, because that is now held to be so by the
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public sector building people, the people who man and manage the local authority building associations, and also by the Building Employers' Confederation and the Building Manufacturers' Association.
I do not want to go too far down that road but I understand that there is about £60 million in the kitty. I know that the Minister is sympathetic to suggestions that would achieve a useful result should this money be put to funding even a percentage of these people in order to give them three years' training so that they can reap the benefits and enter the trade.
I believe that there is a world of opportunity before us, but that there is a political philosophy that divides us. If I had to choose between a minimal reduction in income tax and leaving income tax alone and commencing a substantial public building programme in the widest sense, I have no doubt at all on which course my choice would fall and it is one which I believe in the long run would be of benefit to our nation.
I want once again to congratulate and compliment my noble friend Lord Jacques on moving the second reading of the Bill. I do not know where we go with it from here in a material sense, but I know that he has given us an excellent chance objectively to make not a political attack but once again to air our ideas on what we think may be achieved to deal with a problem which is most tragic and difficult for a large number of unemployed people. Despite recent press predictions, they do not see a light at the end of the tunnel. I and my party will support the Bill in principle.
9.35 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, I am pleased to start putting the Government's view on the basis of what the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, said in concluding his speech. Whatever may happen to the Bill moved by the noble Lord, Lord Jacques—he knows the problems that a Bill of this nature faces—he has given us an opportunity tonight to have a short but well-reasoned debate on a matter that must be uppermost in everyone's mind.
We have had an opportunity to demonstrate the deep concern, knowledge and interest that this House has in the problems of long-term unemployed people. The Bill is aimed at helping this group. There is no disagreement between the Government and those who support the Bill about the plight of long-term unemployed people, about the difficulties that they face in breaking back into the job market and about how those difficulties increase as the period of unemployment lengthens. We all care about those problems and want to offer effective help.
The Bill attempts to provide a way back to the labour market for the long-term unemployed by means of a guaranteed job with an employer. The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, will recognise that the idea of a guarantee is not new. It has its attractions. In June last year, in another place, right honourable and

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honourable Members debated at some length the Select Committee's recommendations which were intended to achieve a similar effect. My right honourable friend the Paymaster General and Minister for Employment outlined then the considerable financial and, more importantly, the practical difficulties of the job creation proposals which the Select Committee envisaged.
I have reservations about a guarantee on two counts. The first is the practicality of artificially creating jobs on the scale required without seriously disrupting the working of the economy and without displacing existing jobs. In effect, we may simply be reallocating unemployment from the three-year or any other group—the Bill provides for a different time-scale—to others, thereby creating new unemployment.
My second reservation is about whether this is the right approach to helping people who may have been out of work for three years and who may not be ready to step straight back into employment. I want to return to that point in a moment.
In expressing those reservations about the concept of a job guarantee, the Government accept the need to take effective action to tackle the problem of long-term unemployment. Our approach is to provide direct help to the long-term unemployed through a strategy which is effective and practical and which reinforces the Government's wider strategy for the economy. That wider strategy, as I and my noble colleagues have said on a number of occasions, is designed to improve the working of the labour market and to continue the pattern of low inflation and sustained economic growth. This, we believe, ultimately offers the best opportunity for everyone who is unemployed whether short-term or long-term.
It is in this context that we have developed an imaginative and comprehensive range of measures to generate employment, to support training and to help the long-term unemployed. I do not suppose that there are very many people now who have not heard of the Action for Jobs campaign that the Department of Employment launched specifically to ensure that people are aware of the range of opportunities available to them, opportunities on which we shall be spending over £3,000 million in 1987–88. The measures are all set out in the booklet.
Of the £3,000 million, £1,200 million will go on measures specifically designed to help long-term unemployed people, central to which is the Restart programme. I said earlier that I had reservations about whether a job guarantee is the best way of tackling the problem. Among the long-term unemployed there is a wide range of people with varying skills, varying abilities, aptitude and, indeed, motivation. It is not necessarily the right answer to offer them a job at an arbitrary three-year or other point that they may not be able to do. The noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, described this graphically from his personal experience. Some may need to update their skills; others may need to acquire new ones; and still more may need to build up their confidence and self-esteem before they are ready to work again.
I know exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, meant in talking about loss of confidence and self-esteem. It just drains away. We have to have some measures to help them overcome this disability.
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Our approach in Restart is to look at the individual. By "individual", I mean women as well as men across a wide age grouping. We want to assess with individuals their needs and help them through a range of options. Restart recognises that people who have been out of work need special attention—individual attention—to help them get back into the labour market.
