Lords Sitting of 26 February 1988

Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Truro.

Benzodiazepines: Prescribing
Lord Blyth: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to discourage the long-term use of benzodiazepines.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the British National Formulary, which we send to all doctors, has for a number of years advised that benzodiazepines should be given only for short periods because of the danger of patients becoming dependent on the drug. The Committee on Review of Medicines published guidelines warning about dependency in 1980, and the Committee on Safety of Medicines reinforced this advice last month in a mailing to all doctors advising use of benzodiazepines for two to four weeks only and only for severe anxiety or insomnia.
Lord Blyth: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that comprehensive reply. Is he satisfied that the so-called next generation of tranquilisers —said to be non-addictive—will be non-addictive? Can he give the House the criterion on which they are said to be non-addictive?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the dangers of addiction are well recognised. But these drugs are not dangerous if they are prescribed responsibly in accordance with the advice I detailed in my orginal reply.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, in view of the increased abuse by, or addiction of, patients and the unnecessary charge on the resources of the National Health Service caused by the widespread practice of repeat prescriptions, are the Government and the Committee on Safety of Medicines prepared to give very clear advice to GPs that they should not give repeat prescriptions? Secondly, will the noble Earl congratulate MIND on its highly successful campaign against minor tranquiliser abuse including widespread establishment of support groups by local mental health associations for those seeking to be free of addiction?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, yes. We congratulate MIND on what it has done in this respect. We and the medical profession are anxious to control the level of repeat prescribing. Many doctors recognise the need for regular review of repeat prescriptions and operate their own control systems. The health departments already monitor instances of prescribing that seem to be excessive using information from the prescription pricing authorities. Discussions with the
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professions are taking place on how information about repeat prescribing can be improved. This will enable doctors to exercise a greater level of control.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, is it not a fact that conditions such as insomnia can be cured or at least curbed by a number of other drugs, some not available on prescription? Is the drug in question not one which should be discouraged in any case?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, that is somewhat wide of the Question. However, GPs will be free to prescribe if they think their patients will benefit from new drugs. They are obviously free also to prescribe "benzos"—which I understand is a colloquial use of the word. They must decide what is best for an individual patient. A brand new drug, buspar/buspirone, is not related to the benzos. It is too early to say whether or not widespread use will produce dependence.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, will the Government consider printing on the packet of drugs a cautionary note to the user?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, that is for the general practitioner to advise when he recommends the dosage that the patient should take.

DoE Consultative Document
11.10 a.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the status of the consultative document issued by the Department of Employment on restrictions on the employment of young people and the removal of sex discrimination in legislation, who has been consulted, and whether the House will have the opportunity of debating the results of that consultation.
The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, the consultative document to which the noble Baroness refers was sent to the Confederation of British Industry, the Trades Unions Congress, the Health and Safety Commission, the Equal Opportunities Commission and a number of other interested organisations inviting comments. Copies are available from the Department of Employment on request. Opportunity for debate is a matter for the usual channels.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Will he not agree that while a number of the Acts concerned with protective legislation are outdated and probably in need of revision, their total abandonment would be a very serious matter which would require the utmost public scrutiny, including scrutiny by your Lordships' House. Can he please say when further information, and a full report, will be available?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as the noble Baroness will agree, the Government are very much addicted to sweeping away useless regulations. However, I certainly accept that in this case we would wish to do so only after careful consultation, and careful consideration following that consultation. On the timing, the noble Baroness will be aware that we are under some constraints because of the requirement in one of the proposals that relates to the ILO Convention.

Education Acts: Consolidation
11.12 a.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they intend to start the process of consolidating the Education Acts, and how long they think that this process will take.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the process of consolidation is under discussion with the Law Commission but would not in any event begin until after the enactment of the Education Reform Bill currently before Parliament. The length of time taken to consolidate major legislation of this nature varies, and is difficult to predict until the Commission has looked at the task in more detail.
Baroness David: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Does the fact that implementation of the consolidation will occur only after the Education Reform Bill becomes an Act not mean that we shall have a succession of education Bills almost every year, one being brought forward before the last has been fully implemented? It will be interesting to know the answer to that question. What consultations will there be about consolidation when the process begins?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, it is too early to comment upon consultation. As regards any future legislation on education, I should like to point out to the noble Baroness that if the Government were to introduce major education legislation in the next session of Parliament it would naturally be taken into account in considering the timing of the consolidation. However, such matters would be discussed with the Law Commission before a decision was taken.
