Lords Sitting of 27 April 1988

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Ely.
Lord Kadoorie Lord Kadoorie—Took the Oath.

Electricity Supply Industry Privatisation
Lord Orr-Ewing Lord Orr-Ewing asked Her Majesty's Government:
What has been the response from consumers' organisations to the Government's proposals for the privatisation of the electricity supply industry.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the electricity consumer organisations have generally welcomed the Government's proposals.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, will my noble friend consider very carefully the setting up of a regulatory authority, which needs to have teeth, and a consumers' authority, which must make itself available to hear complaints from millions of clients? Have the Government made up their minds whether this should be one body? Can they be sure that when people are deprived of a high quality electricity service they will be compensated for any losses and inconvenience that they may have suffered?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, no detailed decisions about future arrangements have yet been taken. We shall be consulting with existing consumer councils to take advantage of their experience and advice before any decision is made. Privatisation will put real power into the hands of the consumer. Prices and standards of service will be regulated. There will be guarantees of standards, penalties for poor performance by the new companies, and compensation for the consumer.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, how can the noble Viscount reconcile the first Answer he gave to his noble friend with the fact that yesterday afternoon 15 organisations met upstairs at an all-party gathering to express their anxieties about the privatisation of electricity, and this included a representative of the National Consumer Council? Is his information up to date or have things moved on since he first obtained it?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, my information is not quite as up to date as that of the noble Baroness as I was not aware of that meeting upstairs. If there are any worries or concerns, now is the time to put them to my right honourable friend. I would remind the House that the Bill is still in its early stages of preparation.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, is the Minister aware that his reply is most surprising? Is he further aware that it in no way conforms with what
204
I have heard from the consumer organisations about the proposed privatisation of electricity? Can he tell the House which organisations have approved of privatisation and which have not; or has he not heard from any of them?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the chairman of the Electricity Consumers' Council, John Hatch, has praised our White Paper proposals as "imaginative", and said that it looks as if customers are being put first.
Lord Renton: My Lords, has it yet been decided what powers the Secretary of State for Energy will have after privatisation?
Viscount Davidson: No, my Lords, not yet.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that vast areas of this country would not have received electrification when they did had it not been for nationalisation? This is especially true of the rural areas. Is he aware that in these rural areas in England, Scotland and Wales there is currently profound worry about the possible consequences of privatisation? Will he confirm that if at the end of the day public opinion appears clearly to be against privatisation, the Government will withdraw their proposals?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, it is beyond me to comment on that. It would be a matter for my right honourable friend. With respect to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, he is moving a little far from the Question on the Order Paper. I should tell the House that a debate on the White Paper has been arranged through the usual channels for Friday 20th May, when we may discuss this matter much more fully.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, has it come to the Government's attention that electricity consumers in the south-west of England are concerned about impending price increases which they think, rightly or wrongly, are being made in preparation for the construction of the Hinkley Point nuclear reactor, which they do not want at all?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I shall write to the noble Lord on that point.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, in keeping exactly to the Question on the Order Paper I can only assume that the Minister did not hear my question. I know what John Hatch said, but I asked the Minister whether he could give the House the names of those organisations which had written to him either in favour of the proposition or against it.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I shall certainly write to the noble Baroness.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I do not want a letter. Is the Minister aware that it is a long way round to have to wait for letters? I have asked him a simple question. The Question on the Order Paper from the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, asks him about the response. I am elaborating on that.

205
May I ask him which organisations have written to him in favour and which have written to him against, or has he heard from none?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I do not have the answer in my brief. I shall not write to the noble Baroness; I shall ring her up.

Dalai Lama's Visit to UK
2.42 p.m.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton Lord Belhaven and Stenton asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether, as a condition of the entry of the Dalai Lama into the United Kingdom, restrictions were imposed by the Foreign Office on what he would be allowed to say publicly during his recent visit; and if so what those restrictions were and what was the reason for them.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, as a distinguished spiritual leader committed to the cause of non-violence, the Dalai Lama is welcome to visit this country. When his recent visit was proposed, assurances were from the outset offered on his behalf that his visit would be pastoral in character and that he would not make political statements while he was here. In these circumstances, no consideration was given as to whether such assurances should be insisted on as a condition of this visit.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reassuring reply. Did Her Majesty's Government take any steps to counter what one could only call rumours in the press and the media that what I say in my original Question was the case: that Her Majesty's Government had imposed such restrictions on the Dalai Lama? People, including myself, believed that; and I thought that the Dalai Lama believed it also. It created a bad impression.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it was for the Dalai Lama's representatives to do that. They gave the undertakings, and it was for them to interpret them. I hope that my noble friend will note that the Dalai Lama himself stated at one of his press conferences that press reports of that alleged gagging had been exaggerated. I hope my noble friend is also aware that the Dalai Lama gave a large number of interviews, including those on television, without any hindrance.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Dalai Lama was greatly welcomed in this country, and that his visit was an outstanding success? Were the events in Lhasa last March and during last year the subject of discussions between the Dalai Lama and the right honourable and learned gentleman the Foreign Secretary? What were the results of those discussions?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, there was no discussion between my right honourable and learned friend and the Dalai Lama.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, both the Minister's answers are, to a certain extent, to be welcomed in that no restrictions were either asked for, or, as I understand it, imposed, on the Dalai Lama; and discussions, as I understand it, took place with the right honourable and learned gentleman the Foreign Secretary. Apart from those discussions, have the Government made any representations about what has been done in Tibet, and, if so, with what result?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, in case the noble Lord misheard me, I should perhaps repeat that no discussions took place between my right honourable and learned friend and the Dalai Lama. With regard to representations, Her Majesty's Government are concerned and regret the loss of life and injuries which have taken place. Both my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs made clear to the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr. Wu, during his visit, the strength of feeling about the matter that existed in this country.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is it not the case that the Dalai Lama was allowed a visa by Her Majesty's Government only on condition that he made no political statement whatsoever? Is that the position?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, no, it is not the position. The position is as I described it in my original Answer. Assurances were from the outset offered on the Dalai Lama's behalf that his visit would be pastoral in character, and that he would not make political statements while he was here. In those circumstances, no consideration was given as to whether such assurances should be insisted on as a condition of his visit.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, would Her Majesty's Government have asked for those assurances if they had not been voluntarily given?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I do not think that it is for me to answer hypothetical questions.

Neighbourhood Watch Schemes
2.47 p.m.
Baroness Sharples Baroness Sharples asked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress has been made in setting up neighbourhood watch schemes throughout the United Kingdom.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, there are now over 50,000 neighbourhood watch schemes in the United Kingdom. The total has almost doubled over the past 12 months. It is four times greater than that of two years ago.
Baroness Sharples: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that satisfactory reply. Does he feel that the time has now come for a more systematic and

207
comprehensive approach to be made—perhaps at national level—to ensure that those schemes are even more successful than they are at present?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it is up to each police force to encourage that protection as much as they can. The result has been successful. We are greatly encouraged by the increasing willingness and commitment which that demonstrates on the part of the general public to become involved in the prevention of crime. That is something for which we must continue to press.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, will the Minister say whether there is any evidence that neighbourhood watch schemes have been truly effective? It appears that in some parts of Greater London the mere exhibiting of a little sticker in one's window offers no deterrent, and break-ins have continued at the same level for the past 18 months even in areas which have neighbourhood watch schemes. Are they being effective?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, wished to take part in any neighbourhood watch scheme, I know that it would be appreciated if he would do more than put up a sticker in his window. The noble Lord has asked an important question. I shall give him a few examples. For instance, in the West Midlands in October there were 500 schemes. In October 1987 there were 3,130, and residential burglary went down by 14·1 per cent.; in West Mercia in October 1986 there were 142 schemes; 12 months later there were 1,416 schemes, and residential burglary went down by 11·4 per cent.; in Greater Manchester there were 800 schemes. After 12 months that figure went up to 5,000, and residential burglary went down by 10·6 per cent.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that it is always somewhat different in Greater London? I have helped the police in my area tremendously.
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I have helped the police to instigate things. Is the Minister further aware that I have been burgled four times because of my activity in neighbourhood watch schemes? The last time I had my house ransacked, which was only last Thursday, the police were of the opinion that I may have been displaying too many stickers showing that I belonged to the neighbourhood watch scheme.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I offer my commiserations to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, on his very unsatisfactory history of unwarranted intruders. I would suggest to him that he should not be put off his neighbourhood watch scheme. Perhaps he could invite others of his friends to display stickers and to be more co-operative over his efforts.
The noble Lord asked specifically about London. According to Metropolitan Police figures, the number of schemes went up from 5,600 to 7,500 over 12 months; burglaries went down by 4·9 per cent. It is unfortunate that the noble Lord's experience did not help him in his figures.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, can the Minister tell us whether there is any limit to the duties of those in neighbourhood watch schemes? For instance, will these neighbourhood watch officials be able or be required to report the visit of a gentleman to a lady's house or a lady's visit to a gentleman's house?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I do not think that there is any limit on what people may report to each other. Gossip usually has a good part to play in that. But I do not think that there are any restrictions on the amount of effort that is required by the public to help the police in combating crime.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, can my noble friend say how the farm watch scheme is going? Are the schemes increasing and have they had any effect in the countryside on rural thieving?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I cannot give my noble friend the answer to that. If he wishes to put down a special Question about the farm watch scheme I shall be happy to answer it.
Lord Mowbray and Stourton: My Lords, has the Home Office any advice as to whether stickers in the window saying, "Beware of the dog" have as great an effect as "Beware of the neighbourhood watch scheme"?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, there are many statistics in the Home Office, but I do not know whether that information would be among them.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, on behalf of his department will the Minister accept our congratulations on the very effective prevention of crime notices and the brief programmes which have appeared on television? In addition to the neighbourhood watch schemes helping the prevention of crime, is his department ensuring that local authorities get the means to carry out effective programmes, with proper caretakers on council estates, proper burglar alarms and proper locks being installed and proper lighting in the streets?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, that is a rather wider question which has all sorts of ramifications. There are some authorities where the police go around and help people to protect their houses. There are certain schemes where that is done which have proved to be of great assistance. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his kind comments about my department, which will be received with delight.

Community Charge, Scotland
2.52 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe Lord Taylor of Gryfe asked Her Majesty's Government:
What proposals they have to amend the proposed Scottish community charge arrangements to take account of the amendments agreed to during the passage through Parliament of the Local Government Finance Bill.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, we have always made clear that, if refinements were made to the community charge proposals for England and Wales, we should consider whether any parallel changes need to be made to the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987. A number of Scottish amendments to the Local Government Finance Bill were agreed to at Report stage of the Bill in the other place on Monday 25th April. These match provisions which are already in the Bill for England and Wales, or are otherwise of a minor or technical nature.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his assurance with regard to the changes in the community charge. Perhaps I may press him on the impact of the amendments, which have been agreed in the other place, on the business community in Scotland. He will be aware that his right honourable friend has decided that the uniform business rate will now be phased over five years. The present business rate places Scottish business at a great disadvantage. The Minister will be aware that close to his home is the Exxon Corporation which pays £9 million per annum in rates. If that plant were situated in England it would pay around £1·5 million per annum in rates. The uniform business rate—
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, will the Minister look at an earlier implementation of the uniform business rate within the terms of this Bill?
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. Of course I am aware of the problems to which he alludes and, as the noble Lord himself will know, we intend to bring forward the harmonisation of business rates between England, Wales and Scotland after 1990. I point out to the noble Lord that as from April 1989 the effect of the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act is to give non-domestic ratepayers in Scotland the benefit of indexation of their rates. This benefit, which comes a year before the changes in England, will give the non-domestic ratepayers a degree of protection which they have previously lacked and a degree of certainty as to the likely level of their obligations.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, can the Minister tell us what powers there are? We know that the Secretary of State for Scotland has said—and the Minister has repeated it here—that if there are changes in the Bill for England they will be considered for Scotland. Are there any powers that will enable the Secretary of State to do this? Will a separate Bill be needed? I sincerely hope that the Government will not include amendments to Scottish legislation on the poll tax in an English poll tax Bill.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I appreciate the point which the noble Lord makes. The Scottish amendments will be commenced by order, thereby enabling the timing of their introduction to be a subject for consultation and to allow flexibility in the work which goes on in that regard on the ground.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, if I heard the Minister aright, he said that it was the intention to
210
introduce the uniform business rate by 1990, thereby avoiding the anomalies to which I have referred. Is it the case that the Minister's right honourable friend has now said that the uniform business rate will not be applied in 1990–91 but will be phased in over a further five-year period? Will that mean that these serious disadvantages in the case of Scottish industry will be maintained for another seven years?
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, no. It is to be hoped that the differences between north and south of the Border will come to an end much sooner than that. However, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State obviously cannot give an assurance at present as to exactly when we shall have precise harmonisation north and south of the Border.
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Prime Minister referred to the Local Government Finance Bill as the flagship of the Government's programme? Can he recall the last time the flagship sailed with only two-thirds of the crew on board?
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, that may be so, but I think that all our flagship Bills this Session have very powerful sails and perhaps one or two have outboard engines!

Business
2.57 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like, as usual, to say a word about the two Short Debates standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, and the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. It is customary in Short Debates that the mover is allowed approximately 15 minutes, and that the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debates. In the case of the Short Debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 14 minutes and in that of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, to 7 minutes. By the time that the figures 14 and 7 respectively appear on the clock, the time is already up. If any noble Lord were to continue speaking, he would do so at the even greater expense of subsequent speakers in the debate.

Scottish Development Agency (Oban South Pier) Order Confirmation Bill
Brought from the Commons, read a first time, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936), deemed to have been read a second time and reported from the Committee.

Education Reform Bill
2.58 p.m.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Hooper, I beg to move the Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That it be an Instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to whom the Education Reform Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order—

Clauses 1 to 7,

Schedule 1,

Clauses 8 to 36,

Schedule 2,

Clauses 37 to 61,

Schedule 3,

Clauses 62 to 104,

Schedule 4,

Clauses 105 to 107,

Schedule 5,

Clauses 108 to 140,

Schedule 7,

Clauses 141 to 169,

Schedule 6,

Clauses 170 to 173,

Schedule 9,

Clauses 174 to 190,

Schedule 8,

Clauses 191 to 197,

Schedules 10 and 11,

Clause 198.

—(The Earl of Arran.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Public Health in England
2.59 p.m.
Lord Hunter of Newington Lord Hunter of Newington rose to call attention to the government publication Public Health in England (Cmnd. 289); and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I cannot find a better introduction to this debate than to quote from the foreword of the report:
"Although it is over a hundred years since the last major review of the public health function and in the interim there have been major changes in the spectrum of prevalent illness, the proposition … is as relevant today as it was in 1871. Today as then, a great burden of premature disability and death occurs which is preventable and for which the consequent suffering and expense are unnecessary. Today as then, all sectors of society, the individual and a number of professions as well as the state have their roles to play."
It is true that the resources which can be devoted to health care are limited. It is also true that because of new methods and new technology and public awareness the demands on the treatment side of medicine will continue unabated and will probably become more and more expensive. The problem is: how can resources be found for the new public health in the face of these insistent demands?
Thinking of the old public health dominated as it was by the medical officer of health and concerned with food, housing, nutrition and inoculations, and comparing this with the developments of recent years, we find that a whole host of things have happened that will become a permanent feature of the new public health.
As the report says, it is ironic that the year 1948 which is usually viewed as being the date on which a new era dawned for the health of the nation was the year which in fact separated much of the public
212
health function from the rest of the National Health Service thus sowing the seeds of a confusion of roles between local authorities and health authorities. Between 1948 and 1974 the more farsighted medical officers of health performed valuable and creative work, striving for functional unity of the administratively tripartite National Health Service. They developed a substantial range of community health services.
A further and unforeseen consequence with the National Health Service which was deleterious was the neglect of preventive services which seemed to be administratively separate functionally and in terms of policy from the hospital service. This has been increased by the more recent separation of general practice services from the hospital activities and the placing of family practitioner committees directly under the Department of Health and the Secretary of State.
Perhaps one could give a few examples of the deteriorating situation and of the present confusions. In the United States of America children are required by law to be inoculated against measles before they attend school. In the United Kingdom measles epidemics continue causing permanent damage to some children. We have only achieved a 70 per cent. inoculation rate and it requires a 90 per cent. rate to stop epidemics of this highly infectious disease. Should we legislate?
The uptake of cervical cytology screening in one Manchester practice has been 14 per cent. That is very low, in spite of the family practitioner committee introducing a call and recall system. Investigation of this system showed that more than half of the cases of non-attendance were directly attributable to administrative errors which resulted in appointments being sent to the wrong addresses or to inappropriate people. This is not an isolated situation. Confidential inquiries in districts with high mortality rates from cancer of the cervix in women showed that the possible reasons varied. In one district none of the women who died had ever been screened. In another district with a high mortality rate all the women who died of cancer of the cervix had previously been screened at varying intervals. Although more than half of those women had shown some abnormalities on the original screening, they had had no re-examination six months later. That was possibly because of a failure of communication between the laboratory, the general practitioner and the woman concerned. The mortality rates for specific conditions such as cancer of the cervix can serve as indicators of matters to be rectified in the delivery of preventive health services.
Under the old public health system, X-ray of the chest was accepted without question to eliminate tuberculosis. Should all patients entering hospital now have an AIDS test? The desirability or otherwise of this and other possible legal requirements needs the application of the skills and knowledge of the law and politics. This necessity becomes more acute as the epidemic spreads and becomes heterosexual in transmission.
The public must have a view about the new public health system. What are the responsibilities of society against the background of the rapidly escalating costs

213
of running the treatment side of the NHS about which we have heard so much recently? What part should be played by individual decisions? Should smokers who develop carcinoma of the lungs be required to meet part of the cost of the treatment according to their means?
In recent years there have been remarkable changes in the contributions made to the public health by other government departments than the National Health Service or the Department of Health and Social Security. The Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are very substantially involved as is the Home Office in relation to narcotics. The Department of Education and Science is concerned with health education, and the Treasury is also involved in relation to taxes on tobacco and alcohol. I quote the words of the report:
"we wish to draw attention to the fact that at present the policies of almost every Government Department can have implications for health and that consequently there is a need for effective co-ordination of such policies if health is to be improved".
This view is also the opinion of the Select Committee on Science and Technology in its examination of priorities in medical research. Saving money on health and for health could be a government-wide exercise.
Much publicity recently has been directed at disturbing difficulties which have arisen over the deficiency of medical treatment, almost entirely in specialised hospital units. The hospital service as we know still remains central in the thoughts of the people of this country. But with regard to the hospital service and specialised treatments one is forced to ask how many of the procedures have been the subject of study by careful analysis of need, and by close collaboration between administrators and clinicians. How many have been the subject of controlled clinical trials and in how many situations such as the Birmingham Children's Hospital have the additional costs been assessed and properly budgeted for?
When we debated the National Health Service last month under the skilled guidance of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, the focus was mainly on the hospital service but there was mention in that debate of the tripartite nature of the NHS and of the public health and also of the contribution of the voluntary services in assisting in a skilled and positive way people with disabilities, helping them to be as independent as possible.
Much is, and will continue to be, the responsibility of local government as Sir Roy Griffiths has said in his recent report, Community Care: Agenda for Action. Sir Roy Griffiths also pointed out in the report with reference to the National Health Service:
"There is little measurement of health output: clinical evaluation of particular practices is by no means common and economic evaluation of these practices extremely rare. Nor can the NHS display a ready assessment of the effectiveness with which it is meeting the needs and expectations of the people it serves".
It was clear from the evidence given to the Acheson Committee that there was a lack of co-ordinated information on which to base policy decisions about the health of the population at national and local levels and particularly at local levels between health authorities, local authorities and general practitioner committees. That was a function carried out in the
214
1960s by medical officers of health. The present situation has led to widespread confusion about the role and responsibilities of public health doctors. Very importantly, there has been confusion about the responsibility for communicable diseases, as was recently evident in the epidemic of salmonella poisoning which occurred in Birmingham. In that case, collaboration did not occur. The Sir Donald Acheson inquiry showed a wide support for a well-trained and medically qualified public health specialist as a key figure. If such a figure had been present and active during the Birmingham outbreak, the consequences might have been very different.
The report suggests that there should be a new director of public health within the health authorities concerned. Moreover, it suggests that there should be established within the DHSS a central unit to facilitate and improve the monitoring of the nation's health. Although the phrasing is different, that seems to refer to the need for R&D as a basis for determining policy, which was a central recommendation by the Select Committee of this House which looked at priorities in medical research with particular reference to the needs of the NHS.
A recent debate in your Lordships' House on Investing in the Future: Child Health 10 years after the Court Report illustrated the growing importance of community paediatricians who could be valuable in building bridges between general practices and the schools. If such doctors are members of a large practice, they can keep the whole question of children and their welfare constantly in view. Another important aspect of the changing scene is mentioned in the Government's White Paper, Promoting Better Health. It proposed considering amendments to doctors' terms of service to clarify their role in health promotion and the prevention of ill-health. Perhaps the Minister will feel able to tell us more about that.
As an illustration of one of the most urgent questions facing public health and primary care, one cannot do better than to consider how the general practitioner is tackling the whole question of AIDS infection. The evidence so far seems to suggest that the GP does not consider that talking to his patients about that problem is very important. If advice about the infection was given to every patient, it might substantially reduce the spread of the disease. However, raising the subject during routine consultations about other matters is difficult.
Another difficulty in testing for AIDS has received little attention. However, it is exceedingly important. Although all tests for antibodies are sensitive and specific, false positive results occur. The ratio of false positive to true positive results is always high when the prevalence of an infection is low in the population, as it is in this case. In the case of AIDS, false positive results are at least five times more prevalent than true positive results. That is yet another difficulty in this desperate problem. That is an illustration of an infection which is closely linked to personal behaviour, for which there is a diagnostic method which may be delayed for many months before it becomes positive and for which there is presently no treatment available which will cure the condition. It adds a new dimension to the importance of personal public health measures; it can only be controlled by personal behaviour.
A different illustration of the importance of public health measures concerns the condition hepatitis B, for which there is a diagnostic test. The condition is spreading in this country. There is a treatment and all that is required is the provision of sufficient resources to eliminate or substanially control it within a matter of years.
Ministers have to make decisions between the demands for resources for those health measures and demands for the resources for development of new cardiology transplant units, modern high technology in radiology departments, intensive care units and the purchase of medicines. The task is difficult and time-consuming. When one considers what has happened in recent months with the crisis in the NHS over funding in hospitals and the further crisis in social security, one begins to realise the almost impossible task facing the Secretary of State. The Health Department should be able to argue its case for the NHS directly with those responsible for an overview of public expenditure. The social services should be able to do the same. Surely there should be a Minister of Health in the Cabinet.
I believe that this important matter should be looked at by the top review body which is considering the future of the National Health Service. As the Acheson Report makes clear, many governmental departments are concerned with public health. I beg to move for Papers.
3.15 p.m.
Lord Trafford: My Lords, we are told that the National Health Service is undergoing a review at the present time. However, I have not seen any rumours reported in the media or elsewhere of the place of public health in that review. Therefore, it is very pertinent that the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, should raise the subject for debate. I am sure that we are all grateful to him.
I hope that the fact that we have not heard much about public health in the review does not mean that the reviewers have forgotten it. Amid all the hints dropped in the press and the media about more competition in primary care, more competition in hospitals, the involvement and competition from the private sector and even the American-style hospital maintenance organisations or the DRG systems in hospitals, we should remember that the domain of public health is not suited to that sort of approach.
The great advances in the health in this and indeed all nations were accomplished by public health measures until relatively recently, when the discovery of drugs such as insulin, penicillin and a host of other agents began a treatment revolution. It was people like Snow who took the handle off the pump as a means of controlling the waterborne infection, cholera; Jenner who used cowpox to vaccinate for smallpox; and Chadwick who was not a doctor but who was an administrator concerned with sewers and drains in London in the middle of the last century who saved more lives and gave a better quality of life to the people of this country than all the pedlars of modern therapies, myself included. I suspect from what the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, has just said that he would include himself with me in that category.
216
That trend is being continued and it should not be forgotten. We have seen in our own time the development of the Salk and the Sabin vaccine for polio and its massive significance for the eradication of that disease. Incidentally, Fleming, who discovered penicillin, was not working on anything related to it at the time, as it was unknown. He was working on the natural protection of the body to infection from lyzozymes, a secretion of the tear ducts of the eye. He accidentally discovered penicillin. Nonetheless, he started a massive revolution which has led to all the subsequent antibiotic therapies and developments in treatment and therapy for sick patients. However, it is in the prevention of those diseases that the significant advances in health have been made.
We tend to take the advantages of a proper public health service largely for granted. It is only when we visit less fortunate lands that we see the grave consequences of its deficiency. I well remember my horror on receiving at my unit two charming gentlemen who were doctors from another country. The purpose of their visit was to purchase on behalf of their government the most suitable kidney dialysis machines for theircountry. I was horrified because the last things they needed were kidney machines and high technology.
What they really needed was a basic practice of medicine, work on the health programme and work on the prevention of polio, which was and still is endemic in that country. They needed to work on sewers, drains and the water supply and they needed to work on an immunisation programme. I was shocked to think that any government—and that was only 15 years ago—could waste money in that way when so much more was needed of that which is basic to the continuing health of a nation.
We have had a number of reports on public health over the years, including the very famous Royal Sanitary Commission, all the way through to the Todd Report of 1968 and the report of the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, of 1972. We have had a number—probably too many—of NHS reorganisations, and a large number of statutes with which your Lordships are only too familiar. Now we have another report. One might well ask why. Why in 1988? What is special?
I think there is a simple answer. It is because a once unitary system is in danger of confusion, fragmentation and ultimately collapse. When the NHS started 40 years ago the old medical officer of health remained with the local authority. His duties continued to cover much the same ground although he was supposed to be limited to non-interference, so to speak, with those GP and hospital medical services. That separation created some problems. The solution in 1974—which was to restore the tripartite basis of all medical activity—may have looked good in theory but in practice did not work out. It left only environmental health with the local authorities. Of course they were allowed to look to the medical officer of environmental health who was employed by the late but not lamented area health authority.
Just before that we heard of and had developed the new specialty of so-called community medicine. In 1972 the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, recommended

