Lords Sitting of 8 December 1988

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Guildford.): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Message from the Queen
The Earl of Airlie: My Lords, I have the honour to present to your Lordships a Message from Her Majesty the Queen, signed by her own hand. The Message is as follows:
"I have received with great satisfaction the loyal and dutiful expression of your thanks for the Speech with which I opened the present Session of Parliament".

Unattributable Press Briefings
3.1 p.m.
Lord Ezra Lord Ezra asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their policy towards unattributable press briefings.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Belstead): My Lords, unattributable briefings are one of the techniques widely employed in this country and elsewhere to communicate information.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, while accepting that very clear statement by the noble Lord the Leader of the House, may I ask whether in his opinion there have not been cases recently when matters have been raised at these briefings which should more properly have been raised in the first instance in Parliament? Further, may I ask the noble Lord whether there have not been cases where matters have apparently been raised at these briefings which have subsequently been denied by the Government, thus causing confusion in the public mind?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that the prime source of information from the Government is, and should remain, Statements and Answers to Parliament; but the lobby system of unattributable briefings supplements that flow of information. I remind the noble Lord that it is welcomed, as I understand it, by the press. As regards the second part of the noble Lord's question, my answer is that I do not agree with him.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, notwithstanding what the noble Lord the Leader of the House has said, is it not the case that there is considerable concern about the alleged misuse of the lobby system? Would it not therefore be in everyone's interest if there were a reconsideration of the ground rules, including a review of the role of the Prime Minister's press secretary?
Lord Belstead:My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition. It is interesting to note that in today's edition of The Times there is a very good example of unattributable briefing from Shadow Cabinet sources about what happened at the Shadow Cabinet last Wednesday. All parties use unattributable briefing. I believe that is something that is welcomed by the press, and I hope it will continue.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I was not contesting the case he made generally on unattributable briefing? Is he aware that I am saying that there is considerable concern about the alleged misuse of the position at the present time? Therefore, would it not be advisable, in order to remove the concern, to have a good look at the ground rules?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, if he would like to give me a specific case I would find it easier to answer.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, is it not the case that two leading newspapers now refuse to take part in the lobby system? Does not that destroy the Government's case that the system is universally popular? Further, can the noble Lord tell us how it is that the details of the Statement about British Shipbuilders were all contained in yesterday's morning newspaper when the noble Lord maintains that the main means of communicating information should be through Statements in the House?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, in answer to the second part of the noble Lord's question, I would say that I did not know about that incident. I deprecate that that should have occurred. The answer to the first part of his question—an important question, I think—is that, yes, indeed, it is the case that two newspapers do not attend the No. 10 briefings. However, I understand that those two newspapers are nonetheless ready to receive non-attributable briefings by government departments and others.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, when these briefings are taped, can the noble Lord ensure that the machine is in working order?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that that is a highly desirable step.
Lord Mowbray and Stourton: My Lords, does not my noble friend agree that it would be a sad day for both parties if banana skins became an unattributable part of our diet?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I take on board what my noble friend says.

Universities Funding Council
3.5 p.m.
Lord Beloff Lord Beloff asked Her Majesty's Government.
Whether the Universities Funding Council set up under Section 131 of the Education Reform Act 1988 shall be bound by Sections 131(7) and 134(3) of that Act.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the UFC will, of course, be bound by these sections and all other relevant statutory provisions.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. Will he also confirm to the House that the UFC will be bound by two undertakings given by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor in the course of the passage of the Bill when he said:
"I confirm now that our annual settlement of overall public support is entirely independent of university success in raising more private funds".—[Official Report, 16/5/88; col. 149.]
On 25th July the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor further said that such conditions as the funding councils will impose,
"may not relate to income received from sources other than the councils".—[Official Report, 25/7/88; col. 35.]
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, these matters were discussed at great length and in great depth during the passage of the Bill through your Lordships' House. I can only say that the whole point of Sections 131(7) and 134(3) of the Education Reform Act is to emphasise that universities will remain free to attract and use funds from private sources without risk of financial penalty.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the draft financial memorandum between the department and the funding council will require the council to keep under review the level of balances of universities without any qualification, or any reservation, or indeed any reference to moneys which universities may have, otherwise than by way of grant? Does the Minister think that that is consistent with the provisions in the Act to which the Question relates?
Viscount Davidson: Yes, my Lords. The Government are well aware of the concern expressed by the CVCP. I understand that a meeting is to be held next week between the department and the CVCP to discuss the points which have been raised. That is one of the points that will be discussed.
Lord Peston: My Lords, is the Minister aware that some universities are a good deal richer than others, and that some are capable of raising £200 million while others have difficulty in raising 200 pence? Would it not be reasonable for the UFC to take account of the difference in funds available to universities, and in particular whether that difference is not itself a reflection of the relative academic qualities of the universities?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am sure that the CVCP will be taking that into account.

Capital Punishment: European Protocol
3.9 p.m.
Lord Hooson Lord Hooson asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they intend to sign the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and, if not, what are their reasons for not so doing.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): No, my Lords. The question of the reintroduction of capital punishment is left to a free vote in Parliament. It would be inappropriate for the Government to enter into an international agreement which pre-empted such a vote.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, as we abolished the death penalty for most offences in this country in 1965, and as the protocol allows for the emergencies of war or the imminence of war, why does this country not sign the protocol, so that it effectively would bring us into line with other European nations and not invite an annual debate on the matter?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I have just tried to explain to the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, why the Government have not done so. All decisions concerning the death penalty have always been by custom the result of a free vote in Parliament. If the Government were to accede to the request to sign the protocol it would mean that they would pre-empt the right of Parliament to change its mind if it so chose. We do not believe that that is right.
I would just point out to the noble Lord that he was quite right. The death penalty was abolished in 1965 for most cases. It still applies for treason under the Treason Act of 1814 and for piracy under the Piracy Act of 1837 and for certain treasonable offences under the armed forces Act of 1871. It is also still an offence to slay the Lord Chancellor.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, that is not the case. It applies only to the Lord Chancellor in his place and in the exercise of his office, which would add a new risk to the occupancy of the Woolsack.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, that is a matter of detail which would have to be decided when the unfortunate case, if it should occur, arose. I would remind the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, who is only too well versed in the matter and doubtless when he took upon himself the responsibilities and duties of Lord Chancellor he found out exactly what he might have been letting himself in for, that it became an offence under the 1351 Treason Act and a hanging offence by virtue of the 1814 Act, but I am not certain whether it was a capital offence between 1351 and 1814.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I gather that the situation was worsened when power was given to the Secretary of State to behead the offender against the Lord Chancellor. I have little doubt that the Government are not moving in that direction.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I think that either option would be fairly disagreeable. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, is quite right; the Government are not moving in that direction.

Housing Condition Survey
3.12 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick Lord Dean of Beswick asked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they propose to take about the housing conditions which were highlighted in the Department of the Environment's housing condition survey 1986.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, the English House Condition Survey showed that less than 3 per cent. of the stock now lacks basic amenities compared with 5 per cent. in 1981. The proportion of the stock which is classified as unfit has been reduced from 6·3 per cent. to 5·6 per cent. Disrepair has not increased. The results of the survey are encouraging, although we must not of course be complacent. That is why we are seeking to target resources more effectively to those areas that most need it.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for that reply. Naturally we welcome the slightly improved situation and hope that the rate of improvement continues to accelerate. However, the Minister must be aware that the National Home Improvement Council and the AMA, after reading the report, have reached the conclusion that in order to deal with the housing stock on a national basis both in the public sector and the private sector over the next ten years between £50 billion and £85 billion will need to be spent. Have the Government any plans to pump more money into housing in order to correct those deficiencies?
The Earl of Caithness: Yes, my Lords. There will be considerably more money. As the noble Lord will be aware the gross provision for local authorities is up for the fourth successive year to £3,303 million for 1989–90 which is a 13·5 per cent. increase on this year.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, does the Minister recall that a few weeks ago I asked him a question regarding the effect of the increase in the bank rate on the house building programme? Is the Minister aware that the house building figures are now taking a downward turn and in some areas remaining static and the bank rate is having its effect? Will the Minister plead with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and dissuade him from eliminating tax relief on improvement loans and from means testing of those who apply for improvement loans? Does he not consider that that would have an extremely adverse effect on the improvement programme which I agree for a time was running extremely well?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I hope that the improvement grants to which the noble Lord refers will be revised with the approval of your Lordships' House so that the resources that we devote to them can be better targeted. That surely is the right way to use public sector finance.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, will the Minister consider convening a conference of all appropriate bodies to
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consider the implications of this very important survey?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, a lot of people have been consulted. All those who wanted to write to the department have had every opportunity to do so. Shortly we shall be consulting the other organisation, Parliament.
The Viscount of Oxfuird: My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware that the survey highlights the poor condition of stock in the private rented sector? What do the Government intend to do about that?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the report shows that the private sector has had great difficulty in maintaining the quality of the stock to the standard to which we would have hoped. The Housing Act of 1988 which your Lordships helped to pass will allow the landlord to earn a reasonable return on new lettings and also contains strengthened powers for local authorities to act where properties are unfit or in serious disrepair.

Christmas Adjournment
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House to know that, subject to the progress of business, the House will adjourn for the Christmas Recess on Thursday 22nd December and return on Monday 16th January. The House will sit at 11 a.m. on Thursday 22nd December.

Southern Water Authority Bill
3.17 p.m.
Read a third time.
Clause 46 [Planning permission]:
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare)The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare) moved the following amendments:
Page 28, line 12, leave out ("Class XII in Schedule 1") and insert ("Part II in Schedule 2").
Page 28, line 13, leave out ("1977") and insert ("1988").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, these are purely technical amendments. They arise from a revised Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1988 which has replaced the 1977 order mentioned in the bill. I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—( The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Birmingham City Council Bill
Read a third time, and passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.

European Communities Committee: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Mackenzie-Stuart be appointed a member of the Select Committee.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

City of London (Spitalfields Market) Bill
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That this House do concur with the orders made by the Commons set out in their message of yesterday.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Mot
ion agreed to; and it was ordered that a message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Murder and Life Imprisonment: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the third Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the Select Committee:

Ackner, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Morton of Shuna, L.

Nathan, L. (Chairman)

Platt of Writtle, B.

Prys-Davies, L.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Windlesham, L.

That the Committee have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee from time to time be printed and, if the Committee think fit, be delivered out;
That the Proceedings of the Select Committee on Murder and Life Imprisonment in the last session of Parliament be referred to the Committee;
that the Committee have power to appoint Specialist Advisers;
that the Committee do meet on Monday 12th December at half-past four o'clock.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Statutory Instruments: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the last and longest Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee of seven Lords be appointed to join with a Committee appointed by the Commons to consider—

(1) Every instrument which is laid before each House of Parliament and upon which proceedings may be or might have been taken in either House of Parliament, in pursuant of an Act of Parliament; being

(a) a statutory instrument, or a draft of a statutory instrument;

(b) a scheme, or an amendment of a scheme, or draft thereof, requiring approval by statutory instrument;

(c) any other instrument (whether or not in draft), where the proceedings in pursuance of an Act of Parliament are proceedings by way of an affirmative resolution; or

(d) an order subject to special parliamentary procedure;

but excluding any Order in Council or draft Order in Council made or proposed to be made under paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 to the Northern Ireland Act 1974.

(2) Every general statutory instrument not within the foregoing classes, and not required to be laid before or to be subject to proceedings in the Commons only, but not including Measures under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 and instruments made under such Measures; with a view to determining whether the special attention of the House should be drawn to it on any of following grounds—

(i) that it imposes a charge on the public revenues or contains provisions requiring payments to be made to the Exchequer or any government department or to any local or public authority in consideration of any licence or consent or of any services to be rendered, or prescribes the amount of any such charge or payments;

(ii) that it is made in pursuance of any enactment containing specific provisions excluding it from challenge in the courts, either at all times or after the expiration of a specific period;

(iii) that it purports to have retrospective effect where the parent statute confers no express authority to so provide;

(iv) that there appears to have been unjustifiable delay in the publication or in the laying of it before Parliament;

(v) that there appears to have been unjustifiable delay in sending a notification under the proviso to subsection (1) of section 4 of the Statutory Instrument Act 1946, where an Instrument has come into operation before it has been laid before Parliament;

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(vi) that there appears to be a doubt whether it is intra vires or that it appears to make some unusual or unexpected use of the powers conferred by the statute under which it is made;

(vii) that for any special reasons its form or purport call for elucidation;

(viii) that its drafting appears to be defective; or

on any other ground which does not impinge on its merits or on the policy behind it, and to report their decision with the reasons thereof in any particular case.

That the Lords following, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, be named of the Committee:

Airedale, L.

Blatch, B.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Dilhorne, V.

Shaughnessy, L.

That two be the quorum of the Committee.
That the Committee have power to agree with the Committee appointed by the Commons in the appointment of a Chairman.
That the Committee have power to appoint one or more Sub-Committees severally to join with any Sub-Committee or Sub-Committees appointed by the Committee appointed by the Commons: and to refer to such Sub-Committee or Sub-Committees any of the matters referred to the Committee.
That it be an instruction to the Committee that they do not consider any instrument which is directed by Act of Parliament to be laid before and to be subject to proceedings in the Commons only; and that the Committee do not join with the Committee appointed by the Commons in considering any such instrument.
That it be a further instruction to the Committee that, before reporting that the special attention of the House be drawn to any instrument, the Committee do afford to any Government department concerned therewith an opportunity of furnishing orally or in writing to them or to any Sub-Committee or the Committee such explanations as the department think fit.
That the Joint Committee have leave to report from time to time.
That the Committee do meet with the Committee appointed by the Commons on Tuesday 13th December at a quarter-past four o'clock.
—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to; and it was ordered that a message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Broadcasting and Terrorism
3.19 p.m.
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers rose to move, That this House takes note of the directions given by the Home Secretary on 19th October last to the BBC and IBA to restrict the broadcasting of statements by Northern Ireland terrorist organisations and their apologists.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, on 19th October I repeated the Statement which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary made in another place about the directions which he proposed to give to the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Independent Broadcasting Authority requiring them to refrain from broadcasting statements by Northern Ireland terrorist organisations and their apologists.
I was particularly encouraged on that occasion by the support which was given towards those measures by the noble Lords, Lord Mason of Barnsley and Lord Fitt. Both noble Lords have had extensive experience of the circumstances of Northern Ireland—politically and personally. And they will be aware of the degree of widespread concern about the activities of terrorist organisations and their supporters in Northern Ireland, including the apparent freedom which is provided to those organisations to ventilate their views on the airwaves and to seek support for their so-called cause. But it is correct that Parliament should have the opportunity of discussing what are—and I readily admit it—controversial decisions. That is the reason for today's debate.
The imposition of any restrictions upon broadcasting—irrespective of the merits of the case—is a very serious step. It was taken only after long and careful consideration by the Government. In deciding to take this action, the Government wanted to go only so far as to restrict direct broadcast statements by terrorist organisations and their supporters. It was limited action on our part. We did not want to suppress the reporting of events in Northern Ireland. Nor did we wish to suppress the reporting of terrorist activities. Those matters—just as much as others—are the meat and drink of life. However much we may dislike them, they need to be reported. It is in the public's interest that the public should be aware of what is taking place.
As a result, the directions do not restrict the second-hand reporting of events. The activities of these organisations, and the words which their spokesmen utter, can still be reported, just as they are in the written press. One Irish newspaper said, at the time when the directions were being issued:
"Sinn Fein are not being silenced . . . merely put in their place."
We should not, I think, be misled therefore by those who seek to make comparisons with the extensive restrictions—and even prevention—on reporting which exist in countries like South Africa. Those sorts of comparisons are in fact a distortion of the limited action which this Government are taking in order to protect the citizens of the United Kingdom from the intrusive and inflammatory voices of terrorism which some seek to convey by means of the broadcasting system.
In arriving at the decision to impose these restrictions, the Government concluded that those who live by the bomb and the gun—and those who support them—cannot in all reasonable circumstances be accorded exactly the same rights as are accorded to the rest of the population. This is a principle which Parliament has endorsed on many occasions.
In the particular case of broadcasting, the Government's view is that those who practise and support terrorism and violence should not be allowed direct access to radio and television screens in the United Kingdom. This is the essence of the Government's action. The same conclusion was reached some years ago by the Republic of Ireland in imposing similar restrictions there, which continue to be in force.
We are not extending these restrictions to the press, because it is the immediacy both of radio and particularly of television which has its own peculiar and immediate impact. It is hard to justify—and indeed, I do not think that one wishes to justify—the sight of people inciting or defending terrorism being projected into the living rooms of people in this country. It is neither wanted nor right. To those who say that this is a curtailment of the freedom of expression, I would suggest that any freedom carries its obligations. No amount of freedom can justify terrorism. None can justify its perpetration.
Second-hand reports in the press, on the other hand, do not have the same impact. And no restrictions will be placed on the reporting of statements by representatives of these organisations in the broadcast media either.
Your Lordships may ask: "Why is it necessary to take these measures?" There can be no doubt that the appearances of these spokesmen on television cause widespread offence. In the case of those in Northern Ireland, who are closer to the problem, the offensiveness is all the greater.
That is not surprising. Members of the public do not want to have the comfort and the privacy of their homes invaded by a spokesman for terrorism attempting to justify yet another atrocity. Nor do they wish to be subjected, through the powerful and intrusive medium of broadcasting, to propaganda and threats from the voices of terrorism. I am sure that your Lordships will agree that this is not what television and radio is for. Nor can we really accept that it was ever intended that the precious—and privileged, let usremember—resources of broadcasting should be used for this purpose. I hope that your Lordships will also agree that we do not want to see the fine tradition and reputation of British broadcasting sullied by the advocation of violence and terrorism.
But the degree of offence which is caused to the viewer by the appearances of these spokesmen was not the only reason for the Government's action. By preventing the appearance of these organisations on television, we are denying them a publicity vehicle from which they have previously received some considerable advantage. And I do not believe that the people of the United Kingdom will feel that they are
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any the poorer for not seeing on their television sets an IRA, Sinn Fein or UDA spokesman addressing a rally of their supporters. Appearances on television have an uncanny knack of lending some kind of spurious authority and respectability to those who happen to be featured.
I should explain the two exemptions from the directions. One is for parliamentary proceedings. The other is for statements which are made during an election period.
In relation to parliamentary proceedings, we were concerned not to take any measures which might affect parliamentary privilege. We have had to have regard to the position of broadcasters in relation to parliamentary matters. Under the licence and agreement, the BBC is charged with providing an impartial account, day by day, of proceedings in both Houses of Parliament. It might be difficult for the corporation to carry out this requirement, particularly in respect of debates relating to Northern Ireland, if the restrictions were to apply to our proceedings.
A similar point applies in the case of elections. Under the Broadcasting Act, the IBA has a statutory duty to treat impartially matters of political or industrial controversy or matters concerning current public policy. The BBC has undertaken, in the annex to its licence and agreement, to fulfil a similar responsibility. In the Government's view, it would be possible to carry out this requirement fully in everyday circumstances since the notices would not prevent the broadcasters from indirect reporting of the statements or activities of the organisations concerned.
At an election period, though, it is different. The ability of candidates and their supporters to make a personal appearance on radio or television is crucial to balancing the interests of political parties and is important in projecting the views--and even the sight—of those who are seeking election. It is, after all, the basis of the broadcasting requirements under the Representation of the People Act.
The application of the restrictions, during an election period, would face the broadcasters with an insurmountable conflict between their legal duty to implement the notice and the requirements of impartial treatment of political controversy. I think that such a position would raise substantial legal difficulties.
For those reasons, therefore, we decided that a candidate who represents one of the organisations concerned, and his supporters, should be free to make personal appearances on radio and television during election time, provided —and this is an important qualification—that their statements are made in support of the candidate and his constituency contest.
There are some who have suggested that the directions are complicated and confusing. I do not think that that is so. The terms of the directions were as clear as we could make them, and we have since provided the broadcasting authorities with guidance about them.
There will, of course, be occasions when the broadcasters, as they do now, will have to use their

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judgment in deciding whether or not to include particular material in a programme. One such issue concerns the question of whether a person is representing a named organisation at the time when he appears on a programme. It is true that a member of an organisation cannot be held to represent it in all his daily activities.
The key to the issue is the word "represent". When a councillor is speaking in Northern Ireland, it is not the subject about which he is talking which will decide whether his speech can be broadcast directly, but whether he is talking on behalf of one of the named organisations. A Sinn Fein councillor, for example, who is talking about council matters on behalf of his group, will not be allowed direct access. There will be borderline cases where this distinction will require careful judgment—just as there are now—but in practice, in the vast majority of cases, I do not think that the decision will be too difficult.
Some have suggested that the measures are a major incursion into the rights of freedom of expression. I do not think that that is so since broadcasters remain free to report the activities of these organisations and free to report the actual words which are used by their representatives. It is only direct broadcast statements by these representatives which are being restricted.
Others have said that the measures do not go far enough. They would like the Government to go so far as proscribing Sinn Fein. But we believe that proscription is an appropriate measure only in respect of organisations who are actively and primarily involved in terrorism. In this context, the status of Sinn Fein and the Ulster Defence Association are kept carefully under review by the Government.
The argument has also been put that by depriving the terrorists of one weapon, namely, the ability to broadcast, we are giving them another—and a larger one—namely, the ability to claim that they have been singled out for peculiar and discriminating treatment.
It has been suggested that we are giving them a propaganda advantage across the world, which will outweigh the disadvantage of being excluded from our television screens. I am not persuaded that this is the case. An Irish American or an Irish Australian, who is already sympathetic to the IRA, will not have his opinion changed one way or the other by these measures. What we are doing is no different from the action which has been taken by Dublin governments, of various political complexions, for many years past.
Critics of the restrictions have said that the public should be able to see and to hear these spokesmen for what they are. But the public are well aware of what the terrorists and their fellow travellers stand for. Our contention is that it is simply not acceptable that the public platform of television and radio should be used—and abused—in a way which causes offence to the vast majority of people. It encourages violence; it disseminates unrest; and it is an abuse of public facility in a way which is both unacceptable and inappropriate.
Nor should terrorists be allowed to continue to draw support and sustenance as a result of having access to the radio and television, and to use these facilities in order to propagate terrorism.
There is one further aspect of the matter which needs to be taken into account. It is not simply that people are affronted by the direct access of men of violence, and supporters of violence, to television and radio. The direct access to the broadcasting media gives those who use it a spurious authority and respectability. They have taken advantage of these opportunities, not just to persuade but to frighten. They expoit and manipulate the media in order to deliver indirect threats. We believe not only that this is wrong, but that people do not want it.
I hope therefore that your Lordships will appreciate that the measures that we have taken are not simply just to protect the viewer from the offensiveness of the appearance of these spokesmen. The measures will also deny an easy propaganda platform to the voices of violence. They will prevent terrorists and those who support them from using the broadcasting media in order to deliver threats direct into the homes of law-abiding people in the United Kingdom. It was clearly necessary for the Government to bring to an end the exploitation of the broadcasting media in this way. I hope that it will receive your Lordships' approval.
This decision is a serious one and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has said that he intends to keep its operation under careful review. I hope nevertheless that your Lordships will understand the reasons for the Government's action and will endorse the measures which have been taken. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the directions given by the Home Secretary on 19th October last to the BBC and IBA to restrict the broadcasting of statements by Northern Ireland terrorist organisations and their apologists.—(Earl Ferrers.)
3.34 p.m.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, perhaps I may start by saying that we on these Benches understand and wholly share the disgust and the outrage caused by the terrorist organisations and their odious supporters. We sympathise deeply with the grief and distress of the victims and their community. We would do anything to damage and curtail their murderous activities.
However, when we use the weapon of banning the broadcasting of interviews, I believe that it has to satisfy two tests. The Minister said that freedom does not justify terrorism. I entirely agree. The method that one uses has to be justified on two grounds. First, will it be effective? Secondly, what are the consequences to our freedom? If it could be shown that it is in the public interest to restrict the media and that it would be effective in this way, we would have to consider it seriously. However, the ban fails the tests both of practice and of principle. The Home Secretary claimed that the ban was necessary because appearances by representatives of terrorist organisations—and the Minister has drawn attention to the fact—
"had caused…offence to viewers and listeners". [Official Report, Commons 19/10/88; col. 885.]