Lord Peston: My Lords, will the Minister ask his right honourable friend the Secretary of State whether it is possible for a document to be produced later in the year explaining and clarifying the law as it will then stand, bearing in mind the large number of lay people, notably parents, who will be involved in the education decision-making process as governors and in other ways and who will have great difficulty in understanding the complexity of the law as it applies to them?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I shall take into account the comments of the noble Lord.

Television: Violent Programmes
11.15 a.m.
Lord Gainford: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what measures are being taken, following the BBC's television programme on 15th February 1988 about violence, to give further warnings to viewers about violent programmes.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, responsibility for the content of programmes, and for possible warnings to viewers about the content of programmes, rests with the broadcasting authorities. However, the Government recognise the need for stronger and more effective oversight of standards relating to the portrayal of violence and sex on television. The Home Secretary has announced his intention to set up the Broadcasting Standards Council.
Lord Gainford: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Has he any information as to a definite link between the unfortunate crimes of violence about which we hear so much and violence on television?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the question of a link between television and behaviour has been the subject of extensive research, though the results can he read in different ways. The nature of any casual link, if it can be firmly established, may be complex. However, our broadcasting arrangements are based on the view that it would be wrong to ignore the possible dangers and the public concern about them. The broadcasting authorities readily acknowledge their responsibility for care in deciding what should be screened.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, will the noble Earl accept that the question of a link may be a matter of acute controversy, but that the question of the distastefulness of programmes of this kind to many people is not a matter of controversy and that there is a strong case for suitable warnings being given from that point of view?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I am aware of the public distaste such as the noble Lord has mentioned. I believe that he understands that there exists a longstanding principle that the Government do not intervene in programme matters which are properly the responsibility of the BBC or the IBA. The Home Secretary could not issue directions about the provision of suitable warnings without breaching that principle.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for the care that he has taken in answering these Questions. Is he aware that there have been occasions on which the Government have intervened, causing great public disquiet? In view of the general feeling about the programmes which have been described, can he say what will be the nature of the council to which he has referred and which his

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right honourable friend is setting up? When is it being set up? Will the right honourable gentleman appoint members to the council? Will it be a council for the whole of the United Kingdom? Will there be Scottish and Welsh councils? What will be its nature and powers?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, in answering the question posed by the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, I shall be as brief but as succinct as possible. As regards composition, the council will consist of a chairman and six members. The Home Secretary hopes to announce the appointment of a chairman in the near future. As regards the date, the council will be put on a statutory basis but it will be established initially in advance of legislation. I understand that good progress is being made on the administrative arrangements and we hope to make a further announcement about the BSC shortly.
As regards the council's remit, it will provide a focus for public concern about the portrayal of violence and sex on television, radio and video and it will selectively monitor relevant programme standards.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Earl on the way he has answered the three Questions. Is that to be a precedent?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the generosity of the noble and learned Lord. I am equally grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench for fielding the fourth Question.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, will my noble friend answer the question put by the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition as to the powers of the Council?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, it is as yet too early to know what will be the precise powers of the BSC.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, does the noble Earl recognise, as I am sure he does, the widespread concern about this matter in all parts of the House? Will he agree that there is also a great deal of public anxiety about the way in which sex and violence are dealt with by some tabloid newspapers? At a time when he is trying to persuade the BBC and the IBA about this matter, will it be possible for Ministers to discuss the subject with the proprietors of some national newspapers?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I repeat that I am well aware of the feelings not only in this House but outside it concerning the public distaste for many programmes which appear on radio and television. A debate was recently initiated in your Lordships' House about the possibility of setting some form of statutory control on the press but it was thought that, for the time being, that would be most unwise.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that it has been the common experience of those who complain to either the BBC or ITV
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about programmes which have violence and excessive sex in them that their complaints are usually brushed off and that the setting up of this independent council by the Home Secretary will he widely welcomed throughout the country, especially by parents when they see programmes which are unsuitable? Will my noble friend convey to the Home Secretary my warmest congratulations?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his generosity.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, when the powers of the council have been finalised by the Home Secretary and those advising him, will there be some opportunity for us to examine the important powers which this urgently-needed council will then possess?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, perhaps I may advise the noble Lord that the BSC will not be a regulatory body and will reinforce, not hijack, the responsibilities of the broadcasting authorities. However, it will be influential and will be able to consider and analyse complaints, initiate discussion and research and, where necessary, express and publicise views on individual programmes without waiting for its annual report.