Restart begins by inviting people into job centres for personal interviews to discuss the particular and personal problems that have held them back in their search for a job. Having identified most, though perhaps not all, of the problems, we are then able to offer them a wide range of opportunities from which a choice most appropriate to meet their needs can be made.
In reminding your Lordships of the eight main options currently available, I shall entitle them but not describe them because noble Lords are probably reasonably aware of them. Throughout all these options there is at least one common thread. It is that they seek to help people to help themselves back into the job market. The options are, first, not unnaturally, a suitable job; and, secondly, a place on the community programme. I take close account of what the noble Baroness had to say about community programmes and making them fit real needs. I know that she will understand that there are problems that we must overcome. It is interesting that 30 per cent. of those leaving the community programme go into jobs or a further training programme. Then there are places in a job club. These have been rather successful. More than half of those leaving the job club go into work.
Then there is the self employment scheme with the enterprise allowance scheme. Two hundred thousand people have set up in business with the help of that scheme. Other options are the Jobstart allowances, work on voluntary projects, a Restart course to help people assess what they are good at, and a range of training opportunities. We are finding that for many of the long-term unemployed the major obstacle to finding work is that they do not have the skills needed for today's industry. We therefore have a number of training opportunities available. Last month we announced the expansion of a scheme to reskill and to remotivate in particular the younger unemployed to help them compete effectively for jobs as the economy grows. The new job training scheme will help up to a quarter of a million unemployed people each year to acquire the new skills and qualifications they need while at the same time—and this is very important—helping industry to meet its skill requirements. It represents a massive investment in reskilling our workforce and a very big boost to the help we are giving long-term unemployed people.
My Lords, all these steps will have a significant impact in reducing long-term unemployment. They demonstrate the Government's determination to do as much as is practicable for this group of people. But we are not stopping here. We want to help prevent, as well as to cure, long-term unemployment. We shall from April be inviting everyone who reaches six months unemployment for a Restart interview. This is the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, who asked: what happens after that? We shall continue to give this support as long as it is necessary.

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The noble Lord will recognise that as soon as one goes on to a training programme, a community programme, or something of that nature, one is no longer available for work and therefore comes off the list. If it fails, one can go back for further counselling; one goes back into the market. Naturally we would want to continue the Restart counselling because it will have an impact at the outset and we wish to continue that.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble Lord clarify the position? If one of the long-term unemployed goes through the Restart programme, and then does not get a job, does he return as a member of the long-term unemployed or does he go back into the general pool of employment? It is very important that we know whether the number of long-term unemployed will be artificially reduced in numbers by the Restart programme or whether, if he does not get a job at the end of the Restart programme, he returns to the category of the long-term unemployed?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, if he does not get a job and comes back for further counselling, even after some training he still has not had a job and is still long-term unemployed. That is the simple answer. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, is trying to ascribe a motive which is far from our minds: that of reducing artificially a group of people. The matter is too serious for us to engage in the figure shuffling business. We are not in that business.
I want to reply to the specific question that the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, asked me on the rate for the job. There are different schemes and each have different conditions. If I take the communtiy programme as an example, the participants are paid the local rate for the job subject to an overall average of £67 a week.
Perhaps I may make one point to the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick. I shall certainly not engage this evening in a discussion on the manufacturing industry. He and I will have the opportunity of doing so in a week or two's time. But it is important to appreciate that we have 61 to 62 per cent. of our total available workforce in this country in employment of some kind. That is a very much higher proportion than in any of the Western industrialised countries. I accept that there is no satisfaction for the 30 per cent. or so who are not in work, but I do not accept that we are lagging behind. We have created over a million new jobs—different jobs for different people—over the past year or two. We have had a good discussion and I do not wish to be acrimonious.
Finally, the idea for the Bill has been developed out of concern for the problems faced by long-term unemployed people. We share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, and we share his great desire to reach out to help this group. Ever since the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, headed the co-operative movement, so much of his work has been devoted to looking after people, and I see that concern represented in the Bill.
However, the Government are not convinced that an employment guarantee is the best way to tackle the
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problem and it is for that reason that I have expressed reservations about the Bill. We remain committed to helping through the comprehensive package of employment, training and enterprise measures that we have on offer, and some of which I have described. We believe that those measures provide the more effective solution to the problem by encouraging people to take up the opportunites for returning to work which best match their individual needs.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to take him up on one point. He encouraged me by saying that he considered people as individuals, male and female. Does the noble Lord appreciate that a great many women are excluded from these schemes because of the requirement that they should be eligible for unemployment benefit? Will the Minister look into that? It is a restriction. It was challenged in the community programme, but the challenge was lost. It means that many women who would like to come back into the labour market, and who would like to take part in the job training scheme, are excluded. It is a rather big question.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the noble Baroness went a little further than I did, but I understand what she is saying. It is a real problem, and if we are serious about looking at the whole problem, then the whole problem is what we must look at. There may be answers; I do not know them. However, I shall certainly be happy to discuss the matter with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to see what programme can be devised to best fit that group of people.