217
that once again those roles should be combined, including the medical staff in the academic departments of public health. Had that happened I think that it would have gone some way to solving some of the problems. It did not, partly because community physicians were treated and appointed quite differently from other physicians and partly because their involvement in planning, manpower, medical personnel and consensus management teams led them in many other directions. It was also partly because there was no longer the respected career progression and training in some basic public health disciplines such as epidemiology, communicable diseases, control of infection and, above all, the research into disease patterns and preventive health, which in a way is part of epidemiology. The noble Lord, Lord Hunter, referrred to this in his speech, and I could not agree with him more.
One of the most important deficiencies in all that we hear about the health service is the question of outcome statistics. I do not mean by that output statistics. It is no good saying that a million patients went through the hospital or that 750,000 people were seen by their general practitioner on an average working weekday. What matters is to know whether it was all worth while, what happened to those patients and what was the result.
I once saw a doctor (who fortunately did not practise in this country, nor was he trained here) who had been carrying out a large number of oesophageal operations—gullet operations. He had been removing gullets at a great rate of knots for carcinoma of the gullet—without I might add many facilities where he was operating. I asked him, "What are your results?" "Well", he said, "some live a week". I said to him, "Why don't you stop?" I did not get a very satisfactory answer. He was appointed as a gullet surgeon and so he continued to operate on the gullet.
That is the sort of thing that we need to know. Fortunately there are not such exaggerated examples in this country. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, has just said, we need to know the true outcome of, say, coronary bypass operations. Are we really talking about a 2 per cent. or 3 per cent. marginal difference in effect compared with medical and surgical therapy? Are we talking about survival? Are we talking about relief of symptoms? All this makes a fundamental difference to the decision or the allocation of resources. If it does not work, shut it down; if it works, give it support.
Unfortunately, as a practising clinician I have to agree with considerable reluctance with the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, that we frequently carry out practices the results of which, the true outcome of which, we do not actually know. He used the example—and I think it is a splendid one—of preventive health as regards carcinoma of the cervix in women. We know from the results that have been published over 25 years in Vancouver in Canada that, although one cannot eliminate the consequences of that disease one can minimise them, not by operations, not by radiotherapy and not by heroic measures but simply by screening at the right time and place. To do that one needs to obtain a sufficient proportion of the population.
218
One of the great problems that has always bedevilled screening programmes is that when one sets up a screening programme everybody who is already fairly intelligent and initiated into such matters rushes along to be screened. They are the last people who need to be screened because they would be the first to notice anything or complain and get action. The people one wants to get at are the people who do not come, the groups one cannot easily reach. That is one of the difficulties of the methodology.
Another problem is that one gets five doctors burning with enthusiasm to rush into some particular piece of preventive medicine. I remember very well one study on the contraceptive pill conducted at the University of Aberdeen 14 years ago. The results were splendid. The number of participants was about 96 per cent., which is something one never gets from the general population in ordinary circumstances. When the results were extrapolated to other districts and other places, the number of people who attended and who were reached dropped steadily until when it became routine it was something of the order of 53 per cent. or 55 per cent.
A really significant, well directed effort is needed to achieve results. A really well directed effort is needed to assess and evaluate the consequences of what we do and then to decide whether more effort or less should be put behind those services.
For some time now we have seen tragically a failure of communication between those who work for the local authorities and those who work for the district health authorities in this field. That has also led sometimes to a lack of interest and certainly to a failure of training of some of the current community physicians and those concerned, for example, with infection and communicable disease. I shall not go over the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunter. I am in total agreement with him and the example of the salmonella outbreak to which he referred; there is also Legionnaires' disease.
Perhaps I may now turn to the report. I found it difficult to read, verbose, repetitive and definitely lacking in clarity. Having been so rude about it, I must also say that I agree with its central points that public health needs revitalisation, that its role needs definition and that a new career structure with proper training, continuing education and association with academic faculties of public health certainly needs development.
I note that some recommendations seem to suggest the recreation of the old medical officer of health. Back comes the annual report, and it is to be discussed in public. Back comes also the role in the field of communicable disease; and back comes the wider role of advising on health care development. Indeed, the role suggested by paragraph 5.3 of the report is very wide-ranging indeed. There are some amusing points. For example, I could not understand quite why the subject of communicable diseases was sandwiched between training and shortage of manpower. Nonetheless all points were taken.
In all of this the two most important statements to which I have already drawn attention were nearly lost: first, that the evaluation of disease patterns, the measurement of outcome and the resultant planning resources are critical; secondly, research in these fields

219
could and should properly be a duty of the medical officer of health. I should therefore welcome the establishment of a proper public health science and service. I welcome also the idea of building on the current role of the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to provide pivotal leadership in this field. I hope that the medical officer will cease to be the repository of unwanted medical chores.
I have one final plea. Why can we not bring back the Diploma of Public Health, which everybody understood, once more call these people medical officers of health and let them walk tall in an old but honoured role?
3.30 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I, too, wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, for initiating this debate. I owe him an apology for not being present at the beginning of his speech, but I shall catch up with it in Hansard.
I agree with him about having an independent Minister of Health who has a seat in the Cabinet. I have no doubt that the health service suffers from the fact that the Minister who represents it in the Cabinet has other serious financial considerations to lay before his colleagues at the same time. He probably has to decide within the department beforehand how resources should be allocated between social services and health. What is required is that the health service should have its own Minister to argue its case in Cabinet. I am only too pleased to endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, said.
I was very interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, and I am very glad to be able to follow it. I, too, found the report difficult to read, but I thought that it had some very good recommendations which I should like to endorse. However, I was a little disturbed when I read the chapter on the shortcomings in the availability of future public health physicians, as community physicians will now be called. If they are to play the important role that the report suggests, we shall need to do a great deal of recruiting and training fairly quickly.
However, I want to talk about the role of general practice in public health. I read the report and then looked at the government White Paper, in which the Government suggest additional roles for GPs in the field of preventive medicine, which I strongly support. I could not see that suggestion reflected at all in this report. I know that there will be discussions on this matter. I do not know whether they have taken place yet. When the Minister replies, I should like him to tell me whether his mind is running along the same lines as mine. The general practitioner is the only person who sees the individual from birth to death, and often before birth. I often see men and women in the Caribbean and also in this country whom I knew before they were born because I provided antenatal treatment for their mothers. Sometimes I delivered them myself but, even when they were delivered in hospital, I provided most of the antenatal care.
220
Although we have community paediatricians, it is the GP and the health visitor who look after the pre-school child. It is a very important role. Although we have a school medical service, again it is the GP who will be consulted by the parents when anything happens to the child. Therefore, the GP's role in preventive medicine is as important—perhaps even more important—as his role in curative medicine. For example, the GP carries out the immunisations, and it is only he and the health visitor who can monitor them. The GP's role in preventing these children from later developing serious illnesses is of the utmost importance.
It is the GP who has the opportunity of influencing the life-style of his patients. Today that is most important when health education enables people to understand which rules are safe and which are unsafe—the GP should not necessarily make the decision for them as to which rules they follow but he should make quite sure that they understand them.
I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, refer to the GP's part in dealing with the problem of AIDS which now confronts us. I agree with him that GPs should discuss with their patients the whole question of the dangers of HIV infection and explain to them in as much detail as necessary what is involved, how they can become infected and how they can avoid being infected.
Although neither the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, nor the report touched on the serious problem of drug addiction, which I have raised in this House several times, I have always felt, and still feel, that here the GP has an extremely important role to play. Now that there is AIDS, which is a concomitant, because addicts pass the infection from one to another through their needles, it is even more important as a preventive measure that GPs should play their part.
I agree very strongly with what the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, said about hepatitis. It seems incredible, since we know how to control hepatitis, that we have not devoted the resources to it. I do not believe that the resources required are so alarmingly high that they cannot be provided. It is surprising that we have not devoted the necessary resources to dealing with hepatitis, as we should have done.
I hope that my contribution will bring into focus the importance of the general practitioner in public health and that the Minister will take that fact back to his discussions. Whatever decisions may be made about the implementation of the report and about the importance of the GP's role in preventive medicine in the new arrangements proposed by the Government, I hope that there will be a coalescing of those two factors.
If the report is implemented, I do not understand who will monitor the GP's activities in this field. As in every other activity in the field of public health, the contribution of the general practitioner needs to be monitored. Therefore, in planning the structure—because obviously some structure is being planned—I hope that the Government will recognise the importance of the general practitioner in this field and will make sure that his role is properly monitored.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, not for the first time I find myself in some difficulty in one of your Lordships' debates. I was delighted when I learned that the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, was to introduce this debate. It is indeed a subject of immense importance. It is one in which I have a very deep interest and in which I have had some professional involvement throughout my professional life. Indeed, there are those who may remember that over 12 years ago I made my maiden speech in your Lordships' House on a related subject: it was on water supplies, hygiene and sanitation. At that time I said, and I repeat now, that plumbers and sanitary engineers together have done more for the public health than all the doctors put together. I adhere to that statement. It will therefore be clear that I attach very great importance indeed to the work of those in the field of public health.
I looked forward therefore to speaking in the debate, but it is apparent that in order to speak I had to read the report. Frankly, I have not found that the most enjoyable of experiences. I had to read it twice before I could begin to understand it. That is no criticism of the chairman of the committee of inquiry, Sir Donald Acheson, and certainly not of his command of the English language. I recently wrote an article in one of the medical journals paying tribute to Sir Donald's work and to his English in two admirable publications for doctors and patients. One was about AIDS and the other was to patients and parents about meningitis in the area of Stroud. I complimented him on his extremely lucid and totally clear English. When my wife read the article she said, "You seem to want something from Sir Donald Acheson". If I had been going to receive it perhaps I shall now forfeit it! However this report does not add to the nation's wealth of literature. Some reports have done so. For example, we have had the Annan Report, with beautiful prose. I can name many reports.
Although it is no criticism, it is interesting to note this fact. Some noble Lords will remember the truly delightful speech of my noble friend Lord McNair on the Second Reading of the Education Reform Bill in which he made a plea for further instruction in Latin as an important means of improving the use of the English language. Perhaps it is not altogether without relevance that Latin is no longer required by medical students for entry into medical schools. The fact that the use of English by doctors has declined since that time may not be unrelated to the point that my noble friend Lord McNair was trying to make.
Perhaps I may put in another plea. One of the difficulties I found in reading the report is that it is littered with acronyms or with alphabetical abbreviations. I open the report at the recommendations. That is the point at which everyone always opens a report. They are what we read first before we decide whether we wish to read the rest. I turn to one recommendation purely at random. It is Recommendation 30:
"We recommend that DHSS, the GMC, the NHSTA, RHAs, the medical schools, the UKCC and other training bodies/institutes should review their education"—
and so on. If I go across the page I see that it recommends that it should be the responsibility:
222
"of each RHA to ensure the provision of specialist support services in consultation with DHAs, LAs, PHLS and the relevant academic departments"—
and so on. By the time one has read the report about four times one begins to understand, what those initials mean. I make a plea to those compiling reports of this kind who find it necessary to use acronyms or alphabetical abbreviations. Will they please put a glossary of those terms at the end of the report so that, if one has forgotten what they mean, one can find out without having to thumb back through 30 pages of the report to find when the body was last referred to. I found it a little difficult.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves the report, perhaps I may ask a rather important question. He seemed to suggest that one can have a bad report and a good chairman. I should have thought that that was a contradiction in terms. I should have thought that the chairman was responsible for every single word of the report and that if it is not good it is his fault.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, I am quite sure that the chairman of this committee of inquiry will accept that any criticisms of his report are criticisms for which he must take some responsibility. However, the chairman of this committee of inquiry must accept some of the credit for the very wise advice that is also given in the report. I am sure that Sir Donald will not quarrel with what we have said about the use of English in this report. Perhaps it is the nature of the subject which, from the point of view of language, tends to make it less interesting than other reports.
Among other things, in the main the report seeks to clarify the administrative structure whereby public health is delivered to the nation as a whole. That is an immensely important task. I agreed with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, said in his speech about the importance of the public health function. Indeed, had we had any doubts, we should look again at that excellent report of Sir Douglas Black on inequalities in health which showed utterly clearly the importance of housing, sanitation and all such matters with regard to the health of the individuals in our society. Those functions were, in part, under the control of the old medical officer of health, and are now under the control of people who work in the public health field.
There has been difficulty with the emergence of people with new names, such as the environmental health officer, the community physician, and so on. We now have community paediatricians. I should like to make a plea that the existence of the community paediatrician should be more widely known and understood. The community paediatrician, in those areas that have one, can do a great deal to integrate services for children between the general practitioner and the school medical service, and so on. That is an important function but it is right that the general structure should be integrated and simplified. I also think that the line of command should be more clearly defined. It is defined in this report, as noble Lords will find if they take the trouble to study it.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunter, mentioned this point in his opening speech. We also have before us

223
a report from Sir Roy Griffiths on the question of community care. Community care has a very important impact on the public health function. In many ways the two reports have to be considered in conjunction. I note that Sir Roy recommends that some of the functions of community care should now be transferred back to the social services departments of local authorities. In a sense, that is putting the clock back because that is where they once were. That might be wise, although I hasten to say that I am not in favour of returning to the old tripartite structure of the health service whereby the public health service, the hospital service and the domiciliary service were three totally separate services. I am not in favour of returning to that position, but if we are to transfer some control over community care to local authority social services departments, there would clearly be a need to restore the role of the medical officer of health. He was a very senior officer in the local authority. As a senior local authority officer he was listened to not only by the general public and patients but by doctors as well. I found the role of the MOH invaluable. I sought his advice on many occasions about infectious diseases and matters of that kind. That advice was always forthcoming.
In the later days when I was still in general practice we had no medical officer of health. I found it difficult to know to whom to turn. I know that there were people; this report spells it out. I did not always know how to find them. I agree that it is necessary that these services become better harmonised and better integrated. There has to be a much clearer line of command.
I come to another point which has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, and by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt. It is: who is in command at the top? Morale in the National Health Service at the moment is low for many reasons. I take the view—I have said this in your Lordships' House before—that it will not be fully restored until such time as we have a single Minister responsible for health and nothing else; a Minister of Cabinet rank. That was so in days gone by.
Noble Lords will remember that when Mr. Enoch Powell was Minister of Health he used to send out a personal message to all National Health Service employees every year. I venture to suggest that if the present Secretary of State sent out a personal message to every National Health Service employee, he might receive some fairly rude answers. But I also suggest that some of those would arise not so much from his functions in relation to the health service but from his involvement in social security matters. They are very different.
It seems to me that if, in the fullness of time, we were to move to some kind of unity of taxation and social security, with a negative income tax scheme, it would be essential that matters such as national insurance, pensions and social security come much more under a Ministry such as the Treasury and not under the Ministry of Health. I hope that sooner or later we shall have a single Minister of Cabinet rank responsible for health and for nothing else. That will improve morale, and will be good for the health service and for the whole British public.
224
The situation has been difficult and has gone on for many years. My recollection is that it was Richard Crossman who originated this huge conglomerate and subsequent Secretaries of State quite liked it, even though they may have voiced some suspicions of it. I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, was not all that happy about this mass multiple ministry until he himself became Secretary of State—
Lord Ennals: No, my Lords.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, I rather think he stopped asking for it to be broken up, but I should be delighted to hear that he is now asking for it to be broken up because I think that would—
Lord Ennals: Wrong on both points, my Lords.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, I do not know which points I am wrong on. The noble Lord will be speaking later and I hope that he may say that he would regard it as an advantage for this Ministry to be broken up and for the functions of social security, pensions and national insurance to be taken away into a separate department, as they used to be.
I have gone on long enough. I know that I have not taken up all my time, but it is not yet compulsory for speakers to fill all the time allotted by the rules. I take the view that, when people talk about having time-limited speeches, it is not how long a speech actually is but how long it seems to be. Sometimes it seems to be too long if people have gone on after they have finished saying whatever it is they have to say. I have said what I have to say on this report and I shall now sit down.
3.53 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Hunter of Newington for selecting this very important subject for debate. He is a great expert in medicine and is mentioned in the report. I was brought up to understand the importance of public health, for at one time one of my grandfathers was a doctor working in public health in Glasgow. We have advanced a long way since those days, but the dangers and difficulties of many infectious diseases are still with us. With the speed and ease of travel nowadays the world seems smaller, and with the resistance of some diseases to antibiotic treatment the need for vigilance is paramount.
Only this Sunday I heard about the case of a student at one of the Northern universities who had reported at his health centre that he had a serious headache. Fellow students later had to break down his door. He was found dead from meningitis. I should be interested to know how many cases of meningitis there have been in the past year, as this seems to be an increasingly serious problem. Acute meningitis is a notifiable disease.
I welcome the report. It states:
"we have made recommendations which simplify the current system and will introduce clear and unambiguous lines of accountability for surveillance, prevention and control and above all improve the capacity to react quickly".
I hope that these recommendations will be speedily implemented.