Lord Ferrier: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware how welcome his replies are to a number of people and how wise my noble friend Lord Nugent was in saying exactly what we feel? Can the noble Earl say to what extent Scotland will be represented on the proposed committee?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I cannot give my noble friend an answer, but I shall write to him.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, can we seek to get beyond always speaking of violence and sex and sex and violence as though they belonged together, since violence is always a bad thing and sex is not always a bad thing?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, there are other matters of considerable distaste besides violence and sex.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, if my noble friend believes that there may be no link between what is broadcast on television and the way people behave, does he not also agree that those who advertise on television are wasting their money?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I believe my noble friend is rather wide of the Question.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, if I may refer to the supplementaries by my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition and the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, though I recognise that the Minister may not be able to give actual details of the powers given to this council, perhaps I may ask the noble Earl whether he recognises that there is much criticism about the inadequate powers of the Press Council and that something much stronger than that is required for this broadcasting council.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I believe that the question posed by the noble Lord is wide of the Question on the Order Paper.
Lord Annan: My Lords, with reference to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, about the unwillingness of the authorities, particularly of the BBC, to acknowledge shortcomings in the past, did he take note of a speech by the chairman of the governors of the BBC to the Institute of Directors in which he acknowledged the faults of the BBC in a way which has never been done before? Is the noble Earl aware that the chairman, Mr. Hussey, is taking account of the very strong feelings on this matter, and does he agree that that is an extremely good thing?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I believe that demonstrates the wisdom and independence of the chairman of the BBC.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, can the noble Earl tell us whether the remit of the new body will cover two grown men trying to bash each other's brains out, even though it is in a boxing ring?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I believe I have said quite enough about what we hope the BSC will do. I hope the noble Lord will understand my point.

Public Utility Transfers and Water Charges Bill
11.24 a.m.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Belstead): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
This is a Bill of only eight clauses and three schedules, but it makes provision for two of the most important industries in this country. Over the coming months, the water and electricity industries will be preparing themselves for major changes which lie ahead. The privatisation of both industries is a fundamental election commitment of this Government.
Our experience hitherto with privatisations is that they transform the attitudes of those within the industry. Privatisation not only makes an industry more responsive to commercial pressures, but also allows it to take advantage of commercial opportunities. It also fosters a greater awareness of the needs and wishes of customers. Taking industries out of the public sector means not only a welcome source of income to the Exchequer but also that they need no longer compete for public funding with our other major spending priorities. But perhaps most important of all, privatisation encourages the wider spread of share ownership so that individuals and in particular employees can take a genuine part in the running of that industry.
Those are the main reasons the Government are determined to press ahead with privatisation of water and electricity at the earliest opportunity. Clause 1 of this Bill will enable the water authorities and the electricity supply industry to co-operate with government as we take our proposals forward. It will also, in the case of water, enable us to make progress with the establishment of the National Rivers
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Authority, which we believe is an important policy initiative in its own right. Clauses 2 to 7 and the schedules are about charges made by water undertakers, and more particularly about metering. They will enable compulsory trials of metering, and will facilitate the introduction of metering more generally.
Clause 1 gives an express power to the relevant public utilities to act in relation to government proposals for the transfer of any of their property or functions to another body corporate. I should like to describe the significance of this power in relation to the water authorities.
In April 1985, a Question from my noble friend Lord Nugent was the occasion for a debate in this House on the discussion paper on the privatisation of the water authorities which the Government had produced at the start of that month. It was in February 1986, after responses to that discussion paper had been considered, that we published a White Paper setting out our intention to transfer the water authorities into private ownership. In May 1986, the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, initiated a debate on the water industry and on the privatisation proposals. Only a few weeks after that debate my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment announced that the Government were putting back the legislation for the privatisation of the water authorities so that we could extend the period for considering the complex issues involved.
In the manifesto, we reaffirmed our commitment to water privatisation. We said, however, that we would confine it to the utility functions of water supply, sewerage and sewage disposal. The non-utility functions of regulation and river management would not be privatised but transferred from the 10 water authorities to a single new national body, the National Rivers Authority. We provided more details of the NRA proposals in a consultative document last July, and a policy statement which was issued just before Christmas.
The utility functions of the water authorities represent on average some 90 per cent. of their expenditure, which now stands at about £2.5 billion on the revenue account, and about £1 billion on the capital account. So the water utility companies of the future will be very major businesses. Placing them in the private sector will open up to them a range of new opportunities. However, I stress that there will not be unfettered ability for them to raise their prices. Charges will be controlled, we intend, by a director general of water services whose task will be to ensure that customers are getting a fair deal. By contrast, in expenditure terms, the water authorities' regulatory and river management functions account for a far smaller part of their operations. But those functions are nevertheless absolutely vital.