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Yet I must point out that there is no real evidence, and no research has been done, to prove that such a draconian measure is merited. One cannot just go by either anecdotal evidence or the knowledge that people switching on television do not like or do not embrace what they see. There has to be something very much more before action like this is taken.
John Birt, the Deputy Director-General of the BBC, has reported that a recent programme which contained an interview with Gerry Adams—who was pressed very hard on this issue in the interview—was watched by over 2 million viewers and not a single complaint was registered by the BBC's duty office. Indeed, I am told by the BBC that more complaints are registered following the screening of IRA funerals in the news programmes which many people find repulsive.
My friends and I are opposed to the ban because we believe that in practice it simply will not achieve the ends that the Government have set for it. The Government obviously are trying in their own way to do the best they can in what they believe are difficult circumstances. But we, and I am sure other Members of your Lordships' House, do not believe that this is the right way to go about it; we believe that it is a dangerous way to go about it. In our view it represents a fundamental attack on the right to freedom of speech.
The ban prevents Northern Ireland terrorists or their supporters from making personal appearances on television or radio. The Home Secretary claimed that direct access gives those who use it an air and appearance of authority; and that was reinforced by the Minister just now. However, one can look at it the other way round. The ban does not prevent the opinions of terrorists' supporters being reported in the broadcast or print media. The Home Secretary went on to say that the ban represents a measure that can further help to protect a free democratic society from the evil of terrorism and its associations. Many of us feel that people are not so gullible. They do not need this protection. The truth is that the Government have allowed themselves to be manoeuvred into a position which permits the paramilitaries to claim that they are the victims—that they are the ones being denied access to the machinery of democracy. The appearance of authority has been firmly planted in the laps of terrorists who now claim that it is they who suffer from repression. That is the exact opposite of what any of us would like to happen.
Any pretence that this ban will be an effective weapon against terrorism is further undermined by the ambiguities and inconsistencies surrounding its implementation. Again the Minister drew attention to some of those. The ban will not apply during election periods. In other words, it will not apply when, following the Government's reasoning, I should have thought that it would matter most, and would therefore give an extra burst of publicity to such organisations during elections.
The Minister stated that the terms in which the guidelines for the elections are written will be as clear—these are his words—"as we can make them".
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Obviously they cannot be very clear because the whole operation is rather confused. The ban applies to legal organisations as well as to illegal organisations. It could be said that this is perhaps its most illogical and undemocratic aspect. If the public are entitled to vote for a party—Sinn Fein is a legal party; it has not been proscribed—then surely they are entitled to hear that party's views broadcast.
I know that many of us find such views unpalatable, repugnant and indefensible, but we should allow them to be heard because freedom of belief and expression is the linchpin of our democracy. In interviews that have taken place in the past, though there have not been many, Sinn Fein either condemned themselves from their own mouths or they were pressed into virtual self-condemnation by the interviewers.
The terms of the ban are unclear. It seems that an interview with a member of Sinn Fein cannot be broadcast when the views of Sinn Fein are being represented, though, as was shown on the "Media Programme" recently, a picture of the interviewee can be shown with his lips moving and his words being spoken by an actor—even an actor with an Irish accent. If it were not so tragic, the situation would be high comedy.
At the same time, following clarification from the Government, it seems that Sinn Fein councillors can broadcast as local councillors as distinct from being members of Sinn Fein. Surely that is a piece of Irish schizophrenia if ever there was one. They therefore can be interviewed on purely local matters. The result is, as my right honourable friend Mr. Roy Hattersley said in another place:
"Sinn Fein will be allowed to represent itself as the caring guardian of local interests, but will not be cross-examined on its support for terrorism".—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/88; col. 1087.]
The Government appear to have shot themselves in the foot over this matter, giving those who support terrorism a propaganda coup but at the same time throwing the broadcasters into confusion. The anger about the whole matter on the part of the broadcasting organisations and broadcasters could perhaps have been mitigated had the Government, before imposing the ban, discussed it with the broadcasters so that a less clumsy and less repressive mode of broadcasting behaviour might be found. Instead of that, the BBC was informed, of the ban the evening before the announcement was made public and the IBA was told on the morning of the announcement.
The Home Secretary claimed that the ban implied no criticism of the authorities. He said that broadcasters had a dangerous and unenviable task in reporting events in Northern Ireland. This step is no criticism of them. Therefore the broadcasters are doing no wrong. Indeed, both authorities, the BBC and the IBA, have rigorous systems of self-regulation for transmitting material which is concerned with terrorist activities. In 1971 the BBC decided that interviews with banned groups,
"should only be filmed and transmitted after the most serious consideration, and that the BBC should be seen to be clearly opposed to the indiscriminate methods of the extremists".
Commenting recently on the ban, David Nicholas, editor in chief of ITN, the independent news, said:

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"Public opinion is more resolute than ever in its determination to defeat terrorism. This owes a lot to the full and free reporting of Northern Ireland, which has exposed terrorism for what it is."
The truth is that the ban was adopted hastily without any real thought of the effect it would have. In their indecent haste to rush this through to show that something is being done, the Government have created an ill-thought-out and potentially dangerous measure.
It means that broadcasters are to be told what they can and cannot transmit and the public are to hear a sanitised version of the political realities in Northern Ireland. I do not know whether noble Lords are aware that this has further far-flung effects as well. For some years I was a governor of the British Film Institute. I have seen copies of correspondence between the Home Secretary and the chairman of the IBA about archive material. The British Film Institute has in its archives hundreds of hours of material dating back to 1981 relating to Sinn Fein. It also has innumerable newsreels going back to 1916.
At present there is a complete state of uncertainty about what can be shown. The correspondence with the chairman of the IBA makes it quite clear that the Home Office also has not come to any definite conclusion, but the Home Secretary, writing to Lord Thomson, said he had been advised by his officials that in many cases the material could not be used. We have reached this stage as well and I find it extremely worrying.
Next week we shall be debating the broadcasting White Paper, the government plan to deregulate broadcasting. In his statement on the White Paper the Home Secretary said:
"We aim to ensure that viewers and listeners have greater freedom of choice from a more varied output of programmes".—[Official Report, Commons, 7/11/88; col. 30.]
What about the freedom of choice to hear all sides of a political argument? What about the freedom to challenge those who seek to justify terrorist activities? Why do the Government, who condemn the nanny state, judge people incapable of understanding the hypocrisy which lies behind terrorist explanations for the use of violence?
Causing offence is unpleasant, but it is not a satisfactory reason for imposing such draconian measures as this ban on broadcasters. Are we as a society to be protected from a knowledge of all that is unpleasant in this world? There are other very unpleasant things on radio and television showing great violence from which we are not, quite rightly, totally protected in case we may be offended or, worse still, in case we may be taken in by the supporters of terrorism. What if—we all pray that it will not happen—a more repressive government should take office in the future? The ground rules would have been laid down for censorship on a much wider scale than anything we have seen before.
The Minister pointed out that we should not make comparisons with, for example, South Africa. But I feel very uneasy about being applauded by South Africa and the ban used to justify measures in its own repressive regime. Those are not the kind of mates I want to be seen with or have agree with me.
The damage the ban has so far done to the World Service has received insufficient attention. The
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reputation of the World Service for independence from the Government is internationally recognised and carefully cherished. The World Service has had battles in the past with other countries which are anxious that we should not give a hearing to the opposition in their countries, but always it has quite rightly stood firm. This reputation is now being undermined. Equally important is the encouragement the ban gives to those who support the IRA financially from abroad. Anyone with any understanding of American politics appreciates the passionate commitment to freedom of speech, mainly through the American devotion to the First Amendment. The ban has meant trenchant denunciation in the media there of what is seen by many commentators as being tantamount to Eastern European censorship. That applies not only to organisations which may support the IRA or Sinn Fein.
The pity is that there is now evidence that long-standing American support for IRA outrages has begun to diminish. By imposing the ban the Government have at a stroke rejuvenated pro-Irish sympathies in America and will almost certainly replenish the IRA's coffers. The ban is not only repressive; it is also short-sighted and self-defeating as an attempt to curb terrorism. Unfortunately the Government appear to believe that if they ignore the IRA in this rather lopsided way it will go away. More openness about Northern Ireland is needed—not less.
I find it insulting that we are deemed to be unfit to come to our own conclusions on the basis of uncensored information. We cannot afford to be represented as the enemy of the freedom that we are trying to defend all the time. I do not pretend that a solution to the troubles in Northern Ireland is easy to find, but I am positive that the ban is not the right solution. I am convinced that it will do more harm than good.
3.56 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, in her forthright and convincing condemnation of the notice issued by the Home Secretary on 19th October banning the broadcasting of terrorist and proscribed organisations on radio or television. I have little doubt that the notice was issued with this thought at the back of the mind of the Government: that under the circumstances which faced them something had to be done. That "something" proved to be the ban which I have no doubt had been considered on many occasions over many years in the Home Office and rejected on each occasion.
I share the noble Baroness's belief that underlying the measure there is an attitude towards the people of this country which is deeply patronising; which does not trust them to make up their own minds; and which believes that they cannot see through the reality of figures such as Mr. Gerry Adams and his colleagues and that they will be taken in by them. I do not share, and I do not believe that the noble Baroness shares, that patronising view.
As my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich has said, we on these Benches have given consistent

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support to all measures against terrorism in Ulster and elsewhere which this and other governments have proposed. We oppose them only where we believe that the proposed measures are ill-conceived, as in this case.
The Home Secretary's notice of 19th October falls into that territory. I must confess that I find neither of the main arguments which he used to defend the measure, repreated today in one form or another by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, to be convincing. The first argument is that to allow terrorists to appear on television causes widespread offence to listeners and viewers. The second argument is that terrorists draw sustenance from access to television.
I agree with the noble Baroness. I believe that in a democracy it is essential that the public be allowed to be offended by what is offensive. It is only by seeing what is offensive that they can judge the nature, extent and seriousness of the threats which face them. I remember that before the war there were those who profoundly objected to the publication in this country of Mein Kampf on the ground that it was offensive in almost every conceivable respect. If only more people had read Mein Kampf , and if only they had read it more carefully, perhaps we should have acted more wisely and resolutely.
To take another example, it is because Stalin managed the media so effectively and manipulated it so skilfully that the horrors of Stalinism were concealed from so many people for so long and deceived so many people for so long. That only reinforces the remark made in a brilliant essay in Survival by a former Regius Professor of History at Oxford, Sir Michael Howard, when writing about the position in the USSR. He states:
"Democracy is unworkable without a free flow of reliable information. Such information not only engenders debate but eliminates misunderstandings".
However, it is argued—as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, argued this afternoon—that the censorship imposed by this notice is confined to interrupting the free flow of information only on radio and television. Why is it being confined to those two media? The noble Earl did not admit it in his speech but counted it to the credit of the Government. However, the fact is that the Government have no such powers over the press. They could not have imposed such a ban on the press. The reason given for imposing the ban on television and broadcasting is the idea that in some way they are magical and uniquely powerful with an ability somehow to persuade people in a way no other media can.
Precisely the same argument was used when the printing press was invented, revolutionising the means of conveying information to the public. It immediately aroused in the authorities of that time a fear that the information would be misunderstood and misused by the public. However, if broadcasting has such a unique power, if it is from broadcasting that people receive their news and views, then to censor it is a severe blow to the free flow of reliable information. No amount of argument put forward by the noble Earl can possibly gainsay that. It also means that Sir Michael's words must he taken most seriously indeed.
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If it is not true—if that argument is not the case—and if by banning broadcasting and television one is not doing anything very important, why should there be all the fuss? Why should we have the notice in order to prevent the broadcast of eight minutes, including repeats, of film on "ITN News" over the past 12 months showing IRA people, terrorists, on the screen? That is what the ban would have achieved. It would have banned from broadcast on "ITN News" over the past 12 months eights minutes of film, including repeats. I wonder whether that is worth the dangers such a measure involves.
I well understand the feeling of those who believe that something must be done. I agree that the fight against terrorism must be relentless. However, it is equally important that the fight against terrorism is coupled with positive political initiatives. We are faced with an infinitely complex political and historical problem in which the support of public opinion—most certainly in Ulster but also in the Republic of Ireland and in the United States—is of considerable significance. It cannot be neglected.
The ban on broadcasting coupled with the Prime Minister's strident lectures to one and all about the extradition of Patrick Ryan can hardly have helped us to win the battle of people's minds. Nor is it a great tribute to the Government's diplomacy, public relations or call it what you will, that the chief supporters of the ban have been, as the noble Baroness pointed out, President Botha of South Africa and President Moi of Kenya. In the United States our ban has been greeted with dismay and bewilderment because, under its written constitution, it could not be brought in there.
Indeed, the effect on American opinion was expressed by the president of NBC News who announced on the television in this country that Britain is now the only Western democracy with broadcasting censorship. The fact that that is not true does not make it any less undesirable that that impression should be conveyed by a significant man who has powerful influence over what is broadcast in the United States.
As the noble Baroness pointed out, and I shall try to avoid repeating her, like all censorship this ban will lead to ludicrous consequences and a good deal of confusion. I do not know how many noble Lords have read the Scoble letter which was a letter from a senior official of the Home Office to the BBC interpreting the ambiguities of the Home Secretary's notice. In fact it requires a metaphysician to interpret Mr. Scoble's letter. For example, what is the status of that letter? It was sent to the BBC signed by Mr. Scoble, seen but not signed by the Home Office and a copy was sent to the IBA. What is its status and what is its standing in a court of law?
More important, the order in question forbids the broadcasting of any spoken words by the person who appears or is heard on the programme where—and this is rather important—(a) the person represents one of the proscribed organisations or (b) the words support or solicit or invite support for such an organisation. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to interpret that for me. The Scoble letter makes no reference to paragraph (b) and claims that the

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restrictions only apply to direct statements and not to reported speech. That is not what the order says.
It is clear from paragraph (b) that what matters is whether the words solicit or support a proscribed organisation. Mr. Scoble argues that the order only applies to direct statements. If paragraph (b) says what it means, a reporter reporting words which support or solicit would be caught. If that is the case the order is far wider than we have been led to suppose. The fact is that the order should be examined in Committee word by word and sentence by sentence. I could go on asking other questions and, like the noble Baroness, I have been worried about the answer in the Home Secretary's letter about archival material and I shall come to that in a moment.
We are also told that genuine works of fiction are not within the scope of the notice. Who is to judge what is a genuine work of fiction? Was "Cathy come Home" a genuine work of fiction or was it not? Were the Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon a genuine work of fiction or were they not? What about the Lou Grant soap, which some of your Lordships may have seen? It takes place in Los Angeles and in one episode some IRA gun-runners play a significant part? Is that or is that not genuine fiction? Similarly, these problems arise with archival material. What about Robert Kee's series on Northern Ireland or Jeremy Isaacs' "The Troubles"; are they or are they not within the ban?
Perhaps I may take a statement which some of your Lordships will recognise. I ask the noble Earl how this would be handled. The statement reads as follows:
"There are things stronger than parliamentary majorities. If an attempt were made to deprive these men of their birthright, they would be justified in resisting, by all means in their power, including force".
If that were said on radio or on television direct to camera and if those remarks were addressed to Irish people, would they fall within the ban? Perhaps because of the nature and standing of the person who spoke those words he should have been a member of a proscribed party. Mr. Andrew Bonar Law was the leader of the Conservative party when he made those remarks and I suspect that those remarks would have fallen within any such ban.
There are problems and questions which demand an answer. The Home Secretary's order cannot, as the noble Baroness said, simply be seen in connection with the tragedy in Ulster. It has far wider implications than that. I very much hope that those implications will be examined in a court of law because that will establish, first, whether freedom of expression, which has always been regarded as a residual right in this country, is a fundamental right, as it is under the Convention on Human Rights. Secondly, they will establish whether the courts would uphold a case on two grounds. One ground is that both the BBC and the IBA are under an obligation of impartiality. It could and should be argued—and I believe that it is a very plausible argument—that the order makes it impossible to carry out that impartiality for which they have a duty. That would establish for the first time the limits
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and the extent to which a government can override the liberties of broadcasters. That seems to me very important.
I hope that judicial review proceedings will be taken and that if our courts do not uphold the case—and our judiciary on past record is unlikely to do that—I hope that an appeal will be taken to the European Court of Human Rights. There, they will have a chance to decide for the first time the limits of governments' abilities to restrict the freedom of broadcasters and to establish that freedom of expression is a fundamental right in this country.
I hope that a case will be brought by the BBC, unless it has been too cowed. If it is not brought by the BBC then by the IBA, and if not by the IBA then by Channel 4. It would be best of all if such a case were brought by them all.
4.8 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I believe that all of us will agree with the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, that this is a very important issue and it is right that your Lordships' House should have an opportunity to debate it. The fundamental point of principle lying behind this is the matter is this: How far should a democratic society go in sacrificing its freedoms in order to fight terrorism?
I wish to concentrate on the point made by the noble Earl about the propaganda weapon which is said to have been handed to the IRA. I believe that he dismissed this far too lightly. I hope that when he sums up he will treat this matter much more seriously, especially in the light of some of the comments made by the previous two speakers.
It is well known that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Many of us in the Churches have had to wrestle seriously on whether all terrorism is the same or whether there are differences, with more justification for those who take arms in certain situations than in others. I think of the voices coming to us from Christian leaders in situations of massive injustice in parts of South America, Africa and Asia.
When this issue is raised my mind goes back to the Lambeth Conference and the discussions we had among the bishops at Lambeth as to how to respond to what some of the leaders from South Africa were saying to us about the situation there and in Namibia where already some people have taken up arms against the regime in that country of South Africa.
A resolution was produced which I had to move at the Lambeth Conference on our attitude to southern Africa. It was greatly misunderstood in many quarters. In fact, a disgraceful headline appeared in one popular paper stating, "Bishops Bless Terror". They did no such thing. What the resolution did—and it was very carefully drafted—was to express support for those who in the face of great provocation in southern Africa continue to pursue the path of non-violence. However, it also expressed understanding for those who, after all other means have been exhausted—I underline that—find themselves compelled to take the road of armed struggle and so become terrorists in one person's jargon and freedom fighters in another's.
The question was raised sharply at Lambeth: why should Northern Ireland and the situation there be