225
The Committee of Inquiry into the Future Development of the Public Health Function was set up in response to two major outbreaks of communicable disease: salmonella food poisoning at Stanley Royd Hospital in Wakefield in August 1984 and Legionnaires' disease at Stafford in April 1985. As a member of the Yorkshire regional health authority at the time, I asked at the RHA meeting what was being done at regional level about the outbreak. I was smartly told that the Wakefield district was dealing with it. Now with a different chairman and team of officers the response would be different.
I welcome paragraph 4.32 on page 21 of the report, which states that regional health authorities should monitor strategic and operational planning and performance of district health authorities. It recommends that the Secretary of State should consider issuing guidance clarifying and emphasising the public health responsibilities of health authorities and that there should be reports.
I particularly welcome paragraph 4.27.5, which states that district health authorities should,
"give advice to and seek co-operation with other agencies and organisations in their locality to promote health".
When I chaired the Committee on Alcohol and Young People, that was also one of our recommendations. When dealing with the health of the nation, whatever the category may be, people should not work in isolation.
Paragraph 3.2 of the report states:
"We strongly support the emphasis given by World Health Organisation to the role of individuals in preserving their own health".
To do this the general public needs education. I recommend your Lordships to read what the report says in paragraph 4.21.3 about schools. It suggests,
"supporting curriculum development of health education projects suitable for use by children of different age groups".
I hope that all noble Lords taking part in the debate will support the proposed amendment in my name to the Education Reform Bill that life skills, including health education, be part of the core subject of science in the national curriculum.
The Government know better than anyone what bad health costs the nation and the advantages of good health. It is vital to project good health wherever possible. It is widely recognised that smoking, wrong diet, lack of exercise, alcohol abuse, dangerous drugs, unwise sexual relationships and too much stress are all dangerous. Young people should grow up recognising that a healthy well-balanced lifestyle will help to promote good health. This advice should be given to them as early as possible before they are sucked into bad habits.
I was very interested to see the excellent educational material on exhibition last week by the Open University. It included advice on looking after oneself, drug abuse and many other subjects. This year we had as a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship category infectious diseases, treatment and care. I was one of the selection panellists. The applicants were of very high calibre and the dedication and enthusiasm in the fields of microbiology and infectious disease control, both medical and nursing, were most encouraging. One
226
university graduate was given a fellowship to study the setting up of health education programmes. He told us that the United States of America and Japan are far more advanced than Britain in computer programs of this kind. He was keen to bring back this expertise and help to provide better systems here.
Many of the candidates told the panel that they had to work in isolation and many were working at patient level. A young Scottish dental nurse who worked with patients who had AIDS and hepatitis B said that she did not have a chance of gaining the much-needed expertise she felt she needed. After interviewing so many excellent people I was interested to read on page 12 of the report that the committee advocated the development of a school or schools of public health where stress would be placed on the multi-disciplinary nature of the subject.
The report also stresses that there is often confusion as regards what public health embraces, confusion between community medicine and environmental health and confusion about the many different government departments involved. There is also often confusion among the many different names and abbreviations being used, as has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley.
The report emphasises that health policy involves the whole of government. I hope that if the Government accept the recommendation for the establishment of a small unit within the DHSS, bringing together relevant disciplines and skills to monitor the health of the public, it will include the problems of road traffic accidents and all other accidents which can have long term effects of brain injury and spinal damage.
I believe that the general public often think of health in terms of either the public or private sectors of hospitals or going to the general practitioner. The immense work carried out in providing the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through organised efforts is not wholly recognised. For example, I am told that Birmingham City Council Environmental Services Division has 1,800 employees and a budget of £100 million per year. Some of the people with whom I work on the regional health promotion group would have liked to see the report's terms of reference set wider than they were.
A leaflet published by the Danish Government on their health service states that health care has been based on good housing, wholesome food, good working conditions, pollution control and an adequate social network. I should like to quote to your Lordships the public health alliance charter:
"Public health means more than being free from illness and disease. It means having the resources to keep ourselves fit, secure and happy in a society which provides an environment free from unnecessary stresses, hazards and risks. Despite all the social and medical progress this century we are still faced with as many avoidable hazards to health as ever before".
With the growing problem of the AIDS virus in our midst it is stated in this week's Sunday Times that there are 20 new patients a week in Britain. There are 1,429 cases of fully fledged AIDS and 8,500 people have been identified as carrying the virus. It is thought that as many as 100,000 people may be infected. We cannot be complacent. We are fortunate to have as our Chief Medical Officer of Health Sir

227
Donald Acheson, who has an interest in infectious diseases. Even though the report has been criticised for the way in which it is written, I hope that it will project the need for better public health in Britain.
4.3 p.m.
Lord Aylestone: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, for introducing the debate. I have read the report and I confess at once that I understood only a part of it. I do not feel too distressed about that because it has been the admission of most noble Lords in the medical profession who have spoken before me. However, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, because we can raise any subject connected with public health.
I am particularly interested in the situation which exists between the family doctor and the patient. The point has already been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, who unfortunately has now left the House. His great interest was that the work of the GP requires monitoring by some organisation. From my understanding of the situation, doing precisely that are the family practitioner committees. They are known as FPCs. They must solve many difficulties and problems, not least those which to many individuals are major problems but which, overall, can be settled easily. I believe that in addition to solving problems and difficulties there are other areas in which the FPCs could assess and assist the working of the National Health Service. The FPCs are an autonomous body composed of both lay members and professional people from the field of medicine. I believe that they perform their duties extremely well.
One should realise that the general practitioners see approximately 500,000 people on every day of every week. It would be somewhat surprising if complaints did not arise from one side or the other when such numbers are involved. The FPCs have a system whereby diagnostic complaints, or complaints of treatment, are dealt with by specialist sections known as services committees. If a complaint is made about the service being given by a doctor, or his actual treatment of an illness, the services committees of the FPCs deal with that. There are also other complaints such as the manner of GP; his apparent lack of interest; his reception of the patient; or of care. All those complaints fall within the purview of the FPCs.
I should like to give your Lordships an example. I have heard of a case of a lady patient who arrived at a doctor's surgery feeling very frightened and unwell. She was probably fearful of the unknown. Without any physical examination she was met joyfully by the GP who told her that she had the 'flu virus, and that there was a great deal of it about. He reached for his prescription pad at the same time and I suppose that she was prescribed the usual dose of antibiotics. That is not a hypothetical case. The GP must see a certain number of patients within the hour. However, he does not have to decide to see 12 or 10 patients within the hour; he must spend the amount of time required for each one. In the case that I have quoted, where the GP saw a lady who perhaps felt that she was unwell, he should have given more attention. In some cases
228
only a few minutes spent with each patient may be all right; but in other cases it is not.
On the other side of the coin, we must accept that some patients are particularly difficult; and on occasions the doctor finds it awkward to deal with them. There may be patients suffering from hypochondria or who have a psychosomatic illness. The doctor—he or she—is at his wits end to know precisely what to do. It may be necessary for the FPC to be called in to deal with the problem. Here again, not hypothetically, I understand they do just that, and make arrangements whereby the FPCs think they satisfy the patient by transferring that patient to another GP, and they certainly satisfy the GP in that case.
I am sure that complaints of this kind, either from patients or GPs, are few and far between. Undoubtedly the work and activities of the family practitioner committees in this country vary considerably. If one looks at the overall picture—and I cannot pretend to have reviewed it completely—they seem to vary in an area both in quantity and in quality. They are related, or should be related, to the population of the area, but that is not always the case. I would certainly urge that if there is a national body—and I do not know whether one exists—serving the family practitioner committees themselves, it should endeavour to have some sort of standardisation in the work of the FPCs.
At this stage I think one could ask the question quite fairly, "What else could they do"? First, they would need an increase in funding which would probably mean more full-time members, which would enable them to carry out regular inspections of doctors' surgeries. Those of us who visit surgeries know that many are excellent; but in depressed and deprived areas they are anything but that. In South London I have seen what were obviously derelict shops with the windows painted over being used as doctors' surgeries. Heaven only knows what they are like inside! They may be all right; one does not know. However, one is put off by that sort of thing. We really must ask ourselves why these are necessary. Are the FPCs doing their job and visiting doctors' surgeries frequently?
It may not only be in deprived areas where surgeries are below standard. In some picturesque country villages it is only necessary for a doctor to visit the village two or three times a week. He has to use temporary accommodation which is the best he can find for the purpose; that could be a converted garage of some description. Surgeries are not always what they should be. I know of one example—and again this is not hypothetical—where there is no regular supply of hot water in that particular surgery, which is used only temporarily.
Another area in which the FPCs could take an interest is the post of doctors' receptionist. Are we satisfied that doctors have the number of receptionists which they require? Are there too many or too few? Is this not a matter that the FPCs can look at? Maybe they do. Can they not engage in some sort of training for doctors' receptionists? Receptionists vary as do all of us in whichever sphere we work. Some receptionists are kindness itself and are absolutely involved in the work they do to the extent that the patients regard them as someone to

229
talk to as well as the doctor. On the other hand, there are receptionists who scare the living daylights out of the patient who is waiting to see the doctor.
We are told that some FPCs have modern computer details not only of doctors but of patients. That would be extremely helpful if generally used for the call and recall of patients for their periodic examinations and tests.
We can think of a number of other things which the FPCs could be doing. In some parts of the country doctors particularly will be aware of what are known as Well Women Clinics whereby once each year the lady patient—although feeling quite well—goes to such a clinic attended by a doctor and nurses to reassure herself that all is well in the area where one is usually concerned about what are known as women's complaints. This is a function which the FPC could take under their wing and insist that more are formed. There are a number of clinics and they do very well.
These are just a few thoughts of how the NHS and the Government can be used by the FPCs, and I hope that they will take on board these few suggestions.
4.16 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, for providing this opportunity to bring before your Lordships' House the report Public Health in England. The term "public health" is defined in the report as,
"the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through organised efforts of society".
To this end on page 11, the report states:
"The discharge of the public health function in England today involves not only the activities of many different Government and non-Government agencies but a large number of different professional disciplines".
Bearing in mind the definitions and aspirations contained in the report, perhaps I may deal first with the recommended structure for the future of public health. That has been referred to by my noble friend Lord Trafford and by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley.
I have to confess that I look back with nostalgia to the days when, as a chief officer—a director of social services—I worked in the city of Oxford which was a unitary authority; that is, all services were within the orbit of the local authority. The chief officers under the chairmanship of the chief executive, met regularly. They included an absolutely outstanding medical officer of health who also worked in one of the hospitals and was therefore in close personal touch not only with the doctors, nurses and health visitors in the city but also with the education department, the housing department, the planning department and the social services department. Indeed, the medical officer of health planned the seven health centres in the city which has a population of 110,000. I can assure the noble Lord who has just spoken that the health centres, beautifully built—five of them purpose built—provide general practitioners with good conditions in which to work. The medical officer of health sent me the health centre plans for my comments.
230
By law the medical officer of health produced an annual report each year which was submitted to the local authority councillors and to the Department of Health. All departments of the local authority received a copy; they were outstanding reports. I often think that each department of the local authority should produce such a report. The medical officer's reports gave an awareness of the work and the public health needs of the city. It would be interesting to see the annual reports of a social services department alongside those of public health, particularly now that we have the Griffiths report.
With the reorganisation of local government and the health service, the role of the medical officer of health has disappeared. And, as often happens with reorganisations, there is left a gap. Every time I travel on the Underground and I hear a fearful voice saying, "Mind the gap", I think of the gap in various areas of our changed legislation.
No longer is there a co-ordinator, a promoter of education, in our public health service. The report offers as a remedy the appointment of a unit at central government level bringing together the relevant disciplines to monitor public health and suggests at local level the appointment of a regional director of public health whose duties are laid out on page 34. This would go some way towards alleviating the gap left by the abolition of the medical officer of health. But an appointment at regional level will not provide the close personal touch that existed with the medical officer of health.
As president of the National Children's Bureau and believing that children are the seed corn of the nation, I can point out some serious areas of concern in public health. There is serious lack of co-operation both at Ministry and at local authority levels affecting the health, lives and development of children. I shall quote various examples of social policies which are adversely affecting the lives of children. The points I propose to make have been brought before your Lordships' House on more than one occasion. Reports have been made and research work has been done: but still the problems continue. It is for that reason that I bring them forward yet again to your Lordships' House hoping that perhaps the recommendation in this report might go some way to alleviating them.
First, I would mention the appalling situation with regard to bed and breakfast housing accommodation. A scandalous state of affairs exists which is very expensive of public money. Not only is it not cost-effective; it is positively dangerous. In your Lordships' House there was a most notable doctor, the late Lord Stone. His son is a doctor working with families in bed and breakfast accommodation in Bayswater. As a doctor he is doing his best to alleviate the appalling conditions there. He has brought to the notice of local authorities and government departments the conditions in bed and breakfast accommodation—I cannot go over them as there is insufficient time—and has written a splendid booklet on the matter.
Also, there has been research done and a report made to the governors of the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children called A Survey of Families in Bed and Breakfast Hotels. That report lists the same complaints that are made by Dr. Stone. Health

231
visitors and doctors say—it is a terrible thing but they have to say it—that, in effect, visiting those families from a medical point of view is a waste of time because it is not the health of the children which is at fault but the conditions under which those children live.
I make an appeal to the Government that someone should at last do something. I hope my noble friend the Minister will forgive me. I hope he does not say that it is not the department's business but the local authority's business. If that is so, the local authority must be helped. That is one social policy which the doctors and the nurses are up against.
Secondly, the education Bill is going through Parliament. I echo the point made by my noble friend Lady Masham that the curriculum for teaching home economics should include child development and health in the community. I learnt today that she intends to move an amendment; I have put down almost the same amendment. People should be responsible for their own health in their own communities in their own families. But if they have not been instructed and trained, they will not do so. That is a terrible gap in our services.
Thirdly, I would ask the Minister if any research has been done into the nutritional state of children following the abolition of school meals for a number of children. I wish that some of your Lordships could see children at lunchtime eating from bags of chips or peanuts. They are, I believe, getting good nutritional value, but it does not seem to be enough. Those children are not sitting down having a social life around a table. Surely that must have affected the health of many of our children.
I am the governor of two schools for maladjusted, emotionally disturbed children, and I have to say from personal experience that the disturbance of those children is increasing. It is more serious now than ever before. Why is that? Surely, there should be an investigation and some research made into that situation. It is very worrying that a number of social workers in child guidance clinics are being withdrawn. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to comment.
There is a very serious situation with regard to school children working. It is the duty of the local education department to register any child who works and to ensure that the child has a medical examination. That is not happening. Many children in London schools are working long hours; they are unable to attend to their classes in schools; they are overtired.
An extremely good review has been undertaken in one school by Mrs. Elizabeth Clark, a trained nurse at the school who has a health education certificate from Croydon College. I am unable to go into the details of the report but I suggest that, from the public health point of view, there should be a study as to how many children are suffering as a result of working long hours in unsatisfactory conditions and for poor pay. The poor pay situation has been investigated by the Low Pay Unit.
It will be remembered that on 28th October there was a debate in your Lordships' House on Investing in the Future: Child Health 10 years after the Court
232
Report, a report by the National Children's Bureau. There is no time for me to quote from that report but the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, said there was good evidence that children's needs had been given a lower priority over the last 10 years than previously. I do not think that that is something of which we can be proud. There were also some very interesting speeches about how children were losing out in the public health area.
Finally, I come to the Acheson Report. I have to say that where children are concerned it is most disappointing that very little mention is made of community care of children by paediatricians. That is not new. In December 1986, the Minister in another place, Mr. Newton, reported that the Committee on Public Health in England was being looked into by Sir Donald Acheson. In January 1987 the Social Services Committee in the House of Commons called on the Government to re-examine their proposals for child surveillance. Then, in 1987, the White Paper Promoting Better Health made Recommendations for keeping under surveillance children who have special needs and the relationships between doctors, health visitors, school nurses, education departments and the social services. Sadly, however, at page 68 of the recommendations in the Acheson Report, there is no mention of surveillance of children. It recommends making,
"arrangements for the surveillance, prevention, treatment and control of communicable disease",
but says nothing about children. If we do not look after our children, we cannot expect a healthy nation.
My final point—I have taken just 14 minutes—concerns the chapter on the education and training of the proposed directors of public health. In Oxford, in a social services department, we reckoned to have doctors working there for at least a week so that they knew what went on in social services departments. If the Griffiths Report is to be successful and if we are to have good surveillance in the community of our children I suggest that these new people, whoever they may be—directors of public health at government or local authority level—must be trained in the social services and the social policies of the country. They must have a wider view than just that of medicine, important though that may be.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, I join in the tributes that have already been paid to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, who, by no means for the first time, has enabled your Lordships to debate an extremely important matter. Reports on the National Health Service as such—there have been many—are much less complicated, at least to my brain, than this report from a committee which was chaired by Sir Donald Acheson. Nevertheless, I think we should all pay tribute to him for enabling the first report on public health for many years to be available. According to my researches there is certainly no shortage of evidence; indeed, there are 10 pages devoted to distinguished bodies and individuals who have given evidence to the committee. Some 39 recommendations were made, which no doubt the Government will consider seriously.
Public health is basic. I wonder whether we in this country pay sufficient attention to the basic needs of

233
hygiene. I believe every doctor's surgery should display a prominent notice about hygiene; for example, washing one's hands where necessary, and such matters. The most disturbing events at the Stanley Royd Hospital in Wakefield were mentioned by my noble friend Lady Masham: the report read like a horror story. One wonders whether enough attention is yet paid to hygiene in kitchens, not only in hospitals and other institutions but also in restaurants and hotels as a whole. Surely that is a basic priority. If there is a large outbreak of salmonella poisoning or a similar disease, the public health authority and its director of public health services have an enormous burden on their shoulders.
Moreover, I ask whether enough publicity is given to the need for innoculations (after all, they do not have to be given subcutaneously) to children and others against the dreaded diseases—they still are dreaded—of measles and whooping cough? One hears, or has heard, of the occasional tragedy due to the after-effects of those innoculations, but measles and whooping cough are still far too prevalent. I believe that if more children had those vaccinations there would be fewer conditions which lead to hearing and, indeed, sight defects.
The report itself is a complicated one. Conversely, it is well set out and has an attractive cover, which is more than some reports do; but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, about the number of hieroglyphics. Perhaps they are necessary but they do make the report difficult to follow. As I have already mentioned, public health is a much more complicated issue than the ordinary broad basics of the National Health Service.
Perhaps Members of your Lordships' House and, indeed, Members of the other place need a seminar or some sort of conference with visual aids to convince us of the great importance of public health and of this report. I believe that seminars, especially with visual aids, teach one far more than just an ordinary document. This is an aspect which my noble friend the Minister might perhaps bear in mind and pass on to the relevant department. Of course, one of the troubles with the present amount of parliamentary business is to find the time for such a seminar. However, I seriously believe that it would be valuable.
I make only one other point, because there are the winding-up speeches still to come. I refer to the value of international exchange. Recently there was a most valuable international seminar on the subject of AIDS. I know that some Members of your Lordships' House and also Members of the other place, met some of the delegates—health Ministers from 120 countries. It may well be that public health authorities should send their head of public health, or whatever title they may have, to a similar seminar. There is much to learn on the issue of public health, especially with the amount of international travel these days, from an exchange of views with various countries. That aspect is perhaps not completely germane, but such a report does lead people to put forward suggestions which may not be in the report itself.
We all have the year 1992 in mind, which will see the advent of complete absorption into the EC, and medicine and health services will play their part. That
234
thought should perhaps be borne in mind in view of the amount of travel which takes place today. It is to be hoped that the Government will study the report carefully and that at least some of the 39 recommendations will come into force in the not too distant future.
4.38 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, first, I owe the House a small apology in that I missed part of the speeches of two noble Lords. However, that was only because of a small private illness rather than public health. Therefore, having made that small apology, I move on to the subject of public health.
We are all extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, for choosing public health and the Acheson Report for what I believe will turn out to have been an important debate—indeed, it has already turned out to be important. The noble Lord always speaks with great authority and we expect of him the reasoned careful presentation that we had today. I agree with many of the points made about the report. I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, on the importance of public health and the danger of a degree of fragmentation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that the report is not the most exciting read. If I were to give it a book review, it would not be a very good one.
As to the contents, if one sets aside the irritations of constant repetition of initials, the fact that it lacks humanity and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said, that it does not deal in any way with community care, and considers rather the recommendations, they are of great importance.
I want to start with the statement that, although there may have been many great advances in the treatment of particular diseases and in surgery, which have wrought miracles for patients in the National Health Service, in fact we are socially a very sick society. The noble Baroness hinted at some of the sicknesses, and I want to look at a few others.
The Government—I shall be somewhat critical of them in this, but perhaps that would be expected of me—not only have refused properly to fund the National Health Service but have ignored growing evidence of health inequalities and have failed to attack the causes of ill-health. I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that when the Black Report was published shortly after I ceased to be Secretary of State, having established the committee that made the report, it was rubbished by my successor, now the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, and it was thought that it could be put into the wastepaper basket because there were only 162 copies to put away. At a later stage, it was realised that this was an historic document. It has been part of the agenda for social and political debate in the 10 years since it was published.
A report published in June by the Royal College of Physicians says that Britain now has one of the worst health records among developed countries after having been a leader a generation ago. It says that Britain has the highest death rate from heart disease in the world. Expectation of life at age 45 is one of the worst in any developed country, with Scotland markedly worse. A man in Scotland aged 45 can

235
expect to live 26·5 years compared with 28 years in England, 29 in France and 32 in Greece. A woman aged 42 can expect to live 32 more years in Scotland, 34 in England and 35 in France and Greece. There is no good reason for these statistics to prevail.
Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that infant mortality has fallen less in the United Kingdom than it has in most other European countries. Measles, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, congenital rubella and whooping cough have been virtually wiped out elsewhere but not in Britain. The noble Lord is right to ask whether consideration should be given to legislation in this respect. The cervical cancer death rate has hardly changed in 15 years but has halved elsewhere in Europe.
Women get a particularly poor deal. Breast cancer claims 13,000 lives each year and 2,000 die from cervical cancer, yet 3,000 and 1,000 respectively could be saved by effective screening and treatment. Only 13 out of the 201 England and Wales health authorities operate computerised call and recall cervical schemes. That is simply not satisfactory. These facts have been researched and are known by the Secretary of State, yet little has been done about it.
Reference was made to diet. The United Kingdom leads the world table in coronary heart disease deaths with 180,000 deaths a year. Many of course are related to a poor diet. The diet of poor families in particular lacks adequate nutrients and fibre and has too much sugar, salt and saturated fats. Cuts in free school meals and the ending of nutritional standards are undermining children's nutrition. The Social Security Bill will take a further 500,000 free meals away from children. I find that deeply disturbing for the future health of the coming generation.
Bad housing means bad health, both physically and mentally. Badly insulated housing means fuel poverty and ill health in Britain. One and quarter million homes are unfit for human habitation. As to safety at work, some 750 workers die and 300,000 sustain serious injury as a result of occupational accidents. The cost to Britain's economy of accidents and occupational ill-health runs to £2,000 million a year.
I deal next with smoking. Tobacco kills almost 100,000 a year. Although adult smoking is on the decline, it is running at a high level among the young. I find that deeply disturbing. Eleven to 16-year-olds purchase over £70 million worth of cigarettes every year. We know that the people who are most likely to be regular smokers in adulthood are those who start as children. We know that those who start as children are more likely to come from families where parents smoke. Thirty per cent. of fifth-formers smoke regularly, on average 50 cigarettes a week. I arrived in Beijing about three weeks ago on the first world international non-smoking day. Knowing how heavily the Chinese smoke, I was fascinated to note that the place was virtually plastered with posters and neon signs urging people to stop smoking. I very much hope that our Government, who are so much against smoking, will encourage the World Health Organisation to proceed with a regular year-by-year international non-smoking day.
236
I turn to alcohol. We spend £35 million a day on alcohol; most is spent on moderate social drinking, but alcohol abuse is growing. Over 1,000 people a year are killed as a result of drunken driving. One can go on giving statistics about the dangers of alcohol. Professor Alwyn Smith, president of the faculty of community medicine at the Royal College of Physicians said recently:
"Britain was the leader in public health a generation ago. It has now lost that pre-eminence and the result is that we are falling behind our neighbours in … child health and immunisation, health promotion and prevention".
I think that that is a wise and correct statement.
There is a responsibility upon the state. The Secretary of State, in Section 1(1) of the National Health Service Act 1977, is charged with a duty:
"to continue the promotion in England and Wales of a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement—

(a) in the physical and mental health of the people of those countries, and

(b) in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness".