In the months that followed publication of the 1986 White Paper we listened to the many voices which spoke up about our proposals. In particular, the Government were persuaded that it would not be right for a private company to have powers to regulate the activities of others in terms of what people can put into and what they can take out of rivers and other water sources. In that context, it has to be said that there have been increasing signs

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recently that the existing water authorities' structure is coming into question even within its public sector context. I am sure that your Lordships will know of the 1985 river quality survey which showed that the progressive improvement in the quality of river waters since the late 1950s had faltered somewhat and that there was a very small, but still worrying, number of instances of deterioration.
Although many factors can affect water quality at the institutional level we have increasingly been led to question whether responsibility for safeguarding river quality should be left in the hands of those who, by operating sewage treatment works, are responsible for the single, most significant polluting load which the river system has to bear. I do not say this in any way to denigrate the good work which water authorities have done, and continue to do, in cleaning up all forms of pollution. But the tension of their dual role under their present responsibilities is undoubtedly a difficulty.
Therefore, the Government have concluded that we should leave the regulatory functions in the hands of a public body to be called the National Rivers Authority. The authority must have an effective presence at regional level in the river-basins to take over the work of regulation. Its decisions will be, and will be seen to be, impartial, consistent within a national framework and based on a proper knowledge of local services.
Care for our rivers goes beyond regulation and also includes the activities of water resource control, flood defence, land drainage and fisheries. We have therefore decided that the N RA must be responsible for those functions as well. I must say that our proposals have been widely welcomed by those who have responded to our consultation and Clause 1 will enable us to take those proposals forward as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
The Bill also paves the way for the privatisation of the electricity supply industry by conferring in Clause 1 an express power on electricity boards and the Electricity Council to prepare for the restructuring which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy announced yesterday in another place—a Statement which was repeated in your Lordships House. I will therefore briefly say that the Government's intention is that privatisation should give customers and employees a better deal and a real stake in the electricity industry. We believe that although it has a good record, the industry will achieve even more once it is in the private sector and thus freed from government interference and made accountable to its customers and shareholders. The proposals announced yesterday are based on six principles which were set out in the White Paper and which I will not repeat today.
An essential element in the new structure of the industry, which was mentioned yesterday, will be the increased scope for competition, particularly in the generating side of the industry. It is to ensure that this will develop that the changes we are proposing to the Central Electricity Generating Board's role are necessary. We look to the industry's management and employees to assist in carrying out these changes; and we believe that this Bill will help them to play a constructive part in that process.
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That is the reason for Clause 1. I apologise for the rather lengthy explanation but I felt that this was the moment when I could run over the ground. The remainder of the Bill, Clauses 2 to 7 and Schedules 1 to 3, is mostly concerned with providing a special regime for compulsory water metering trials. These clauses and schedules also clarify and update the existing law on metering and water charging generally.
The possible extension of water metering to domestic consumers has been debated at length for years; but in 1985 a joint water industry and Department of the Environment study recommended that the Government and the water industry should begin to work on the presumption that an extension of water metering might be worthwhile from an economic point of view. This was because metering should reduce demand by improving the detection of leaks and cutting down on inessential use. In turn, this will lead to better planning and programming of future investment on expensive infrastructure. The study also suggested that water undertakers should carry out a number of controlled trials of compulsory metering and recommended a number of changes to legislation.
However, since the group reported we have introduced a Bill in the other place to abolish domestic rateable values in most parts of England and Wales. New domestic properties and conversions will no longer be assigned a rateable value after 1st April 1990, and new charging methods will have to be found for water services. In addition, the rateable values for existing properties—largely those stemming from the 1973 revaluation—will become increasingly out of date.
The Government therefore intend to amend the Local Government Finance Bill, which is in the other place, to prohibit the use of rateable values for water charging purposes as from 1st April 2000. This will give the water industry a period of 10 years in which to introduce suitable alternative means of charging for water services. Metering is the most obvious but not the only option. Other suggestions include those based upon household size, floor area or a flat rate charge—possibly with extra charges for, say, hosepipes and garden sprinklers.