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any different? It is no secret that my colleagues from Northern Ireland, the Irish bishops, were deeply concerned about this resolution, especially when they saw the press the following day. Yet I believe there is a profound difference between the situations in South Africa and Namibia, parts of Latin America and Asia where people have been driven to take up arms, and the situation in Northern Ireland today.
Why is there this difference? This comes to the real heart of this debate. It can only be regarded as different if the IRA and the Protestant paramilitaries have no justification for their acts of bloody violence—no moral justification for it—because there are other means of remedying oppression. Slogans appear on the walls of Republican areas:
"IRA—the voice of an oppressed people".
It is important for all of us here in Britain to try to hear the voices of those who are oppressed, or who feel they are oppressed, in Northern Ireland today.
I share with your Lordships some words from the Financial Times which were published at the time the Home Secretary made his announcement:
"Despite the efforts that have been made since the civil rights marches in the late 1960s, the extent of the political and social alienation among Catholics, especially but by no means exclusively, in the working-class districts of Belfast, is still underestimated by the British authorities. The Government's decision to tinker with the way Northern Ireland is reported will strengthen the view … that British ministers see the Irish problem largely in terms of security—to the neglect of the political and social factors that contribute to the unrest".
I believe that it is fundamental for us in the United Kingdom to see something of what those political and social factors are and the sense of injustice that still remains, however much greater it may have been in the past.
I do not for one moment wish to minimise the efforts which are being made in the fields of equal opportunities, employment and housing to remedy some of those injustices, but my main point is this. I do not believe that the IRA can really be considered the true voice of an oppressed people if there are other ways of bringing attention to these injustices and continuing the struggle for justice.
In Northern Ireland we have been able to say that there are indeed other ways forward. It is a part of the United Kingdom in which there is a high degree of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and where people from the Republican areas can be elected for Sinn Fein or, on the other side of this tragic divide, people can be elected to represent the voices of extreme Protestantism.
I conclude from that that all situations of terrorism are by no means the same. I think we all concede that. The extreme example which is always pointed out is that of the Nazis in occupied Europe and those people who rose in resistance in France and elsewhere against that terrible regime. Therefore many of us do not believe that, whatever justification there may be for the armed struggles in other parts of the world, there is any justification whatever for the methods of the IRA and the Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland today. It is significant that the IRA receives no support whatever, officially, from the Roman Catholic Church.
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However, we are only able to draw that distinction provided those liberties are maintained in Northern Ireland. This is where I come to the whole point about the propaganda advantage now being handed on an open plate to the IRA in particular. It was no surprise to me to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, say that already this is being used in the United States of America, and not only by those with Republican sympathies. After all, we are struggling for the middle ground in world opinion, and that is fundamental.
It is good that the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, emphasised that the action is limited, but many actions begin by being limited and yet are significant steps—the thin end of the wedge—towards something that begins to erode certain important liberties. The point that worries me is that the action is being taken against organisations which are legal. The kinds of difficulties into which the Government are getting themselves in this regard were shown clearly by both the previous speakers when they referred to the problem of distinguishing between what happens at times of elections and what happens in the normal run of the month or year.
The Minister justified this step on the ground of the power of television. It is a powerful and intrusive medium coming right into our living rooms. However, I have always understood that part of the role of television is to convey as true art impression as is possible of the world in which we live. That puts heavy responsibilities on the programme makers. I can quite see that if we did not have a ban such as that proposed, Republican or Protestant paramilitary spokesmen could be used in badly made programmes which give a distorted view and are totally inappropriate. They should be subject to criticism for such programmes; not bullying, but criticism to make sure that people are able to see the true picture of what is happening in Northern Ireland.
A great deal depends in this debate—and it is, I suppose, similar to the arguments about pornography—on the point of view from which programmes are made. Therefore I conclude by saying that although I understand the reasons the Government feel driven to do something to counter the use made of the mass media by these organisations I am sure that this ban is the wrong way to go about it. I am afraid that it is tragically counterproductive. It gets dangerously near eroding the fundamental principles of liberty in our country and simply hands a propaganda weapon to those whom the Government wish to discourage and to fight against.
4.20 p.m.
Lord Aylestone: My Lords, the number of occasions upon which a government of either political party have found it necessary to issue a directive such as the one issued by this Government on 19th October are so limited that I find it extremely difficult to remember even one such case. In a very much lighter vein, I remember a directive instructing us not to advertise cigarettes on television, but that is in rather a different field.
I have tried to recall an occasion when programmes have been interfered with to the extent that this directive obviously does and is intended to

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do. But it is a very different kind of directive with a very different purpose. Noble Lords will remember that both the BBC and the IBA have advisory committees. Those committees are themselves formed of governors of the BBC and members of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. If they do their job at all—and from the little experience that I had some years ago I am pretty sure that they do—issues of this kind must have come before them. They must have realised that there was an issue to be discussed. Whether or not they discussed it, we do not know. The directive is something rather different which could and perhaps should have fallen within the purview of the advisory committees and of the BBC governors and IBA members.
Over the years various governments in this country have been very anxious to explain and emphasise the importance of not interfering in any way with the programme content of broadcasting. It is generally known that the BBC under its charter and the IBA under respective Acts have to be absolutely impartial in dealing with political issues. They have to see that programmes are generally well balanced in every respect. They have to be sure that even the coverage of the news of the day is factual and accurate and that any comment must be limited to just sufficient added information to make the news items understandable without taking sides in one direction or another as regards the particular news item. One should not expect, and I hope that we never have, the personal views of any newscaster or the producer of any news programme infiltrating into the programme itself.
The BBC and the IBA already have the necessary authority to prevent the broadcasting of any matter which infringes the charter and the Acts. I can assure noble Lords that on occasions they take such action and it is to their credit that they do. In fiction this happens frequently. A programme that is too violent or has too much sex very often has something taken out and on one or two occasions programmes are banned. When one returns to this kind of issue where an apologist for murder and violence appears on the air, probably as the result of an interview, and himself advocates those views or, to be kind to him, simply apologises for them, one is in a very different position. That should have been seen and noticed by the people responsible; namely, the BBC governors and the IBA members.
If we speak about Sinn Fein as a political party, but only as such, then it has as much right as any other political party. But if it uses that cover as an apology for murder, the position arises as to how it should be dealt with and in what way. We know that Sinn Fein is unquestionably—I am looking for the right word—associated perhaps, with the IRA and it fails in not denouncing murder and violence by the IRA. In some way or other it regards the IRA as part of its political activity for a legitimate political end; namely, a republic of the whole of Ireland. That is what it is after, and Sinn Fein may regard it as a legitimate political end. It is entitled to say so politically if it is only a political action. In my view what it is not entitled to do is to become an advocate for violence.
To report the news of terrorist activities and murder is the result of the way in which we cover
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news items. I am not arguing with it or suggesting that it is wrong. It has to be done in a way to condone what is contained within the news items. The majority of the people of the United Kingdom, and I am sure also the people of the Republic of Ireland itself, are appalled and opposed to murder and violence. They are opposed to it from whatever side it comes. It is not only the IRA that has been concerned with violence.
I am extremely sorry that the Government have had to give this directive to the BBC and the IBA. I repeat that they had all the necessary authority to deal with the situation, and with all the advice that they have had they could have done so. It is very difficult for there to be any justification for giving terrorists the freedom of the air. Unless something is done, that is what we are going to do. Speaking for myself and my SDP colleagues on these Benches, despite our extreme dislike of censorship in any form, we feel that the Government have had to make this directive. At the same time we regret that the governors of the BBC and the members of the IBA have not taken action.
4.28 p.m.
Viscount Caldecote: My Lords, I was disappointed with the unconstructive speeches of noble Lords from the Front Benches of the parties opposite in this very difficult situation. They seem to add nothing positive to the difficulties that we face. I fully support Her Majesty's Government in the actions they have taken and in the directive that the Home Secretary has given on their behalf. Of course it is not a complete solution; I wish it were as easy as that. It is a contribution in the right direction but it is no panacea. It seems that we must regard ourselves virtually in a state of war with those who are prepared to kill innocent people in pursuance of their objectives however strongly their views are held. In such circumstances surely it is entirely reasonable to give up to some small extent the freedom that we regard as fundamental to our way of life in normal circumstances.
If the sacrifice of a small amount of our freedom saves just a few lives, surely it is well worth while. I believe it is for Her Majesty's Government to decide what measures are needed to deal with this very difficult situation and how those measures are to be applied. They have, I am sure, balanced the public relations aspects—the pluses and the minuses—which have already been referred to in the debate. I believe that they have judged rightly.
In my view it is greatly preferable that the Home Secretary should come out clearly and give a directive, which he is empowered to do under Act of Parliament rather than that he should lean on the broadcasting authorities as was done on the BBC by the Home Secretary in 1985 at the time of the dispute over the Real Lives programme. That put the BBC in an extremely difficult position. It is much better that the Government should take responsibility and not in any way shove it on to the broadcasting authorities. That the Government have done. They have been firm and courageous. I welcome the action they have taken for that reason and because it makes a small

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but useful contribution to this difficult and dangerous situation.
4.31 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, I thought that the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, made out as good a case as can be made for this measure. Television has a singular power over the emotions of the viewer. It confers status and glamour even on the participants in television programmes. It can raise millions of pounds overnight for charity. And in the shops one sees pathetic labels on goods, "As advertised on TV". So it is highly desirable that terrorist organisations and their sympathisers should not appear on television.
But how often do they appear on television? I wonder whether the noble Earl can give us some facts in this case. There seems to be quite a dispute between the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, and his former noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone. He suggested that the BBC and ITV had been remiss in their duties. The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, spoke of terrorist sympathisers appearing for eight minutes only in a year.
If the terrorist sympathisers are precluded by this government edict, do not let us suppose that this moral gesture will have any visible effect on the incidence of terrorism. It will not stay the hand on the bomb fuse. If it could, one might be more sympathetic to this decree. There will be only a moral reward for this moral gesture and there will be an important moral loss. We have embarked on a measure of censorship. Who knows what the next step will be?
There is one immediate loss to be feared. The whole world is interested in the Irish question. Its best source of objective information is the World Service of the BBC. Over the years the BBC has established its reputation for being independent of government. Indeed it was only yesterday that it won a prize from the United Nations for the excellence of its reporting. But now the pure well has been slightly muddied. The world knows that the BBC is censored by the Government. Reasons can be found for this edict. There are always good reasons for censorship. However, there are always better reasons for fighting against censorship, for condemning censorship and for resisting censorship. I cannot support the Government, wholehearted though I am in the struggle against terrorism. Indeed I am one of those who believes that terrorism is never justified even in the worst conditions of oppression.
4.34 p.m.
Lord Moran: My Lords, some six years ago, when I was serving as High Commissioner in Canada, I saw a report that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which has a role in Canada very much like that of the BBC in this country, was planning to broadcast an interview with Gerry Adams. I immediately telephoned a senior man in the CBC to say that I had been greatly surprised to see this report, that I found it hard to believe, that if it was true I thought that perhaps those responsible could
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not be aware of the position held by Gerry Adams in Sinn Fein/IRA and that I hoped very much that on reconsideration the CBC would decide not to broadcast that interview. The CBC thought it over and rang me back to tell me that they had decided not to broadcast it.
It was therefore something of a shock to me to learn soon after that at home the BBC did interview Gerry Adams and some of his associates. I thought that it was wrong then and I think now that it was wrong. My principal reason is that it is intolerable—I do not think that that is too strong a word—that the families of those who have been murdered by the IRA, whether they are soldiers, policemen or civilians, should have to see in their living-rooms the godfathers of that organisation giving specious justification of the terrible things that they have done.
In an ideal society those in charge of our great broadcasting institutions would not for a moment consider it right to broadcast interviews with terrorists. I am greatly surprised that the governors of the BBC and those in charge of the IBA have thought it right to do so. I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, said about this, which seemed to me to be right. If that had been so it would not have been necessary for the Government to act. But we have to face conditions as they are. The BBC and ITN appear to believe that broadcasters should be given a free hand in these matters. The broadcasters themselves clearly think—not without reason—that interviews with terrorists are on occasion good copy.
Another factor, which I have mentioned before in the House, is the slight degree of bias in BBC handling of the issue. I corresponded about this point in the spring with the chairman of the BBC. I said in one of my letters that I thought as an ordinary listener that there was a slight but noticeable slant towards the republican view in BBC reporting. I mentioned,
"constant air time given to IRA spokesmen (who are of course banned on RTE) and constant examples of biased editing—either in the selection of speakers or in the presentation of the news."
I think therefore that in the present circumstances the action taken by the Home Secretary is justifiable and right. I only wish that it could have been taken 10 or 15 years ago.
I regret that it was not found possible to extend the restriction to all the media. At the moment it looks somewhat discriminatory to apply it only to television and radio. I wonder whether there is any way to close the loopholes which television at any rate used to try to get around this, some of which were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Birk. I refer to the business of showing a still photograph and then printing the words on the screen in order to cheat and to dodge the ban. There have been restrictions of this kind in the Republic for a good many years, since as far back as 1960. They have worked well there. Indeed in The Times of 6th April there was a cogent and clearly argued article by Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, a former Minister in the Republic. He introduced an amendment to the regulations on this issue. He set out in that article as clearly as I have seen it expressed the case for restrictions of this kind. To any noble Lord who

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doubts the propriety of the Home Secretary's action I strongly commend it.
The Canadian to whom I spoke—
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, am I to understand from what the noble Lord said that he believes that censorship should be extended to the press? If he thinks that it should be extended to the press, should it not be extended further than the press and to the spoken word?
Lord Moran: My Lords, what I said was that I regretted that it had not been found possible to extend it in that way.
When I spoke to my Canadian friend in the CBC, he could have said—although he did not—that surely Gerry Adams was an elected Member of the House of Commons and, therefore, how could the CBC be criticised for carrying an interview with him. That shows the illogicality to some extent of the Government's position.
After all, as I understand it, Ministers refuse—I think rightly—to talk to members of Sinn Fein, but we allow Sinn Fein to stand at elections, either for the House of Commons or for local councils. Indeed, it seems to me—as has been pointed out—that Sinn Fein could dodge this ban by putting up a multiplicity of candidates for elections and then they would be free, as they are taking part in the elections, to be interviewed and to put the IRA's case publicly. So I think that the logic must be that, despite what the Minister has said, we ought to consider seriously outlawing Sinn Fein.
We are concerned with two cases: our own case and that of the IRA, and how to get this across to people of open mind. The action which has been taken by the Home Secretary is of course negative action, shutting off a channel for all the terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland. It seems to me that we also need positive action to get the truth understood generally. I believe that we have had some success in the United States in doing this, but it appears to me that we have had less success in Europe.
It is a little difficult because the Continent of Europe is predominantly Catholic and there may be some predisposition there to think that there is some merit in the Republican case. It seems to me that the whole episode which we have just witnessed—namely, the affair of former Father Ryan—has demonstrated that we have not managed to get our case across effectively in Europe.
Three months ago I never could have imagined that the Belgian Government would fly a suspected IRA terrorist back to Dublin in a military aircraft, avoiding British airspace. It would have seemed to me to be wholly fantastic; but it has happened. I believe that it has happened against a background of misunderstanding in Europe of the British case. I think that we need to make a real effort—that is, Ministers, ambassadors and the whole of our information machine—to get our case, and the truth of the situation as we know it, across to European opinion.
One thing that the IRA knows is that to be effective you say something over and over again. Let us take
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a simple example. It says, for instance, that an Irishman can get no justice in a British court. It does not matter if it is totally untrue; it says it again and again. As a propaganda weapon I think that it is effective because some of it sticks.
We never do that. For example, we have an extradition case like that of Evelyn Glenholmes, which is fairly scandalous, but we never mention it. Once it has happened it is all forgotten. I think that we should say again and again, "Where is Evelyn Glenholmes? Why hasn't she been produced to our authorities to stand trial?"
I think that Europeans and others find it difficult to understand what they sometimes see as our ambiguous attitude. We say on the one hand that we are fighting Sinn Fein and the IRA but, on the other hand, we allow Sinn Fein, as I said, to operate legally. By contrast the IRA's line is crude but consistent. It commits an outrage and then denounces the British Government, while all its friends in the United States and Europe, and in this country, do the same and speak with one voice.
I think that we need to make our attitude very clear. I hope that the current review of the Anglo-Irish Agreement will perhaps give us an opportunity to make our attitude clearer. I hope that we shall ask the Irish to take security matters more seriously and perhaps to make extradition automatic once the identity of the person concerned is established and, further, to allow their army to talk to ours—which, after all, it still cannot do three years after the agreement.
Therefore, I think that we are entitled to ask for far more determination to join in a joint effort to stamp out terrorism. I hope that we shall do that primarily in this context in order to make our attitude absolutely clear and understandable to those in Europe and elsewhere who do not at present understand it.
4.46 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, I should like to say a few words about freedom of speech, democracy and terrorism. However, before doing so, I should like to thank the media, especially the BBC, for their reaction to this government action. As noble Lords will be aware, they are now prefacing reports where they would have interviewed someone now supposedly banned with the remark, "This broadcast is coming to you under the broadcasting restrictions imposed by the Government". That effectively puts the scene into context alongside the problems that the BBC has in reporting the situation in South Africa.
Having said that, we must be most careful. One interesting aspect is that this afternoon we are not being asked to approve, or disapprove, of the Government's action; just to note it. I thank the Government for putting the Motion in that form. It enables us to have a sensible debate rather than a slanging match about the pros and cons. I think that some useful points are being made.
Freedom of speech is something British people hold in very high regard. It is a watchword of most politicians, I think, that we will defend the right of people to say what they like even though we disagree

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with what they say. Some people may add, "to the death"; but that is a bit theatrical. However, freedom of speech is something about which we have high aspirations. It is unfortunate that that high regard is observed in the breach more often than it is in the adherence.
Going back hundreds of years and considering the attitude of the establishment to the emergence of newspapers, we can see how in their early days they were controlled and censored. We now have a situation—some time later of course—where it is very difficult for the government of the day to censor the written word, although they still keep trying. One only has to think of the Peter Wright affair to see how the Government still attempt to censor the written word.
Freedom of speech is important; it is an essential adjunct to democracy. As other speakers have said, it is impossible to have democracy without freedom of expression and freedom to communicate ideas and ideals. One of the problems with this government action is that it has been taken with an almost complete disregard of democracy. There was no public consultation. We have heard that it was dictated to the IBA and the BBC at an hour's notice. There was no prior discussion either here or in the other place. Unfortunately the Government denied themselves the opportunity to garner, through discussion and contributions reflecting other aspects of thought, how the action might be received and what the problems might be. As other noble Lords have said, we are faced with some very grave anomalies in the interpretation of the government diktat. But we are also faced with the practical reality that the cause of the IRA has been succoured in countries outside the United Kingdom, particularly in the United States.
This is one of the problems facing us with this Government. They have the "little England" mentality that anything we do as little Englanders is right and that we do not need to listen to anyone else. They will not even listen to the Scots and the Welsh, far less the Irish, and certainly not to anyone in the United States, Belgium or Australia. I hope it will be noted that I say "listen". Listening is very important. The ability to listen is predetermined by the ability of people to express themselves freely and to explain their point of view. This Government not only seek not to listen; they are now attempting to deny people the ability to express themselves. The fundamental problem here is that the Government are effectively denying the very concept of democracy.
I should like to say a little about terrorists. Terrorism can take many forms. My wife is terrorised by telephone calls in the middle of the night from people who will not give their names and who accuse me of being sympathetic to the IRA. In 1981 I saw grown men shaking with fear because of the threat of redundancy. Terror has been employed by the British Government at various times and in various circumstances. Towards the end of the last century the Boers in South Africa were terrorised and forced into concentration camps by the British establishment with the resultant inculcation of the
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Broederbond, the introverted mentality of the Boers, which has led to so many problems in South Africa. Therefore, there is a very wide historical perspective.
Having said that, one might think that I was opposed to terrorism. However, there are occasions when I can appreciate that terrorism, the threat and use of physical violence, is sometimes neccesary. We only recall the recent (in historical terms) South Atlantic campaign to retake the Falklands, to realise that the use of terror and physical violence is sometimes required to achieve the ends that are being sought. I am sure that during the psychological warfare of the Falklands campaign, the Government were trying to employ the arts of terrorism to frighten the Argentinian troops into surrender. The white flag flying over Stanley suggests that they were in some measure successful. Some people would applaud that situation. We should recognise that the loss of life in that conflict was much less than it might have been. There are occasions when the use of physical violence and terror is sanctioned and accepted by this Government.
There is one thing in the context of Northern Ireland that we must appreciate. When Merlyn Rees was Home Secretary, he tried with some success to criminalise the activities of those people who were employing physical violence and terror in Northern Ireland. I say that he had limited success. But that is a very potent way of dealing with some of the problems we have had in Northern Ireland.
To talk continually about IRA terrorism feeds the political element of the problem. It gives propaganda advantage to Irish Republicans. One of the problems is that Parliament and the Government are always faced with the need to be seen to be doing something. Sometimes it is better for us to say that we will stay our hand as parliamentarians and legislators because it is a problem which must be dealt with by the professionals involved. I should like to see the Government change tack and say that many of the problems of Northern Ireland that spill into the mainland fall within the province of the criminal law, and that ordinary police methods should be used to deal with them.
One thing that frightens me is the Government continually saying: We know such and such has committed a terrorist attack; we know so-and-so is a terrorist; we have taken action to exclude them. How can they say that? What confidence can we have in the word of the Government when we look back at the situation in Gibraltar? We were advised by the government spokesmen that at least three people shot in the streets in Gibraltar were armed and had a big bomb that they were about to explode. The truth came out later: not only were they not armed, but there was no bomb. The problem that faces us is the credibility of the Government. This is where truth and freedom of speech arise. When freedom of speech is denied, disillusionment is created together with an environment where probably quite truthful statements by the Government can be pointed to as being probable lies. The Government has been indulging in distortions of the truth and being economical with the truth on so many occasions.