9.52 p.m.
Lord Jacques: My Lords, I shall restrict my reply to two or three minutes in order that the next debate can proceed.
The noble Lord suggested that I wanted to employ the long-term unemployed in artificial jobs. As the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, pointed out, the position is exactly the opposite. The noble Baroness said that we do not want local authorities with tidy churchyards; we want to deal with housing which is badly in need of repair. In introducing the debate, I said that that was where I wanted the work done—not in tidying up this that and the other, but in doing work which at present is being neglected.
The second point I wish to raise is that the noble Lord said that some of the long-term unemployed may need training before they can be re-employed. That is correct: they may need training. All right, give them their benefit, give them an expense allowance, arrange for their training before work is found for them, but do not allow them to lie rotting which is what is happening at the present time.
I hope that the Minister will influence his right honourable friend that we need to do two things. First, if we are to get the support of industry in guaranteeing employment, we must pay the rate for the job. Secondly, we must do that on a far bigger scale than we are at the moment, otherwise, we shall never get there. My Lords, I commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Benefits: Optimising Take-up
9.55 p.m.
Baroness Seear Baroness Seear rose to ask Her Majesty's Government, in view of the statement by the Citizens' Advice Bureau that thousands of people do not claim benefits to which they are entitled, whether they will arrange for an immediate television campaign to inform people, in detail, of the available benefits, and whether they will undertake a thorough investigation to find means of improving the take-up rate.
The noble Baroness said: my Lords, this is my second attempt to get this debate on the Floor of the Hose. At this late hour it is not surprising that it is still not a very well-attended debate. I put down this Unstarred Question during the big freeze because it seemed to me quite ridiculous that we should be discussing, at great length, ways in which people with low incomes could get an extra £5 provided they fulfilled a number of very complicated requirements as regards measuring temperature—I am not complaining about that, but it was a complicated scheme—when it was quite clear that a considerable number of them were already entitled to a much larger sum than £5. For one reason or another—no doubt frequently ignorance—they did not go along to draw the money.
I repeat, I am not against the £5 heating allowance, but it seems absurd to be concentrating on that instead of concentrating on ways in which Parliament's decision that these additional moneys should be available was conveyed to people in such a way that they would take up the benefits to which they were entitled. There can be no question—I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, is not going to deny this—that a considerable number of people do not draw the benefits to which they are entitled. I know that the Government have made a considerable effort to get information across to them, but in a number of cases it has not been successful.
I want to tell the House about one or two cases. I do not wish to detain the House long. These cases came to me directly from the institution which had to cope with these problems. They illustrate the kind of thing that happens because people do not know about or take up these benefits. I cite the case of Mr. and Mrs. X, aged 64 and 59 respectively. Mr. X was claiming invalidity benefit following an accident at work three years ago. Mrs. X was an epileptic who suffered with stomach ulcers and whose mobility was impaired by polio. Mr. and Mrs. X were in receipt of £62 invalidity benefit per week and standard housing benefit.
Mr. and Mrs. X steadily accumulated large debts and found difficulty in managing to meet their basic needs of buying food and paying fuel demands. The fuel authorities had sent letters about cutting off their supplies. Eventually, when Mr. X was admitted to hospital following a suicide attempt because he felt no longer able to cope with the increasing pressures and demands, it materialised that Mr. and Mrs. X were entitled to claim supplementary benefit for extra heating and diet additions. Also, Mrs. X claimed mobility allowance and attendance allowance which increased their weekly income by a staggering £58.09.
That is perhaps an extreme case. I have it from the hospital which these people went into. If that is an example it is absurd, is it not, that this kind of thing should continue? At this late hour I will not give more examples, but I could do so and I am sure other Members of your Lordships' House could add to them.
I know that the Government have been attempting to do a considerable amount. In my experience, many people in all levels of society and education do not read notices; do not read leaflets; forget what the leaflets say if they do read them; lose the leaflets—and I am high on the list of people who lose leaflets—and do not remember what they are entitled to. Of course there are many different benefits. I wonder whether anybody in your Lordships' House except the noble Baroness, could reel off the different benefits to which people are entitled.
Baroness Trumpington: I could not!
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I was paying the noble Baroness the compliment that she knew the benefits. I did not really believe it and she is honest enough to admit that she does not know. These are extremely complex matters and this raises another and much larger issue as to whether or not it is sensible to have this vast number of specific benefits. But, that is what we have at the present time.