It will be for each water authority and water company to evaluate each of these options and decide which method is most suitable for its area. The decisions will not be the Government's. But whatever method is chosen it will have to comply with the essential principles set out in Section 30 of the Water Act 1973, repeated in Clause 3 of this Bill; namely, that charges must have regard to costs and must not unduly discriminate against, or show any preference to, any classes of persons.
Last year the water industry announced the sites it would like to include in a nationwide co-ordinated programme of trials. Since then the industry has been consulting its customers, who are likely to be affected, about the implications of the proposals. The industry has done so, of course on a provisional basis. Although it is still early days and tariffs have yet to be agreed by the Secretary of State very few customers have objected to the principle of the trials. Indeed, some undertakers have received complaints

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from people who are disappointed that the area they live in has not been proposed for a trial.
Clause 2 of the Bill confers charging powers on statutory water companies similar to those of water authorities under Section 30 of the Water Act 1973. The power will be additional to, rather than as a replacement for, their existing charging powers which are mostly in local Acts. The whole point of Clause 2 is that it will make it easier for the statutory water companies to participate in the metering trials and to introduce alternative charging systems to replace domestic rateable values in the future.
Clause 3 re-enacts the provisions, which I have already mentioned, of Section 30 of the Water Act 1973 relating to having fair charges enshrined in statute. These concern having regard to the cost of providing services and not showing undue preference to, or discrimination against, any class of persons.
Clause 4 provides for a special regime for charges made in connection with the metering trials. The difficulty is that no matter how carefully a water undertaker may fix trial charges, those customers taking part or those who are excluded could claim that they are being discriminated against compared with other customers. Furthermore, it may not be possible for undertakers to ensure absolutely that the tariffs in certain areas, being experimental, reflect costs precisely.
So under Clause 4 the constraints of nondiscrimination and cost-relatedness are lifted from charges in the trial areas. Instead, each water authority or statutory company wishing to carry out a trial is to submit proposals to the Secretary of State. He is then required to take into account the interests of the customers taking part in the trial and various other matters, including consultations with customers. My right honourable friend will then wish to see that the proposed charges are as reasonable as possible in the circumstances.
Clause 5 and Schedule 1 contain detailed operational provisions dealing with regulations, the metering of new domestic supplies, powers of entry, meter installation costs, information about meter readings required by undertakers where water and sewage services are provided by different undertakers, and arbitration in cases of dispute. The remainder of the Bill is largely technical, dealing with consequential amendments, repeals and definitions.
There is one more matter. One of the most important metering provisions is to be found in paragraph 6 of Schedule 1. This makes it clear that when a water undertaker's customers are metered compulsorily, the water undertaker and not the customer will in normal circumstances be required to meet the cost of installing the meter and any associated equipment. Under paragraph 1 of Schedule 1, however, developers will be responsible for meeting the cost of metering new domestic supplies where this is required by undertakers.
There is no doubting that although this is a comparatively short Bill it contains important provisions which are designed to enable two of our key utility industries to prepare for privatisation and for the water industry to decide what alternative to
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ratable values they wish to use as the basis for charging customers in the longer-term future. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Belstead.)
11.42 a.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal for his introduction of the Bill and for taking us through it in his usual meticulous and clear manner. I apologise for my noble friend Lady Nicol, who I am afraid is indisposed today and is unable to take part in the debate. I know she would have liked to take part in it because she has strong views on these matters, particularly on water. As the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal said, she initiated a debate at rather a crucial time in the evolution of government policy.
As the noble Lord has said, this is a short Bill but an important one. I say straight away that we do not like it. We are opposed in principle to the privatisation of utilities. We believe that utilities should stay within the public sector. I understood the noble Lord to say that the question of principle has been decided by the electorate. I shall have something to say about that later. The Bill also deals with the arrangements that the Government propose. I shall comment upon them in, I hope, sufficient detail for the noble Lord to answer certain questions about what is going to happen.
Before I do that, I should like to say that there are certain consequential effects of privatisation to which the noble Lord did not refer when he introduced the Bill, and the initial provisions of it, with a eulogy for privatisation. There is a welfare problem. I do not have to go over the ground that your Lordships have already covered in the cases of British Telecom and British Gas. It is clear that when utilities are privatised the treatment of the consumer is not necessarily—if I may put it at it lowest —better than it was when the utilities were under public ownership. I remind your Lordships that in the days when local authorities collected water and sewerage charges disconnections never happened. The local authority paid the authority on behalf of defaulters and then took action against them as rate defaulters to obtain payment, with all the necessary welfare considerations that a local authority will bring to bear.