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I make a plea to the Government: please be more open and more truthful. It can only rebound to the advantage of the Government and all of us.
Lord Monson: I wonder whether the noble Lord can answer one question. He appears to be in favour of the broadcasting media being allowed to do whatever they wish without censorship of any sort. Logically, therefore, the noble Lord should be in favour of the BBC and ITV being free to transmit hard-core pornography and incitement to racial hatred. Is that really what the noble Lord wants?
Lord Monkswell: I think that there is a wide measure of agreement that the publication and the broadcasting of matters which tend to be racially inflammatory or pornographic is not permitted. However, in this instance we are talking about the elected representatives of the people of a valid political party that contests elections and, in the case of Sinn Fein, has over 100,000 supporters who are prepared to put their tick on the ballot paper. Are we going to say that their spokesmen should be denied any say?
5 p.m.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, I regret that I missed my turn to speak, for which I apologise. However, it has kindly been arranged that I can now say a few words.
The remarkable thing about the debate is that very few of the people associated with Ireland appear to have spoken in it. That seems rather astounding. With great respect, I think that one or two speakers went off the subject. For instance, the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, even brought in Stalin. He said words to the effect that the reason no one knew about the 30 million people murdered by Stalin was that there was press censorship. That may have been part of the reason, but I think it was not popular with our press. How was it then that in this House, pretty well ever since I have been here—1956—I was drawing attention the whole time to the brutalities of Stalin and to the appalling murders? The censorship cannot have been very strong.
There are one or two other matters that I wish to raise. If I had not missed my turn I should have spoken at far greater length, so perhaps your Lordships are rather lucky.
We have heard a great deal about freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is not a licence to kill. A lot of things have been said about the IRA. People seem to think that the IRA is an enormous organisation. The number of terrorists who commit these appalling crimes—and some are protestant—is very small. There is another matter about which I have been told, although it may not have been right. When members of the IRA are captured, they are all very young, and none of them knows the history of Ireland. I understand that they are completely brainwashed, and some may even be drugged.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, brought in the question of what he called the alienation of the Catholics. With due respect, that is nonsense. As a young man I was brought up in Ireland. I know it very well. My family was prominent in the North and
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in the South. My father was the king mason of Ireland. We employed Catholics, and Catholic priests came to my father's funeral. To say that everyone in the North of Ireland is anti-Catholic is absolute nonsense. If a referendum were held in the North of Ireland today, I am sure that the great majority of Catholics would vote to remain in the United Kingdom. Therefore there has been a great deal of exaggeration in the debate by noble Lords—I say this again, with respect—who do not really understand Ireland.
I should like to emphasise that in my opinion the debate has to a great extent been all theory. We were told, for instance—it is quite right —that the BBC has impartiality, and of course it always must have. I remember, although I do not want to go too far back, the time of the Rhodesian crisis. I remember that the African nationalists were always put on television, but the moderate Africans were never put on. I brought this up in the House, and I was told, "You must remember that the BBC is impartial". There you are: one can have it both ways.
I thank your Lordships for allowing me to speak. I support the Government strongly in regard to what is being called censorship; and I suppose that it is a form of censorship. I am chairman of a television company, a public cmpany. It came on the market only about three months ago. I had been a director of this company as a private company for a long time. I do not hold with all the arguments that have been used to the effect that this is a law that will destroy freedom of speech. I think that is an utterly nonsensical argument.
5.6 p.m.
Lord Jakobovits: My Lords, this debate with its exceedingly wide range of conflicting arguments to my mind has clearly shown that we are dealing here with issues of the most profound consequence and of fundamental principle far beyond the immediate concerns of the Home Secretary's order, and that we cannot isolate the specific situation in Northern Ireland from the wider issue of international terrorism, of which it is an integral part. It is therefore to those basic issues that I should like to address myself in a few remarks.
Let me admit at once that in any conflict between life and civil liberties I am on the side of life. The first duty of any government is to ensure the safety of their citizens. There may be a political or ideological debate on whether the state owes a living to its citizens, but there can be no question that it owes to every citizen the defence of life, the most precious of all.
Much has been said here and elsewhere about the threat to the freedom of speech and the erosion of civil liberties. To my mind this argument is based on a moral fallacy and a grave misjudgment. When I am about to board an air flight, as I do fairly frequently, and I am subjected to a thorough search, perhaps even including frisking my body, I readily tolerate and indeed welcome this infringement of my liberties for I feel safer on the flight.
To allow violence to be publicly justified or excused not only gives offence to relatives of victims

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or to maimed survivors; such defence of murder should outrage every citizen. It diminishes our humanity; it heapens our decency; it affronts our morality and it erodes our civilisation.
Much more is at stake here. The normal process of the law, with all its safeguards, may be adequate to cope with even the worse kinds of offenders, murderers, rapists and hideous child abusers, who act out of passion, lust or greed for personal gain; but in a totally different category are acts of terror calculated to subvert the rule of law itself, to hold governments to ransom and to incite violence by inflammatory rhetoric. The defence against this menace can no more rely on traditional methods of fighting crime than one could prevail against nuclear or chemical warfare with bows and arrows.
A 2,000 year-old saying in the Jewish Ethics of the Fathers proclaims:
"Pray for the peace, for the welfare, of the Government. Since but for the fear thereof, men would swallow each other alive".
If ever society allows men of violence to impose their will on our rulers, nations will become ungovernable. We would reduce them to the anarchy and agony of Lebanon.
The role of the media is all important, for they not only reflect, but control, condition and manipulate public opinion which can either make or break the chances for terrorism to succeed. It is sheer hypocrisy for those who deny and undermine the law guarding society to seek for themselves the protection of the law; to claim the benefit of liberty in order to deprive others of it.
What kind of warped and irrational consistency demands, as has been argued, that because some governments may at one time or another have been soft on terrorism, they should not be firm in the future? I urge only one variation in the Home Office's proposed directions. Reference has been made to ambiguities and confusion as to what may be broadcast. To my mind, it matters not who speaks on the media; what matters is what they say.
By all means let members of any organisation be free to present their political thoughts and aspirations as they see fit. What ought never to be tolerated in the media, including the press, is their use to advocate or justify acts of violence; to encourage anything illegal, or to incite intercommunal hatred, prejudice or discrimination. Such promotion of subversion should be made into a criminal offence for speaker and media alike, whether committed by a member of a terrorist organisation or not.
It is indefensible for the law-abiding 95 per cent. of the population to make their media available to the tiny fraction of law breakers so that they can amplify the voice of lawlessness. The conflict between security and freedom of speech has still wider ramifications. With every air traveller now being a possible hijack victim, and with hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens being at risk from terrorist bombings, international terrorism potentially threatens far more lives than drugs, AIDS or any other single scourge.
Often that evil exists only because it relies upon the media to carry its message. If hijackers knew that by
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international agreement under no circumstances would their so-called demands ever be broadcast, and that they would invariably be returned for trial to the country against which they acted, as in the textbook treatment of last week's Soviet hijackers who were returned by Israel to the Soviet Union within 24 hours—if they knew those two inescapable consequences in advance—there would be no hijacks in the first place.
I hope that Britain, with such an enviable record in its resolute resistance to terrorism, will press for effective international action to those ends to ensure, above all, that the media everywhere will never be permitted to make terrorism a worthwhile propaganda tool for gangs of ruthless killers. Terror will be suppressed if it no longer pays publicity dividends.
Perhaps I may conclude on a personal note. I was a 12-year-old youth in Berlin when Hitler came to power. For three years, I lived under his tyranny. He came to power, and remained in power, through perfectly democratic elections. All he did was to use his rabble-rousing skills on the media to turn what had been a highly cultured and civilised people into millions of mass murderers and silent accomplices. I well recall the chilling dread which seized us every time that evil man appeared on the radio to mesmerise the masses into mindless savages. No doubt there were then also people who would have opposed any ban on Hitler using the press and radio to propagate his incitement to terror as a denial of civil liberties and freedom of speech, or who would have argued that such a ban would be counter-productive and would drive the movement under ground. Had it been driven under ground, the world would have been spared its greatest ordeal which cost tens of millions of lives and from which we have not entirely recovered.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, said that if more people had only read Mein Kampf there would have been more opposition. My memory and experience tell me that if that work had been suppressed and had not been allowed to be publicised, there would have been no Hitler and there would have been none of the consequences that we endured.
The human mind, infinitely wonderful as it is, is a fragile organ of the greatest delicacy, easily prone to be corrupted by unscrupulous appeals to the brute and the vile in man. Even more important than protecting our physical environment from ecological pollution is preventing the pollution of our channels of mass communication from poisoning millions of minds; from turning the mass media, meant to serve as a meaningful mentor, into a menace as a lethal tormentor.
There should be non-partisan support for the determination to keep our national home clean from such moral pollution which seeks to confer the insult of legitimacy upon violence and law breaking and add it to the injury of destroying defences protecting life, limb and decency.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, will he take the opportunity

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to assure your Lordships that his strong denunciation of terrorism in all circumstances applies also to governments in various parts of the world who employ methods of violence and terror against their own people?
Lord Jakobovits: My Lords, I am not a pacifist. I do not reject recourse to force and violence by a nation against evils such as those we saw rise with Hitler. I have dealt with the juxtaposition of freedom of speech and civil liberties with the rights of individuals to the protection of their lives by governments appointed to do so.
5.19 p.m.
Lord Gridley: My Lords, I wish to express my appreciation of what the previous speaker said. I hope that there may be many other occasions when we shall hear the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, speak in the future.
I wish to say something about the overseas broadcasts of the BBC which have received so much acclaim this evening. I wish to make it perfectly clear that I listened to those broadcasts during the war. One reason why they received the acclaim which they did then, and which they do today, was that they told the truth. At that time some people overseas were subjected to a foreign power which had taken over their country. They were subjected to tortures and they were told that if they listened to the BBC they would be executed. They came to believe what the BBC said because the BBC told the truth.
What the BBC told people overseas was that at the beginning Britain was losing that war as a result of the defeats that it was suffering, but that it hoped to pull through in the future. Then, when victory came and the tide was turned, listeners heard that story too. People overseas believed that no country would tell stories of that kind unless they were the truth. That was the reason why the overseas broadcasts of the BBC at that time acquired renown. That renown has remained with the BBC.
Today some people say that the BBC should adopt the same policy with regard to broadcasting throughout this country. But today the position is entirely different. We are not suffering defeats in the sense of war, and there is not that population overseas who are interested in our situation. They were interested during the war as regards our situation because of their own feelings, and as a result of what they suffered under oppression. They were interested to hear when victory would come. The circumstances now are entirely different.
If the BBC wants to re-establish its reputation, it must have another think as regards what it wants to do with its overseas broadcasts. That is my opinion. I want to be quick because the speeches have taken quite a long time in this debate tonight. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, made a remark that the Government, by imposing restrictions, were denying freedom to the people. What the Government are doing is to impose restrictions against a certain section of the community; that is, certain broadcasts of the BBC. It is not a widespread denial of freedom. That is all that the Government are doing.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, this is the problem that we are trying to address. The noble Lord says that only a small number of people is involved. But when one starts eroding freedom one stops either a small or a large number of people having access to certain interviews, speeches and other things. If one places it on a much larger scale, one advances the situation a long way. With great respect, I do not think one can argue in that way.
Lord Gridley: My Lords, I would answer the noble Baroness by saying that if the broadcasts about the terrorism that took place in Gibraltar were a fair expression of the facts that occurred in that island, that situation would require further consideration. There is no doubt that a tremendous amount of agitation took place against the security forces and the Government for the action they took in Gibraltar. That, in its turn, washed off against the brave men who were finally forced to go to that island and give evidence as regards how they carried out their attacks.
The agitation was so bad— it was fostered by what the broadcasting authorities had done because they broadcast everything— that it was necessary for the men to give their evidence in such a way that they were hidden from view. The reason for that was simply that there was a danger that they would suffer death at the hands of the terrorists if their identity was disclosed. That is all fact. The Government are absolutely justified in asking us to take note of the minor law which is now on the statute book.
5.26 p.m.
Lord Annan: My Lords, I hope that the House will forgive me if I intervene at this point because I telephoned too late to get my name included in the debate. The noble Earl may remember that when he made his Statement some weeks ago on this matter in this House, I asked him what the situation was in the Republic of Ireland. He said that the Sinn Fein party was banned and that RTE was forbidden to broadcast its activities. The Republic of Ireland has of course a long memory on these matters.
In 1922 when the Irish Free State was proclaimed, the Prime Minister at that time, Mr. Michael Collins, was assassinated by the IRA shortly after the state was proclaimed. The Irish Free State was faced with the possibility that it would be overthrown by terrorism. Therefore it decided to take the most drastic measures possible. In six months it shot more Irishmen than the British had shot in six years. That fine novelist, Erskine Childers, was found with a revolver in his house. He was taken out into his garden and shot. That is why the IRA was then defeated and that is the memory of the Republic of Ireland of terrorism in its own country. That is why I ask the noble Earl, when he told the House that there were certain measures which the Government had under review, whether among those measures they had in mind the banning of Sinn Fein as a political party in Northern Ireland.
It seems to me that the Government have got themselves into an illogical state of mind. I think it is very difficult for broadcasters to observe what the Government are asking them to do, not so much as

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regards broadcasts in this country but broadcasts in Northern Ireland itself. In Northern Ireland there is a legal party which supports terrorism yet the Government also say that in local elections broadcasters must not report what that party says. Therefore, I ask the noble Earl whether it is not the case that, if the ban is to be meaningful, we must face the fact that the party to which Mr. Gerry Adams belongs should not be permitted to exist unless its members sign a declaration, which everyone who stands for Parliament in Northern Ireland should have to sign, that they are unequivocally against violence, terrorism and all illegal methods of imposing their will upon the United Kingdom.
That was something in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Moran, that I agreed with. I did not agree with a great deal of what he said, but I think that if this ban is to be meaningful it can only really be meaningful if Sinn Fein is made illegal as a party. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, that otherwise it is an unwise thing to have done. It is unwise because of the international repercussions that it has had. I do not think it is so much unwise as regards the broadcasters because they must learn to live with it. But I think it has had a bad propaganda effect abroad, unhappy though that may be and unwilling as we may be to recognise it. I detect in the Government's policy too great a readiness to leap into action on comparatively small issues of this kind. I am thinking of Clause 28 and a number of other things, for example the insistence in universities upon free speech. I do not know whether the clause that was added to the education legislation at that time has done much to remedy the situation.
It is understandable that the Government should have wished to give some reassurance to the people of Northern Ireland that they were taking the recrudescence of IRA activity very seriously indeed. However, I am afraid that I think that it would have been much more effective and they would have been much more convincing if they had moved to that further political act which I believe we shall have to accept.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I think it is generally agreed that we have debated today an issue of the highest public importance. It relates to the freedom of broadcasters, and broadcasters alone, to report fairly and honestly the terrorist situation in Northern Ireland and the activities of their apologists both there and in the rest of the United Kingdom, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Annan, has just observed, to cover the activities of a lawful political party. I hope very much that the noble Earl will come back to that point because he passed over it rather briskly in his speech and it seems to me central to the discussion we have had today.
Having had in the past some direct responsibility both for dealing with the terrorist threat in England and Wales and for broadcasting policy in the United Kingdom, I should like to raise three issues. First, I should like to deal with the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone; that is, the question of
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the number of directions which have been made by governments of different political parties under the BBC licence agreement. Until this one, there have been four. The first was in 1927 when the original licence was granted to the BBC and directed it not to broadcast its own opinion on current affairs or on matters of public policy. That is the only direction which is now in force.
There was a second direction in 1927 when the BBC was directed not to broadcast matters of political, industrial or religious controversy. That has been withdrawn. In 1955 the BBC was directed to refrain from broadcasting statements or discussions on matters during the fortnight before they were debated in Parliament. That was withdrawn. Also in 1955 the BBC was directed to refrain at all times from broadcasting controversial party political broadcasts other than those arranged in agreement with the leading political parties. That alio has been withdrawn.
I think that that makes the importance of the issue we are debating today abundantly clear. Only one such direction is in existence and that was issued 61 years ago.
What then is the case for this action by the Government? I can do no better than to quote the Prime Minister in her speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet when she said:
"We do sometimes have to sacrifice a little of the freedom we cherish in order to defend ourselves from those whose aim is to destroy that freedom altogether and that is a decision which we should not be afraid to take, because in the battle against terrorism we shall never give in".
I do not think that any of us have any disagreement with the Prime Minister concerning the latter part of that proposition. But does it even begin to explain or give credence to the position the Government have adopted on this matter?
In seeking to justify the decision the Prime Minister has referred to the oxygen of publicity. But does anyone really believe that to prevent Mr. Gerry Adams, an elected Member of the House of Commons, being questioned in a television programme or an elected Sinn Fein councillor being cross-examined on television will reduce the level of violence in Northern Ireland? I listened carefully to the noble Earl in case he sought to make the point. Of course, being an entirely sensible mart, he made no such attempt.
I listened with respect, as I think we all did, to the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, in his speech a few moments ago. All of us listened with great sysmpathy to a man who had an immensely difficult childhood in the hideous situation in Berlin at that time. However, I am bound to say that I am in profound disagreement with a very large proportion of what he said. What he was really arguing for was some form of full-scale military censorship. That was the logic of his position. If he will forgive me for saying so, I found it hard to believe that to have banned Mein Kampf and to have prevented Hitler and his supporters receiving coverage in the German press would have prevented Hitler gaining power in Germany. I think that that is a very far-fetched proposition, if he will forgive me for saying so.

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More recently, a second argument has been used to justify the Government's decision. It was produced in another place, where it was said that the relatives of those killed or injured find it deeply offensive to hear the apologists for violence speaking on radio or television. The noble Lord, Lord Moran, made exactly that point an hour or so ago. I am sure that that is entirely true, but if that is the argument on which the Government base their case they have to answer a rather different question. That is: if the ban is justified on those grounds why have they applied the ban only to the broadcasting organisations? Why are the press excluded?
The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said in his speech that it was necessary to protect citizens from inflammatory voices. However, every day the press of Northern Ireland is filled with statements and interviews with the leaders of the paramilitary organisations justifying the activities of the men of violence. Yet that apparently is not a matter on which the Government choose to act. Why, I wonder, is there that distinction?
It is even more odd when one looks again at the speech made by the Prime Minister at the Guildhall, because she quoted a letter she had received from the mother of a young servicemen who had been murdered by the IRA. That woman said:
"'Where is the freedom of the press, I hear them cry. Where is my son's freedom?' she said".
I can understand the anger of that mother, but that quotation from the Prime Minister is directed precisely at the people not affected by the ban, because only the broadcasting organisations are apparently to be dealt with in that particular way. I should be grateful if the noble Earl could address himself to that paradox.
I come now to the terms of the government notice and the letter of clarification which was issued to broadcasters to explain the full meaning of the notice. Words or statements by terrorists and their supporters can be reported, as has been made clear in the debate today, but not the actuality of their speeches. But again, if we consider the anguish of the bereaved, is it seriously suggested that the statements of Mr. Gerry Adams reported faithfully on the BBC or independent television will not cause those people precisely the same degree of anguish? I am sure it is clear that it will.
The Government notice then forbids the reporting of the actuality of a foreign leader or politician supporting Sinn Fein or the Ulster Defence Association. But if a foreign leader is sufficiently stupid to do either should the British people not have the opportunity—indeed, the right—to hear him say so? What conceivably is the argument against that? The noble Earl told us that he drew some comfort from the fact that any speech made in Parliament can be reported faithfully and the actuality of the voice can be reproduced; but not in the European Parliament for some strange reason, although of course we elect Members of the European Parliament. Again, can the noble Earl help us? Why is it right to allow speeches in this House and another place to be reported but wholly wrong to allow the reporting of speeches in the European Parliament? It
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seems slightly strange, if the noble Earl will forgive my saying so. Earlier this year, in a particularly impressive "Panorama" programme—
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will forgive me for interrupting him. I would not have wished to do so, but it is in order to put him out of his misery. The BBC has a parliamentary obligation to record and report the views of Parliament, which it does not have in respect of the European Parliament.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: With great respect, my Lords, that does not begin to answer the point that I have just made. The noble Earl should address himself to that issue. In my view, quite rightly the Government have chosen not to try to ban the reporting of speeches made in either House of Parliament. The question remains: why is the ban being directed at the European Parliament and not at the House of Commons or the House of Lords? The intervention of the noble Earl, if he will forgive me for saying so, does not begin to answer that point.
Returning to the matter that I was just about to raise, I think that many noble Lords may have seen earlier this year a rather impressive programme on BBC television in which a substantial number of Irish Americans were addressed at a NORAID fund raising dinner by Mr. Seamus Twomey, who was urging them to back the IRA. I believe it is not only right but highly desirable that we should have the opportunity to see our enemies at work and to appreciate why otherwise rational Americans are apparently prepared to finance an organisation whose funds are used to purchase arms for the purpose of killing members of our security forces and many innocent men, women and children. How can banning such a programme help us in our struggle against IRA terrorism? It seems to me to be an extraordinary proposition.
In his article in the Independent on 21st November Mr. Birt asked the pertinent question—and it is a point that was made by the noble Baroness in her speech this afternoon—how will the British public be made aware by television and radio of such events as the long series of discussions which took place this summer between the Social and Democratic Labour Party in Northern Ireland and Sinn Fein? As the noble Baroness said, the BBC programme "On the Record" analysed the position of the two sides and during that programme Mr. Adams was pressed quite aggressively to answer a number of questions which had been put to him by Mr. Hume. As the noble Baroness said, the programme was watched by 2·5 million people and there was not a single complaint received from a member of the public.
Yet the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, in justifying the ban said that the case for the direction was the widespread offence caused by such broadcasts. I should like to put another question to him. As I am sure he will accept, on that occasion there were no complaints, yet, as the noble Baroness rightly said, a number of noble Lords at various times have had anguished letters from members of the public complaining about IRA funerals, which in fact become large-scale demonstrations.