My argument is quite narrow. There is one method of communication which succeeds far better than any other, and that is television. One reason that it gets over is well known to anybody who has ever taught; namely, if it is possible to penetrate more than one sense at a time—for example eyes and ears—information sticks far better than if you go through only one sense—for example, reading. There is evidence that this method has been tried and is effective. The GLC (which I know is not a favourite institution, or ex-institution of the noble Baroness) had a scheme of this kind and there was a remarkable increase in the number of people who applied for benefit.
My noble friend Lord Winstanley, who runs a programme of this kind in the North-West, can also tell of the remarkable results which flow from his graphic television programmes, delivered no doubt with all his usual wit and charm. But, it brings in the people and I think the noble Baroness is aware of this.
I am sure that the Government want people to claim benefits. It was suggested a few moments ago that the Government do not really want people to apply for benefits to which they are entitled. I do not attribute this to the Government. I am sure the Government recognise that if Parliament has willed that these benefits should be used, then they should be used. I am asking that the Government direct their attention to television as an effective instrument. The Government have recognised this because of the way in which they are using television in respect of AIDS. This shows that they know that it is the most effective way of getting information over. What they can do for AIDS, surely they can do for the other cases that we are now discussing.

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There is another aspect to this problem which I will touch on briefly. It is not only that people do not know the benefits available, it is the difficulties experienced in the social security office. Such offices are staffed by young men and women (not all of them young) but not of a very high grade and not very well paid. In many cases they are overwhelmed with applicants. Inevitably, they have not been given a very great deal of training to deal with the problems they encounter, and to deal with people who are in need, anxious and often aggressive. It is a taxing job to do. I understand that the conditions of employment and the level of employment in the social security offices is an additional reason why Parliament's will that these benefits should be paid is being frustrated.
The Civil Service does not recognise the very important and taxing job which is done by people in social security offices up and down the country. This fact was underlined when I took part in the McGaw committee on pay of non-industrial civil servants. The Civil Service values only one thing, and that is people who make policy and scribble minutes on little bits of paper. People in the social security offices who are trying to tackle these hideously difficult problems deserve a great deal more support and a great deal more training—and probably a great deal more remuneration—than they receive. That is the second limb of the approach to improving the take-up of services.
10.4 p.m.
Lord Bauer: My Lords, I should like to pay tribute to the eloquence, compassion, clarity and vividness with which the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, introduced her Question. I have long been familiar with these policies because for years the noble Baroness and I were colleagues at the London School of Economics. Nevertheless, in the face of her sincerity I still wonder whether spending more to increase the take-up of benefits would exacerbate the conspicuous anomalies of the social security system, especially those of universal benefits.
The scope and level of benefits are laid down by Parliament, but one can disagree with the methods of administration and the attendant publicity. We should hesitate before encouraging or pressing people further to take up their entitlements. I am addressing the question of taking up of benefits and not the method of administration by the DHSS to which the noble Baroness also referred.
Discussion of those benefits takes place amid widely canvassed allegations of mass poverty and mass unemployment. Many millions are said to live in acute poverty, even at, or near, subsistence level. Yet according to official statistics released last month, in 1985 virtually all households had television and 86 per cent. had colour television. The latter figure may now be 90 per cent. or more. How can we reconcile this and much other reliable information, with allegations of mass poverty?
Again, in London several hundred thousand people are unemployed. But there are no porters at the railway stations, London Transport is beset by staff shortages and department stores and shops persistently
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advertise vacancies at all levels. All this is pertinent to the take-up of benefits and to equating a wider take-up with unequivocal improvement.
More detailed information reinforces such doubts. I know of a prominent, prosperous Lloyd's underwriter who was much surprised that on reaching 65 he could use London Transport for free. Very rich people, including people with six figure incomes and seven figure capital, take up child benefit and get free prescriptions. Only the other day I met two very well-to-do mothers. One takes up her child benefit, which she regards as her due because her taxes help to support other people's children. The other does not claim because she feels that she is much better off than most taxpayers.
On a more modest level my secretary, who has three young children, takes up her child benefit but does so with some misgivings. She regards it as objectionable that people should be paid for bringing up their children, whose maintenance should be the first claim on parental incomes.
Who are the people who do not claim their benefits? They fall into three categories: those who do not know their entitlements, those who cannot be bothered, and those who think it repugnant that the necessities should be provided, or subsidised, from public funds. Those categories of course overlap, especially the second and third. But are there many people in genuine need who do not know about their entitlements after many years of the most extensive publicity by the DHSS in its own offices, in post offices, through the media, on posters, on public transport and through publicity reinforced by local authorities and vocal pressure groups? It may be patronising to think that there are many needy people altogether ignorant and careless of matters affecting their welfare and that of those closest to them.