When the water authorities decided to go for direct billing not only was this a large extra expense but it introduced the curious phenomenon of waterless households. The numbers are now rising. In default of any assurance to the contrary we must assume that, if and when water authorities are privatised, the commercial imperatives which these companies will have to follow will lead to even greater numbers of waterless houses. The welfare argument is one which we cannot ignore.
There is a second consequential effect of privatisation in the economic argument. Privately-owned utilities will inevitably look for their supplies at the cheapest rate in the short term. They are not particularly interested in ensuring that other industries which may be their long-term suppliers have a healthy future. Perhaps I may explain by citing

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one example of what I mean. I take the case of the South of Scotland Electricity Board and British Coal. The South of Scotland Electricity Board uses 4 million tonnes of Scottish-mined coal per annum and there are agreements in operation until 1992 and 1995.
The SSEB has recently tendered for future supplies from other sources. Despite good and improving offers from British Coal there is a real possibility that it will be undercut by subsidised foreign coal. The loss of the SSEB contract will effectively close the Scottish coalfields which were themselves developed to meet the needs of the board. There would be a loss of 4,000 jobs simply because of that policy. Generally speaking, imported coal is subsidised and it is cheap. Once the home fields are put out of action they can never be recreated and they can never be reopened.
If the SSEB is privatised—which is the intention of the Government—in whatever scraps and bits and pieces the Government have in mind, it too will go for the short-run advantage in procuring its supplies and it will pay no regard to domestic industry in the process. We are liable to see our coal industry decline simply because, for the moment, Australian, American or Polish coal is cheaper than British coal. That may not be the situation for more than a year or two, but once a mine is closed down it cannot be opened up again.
The proper costing for supplies to the utilities, particularly for generating electricity, should be on the basis of the long-run marginal cost. It should not he on the basis of short-run marginal cost because these are long-run investments.
Turning to the Bill itself, as the noble Lord said, Clause 1 deals with transfers. In passing, we note that these transfers will be the first pieces of privatisation to take place under the Financial Services Act. We note the general provision under Section 47 of the Financial Services Act which applies to all of us. It says:
"(1) Any person who—(a) makes a statement, promise or forecast which he knows to be misleading, false or deceptive or dishonestly conceals any material facts; or (b) recklessly makes (dishonestly or otherwise) a statement, promise or forecast which is misleading, false or deceptive"
with a view to inducing investment commits a criminal offence. The penalty for such an offence is a maximum of seven years' imprisonment. The Government have to make sure that they do not make, recklessly or otherwise, any misleading statements about what will happen in their privatisation of electricity and water.
Transfers of undertakings to companies are governed by Sections 103 and 108 of the Companies Act and require auditors' reports. I wonder whether, when he comes to reply, the noble Lord will be able to tell us how the Government will establish a fair value for the transfer of water authorities and electricity boards. In the case of water authorities, the 1973 Act allowed for transfer of assets. The assets were then mostly unregistered. At the time very few water authorities had a complete register of their assets. Even now, a number of water authorities do not have a complete asset register. They know that a pipe starts here and ends there but they do not quite know where underground it goes. These assets were transferred at historic cost.
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At the time nobody quite knew what the historic cost meant. Since then water authorities have compiled accounts according to historic cost and in some cases CCA accounting. Is that the right basis of accounting for such a transfer? There is no mention in the Bill of the transfer being at fair value. But it must be at fair value; otherwise the prospectus cannot be written accurately and will be misleading. If it is to be at fair value, how will that fair value be established? On what basis are the assets to be valued?
Secondly, with the creation of the National Rivers Authority, as the noble Lord pointed out, part of the activity of the present water authorities will be hived off into a new quango—a name we used to hear in those early days of 1979 and 1980. This new quango will take over part of the activity and part of the costs of the water authorities. In any prospectus for a water authority plc, we will need a five-year profit and loss account. That profit and loss account will have to be audited and restated for the past if, within five years of flotation, we are to take account of the removal of the activities which will go into the National Rivers Authority. I invite the House to imagine the accounting problems of restating water authority accounts to 1984 or 1985 when the water authorities are privatised.
If that is a problem, what about the problem with electricity? The electricity authorities, like the water authorities, have little idea of the exact locus of their underground assets. The White Paper to which the noble Lord referred says that the CEGB will be split up, area boards will have new responsibilities and the national grid will be partially owned by each area board and so on. The accounting problems and legal problems in splitting the CEGB and making a proper prospectus will be formidable. If the noble Lord thinks that that can be done overnight or easily, I advise him to try his hand himself. I have tried. And splitting up even small companies is complicated. If one tries to split up an activity like the CEGB, which does not know where a good many of its assets are, one really is in trouble.