Section 3(1), delegates to regional health authorities and, through them, district health authorities, and imposes a duty:
"to provide throughout England and Wales, to such extent as he considers necessary to meet all reasonable requirements … such facilities for the prevention of illness, the care of persons suffering from illness and the after-care of persons who have suffered from illness as he considers are appropriate as part of the health service".
Although the Act does not use the term "public health", it is explicitly stated that the duty imposed upon the Secretary of State in Sections 1 and 3 of the Act includes responsibility for, among other things, the improvement of the physical and mental health of people by the prevention of illness. This carries the implication that the state of health of the population should be assessed and progressively monitored. There is therefore a major responsibility upon the Secretary of State. He is not just responsible for the National Health Service. He is directly responsible for the whole of public health.
I may be unpopular with some for saying this but there is at the present time a serious lack of leadership from the centre on precisely the issues we are talking about today. It may be that, in responding to the many recommendations made by Sir Donald Acheson, the Minister will move us forward into a more positive sense of leadership on the issues that have been raised here. Time will tell. However, I fear that on many issues we are awaiting some formal leadership from Her Majesty's Government.
Perhaps we should look at some of the reports that have been received. On the Wagner Report there has been no response from the Government. On the Firth Report there has been no response from the Government. There is also the Griffiths Report. I do not know how long we shall have to wait for a response to that, but there will be a debate in your Lordships' House on mental health on 18th May. Perhaps that will give the Government an opportunity to give a considered response. It is unsatisfactory that recommendations should be made while the Government sit silently and watch so many things getting worse. We are a sick society. Once we move down the track of sickness it is difficult to start building up again.

237
There was an interesting article in the Health Service Journal last week which dealt precisely with the problem of inadequate leadership. It stated:
"Although it is generally acknowledged that not everything can be done with available resources, ministers and civil servants have not taken it on themselves to offer clear and consistent guidance to health authorities on priorities for service development … Since Priorities for health and personal social services in England was published in I 976"—
I pause to say that I was Secretary of State in 1976; I devoted an enormous amount of my time to the preparation of Priorities for health and personal social services in England, a document that attempted to give some leadership to health authorities and other bodies—
"there has been a progressive move away from identifying specific and achievable objectives for the NHS. This has resulted in health authorities being expected to pursue a wide range of policies regardless of whether they have the financial or managerial resources to do so. The clear impression has been created that there is no coherent vision or plan for the NHS at a national level".
I would say for the health of the nation and not just for the NHS. Often from these Benches we have asked the Minister about this, that or the other, and the answer almost always has been, "Priorities are a matter for district or regional health authorities", as if the Secretary of State himself did not have a direct responsibility. He was just shuffling it off on to health authorities. That is not good enough. We are entitled to ask for some leadership.
The fundamental of this failure of leadership has been the Government's refusal to accept the principal conclusions of the Black Report—not just its recommendations but the principal philosophy on which it is based—that health is closely linked with poverty and with all those social conditions to which I referred at the beginning of my speech.
The review team chaired by Sir Donald Acheson considered that the public health responsibilities of district health authorities are so important that they require the identification of a single person to be responsible and accountable for the function on behalf of the DHA and the district general manager. I believe that this recommendation—that there should be appointed a director of public health—is an extremely important one. We would expect him to receive advice from the Secretary of State and, taking account of that advice, to be able to co-ordinate the policies that are carried out not only, as the report later says, by health authorities but by local authorities as well. It is important to bring together the roles in public health of health authorities and social services departments. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in responding to that point.
In conclusion, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, on introducing the debate and at the same time congratulate the chief medical officer on this important series of recommendations. Thirty-nine recommendations were made of which many have already been underlined. The report says that 31 can be implemented with no delay and 29 can be implemented at low or minimal cost. Therefore if in reply the Minister says, "If only there were resources the Government would be able to do this", I say to him that there are hardly any resource implications in the recommendations. I hope that we shall hear a positive response to them from the Minister.
4.56 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Skelmersdale): My Lords, I too should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, on initiating the debate and thank him on behalf of the Government for providing the House with an opportunity to debate this interesting report. Who better to introduce the debate than the noble Lord. Indeed, much of the committee's findings must have a familiar ring to him. He chaired a working party in the early 1970s which looked closely at community medicine in the reorganised health service. Reading his report I was struck by how similar its conclusions are to Public Health in England.
It is arguable that if health authorities had fully implemented the recommendations of that earlier report we would not be facing the problems regarding the specialty of community medicine that Public Health in England has highlighted. That is as may be. But times have changed. We must ensure that any proposals we adopt to solve the only too familiar problems are suitably adapted for the NHS in the late 1980s and beyond.
As the report makes clear, it is the first general review of the public health function since the Royal Sanitary Commission of 1871. Sir Donald Acheson's remit was so wide, and the weight of evidence so great, that it proved to be impossible for the committee to report within the timescale originally proposed. I am sure that the House will agree that the time taken has been fully justified. I should like to thank Sir Donald and his colleagues for the care and energy they have devoted to a most constructive and thought-provoking report. Seldom have I ended up with a list of so many questions in a short debate. From those questions it is clear that the report has generated wide interest among your Lordships. I am sure that it will influence developments in the vital field of public health services for a considerable period of time. Today's debate gives us a most welcome opportunity to hear the views of noble Lords and for them to be taken fully into account in the Government's consideration of the report.
If the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, thinks that I am going to go through the 30 or so recommendations of the report this evening, accepting this one, not accepting that one and accepting the other in part, I am afraid that he will be disappointed. The report was presented to the Government in January 1988. I have to come clean at the beginning and say that the Government have not yet made up their mind on the recommendations. The noble Lord shakes his head. Whether he expects me to be able to announce the Government's findings or decisions on the report I do not know. He gave me the impression in his speech just now that he does.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way. Yes, I expected such an announcement. Although many of the issues were admittedly not put into the report (which was not seen by Ministers until four months ago) they are ones that have been discussed in the department for

239
a number of years. Sir Donald Acheson did not start from scratch, so of course I expected in a debate about the report given to Ministers four months ago that we would have replies to the principal recommendations. I shall be disappointed if we do not.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, in that case, the noble Lord will have to contain his soul in disappointment.
As I said, in 1972 the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, studied many of the matters discussed in the report. To that extent I accept the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, that some of the matters contained in the report are not new. The noble Lord, Lord Hunter, did not however include communicable disease, and the Acheson Committee's report is a careful and detailed analysis of the extensive evidence which was presented to it across the whole field of public health. Well over 300 individuals and organisations submitted written or oral evidence to the inquiry.
My noble friend Lord Trafford and many other noble Lords pointed to the relationship which exists between public health and other government departments, whichever of them is responsible for the public health function at any period. I accept that the Acheson Report is only the latest in a long line of reports which have drawn attention to the interdependence of health and other services; for example, housing, education, social services and environmental services and of course the responsibility | which each one of us has for our own health. Again I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, that there is an interrelationship; but decisions on the composition of the Cabinet and the restructuring of the government machine are not for me. However, I shall pass on the many comments that have been made by your Lordships this afternoon.
With regard to that interrelationship, an example was produced by my noble friend Lady Faithful!, who raised the issue of children in bed and breakfast accommodation, which she sees as a public health responsibility, and especially a child health responsibility—and one which is neglected at that. I am most grateful to her for sending me the two reports about families in such accommodation. I shall read them with great care. As I understand it, they illustrate vividly the complex and varied problems of homeless families in inner London and the importance of a co-ordinated approach to resolve these problems. Of particular relevance to the debate is the way that they highlight the many agencies which have a role—local authority housing and social services departments, general practitioners and so on.
The importance of local authority public health responsibilities was emphasised in the report, as was the need for effective collaboration among the many agencies concerned. The report Public Health in England also drew specific attention to the director of public health's responsibility for assessing and advising on the comprehensive provision of preventive and surveillance services for children,
240
which is especially relevant to some of the problems discussed in the reports on homelessness.
The department has also funded a four-district project looking at the organisation and management of child health services. It includes Riverside, where the problems of providing health services for a highly mobile population are well recognised.
One of the committee's first tasks was to agree a working definition which fully recognised the wide range of influences on public health. Its definition accepted the importance of lifestyle as well as those aspects of public health, such as sanitary hygiene and epidemic disease control, with which it is more commonly associated.
The committee fully recognised that the task of minimising, and where possible removing, injurious environmental, social and behavioural influences of all kinds is fundamental to public health and that this task is the shared responsibility of a wide variety of government departments. However, it also recognised that to investigate such an all-embracing concept would go far beyond its collective capacity or the time available for its work. So it concentrated on reviewing the relevant aspects of the work of those statutory agencies with major responsibilities for securing the health of the public; that is, it interpreted its remit as being concerned principally with arrangements within the current institutional framework to do three things: to improve the surveillance of the health of the population centrally and locally; to encourage policies which promote and maintain health; and to ensure the means are available to evaluate existing health services.
A number of points emerged in the evidence given to the committee. The most important of these was a lack of co-ordinated information on which to base policy decisions about the health of the population at national and local levels. In its view this has led to: a lack of emphasis on the promotion of health and healthy living and the prevention of disease; widespread confusion about the role and responsibilities of public health doctors both within the NHS itself and among the public, to which I referred earlier; confusion about responsibility for the control of communicable disease and poor communication between the agencies involved, in particular widespread dissatisfaction with the position of the medical officer of environmental health, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, drew attention; weakness in the capacity of health authorities to evaluate the outcome of their activities and therefore to make informed choices between competing priorities; and, lastly, wide support for the need for a well trained, medically qualified public health specialist as a key figure in the health service.
"Bring back the medical officer of health", says my noble friend Lord Trafford. We shall have to consider whether, and, if so to what extent, it is possible to turn back the clock and resurrect a post set up to co-ordinate public health functions in the last century. I should remind my noble friend that local authorities were much more involved in the health scene at that time than they are now. The committee has recommended however that the function of the medical officer of health is:
"To inform himself as far as practicable respecting all matters affecting or likely to affect public health",

241
to quote from an Act of the last century, and to advise his employing authority by preparing an annual report which should be incorporated into the responsibilities of the individual that the committee calls the director of public health, who would also take on a number of other public health functions more suited to the health service in the late 20th century.
The committee adopted a number of key principles which underpinned the recommendations it made. These include: clarifying the nature of the public health responsibilities of health authorities and making named individuals accountable for the discharge of these functions within the framework of general managements; improving the means whereby objectives and targets for health are set; and stressing the need for collaboration for health among central and local government, the voluntary sector, industry, the media, the private sector and the individual, but particularly among the triumvirate of agencies at local level—health authorities, local authorities and family practitioner committees.
In his inimitable way, the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, put his finger on a major problem, which is how to find who is responsible for public health. We acknowledge that problem. One of the main principles behind the report's recommendations was that health authorities should identify named individuals who would be personally accountable for performing carefully defined functions.
The question of the evaluation and measurement of the outcome of the public health function, or indeed any health function, is exercised sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly—I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Ennals—by the Secretary of State of the day, and is a situation incidentally which has not changed in the period between the noble Lord's distinguished tenure of that office and that of my noble friend today. The emphasis given by my noble friend Lord Trafford and the noble Baroness Lady Masham to the importance of a scientific base for the input of the public health medicine, the development of health indicators and the growing importance of health targets are of course of great interest to this Government at the moment. I rather wonder why nobody else has had the idea of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to set up a health index so that we can identify where there are gaps or a lower quality of service delivered in various areas of the country. I should have thought that this was essential.
I agree with both my noble friend and the noble Baroness that there is a desperate need to quantify health in this country. I anticipate such a unit as the report suggests, namely a central unit within the department, to facilitate and improve the monitoring of the nation's health. I see that unit doing just such a job.
The recommendations are designed to secure the better discharge of public health functions mainly but not exclusively by health authorities, local authorities and by family practitioner committees. To crystallise this higher level of functioning the report recommends a change in the style of community medicine to public health medicine. There are early indications that this change is going to be taken up by
242
the professions. The report recommends that both regions and district health authorities appoint directors of public health and I gather in some places this recommendation is already being put into effect. The director of public health would, as I understand it, become a source of medical advice not just to health authorities but also to local authorities and family practitioner committees.
Another key recommendation is that authorities should publish an annual report in which the director of public health would report on the health of their population. This would be drawn up after consultation with family practitioner committees and other relevant local bodies. The report's training and manpower recommendations follow on from these main recommendations affecting the way in which the public health function is discharged. Those which deal with the control of communicable diseases are important to pursue because of the need to ensure that everything is done to deal quickly and effectively with outbreaks when they occur and the need to prevent them taking place wherever possible.
In a speech which I found most interesting and very wide-ranging, the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, asked me a vast array of questions. I should like to take up straight away the point about smoking. The risks associated with smoking in pregnancy were once again highlighted in the recent fourth report of the Independent Scientific Committee on Smoking and Health. We are considering the recommendations it made. It is clearly important that pregnant women should be aware of the risks. Indeed cigarette packets have carried the specific warning since 1986:
"Smoking when pregnant can injure your baby and cause premature birth".
The House will know however that it has never been a principle of the National Health Service that people should be assessed and charged according to the extent to which they contribute to their own ill-health. There are many illnesses, not just smoking-related ones, which are connected at least in part with people's lifestyles. Our aim must be to try to prevent ill-health by making people aware of habits which they should avoid and the positive actions that they can take such as having a better diet. This emphasis on prevention is the key to the Government's approach.
There are three major causes of ill-health. In heart disease the number one cause is diet, followed by smoking and lack of exercise. As far as cancer is concerned, the order is reversed somewhat, and the No. 1 evil is smoking followed by inappropriate diet, followed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, will know well, by excessive consumption of alcohol. I find it particularly interesting and not a little disturbing that the amount that the public is prepared to spend on alcohol almost exactly equals the amount that the country currently spends on the National Health Service as a whole.
Several noble Lords mentioned family practitioner committees. The noble Lord, Lord Hunter, asked whether they should be re-amalgamated with district health authorities. In our White Paper on the Government's programme for improving primary care, which all noble Lords from their speeches have clearly read, we responded to the recommendation made last year by the Select Committee on Social

243
Services in Primary Care that family practitioner committees should be re-amalgamated with district health authorities. We concluded that this was not the time for further major organisational change.
The separation has given the family practitioner services a stronger voice in the National Health Service overall and the FPCs are taking an increasingly active part in the planning and development of services in their areas. Our hope now is to build on that and to extend their management role as a means of securing improvements in primary care services.
I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, that part of the trouble is that FPCs rather hide their light under a bushel. I can advise him that they systematically inspect doctors' surgeries. The department has recently issued guidelines on general practitioner premises. Furthermore, paragraph 3.5, I think it is, of the White Paper on Primary Health Care says that the Government will also review minimum standards. FPCs will continue to be responsible for the inspection of premises and will be required to apply sanctions more stringently than before in respect of inadequate premises.
As regards the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, I suggest that a friendly and effective receptionist is an important member of the practice team. Very often the receptionist is in the first line for complaints rather than the GP or the dentist. The Government's review of the complaints procedure will make it easier for patients to make complaints where that is appropriate. I am sure that the whole House would agree with that as a point of view.
This brings me very neatly to the role of general practitioners. The Government's White Paper on Primary Health Care again contains proposals on important changes in the GP's contract which would have the aim of increasing their role in prevention. Clearly this is an area of great potential for preventing disease and promoting good health.
The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, pointed out that it is only the general practitioner who sees people from life to death. That is not always so. I was told recently by a family practitioner committee that a doctor had not seen a particular patient for over 20 years. I should therefore say that with computerisation the general practitioner is the only person who is in with a chance. Therefore, computers and computer-aided general practitioners are the essential first link in what will be a very long chain if the report's major recommendations are accepted.
However, the noble Lord is quite right. In spite of the rude remarks which many of your Lordships have made about it, the Acheson Report leaves us in no doubt about the need to acknowledge the role of the general practitioner. It envisages the work of a director of public health as drawing on information provided by family practitioner committees. Clearly general practitioners, as both the White Paper and the report say, have a major role in prevention.
The report concentrates its attention on how health authority responsibilities for public health could be emphasised and clarified, but repeatedly emphasises the role of the many other agencies and
244
individuals who make important contributions to public health, not least general practitioners. For this reason, it also stresses the importance of collaboration between health authorities and family practitioner committees on public health issues.
Should general practitioners do more AIDS counselling? With the development of care in the community it is clear that general practitioners will play an increasingly important role in the care and treatment of people with AIDS and HIV infection, not only in providing the necessary treatment during periods of symptomatic illness and liaising with other professionals and groups involved but also in providing counselling and support. We have recognised the importance of GPs by funding counselling training courses, a course in the clinical management of people with AIDS and part-time training services for general practitioners to work under the supervision of hospital specialists.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, is of course quite right. At the moment only a change in personal behaviour will reduce the spread of this incurable disease and certainly there is opportunity for general practitioners to influence personal behaviour. Gaining accurate information on the extent and the speed of spread of HIV infection is clearly also very important. An expert group under the Director of the Public Health Laboratory Service has been reviewing the current surveillance arrangements. The group's report will be published shortly.
I was very pleased that my noble friend Lord Auckland felt able to comment favourably on the Government's international activities in the field of AIDS. The House will be interested to know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will be continuing this theme in Geneva next week.
Many noble Lords spoke about immunisation. The House will know that in 1985 we asked health authorities to set progressive uptake targets for all major childhood immunisations and to designate one person to be accountable for performance in this field within the health authority system. These people are called immunisation co-ordinators. So important is this subject seen to be in district health authorities that at a recent meeting in London that I addressed over 80 per cent. of a possible 191 designated officers attended. I was told that this was extremely unusual in such a meeting where it would be good going to get 60 per cent. of representatives from district health authorities countrywide to attend.
We have no plans to introduce compulsory immunisation in this country or to make it a condition of school entry. Indeed there is some evidence now emerging from the United States that compulsion of this kind does not necessarily lead to a universally high uptake. Health authorities in this country are already aware that no opportunity should be missed to immunise a child against infectious diseases. But equally we do not yet believe in compulsory immunisation. It has never been compulsory in the United Kingdom except for a very brief period for smallpox in 1949 and there is no present intention to change this.
I think that it would be right to move on very rapidly to meningitis and to the question of the noble

245
Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. I confirm that there has been an upsurge since 1984 similar to the one in the 1970s. In 1987 notifications in England and Wales reached 1,090. I could go on but I think that it might perhaps be appropriate if I wrote to the noble Baroness.
I mentioned earlier the interest of my noble friend Lady Faithfull in children. Again I think that I should write to her on this matter, but I wish to comment on the overall effects of the new social security arrangements, which are clearly still misunderstood. Before 11th April about 210,000 children in families receiving family income support actually took free meals and a further 340,000 took them under local education authority discretionary schemes. The Government estimate that cash help in the form of family credit will reach around 650,000 children of school age so the new arrangements will benefit around 100,000 more children. It is too early to say how these arrangements are affecting children's diet, but of course as with the other forms of social security we shall be watching this.
In considering the report's recommendations our aim must be to ensure that any changes we implement and any new mechanisms we set up are appropriate and workable. We should not wish to make matters worse by making quick decisions recommending solutions that will not work in practice. We are considering the report with the urgency noted by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in announcing publication in January. Our intention remains to make a statement on implementation in the near future.
I know that that will disappoint some of your Lordships. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has made it quite clear that it disappoints him, but as I said it is only four months since we received the report. There is much more in it than in the previous reports, and we shall need to look at its reaction on other proposals that we shall be bringing forward for the health service as a whole.
5.25 p.m.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, we have had a good debate. I wish to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in it. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

BBC: Responsibilities and Duties
5.26 p.m.
Lord Chalfont Lord Chalfont rose to call attention to the responsibilities of the BBC under the Royal Charter and the licence and agreement granted by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on 2nd April 1981; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to propose the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. Perhaps I may at once apologise to the noble Earl who will be replying to the debate because I know that the timing of the debate has disrupted some of his other arrangements. I am sorry that that is the case.
I should also like to say how gratifying it is to see past and present members of the governors of the BBC in their places this evening. I must especially say how gratified I am that, given his eminent role in the guidance of the BBC's affairs at the moment, the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, is in his place this evening.
On 15th March in your Lordships' House I tabled a Starred Question on a BBC television programme called "Airbase" which was a so-called drama documentary programme set on a United States air base in the United Kingdom. In the course of replying to a supplementary question put by the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, delivered a lapidary judgment. I quote from col. 1031 of the Official Report:
"Programme content is a matter for the BBC. It is not a matter for the Government to interfere in".
That of course is nothing new. It is a doctrine to which successive governments have resorted whenever they are confronted with a criticism of the BBC. It is my purpose, in introducing this Motion this evening, to suggest that that is a false doctrine without any constitutional foundation. I shall in fact go further and suggest that the Government not only have a right to "interfere", if that is the chosen word, in the content of the BBC's programmes, but that in certain circumstances they have a statutory obligation to do so. I hope that I shall not detain your Lordships long.
The BBC operates under the provisions of a number of constitutional documents. The central and most familiar of these is the Royal Charter granted by the Sovereign. The current charter came into operation on 1st August 1981 and, if all goes well, remains in force until 31st December 1996. For the purpose of my Motion today I wish to draw the attention of the House to Article 20 of the charter which contains the following important provision:
"The grant of this Our Charter is made upon the express condition that the Corporation shall strictly and faithfully observe and perform and cause to be observed and performed the provisions prescribed therein or thereunder, and also the provisions prescribed in or under any licence which Our Secretary of State may from time to time grant to the Corporation".
To put that in simple lay language, the charter is granted strictly on condition that its provisions and those of the accompanying licence are observed. Furthermore, the charter goes on to state unambiguously that if it appears to the Secretary of State for the Home Department that the provisions of the charter or the licence and agreement have not been observed, and if within a specified time the corporation has not rectified the matter, the Sovereign may on the Home Secretary's advice revoke the charter.
As sound and television broadcast programmes are, under the charter, the principal objects of the corporation, I for one am at a loss to understand how the Secretary of State can discharge that obligation without reference to the content of those programmes. That is all that the BBC does. If a programme which is broadcast by the BBC offends against the charter or against the licence and agreement, the Home Secretary is empowered to require the BBC to remedy the matter. How can he possibly do that without (to use the chosen phrase) "interfering in the content of the programme"? It is the content of the programme that is at issue.
Let us look at the licence and agreement which is issued in conjunction with the charter. The current licence and agreement is promulgated under a Treasury minute dated 2nd April 1981 granting a new licence to run coterminously with the Royal Charter—that is to say, from 1st August 1981 to 31st December 1996. Like the Royal Charter, it is subject to revocation in the event of non-observance by the BBC of either the charter or the licence.
One of the conditions upon which the licence and agreement is granted is set out in the preamble. It states:
"and whereas by a resolution dated the 8th January 1981 and annexed hereto the Corporation has renewed the assurances previously given in respect of the general standards of programmes broadcast by the Corporation".
That is a part of the preamble and it means that the BBC's resolution to which it refers is an integral and essential part of the licence. It is a part of the conditions upon which the licence is issued and the charter continues in force. The relevant passage from that BBC resolution for the purpose of my Motion this evening is as follows:
"The Board recall that it has always been their object to treat controversial subjects with due impartiality and they intend to continue this policy both in the Corporations news services and in the more general field of programmes dealing with matters of public policy".
Perhaps I may point out at this juncture that the words contained in that resolution:
"the more general field of programmes dealing with matters of public policy",
bring such programmes as drama-documentaries within the scope of the resolution and therefore, by extension, within the scope of the licence and agreement.
If I have misunderstood the position I hope that the Minister will put me right when he comes to reply, but as I understand it, one of the conditions of the continuation of the charter and the licence and agreement is that the corporation shall treat all controversial subjects with due impartiality. If it does not, it appears to me that it is clearly within the power of the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Royal Charter to take the necessary action. I repeat that I entirely fail to understand how the Secretary of State can do that if he rejects any responsibility for the content of the BBC's programmes. It is only a programme or some part of a programme which can offend in that respect.
It is my contention that the corporation has, for some time, systematically contravened the requirement for impartiality. I could recite a long list of plays, documentaries, news and current affairs programmes on both radio and television which could not, without making a mockery of the English language, be described as impartial; and here let me say that the concept of the balancing programme is in my view a confidence trick. If the corporation transmits one biased and partial programme and then balances it with another biased the other way, what you have is two biased and partial programmes.
That gives rise to the kind of mental confusion which leads spokesmen of the corporation to remark from time to time that if they are attacked for bias from both sides of the political spectrum they must be
248
doing something right. The real implication is that they are doing everything wrong. The duty laid upon them in the constitutional documents is clear. It is to treat controversial subjects with impartiality; not to be partial in one direction on one occasion and in a different direction on another.
I should like to use as a brief case study one programme—the so-called play entitled "Airbase", broadcast on 1st March 1988 and the subject of my original starred Question. This is, as I have said, not an isolated case but merely one of a long succession of controversial programmes in drama, drama-documentary and current affairs. I shall not waste time with the artistic merits of "Airbase", since it had none which I could discern. One can only marvel at the intellectual impoverishment of those who write and produce such stuff and at the motives of those who allow it to be broadcast. My concern today is with its relevance to the requirements of the BBC's charter and licence.
In order to determine the relevance, it is necessary to answer two simple questions. First, did the programme deal with a controversial subject? The answer must surely be "yes". There are few more controversial subjects than the presence of American nuclear bombers on British soil. Secondly, did it treat the subject with due impartiality? Its main proposition was that the pilots and officers of the American bombers on this base were foul-mouthed, irresponsible morons who flew their operational missions under the influence of drugs. There was not one single character in the play who was not psychologically, morally or intellectually defective.
There was, furthermore, a clear inference, which the author and producer must have known to be utterly false, that biological weapons were stockpiled at the base. In fact, the entire production was an intemperate, sustained and malevolent attack upon a group of servicemen whose bearing, behaviour and motivation, as anyone who knows them will readily confirm, are of a very high standard, and who make a vital contribution to the security of the free world.
One of the lines of defence advanced by apologists for the corporation in this case is that it was "only a work of fiction". In this context, it may be worth calling the attention of your Lordships to an article which appeared in Radio Times, an organ of the BBC, in the issue which advertised the programme. In that article a journalist was commissioned and allowed to add his own measure of poisonous drivel to the mixture under a headline including the words "Just like the real McCoy" and to say of the play, among other things, that:
"it may seem paradoxically exaggerated, but that is all part of its accuracy."
It is difficult then, to resist the conclusion that the BBC allowed to be broadcast in its programme and its official organ a treatment of a controversial matter which was in clear contravention of the terms of its licence and of the Royal Charter. I am sure that other noble Lords speaking in the debate will have no difficulty in recalling other programmes which have offended in similar ways. I shall leave that to them.
Before I conclude, I should like to ask the Minister, when he comes to reply, to answer a number of quite specific questions, of which I have given him notice,