Why should further public funds be spent to cajole people who do not bother or who have misgivings about doing so to take up benefits? Is it reprehensible to have qualms about receiving personal subsidies of taxpayers' money, and to recognise that this undermines personal responsibility and the cohesion of the family? Is there anything wrong with not wishing to be pauperised? American black professors, notably Professor Glenn Loury of Harvard, have written convincingly on the destructive effect of so-called welfare programmes on the negro family. Higher take-up may do little to relieve genuine need, though it may benefit welfare activists and administrators.
These observations do not reflect a harsh, unfeeling attitude. I have no doubt that there are in our midst very many people in acute emotional, mental and financial distress who cannot help themselves, and who are neglected by families, friends and neighbours. I have in mind old and lonely people, chronically ill, disabled and mentally disturbed people, victims of inflation and of rapid social and economic change, refugees and many others.
Preoccupation with the take-up of benefits diverts attention and resources from the much more difficult task of helping these people, whose distress may not be visible or measurable but is nevertheless real. They cannot be readily assisted by state-provided benefits. Religious bodies, non-politicised charities and other

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forms of voluntary effort are likely to be much more effective. A familiar riauage from Goldsmith—Oliver, not Sir James—in many ways applies to state benefits:
"How small, of all that human hearts endure,
that part which laws or kings can cause or cure".
It is for Back-Benchers, who are not boxed in by political constraints and not concerned with Front-Bench responsibilities and possible adverse publicity, to dwell on such matters.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask whether he will be kind enough to answer me just one question? I wonder whether he would agree that if Parliament goes to the trouble to vote special help for a special group of people in special need, it would be no bad thing if that help actually reached those people? Does he agree that the people in most desperate need are seldom the people who get all the benefits that are going? The people who get all the benefits are often those who are not in the most need but those who are the best informed.
Lord Bauer: My Lords, I tried to anticipate this question by expressing doubt as to whether, after many years of the most active and extensive publicity, there are still likely to be many people so ignorant or careless as not to know of these benefits. I suspect that such people are far more likely to be reached by voluntary effort than by state-provided benefit.
10.14 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, it is interesting that I find myself talking after the noble Lord, Lord Bauer, when we are considering the less fortunate in this country, just as I followed him when we were talking about the less fortunate people in the third world a few months ago. In both cases I could not disagree more with his views; and in this particular case I have the benefit of working as a general practitioner among some of the very needy people whom he thinks perhaps should not receive the benefits to which they are entitled and to which Parliament feels they are entitled.
Many people throughout the country who have the misfortune to be both disabled and poor will be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, for raising this topic. At least I hope they will be, but that depends on the answer which the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, will give. I know that she has a compassionate side and she has only too close an acquaintance with some of the problems which we are discussing tonight.
I want to consider a further way other than through the media in which knowledge of and take-up of benefits by the people who are entitled to them could be encouraged; that is, by helping nurses and doctors, particularly general practitioners, to be aware of which benefits are available to their disabled patients and to assist those patients to take advantage of them. After all, doctors are key people for all the disabled. Every disabled person will have seen his GP at some stage in the development of his illness and usually continues to do so at regular intervals. No other professional person is seen so often, apart from the district nurse, by those who are severely disabled and who are visited at home. Home helps also frequently visit handicapped people and their knowledge of these benefits is something that should be thought about.
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But doctors and nurses—and I include myself—are woefully ill-informed about this important aspect of care and support for their patients. I and many other doctors have sometimes been treating patients regularly for years without realising that they are not claiming the benefit to which they are entitled. Sometimes this is because I am unclear about their entitlement. Sometimes I assume that they have applied for their benefits and I am surprised that they do not know about them.
Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Bauer, said, there are many people who do not know about their entitlements, even though he said that information has been going their way for a long time. A lot of people do not take it in. They may not have the sensory faculties to do so. They may be deaf or partially sighted. I sometimes find people who have not applied for supplementary benefit, which is the key to many other benefits, because of pride. They feel that to admit that they need supplementary benefit is demeaning, though they may well be suffering financially, getting into debt, not eating enough so that their health may be suffering, or getting cold and in danger of hypothermia in cold spells such as we have just had.