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If we are endeavouring to stop widespread public offence, to use the words of the noble Earl, why do the Government in terms of logic direct this ban to statements made by Mr. Adams and people like him and not to activities of this kind which cause such public anger?
I turn now, if I may, to the second issue to which I wish to refer; namely, the effect that this measure will have on the reputation of British broadcasting. That again is an issue that was touched on by the noble Baroness. When I have in the past attended international conferences on broadcasting I have been struck by the quite extraordinary respect with which our television and radio systems were viewed by the international broadcasting community, by representatives of the American networks, our colleagues in the European Community and broadcasters in the third world. I think that we have acquired this reputation for a number of reasons: because of the quality of our programmes, our reputation for integrity and, sometimes, the courage of many of our programme makers. Above all, I think it is because of the sturdy independence of public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom.
But it is not just broadcasters who have this view. I remember very clearly hearing the then Prime Minister of Sweden and a number of leaders of the German Social Democratic Party speaking with equal warmth of the quality of the BBC World Service. Indeed, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, was with me on that occasion. The reason they held that view was the reputation of our World Service, which is prepared to report the truth even when that truth may be deeply uncomfortable for the British Government of the day.
I believe that that hard-won reputation for integrity is now at risk. Because of the Government's ill-judged action their conduct is now being cited by a large number of enemies of free speech as an attractive precedent. There is President Botha demanding that South Africa's media (I quote him):
"Black out the propaganda of the tyrants".
He states explicitly that if they refuse to do so they should not complain if his government introduce similar measures to those of the British Government. That must cause deep embarrassment and distress to many members of the present Government.
There is the Government of Kenya asking how the Foreign Office can any longer pretend that the British Government have no control over the BBC. As we all know, there have been a number of disputes between the Kenyan Government and the British High Commissioner in Nairobi; that government have applied pressure to ensure that the views of Kenyan exiles in this country should not be reported in the World Service. The high commissioner has said that he cannot do anything as the British Government are not responsible for the BBC. Not surprisingly, in the light of what our Government have now done, the Government of Kenya believe that the British Government can take action.
Then there are the Somalis, protesting that the terrorists are (in their words),
"being given full access to the British media".
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There are also the Ugandans, demanding that our Government should ban appearances in the World Service of what they describe as Ugandan subversives. And so it continues. It is a thoroughly nasty mess. I doubt whether this Government ever considered properly the full implications of what they were doing.
That brings me to my third and final point. No one who has any experience of dealing with Irish terrorism can fail to recall his emotions when he was told of a new senseless and wicked act of murder perpetrated by the psychopathic killers in Northern Ireland and sometimes about their activities on this side of the Irish Channel. Of course similar emotions have been experienced by German Ministers when confronted with a new act of slaughter by the Bader-Meinhoff gang, by Italian Ministers when told of an assassination by the Red Brigade and by Spanish Ministers when told of a another car bombing by Basque terrorists.
The purpose of terrorism is to destabilise democratic governments. If we over-react—as, in an altogether different situation the French did in Algeria—we can do immense damage to the principles of democracy itself. There is only one method of dealing with terrorists that has any prospect of success and that is by strengthening our security forces and by working patiently with the rest of the international community, in particular our colleagues in the European Community and the United States, to strengthen our co-operation. I believe that a great deal has been achieved already, but, as we are all well aware, it will be many years before there is a realistic prospect of success. All one can say on a day like this is that the decision of the Government which we have been debating is little more than a futile gesture.
I have little doubt that the paramilitaries will discover quite quickly how to evade this measure and I believe that it will make both broadcasters and government look equally silly. I think that it has been a foolish error.
5.49 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, my noble friend Lady Birk explained clearly at the beginning of the debate our essential concerns about the Home Secretary's directions to the broadcasting authorities on 19th October last. My noble friend showed why the official Opposition are taking a different view from that of the Government. She foreshadowed criticisms which have been powerfully voiced by other speakers, in particular by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, and the noble Lords, Lord Bonham-Carter and Lord Harris of Greenwich.
The restrictions imposed on 19th October represent a serious and important matter. And that has been admitted by Government Ministers. Up until the last few months, apart from the abandonment of jury trials for scheduled offences, and sometimes undue delay in bringing accused persons to trial, the Government had been careful not to be tempted by the paramilitaries in Northern Ireland into chipping away and eroding the institutions and principles of a free society which we,

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who have been brought up in a democracy, believe in deeply. That was the Government's position as defined two years ago by Mr. Nicholas Scott, the then Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office, when he delivered an important speech at the Institute of Foreign Relations in Munich. I should like to read a very short extract from his speech of 18th November 1986:
"If I start from the basis that we have in Northern Ireland a democracy and that it is a liberal democracy, then I believe we are entitled to defend it, but I believe democracies have to be careful in seeking to defend their democracy by not adopting means which play into the hands of the terrorists, and therefore I think we should seek to derogate as little as possible from the normal standards of justice and government which we would normally apply".
We would heartily adopt that passage.
The Government justify this important derogation from normal broadcasting standards on two grounds. They have already been mentioned by almost all the speakers in the course of the debate. I hope that what I have to say will not weary your Lordships. We are told that occasional—to use the word of the Home Secretary—appearances of representatives of the paramilitaries cause widespread offence to viewers. Perhaps the Minister will answer the question asked by my noble friend Lord Ardwick: how much television time was taken up over the past 12 months with appearances by representatives of paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland? May we have the answer to that question, please?
The Minister refers to the widespread offence caused to viewers and listeners. When the Minister winds up the debate, perhaps he will enlighten the House as to how many relevant complaints have been received by the broadcasting authorities, the Northern Ireland Office and the Home Office over the past 12 months. Collectively, have they received thousands of complaints, hundreds, or less than 100. Perhaps the Minister does not know the answer? If the answer is not known, or if the total number is small, I suggest that this should not have been one of the reasons put forward as grounds for the decision.
With the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, I can understand that many people are angered and affronted by the funeral scenes; but those scenes will not be affected by the ban. We should like to know the explanation.
The Government justify the ban partly on the grounds that the terrorists themselves draw support and sustenance from having direct access to radio and television. Although this is a subjective belief, I should have thought that there is precious little evidence of that. Indeed, it is my impression that when paramilitary representatives occasionally appear on TV programmes, they usually lose support for their cause. Many of us can recall cases where representatives have appeared on the box and have been effectively cross-examined and pinned down. However, to the Government, the decision is clear cut and represents common sense. That would also appear to be the view of the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits. But it raises profound issues, patiently and clearly raised by my noble friend Lady Birk, by the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Manchester, and by the noble Lords, Lord Bonham-Carter and Lord Harris of Greenwich.
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There are in Northern Ireland about 60 Sinn Fein elected councillors. Sinn Fein is a lawful, political party. And that is a substantial number of councillors. However, as I understand it—and the Minister will correct me if I have not understood the directions correctly—a Sinn Fein councillor is no longer able to appear in a television or radio programme to represent the views of Sinn Fein on any subject. Although a councillor, he or she would be banned from appearing in a programme to give his or her party's view on a domestic issue such as the closure of a maternity hospital. Is that fair? Is that reasonable?
So far as I am aware, there is no precedent in the history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom in peace time when Home Office directions have been issued which prohibit a member of a particular group from appearing on television or radio to represent the group's view on any subject. In that belief, I am supported by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich. When the Minister winds up, will he confirm that in this decision the Government are not guided by any United Kingdom precedent? In other words, this direction is unique in the history of the United Kingdom.
If the Minister again draws our attention to the precedent to be found in the Irish legislation, we reflect that it is seldom that this Government are willing to take a lesson from the Irish Government or from Irish legislation. Indeed, given the background to the Irish legislation, which has been explained by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, I doubt whether it is a fair parallel. Moreover, the Irish legislation is at least authorised by an Act of Parliament.
Reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 10 expresses the abstract but important principle of the right of freedom of speech in these terms:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority".
As I understand the convention, only the most pressing grounds—which are listed in the article—will justify a derogation from Article 10. We would be interested to learn from the Minister how the Government reconcile the ban with Article 10. Do the Government accept the view of the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote that we are in a state of war with the IRA, with all that that implies? Is that view accepted by the Government?
We have been reminded by a number of speakers—although we do not need to be reminded—of the burden shouldered by the security forces, and of the threat that is posed to human life in Northern Ireland. We are only too conscious of the difficulties in the path of the security forces and those who defend law and order. But whether the measure we are discussing this evening will in practice result in any real help for the security forces and to the defenders of law and order is very much in issue.
This brings me to the last major point. It was made by my noble friend Lady Birk and it underlies so much of what we have been discussing. Whether or not the decision is defensible in principle, what effect

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will it have on the political situation in Northern Ireland? What can be achieved is almost as important as the issue of principle.
I accept that by this decision and the earlier decision we debated in your Lordships' House a couple of weeks ago to weaken the alleged offender's rights to silence, the Government appear to be signalling that they are stepping up their campaign against the men of violence in Northern Ireland. That may have some attractions for some people provided it does not lead them to believe that there are shortcuts to solving terrorist problems. But that advantage, if it be an advantage, has to be weighed against a substantial disadvantage which flows from the decision.
Our fear is that by this intervention the Government have fallen for one of the well-known techniques of paramilitary organisations for achieving their own political ends and indeed for weakening the democratic system; that is, attack the government in such a way that they will be provoked into creating another issue, another cause and another grievance which the paramilitaries can exploit and so gain sympathy world wide. In Northern Ireland there is a long and ancient consciousness of grievances.
I cannot help pointing out that we were recently reminded in a book review of the wise words written by the late Sir Wilfrid Spender, Cabinet Secretary of the Stormont Parliament for the first two decades of its history. After acknowledging that Northern Ireland could properly claim to have the biggest ropeworks in the world, the biggest linenworks in the world and the biggest tobacco factory in the world, Sir Wilfrid went on to confide to his diary that there was,
"one other factory in which we could probably claim that we or the Free State are the largest manufacturers—namely the factory of grievances".
Alas, only the factory of grievances remains. Here are the Government with another issue which will finish up as a full-blown grievance. Grievances are a recipe for trouble and offer no real hope of stability and reconciliation.
The Home Secretary's statement of 19th October fills us with concern. What we have sought to do from these Benches is to emphasise that we are dismayed with the Government's action in the hope that they will take seriously what we have said and that they will not be tempted to go further down this road which leads to instability.
6.4 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, this has been a debate of some considerable seriousness and it is not surprising that your Lordships have taken that view considering the matter under discussion and considering the matter to which it all refers; namely, terrorism. It is important not to forget the background to this decision. The Government are steadfast in their determination to defeat terrorism. It is a threat, as all noble Lords have appreciated. It is a threat to the stability and the fabric of our society. Not one noble Lord who has spoken of whom I am aware has taken
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a contrary view to that. But it will be defeated, not by military means alone but by the determined efforts of the security forces backed up by the firm resolve of the whole community in Northern Ireland.
Various measures are being introduced by the Government to ensure that terrorism does not succeed. It is against that background that it makes no sense, in our view, to continue to provide the vioices of terrorism with the publicity and the propaganda opportunites of television and radio. This was made more acute when it became clear that these opportunites were being used not only to persuade but also to frighten. To stand by and allow spokesmen to issue threats to law-abiding citizens would, we believe, be an unacceptable lapse on the part of the Government.
Nor did we believe that it was proper to place the onus of responsibility for denying access to the airwaves on to the broadcasting authorities. They have a difficult enough task, but the circumstances were such that it was necessary for the Government to take responsibility for this decision. That is what we have done. That is the reason we had this debate where the Government's responsibility for that can either be supported or questioned. It was satisfying to find that so many of your Lordships supported the decision.
The noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, said he was sorry that it had to come to a ban, but he said he thought that the Government were right. He has had considerable experience in the broadcasting industry. My noble friend Lord Caldecote, the noble Lord, Lord Moran, my noble friends Lord Massereene and Lord Gridley, all supported the principle. The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, with his considerable experience of the media, gave me the courtesy of saying that one had made a good case. I am grateful to the noble Lord for that because I realise that he is concerned about the ability of the media to retain those benefits which they have already had.
The noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, made what I thought was a remarkable speech. He said that when life and civil liberties were concerned he was on the side of life. He spoke about the freedom of speech and the erosion of civil liberties, which some people feel this is, as a fundamental misconception. If I may say so, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits. His personal knowledge is considerable.
I should not care to get involved with the argument which he had with the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Bonham-Carter, about Mein Kampf. The noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, had good reasons for taking the views he did. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, may disagree with that, but over one matter the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, made a great mistake. With the greatest of respect to him, he said that if only more people had read Mein Kampf they would be better informed and maybe that which happened would not have come about.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I said that if only more people, speaking of people in this country, had read Mein Kampf more carefully, we might have acted more wisely and more resolutely.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, if I misinterpreted the noble Lord, of course I apologise. But the point I wish to make is that there is nothing to prevent that happening now. All these measures do is to say that the person concerned cannot appear in person on television or on the radio for those purposes. It has nothing to do with the curtailment of the freedom of speech, to which several noble Lords referred: that continues. It is in the mode of dissemination where there is the curtailment.
Noble Lords may believe that that is unreasonable or that it is a form of censorship, but I do not believe that it is. The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, shrugs his shoulders. Everything that those people wish to say can be reported in all the various forms in the media, the press and television. Only their actual selves cannot be shown making the speeches, for the reasons that I have given.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, asked why this stance has been taken against the television authorities and not the press. He knows full well the reason. It is because of the immediacy of the impact of television and radio. I was disappointed by the noble Lord's speech. He is entitled to his views, but, speaking as someone with the responsibilities which I have for my department and answering for it, I was disappointed, to say the least, that he described the action as a futile gesture and a foolish error.
What is the futile gesture? It is preventing people who are promoting terrorism from being actively projected into the houses of law-abiding citizens by means of television and broadcasting. I do not believe that that is a futile gesture or a foolish error. I believe that it is less worthy of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, than his speeches normally are that he should say that.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, governments of different political persuasions, including the noble Earl's own, have turned down the ban which the Government have now introduced. What I said today is entirely consistent with the view shared by a substantial number of people with ministerial experience of terrorism and broadcasting.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord is entitled to his view, as I have conceded. I merely expressed the view that I was disappointed that he should have held it in the way in which he did.
The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, referred to the freedom of speech and said that we are giving the terrorists a propaganda coup. Several noble Lords put forward the argument that we are giving the terrorists the opportunity of stating that they have been denied certain advantages which they have previously held and that others will not understand the Government's action. We are doing what the Irish Republic has been doing for several years. It may be considered that those in the United States will not understand it but there are those who do not believe that our action is manifestly wrong or fundamentally flawed. We did not expect our action to meet with universal approval throughout the United States or elsewhere.
The noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Prys-Davies, asked what the evidence is for taking this
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action and how many people have telephoned to complain. It is the view of members of the public—approximately 69 per cent. said so in a recent poll—that terrorist organisations should not be allowed to express their views on television. It has been grossly offensive for listeners and viewers to put up with the voices of terrorists using the broadcasting media for propaganda purposes. Therefore it is not without reason that we should take such action.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, I asked the noble Earl a question, perhaps in an oblique way, as did the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, and my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies. We asked to be told the number of complaints which have been received from the BBC and the IBA and the poll to which the Minister referred.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Baroness the answers to the questions but they are not necessarily so important. The important point is whether terrorists should be permitted to advance their causes via the radio and television media. Of course it is an important and controversial action to restrict that, but governments must take controversial decisions and that is why it was done.
I listened with interest to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. He said that he was surprised and somewhat wounded by headlines about the Church's reaction to South Africa. I do not wish to become involved in that issue, but I must say that I was disappointed by the right reverend Prelate's comments. He said that it is important to hear the views of those who believe themselves to be repressed in Northern Ireland. Nothing that we have done will prevent those views being put forward. He said that injustice still remains in Northern Ireland. Maybe it does; that is a view to which the right reverend Prelate is entitled. However, there are perfectly good, democratic, legal ways of expressing those views and abhorrence—if it is abhorrence.
When the right reverend Prelate implied that he was concerned because the people who promote terrorism will be restricted by the action, I wished only that in its pronouncements the Church would be a little more specific. When it must take an unpleasant decision the Church is anxious to be seen not to be taking it against the minority. However, it is a little like Humpty Dumpty and it does not make too clear on which side of the fence it is falling. I hope that the right reverend Prelate, as I am sure he intended, will denounce terrorism in all its forms, particularly and especially when projected into homes.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving way. The Churches have made clear their abhorrence of terrorism. However, surely the point is that at the moment Sinn Fein is a legal organisation for which a large number of people have voted. Therefore, it enters into the picture of those who are able to present the injustices faced by their people, especially as these occur in the minds of many people in the United States.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it may be a perfectly legal party, but if it supports and incites terrorism it is for that reason the restrictions have been proposed.
The noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, referred to freedom of speech. That has not been curtailed. He said that it was an essential adjunct to democracy. That is right. The noble Lord has delivered himself of his speech and left the Chamber. I am sorry. The serried ranks of noble Lords opposite have filled up so remarkably that I missed the noble Lord who had removed himself and placed himself elsewhere. He should not regard this as, a "little Englander" mentality. I have tried to explain the reasons why the decision was taken, controversial though it may be. It was not because of any "little Englander" mentality but because we do not believe that it is right for the advocates of terrorism to portray themselves in such a way.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, asked whether a particular statement might or might not be permitted. It is not for me to answer hypothetical questions on how the restrictions might operate in specific circumstances. Directions have been issued to the BBC and IBA and guidance has also been issued in the letter to which the noble Lord referred. Whether that has authority in a court of law will be up to the courts of law to decide. I have no reason to suppose that there is anything in that letter which is other than helpful in trying to explain how the regulations should be carried out.
The noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, said that this was undemocratic. In my view it is not undemocratic. The decision over this matter is an action taken under the licensing agreement of the BBC. Section 13 (4) states:
"The Secretary of State may from time to time by notice in writing require the corporation to refrain at any specified time or at all times from sending any matter or matter of any class specified in such notice".
That was agreed by Parliament, and Parliament gave the Home Secretary authority to do it. Therefore, the Home Secretary has acted wholly democratically and now seeks your Lordships' approval of that.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, perhaps I may clarify my remarks. At no stage did I say that the Government did not have the legal right to do what they have done. I was trying to point out that by doing it within the legal framework without any prior public consultation—and I consider that consultation to be part of the democratic process—they have left themselves in a situation where, not having had advice from the public and other political parties, they have gone ahead with an action which will be counter-productive.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I see what the noble Lord is driving at.
The noble Lord, Lord Annan, referred to the proscription of Sinn Fein and asked whether the Government are considering that. The possibility of proscribing Sinn Fein or the UDA is kept under close and continuing review. But it has to be remembered that people should be made answerable to the law for the actions which they take or incite, and not for the opinions they hold or the political parties they
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support. Although some members of Sinn Fein and the UDA are undoubtedly involved in terrorism, many are not. As a whole the organisations are not actively and primarily involved in the commission of terrorist acts. As such they can be distinguished from the IRA and the UDF which are proscribed.
The noble Lord also referred to a declaration against terrorism which people have to sign before becoming elected. The declaration against terrorism is part of the Elected Authorities (Northern Ireland) Bill which received a Second Reading in another place last week. The declaration, which has long been mooted, is designed to inhibit councillors and members of the assembly from expressing support for, or approval of, proscribed organisations or acts of terrorism and is a response to the difficulties which face local government in Northern Ireland. Your Lordships will have the opportunity to debate that in due time.
We have discussed an important matter today and I should like to reinforce the point that our action to restrict access to the broadcasting media by terrorists and those who go with them is not a criticism of the broadcasters. They always have a difficult and demanding task in the reporting of events in Northern Ireland. As I said earlier, in issuing the notices we felt that this was an action for which the Government, and not the broadcasters, should shoulder the responsibility.
Perhaps I may give your Lordships an example. Let us consider for a moment what might have happened if the notices had not been in force a few weeks ago when an IRA bomb killed a grandfather and his granddaughter who were nothing other than innocent passers-by. It is quite likely that a spokesman on behalf of the IRA would have appeared on television shortly after the outrage claiming responsibility for it. It is also likely that he would have attempted to explain away the deaths of these innocent victims by reference to the IRA campaign and that it was the Government's fault because of their presence in Northern Ireland. We might well take a few seconds to imagine the distress and the gross offence which such a broadcasting appearance would cause, not only to the relatives of the victims but to all law-abiding people.
I am sure that your Lordships do not believe that it was ever intended that the privilege of broadcasting and the airwaves should be abused in such a manner. The Government took the view that it was clearly wrong that such abuse should be allowed to continue. Nonetheless, I accept that democratic governments need to consider long and hard before introducing measures of this kind, even when they are dealing with the enemies of democracy. Of course we have. That is why it has taken so long to bring these matters forward. We knew that there would be criticism such as your Lordships have expressed this afternoon. However, on balance we thought it right to do so.
We have given considerable thought to these matters. Our conclusion is that we cannot justify giving terrorists and their associates complete freedom of access to broadcasting in order to promote their campaign of violence and tragedy and to sow fear in the minds of ordinary viewers and listeners at home. We have, therefore, taken steps to