249
since this Motion is intended to be contructive and not in any way abrasive or mischievous. Does the Minister accept that under the charter the Home Secretary has a responsibility to ensure that the BBC observes its requirements and those of the licence? Does he accept that impartiality in the treatment of controversial subjects is one of those requirements? Does he agree that it is impossible to ensure impartiality without becoming involved in or at least interested in the content of the programme? Can he assure the House that the Government will in future desist from claiming that they have no right to interfere in the programmes of the BBC when it is clear under the terms of the charter and licence that in certain circumstances they have a clear obligation to do so?
Finally, I have a more specific message for the Minister, of which I have also given notice. In order to deliver it I must return to Article 20 of the Royal Charter and draw his attention to the following words. I paraphrase the words this time because to quote them in full would be time-consuming and perhaps even confusing. The charter says that "If it is made to appear to our Secretary of State on the representation of any person that there is reasonable cause to suppose that any of the provisions of the charter have not been observed, he may take the actions prescribed in the charter".
I am now making that representation under the provisions of the charter and am formally representing to the Secretary of State through the Minister that such reasonable cause exists. If as a result of that representation the Home Secretary decides to take no action, it will be clear that it is because he decides not to and not because he has no power to do so. The power is there under the terms of the charter and the licence.
Will the Minister therefore now ask the Secretary of State whether he will take the action clearly prescribed in the charter to ensure that the corporation shall in future comply with its responsibilities and refrain from permitting the broadcast of such programmes as "Airbase"? Will he further remind anyone in the BBC or elsewhere who still believes that the corporation has no responsibility to anyone but itself that the extreme penalty for failure to comply may in certain circumstances be the revocation of the licence by the Government and of the charter by the Queen in council. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.43 p.m.
Viscount De L'Isle: My Lords, I think most of us agree that this is a timely debate; we are grateful to the noble Lord who has just sat down. There have been many developments in broadcasting and the BBC has enjoyed its privileged position for no less than 60 years. I well remember the debate in this House in the early 1950s when it was proposed that Parliament should license commercial television. I shall never forget how Lord Reith, with the zeal of an Old Testament prophet, resisted that proposition.
In discussing the BBC's responsibilities, it is useful to look at an interesting document published by the corporation as Appendix 6 to its annual report for
250
1986–87. That document offers a number of explanations and comments on the corporation's constitution and organisation. It describes, as the noble Lord has just described, the Home Secretary's power to veto under the licence. However, it proceeds to point out that never yet have those powers been invoked, even when there have been very severe criticisms of editorial decisions taken by the BBC. The document cites Suez and the Falklands war.
As we read on, we find that under the licence,
"The corporation shall at all times refrain from sending out broadcast matters expressing the opinions of the corporation on current affairs or on matters of policy".
The appendix comments:
"Newspapers may editorialise on any subject, broadcasting authorities are specifically prevented from doing so".
By "editorialise" I suppose is meant ex parte and attributable statements of views and opinions. The appendix proceeds:
"Not only the BBC may not express views of its own, it would not do so under its long established rule of impartiality".
It is explained that,
"An essential ingredient is fairness. The opportunities for all parties to controversy or debate to put their case. … Balance and fairness arise naturally out of the BBC's obligation to avoid expressing editorial opinions".
Yet as we read on we discover that precept and practice are at odds. We are told that there are some important qualifications to the concept of balance. We discover that,
"Balance may not always be the appropriate means of achieving impartiality".
We reach this significant statement:
"It used to be thought that every programme on a controversial subject must be balanced within itself. Experience shows, however, that too much emphasis on balance within a single programme could confuse the audience".
In support of that thesis is quoted the dictum from a former director general of the BBC, Sir Hugh Carleton-Greene:
"We have to balance different points of view in our programmes but not necessarily within each individual programme. Nothing is more stultifying than a current affairs programme in which all the opposing opinions cancel each other out. Sometimes one has to use that method, but in general it makes for greater liveliness and impact if the balance can be achieved over a period, perhaps within a series of related programmes".
One can see how readily justifications can be found for by-passing that fundamental condition of the licence. What is more, in this document impartiality is expressly discarded in what are called "access programmes". These, we are told, set out to offer personal views. And the document cites a series some time ago by the late James Cameron called "One Pair of Eyes". It is a persuasive example. One cannot help wondering whether it was the late Mr. Cameron's virulent anti-Americanism which attracted the talks section.
It may be that it is not necessary for the BBC to editorialise. The corporation's collective mind set can be better conveyed to listeners by the choice of programme makers and editors, by news items, correspondents and speakers like Mr. Cameron. Few can doubt that a large, powerful and influential corporation as is the BBC, with its great resources, has developed its own collective attitudes to public policies and current events which it is anxious to

251
promulgate. As the document illustrates, by professing a duty as well as a willingness not to editorialise, the corporation avoids accepting onus for the timing and content of broadcast matter which the members of its staff put out on its behalf, no matter how irresponsible and damaging in the national interest. Controversial opinion and statements can only be effectively countered immediately and in the same programme. Counter-arguments, if offered later, are heard by different audiences knowing little or nothing of the points to be answered, and no meaningful debate is possible. Authors of controversial current affairs programmes mounted on the principles of Sir Hugh Carleton Greene are allowed possession of the field long enough for their purposes.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, has eloquently pointed out the responsibilities of the Home Secretary. It is my view—perhaps he does not share it—that in practice not only has the Home Secretary not exercised his authority but that he will not exercise it because it will never be accepted in the general political world that his veto of BBC programmes is quasi-judicial. We saw lately the hubbub that emerged about Mr. Brittan's persuasion over a programme on Northern Ireland.
Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, has pointed out, the Home Secretary has but one shot in his locker—suspension. It is inconceivable that in time of peace any government would move thus far, despite their obligations. The BBC's position is one of entrenched privilege, unrestrained. And it is judge of its own performance. It is, indeed, subject to the general body of criminal law, but on its own powers in practice it is sovereign and unassailable.
The appendix I have quoted reveals clearly the BBC's ambivalent attitude to the licence and charter. I agree with those who propose that at an early date the charter and licence should be replaced by a statute which would make the BBC answerable to the courts of law in respect of its own obligations and performance.
5.52 p.m.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, I shall not discuss the programme "Airbase", which seems to me too small a wart to be worthy of the expensive time of this House. I should like to look at some more general principles at stake.
We are naturally concerned with broadcasting in general, and the BBC in particular, because it represents a very special power in national life—the power to communicate with the whole population. Indeed, it is the main single channel of communication available, used between and within the whole nation. It has a potential unequalled for influence over the nation's mind for good or ill. If good, the influence will enrich society; if bad, it may degrade our society. Only a privileged few have that power in Britain—a few channels of television, relatively a few wavelengths of radio—and the BBC is primus among those privileged. It is therefore right for us to be concerned about the BBC and how it meets its obligations, though it is not right to be obsessed with its minor warts.
252
The obligations of the BBC are not just to meet or to massage some political preferences but primarily, and much more importantly, to provide quality in programmes. Impartiality is part of it, but only part. Quality of course is difficult to judge. It is subjective. But most of us know quality when it is there—and especially when it is not there. I was recently in the United States and, watching their television, I knew that quality was not there. I have just returned from Australia, and I knew it was not sufficiently there. I am sometimes in Italy, and I know that it is not there at all. Why? What do they have in common? They have in common the greatest degree of private ownership and the least degree of public service broadcasting in the advanced world. The correlation between public service broadcasting and programme quality is very high.
I believe that the BBC is still the supreme example of a public broadcasting service by its range of programmes, its national coverage and its truth, integrity and independence—some of which is polluted by political or commercial pressures—which are vitally linked to the independence and adequacy of its revenues.
In Britain ITV exhibits those characteristics too. I believe that that is partly the regulatory hand of the IBA, but it is especially because the BBC long before set a benchmark of quality for it. Having said that, of course the BBC is not perfect. It is very imperfect. It is surely impossible for such a large corporation to be perfect. Some of us are imperfect; I enjoy being very imperfect. The companies we work for make mistakes. We should not set impossible standards for a corporation of that size.
It is right that it should be criticised and that it should definitely be held accountable. We know how it has erred in an opposite direction in the past. It is right that the BBC should be required to change and adapt. It must become more commercial especially and more efficient. What worries some of us—and I felt that the tone of some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, might reinforce those worries, though he was not the source of them—are certain rumours and vibes that Her Majesty's Government want not adaptation but destruction, driven by a rather crude ideology of market economics and alleged consumer preference and also by what I believe are exaggerated allegations of Left-wing bias. I share the noble Lord's anger whenever I hear them, but I believe that they are exaggerated.
The Government aim to destroy the alleged duopoly power of the BBC and ITV. I believe that that would be wanton hooliganism. The BBC is by practical standards a precious national asset, however flawed and however irritating. Overseas, as the chairman of the Peacock Committee discovered—I imagine not to his surprise—foreigners envy it. They think that we are mad to contemplate damaging it. Sadly, there are now very few areas of human life in which Britain exhibits excellence and leads the world. We still lead the world in the theatre. We once led the world in the universities, but I think we no longer do so. I am told that we lead the world at snooker. Broadcasting remains pre-eminent, and we should not vandalise it.

253
We should be wary of hypercritics and pseudo-reformers in this field—those from the far Left, those who want state party propaganda and those from the far Right who want broadcasting as propaganda for the established order and who become paranoid about any radical criticism. The BBC is nowhere near being a vehicle of Comintern; nor do we want it to become a subsidiary of the CIA. It dissatisfies and irritates us all, and it will continue to do so. That is its job. It will err towards bias, because perfect balance is very difficult to achieve, but we should remember that one man's bias is another man's fair criticism, as we often appreciate in this House.
We should not be obsessed by these minor imperfections but should put them in perspective. Let us remember what Thomas Jefferson said about a healthy democracy needing a free, healthy and critical journalism. We need that. The BBC is still the best broadcasting service in the world, however flawed, and in practice is better than anything else on offer.
Would we prefer the proprietor of the The Times to be running our television? While it meets its true obligations, which are to produce a large number of high quality programmes—although not all high quality programmes; that is not humanly possible—we should count ourselves lucky. It has been very imperfect in the more recent past but it now has a new management team. It is beginning to take a more commercial approach. It has to do so much more, and we should support it. We should stop harassing it. We should resist the philistines who wish to destroy public broadcasting in Britain or those who exhibit very narrow obsessions with very minor parts of its activities.
6 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I follow the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue. I listened to the indictment of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, with great care. Of course he is right. As anyone who has read the charter of the BBC knows, it provides the Government with all the powers that even the Greek dictators would have wanted to hold over a broadcasting organisation. It can veto programmes; it can insist on programmes; it appoints the board of governors; it has all the power to control the BBC which it cares to use.
In the same way in our parliamentary system Parliament is sovereign. There are no restraints on what Parliament could do if it cared to do it. But liberties in this country must depend, and always have depended, on self-restraint on the part of the Government and of the population. The noble Lord urges the Home Secretary to exercise his powers in the BBC. If he were to do so he would be replacing the board of governors which on his behalf exercises those powers as a buffer between political influence and impartiality.
If one involves a Secretary of State in the daily affairs of the BBC by previewing, or in other ways, in the way that Mr. Brittan unfortunately involved himself in "Real Lives"—which, as people who saw it subsequently will remember was a curiously inoffensive and balanced programme, although not a
254
very interesting one—one runs into real difficulties and dangers. We should not abandon the self-restraint which is the only foundation on which the liberty of this country depends.
I do not expect that any argument that I can deploy will convince the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, that the BBC is not a nest of subversives planning to undermine the institutions and the liberties of this country and to hand them over to some extraordinary body of people.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, the noble Lord need not convince anyone of that point. It has never been an article of my faith that the BBC is a nest of subversives. This is a very specific point on the provisions of the charter. I hope that he will not misrepresent my views.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, the provisions of the charter are absolutely clear. No one denies that. The question is whether those provisions should be deployed on account of one programme.
The noble Lord has said elsewhere that he can produce a mass of evidence that this is a systematic process. If that evidence comes from the Media Monitoring Unit he will not find that it convinces many uinbiased persons. If we want the opinion of unbiased persons on the Media Monitoring Unit and the evidence that it produces, perhaps I may refer to the Sunday Telegraph, which is hardly a Left-wing paper, and Brenda Maddox, who is hardly a Left-wing columnist, who writes that the researcher was not a professional. The MMU endeavour was unintellectual and naive in its methods. Not only was just one pair of eyes used. There was no allowance made for the entirely different intent of programmes. One will not find anyone who is professional in sampling or monitoring programmes who will accept the evidence of the MMU. It was openly and self-confessedly a body set up by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. I think I am right that he was chairman of it. It is said that he raised the money for it in the City. Is he denying all connection with the MMU?
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again. I would not have done so had he not invited me to. Nothing that I have said tonight has any relevance to the Media Monitoring Unit. None of my evidence comes from it. I have not referred to it. It is totally irrelevant to my argument.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I only assumed that the noble Lord was referring to it when he said that he had systematic evidence to back up his statement. If it was not that, it would be interesting to know what the evidence is. Perhaps he will let me have it. I apologise if the Media Monitoring Unit was not the source of the information on which he was basing his argument. However, I do not expect to convince him by any argument that I can deploy that his fears are exaggerated.
There is, however, in the debate, a useful function that can be performed. The noble Earl who will answer the debate may be able to give us some information about the Government's plans for broadcasting and in particular the Broadcasting

255
Standards Council. This was announced six months ago since when we have had no terms of reference. We have had no chairman appointed. There is a multiplicity of rumours as to what its powers are to be. It is said that it may pronounce on individual programmes. It is said that those pronouncements will have to be broadcast. It is also said that it will preview programmes and if necessary have the power to ban them. These are rumours, but they are rumours because there is no hard information. It would be very useful if the noble Earl in answering the debate can tell us where matters stand.
Another rumour in connection with the Broadcasting Standards Council is that Sir William Rees-Mogg is to become its chairman. Sir William Rees-Mogg has many merits but understanding broadcasting is not one of them. In addition he has an unconcealed dislike and contempt for the BBC. If Sir William Rees-Mogg, who was intimately involved in the "Real Lives" fiasco, is appointed it will confirm the fears of those of us who feel that the Government are not interested in supporting the BBC as an institution on which we lay great value, which is of great importance to this country and whose independence should be maintained.
Secondly, if the Broadcasting Standards Council is set up with those powers, one cannot understand what the function of a board of governors is. The board of governors is responsible for defending the public interest, for seeing that the BBC carries out its duties under the charter and for appointing its leading personnel. If over and above the board of governors one places a broadcasting standards council to oversee it, it seems to me that one is dispersing responsibility and running a very great danger of undermining the independence of the BBC.
6.9 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Ely: My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity provided me by this short debate which we owe to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. I put my name down to speak in order to say one thing in respect of a single area of the BBC's responsibilities under the Royal Charter: religious broadcasting. I hope that my brief intervention will not seem irrelevant to the very specific question that the noble Lord is raising.
My most recent experience of the BBC in the field of religious broadcasting was in Holy Week and Easter of this year. I was part of the BBC's output, if I may so put it, at that time. Some noble Lords may even have seen the BBC television presentation of "Songs of Praise" from Ely Cathedral on Easter Day. I was in my place in the cathedral for the two long evenings during which the programme was made. I was moved afterwards to write to the Head of Religious Programmes, BBC Television, to ask him to convey to all concerned my appreciation of the seriousness, sensitivity and tone of all that was done in the cathedral and in the personal interviews which were filmed in the making of that programme. I think that a true religious dimension came through the programme as presented, and many people have told me that they were grateful for it. We in Ely felt that great respect had been paid to our cathedral and what it stood for.
256
I cannot speak of other parts of the BBC's programmes in Holy Week and Easter with the same first hand knowledge. I am not able to follow them as I would, but I looked carefully at the whole schedule of programmes as set out and there can be no question that they were designed to offer a serious and Christian presentation; scriptural, devotional, meditative, musical and reflective in ways pertinent for today. There was not one that I should not have wished to hear or see. I am told, on the religious front to which I confine myself in these brief remarks, that the one complaint received by the BBC about the ordering of programmes in that particular week was from a humanist who felt that there had been too great an emphasis on a Christian presentation. I am moved to hope that the day will never come when on a plea for impartiality pressed hard the BBC would feel inhibited from casting up such a programme. Perhaps I am wrong even to think of such a thing.
I rose to speak on a limited point. I am grateful for the opportunity to have paid a tribute where I believe a tribute to be due.
6.11 p.m.
Lord Annan: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, will know that I have some sympathy with the views he has been expressing because I believe that there is a tiny clique of producers and writers who produce programmes that consistently denigrate not just the policy of the Government but the authority of the state and our country's foreign policy. Its objective is to cover these with slime. It is not an accident that the producer of "Tumbledown" is the same man who produced "The Monocled Mutineer", which was a programme compounded of malevolent falsehood.
However, the whole output of the BBC is not infected. Did the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, by any chance see "The Trial of Sir Roger Hollis" a few weeks ago? A fairer or more serious presentation of the evidence could not have been devised. Did he see a year ago in March 1987 the "Panorama" programme on the Brent council? "Panorama" is often attacked as being Left-wing, but every shot of those local councillors arguing for their so-called anti-racist and anti-sexist policies must have lost the Labour Party hundreds of votes.
I do not agree with the noble Lord about due impartiality. This was discussed at length in the report of the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting. Due impartiality is different from neutrality and balance. One can achieve a balanced output during a general election, but it would be impossible to do that week in and week out. It means reflecting different views even if those views are biased to one side. But it also means providing a wide range of views and taking into account the weight of opinion holding those views. In our report we said:
"While it is right that the accepted orthodoxy should be challenged, equally it is essential that the established view should be clearly and fully put".
It is that which Lord Chalfont, and I too at times, have felt that the BBC have been failing to do.
I did not see "Airbase" but I am fully prepared to accept that it was every bit as offensive as the noble