The requirement not only of the Financial Services Act but of the Companies Act is that there should be an audited statement to say that the accounts will be true and fair. I challenge the noble Lord to demonstrate to us how these accounts can possibly be true and fair in the light of the proposed government policy. Clause 2 does something quite simple. It confers on statutory water companies the power to levy taxes. That is an extraordinary constitutional doctrine. I have always understood that taxes were levied by Parliament and not by private companies. However, Clause 2 gives the same power to statutory water companies as is at present held by water authorities in the public sector and therefore under the control of the Secretary of State who is responsible to Parliament
If a statutory water company or a water authority plc is allowed to fix charges—such charges as the company thinks fit—and is then allowed to demand and recover charges fixed in the manner it feels fit, this is equivalent to a tax. Up to now we have had a rate. When water authorities charge through the local authorities, it goes with the domestic rate. It still

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comes as a water rate and is charged on the basis of valuation of the property. I shall come on to metering in a moment. The problem is that metering will not be universal for a long time and so water companies, as they are to become, will continue to have to charge on the basis of a property valuation. That is a tax. I find it hard to see how Parliament can possibly confer on statutory water companies or anybody else the right to levy such a tax.
In Clause 3 there is nothing about the welfare argument. I brought up that argument in my introduction but Clause 3(3) deliberately sets out, as the noble Lord said, to ensure that no undue preference is shown to any class of persons. There is no ability to make allowance for welfare situations. If people are dying of hypothermia, it is tough luck. If people do not have water and cannot have a bath, that is tough luck. We cannot discriminate in their favour because the Bill tells us that we are not allowed to. That seems rather odd.
The noble Lord said that a good deal of the Bill is concerned with metering trials. Indeed it is; and I shall not go into the complications involved in water metering because, as the noble Lord said, we have debated this on many occasions. The problems are formidable. I come now to the major problem. Who will pay for all the work that will have to be done to implement the Bill? The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum says that the Bill contains no public sector manpower implications and that the costs will add to public expenditure only if, and to the extent that, external financing limits need to be increased for these purposes. The vast army of accountants and lawyers who will march into these organisations will be paid for by the consumer or by the investor when he comes to invest.
What will happen—and it could easily happen—if privatisation is not a success? What will happen if the market is not receptive to the flotation of water authorities? What will happen if the market is not receptive to the flotation of the electricity boards? Who will then pick up the tab? It will be the consumer. The consumer ultimately will pay. I can conceive of many types of market condition that will not allow the Government to float the water authorities and the electricity boards.
Millions of pounds—and I mean millions of pounds—will be spent on professional fees to set up the system which the noble Lord has described. He says that the Government have a mandate from the electorate to do this. The mandate doctrine is a difficult one. The mandate does not make it mandatory on the Government to do something. The mandate is permissive. If a policy turns out to be so lacking in sense that the Government decide that although they thought it right at the time of the general election they have come to the conclusion that it is not right and have decided to withdraw it, there is nothing in the doctrine of the mandate which says that they have to do it. Many people on all sides of the House feel that the privatisation, especially of water, is a serious mistake. On electricity there are definitely divided views. We are clearly opposed, and some noble Lords opposite are in favour.
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As we go forward we see that privatisation is rapidly becoming something of a farce. I am sure your Lordships will remember a film—before the war I think it was—called "King Kong". King Kong was a giant gorilla who ultimately went berserk and ran around New York smashing up everything and pulling down the Empire State Building. I think that the Government's privatisation programme has become rather like King Kong. The Government are running around and smashing up companies and, similarly, as happened at the end of "King Kong", all the taps will run dry and all the lights will go out. That is what will happen if the Government pursue this policy.
Therefore I ask the noble Lord, the Lord Privy Seal, in all earnestness to take this unpleasant little Bill away and throw it in the waste paper basket.
12.1 p.m.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, I too should like to thank the Lord Privy Seal for having explained not only what is in the Bill but also what is intended by it, although not expressed therein. I also thank him for having explained the purpose of it so clearly and in a manner which is likely to keep the temperature as low as possible. I must say that I too do not like the Bill. But I come to that conclusion not in advance of considering the Bill but on having considered its intentions.