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limit that freedom. Let us remember that freedom also carries its obligations and when those obligations are abused, freedom is inevitably endangered. I hope that in taking note of the Motion before your Lordships the House approves the measures taken by the Government.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Peers' Voting Rights
6.27 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon Lord Stoddart of Swindon rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will propose a restriction on the right of Lords to vote in Divisions on the basis of a given number of attendances over a specified period.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in asking this Question perhaps I may say how gratified I am at the interest which has been shown in it and I also thank in advance all noble Lords who have decided to take part in the debate.
I tabled this Question on the Order Paper on 24th May of this year. That was the day following the infamous vote on the poll tax when the Government brought in their so-called backwoodsmen to defeat an amendment of one of their own Back-Benchers, the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, for which there was clearly much support among the regular attenders of this House, Members of another place and certainly in the country as a whole.
Your Lordships will recall that on that occasion the vote, which totalled 500, was the highest since the vote on the Motion to approve the White Paper on the European Communities. On 23rd May the Government mustered no fewer than 317 noble Lords to their Lobby and achieved a majority of no less than 134. It was not only I, members of the Labour Party and members of other minority parties who were shocked and hurt by this brazen use of the Government's in-built Tory majority. Informed opinion, including the bulk of the media, were certainly and sincerely dismayed by that vote and public opinion generally felt that the House of Lords, whose reputation has certainly improved over the past few years—and I think we would all accept that with gratitude—did not, after all, constitute a proper and worthwhile safeguard against an overweening Government backed by an overwhelming and obedient majority in the House of Commons. I have to tell the House that at least some of the Government's own supporters were troubled by that vote on 23rd May. The kindest criticism that could be made was that the Chief Whip had on that occasion indulged in massive overkill.
I make it absolutely clear, however, that I do not criticise the Chief Whip and his colleagues on a personal basis. My experience as an Opposition Whip here, and even more so as a former Government Whip in another place, enables me to understand that Whips will use all proper measures that are available to them to get the maximum number of votes into the Lobby. What I suggest is a limitation on what is available to them. Therefore there is no criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Denham, who does his job for
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the Government so admirably in this House. I assure him that there is no personal criticism.
However, the dismay at the poll tax vote was certainly reflected in the press on the following day and on subsequent occasions. In my experience of politics over a long period I have seldom, if ever, seen this House given such a lashing as it received on that occasion. I quote from some press cuttings that I have here. The first is from the Guardian—I am sure that the Guardian commends itself to noble Lords opposite. In an article by James Naughtie headed "Thatcher's Lords a-leaping" the opening paragraph reads:
"The Government had to choose last week between the poll tax Bill and the pretence of decency in the Lords. It chose the Bill, and in Monday's triumph, which doubtless echoed through Boodles, Pratt's and the Turf long into the night, questions were raised which some ministers may find it hard to answer.
The sight of 317 Conservative peers queueing up to vote was startling and maybe disturbing, even to some Government whips not noted for their squeamishness. Bertie Denham, the long-suffering chief whip in the Lords who is required to play from a difficult hand, had done well.
But had he done too well?"
Next I come to the Financial Times of 25th May under the headline,
"When seeing leads to disbelieving".
Peter Riddle writes
"Monday's crushing defeat of the poll tax rebels exposed several myths about the Lords. The scene was a cross between Gilbert and Sullivan's lolanthe and Noel Coward's The Stately Homes of England. The Tories' own block vote, the hereditary peers, was mobilised—219 of the 317 on the Government side inherited their titles. This was enough on its own to defeat Lord Chelwood's amendment".
In The Times of 26th May Ronald Butt—a respected figure particularly on the Benches opposite—under the headline "A power forgone" wrote:
"After using their hereditary cohorts against the poll tax amendment on the grounds that the Commons must not be offended, the Tories will have not the slightest ground for encouraging the voting majority of the Lords (even when it consists of working life peers) to resist any dictatorial measure by a future socialist government. So the Constitution has been changed because Mrs. Thatcher committed here self to abolishing the rates, found a substitute hard to devise and finally hit upon a flat-rate tax disliked by many Tories".
My final brief quotation comes from the Observer of 29th May under the heading:
"Lords are cashing in on the poll tax".
The opening paragraph reads:
"The 'backwoodsmen' peers who gave the Government its resounding victory on the poll-tax vote last week will be among the greatest beneficiaries of the new legislation, an Observer survey has revealed".
The article goes on to name a number of peers but in this debate the naming of noble Lords would be invidious and I therefore do not intend to do so.
My action in tabling this Question was not prompted by press comment. I did so because I felt angry, frustrated and affronted that the vigorous and genuine efforts of so many hardworking Members of this House should be brought to nought by an invasion of noble Lords who normally show little or no interest in the proceedings of this House. I therefore asked myself what measures could be taken to eliminate this anomalous position where casual or virtual non-attenders can decide what view the House of Lords reaches on a major issue.
It is well known that the Labour Party has, over a long period of time, believed that the House of Lords should be abolished; but even though people as diverse in their opinions as Roy Hattersley and Tony Benn agree that abolition is the right course, I fear it will be a long time before any realistic move can be made on abolition. In saying that, I notice the Chief Whip is looking at me in a quizzical way. I do not mean that the Labour Party will not obtain office at the next general election; of course it will. However, abolition of the House of Lords will not be a priority in its first parliament. Therefore, it will be a long while before any realistic move can be made in that direction.
The same is true of full-scale reform, short of abolition, since that would require all-party agreement, which I cannot see being achieved in the foreseeable future. Therefore, I concluded that the only real possibility of bringing respectability back to this House lay in restricting the right to vote to those who regularly attend the House. It is probably the only proposal likely to be agreed by all parties within a reasonable period of time. I trust therefore that I shall receive a sympathetic answer from the Chief Whip when he replies.
People have asked me how the system would work. I suggest that a 33 per cent. attendance record, as proposed in the 1968 White Paper on House of Lords reform, might constitute a starting point. Of course the final details can be sorted out after all-party agreement has been reached in principle. Some idea of what that would actually mean in practice can be gained from the report from our own House; from the group on the working of the House in the Session 1987–88 (House of Lords Paper No. 9). According to that paper, if the 33 per cent. rule were to be applied the composition of a working House would be something like this: the Conservatives, 168 Members; the Labour Party, 88; the Liberals, 27; and the SDP, 24. Therefore, in party terms the Conservative Government would have a respectable majority. However, the Independents would number 73 and therefore to get legislation through the Government would have to put forward extremely good arguments. I believe that would be altogether good for the Government. It is therefore possible and feasible to adopt my suggestion.
When I tabled my Question I believed that my proposal had not previously been discussed on the Floor of the House. However, one has to be either a near genius or extremely lucky to do something new in this place, which has existed for over 800 years. I discovered that such a proposal had been made. A Motion had been put forward restricting the voting rights of Peers by the then Marquess of Exeter on 17th March 1953; that is 35 years ago. The Motion that he moved was roughly,
"that no Peer, except that he had obtained leave of absence under Standing Order No. 21, should vote on a division of this House unless he has … attended the House at least x times … during the previous session in which the House has sat for public business on twelve or more days".
So we have had this proposal before.
The debate on that occasion was a good one. But it transpired that the Marquess of Exeter's Motion,
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even if agreed by the House, could not be carried into effect because this House cannot take away from any noble Lord the right bestowed upon him by law; namely, that once in receipt of a Writ he is entitled to a
" 'seat, place and voice' in Parliament".
Since a voice is taken to mean a vote, that vote cannot be taken away by a simple Motion agreed by your Lordships but only by a Bill passed by both Houses of Parliament and receiving the Royal Assent. That is why the question has to be put to the Government, because I understand that it is only they who can bring forward such a Bill.
Nevertheless, the House has certain powers. If the noble Lord, Lord Denham, cannot give me a good answer tonight we might look at those other powers. They have been looked at by the Select Committee on the Powers of the House in Relation to the Attendance of its Members. Its report was published in January 1956. It transpires that this House has powers to compel Members to attend. I refer to the powers contained in paragraph 40 under the heading "Powers in General". Your Lordships' Committee reported in 1956:
"The House undoubtedly has power to order the attendance of its members and to punish members who disobey such orders by reprimand, by fine or by imprisonment".
Imprisonment, mark you!
A Noble Lord: Hang 'em!
Lord Denham: Order!
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: It is even worse than that, because your Lordships have the power to dispatch the Sergeant at Arms to bring in the defaulting Member under arrest. My researches have revealed that this House has considerable powers and if the noble Lord, Lord Denham—
Noble Lords: Order!
Earl Russell: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that dispensation from these powers is almost invariably given automatically on request?
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I was not aware of that, but I am sure that it would be given. Nevertheless, one begins to wonder when we have such turnouts as we had on 23rd May whether such dispensation should always be given unless there is very good reason. Perhaps that is a subject for another debate.
If the Government do not reply favourably we may have to look at some of those measures. Perhaps they are not realistic in 1988. I urge the noble Lord to give me a favourable reply because the reputation of this House is important to Parliament; it is important to this country and to its people. I hope that he will not give me a dusty answer tonight but will listen to the debate and to the views of the Members of this House and of the public. If the noble Lord does that he will certainly give me some encouragement that the Government do indeed believe in democracy and that this House, properly run and constituted and having proper duties, can continue to constitute a part of that democracy.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, if only on this occasion to be able respectfully to disagree with him and to give some reasons which may commend themselves to your Lordships. It is appreciated that the noble Lord makes no personal criticism of my noble friend Lord Denham. It is also appreciated that the noble Lord, as always with his commendable frankness, in effect accepts that this question is sired by frustration out of anger which is not the best parentage, I suggest to your Lordships, for such a progeny.
One takes the proposal as it stands. The purpose of the proposal is avowedly political. It is to seek to ensure that the Whip to those of us who sit on this side of the House and accept it and no one else—that is, the pious hope or unsettled expectation of my noble friend Lord Denham to carry through the government business— shall be less effective. The proposal does not inhibit Whipping the attendance or contribution of any noble Lord, but only the right to vote. If I am not mistaken it is said that it is only to correct an imbalance of voting strength between the Conservative and Labour parties. As the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, put it, it is an abuse of an inbuilt majority.
Let us face the question head on. The proposal is erected on an entirly false premise; namely, that there ever could or should be any imposed balance of voting strength in any second Chamber, however constituted, in any democratic society. That is more particularly so if it were to be elected at political hustings. Of course, if it is abolished, cadit quaestio! Even if a temporary balance were to be achieved, whether by accident or design, the equilibrium would inevitably be upset by defections that have happened within living memory from the parties opposite.
This dream, this false ideal, is a false premise of an imposed balance of voting strength. It is a nonsense; and built upon a nonsense we proceed. As we are constituted at present, with Cross-Benches and Spiritual Benches, implementation of this proposal, however, effected, would be impractical; it would debase the standard of our debates and produce a monstrous absurdity. It is much to be doubted whether this indirect approach to seek to correct an imbalance of voting strength is permissible under our constitution. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, in effect accepts that such is the case. If noble Lords will forgive a canine metaphor, this Stoddart muzzle muzzles the bite of the lordly dog to curb Whipping by its lordly master.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I am not seeking to muzzle noble Lords. They can come to the House and speak as much as they like. However, they will not be able to vote unless they have played a proper part in the proceedings of the House in a previous Session.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I fully understand what the noble Lord is saying. I have already taken the point as he will see in Hansard; but unfortunately he was distracted by the noble Earl, Lord Longford. It is a very good-humoured debate.
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The right to vote, subject to leave of absence, is but an incident of the oath taken by noble Lords within the remit of the residual powers of the Royal Prerogative. Apart from statute, mental incapacity being one example, no restriction may be placed on the right of any noble Lord to vote.
There is another aspect. The sheer generality of this proposal would be to deprive your Lordships of invaluable advice on matters of great public importance which lie outside the political arena. I have especially in mind the contributions from the Cross-Benches of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice. These would be excluded.
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Yes!
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I hope that I am not distracting anyone this time. I cannot help supposing that the noble Lord did not understand the point of the intervention. Under the plan of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, the Lord Chief Justice and other eminent people would be allowed to speak to the House, but they would not be allowed to vote. There is no question of our being deprived of thier counsel.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I assure the noble Earl that I did understand. I was about to deal not only with the contribution of the noble and learned Lord but with his vote on an important matter.
Why should this House be deprived of the contribution and the vote of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice, whose administrative duties are so vast that he can only seldom attend? It is nonsense. I give as an example the Children Bill. Contributions and votes from any side of the House on the Children Bill are of the greatest importance. If it is said by the noble Earl or by the noble Lord that we must make exceptions for special cases, how shall the basis for exemption be defined? Surely not because of specialist knowledge or expertise, for there are Bills such as the Children Bill where common sense, practical experience and broad principles are of greater importance than any special knowledge or expertise.
Surely on any objective examination—it is reasonable to examine a proposal objectively—this proposal, however implemented, must produce an absurdity. We must ask some questions. What is an attendance? What is an attendance in the meaning of the Unstarred Question? Does an attendance for the purpose of the question involve an obligation just to vote or to make a contribution to the debate? Does it involve working in one of the committees on a particular day? Is that an attendance? Or is attendance just sitting in one's place for a scant period of time? Or has one to sit in one's place and watch the clock? If so, for how long? What is an attendance? What is the noble Lord proposing?
If by some good fortune a Division were to be called, would the vote as such, having removed oneself from the precincts of the Chamber (if I may put it that way) into the Lobby, count as an

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attendance? If the right to vote is to be based on a given number of attendances over a specified period, surely attendance at one of the committees of your Lordships' House is equally as important as a contribution to debate. How many attendances would be required?
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, the White Paper to which we refer stipulates that attendances at committees would count.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, the Unstarred Question makes no such concession and is completely unclear as to what is proposed. Even if it were couched in the form in which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, has suggested, still my question arises. How many attendances would be required? The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart,says 33 per cent. What kind of attendances? Over what period? If a contribution to debate is relevant, is any intervention, however short, a contribution to the debate? I welcome interventions because they focus attention on the issue; but these questions have to be defined and answered before any regulatory process can be introduced. And with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, none of them received any attention in his speech.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the noble Lord invited interventions. He will recall that I wanted to shorten my contribution as much as possible. I said that once the matter had been agreed in principle between the parties, the details could be worked out. In order to save time I did not go into detail.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, that simply will not do. It is no use talking about working out things that cannot be worked out. They cannot be worked out without making a total nonsense. No one has yet devised a viable or operable system. If the noble Lord has one, why has he not so informed the House?
I apologise for taking so long, but I had to accept the interventions as they came. If by and large, subject to the Parliament Act and convention, the will of the elected Chamber were not respected at the end of the day, the retention of your Lordships' House as presently constituted could serve no useful purpose. By and large, the convention of restraint has been exercised by both parties. Assuredly my noble friend Lord Denham, both in the short term, and far more importantly in the long term, was wholly justified—on the poll tax and especially on the steps taken to ensure that the financial privilege of another place should not be infringed as a result of a mere procedural quirk and anomaly.
It has been the declared policy of the Labour Party since 1918 to abolish your Lordships' House. That is its policy today. It is no use the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, saying that it will not happen in the next Parliament. It will be a manifesto commitment as I understand Labour Party policy, and presumably it is proposed to implement it.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, I am sorry to intervene again, but it was not in the last manifesto.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, it was not in the last manifesto but—and I hope that the noble Lord will agree, because I have studied the subject a little—that was the first manifesto since 1918 which did not in fact include it. But be that as it may, as I understand it it will be in the next manifesto. So what is the use of worrying about the last manifesto? I simply do not understand the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, when he says that it is a matter that really will not happen before this and that.
I conclude on this observation. The important aspect is this: in the case of noble Lords who would wish to abolish this Chamber as a matter of policy and who have only to produce a monstrous and manifest absurdity, is there any need for further justification for their case for abolition?
7 p.m.
Lord McNair: My Lords, it was felt in that backwater—or should I say that important tributary—of the usual channels which I inhabit that someone ought to make clear the approach of the democrats (that is, the Social and Liberal Democrats) to the grievous problem to which the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, has drawn our attention this evening. I fear that this means that mine will be a relatively humdrum contribution to the debate. I shall leave it to my noble friend Lord Russell to remedy the inevitable deficiencies of my speech both in historical perspective and entertainment value.
The immediate short-term problem is this. Since your Lordships' proceedings came to be televised there are more people in the country who know a little bit more and are therefore able to take more interest in what goes on in this House. So when some unpopular outrage is perpetrated in another place, such as the poll tax, eyes or teeth, no matter what it concerns the press immediately sets about raising the hopes of the public—the long suffering public—that the House of Lords will intervene in the nick of time, like the seventh cavalry, and snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.
However, what actually happens is this. The great day comes and behold, what looks like two or three busloads of noble Lords with venerable titles and unfamiliar faces converge upon this place, make their way, not without difficulty, into the government Lobby and bulldoze the offending measure on to the statute book. The public is bitterly disappointed and we all look mighty foolish.
If I were to sum up our position on these Benches in one sentence I would say that we applaud the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and certainly the charm and humour with which he posed his Question, but we are not sure that he has hit upon the right solution. I shall await with great interest the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Denham. However, I shall not be surprised if he finds quite a number of practical and legal difficulties in the noble Lord's proposal. Even if practical, it would be no more than a palliative because it does not tackle the real

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problem, which is the archaic composition of the House. I believe that there may still be a House of Chiefs in Fiji, but apart from that I think that we are unique in the 20th century.
Our attitude towards the wider question of House of Lords reform can perhaps best be conveyed by a quotation from a publication optimistically entitled The Time Has Come which preceded the drawing up of the Alliance manifesto in the last election. It says:
"The Alliance Parties believe that reform of the House of Commons must be matched by reform of the Second Chamber. It is unacceptable that there should still be a legislative role for peers merely by virtue of heredity. We need a reformed Second Chamber which includes an elected regional dimension".
That leaves many a "t" uncrossed and many an "i" undotted, an omission which I hope will be repaired in time for the next general election.
I take it that it is almost unnecessary for me to add that a reform of the system by which the House of Commons is elected must form a central element of any constitutional reform. A system which contrives that a party supported on polling day by a bare third of the electorate can muster an impregnable majority in the House of Commons is not only an anomalous absurdity; it is also incidentally the root cause of several of the fiascos of the last Session of this Parliament to which the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, has drawn our attention.
If the composition of the House of Commons had been even roughly proportionate to the wishes of the people, does anyone believe that the iniquitous poll tax would ever have reached this House?—surely not.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will give way for a moment. I wonder whether he has recollected that on that historic vote in this House it was in fact a majority of the independent Peers who supported the Government and therefore the whole of his argument based upon the apparent lack of representation falls to the ground.
Lord McNair: My Lords, with respect, I do not think that it does fall to the ground. If the House of Commons had been constituted as I described, I do not think that the Motion would ever have emerged and come along the corridor.
I return to the composition of this House. I suggest that in the next few years it will become increasingly apparent that we must make some changes which will enable our MEPs to play a greater part in the deliberations of our own national Parliament to build a bridge, as it were, between Westminster and Strasbourg. If we fail to do this, our lines of communication will break down.
Perhaps I can best conclude by reminding your Lordships of what was said in a thought-provoking way about the problems of bicameralism by that aphoristic savant The Abbé Sieyès. He said:
"A Second Chamber either agrees with the Lower House, in which case it is superfluous: or it disagrees, in which case it is pernicious".
I profoundly disagree with the Abbé and would add a reasoned amendment to his dictum which would read:
"But if the Lower House cannot guarantee to examine all legislation in detail, then a Second Chamber is essential".
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With all our imperfections I think that that is what we are.
7.8 p.m.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, I confess to finding myself a little surprised that this debate is taking place at all. However, since it is, I think it perhaps not inappropriate that someone who is a hereditary Peer should speak from these Benches. It is generally supposed that we on these Benches have no friends. But we have compensations for it: we are allowed our independence. However, sometimes it is removed altogether; it only needs the creation of a new peerage for us to be homeless for at least the first part of the afternoon.
There was however a moment of excitement in what the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said when suddenly I thought that far from being an island of independence in this great political sea all around us we might—all 73 of us whom he would allow to vote in these matters—hold the balance of power. This is indeed heady stuff. But I doubt whether these not entirely full Benches this evening would go along with my sense of excitement, so I shall leave it to one side.
I think that the serious point is that there is within your Lordships' House a vast reservoir of experience and wisdom. Not a subject under the sun arises but a few, and sometimes many, of your Lordships have a wealth of experience and technical expertise in such matters. Further, the combined weight of your Lordships adds up to a great deal or ordinary old-fashioned human wisdom.
This combination of expertise and wisdom is governed by no factor whatever. It has nothing to do with age; it has nothing to do with wealth; it has nothing to do with geography. It has, I think, nothing to do with the nature of the peerages which entitle your Lordships to sit in this House. It is not the prerogative only of Life Peers, however well deserved those peerages may be, to be wise or experienced or to be able to help your Lordships; and certainly it has nothing whatever to do with regularity of attendance. There are countless debates in which an enormous amount of valuable expertise and guidance is provided to this House by people who very properly do not attend many more debates because they feel, as I often do, that there are debates about which they simply do not know enough to take part. They tend to restrict their appearances to those subjects on which they can at least be helpful to this House and the nation in general.
If that is the case, it seems to me that to suggest a qualification of attendance is wrong. It would simply mean that a very large proportion of the wisdom and experience available to your Lordships was reduced to the status of mere consultancy. To have a lifetime of experience in something, to be allowed to speak on it and then to be denied the opportunity of voting, giving, as it were, teeth to your opinion—if that is not too mixed a metaphor—seems to me to be entirely wrong.
The solution to this problem, if it is a problem and not merely a complaint, seems to me to lie in your Lordships' hands entirely. Political loyalty is a phrase that is often invoked, but usually simply because

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there is some kind of dichotomy in the mind of somebody about to vote between what his party directs him to do and what he thinks is sensible. This is often brought out as a matter of conscience, but conscience is something which occurs only in the major issues of the time. Very often it is simply a matter of believing things to be mistaken or amendments to be necessary. Political loyalties are invoked on every side.
I am well aware that obligation and friendship play some part in these matters. I am also quite aware of the charismatic influence of the noble Lord, Lord Denham, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and other noble Lords who find that Whips are an essential piece of furniture in their office. But what surprises me is the number of your Lordships who respond to it. However charismatic they may be, it seems to me that this House is properly constituted to represent a very great deal of independence of spirit and independence therefore of voting. I am constantly astounded that people who so far as I can see have absolutely no reason to do so should respond to a Whip. There is nothing to prevent those noble Lords who are Whips from using their very best endeavours upon these people, but I think that there is more voting by party than there should be. I wish that it were less. I should have thought that your Lordships' House was the very place where that spirit of independence ought to be encouraged.
This is a Question to the Government whether they will make recommendations about the ability of Lords to vote. For all these reasons, I hope very much that they will not.
7.13 p.m.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, I am indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for airing a generally felt grievance. I hope that he will not regard me as discourteous if I say that perhaps a little of the edge of his argument was taken off when he made it perfectly clear that all he was doing was arranging for me to have an opportunity to straighten my tie before going to the guillotine. That is not a very serious proposition. Despite what I imagine the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, is going to tell us, the Labour Party official policy is that the House of Lords should be abolished in its present form but not immediately—and for that we are very grateful. That is not my view, and of course I no longer have the privilege of being a member of that party.
I share the view of the noble Lord. Any proposal which could be accepted—of course, it is unlikely to be—which would accentuate the need for this House to become more and more of a work-house rather than a House attended on what I might call, despite what we have just heard, a somewhat dilettante basis, would have my support. It is shown by the number of those who attend regularly that it is becoming more and more a House of working Peers, and that is all to the best.
Until we have a thoroughgoing reform of your Lordships' House, in my view we can only work on the basis of complete equality, whether man or woman, whether seventh Earl or newly-created Life
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Peer. One cannot justify logically the composition of this House, and there are many ways in which it can be reformed and should be reformed. However, it should be reformed in a major way and not in any minor way, meeting the kinds of difficulties that have been proposed. Once one starts on the road of selecting those Peers who should be entitled to vote, where will it finish?
The priority suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, would not be my priority. My priority for excluding Lords from voting would be every single hereditary Peer who has an elder sister—every single noble Lord who comes here and votes for a sex discrimination Act and then proceeds to participate in a system under which the child entitled, by being the first born, to participate in your Lordships' House and to enjoy one of the greatest honours in the country is excluded from that on one ground only; namely, that she is a woman. That would be my priority in dividing Peers into voting Peers and non-voting Peers.
I am bound to say to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, that once one starts on part reform one gets into the kind of difficulty which he illustrated. He chose the vote of the Lord Chief Justice.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, will the noble Lord forgive me and allow me to intervene? He said that it was restricted to the first male child to be allowed to enter your Lordships' House and inherit the title. That is not quite correct because it depends entirely on the way in which the Peerage was granted in the first place, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, I do not want to get bogged down with the detail; otherwise it would take too long. We have had this point many times before, and this is mainly what occurs.
I raise the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, merely to illustrate the total illogicalities with which we are faced in the present way in which the Chamber is constituted and run. The noble Lord was very anxious that the Lord Chief Justice should have the right to vote in your Lordships' House. The basis of democracy, as he, a distinguished lawyer, will acknowledge, is the separation of the judiciary from the legislature. We have a situation in which we somehow or other manage to make it work—not entirely satisfactorily—where you have a number of Law Lords participating in the legislation. If the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, had my problem of trying to explain to many distinguished visitors from the Commonwealth what a great democracy we are and how the House of Lords is the champion of democracy, he would find that that aspect presents a little difficulty. Let us not pretend that we are not full of illogicalities. However, we are experts at making the illogical work somehow or other.
I come back again to this: I think that the only principle on which we can work is that each Peer is the keeper of his or her own conscience. He alone must be responsible for what he says and what he does. He must be free to take advice from the Whips as to what he should do and either to accept it or to