A recent survey in Sheffield by a medical student, Douglas Simkins, of 46 general practitioner trainees and their tutors found a large area of ignorance. I shall quote from the summary of his report:
"Only half of this group of doctors realised that a woman with multiple sclerosis who was virtually unable to walk was entitled to claim mobility allowance, and very few thought of the possibility of an entitlement to severe disablement allowance or invalidity benefit. GPs and trainees were also fairly ignorant about the conditions entitling people to free prescriptions, and only 17 per cent. realised that a working man receiving twice weekly kidney dialysis at home would qualify for an attendance allowance".
The problem is that the topic, as the noble Baroness said, is very complex in detail, and for medical students and GP trainees it can be intensely boring to learn about all these details if the benefit entitlements are not related to the circumstances of individual patients. The subject is not taught at present, if it is taught at all, in a way which is appealing. I am not suggesting that doctors should have a detailed knowledge of the workings of the social security system. However, they should have some idea of what is available and what sort of disabilities qualify for benefit.
In the same way, no doctor knows the full contents of the national formulary, which as many of your Lordships may know is the detailed description of all drugs available. However, we do have a working knowledge of drugs and we frequently use the national formulary for reference. If a possible claimant were identified by a general practitioner or a nurse it should be possible to have a simplified guide to the system or such a guide should be easy to obtain from a DHSS or other advice centre. Hopefully, such information could be obtained by visiting the patient at home. I am not sure whether such information is now available and perhaps the noble Baroness can tell us.
A few general practice group practices now have access to a computer programme developed by Professor Brian Jarman and Peter Rice at Lisson Grove Health Centre (part of the St. Mary's Hospital department of general practice.) The programme makes it possible to see at a glance how to match the

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characteristics of the patient to their entitlement. I believe that the citizens' advice bureaux have a similar computer programme. Recently Pulse, which many of your Lordships may know is a magazine mailed to general practitioners by pharmaceutical manufacturers, published a two-part supplement for general practitioners giving a simple key to the benefits jungle. It is attractively presented and it is quite easy to use. I gather that citizens' advice bureaux also have a simple key of the same type which they would like general practitioners to have. However, so far they have not managed to reach more than a very small proportion of general practitioners with this key to benefits.
I wonder whether the DHSS should not concern itself with this need and possibly produce by itself or in conjunction with the citizens' advice bureaux a publication similar to that which I have outlined, which could go out to all general practitioners. I do not think that sending such a publication through the mail will necessarily be effective. General practitioners have a habit of throwing most of the things which come through the post from the DHSS and from the drug companies into the wastepaper basket. I think that a visit will be necessary and that liaison with the citizens advice bureaux might well be considered. A personal visit could be made to the GP and the leaflet could be explained.
Another way in which GPs can locate those entitled to benefit is to draw up a register of disabled patients within a practice. If GPs have a computer, that will assist. However, it is not essential. Disabled patients could then be reviewed systematically and their needs assessed so that no one is missed out.
There may be some economy-minded people (including, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Bauer) who do not want to spread the word about benefits around too far. It is perhaps thought that it is too bad if people do not claim their benefits, they are there for the asking. However, I think there is another aspect. In a recent report by the Audit Commission which was published last December called Making a Reality of Community Care it was stated that it is sometimes more cost-effective to help patients to get an attendance allowance and other benefits in order to provide care in the community in their own homes where they want to be than to admit a patient to a nursing home. Not only does the full uptake of benefit make for a better life for disabled people and give satisfaction to those caring for them, whether they are professional or family, but in some cases it can actually save money. I should be most grateful to hear the views of the noble Baroness on these points.
Lord Bauer: Before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him whether he realises that there is no proper analogy between our exchanges today and official foreign aid to which he referred. What we are talking about is how we can best help poor people in this country, whereas foreign aid goes to and through governments.
Lord Rea: The analogy is there because the noble Lord makes out that in both cases the aid is counter-productive and diminishes people's own efforts. I fundamentally disagree with him on that point.
10.25 p.m.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, we are greatly indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, who has brought this important Question before us. It would be helpful to have some assessment of the scale of the matter. I am sure that many noble Lords have received a great deal of information about the non-take-up of benefits which is the subject of the debate. I have been reading Cmnd. Paper 56 on the Government's expenditure plans for 1987–88. In paragraph 20 this official document says:
"It is clear, however, that a significant proportion of people who could qualify for income-related benefits, for example, supplementary benefit, do not claim".
That is an official statement which I hope the noble Lord. Lord Bauer, will take on board.
I have many papers before me with which I shall not concern your Lordships at this time of night. I have a publication from Age Concern which claims that 35 per cent. of old people do not claim all benefits. In a publication called Everyone Can Benefit the Association of County Councils estimates that £2,000 million a year is unclaimed. I have a publication from Merseyside where there was a campaign for taking up rights. It is called Claim it Now. The campaign resulted in 33,000 new claims. Those were from people who had not known of their rights until the campaign started. There was a big increase in the number of claims. I do not think that I should stray into Scotland but I understand that Strathclyde had a campaign to inform people of their rights. This resulted in many more applications from people who had riot realised what they could do.