257
Lord, Lord Chalfont, and others have said. But I do not know whether he was too busy when he was a Minister of the Crown in the 1960s to attend the debates in your Lordships' House on the abolition of the Lord Chamberlain's censorship of the theatre. In those debates it was revealed that the Lord Chamberlain's office censored as a matter of course any play which was anti-American. I cannot really believe that the noble Lord wants to go back to those clays. There is evidence of course that some matters in that offensive programme had a basis of fact. For instance, the American armed forces in the Vietnam war did go in for drug taking.
I said that the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, was right in saying that the BBC had sailed off course. To bring the ship back, what did the Government do? They appointed Mr. Hussey as admiral and the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, as vice-admiral. The first thing the two admirals did was to dismiss the captain of the ship and to appoint Mr. Checkland to command the ship. He in turn appointed the first officer of the watch, Mr. John Birt. That has led to the retirement of a number of recalcitrant officers. Finally, the Director-General has made the brilliant appointment of Mr. Paul Fox. He has persuaded him to come back to be Director of Television.
There cannot be a change of course overnight. I think the new team was right to tackle news and current affairs first, but when they come to drama I hope that the critics here tonight will not censure the BBC for dramatising Dickens. Dickens was denounced by the upper classes in his time for being vulgar and biased because he attacked the new Poor Law in Oliver Twist, and the Civil Service in Little Dorris. Your Lordships will remember the Circumlocution Office. Of course Dickens was unfair. Of course he was inconsistent. One moment he was attacking the government for doing nothing and the next he was attacking them for interfering. People who crusade against misery are always unfair in the eyes of politicians and civil servants, because they are the people who have to cope with that misery.
The Motion before the House suggests that the Government should now intervene to revoke the Charter or, at the very least, to wave a mailed fist in the BBC's face. I cannot conceive of anything more disastrous. I was greatly relieved at Question Time last month to hear the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers—who was as indignant as anyone against the "Airbase" programme—say with great firmness that the Government had no intention of intervening.
It is no good picking on individual programmes. What is needed is a six-month survey of all current affairs, features and drama programmes that the BBC puts out. The survey must be both dispassionate and sophisticated. Anyone who wants to indict the BBC has to do that. It does not require much wit to set up such an inquiry. It requires a little money, but I have no doubt that if the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, called for funds they would pour in.
The most important quality of such a survey must be due impartiality. There are madmen on the Right who see reds under every bed and there are madmen on the Left who see American conspiracies and the
258
evil hand of the Prime Minister in every public action. Call for and set up an audit. If after six months the audit shows that the BBC is in the red then force the governors to explain why that is so. But keep the Government out of such an inquiry for their own sake. Let us not follow the French example: there whenever there is a change of Government all the major executives in broadcasting are promptly sacked.
6.18 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, it is always nice to follow the noble Lord, Lord Annan, because he speaks with such éclat. I am sorry that time does not allow one—in cutting down a speech which was meant to be 15 minutes, but now has to be seven and a half minutes—to undertake the niceties and the politenesses and, incidentally, to praise the very good things which come out of the BBC as well as certain transgressions.
I want to concentrate on the lack of impartiality in BBC drama. The noble Lord mentioned Dickens. I remind him that Dickens was not controlled by a charter and a licence, so he had rather more freedom than the BBC has on impartiality. I want to concentrate on the controversy surrounding the forthcoming screening by the BBC of the play "Tumbledown". This was written by an experienced Left-Wing playwright, George Wood, and is produced for the BBC by Richard Broke. Curiously enough, Mr. Richard Broke was also the producer of the "Monocled Mutineer" in which the pernicious practice of inextricably interweaving fact and fiction was similarly employed. There was a time—and we all remember it well—when responsible dramatists were keen to emphasise, when presenting works of fiction, that any resemblance between the characters portrayed and real people, either live or dead, was purely coincidental. We remember those words. It appears that radical playwrights, producers and some members working for the BBC drama department are at pains to intertwine truth with falsehood as inseparably as possible.
Let us consider "The Monocled Mutineer". The series was first broadcast in 1986 and I see that it has been scheduled for repeat. Mr. Putkowski was the series' consultant and he felt it necessary to disclaim responsibility. He declared that this story of a First World War mutiny in France was fictitious and that scenes of' British soldiers raping uniformed women were totally out of place and unjust. He said that is was "riddled with errors". He made that point before the programme was broadcast and divorced himself from it.
In its promotional material for this caricature of events the BBC at first prominently claimed that it was an accurate account. I am glad to say that it later climbed down from that claim. With respect, it was nothing of the kind. As Paul Johnson rightly noted:
"it was another piece of agitprop to inflame class hatred and denigrate Britain".
Now Mr. Richard Broke is back using his preferred formula of real people and fictional events in "Tumbledown", a programme which we are to see shortly. Once again the central character is a real

259
person. In this case it is Lieutenant Robert Lawrence, formerly of the Scots Guards, who received the Military Cross and a desperately serious wound.
Charles Wood's published screenplay gives many instructions to the director stating that he should dwell on the horrendous wounds sustained during the Falklands War. I quote from page 38:
"His hair and head are still matted with blood and dirt. The stitching of his scalp has left great black, rough stitches over the front and a gobbet of brain protruding behind. Pink fluid oozes all the time from his head. The pillow is soaked with it …".
That is not the kind of thing that one wishes to have shown in the homesteads of our country. With respect, it should be possible to horrify people with initimate filming and it could be with horrific details of wounds inflicted on soldiers in any battle, in any war, no matter how just the cause for which the war was being fought.
Yet this play will be a statement about the Falklands War. It will be a statement about specific events and individuals in which and with whom Lieutenant Lawrence was involved. However, all the while the BBC will seek to claim, as they have already, that, despite the naming of the central character, the rest of the film is fictional. The right honourable George Younger, Minister of Defence, has said that he is, deeply unhappy about the mixing of fact with fiction. Understandably the Scots Guards have serious misgivings.
The Curteis play is quite a different kettle of fish. It was personally commissioned by the then Director General of the BBC, Alistair Milne. Mr. Curteis, the author of more than 80 plays and series on television over 20 years, spent a year writing and researching it. He took the trouble of interviewing senior politicians, civil servants and military men. He was gratified to receive a letter from the BBC Director General in June 1986, stating:
"I have now read 'The Falklands Play' and it makes a terrific story, as one would expect".
He added:
"your work has enriched the BBC".
However, according to Mr. Curteis's account in the Guardian on 20th September 1986, the then BBC head of plays, Peter Goodchild, visited him for five hours after seeing the script. To quote from the Guardian, he said that Curteis should:
"consider rewriting some of the War Cabinet scenes to show the decisions being taken by politicians on military matters and tailoring them in order to win the next General Election or to influence the next General Election".
That is a quotation directly attributed by Mr. Curteis as having been spoken to him by the head of BBC television plays. Mr. Curteis also reported how Mr. Goodchild had sounded him out, and again I quote:
"about cutting those aspects of Mrs. Thatcher's character that showed her as womanly and caring … while leaving in those aspects that projected her as hard and domineering".
It is now nearly a year since the general election. The historically-based "Falklands Play" by Ian Curteis has been cancelled by the BBC. The fictionalised "Tumbledown" is to be shown shortly. Its author, Charles Wood, once declared:
"I am not interested in writers who are not subversive".
260
When it commissioned him to undertake the play the BBC must have known that he was dedicated to that attitude of life.
Although the BBC has made efforts to tighten editorial control and honour its obligations, too many current affairs and drama programmes are slipping through the net. Although the spirit at the top is willing, I cannot help feeling that some staff at the workface seem delighted to disregard their professional standards and the obligations of the corporation. It cannot be an accident that current affairs series, such as the six programmes undertaken by Duncan Campbell or the six programmes undertaken by Helena Kennedy, both of whom have strong Left-wing connections, are commissioned by the BBC. "Airbase" is a pathetic and bad example. When one comes to drama, "The Monocled Mutineer" and "Tumbledown" have very different approaches and very different treatments from that accorded to the "Falklands Play" which has been cancelled.
Those are examples. I know that there is a lot which is good but we must ensure that the BBC Royal charter and licence for impartiality is honoured. No noble Lords have dared put forward any solutions but I put these forward succinctly. Either the Government must revise the charter and licence or issue something in its place, or we must set up a regulatory authority so that in future the BBC is no longer judge and jury on its own account.
6.27 p.m.
Lord Swann: My Lords, it is nearly eight years since I was chairman of the BBC. Much in this debate carried me back to the kind of issues I had to wrestle with all too frequently. Before I say a little about them I should first like to thank my noble friend Lord Bonham-Carter, who battled with me in the BBC. I echo most strongly what he said about the proposed Broadcasting Standards Council. It is either very silly or very dangerous. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, who I thought showed an unusually extensive understanding of how the BBC actually works. Finally, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Annan, who has saved me from saying a number of things that I wanted to say by saying them much better than I could have done.
I shall not take on the role of defending the BBC. There is no need for me to do that because, to some extent, the BBC has already stated where it believes it has gone wrong. The director general and the chairman have already said that they believed "Airbase" was second-rate. They were very annoyed with the Radio Times for publishing an article purporting to claim that it was factual. As noble Lords may know, the editorial control of the Radio Times has been notably stiffened up. If it is any comfort to the noble Lords, Lord Chalfont and Lord Orr-Ewing, the programme had an abysmally low viewing audience and one of the lowest audience appreciation indices that there has ever been.
Curiously enough, the same cannot be said of "The Monocled Mutineer", about which an article was also published claiming that it was factual. I saw one

261
programme of the series, although this was almost two years ago and I rather forget, but its audience figures were quite impressive. They started at almost 8 million and by the fourth programme they were at almost 10 million. The audience appreciation rose steadily to a very high figure.
One can make of that what one will. The programme was about a very nasty subject—war—and inevitably it was rather nasty. Are we perhaps never to show the realities of war? Having been in one, I should not like to see a shrinking from it. I shall riot go into the complicated ins and outs of the director general commissioning the Ian Curteis play on the Falkland Islands and what has subsequently happened. All I can say is that my erstwhile friends present it a little differently from the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing.
However, I should like to say that I detect a couple of familiar factors. One is that a mixture of fact and fiction is invariably dangerous. On these occasions it was clearly not treated with the care it should have been. In the BBC circles it has a name: "faction". It has always been a source of trouble and I shall refer to how these things are looked at in a moment.
I also recognise—and I think it has something to do with the fact that we have had a Conservative Government for a long time—that people forget what happens when we have a Labour Government. Indeed, having been through two or three changes of party in my time at the BBC, I recall precisely how the volume of complaint switched overnight from one direction to the other. Of course, a lot of bias is in the eye of the beholder.
With that in mind and because it raises one or two other points which I wish to follow up, I want to read what a previous Labour Prime Minister said when opening a new BBC building in Manchester at a time when I was chairman. It was Mr. Callaghan, who is now the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan. He said:
"In this country it is the broadcasting organisations which are responsible for programme content. Sometimes your decisions and actions give me pain, and I find myself having to explain to overseas countries, when they are hurt by what you say about them, that the Government does not control you. Even when I have convinced them of this, they still think the Government could do something to stop you if it had the will. I then go on to say that, domestically, you and we sometimes have differences, but that none of these differences has ever disturbed the fundamental principle that the influential medium of broadcasting is free from political control and will so remain".
Of course, I accept that the Home Secretary and the Government have an absolute power of veto over what the BBC puts out. However, I believe it is to the eternal credit of successive governments that this power has never been invoked. For if it ever were to be invoked it would make it that much easier for the same or subsequent governments to do so again and again. That is the classic slippery slope that leads slowly but surely down to the precipice of totalitarian control.
I also deplore the noble Lord's wish to see governmental interference in programmes for another quite different reason, which has to do with the BBC's External Services. All over the world those are regarded as perhaps the foremost jewel in the BBC's crown. They have an enormous international audience; in a great many countries they are regarded as the only source of reliable news and comment; and
262
in many countries they are listened to in spite of heavy penalties for anyone caught doing so.
However, as some of your Lordships will know—and as the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, was once a foreign affairs consultant to the BBC I feel sure that he also will know—there is a continuing stream of denigration of the BBC's External Services from the governments of ideologically hostile countries attempting to make the case that the BBC is simply putting out clever government-controlled propaganda. If the Government were ever to start interfering with programmes, any programmes, they would indeed be making the hostile governments' case for them. Moreover, as I know all too well from my time at the BBC, that interference would not pass unnoticed. Hostile governments keep a very sharp eye on these things. In short, government interference with the BBC's independence would damage the BBC's international standing rapidly and irreparably and would do much harm to the national interest.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, is clearly convinced that the BBC is in the grip of a Left-wing conspiracy. I have to repudiate that notion totally. Nor can I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Annan, that there is a clique of people doing this sort of thing. The BBC has a powerful ethos, even though, all too frequently, it does not live up to it. Of course, in the BBC there are extensive methods for trying to catch up with that. There is the procedure of upward reference. To deal with trouble there was set up in my time what we called the early warning system, and from time to time no doubt these things need to be stiffened up. I used to have to do that and I have no doubt that Lord Reith had to do it too, because there were terrible rumpuses even in his day, contrary to general belief.
One has to keep some perspective on this. There are 15,000 hours of television put out by the BBC a year, as well as 200,000 hours of domestic radio, and the staff would have to be archangels if they were never to make silly mistakes or errors of judgment. Given that some 50 million people of highly diverse views watch or listen fairly regularly, it is inevitable that many people will be annoyed for a few hours per annum and a few people annoyed for a lot of hours per annum. Among them, it would seem to me, are the noble Lords, Lord Chalfont and Lord Orr-Ewing. I regard that as a small price to pay for maintaining the integrity of the BBC's uniquely influential External Services and preserving the essential element of a free society: namely, the freedom of the media.
6.37 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Swann, has told us quite rightly that a mixture of fact and fiction is always dangerous. The problem is that fiction presented as fact and viewed as such in millions of homes is bound to distort the opinions of people—nearly all open-minded people—in those homes. The noble Lord also said that he thought, quite rightly, that the Government's power under the charter has not so far been invoked and he said that he hoped it never would be. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, has invited my noble friend to say—in

263
addition to the other questions he wants answering—that the Government will ask the BBC to comply with the charter in future.
If your Lordships will bear with me, I wish to examine this matter by giving evidence about "Airbase". I have lived in the diocese of Ely—although not in the old county of the Isle of Ely—within a mile of the perimeter of one of the largest operational air bases in Europe, Alconbury, since it started in 1955 and I was there for 10 years before that. I remained MP for Huntingdonshire for the first 24 years that that base was operational. During that time I visited it several times a year for one reason or another and I got to know many members of the United States Air Force from the rank of colonel downwards. I say without hesitation that in my experience every man whom I came across was a splendid man. I did not come across any others. They were highly skilled technically, as they had to be, and were rather serious. They were good family men and nearly all had their families living with them on the base, where several hundred American children were receiving an all-American education, and doing so without making any demands on our own system.
On one occasion I flew with the United States Air Force to and from Germany in one of their aircraft to visit their headquarters in Frankfurt and West Berlin. From my knowledge of American airmen, which is spread over nearly a quarter of a century, I can assure your Lordships that I never saw any sign of indiscipline, although naturally there was some minor indiscipline from time to time. I did not see any drunkenness and I was never conscious of any depravity. The film "Airbase" gave an utterly false impression of men who had left their own country to help to defend ours and to help to keep the peace of the world.
An apology is owed to the United States Air Force by the BBC. I do not know whether any such apology has even been hinted at, but I certainly think that one is due. Of course, the question arises as to whether an apology is owed on behalf of the people of this country. If that is so, only the Government could give it. That brings us to the problem already mentioned, that the Government would then be in the position for the first time of criticising the BBC and, it could be said, of interfering with its activities, although ex post facto.
I hope that this debate may have served the purpose of bringing home to the television authorities that they sometimes run a risk in the kinds of programmes that they present. When the risk is confined to opinions affecting what we do in this country among ourselves perhaps it matters less, but when they run the risk of offending those of our allies who were in this country helping us defend it, then I regard it as an extremely dangerous matter and full justification for what the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and other noble Lords have said.
I am sure that the noble Lords, Lord Swann and Lord Annan, with all their experience and authority, would agree that, however interpreted, impartiality and balance can be achieved only on the basis of true
264
facts. Accuracy is essential before sound judgments can be reached. But if those responsible in the BBC and in the IBA merely assume that the principle of freedom of speech allows facts to be distorted or extreme prejudice to become acceptable, in my opinion they are failing in the trust which is given to them.
6.43 p.m.
Lord Kagan: My Lords, I agree absolutely with what the noble Lord, Lord Renton, has just said. I saw the film "Airbase" as an ordinary viewer. I did not believe what I saw, and I chose to see it a second time. I did not believe that the BBC could commission or screen such a so-called drama; but it did. Not since the days of Hitler's media controller, Goebbels, have I seen such a vicious, tendentious misrepresentation of a group of people, in this case American airmen. Perhaps I may be forgiven for feeling rather strongly because I survived the last war not least because of the intervention of the Americans, without whom Europe would not have kept its freedom.
As the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said, to allow such distortion in the name of free speech is wrong. It is also very wrong to think that because of the low quality of the presentation it is not dangerous or damaging. Hitler got to the top and within an inch of subjugating Europe with precisely that. I have never doubted the integrity of the BBC. Nor have I doubted that it is probably the best broadcasting organisation in the world. But the responsibility of the media is colossal. Whether they live up to that is questionable.
The motivation and the purpose of Goebbels was clear. The motivation and the purpose of the producer of "Airbase", or of its patron, the BBC, are not clear. Perhaps the noble Minister can enlighten us on that.
"Airbase" has been referred to as a wart. The noble Lord who did so told me that he had not seen it. Had he seen it I am sure that he would not have considered it a wart; but it is certainly a million-pound wart of BBC income or taxpayers' money.
Perhaps I may be allowed to make a constructive suggestion. If this so-called drama "Airbase" were offered to Colonel Gaddafi, who has a lot of money and lacks the skill to produce such a persuasive distortion, he may be quite happy to pay for the cost of the film and might even leave us with a profit at the end of it.
6.46 p.m.
Lord Greenhill of Harrow: My Lords, I am a rather unwilling participant in this debate for several reasons, but I am encouraged to take part partly by the welcome presence of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, whose appointment was one of the best public appointments that the Government have made in recent times.
I have a considerable affection and admiration for the BBC, having been a governor for five years and having been associated for a much longer period with the External Services. I enjoyed serving under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Swann, and in company with the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter.

265
We all rely on the BBC more than on the quality press for news and comment on domestic and foreign affairs. The BBC and the ITV together have immense political power and have indeed reshaped our democracy. It therefore gives me no pleasure whatsoever to see the BBC being an object of criticism, however justified it may be. As many noble Lords have asserted, there can be no question that under the charter licence and associated documents the BBC assumes certain programme obligations to the Secretary of State. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, set them out, and he was perfectly correct. If those obligations are not met the Secretary of State has a right and a duty not only to comment but in the last resort to intervene. The BBC does not contest that.
For example, it says on page 169 of the 1985 annual report with reference to Clause 13.4 of the licence—and I apologise if this repeats something that the noble Viscount, Lord De L'Isle, has said but it is worth hearing what the BBC said in detail
"This clause enables the Government or Parliament to have the last word on issues on which their views and those of the Corporation might he in conflict. It confers on the Government a formally absolute power of veto over BBC programmes. However this power has always been treated as a reserve power and has never been invoked. In its programme activities the Corporation has enjoyed and enjoys complete freedom".
In other words, the independence of the BBC is a highly desirable convention which both parties have respected. Whether this so-called play "Airbase" or any other programme justifies breaching this convention is a matter of opinion.
However, noble Lords will recall the universal disgust about the programme when the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, first raised the matter in the House. It is clear that the Government, if challenged, cannot seek refuge, as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, initially did behind the alleged unfettered independence of the BBC. The programme, and indeed all programmes, can be looked at by the Secretary of State in the light of the obligations accepted by the corporation in the charter licence and so on.
Whether it is the Government's intention that the proposed broadcasting watchdog should play a role in these matters I know not, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter. I do not see why those functions could not be perfectly well performed by the governors or by a combination of the governors and the main advisory committee. There are strong and obvious reasons why conflict between the Government—any government—and the BBC should be avoided and should be the exception rather than the rule. Conflict can only be avoided if governments exercise sensible restraint and the BBC exercises proper discipline over its gifted and intelligent staff.
The appearance of the programme "Airbase" and its accompanying Radio Times article shakes one's confidence. From time to time the programme makers seem able to sneak on to the screen, or on to the air, a programme or play which causes deep offence and comes near to being a breach of the charter. Mr. Birt, who recently joined the BBC, said that impartiality in the corporation is a withering plant. I think that the handling of the Falklands play
266
suggests that there is some substance in that remark. It recalls to me an article written by a BBC broadcaster in a Sunday newspaper some time ago. He said that when he wished to break the rules and flout conventions he always arranged for the programme to be shown on a Friday night because he knew that the director general was on his way back to his country house in East Anglia and all that happened on a Monday morning when the director general returned was that he received a silly smile.
I do not believe that the present high echelons of the BBC belong to the "silly smile" brigade. How they prevent unsuitable programmes from slipping through is their business and we should not attempt to instruct them. Referring up is clearly not satisfactory and the balancing of programmes over an extended period is ineffective.
I seldom complain to the BBC, but I shall cite two rather trivial examples because they give an interesting reflection of its attitudes. I complained about an obscene reference to the Virgin Mary in a so-called satirical programme. The answer I received was that it had been approved by the religious affairs department for "factual accuracy". I also complained about a programme which was shown on a Christmas morning and which denigrated the monarchy, Parliament and the Churches. The answer was that the timing was a little unfortunate but that it was necessary to broadcast such a programme to convince foreigners that the BBC was not a creature of the British Government.
Those are minor blemishes. We all want to see the continuation of the desirable convention which enables the BBC to enjoy a responsible independence, which has been the basis of its reputation. We do not want the Government breathing down its neck and we do not want the charter forgotten or flouted. I recommend refresher courses on the charter and possibly that the charter should be signed by members of staff, in the same way as some people have to sign the Official Secrets Act. The main point is that the BBC is a great asset, but it must play to charter rules.
6.55 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, I think your Lordships will agree with me that we in Britain have what is probably the best broadcasting system in the world. The BBC, which is supported by the licence fees of the watching public to the extent of, I believe, £1,000 million, is the top and cream of it all. It provides us with news, entertainment and comment and also provides news and information to other parts of the world that might not otherwise be so well informed. Anyone who has had experience of television in other nations will certainly agree with me on that point.
Indeed, we are so fond of the BBC that we call her, affectionately, "Auntie", and like a well-loved aunt she lives with us all. She is allowed the freedom of our living rooms and I have found her chatting away in some people's kitchens. I believe there are families who even take her to bed with them. In short, she is totally part of our lives and lives with us all.