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reject it, and he must be entitled to take advice from any Whip to whom he chooses to go—even the noble Lord, Lord Denham. That is the only basis on which we can work. I can think of no formula that fits our traditions, the practice of our House and the aspirations which I am sure all noble Lords share other than that each of us should be regarded as one among equals.
7.21 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I have too much respect for the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, to wish to disconcert him unnecessarily, but I cannot help recalling—although my memory is not what it was—that he was a distinguished Member of the Labour Government of 1968 which produced a plan under which there would have been a very selective arrangement whereby hereditary peers would have been allowed to attend but not to vote. The noble Lord joined in responsibility for that. Time has moved on. I shall not pursue the topic.
I support the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. It happens, for reasons I shall not inflict on the House, that I have been asked quite often in public lately whether I think the House of Lords is a good thing. I recall, as many do, what Mr. R. A. Butler, as he then was, said about his Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden:
"He is the best Prime Minister that we have".
I should say that the House of Lords is the best second Chamber that we have. I am in favour of a second Chamber; I want there to be no doubt about that.
When we consider the Chamber, we can hardly regard it as perfect. I never got as far as the House of Commons. The superior eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, denied me that chance in an election many years ago. With all due diffidence, it seems to me that we are its superior in many ways. Our manners are better. We are kinder to each other. We have more knowledge and more wisdom, we like to think. I use a word introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Birkett. We are therefore a very fine House in terms of debate. I do not underestimate the influence that can be exerted in debates over a period.
When it comes to voting, of course, the place is a sick joke; it is an absurdity. No one really questions that. It is quite indefensible. The real point is whether anything at all ought to be done about the voting system. We want to continue as far as possible the influential, wise and delightful discussions and the life that we enjoy so much. But any dispassionate observer from outside would certainly say that something ought to be done about the voting system. No other country has copied, or is the least likely to copy, it. It has just grown, and here we are with it.
If I speak about reform, I do not want to seem to be speaking from a Labour Party point of view only—although I do speak partly from that point of view. From our point of view it is intolerable that—when I last looked—between 300 and 400 Members take the Conservative Whip and rather more than 100 Members take the Labour Whip. That is an absurd imbalance. No one would constitute a
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chamber in any civilised world with that kind of composition.
I shall not pursue the question of how far the Conservative Government—I do not want to get involved in what would happen under a Labour government—of today have an automatic majority. We are all aware that the Government are beaten quite often. That is of course a feature of a part-time House. I am all for a part-time House. I think that all the famous wisdom and the contributions would be much less weighty if we had to attend full time; so I am all for a part-time House.
We all know the situation. The Government can be and have been beaten quite often in the past few years, but when they want to pull out all the stops they always win. It is a question of whether on a particular occasion they want to pull out all the stops, or how many stops they want to pull out. The question of the poll tax has been dealt with.
We might consider the matter of charges for eye testing, which arose recently. When that was discussed in the House, plenty of Conservatives did not like the charges at all, together with Independents and Labour and SDP Members. Two hundred and fourteen Members voted, and the Government were defeated. The matter went back to the House of Commons, and it scraped through by eight votes. It was brought here again, and 464 Members voted. Twice as many voted when it came to the pinch. Whether we think it is a lovely, a ridiculous, or an indefensible plan, that is the situation.
The question is whether anything can be done in practical political terms. Here I look at matters more from the Conservative point of view. The pressure for reform of this Chamber is no new thing but—until1968 anyway—it came almost entirely from the Conservative side. For various reasons, I happen to have had occasion to look into all that, but I shall not weary noble Lords with my researches. In 1907 Lord Newton, a Conservative Peer, introduced a Bill that prevented the automatic right of a hereditary peer to a seat in the House of Lords. Eighty years ago that was a Conservative initiative.
There were all kinds of other proposals—nearly all Conservative proposals—for reform. In one way or another they have all been defeated. Proposals were put forward, for example, by a Conservative government in 1927, and private Members' Bills were introduced by Conservative Peers in 1929, 1933 and 1935. The initiative for reforming the House, recognising that the composition of the House is really indefensible, has come from the Conservative Benches.
Quite a number of noble Lords would have been Members in 1968. I was Leader of the House at that time. I took the initiative in making a proposal that only Peers who had been awarded their peerages should be allowed to vote; hereditary peers should come and make the contributions that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, values so highly, but would not be allowed to vote. That was agreed by the two Front Benches. After I resigned from that government, a lot of work was done on the proposal particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington and the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, on the Conservative

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side, and by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and, in the other place, Mr. Crossman, on our side.
An agreement was reached between the two parties to abolish the hereditary right of Peers to vote. It was sabotaged in the other place because the Back Benchers on the extreme wings did not want this House of Lords to be rational; that is, so far as I could understand the motivation of the other place. Thus it was sabotaged after an agreement had been reached. Let no one assume for a moment that the Conservative Party throughout the century has stood for the automatic right of those who inhereit titles to come and vote; quite the contrary.
Since that time there have been one or two Conservative initiatives. An exceptionally strong Conservative committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Home, and including the noble Lord, Lord Blake, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in 1978 published proposals for a second Chamber which would have had a combined basis of election and nomination. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, in an impressive and absorbing book has come out for an elected second Chamber. I do not know whether anyone has had time to read the book. If they have, they may not have welcomed that proposal. One of the most eminent Conservatives of the day now favours an elected second Chamber; so do not let us talk as though suggestions for reform come from wild, fanatical lefties who want to destroy the whole institution. I have given facts, whether or not the House finds them acceptable.
My noble friend Lord Ponsonby may go into more detail about the proposal put forward by my noble friend Lord Stoddart. I shall not detain the House. If anyone wonders whether these proposals are practical, they can look at the 1968 White Paper to which I have already referred. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, will find in it that some of his questions are answered. No doubt further work will need to be done on the details. I dare say that my noble friend Lord Ponsonby will go into that point.
I repeat that the main feature of the 1968 proposals was that hereditary Peers would lose the right to vote but would be allowed to speak. That 1968 agreed proposal contained an arrangement of the kind proposed by my noble friend Lord Stoddart.
The noble Lord, Lord Denham, has an exceptional position. In my 43 years here, there has never been a Chief Whip who was at once more astute and more popular. If one can be astute and popular, one achieves more than is usually given to mortal men.
I recognise that the proposal made by my noble friend Lord Stoddart, however it is worked out, might add to the difficulties of the noble Lord, Lord Denham. With his infinite resourcefulness, he will overcome those difficulties. He should not be intimidated by the proposals. I ask him to consider my submission that reform of the composition of the House is in the great tradition of his own party. I hope that he will give us some encouragement in that direction this evening.
7.33 p.m.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, I disagree with the proposal before your Lordships' House. I wish to speak from personal experience. When I was first created a Baroness in 1981 I attended your Lordships' House on average on two days a week. When Mr. Whitelaw, as he then was, the Home Secretary, appointed me in 1983 as chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission, it was on the clear understanding that I would spend an average of two days a week at its headquarters in Manchester. Over the five years of my appointment, I carried out that undertaking, and worked much more than a full-time week, including travelling all over the country speaking generally on the importance of equal opportunities for men and women.
Lord Diamond: Hear, hear!
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. During that five years, m y attendance in your Lordships' House was naturally abysmal. My statutory duties lay elsewhere.
However, when the second Sex Discrimination Bill passed through the House, I was present on all occasions, to speak, to vote and I hope to influence the Government to change the Bill for the better. Your Lordships may recall that I put forward an amendment which, with the support of noble Lords on the Opposition Benches, was carried against the Government. Had an arrangement such as that suggested today been in force, I should have been prevented from doing that, and therefore in my view prevented from carrying out my statutory duties. I hope that your Lordships will agree that it would also prevent someone with specialised knowledge in a particular field from casting his vote based on practical experience of the subject before the House. That is my experience, which I know is not unique. Other noble Lords have for periods of time been placed in a position similar to that which we have heard of tonight. I hope that your Lordships will not follow the suggestion put before you tonight.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, from her vast experience and hard work, may I ask her what proposals her group is making about elder daughters being ignored in respect of attending your Lordships' House?
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, I cannot tell the noble Lord what is available in that respect. However, I like the idea of elder daughters having that right. I also know that peerages have been created over the centuries in different ways.
7.35 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, many of your Lordships will have expected my distinguished noble friend Lord Moran to rise to his feet at this juncture. I am sorry to have to disappoint you, but in the perhaps inevitable pre-Christmas confusion a printing error would seem to have substituted his name for mine on the list of speakers.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, for drawing attention to a problem which has had many of us uneasy for months and in some

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cases for years. The moral legitimacy of this House in its legislative capacity surely rests upon two pillars. The first is tradition, or our unwritten constitution if one prefers. The second is the existence of a good degree of public support—not of course unanimous support—for the House and for the work that it does.
I am not qualified to talk about the pre-war years, but to the best of my memory the House has always enjoyed a reasonable degree of public support from World War 2 onwards, even during the fiercely egalitarian middle and late 1940s and the fun-revolutionary middle and late sixties and early seventies. All that support was in evidence, notwithstanding the cartoonists' cliché, which is still with us—albeit an essentially good-humoured cliché—depicting the typical Peer with his drooping white moustache, his hearing aid and his walking stick, garbed in his robe and coronet. But in recent years the House has moved from being merely tolerated to being positively popular. That is partly due to its proceedings being televised, an experiment I freely admit having strongly opposed at the outset. Even more is it due to the fact that the House has defeated the Government on more than 100 occasions since 1979, almost always in responsible circumstances and a responsible manner rather than in any flippant or lighthearted way.
Such a development appealed to most voters, including one suspects a majority of Conservative voters who are no less inclined than the rest of their countrymen to feel that over-mighty institutions, which category includes governments with massive majorities in the other place, need to be humbled from time to time.
Now all that great good will towards this House seems to have evaporated almost overnight. Of course, popularity should never be an end in itself, and there is a case for saying that it is just as well that the honeymoon period of excessive popularity is over. It was never realistic to suppose that one can or should please all of the people all of the time; but the pendulum has swung alarmingly far in the other direction, thereby challenging the moral legitimacy of the House. Why should that be? The catalyst of course was the evening of what we conveniently term the great poll tax Division.
The following day, The Times suggested that no fewer than 60 backwoodsmen turned up to swell the government Lobby. Rather more charitably, I should have put the total of, let us say, infrequent attenders at 49; other noble Lords may have arrived at different totals, but whether the figure be 60, 49 or some other number of that magnitude, it still seemed to many people to be excessive. The tragedy is that it was not even necessary. The Government could have won handsomely without scouring the shires to such an extent.
To turn up once in a blue moon to vote on an important issue which is not strictly party political (for example the death penalty) might just be justifiable—I remain open-minded on that point—but to do so on a strictly party political issue on which one is most unlikely to have heard the arguments in any detail, if at all, is quite another
736
matter. One senses that most members of the public, irrespective of party, are shocked at this state of affairs and do not approve at all. I must say that I considered many, if not all, of the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, to be well founded.
I suggest that one possible step in the right direction would be to tighten up the leave of absence rules. Finally, I wish to point out that the emotions of those of us on these Benches, however few or many we may be, who happen to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, are most certainly not:
"sired by frustration out of anger",
as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, suggested.
7.40 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, this debate could quite easily have devolved into farce as the Denham dilemma, or Bertie's backwoodsmen. But I am glad in a way that it has been much more serious than that. There is the funny side of course because we are a complete anachronism. We in this country call ourselves a democracy and yet we are ruled by a parliament that is so undemocratically constituted as to be a laughing stock to the rest of the world. It is only the good manners of the rest of the world which prevents it from laughing at us all the time. Unfortunately, some of our actions are changing that and I suspect we are becoming a bit of a laughing stock.
It is quite interesting that just about the only aspect of this Chamber's operations that is democratic is the way we relate one to another. We are considered equal, we have equal speaking rights and we have equal voting rights among each other. That I think is a great credit to us. The problem, and the question that we are really discussing tonight, is raised by the whole hypocrisy of our very existence. We are not debating the way we conduct our business, but what we do in relation to the governing of the country, what relationship we hold to the other Chamber and what relationship we have to our monarch.
Some people espouse the idea that the House of Lords is a backstop against an all powerful House of Commons. Others espouse the belief that we are a repository of specialist knowledge and wisdom and that our object in life is as a revising Chamber, giving the impression of going through Bills line by line, correcting the grammar and the spelling and making sure that everything is correct. But in practice we are a very political Chamber. That is something that the public at large does not appreciate. Many people involved in this House, who only attend occasionally, do not appreciate how political we are. We are divided on party lines—dare I say it?—in the old county tradition where there is always a good number of independents on the county councils. But those of us on the Labour Benches always knew and recognised those independents as unofficial Conservatives. The way they voted, virtually on a 100 per cent. basis, demonstrated that to us.
I express the following idea rather differently from the way other noble Lords have expressed it. I believe there are approximately 1,300 people eligible to sit in this House. Out of that number, approximately 120

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are Labour Party members. Therefore, the Labour Party, Her Majesty's official Opposition in the House of Lords, constitutes one-tenth of the membership. On that basis there is an overwhelming Conservative majority.
The interesting thing is—dare I say it?—how inadequately the noble Lord, Lord Denham, performed up until shortly after the election in 1987. He seemed to be able to lose vote after vote. But when we realise the implications of that, we see that there were two implications. First, it created an illusion of the odd nine-day wonder that the Conservative Government were being defeated. Secondly, it created an illusion that the House of Lords was a good place.
But, in practice, the Bills put forward by the Conservative Government were only changed in the margins. The Bill to abolish the metropolitan counties and the GLC went through with, admittedly, some minor amendments; but the reality is that we no longer have a GLC, and we no longer have the metropolitan counties. The destruction occurred of that whole tier of democracy. Here we can see the flaw in the Conservative myth that the House of Lords is a backstop against an all powerful House of Commons.
We are a political Chamber and we are an anachronism. So, what is the practical use of the House of Lords? I suggest that it has one practical use and that is as a retirement home for senior members of the establishment, whether Members of another place who have retired or retired people from the City or retired people who have occupied senior positions in the trade union movement. It is a happy resting place for them and it keeps them out of mischief. It gives them somewhere to come, have a drink, chat with their friends and, if they feel like it, think that they are doing something useful. That is quite a useful thing to have; but that I think is the only useful function of the House of Lords.
We then come to considering how we might change the form of government in this country, because that is what we are talking about. I suggest that there is not the popular will to have what effectively would be a revolution to get rid of the House of Lords and the monarchy and just have the House of Commons as the government. I do not think at this stage that there is the popular will for that to come about. But we have over the years evolved a constitutional monarchy whereby the monarch takes advice from Parliament and, so far as I am aware, never disagrees with that advice. A monarch has the capacity in theory to refuse to sign a Bill; but in practice he always accepts that advice.
In practice, I believe the best way of dealing with the problem of the House of Lords is to turn it into a constitutional Chamber. The way to do that would be for all Bills to start in the House of Lords, in order to benefit from the undoubted wisdom of the assembled company. There are some tremendously powerful individuals in this Chamber with tremendous abilities to offer in terms of giving advice. Bills would be considered here first. Having been deliberated
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upon, in another place, they would then go on to the House of Commons. Thereafter we would have nothing more to do or say about them. The constitutional niceties could be observed and the Bills could come back for consideration of Commons amendments, for example.
But there would be no more amendments to the Bills after the House of Commons had effectively done with them. In that way we could retain our say and we could observe the constitutional niceties, but we could also demonstrate to the world and the people of Britain that we in this country are a democracy, because at the end of the day the elected representatives of the people would have had the final say. I have probably spoken for too long, especially as it is the second time that I have spoken today. I shall leave noble Lords with those remarks.
7.50 p.m.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, seemed to be most concerned with equal opportunities and fairness for all. I think I have a possible solution to his concerns which would obviate the necessity of trying to implement some of the ideas underlying the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. Far from restricting Members of this noble House from attending, why not consider creating a whole lot more hereditary Peerages, only this time they might be entailed general as opposed to entailed male. I am sure that would meet with the approval of my noble friend Lady Platt.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, will not think that I am saying to him personally that he is thoughtless, inconsiderate or presumptuous, but I would say that the proposal behind the Question is to an extent a mixture of all three. First, it is thoughtless because it has not been thought out in terms of what the knock-on effect will be. Various noble Lords have already pointed that out.
There is another area which has not been pointed out. At the moment we have the right to attend and to vote in this House and therefore we do not have the right to vote at a general election. If any Members of your Lordships' House were to find that their right to vote was removed they would have to have the right to vote in a general election. If that were to happen and certain noble Lords were barred from voting for a particular length of time or in particular Sessions, can one imagine the machinations which would have to go on in the offices of the registrar to decide who would be able to vote, when and where?
The proposal is inconsiderate. It is inconsiderate to many noble Lords who do not appear to attend your Lordships' House regularly to describe them as having no interest. I think that that is somewhat unfair and slightly offensive. We have already been given two very good examples—the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice and my noble friend Lady Platt. There are many other noble Lords who carry out an enormous amount of work and business which precludes them from attending. Because they are loyal to the party to which they belong, be it Conservative, Liberal, SDP or Labour, they will make tremendous efforts to come when asked to do so on matters of great importance. I think

739
therefore that it is inconsiderate to suggest that those who are prepared to make such efforts should find their services, however apparently scant, rewarded in such a way.
It is also presumptuous. It is presumptuous because it is assumed, certainly I think by the noble Lord who tabled the Question and perhaps by many of his noble friends, that Conservative Peers will automatically support their party if Whipped in. No chief Whip could ever automatically assume that that would be the case. Indeed, I know that the other day my noble friend the Chief Whip welcomed one of his noble friends whom he had not seen for some time and thanked him most profusely for coming so far to help the Government's cause. To his utter horror and chagrin he found him walking through the Opposition Lobby. One can never take anything in this life for granted.
The reason for the concern of noble Lords opposite which has given rise to the Question springs from the feeling that they cannot command a majority against the Conservative Party because they know that unfortunately a large number of hereditary Peers happen to support the Conservative Party. One has to ask oneself why that should be so. Gilbert said:
"That every boy and every gal,
That's born into the world alive,
Is either a little Liberal,
Or else a little Conservative!"
Indeed, yes; one might be born a hereditary Peer but one is not born a herditary Labour Party supporter, Conservative Party supporter or Liberal Party supporter, or what you will. People change their affiliations.
Why do they change their affiliations? They do so because they like and are attracted by the policies of the party to which they wish to belong and what that party stands for. If over the years since the war the policies of the parties of noble Lords opposite have not been such as to attract the many backwoodsmen who appear to take no interest in politics, one has to say to noble Lords opposite: why not think about the things which you are expounding and stand for? Perhaps if one were a little more radical and not so determined in other ways one would have better support. If that were done, the balance of voting strength which has been referred to might be better than it is at present. Surely it is better to achieve that by natural causes rather than by these proposed artificial means.
7.56 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, will I think understand that I share the frustration which has led him to bring this Question forward. In the time since I have been a Member of this House I have I believe voted in the government Lobby once. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, may forgive me if I remind him that that was on the Firearms Bill. I fancy that he was in the same Lobby.
I have been in this House and in the anti-government Lobby on all the days in the past year when the backwoodsmen have been present. On 8th November last I heard that the noble Lord, Lord Denham, was asked how many times I had voted
740
against him that day. The noble Lord said, "He only voted against me twice because I only gave him the chance to do it twice. He would have voted against me 17 times if he had had the chance". I think that the noble Lord understands me very well. It is in that spirit that I make my remarks about the Question.
I share the frustration. If we have won the argument, if we have won the support of the public outside, as on all three of those occasions we had, it is extremely frustrating to find that we are defeated by the ability of the noble Lord, Lord Denham, to call spirits from the vasty deep. However, though the noble Lord has uncovered a major cause of concern, like my noble friend Lord McNair I am not convinced that he has found the correct remedy.
My concerns about the proposal are connected with liberty. Liberty has something to do with rights, a patchwork collection of rights, here and there and wherever you do not expect to find them. The more those rights cause inconvenience, the more those rights are a guarantee of liberty. The right to attend this House is among them.
I shall touch only briefly on the perfectly practical point that this proposal would deprive us of the services of those noble Lords who hold the perfectly proper view that they should not attend and vote unless they know something about what is being debated. If, for example, on the Education Bill my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, had been told that as a living, working, vice-chancellor he was not entitled to vote on the position of vice-chancellors, I think that the House would have been the poorer. After the division on the Local Government Finance Bill the Guardian published a list of those Peers who had voted in that division but who had not voted in 10 divisions during the past year. I looked at that list carefully. It intrigued me to see included the name of the noble Lord, Lord Barber, whom we heard recently in the debate on the humble Address. Whatever anybody may say about the noble Lord, Lord Barber, he is not a man without political experience. In debating the actions of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer it would, I think, be a great mistake and a great derogation from the rights of the House if we were to deprive ourselves of the services of the last Chancellor to make the same mistake.
There are also those noble Lords, junior Members of this House, who have full-time employment in other places. I hope that the House can benefit from their presence. I must confess that I was quite taken aback to hear the proposal by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for a 33 per cent. attendance record. I came to the House believing that I was coming here to defend the rights of others. I am somewhat startled to find that I am defending my own rights, and much relieved that I had decided to take a disinterested stance before I was aware that I was in any way threatened. However, I must confess that as a servant of this House I take amiss a proposal which would deprive me of the right to remain one.
I think that it is also worth considering the relationship of Members of this House to each other. In 1621 an incident took place in this House which I think some noble Lords will understand a lot faster