There are some disincentives. After we have the figures for non-take-up, let us see what are the disincentives to claiming. I totally disagree with the noble Lord. Lord Bauer. I do not think he has ever stood, as I have, in the snow outside the DHSS office in Tavistock Square. It closed at 10 o'clock in the morning because there were so many applicants. We had to stand outside in a queue because there was not room inside. People in that situation just go home. I spoke to some people who said that they would rather starve than put up with it.
The conditions in some offices are uncomfortable, to put it mildly. I know that the noble Baroness shares with me the belief that we ought to improve these premises. A good deal has been done to improve them. I make no party point because the present Government inherited a good many grotty premises from a previous government. However, there is much discomfort. There are times when the harassed staff take off the telephone because there are not enough people to answer it. As a result, I know that old people say, "I could not get through, so they do not care any more."
The Government and, I hope, the noble Lord, Lord Bauer, should perhaps take a moment to look at the citizens advice bureaux report on the conditions in Greater London offices. That is a responsible body, and it has found a great many difficulties. For example, claimants had to wait for more than an hour to be seen at 94 per cent. of DHSS offices; 88 per cent. of supplementary benefit offices had insufficient staff; and there were delays as a result of mislaid papers. I

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am not raising these points as a criticism of the staff but only to explain why I feel there is a lower take-up. It is because people get so fed up and the staff get so over-worked that there is not the sympathetic response that there ought to be.
I do not know whether the Minister can say how many offices have to shut their doors early, how many cut off their phones or whether the staff problems are being dealt with. I know from a Question which I asked that there are more staff being taken on and I hope that that will help the situation.
As regards information, there is something to be said for television. I have one small suggestion for the Minister. I am so old that I have a pension hook. At the back of the book, there is reference to "Information on other benefits." However, that is in very small print and it is not very clear. Perhaps some communication that is clearer for poor old people like me whose eyesight is not very good could be included with the pension book.
I have one specific question on the take-up of the £5 a week cold weather benefit. That seems to me to illustrate the problems that arise when the Government make benefit provisions only for people to find themselves in a muddle about how to obtain such benefits. How many people have received the £5 a week benefit? How many people have been refused? how many applicants were there? Are the Government satisfied that during this spell of cold weather the new plans are working well? I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, will agree that that matter is all part of the problem of take-up and that the measure of take-up during cold weather is an important part of our considerations.
Those are some of the questions in our minds. We hope very much that we can have some answers and hear something about the plans of the Government to increase the take-up. However, I repeat what I said at the beginning of my remarks. What we need, above all, are statistics about the take-up. There are contradictions, and we must analyse the problem before we can deal with it.
10.34 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, at the outset I should like to say that I fully understand and share some of the concerns which have been so eloquently expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, this evening. The subject of benefit take-up is vitally important and I am pleased, even at this late hour, to have this opportunity to bring to your Lordships' attention some of the major steps forward which the Government are taking.
The Government's policy on take-up is and will remain quite clear. We aim to promote greater awareness and understanding of the benefits available and to encourage those who are entitled and wish to claim to do so. We have heard the important, thought-provoking but polarised contributions from my noble friend Lord Bauer and the noble Lord, Lord Rea. In the spirit of compromise, I hope that the truth lies somewhere between the two.
1 can assure the noble Baroness that the Government maintain close contact with the citizens'
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advice bureaux service. At national level representatives have frequent meetings with my ministerial colleagues and locally many of our local office managers sit on the management committees of the bureaux. We therefore are well aware of their interest in the whole question of take-up of benefits and have indeed discussed the issue with them on a number of occasions.
There are two general points that I should like to make. First, I can assure the noble Lords who have made particular suggestions for improving information about the availability of benefits and take-up of benefits that we shall consider their ideas and suggestions most seriously. That includes the suggestion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, about extra information in pension books. Secondly, there is no doubt that the Government can and do play an important role in promoting take-up of the different benefits available. However, I do not wish to let this opportunity pass without paying tribute to the many voluntary organisations that also make a contribution. They perform a valuable function in providing people with the information that they need and in encouraging them to claim the benefits to which they may be entitled. I include in this of course the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux.
For our part we make use of whatever media are best suited to conveying our messages. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, mentioned television, and of course television is only one of many media which we consider when deciding how best to advertise benefits. There are times when the press and the radio both at local and national level provide a more effective means of getting our message across. I do not think that an immediate television campaign to inform people in detail of available benefits would be a feasible proposition. We take a great deal of advice and will continue to do so.