267
However, Auntie has changed. Not only has she taken to using bad language—which one would not condone from any other member of one's family—but she has also become very biased; not swinging from Right to Left, with ideas here and there, but almost entirely to the Left. In fact, she is becoming distinctly sinister.
What are we to do with Auntie? Can it be her age? She was born on December 20th, 1926 by Letters Patent under the Great Seal. Ladies, maiden and otherwise, go through difficult periods at certain times in their lives. Or is it perhaps that Auntie is associating with undesirable friends who are influencing her unduly? That is not of course Mr. Hussey or the noble Lord, Lord Barnett. I emphasise that we love Auntie very much; she is part of our family life and lives with us all. We especially admire her sound views, her impartiality and her balance. However, we are worried that she is losing her balance.
We have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Chalfont, Lord Renton and Lord Kagan, about the detestable programme "Airbase" which portrays our American allies, with whom we have a special relationship, as something sub-human. It is not surprising that that has caused some upset with them. Noble Lords have already made, and more succinctly, all the points which I should like to have made about the programme.
My noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing also spoke with much force on the projected screening of the Falklands play "Tumbledown" by Charles Wood. Charles Wood is on record as saying:
"Every play I write is subversive".
The playwright lain Curteis was commissioned by Alistair Milne to write a play about the Falklands war. It attempted to show the reasons why the war was fought, the doctrine of self-determination and that the rule of aggression should not pay. It was said that his play was too biased in favour of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and, therefore, was not shown by the BBC before the election so as not to influence voters. However, the election is now over; the play has been shelved and instead we are threatend with "Tumbledown", which is not only biased but, I believe, unnecessarily violent.
The series "Secret Society" is by Duncan Campbell, who wrote for the New Statesman. Many people who were introduced in his series, such as "a former immigration officer at Dover" (Jolyon Jenkins), and "a former US Army Captain" (Bill Arkin) were in fact close journalistic friends of his on the New Statesman—a fact which was not mentioned.
Another friend of Auntie's is the Left-wing barrister, Helena Kennedy, who presented a series of "Heart of the Matter" religious broadcasts. She is closely connected with the Haldane Society of Socialist lawyers. She also defended Thomas Quigley, the Irish terrorist who bombed the home of my noble and learned friend Lord Havers among other atrocities.
We all love Auntie, but we do not like her Left-wing friends; nor would we like it if she had thrown in her lot with the National Front. Auntie is part of
268
our family and our home life. We beseech her to abandon her hard Left views and become once more the auntie that we all know and love.
7 p.m.
Lord Moran: My Lords, the BBC is such a vast organisation that the ordinary listener and viewer who is busy with other things can form no more than a snapshot impression of its outlook. Unquestionably, there is a great deal in that output that is excellent. The World Service in my experience is mostly very good. Indeed, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, whether he would consider making it available at reasonable hours for listeners in this country.
Then, the BBC does an enormous amount for music; its drama serials are admired all over the world; and its nature programmes are superb. Nearly everything from the BBC at Bristol in fact seems first class. Some radio programmes like "File on Four", "From our Own Correspondent" and "The Food Programme" are very well done. I am particularly struck by what seems to be the fair and dispassionate selection of letters from the public on "P.M.", which appears to reflect genuinely what ordinary people think even when they are highly critical of the BBC. I do not think there is generally any party political bias in programmes, certainly not ones that I have heard and seen.
However, there are occasional extraordinary lapses. There was the choice of Duncan Campbell to do a whole series on security matters—an example perhaps of a remaining pocket of the antiestablishment, iconoclastic tradition associated with the regime of the late Sir Hugh Greene whose influence on the BBC was, I believe, largely unfortunate.
Then there was a programme on Radio 4 on 28th January on the Birmingham six, produced by Kathleen Gallagher, on the day of the judgment by the Court of Appeal. By then the BBC knew that the Lord Chief Justice and two other judges had, after 27 days of exhaustive examination, found, as had the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in the earlier appeal, that the convictions by the original jury, reached after hearing what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bridge, had described as
"the clearest and most overwhelming evidence I have ever heard in a case of murder"
were "safe and satisfactory".
Despite this, the programme did its utmost to suggest that the six were innocent and wrongly condemned. What seemed to me indefensible was long interviews with the three principal defence witnesses without any mention of the judges' remarks, in their judgment, dismissing the evidence of these witnesses as worthless and unconvincing. I took this up with the chairman of the BBC. I am glad to say that he accepted that in this instance the producers of the programme had made a serious error.
There are, I suggest, two specific issues on which the corporation has not always followed the 1981 resolution of its board of directors, quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont,
"to treat controversial subjects with due impartiality".

269
These are South Africa and Ireland.
On South Africa, there has been lack of a sense of proportion, a tendency to go on and on about the wickedness of the South African Government while the dreadful things that go on, as anyone in my old profession knows, in many other countries receive less attention.
At the time of the Commonwealth conference in 1986 the BBC, regardless of the licence requirement that,
"the corporation shall at all times refrain from sending any broadcast matter expressing the opinion of the Corporation on current affairs or on 'natters of public policy"
made little secret of its support for a policy of mandatory sanctions.
When the House debated South Africa on 4th July 1986, the BBC gave a misleading and one-sided report of the debate, suggesting that support for sanctions in this House was much more general than in fact it was. It made no mention of criticisms of the BBC by for example, the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, and myself.
The BBC seemed then to have developed something of an obsession with South Africa. We live in Wales. I remember listening anxiously for news of the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl. I heard nothing about that; only a long piece on South Africa and then an item about the number of blacks in the Brigade of Guards. Happily, in recent months, there has been much less about this question. The reporting has been more balanced.
On Ireland, for some years until very recently there was, I believe, a noticeable slant towards the republican view. This was evident in the choice of people interviewed and in the editing and presentation of news on Northern Ireland. However, it has been much less marked in recent weeks. I hope that means that the bias is being corrrected.
Nevertheless, air time is still sometimes given—and not only by the BBC—to terrorist spokesmen. I think that that is wrong. I commend to your Lordships the excellent article by Conor Cruise O'Brien in The Times of 6th April. I believe that we should, like Dublin, ban broadcast interviews with all terrorist spokesmen, as he suggests. I urge the Government to add this to the Bill at present under consideration to control terrorist funds.
On the whole, however, I am hopeful. I believe that the BBC's new chairman and his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, will bring about much needed changes. Already there are signs that welcome improvements are being effected. Obviously things cannot be changed overnight. The BBC, like Shell, has always believed in decentralisation. Where one gets a good producer, one gets regularly good programmes; where one gets a bad one, one gets carelessness and bias.
I believe that the corporation is now in good hands. I welcome today's announcement that £62 million is to be put into news and current affairs programmes, increasing foreign coverage and business news. Provided that tight control is kept on standards of fairness and impartiality and bad producers moved out, the prospects are, I believe, now more encouraging than some noble Lords may think.
7.7 p.m.
Baroness Blotch: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Chalfont for the opportunity to express my concern over the showing of the programme "Airbase" by the BBC on 1st March, and to question the accountability of the BBC under the Royal Charter and the licence and agreement, granted by the Home Secretary in 1981. As I do not have time to dwell on the positive aspects of the BBC, I ask noble Lords to forgive me if my speech is rather negative.
"Every now and again a programme swims on to the screen that is so grossly offensive, so horribly biased, displays such contempt for the intelligence of the public and is clearly so unsuitable for prime time viewing that it leaves one astounded that it could have got through the network planning procedure".
That was the view of the television critic Peter Paterson, of the Daily Mail.
The issue for this debate is not that the BBC in its wisdom allocated prime time to a third rate play. The issue is whether it was a play or a documentary, whether it was mere fantasy or an account of life as it is lived on our airbases in the United Kingdom and, whatever it was, whether it offended against the charter of 1981.
The reason for such confusion and for the offence and anger caused by the programme was the deliberate advance publicity in, of all places, the BBC's own publication Radio Times, which titillated the viewers' appetite by claiming that:
"US fighter pilots arc flying high on drugs, sex and death just like the real McCoy".
However, it then went on to give a very clear impression that, however exaggerated or incredible the programme might appear, it was all the more significant because of its "accuracy". As a play it was awful; as a documentary it was dishonest and a complete distortion of life on USAF bases within the United Kingdom.
A former director general of the BBC, Sir Hugh Greene, said:
"We have to balance points of view in our programmes but not necessarily within each individual programme".
However, that is no defence of this programme. A programme of the Left—this has already been said—which is dishonest, personally indulgent on the part of the author and inconsistent with the conditions of the charter cannot be balanced by an equally dishonest programme of the Right. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Alan Whicker, of television fame, recently wrote:
"I am increasingly worried by the way in which television documentaries try to nobble you and make up your mind for you. It seems to me that the trend is to write the script in the office then go and find the facts and the people who will support the contentions. I think that's totally wrong … most documentaries you see nowadays should have a caption underneath reading, 'we have temporarily lost our sense of objectivity'".
Added to this is the practice of appointing extreme Left-wing protagonists in controversial political issues to key presentational positions—for example, Helena Kennedy to "Heart of the Matter" and journalist Duncan Campbell to "Secret Society". That they would produce biased documentaries was entirely predictable. One's suspicions are really aroused by the refusal to screen Ian Curteis's play about the Falklands because it was deemed to be

271
pro-Government, when it is planned to show "Tumbledown", the Falklands play with a Left-wing bias.
I am privileged to be the chairman of an Anglo/American community relations committee for the large USAF base, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, of Alconbury in Cambridgeshire. I know from first hand experience that the young airmen, and in particular the front line pilots, so savagely dealt with by the programme "Airbase", are highly disciplined and highly skilled, are committed to their role as our allies in NATO and are concerned to achieve the highest standards of professional and personal conduct. They live in our community and I am constantly humbled by the catalogue of activities in which they are engaged, involving them in giving generously of their time, energy and money for charitable and community causes. As for flying highly complex and expensive airplanes under the influence of drugs or alcohol—as suggested in "Airbase"—it is simply an absurd suggestion.
Mr. McKay, author of "Airbase", together with Francis Wheen and others of their ilk have a mission. It is to discredit the Americans, to undermine the professionalism and commitment of the armed forces, to undermine the confidence of our allies and to undermine this country's defence strategy and our commitment to NATO. To achieve these ends they are no seekers after truth. It would appear that they can do this with large sums of public money. They can be provided with a vehicle to peddle personal and political viewpoints masquerading as documentary with license to use the Radio Times to propagate, advance and supplement their work. How can that be consistent with the obligation of impartiality and fair treatment under the charter and the licence and agreement of 1981? Free, self-regulated media are by far the most desirable, but with that freedom goes responsibility. The production of "Airbase" flouted the system. My Lords, where is the accountability?
This debate begs a most serious question. Meanwhile, an apology, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is due to a fine body of American men and women whose commitment to peace in the West is considerable and who cannot on this issue defend their own position.
7.14 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster: My Lords, I should like to say a few words in my capacity as honorary treasurer of the Christian Broadcasting Council of Great Britain about the moral standards, or, more appropriately, the lack of moral standards, set by the BBC. There can be no doubt that many members of the public, to judge by Mary Whitehouse's Listeners and Viewers Association, which had its annual general meeting on Saturday, are still gravely concerned at the continuing permissive trend, and particularly the emphasis on sex and violence, that characterises so many of today's programmes. And it is pointless to say that so many of these programmes are shown late at night, when, apart from children being allowed to stay up late, the programmes can be recorded and shown to the whole family.
272
The early years of the charter, right up to the end of World War II, were glorious years for British radio. The BBC was recognised worldwide for its depth and fairness in reporting, for the high quality of its entertainment and for its Christian and moral stance. However, as we all know, standards have declined since the war, particularly in television. Is it not true that the BBC is now more concerned with ratings than with the quality of the product? A significant change has been the universal concept that only pop music shall be played on BBC local radio, a curious concept.
What of the spiritual attitude of the BBC. This surely has also undergone a sea-change, from the early days of Lord Reith, who saw it as a valuable tool for the evangelisation of Britain, to today when its attitude might be described as scientific-humanist. Noble Lords will say that the BBC's religious affairs department has a notable output, particularly on radio. Many of us derive spiritual profit from such programmes as "Prayer for Today", "Thought for Today", "The Daily Service", "Songs of Praise"—the right reverend Prelate mentioned the "Songs of Praise" programme from Ely Cathedral which I think we all agree was magnificent—and other similar programmes.
However, these programmes, excellent though they be, and a welcome relief from the constant battering of pop music, the anaesthetic of sex and the stimulus of violence, tend to be about "churchianity", if one can use such a word. I hope that the right reverend Prelate will forgive me for using it. They tend to be about "churchianity" rather than about Christianity, and represent, to some of us at any rate, the icing on the cake. Could we not have programmes with a more solid theological content, such as talks by Magnus Magnusson, programmes which emphasise that religion should be the bedrock of our being? And why not programmes emphasising the bonds uniting families rather than, as happens all too frequently, the stresses and traumas dividing them?
There are now at least three bodies with which I am connected working to promote family unity. They all see the family—by this I mean the conventional definition of the family, not the one-parent family or the so-called homosexual family—as the stabilising, life-giving element which enables its members to withstand the manifold stresses and strains that come their way. Has the time not come for the BBC to help us to think in terms of right and wrong, of black and white, instead of those hazy half tones, those dingy browns and murky greys which becloud so much of our moral thinking today?
Finally, I should like to refer to the Broadcasting Standards Council about which we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter. Like many noble Lords I look forward with much eagerness to the time when the wraps are removed from the council. Like the noble Lord I hope very much that the Minister will be able to do this for us. Perhaps I may express the hope that when the wraps are removed we shall find standards in line with some at least of my thinking.
7.20 p.m.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, I shall go back to how the BBC started with its charter and licence. The charter and the licence provide a remarkable degree of freedom to the BBC and its governors to do what they think best in the interests of broadcasting and to act, in a phrase first employed in 1972, "as trustees of the public interest". The charter contains almost nothing about the making of programmes. The licence and agreement say little more.
The commitment to taste and decency in programmes derives historically not from statute but from the codification of the BBC's own thinking and practices. Unlike many other noble Lords, I find that not only right and reasonable but reassuring. This freedom allowed to public service broadcasters has underpinned the BBC's practices. If we invoke the charter and licence, we shall be on a slippery and dangerous slope. I hope that we do not see that happen.
A number of noble Lords have referred to the three plays which they viewed with horror, contempt, dislike, fear or a mixture of all four—"Airbase", "The Monocled Mutineer" and "Tumbledown". I do not support what was in those plays, and did not particularly like them. The chairman of the BBC has made it clear in correspondence to those people who wrote in complaining about "Airbase" that he saw no merit in it, and nor did many other people in the BBC. "Tumbledown" and "The Monocled Mutineer" are two plays which are quoted all the time. I find it interesting to note that although we have constantly heard about those three plays during the debate, they are three plays out of an output of 800 plays over the past two years. Of course they were of varying lengths but they were all from the BBC's drama department. We may not be giving enough credit to the positive side of what is being done while repeating too vociferously what we think is wrong with the other plays.
There is another point which worries me. I do not like the feeling that we and other people are sitting in judgment on other adults. Why should people be treated in what I frankly find to be a rather patronising and protective way? They have the right to decide whether they wish to see a programme. They can always turn the "off" switch, which is something we have heard nothing about today. They can turn off the television and not watch the play. One noble Lord said that he had watched a play all over again because he could hardly believe what he had seen, and I found the reference to Nazi Germany made by the noble Lord, Lord Kagan, in the context of one of those plays offensive.
The noble Lord, Lord Renton, should not worry overmuch about American reaction to "Airbase". They are too tough-skinned and sensible; they will not be put off or have a tantrum because one play refers to American airmen.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords—
Baroness Birk: My Lords, I shall not give way because we are having a timed debate. Perhaps the noble Baroness and I could have a word afterwards.
274
It is worrying if we set ourselves up as arbiters of everyone's taste. We have the right to be the arbiters only of our own taste.
Today the BBC faces unprecedented challenges. There is the challenge from the privatised, and fundamentally unaccountable, cable and satellite systems. That is one of the most obvious examples. There is the challenge—we are seeing it exerted tonight—of ever greater political pressure on broadcasters. I find myself in complete agreement with the noble Lords, Lord Bonham-Carter, Lord Swann and Lord Greenhill of Harrow, over the Broadcasting Standards Council. It is another example of not treating people as adults. It is entirely unnecessary when the BBC has a board of governors and various committees which have been set up.
It is of course the BBC's responsibility to respond when mistakes are made, and they inevitably will be made unless we expect the BBC to operate in a straitjacket of caution. Its response must be tempered by the belief that if there are no mistakes there will probably be no innovations. The BBC must temper such judgments in the further knowledge that what some people call mistakes are often no more than uncomfortable truths. If we do not find a place within our society for uncomfortable truths to be uttered, so much the worse for us.
The BBC's responsibility is to sustain its independence from all political and commercial partialities. The BBC's responsibility — this is what Parliament has called for for six decades—is to the whole of our society and its people and not to the narrow-minded prejudices of a small but vociferous minority which would castrate the BBC journalistically and creatively. Such a minority prefers a dull and obscuring calm to the excitement, illuminating passion and sheer pleasure which we find in the BBC at its best. The fact that it does not always reach those standards is not a great criticism—because in which walks of life are standards of perfection reached?
It is not our responsibility to encourage, and nor do we want to see, the broadcaster meek, blinkered, evasive or partial. The world is full of organisations which, in the eyes of their governments, are all too responsible. I do not believe that noble Lords want that position, because we should then be moving to dictatorship in radio and television—which play a larger and larger part in our lives. Our responsibility is to remind the BBC and all its critics of what was said by a former chairman, Sir Arthur Fforde:
"(It) is of cardinal importance that everyone in a position of responsibility should be ready to set himself or herself the duty of ensuring to those creative members of the BBC staff, who must take the daily, hourly or even instantaneous decisions, that measure of freedom, independence and élan without which the arts do not flourish".
During the debate the BBC has been asked to change its ways somewhat, and to be tolerant of our views and those of other people. At the same time we owe such an institution a tolerant hearing. We want to see it make better programmes. We should give it encouragement rather than a great deal of discouragement.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, wanted to know whether the BBC had apologised to the American Government. With great respect, that is nonsense. In

275
any case, Mary Whitehouse took it upon herself to write to President Reagan and apologise on behalf of the whole country. I think that was quite enough on that score.
We should be supporting and safeguarding the freedoms of the BBC and also the IBA, although the debate is not about the IBA. We have seen the slippery slope in other countries when heavy fists are laid on an organisation which is struggling to do right. It does not always do it. It sometimes makes mistakes. As far as the programmes are concerned, the BBC will readily admit that some are failures. But even if that is so—as it is—that is no reason for us to try to contain the organisation in a straitjacket. That is the one thing which should not be done. I believe that in going along the line that it takes at the moment the BBC is behaving generally in the right way and that it does not deserve the calumny and acrimony which have been poured on it to some extent tonight.
7.30 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, has introduced an important debate today in a characteristically forthright and impressive manner. I am indebted to him for having given me notice of the points which he intended to make. I think that we have had a very reasoned debate and one of great interest. Many noble Lords have considerable knowledge and experience of the BBC and of the problems which it encounters. We have had the advantage today of hearing the noble Lord, Lord Swann, with all the experience and wisdom which he obtained when he was such a distinguished chairman of the BBC.
I propose to confine my remarks to the more limited subject matter of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. I shall resist the temptation to stray into the rather wider fields, such as the noble Lord, Lord Bonham Carter, suggested, of the Broadcasting Standards Council and other such excitements on which some of your Lordships touched.
The noble Lord, Lord Swann, referred to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, and I should like to do so also. He said that if programmes are good they will enrich society; that if programmes are grey, they will debase society—I think that that is what he said—and that the BBC has great powers; that the BBC is the best public broadcasting company in the world and it is difficult for a large corporation to be perfect. I may not have got the noble Lord's words quite right but that was the basis of what he said. As a general canvas of the subject which we are discussing today, I thought that his remarks were pretty accurate.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, has said that the contents of some of the BBC's programmes are so biased that they have offended against the charter and the licence and agreement and that he wishes the Home Secretary to take note, and preferably to take action. That is pretty stout stuff! The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, is entirely correct to draw to the attention of your Lordships and the public what he believes to be an intolerant and biased content of
276
programmes. He knows—and we all know—that the BBC has undertaken to produce programmes of a high general standard, and with due impartiality.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, that equilibrium is not achieved by having one programme which is grossly biased in one way, only to be balanced by another one which is grossly biased in the opposite direction. That is not impartiality. However, programmes cannot be just anodyne presentations. Inevitably they will have substance; periodically they will enter, and rightly so, the realms of controversy. Sometimes to some that will be unacceptable.
Programme-makers inevitably require a degree of artistic licence. But the licence infers a gift of tolerance on the part of the viewer towards the programme-maker in return for programmes of quality. Obviously this should not be abused. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and other noble Lords have suggested that this tolerance has been abused. In his Question on 15th March and again today the noble Lord vigorously criticised the content of the programme "Airbase", and other noble Lords agreed with him both on that occasion and today.
It is quite clear that that programme caused offence, not only to your Lordships but also to many members of the public and to our many friends overseas in America. I have seen part of the programme myself and I can easily sympathise in a personal capacity with the views which your Lordships expressed about it. As a result of the exchanges at Question Time on 15th March, I undertook to let the chairman of the BBC know the opinions which noble Lords had expressed. He replied to me pointing out that, in his view there was little merit in the programme and that:
"It was one of those failures which are, I suppose, inevitable in such a wide and varied dramatic output".
Those were the words of the chairman of the BBC. He also added that the article which appeared in the Radio Times was an error of judgment and that it was an inappropriate article for this publication. I understand that steps have been taken to ensure that the editorial procedures do not in future allow a recurrence of such a mistake.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, has asked some specific questions and in particular he has referred to Article 20 of the BBC's Royal charter. It is important that we should be quite clear exactly what the position is. There are two documents. One is the Royal charter which defines the constitution of the BBC and its organisation. It gives the BBC the right to broadcast within some fairly general parameters. The licence and agreement set out the details of how the BBC should carry out this responsibility.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, is perfectly right that in Article 20 of the charter the Home Secretary has the right—indeed he has the obligation—to accept the expression of views which may be made to him, pointing out that the BBC has offended against its charter or its licence and agreement. The Home Secretary would have to consider those representations and, if necessary, he would ask the BBC to satisfy him that it had met its obligations. If it was not able to do so, the matter could then be referred to the Privy Council and to Her Majesty the