741
than many of my professional colleagues. An enormous row took place between Lord Spencer and the Earl of Arundel. The House, with a delightful right and left, decided to reprove Lord Spencer for calling the Earl of Arundel "a great Lord". It said: there are no great Lords among us; the greatest Lord that is lays down his greatness at the door. My Lords, I think that that was a good principle.
If there are no great Lords then there are no little Lords. Still less should there be any lesser Lords without the vote. The principle that all Lords count equally is, I think, important. I do not want to be a party to a proposal to make some Lords less equal than others.
I ask noble Lords to forgive me if I speak personally for a moment. Coming to this House as a new Member and facing the full weight of an extremely determined government, I was delighted to find that the House in fact practises what it preaches in this regard; namely, that all Lords when they get up to speak rise equal and whether they sit down equal is up to them. I have taken so very much pleasure enjoying that equality that I cannot be a party to depriving fellow Peers of it. I am not happy about that proposal.
I believe that it is also worth remembering that the power to restrict membership of the legislature is potentially a very dangerous threat to liberty. It is something that kings in time gone past have tried very hard indeed to do. The last one to try was King Charles I and the last time he tried to do it was in 1640 against Viscount Mandeville. Three days before the House met, the spiritual ancestors of Mr. Bernard Ingham were drumming out the message that Mandeville would obtain no writ. When the House met he had his writ and he was there. I do not know why it happened. I know that in the procession at the State Opening he presented the Lord Admiral with "Five pounds of Bermoody orangs".
In the 1960s the ci-devant Viscount Stansgate rashly tried to retell that story. He attempted to argue that the granting of the Writ of Summons was discretionary and that the Crown had the right to withhold it. I am delighted that he was overruled. If we reintroduce a discretion to withhold a Writ of Summons, we are threatening a vital freedom of this House. This House has always resisted attempts to tamper with its membership. Indeed, it is a matter of pride for me to know that all through the Civil War it resisted the most savage pressure from another place to deprive its Roman Catholic Members of the right to attend.
I have said that this is a genuine problem. It is an old problem. It is not the first time that Members of this House have felt aggrieved by the power of the Crown to achieve a massive attendance in this Chamber. I remember the remark which was made by Professor Haley about the exclusion debate in this House in 1680: what delighted the courtiers about Halifax's speech was not having the better of the vote—they were used to that; what was new to them was having the better of the argument. I think that some noble Lords will recognise that voice.
But where there is an old problem there is also an old remedy. My advice to the noble Lord, Lord
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Stoddart of Swindon, is traditional advice: he should get himself and his honourable and right honourable friends into a position from which they can advise Her Majesty on the exercise of her prerogative. I choose my words carefully here. It is an area in which Her Majesty normally chooses to take the advice of Her Ministers. On three occasions the Crown has decided that it needed to correct the balance of power in this House. On only one occasion has the Crown had to carry out that decision. If there is an overwhelming imbalance of forces in this House, the Crown if so advised by Ministers has the right to correct it. That is the target at which the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, should be aiming.
Meanwhile, I believe that the rights of Members of this House should only be taken away if considered as part of a general parliamentary reform Bill which should apply to both Chambers of Parliament. I cannot support any reform of Parliament that is confined to one House. The noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, said just now—I believe it was the phrase he used—"the people or at least their elected representatives". The noble Lord has to accept that those are two very different things. In all the recent areas of dispute, the overwhelming support of the people has been on the side of this House. In the matter of eye tests 87 per cent. were on the side of this House.
If we have a situation where the people are better represented in this Chamber than they are in the elected Chamber, I think that we have a case not for a procedural reform but for a great reform Bill.
8.8 p.m.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, I very much enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and agreed with his logic to a great extent. Unfortunately democracy is not logical. In a general election the village simpleton casts his vote, as does a great captain of industry who employs 10,000 people and brings great wealth into the country. The captain of industry and the village simpleton have the same power to choose their final arbiter—if that is the right word to use. That is not logical.
As I said, I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, which I think was a very good one, but with due respect to him I must say that with whatever logic one may argue one is beaten in the end because democracy is not subject to logic. True enough, the ancient Greeks who started the system were renowned for logic but of course their system is not possible here today because they had a parliament of the elite. The people in it were great scholars and had great experience. However, I shall not go into that.
With the Chief Whip sitting on the Bench below me I have to be very tactful. I agree that i1 is annoying for the Opposition if we have an overflow of Peers on a great occasion—although I would riot call the £10 charge for spectacles a great occasion. However, they are not all Conservative voters or supporters. Members on the Cross-Benches do not necessarily vote Labour; in fact very few of them do so, and one has to include them in the number. One cannot therefore always blame the Tory voters for a defeat.

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I wrote a book on this subject some time ago. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was kind enough to write the introduction. In it I set out various schemes. However, it sold out very quickly and has not been reprinted.
The noble Lord on the Cross-Benches made a very good speech. He pointed out that it would be terrible to destroy the tremendous expertise in the House. Some people say, "They can come and speak, but not vote". But I do not think that that would be satisfactory to many of them.
I have been attending the House since 1956. I have one criticism, although it may not be a good one. When I first came to the House, if one were a BackBencher and read a speech one was called to order. With due respect, I find today that many BackBenchers now read speeches. We do not wish to become like America—I am sure that most noble Lords have been to America. You will know that in the House of Representatives and the Senate one can have one's speech typed out by somebody—one has not even written it—and one hands it in to the equivalent of Hansard and it is printed as if one has been present. One does not even have to attend the Chamber.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, what has this to do with the subject?
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, it has a great deal to do with it.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, may we have the benefit of that exchange?
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, I wish to say that if one messes about with this House too much one will destroy a House of great value. I understand that my noble friend Lord Carrington has written a book in which he suggests that this House should be an elected body. If that were so, one would have only a mirror of the Commons. I can see very little point in that.
I shall cease now. However, I agree with the logic of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. It is good. But I do not see how he can put it into practice because democracy is so illogical.
8.14 p.m.
Viscount Ingleby: My Lords, I should like to ask the Government one question. Was it an honour to the House when the police at Peers Entrance had to challenge a number of Members on a day not so long ago, and when some of those Members had to ask where the cloakrooms were? I met a friend of mine; I was delighted to see him. He is a Member of this House but I see him only on rare occasions because he comes only when he receives a certain communication from the Chief Whip.
I should like to ask whether it is right that some of those Peers should be able to go into the Division Lobby and carry the vote for the Government. Does this not provide ammunition for those who would like to abolish this House? I would be very sorry indeed to see that. If the people of this country see that when it comes to the crunch on an important
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matter the Conservatives will always win, this will only strengthen the argument for abolition. If this House is to retain its credibility—as I very much hope that it will—it must surely occasionally be able to defeat the Government on an important point.
However, on the matter of bringing the House into disrepute, could this not be avoided without any change in the rules if the Whips of all parties were to exercise self-restraint—
Lord Elwyn-Jones: There is not a hope of that.
Viscount Ingleby:—and not to send three-line Whips to those who do not attend this House? If this agreement could be reached and honoured—I hear some doubts expressed on the other side—would this not be a much better way of achieving the aims which the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and many others would like to see?
8.16 p.m.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, perhaps I may first thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for putting down this Unstarred Question. He admitted when he opened his remarks that he had put it down in a feeling of anger and I think that feeling of anger and concern was very widespread after the vast votes which we had earlier in the year, in particular on the poll tax. The question of the reputation of the House is a matter of concern to all noble Lords. I think that the reputation of the House suffered as a result of these particular occasions.
The noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, said that he too was concerned about the reputation of the House. I therefore hope that he will join with me on that point. I have been a Member of this House for 12 years, since 1979. The noble Lord who is to reply to the debate this evening, the Government Chief Whip, has of course been Chief Whip since 1979. During the time he has been Chief Whip I would say that the reputation of the House has been enhanced. The House has enjoyed more public esteem. This may in part have been because of the televising of the House. It may in part have been the fact that this House showed that it could on occasion defeat the Government. However, this enhanced reputation has suffered on every occasion when he has decided to over-exert himself and bring in vast numbers of backwoodsmen.
It so happens that I received a copy of a letter written to the Government Chief Whip today which was sent by a citizen of Nottingham and I think it puts this very well. He says:
"For many years I have been a staunch supporter of the House of Lords in the belief that it was a moderating chamber for the discussion and revising of the Government of the Day's more sensitive proposals for legislation.
I have to say that my belief in the impartiality of the House of Lords has been shattered by the tactics employed by you as the Government Chief Whip when there is a strong possibility of defeat for the said Government on an unpopular or major issue.
By this I mean your inviting to the House a large number of peers, who do not normally attend the Lords, to cast their votes to crush any rebellion. This has taken place at least three times in the last couple of years.
I sincerely believe that these tactics are destroying the credibility of the House of Lords … I propose in future to vote for any candidate whose policy includes the abolition of the House of Lords".

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In fact the noble Lord the Government Chief Whip is not achieving what he hoped to achieve by these tactics with this citizen. It looks from the tone of his letter as though he previously voted Conservative.
It is interesting to note that among the many statistics available to Chief Whips we have a list of the Divisions in the House of Lords of over 300 votes between 1831 and the present day. During that period there have been 44 such Divisions. During the period before the noble Lord became Chief Whip there were 20 such Divisions over a period of 140 years, so roughly we had one really big vote once every seven years on matters such as the Common Market Motion on the Government of Ireland Bill, the Prayer Book Motion and other such matters. Since the noble Lord has been Chief Whip these really big votes have taken place three or four times a year. We have had vast and heavy turnouts—I am talking now only of votes over 300, but the higher votes too are very much included in these figures—only since the noble Lord has become Chief Whip. Obviously there is some connection between the two matters.
But the noble Lord should not be all that worried and think that he has so many detractors because he knows that last week the Observer newspaper named him as the Peer's Peer. Earlier on 23rd November the Spectator nominated the noble Lord as the Whip of the Year. I should like to congratulate him on that. Indeed he is the first noble Lord to have been given a Spectator award. The citation says:
"Lacking the disciplinary sanctions of House of Commons he has to use the more aristocratic arts of charm and gentle persuasion to coax scores of dozing Lord Emsworths from their country seats. In this he has succeeded, and without any sacrifice of the good humour of the Upper House".
Those of us who attended the occasion when those awards were presented by the noble Lord, Lord Whitelaw, were most amused to hear him say that he remembered the occasions when the noble Lord the Chief Whip would come to him and say, "I think it is about time that we had a government defeat".
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether the turning on of the screws so frequently is an abuse of the anomalies with which this House lives. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that the reputation of the House has suffered as a result. We have a working House, the composition of which was laid down by the Procedure Committee Report, in which the noble Lord the Leader of the House partook last year, which defined a working Peer as one who had attended one-third of the meetings of the House. There is a feeling that when we are taking many of the decisions and votes it is mainly the people who have been involved who should be participating in the votes. To bring in many additional Peers on certain occasions does not help the working of the House.
As has already been said, no Peer can be deprived of his right to vote without legislation. I have a feeling that that would be difficult to achieve, but restraint would be easier to achieve. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, and the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter—if he were present in his place, he would no doubt be bouncing up and down on this Question as well—are always keen on
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the problem of composition and whether the Labour Party wants to abolish the House of Lords. The truth is that the abolition of the House of Lords has been in and out of the Labour Party manifesto all this century. It was not in last time, but it was in the time before. What can be clearly stated is that the Labour Party is against a second Chamber composed as this Chamber is at present. For there to be any change in the nature of the second Chamber is a matter which would have to have all-party agreement and nothing would be likely to proceed in that area without such agreement.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I am grateful to the Opposition Chief Whip for giving way and I shall be very brief. No, the policy of the Labour Party is abolition, not reform. Those are the words used in its manifestos.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: No, the noble Lord is not right, my Lords. It is abolition in its present form, which means reform. The House of Lords is, as has been said on many occasions this evening, a revising Chamber. We respect the will of the elected House. We do not seek to challenge it at Second Reading—a dictum which was laid down in this House many years ago. We retain the right to put proposals to the other place for amending legislation. It is our considered view when we put those proposls as to what should be done.
I see no reason for the Government to be unduly upset if we do this from time to time against their wishes. We know that the Government Chief Whip feels that it is healthy for the House of Lords to do that from time to time, but obviously not too often. We would hope—indeed I go further—we feel that when the House's views are expressed after considered debate by noble Lords they should command a fair wind when they go down to the other House. A fair proportion of those views should be accepted. Unless that situation persists and unless our proposals are given a fair wind when they go to the other place, noble Lords will feel that they are wasting their time—that is, if no amendments that we propose to a Bill are accepted down the other end. That would not be healthy for Parliament.
My noble friend Lord Stoddart is seeking a solution to a problem which has concerned many of us. Many noble Lords have raised points of detail concerning his ideas. I do not believe that it is appropriate to discuss points of detail this evening because if it were decided to proceed any further on the principle, those are matters which would be discussed at a later stage. I know that my noble friend has no right of reply, but the 1968 White Paper suggested a 33 per cent. threshold, but there is nothing sacrosanct in that figure. Interestingly enough it is the same figure as the Committee on Procedure used to define who was or who was not a working Peer.
There is another interesting aspect which occurred before my time, but not perhaps before the time of the noble Lord, Lord Denham, or the Leader. Originally when attendance allowances were introduced into this House this was an assiduity rule, which meant that no Peer could claim attendance allowance unless

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he had attended on a certain number of occasions—
Lord Denham: A travel allowance, my Lords.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: Travel expenses—unless he had attended on a certain number of occasions. This was found to be quite unworkable at the end of the day because it cut out some of the people whom the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, had in mind. It is possible that when one considered those proposals again such problems would arise. My noble friend has put his Question today. It merits consideration and we await with interest what the noble Lord the Government Chief Whip has to say.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, the answer to the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, is no. In the first place the noble Lord's suggestion is impractical, as he told the House most fairly when he introduced the Question.
Under the terms of the Letters Patent granting a Peerage your Lordships are entitled to a "seat, place and voice"—and "voice" means a vote in this context—in all Parliaments, as well as
"all the rights, privileges, pre-eminences, immunities and advantages",
heretofore used and enjoyed or, at present, used and enjoyed. Furthermore, since the early 17th century it has been held that the issue of a writ of summons to Parliament—so that these rights can be exercised—
"to treat and give your counsel"
is inherent in the Peerage and cannot be denied to your Lordships.
Your Lordships' House would not therefore be competent, merely through amendment of standing orders, to impose any curtailment of these rights. It would entail primary legislation, a Bill to reform your Lordships' House in fact, and I doubt whether any administration in the near future would be likely to grasp that particular thistle again.
In the second place it is undesirable—not least in that it would not achieve what the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, would like it to do. I have done a little research into the voting figures in the Division on the amendment of my noble friend Lord Cullen of Ashbourne to the Health and Medicines Bill—which I think lay behind the noble Lord's Question. If all Peers who attended less than 10 times during the 1986–87 Session, the last Session for which figures are available, had been eliminated from the voting on that occasion, Her Majesty's Government would still have won the Division. I have all confidence that the same situation would have applied to the previous Division to which the noble Lord objected and which prompted his Question.
But the result of such a proposal would indeed be unfortunate. It would have the effect of keeping away those Peers who live or work away from Westminster, sometimes in remote areas, who add so much to this House by bringing to it an up-to-date working knowledge of their occupations or the parts
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of the country from which they come. That would have included my noble friend Lady Platt of Writtle.
It would also cut out four out of the seven right reverend Prelates who voted on that occasion. Had the criterion been only a slightly higher number of attendances, all seven would have fallen. The loss of the Bench of Bishops would deprive the House of wise advice and spiritual guidance, to say nothing of individual personal friendships, but I really could not see it affecting the voting figures in the government Division Lobby to a significant extent. It would totally exclude new Peers who had not had time to build up an attendance record at all.
Several noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, have suggested that if you deprive a Peer of his vote you need not necessarily deprive him of his right to make a speech. I do not believe that that would work because it is totally illogical. A noble Lord has only one vote but by making a speech he can influence any number of peers. On occasions my noble friends sitting behind me have spoken against a government Bill and then said that they will not vote against it. My invariable reply is that I would much rather they voted against the Bill because they have only one vote, but if they speak against it they can influence any number of Peers.
I have been at some pains in the past to disperse the myth of "the built-in Conservative majority" in your Lordships' House. But as it has been raised again today, I should like to do so once more. Her Majesty's Government do not have an overall majority in your Lordships' House—whether we consider total party membership or what has been described as "the working House". At my last count, this morning, there were 426 peers in receipt of the Conservative Whip as against a total of 456 who either belong to other parties or who take no Whip at all. On those figures the Conservative vote is 48.3 per cent.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords—
Lord Denham: I did not interrupt the noble Lord and I hope that he will not interrupt me.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, the noble Lord knows that if he makes such a remark I must interrupt him as always. He is counting all the Independent Peers as being against him, and that is patently not so.
Lord Denham: My Lords, it is a question of having an overall majority. Many of the Independent Peers vote against the Government and on occasions every one of them does so. They have every right so to do, but the Conservative figures are as I have given them. It would be impertinent of me, and although I would not use the same word as the noble Lord opposite, it would be unwise of him, to suggest that any Independent Peer will vote in any particular way at any particular time. As your Lordships are aware, these paper figures tend to be pure science fiction because that number of Peers never attends, or a large proportion do not. However you calculate what constitutes "the working House", the results are much the same. For example, if you take those Peers

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who attended one-third of the sittings or more in 1985–86, the position of the Government is even weaker. There were 168 on the Conservative Benches as against 212 elsewhere. That brings down the figure to 44·2 per cent.
There is another myth current about your Lordships' House which maintains that the Conservative Chief Whip has an inexhaustible supply of backwoodsmen at his disposal who have never attended before but whom he can summon at will. Sometimes I wish that it were so, but perhaps I can have a go at that one too. The truth is that while some of your Lordships are able to attend regularly, there are others whose business commitments and geogaphical locations prevent them from coming here more often than once a fortnight, once a month or even a very few times a year. It is only when I send out a very strong Whip, which is usually once or at most twice a year, that a large number of them are inclined to come on the same day and so be particularly noticed. It has always been my belief that some of these rare attenders, and they exist in other parties too as well as on the Cross Benches, are present on almost every sitting day, whipped or unwhipped, but nobody notices them then.
In order to find out whether that was the case, I carried out another exercise taking Tuesday of last week as a sample, the final day of the debate on the humble Address. There was no Division expected and therefore no Whip in force. But there were present in the House on that day 41 Peers who attended less than one-third of the sittings in 1986–87, 13 more who attended less than 10 and four more who attended no sittings at all. I have not counted some 15 Peers present who had not taken their seats since the 1986–87 figures were compiled.
Attendance is a difficult issue. During the course of the debate several noble Lords have asked exactly what "attendance" means. If a Peer attends for nine consecutive sitting days and sits for half an hour per day—in other words, during Question Time—and then leaves, has he done his duty better than a Peer who attends for one day and sits through a nine-hour debate? Which is the better attendance? On the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, I have no doubt that the 30 minute-a-day Peer would get away with it whereas the nine-hour debate Peer would not.
I have not gone into various problems of detail—many of them mechanical difficulties which the noble Lord has not really faced up to. Would there be an appeals procedure, for instance? How would the threshold of attendance be established? Would it try to ensure that the Government never win a vote? I cannot think that the noble Lord's party would approve of that. Or would it try instead to mirror the voting pattern of another place? I do not think it would care very much for that either, remembering that my right honourable and honourable friends have an overall majority of 102.
But I really cannot help wondering whether the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, has not missed the point of what this House is all about .Your Lordships' House is not in the business of setting itself up as a rival to another place over matters of
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major party political principle, strangely though noble Lords opposite now seem to wish that it were. It is a revising Chamber and for this it is uniquely fitted for the very reasons that the noble Lord complains about. It is indeed the disparity of numbers between the parties that makes playing the party political game to a certain extent irrelevant and enables the House to look at minor but nonetheless important points of legislation from a non-party or cross-party standpoint. And it is, as l have said, the rare attenders themselves who can provide professional expertise on every subject that is discussed. A Conservative Government is defeated between 15 and 20 times each parliamentary Session but very many times that number of amendments are won by argument on the Floor of the House.
As the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, suggested—I agree with him on this—it is good that if your Lordships on a revising point ask another place to sit again, they should accept those amendments as often as possible. I believe that to be the value of your Lordships' House. It is not, if I may say so, the business of this House to amend Clause 1 of a government Bill so drastically that further discussion would become impossible. That would have been the effect if the Committee stage amendment to the Local Government Bill, which sought to delete the flat-rate community charge, had been agreed to, and would have wrecked the Bill quite as effectively as if we had rejected it at Second Reading. I must tell the noble Viscount, Lord Ingleby, that on such a Division I should not have wished to win by a single vote less than I did.
Nor is it the business of your Lordships' House to insist on Lords amendments over matters that are properly subject to Commons financial privilege, as by a procedural quirk it became possible to do over sight testing charges on the Health and Medicines Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, may shake his head as much as he likes. That was a matter of Commons privilege, and if my honourable and right honourable friends in another place had not honoured a concession which they had promised, the second amendment would have come back to your Lordships with the privilege reason given and your Lordships would not have voted against it. It is slightly anomalous that where a concession has been given this House has the ability to vote again, but where no concession is given the House has to accept it.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, I apologise for interrupting because I know that the Chief Whip does not like it. I have followed his speech with almost complete sympathy. However, the fact is that at the time it came back to us it was new matter and therefore, by all logic, precedent and practice we had the right to discuss it and vote on it.
Lord Denham: My Lords, we had a de facto right to discuss it, which is why the vote was able to take place. However, that was a matter of Commons privilege and there is no shadow of doubt that had that concession not been allowed another place would have rejected the Lords amendment and would have given the privilege reason. The Speaker in another place told the House that it was a matter of

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privilege. I am convinced that it was in the best interest of this House that in the event your Lordships decided to do neither of these things as regards the vote on the community charge or eyesight testing.
This House has every right, and indeed a duty, when it thinks fit to ask another place to think again. But what some of your Lordships may not realise is that if another place rejects a Lords amendment outright, your Lordships then insist on it and another place insists on its original disagreement, that is the end of the matter and the Bill falls. Another place can offer an amendment in lieu, which in practical terms means giving a concession of some sort, but it does not have the option of asking your Lordships to think yet again.
Your Lordships' House has gone to this length three times in the not too distant past, twice at the instigation of my noble friends when we were in Opposition and once at that of noble Lords opposite during the 1983–87 Parliament; and no doubt there will be times in the future that it will be right to do so again.
Just how often and in what circumstances this House should challenge another place is a matter for the nicest and most carefully balanced political judgment by the business managers of Her Majesty's Opposition. Perhaps I could be of help in this to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, and his noble friends, because I have distant memories of the time when we were in Opposition and this problem was very much in the minds of my noble friends and myself. I do not think that they could go far wrong if before taking such a decision they were to ask themselves the following question: "Is this the sort of action that we ourselves would tolerate the unelected Chamber taking when we are in government and, if not, can it be right for us, in Opposition, to ask your Lordships' House to take it now?"

London Local Authorities Bill [H.L.]
Read a first time, passed through all remaining stages pro forma, and sent to the Commons.
House adjourned at a quarter before nine o'clock.