Nevertheless, I recognise the fact that not everyone claims all the benefits to which they may be entitled. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, gave us a sad example of that. I have to say that what she said simply bears out the facts. Surely it is not too much to ask of people, if they are in doubt—and I readily admit that I do not know every permutation of every benefit—to go to their local office and ask what they are entitled to. They will find those who work there—and I say this deliberately—sympathetic, knowledgeable and helpful. I certainly wish to add my tribute to those tributes paid by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, to people who certainly do not receive the bouquets that they so often deserve, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, said, who quite often are working in difficult surroundings.
With regard to those people who are mentally handicapped or confused in any way, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Bauer and the noble Lord, Lord Rea, I hope that perhaps people may remember that in this House there have been several occasions on which I have urged friends, voluntary bodies, relations, social workers of course, and others to help those people claim what is rightfully theirs. I do not believe that television is always the answer to those particular groups.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, acknowledged that doctors cannot have detailed knowledge. Surely advice

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is best left to the experts. The local offices of the DHSS are available for advice. There is a generally available leaflet called Which Benefit? That information may be helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger. The leaflet is a catalogue of what is available.
The reasons for non-take up of benefit are highly complex. There is certainly evidence to suggest that some people who are in very short-term need or who live in reasonably well off households simply do not bother to claim benefit because they would rather not do so. The noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, quoted a figure of £2 billion in benefits unclaimed. That is an exaggeration. The broad picture is that about £570 million supplementary benefit, £45 million in one-parent benefit and £55 million in family income supplement were unclaimed in 1983–84. Those are the available estimates. The exceptionally severe weather payment figures are not yet available and I shall have to write to the noble Baroness on that point.
We have been given some grounds for encouragement by the latest established estimates for take-up of supplementary benefit. In reply to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, our inquiries show that the individual amounts of unclaimed entitlements are relatively small. For the supplementary benefit population as a whole, the amount by value which was claimed was 89 per cent. in 1983. Of those pensioners who do not claim, some 60 per cent. have an entitlement to less than £3 per week. The unclaimed average for pensioners is about £3·40 per week.
What steps do we take to inform people about the benefits available? What part can we play to improve the take-up of benefits? On the national level, we ensure a wide distribution of leaflets, claim forms and information sheets. Many of the forms and leaflets have been redesigned to make them more easily understood and many have been interpreted for use by ethnic minority claimants. We have received a number of awards for clarity and plain English. I must sometimes blow the DHSS trumpet!
As well as a wide general distribution of leaflets, we try to ensure that as many potential beneficiaries as possible are also approached on a more targeted basis. We therefore routinely issue supplementary benefit claim forms to all retirement pensioners, widows, unemployed claimants and sickness benefit claimants, who are the groups most likely to have an entitlement to that benefit.
We make families aware of the existence of family income supplement by means of an insert in the child benefit book. To encourage people to deal with social security matters in the privacy of their homes, we have extended the postal procedure to cover all supplementary benefit claims. But, as I said, publicity is often most effective at the local level, and that is where many of our local offices show considerable initiative. I have some excellent examples, but the hour is late.
I am sure that some of your Lordships who are here will appreciate that nearly half of our local offices have appointed local information officers, benefit information officers or publicity information officers who complement the work co-ordinated in all regions by
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those officers whom we call RINOs, not because they are thick-skinned, but because the initials stand for regional information officers. I have appreciated their helpfulness in the gleaning and giving of information and have many times seen evidence of the invaluable functions that they perform.
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, whom I am sorry not to have heard speaking in this debate, will echo that tribute to the RINOs. In turn, I want to put on record my appreciation of his endeavours to promote awareness of the benefit system through his regular programme on Granada Television, "This is your Right", which is now of some 17 years' standing. How is that for a plug for the noble Lord?
We continue to encourage staff to co-operate with local radio and television stations. We also encourage local offices to co-operate with responsible and well-organised local authority campaigns, to send representatives to meetings and to give talks to people who come into contact with potential benefit claimants.
Almost every region can point to offices that have mounted information displays of varying degrees of sophistication. One important innovation is our nationwide Freefone service which gives free public access to experienced staff who can give advice to inquirers on a wide range of social security matters. The 600,000 calls in the past year are a measure of its effectiveness. We know that many people are discouraged by the sheer complexity of the current system, but we do our best.
We shall continue to do our best. We shall take and follow advice. However, I think that your Lordships will agree that at the end of the day one can take a horse to the water but one cannot make it drink.
House adjourned at fifteen minutes before eleven o'clock.