277
Queen who could, if they saw fit, revoke the charter. Those are very important powers and they are not to be used lightly.
However, I am bound to tell your Lordships that there is no obligation about programme standards in the Royal charter or the licence and agreement which would enable or oblige my right honourable friend to use these powers. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, said that the annex to the licence and agreement provides just such an obligation. I am bound to tell him that the annex is a resolution by the board of governors. It is a statement of intent by the board of governors that they intend to "treat controversial subjects with due impartiality". As such it is important, but it does not contain nor does it confer obligations on the Home Secretary which can be enforced under Article 20, unlike the obligation to broadcast an impartial account day by day of the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament. This is a specific requirement and it is spelt out in Section 13.2 of the licence and agreement.
That is a very important factor. If such a requirement for impartiality had been enforceable under the charter, it would place the Home Secretary of the day in an intolerable position. He would be obliged to be the arbiter in any or all of the representations which may be made to him about programme content. He or his officials on his behalf would have to consider the representations, see the programmes and make a judgment. Then the Secretary of State would be obliged, where appropriate, to take action. That would be censorship. It would be broadcasting by government consent. It could even develop into broadcasting by government diktat. I hope that I carry the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and others with me in saying that that would be an intolerable position for any government of this country to be in. It would be quite unacceptable as a method of televising and broadcasting.
The BBC has a responsibility for impartiality. And the way in which the Government see to this is by appointing the board of governors. The Government appoint to the board eminent and responsible people—of whom the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, is one—whose duty it is to ensure that the BBC conducts itself in a proper and responsible fashion. If it does not do so, it is to the board of governors and to its chairman that aggrieved people should address themselves.
At the risk of being told by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, that I am making another lapidary judgment, I would say that it cannot be for the Government to dictate or to determine the quality of progammes. That is, and must be, essentially the responsibility of the chairman and the governors of the BBC.
If we were to accept the principle of government interference or the right to censure the BBC on the contents of any, some, or all of its programmes, then we would be embarking, as the noble Lord, Lord Swann, and the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, have said, on a very slippery slope of broadcasting and televising by government consent. That I think few people wish to see.
278
My answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, is, in short, that he is right to complain. He was entitled to be offended by that programme and entitled to claim—as I think the chairman of the BBC has conceded—that the programme did not live up to the standards expected of the BBC. But that is not a matter which falls within the Government's responsibility; nor does it offend against either the charter or the licence and agreement. It is not a matter, despite criticism of that programme or concern about the impartiality or otherwise of programmes in general, upon which my right honourable friend is justified or even entitled to take action.
7.42 p.m.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I am grateful to the House and to all those who have taken part in an extremely valuable and stimulating debate. The arguments on both sides were adduced for the most part constructively and thoughtfully. Before begging leave to withdraw the Motion, I shall make two brief points. The first is that there seemed in some speeches to be a misunderstanding of the aim and the object of the Motion. It was not my intention to suggest that the BBC is, as someone said, "a nest of subversives" or that it is, as someone else said, "a Left-wing conspiracy". That is not my view; therefore, it would have been surprising had I put it forward.
My aim was less ambitious. It was to do two things; first, to question a doctrine set forth by the noble Earl in answer to my original Starred Question. I must tell the noble Earl that I am far from satisfied with the reply he has given tonight. I do not believe it is right to say, as he has now said, that the BBC and its governors are the ultimate judge and jury in their own case on matters of programme content. I have to disagree with the Minister fundamentally in the interpretation of the charter, but this is not the time to go into that.
My second aim—it has, I think, been fully achieved—was to give an opportunity for those in your Lordships' House who wished to do so to express to our American friends their deep regret that such a disgraceful programme should have been allowed on the air by the BBC. A number of noble Lords have done that, and I am grateful to them. I am content with that result, but I am sorry that not everyone felt able to make that apology. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Foreshore Development: Planning Control
7.44 p.m.
The Earl of Onslow The Earl of Onslow rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they still consider it appropriate to plan for foreshore development by means of private legislation rather than bring such developments within the planning system.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. It arises, as some of your Lordships may have guessed, for want of a better word, out of the Swanage Yacht Haven Bill.
I am not under any circumstances going to go into the merits or the demerits of that particular development but I think that it is worth while just recalling to your Lordships what happened. A promoter got together with a local authority; the local authority thought the scheme an acceptable one, granted planning permission on the landward side and, under the rules as they presently stand, approached your Lordships' House for parliamentary permission to increase the enclosed harbour which then existed.
This matter was perfectly properly debated on Second Reading and an instruction was given to the Committee. It went through a Committee on which I have the honour, and I would add the very great pleasure, of sitting. That is a duty in your Lordships' House which I find not only instructive but also enjoyable and intellectually stimulating as one sits and listens to very clever and almost certainly highly paid lawyers arguing the pros and cons of a case. We were quite excellently chaired by my noble friend Lord Alport.
We came to a split decision and the matter came to the House and was slung out on Third Reading. That is a perfectly acceptable procedure as the rules of your Lordships' House stand. It was, however, completely unprecedented except for the legislation on Felixstowe Docks, which I shall come to at a later date.
My point in raising this matter is not to argue the merits of the Swanage Yacht Haven Bill or even to discuss it in detail. But I think that I have to hang my argument upon it. My argument is that there are better ways of coming to what are essentially planning decisions than by having two separate lines of communication and decision making. Those two separate decision-making processes are disconnected and not in any way answerable to each other.
If there is a fundamental disagreement it would even be more acceptable to throw out a Bill such as the one in question on Second Reading rather than on Third Reading. It has been put to me that the argument which the Chairman always produces on Private Bill legislation is that a Bill should not be thrown out on Second Reading but should go to Committee, and that then on Third Reading noble Lords say that the Committee has already discussed the matter so it should be thrown out. It is rumoured—this is gossip more than anything else—that this doctrine was invented by our late and much loved clerk, Euan Graham, to get business through the House. I do not know whether or not that is true but I accept that there is a certain limitation on the powers of the House by saying—[Interruption.]
My Lords, laughter is always a much better form of interruption than hostile ribaldry.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, if the noble Earl will permit me I only wanted to draw the attention of the House to a phenomenon in a way that can be recorded in Hansard. I wanted particularly to draw attention to the expression on the face of the Clerk of the Parliaments.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I am sure that is out of order. Let us return to serious matters. It would seem to me that there is a limitation on the power of the House. There is a slight fallacy in the argument that the House cannot make a decision on Third Reading but that it must leave that to five people—good men like my noble friend Lord Foot or my noble friend Lord Alport—all of whom make up their minds quite independently of party pressure.
It might be worth while for me to comment on some of the other Private Bills with which I have been relatively closely connected. The first such Bill was the Okehampton Bypass Bill. I was involved because I was chairman of the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society. The society then read what I had said and sacked me but did not tell me that it had sacked me. It was embarrassing for them and quite funny for me. On that Bill the inspector came to a decision and, because of some promise which had been given, the matter had to go to a joint committee. The Government were convinced that the committee would come down on their side. That did not happen. They then had to overrule the joint committee. That is not a satisfactory way of proceeding in fairness to anybody.
What I hope that we shall do in this small debate—I would not expect my noble friend on the Front Bench to do anything other than make a very prepared speech because we know that there is a joint Select Committee sitting on the subject—is to throw just a little more light on the whole subject.
The Fleetwood Harbour Bill came forward and I was on the Committee. We slung that out on what I think were relatively spurious grounds but quite correctly. The Preston Docks Board objected to Fleetwood Harbour building a roll-on roll-off ferry because it said that that would threaten the interests of Preston docks. I suspect that they have probably closed down now, although I do not know. However, we slung that Bill out because we established from the promoters that they were intending to build enough ro-ro capacity at Fleetwood for more than three times the amount of forecast trade with Ireland until the turn of the century. We thought: "That is a pretty silly way of proceeding". Whether or not we were actually allowed to take that decision within the rules of procedure, I think that it was probably the right decision. However, it was possibly not what we should have done even though we may have been right.
I was also deeply involved—in this case, wearing a sort of Fitzroy Raglan hat—in objecting when Guildford Borough Council wanted to build itself a sort of palace on some public open space which had been protected by the Guildford legislation of 1926. It wanted to build a palace and a lot of local people thought that it should not be allowed to. We had a Second Reading debate in this House and the Committee threw the Bill out on what I am fairly certain were financial grounds. The late Lord Gordon-Walker was one of the Members of the Committee. It was thrown out on financial rather than planning grounds.
Many people take the Felixstowe Docks Bill as the precedent for slinging a Bill out on Third Reading. I

281
suggest that that Bill was slung out not on any planning grounds whatsoever but because it was going to extend the dock labour scheme to Felixstowe. That was in the dying days of the Administration of the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan. The House threw it out as a political rather than a planning Act. I believe that that was reasonable because it was political. In my view, planning should go along one line of decision.
I have reason to believe that the objectors to a proposal submitted to Parliament very often prefer their objection to be heard before a public inquiry. They reckon that sometimes they have a fairer hearing there, perhaps because we on these committees sometimes put on impassive faces and they do not know what we are thinking. I do not know. However, I believe that that is the case.
I accept that in any enclosure of the foreshore there are bound to be navigation, pollution and drainage or water board difficulties. Such things can and should influence the planning process. Those considerations can perfectly easily be called in by the Minister in the event and if the local authority gives consent a public inquiry can be asked for. I do not think that it is beyond the wit of man to devise a system whereby a scheme such as that proposed for Swanage—I am not taking a view as to whether the actual decision was right or wrong—could have been more fairly dealt with by putting the whole thing together in one concept before one decision-making body and giving everybody the same amount of access and the same amount of time for legal argument and ensuring that the decision would not be subject to parliamentary ambush.
I accept that that proposal would mean legislation, and I accept that there is no likelihood of that legislation being introduced. I accept that all I am doing is asking a Question and putting forward a view. However, considering the Channel Tunnel Bill, it is possible to consider that the hybrid part of that Bill—I believe that the Government said when they promoted the Bill that to argue whether Waterloo Station or some other station was the right station from which the line should depart was part of the concept of the Bill and not a detail of the Bill—could have been wrecked by somebody saying: "No, you cannot start from Waterloo Station. You have to start from Medward Green". That station has not been used since it was put down by the Beeching Act of 1963.
I accept that that may be an extreme argument. However, here again is the possibility that an outside decision-making process can come in to which there is no appeal back to the main process. All I suggest and hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will consider is that there is a case for looking at the matter with care and in detail.
7.57 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, my name does not appear on the list of those intending to speak. I hope, however, that your Lordships will bear with me for a few moments while I express my view on the Question put by my noble friend with his usual penetrating approach to problems.
282
It is for my noble friend on the Front Bench to answer the Question. However, I hope that what I have to say may have a bearing on his reply. My noble friend Lord Onslow suggests that we should abolish the Private Bill procedure not in general but in particular circumstances; namely, for yacht and harbour developments which have been subject to statutory planning procedures, as they normally must be. Therefore, in those limited circumstances, my noble friend wishes Parliament to deprive itself of a part of its sovereignty. It is as simple as that. It is a part of Parliament's sovereignty which is asserted by its practice of passing Private Bills. That is a very ancient practice, going back to the 16th century, if not earlier. However, its antiquity is not the justification necessary for its retention.
I find myself unable to accept the argument put forward by my noble friend. It is not only because Parliament would be depriving itself of part of its sovereignty that I disagree. I disagree also because there are inevitably occasions when Parliament finds that the planning procedures which it has put forward arc inadequate or are not working in the public interest. When that happens the situation can be retrieved by passing a Private Bill. I suggest that it would be wrong to restrict Parliament in the way that my noble friend has suggested.
8 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I have not put my name down to speak, but what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, a moment ago has provoked me into making an observation, which will be very short. There is a good deal of sense in what the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, has suggested. I do not see that it in any way detracts from the sovereignty of Parliament. If Parliament decided to change, modify or to restrict the Private Act procedure, then it could equally restore it, so that it in no way affects the sovereignty of Parliament. I simply could not follow the argument. I normally am able to follow the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, but I simply cannot understand him on this issue.
Parliament is a sovereign body. It can take to itself powers, it can enlarge its powers and it can restrict its powers. Provided it always has the right to do so, then its sovereignty remains unimpeached in any way. It seems to me that that issue must eventually be dealt with on pragmatic grounds. The expensive procedure of moving for a Private Bill and running the risk of being defeated on Third Reading, as happened in the Swanage instance—and I agree entirely with the decision which this House came to on that issue—is a terrifying prospect for promoters of the Bill. They may prefer the greater certainty of the planning procedures.
The only reason that I am provoked to make the observation is that I simply did not understand the objection made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton.
Lord Renton: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, would he not agree that so long as the Private Bill was in force—having been passed through both Houses and received Royal Assent—then Parliament during the currency of its being in force (and it might

283
last many years) has asserted its sovereignty? Surely it cannot be denied that, if Parliament decides that it should not do that, then it is limiting its sovereignty.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I am afraid that I do not agree. Parliament has limited its own powers in many ways and in many directions. It still does so virtually every day of the year and that in no way affects its sovereignty.
8.3 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, we must be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for asking this Question of the Government. There could be two opinions about whether now is the right time to ask it when there is a joint Select Committee still sitting to consider the matter. Nevertheless, he has been able to give the House the benefit of his extensive experience of the Private Bill procedures. That has been valuable. No doubt he will be disappointed that more noble Lords with similar experience have not felt able to take part in the debate, but the matter has been relieved by the intervention of two distinguished lawyers, the noble Lords, Lord Renton and Lord Hooson.
There are two issues which concern us this evening. One is that of foreshores, because that is the specific case mentioned in the Question; the second, arising from it, is the whole question of Private Bill procedures.
First of all I must agree as strongly as I can with the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, when he questions the idea that the rather peculiar arrangements which we have for giving planning permission for developments on foreshores are in any way an essential part of the sovereignty of Parliament or that to give them up—in other words to return them to local planning authorities—would be a derogation of the sovereignty of Parliament. After all, as the noble Lord says, we are all the time delegating responsibility for things which are theoretically within our sovereignty. Every act of local government is a delegated act under powers given to it by Parliament. In that respect foreshore developments are no different from developments in any other part of the country. I confess immediately that, although I have some experience of planning in local government, it has always concerned inland developments and I have no experience of the cases about which we have been talking.
There is something special about foreshores. When there was a threat under French law that the foreshore in front of Brigitte Bardot's villa in St. Tropez should be opened to the public—and I understand that French law requires that foreshores should always be available to the public—she raised an almighty fuss. She said that her privacy would be disturbed and that her life would become intolerable and she threatened to move inland. It is clearly a matter which arouses great passions.
There is a general feeling that the foreshore, our coastline, is something special; it is something that belongs to all the people and there ought to be some particular safeguards against unwise developments. They could be on a number of grounds—on
284
conservation grounds for example. The fact that our coastline is the breeding ground for 40 per cent. of the wading birds of Europe is a not unimportant factor. The fact that harbour developments themselves have very significant implications not just for the immediately surrounding community but also for the transport system of the whole country must also be taken into account, as must the fact that dredging and draining and estuarine developments can have effects far beyond the immediate area with which the local authority is likely to be concerned. Therefore there is a case for treating the foreshore, and harbour and estuarine developments, differently from other planning applications. The matter needs to be considered very carefully. I would not assume that prima facie the case for handing it over directly to local authorities has been proved.
However, I must say that the argument for the existing system, the Private Bill procedure, is very much weaker. There are huge defects in the Private Bill procedure, as I have observed as a nonparticipant and a lay Member of this House. It seems to me that the first problem—although the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, questioned this—is that we normally give a Second Reading to a Private Bill of this kind. The effect is that when local people want to object to the Bill they are told that the development has been approved in principle and therefore their objections can only be about points of detail.
The second point—
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I am not sure whether I am in order but with your Lordships' permission perhaps I could explain that at the Committee stage of a Private Bill one has to prove need for a development. It is different from a Public Bill in that on Second Reading a Public Bill approves a principle but in the case of a Private Bill one has to prove need in Committee, which is rather more than accepting Second Reading. That is a technical detail.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Earl. As I said, I have never served on one of those Committees. I accept his assurance that that is the way the Committee proceeds. I do not think that that affects the fact that, when parliamentary agents are appointed to make representations on behalf of objectors to the Bill, they are told that it has been approved in principle. No doubt the Minister will correct me if I am wrong. The point I am making is that it weakens the powers of objectors if they have to come before a Committee in that sense.
It is also true that appointing parliamentary agents and providing for representation before a Committee dealing with a Private Bill is very much more expensive than making objections before a local authority planning committee or even making representations before a public inquiry.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I think that on reflection the noble Lord will find that objectors have much more freedom to raise their objections under our Private Bill procedure than they have under the ordinary planning procedures. Under the planning procedures the opportunity of even becoming an

285
objector is very limited, whereas almost anyone can become an objector under the Private Bill procedure.
Baroness White: My Lords, before my noble friend deals with that point perhaps he could deal with a detail which affects a situation in Wales where there are a great many proposed foreshore and estuarine developments. You might wish possibly to object but for reasons of expense you refrain from doing so because you know that there is another objection or petition in train and that some of the points about which you may be concerned are likely to be dealt with through the petition of a better financed or stronger body. If it then withdraws its petition, what is the position of the person who originally wished to object?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I yield to greater expertise on both sides of the House. I am certainly prepared to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, telling me that there are improvements required in the publicity given to planning proposals dealt with by local authorities and increases required in the rights of objectors. I have always felt that very strongly.
However, my noble friend Lady White has raised a valid point, which should be taken seriously; that is, the limitations on the ability of objectors to Private Bills to see that their objection is effectively sustained. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, gave us some indications of the issues arising on a number of recently contested Private Bills concerning development. Some of them, like those for Okehampton and Lyndhurst, do not come into this Question because they do not concern foreshore developments, but the Swanage Yacht Haven Bill certainly does, and I was one of those who voted at Third Reading that the Bill should be thrown out. I did so not because I in any way set myself up as an expert on Swanage—I have not been there for 40 years—but because it seemed to me that there was a coherent body of public opinion locally which felt that the borough council was not doing the right thing. That opinion was shown by a town poll, which was the reason that in the end swayed me to think that our own Committee was wrong and that the proposal ought not to go ahead.
With due respect to those who devotedly give up their time to be members of committees on these Private Bills, we do not have the expertise to consider these planning matters. We do not have expertise comparable to that of the inspector in a public inquiry. The kind of debates which take place on the Floor of your Lordships' House—apart from the debates in committees, of which I know nothing—on the whole, seem to me to indicate the strength and force of the lobbies and pressure groups which come before your Lordships' House and attempt to influence your Lordships rather than any necessarily coherent view of the principles on which these planning applications should be considered.
Therefore, our view on these Benches is that the Private Bill procedure for foreshore and other developments is seriously defective. We hope that the Select Committee, which is now meeting to consider
286
these matters, will find it possible to make very radical changes to the procedures. I do not presume to offer a conclusion, but it seems to me that there is enough evidence that the public inquiry procedure, with all its defects, as an appeal against decisions of local authorities is preferable to the procedure which is adopted. I do not believe that it would be a serious loss of sovereignty to this House if we ceased to have this kind of Private Bill procedure for this kind of judgment.
8.14 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, the Question raised by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, although directed at foreshore development, reflects a wider concern at the use of Private Bills as a means of obtaining planning permission for development proposals. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, has commented on that. The way this works is that once the principle of a scheme has received parliamentary sanction, the Town and Country Planning General Development Order confers an outline planning permission for the development, leaving the details to be submitted to the local planning authority. In some instances, the Bill may seek parliamentary approval for certain of the details as well.
Thus, where a Private Bill is introduced, normal planning procedures, which for controversial schemes will usually involve the holding of a public inquiry, do not need to be followed. However, the Private Bill procedure allows for petitions to be made and heard by a Select Committee in each House and this facility fulfils a similar function to the public inquiry.
As the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, knows, the whole question of using Private Bill procedures, including in particular the use of such Bills to authorise particular works, is being examined by a joint committee of this House and another place. The Government have given evidence to the joint committee. I am sure the committee will have been sensitive to misgivings that have been expressed about a number of individual cases in recent years. We must await the committee's report. I am no more able than the noble Earl to anticipate what its findings and recommendations may be.
However, I must make it clear that a Private Bill is not a straight alternative to planning procedures for developers. It can be promoted only if the powers cannot be obtained by any other means. The promoters have to declare this in the preamble to the Bill. But if a works scheme requires other authorisations which can only be granted by Parliament, it seems reasonable that Parliament should consider also the planning issues as part of the consideration of the principle of the scheme. This avoids the need for the developers to go through two separate processes in order to achieve the necessary authorisations. There is no reason why Parliament should not give proper consideration to the environmental implications of a scheme if those aspects are brought before it by way of a petition from those with a special interest in the project, or by being raised on the Floor of either this House or another place.

287
The noble Earl has referred specifically to development on the foreshore—that is, the land which lies between the high-water mark of median high tide and the low-water mark. The general principles which I have just outlined are equally applicable to such development. Most development on the foreshore is in fact dealt with under the planning system.
I should perhaps explain at this point that the normal limit of local authority jurisdiction, and hence of the scope of the planning system, is the mean low-water mark. There are a number of exceptions to this rule, for example in enclosed bays or in harbours for which the local authority is the harbour authority. But the low-water mark is a sensible boundary line. Once one goes beyond it, the normal considerations which local planning authorities take into account when considering planning applications, which relate mainly to the appropriateness of the proposed land use to the uses of neighbouring land, become of less importance. Once out at sea, issues of navigation and fishery have to be considered on which even coastal local authorities do not have, and generally do not need to have, any expertise. Local authorities have a legitimate interest in what goes on just off their shores, but this does not mean that they should be given control. In practice, very few developments are undertaken offshore; each one raises different issues, and, in the absence of any appropriate authority, such projects can be decided only by Parliament.
In those instances where private legislation is promoted for foreshore development it is usually for one of the following reasons. First, it is to authorise activities not within the scope of planning legislation, such as dredging or works extending beyond planning boundaries—that is, as I have said, seaward of mean low water; secondly, to amend existing legislation governing the development of the site; thirdly, to establish the developer as a controlling authority for the development, with the powers necessary for the proper regulation of the development; fourthly, to deal with the question of giving the developer immunity against actionable nuisance for infringing any common law rights, such as navigation and fishing, within the area of the development—I should mention here that a marina would otherwise be subject to these rights, and anyone could legally disrupt its operation by exercising those rights within it. Finally, legislation may be needed to overcome the problem of land which is subject to a public trust—for example, where a local authority wishes to develop a site which it owns for purposes not covered by existing powers.
Where one or more of these reasons apply, the planning system is not capable of giving the requisite authority and the use of private legislation is necessary. The flaw in the argument of my noble friend Lord Onslow is that it would be neither appropriate nor proper for the planning system to be extended to enable a local planning authority, or indeed the Secretary of State for the Environment, on appeal to give the kind of authorisations to which I have referred. It therefore surprised me that the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, spoke in support of my noble friend Lord Onslow, in particular with his knowledge of the possible infringement of common law.
288
It may be helpful therefore if I refer to two matters which are of interest to my noble friend. The first one that he mentioned was Okehampton. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said, this is not a foreshore development and I too shall not comment on it further. The second is the Swanage Yacht Haven Bill, which was promoted even though the developer had obtained planning permission for the haven itself from Purbeck District Council. In that case there was a two-stage procedure at—I stress the word "at"—the promoter's choice. A Private Bill was required in addition for a number of reasons: first, because common law rights and works extending seaward of the low-water mark were involved; secondly, to allow the transfer of the undertaking of the Swanage Pier Company to the promoters and to repeal the Swanage Pier Act and Orders 1859 to 1948; and, finally, to create the marina itself. These are matters which, as I have explained, had to come before Parliament for the necessary authorisations and which could not have been dealt with under the planning system or on order-making procedure under the Harbours Act 1964.
I entirely understand my noble friend's concern that foreshore development should be brought within the planning umbrella. Frequently it already is within that umbrella. But I hope he will agree that special considerations apply which make it difficult for a purely planning approach always to be adopted. In such cases, we do not think it unreasonable that the whole matter be dealt with by Parliament. However, as I have said, there is a joint committee looking into the whole question of Private Bill legislation and the Government's detailed response must await its report.

Felixstowe Dock and Railway Bill
The Queen's Consent signified, and Bill reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee without amendment.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes past eight o'clock.