First I should deal shortly with what is in the Bill, which of course is very little. If I leave out the first clause, there are six clauses and three schedules dealing with water charges, the main effect of which is to remove from the consumers the choice that they at present enjoy of whether to pay their bills by volume or on the basis of rateable value. As I understand it, ever since 1981, domestic consumers could have opted for payment by volume but they have not done so. As regards domestic consumers, not more than one-tenth of 1 per cent. have decided so to do.
The noble Lord put forward the argument of the need to be less wasteful with water. I cannot attach much importance to his argument. Supposing, for example, the compulsion of paying by volume had the maximum effect of saving some 10 per cent. in the use of water by domestic consumers, it would thereby save approximately 4 per cent. of the total consumption of water. That is the most that any such compulsion could achieve.
So what happens to water? Seven and a half times that amount—30 per cent.—goes down the drain; 30 per cent. is lost because it leaks into the ground through faulty pipes, and so on, in the course of distribution. That is where we should look for saving in water. But to put a compulsion on the consumer to pay by volume for the sake of saving a comparatively minor quantity is not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable that the Government should, by way of the Bill, take wholly excessive powers in two respects. First, the powers that they take—albeit they are described in the Explanatory Memorandum as being,
"Powers to prepare for privatisation"—
of course go much wider than that.
There is no single mention—not one word in the text—about privatisation or the NRA which is also

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contemplated. The Bill provides, as the noble Lord, the Leader of the House said,
"that any property or functions of a relevant public utility"—
when they are being transferred,
"shall include the power to do anything which in the opinion of the utility…is appropriate for the purpose of—
(a) facilitating the implementation of the proposal for the transfer".
The transfer could be any type of transfer. If they wanted to do so the Government could decide to transfer the whole of the electricity industry to the Corporation of London. That is a body corporate. I cannot see much point in them doing so, but what I am trying to make clear is that the Bill provides powers which go far beyond privatisation alone. If I have that wrong, no doubt the noble Lord will tell me so when he comes to wind up. Indeed, to be fair to those who have drafted the Bill, the rubric refers to:
"Power to act in relation to proposals for privatisation etc.".
It is the "etc." that is the important part.
I also dislike the removal of accountability from Parliament. In subsection (4) it states that:
"the powers conferred by this section"—
which as I have already said are very wide and much wider than the Government need—
"in relation to a proposal shall he exercisable whether or not Parliament has given any approval on which the implementation of the proposal depends".
If, for example, the Secretary of State for the Environment has a further change of mind, he is entitled to think again on certain matters. He has already had one important change in regard to the NRA. Let us suppose that, on thinking again, he should decide that the pressure is now moving in the other direction, and he wants to remove the NRA, but much expenditure has been incurred by the water authorities in preparing for a reconstruction which involves that body. Then Parliament could not complain at all even though all that money would be wasted. As the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, pointed out, millions of pounds will be involved in the preparation towards privatisation which the Government have in mind. Secondly, we are, by way of the Bill, invited to say that the expenditure shall no longer be subject to the criticism of Parliament. Therefore, in those two major respects we think that the Bill goes too far.
The main focus of the Bill is privatisation of two of our major industries and two of the remaining national assets which the Government have not yet got their hands on. On these Benches, our approach to privatisation or nationalisation is not dogmatic as it is on the opposite Benches. We do not regard changes of ownership as being crucial. Whether an industry is owned by the Government, in trust for the nation, or owned by private individuals, it can still function efficiently. We do not accept the view that it is automatically more efficient for an industry to be run in the private sector than in the public sector. It is often alleged but it is never proved. However, we accept that if you have good management in either sector, you achieve good results; conversely, if you have bad management, you have bad results.
It is evident that the Government and everyone else seem to be wholly satisfied that the management of both electricity and water is good. We do not accept
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the argument that the Government keep trotting out: that one of the major advantages of privatisation is that the presently nationalised industry will be free from government interference. That is a most extraordinary argument to come out of the Government's mouth.
If the Government think that their actions are damaging the nationalised industries; if they think that Cabinet decisions are unwise and that they should stop interfering, as they put it, with the nationalised industries, it is open to them to do so. They need not continue to reach had decisions and interfere in a damaging way. They could come before the House and say, "We had better privatise this industry, because so long as it is nationalised, it will he subject to our damaging interference".
I do not accept the view—I had a great deal to do with this matter, as does every Chief Secretary— that the contribution to the thinking made by the Treasury, and which no doubt continues to be made by the Treasury, is anything other than helpful in the national interest. We reject the rather silly argument that the only way to get rid of government interference of the wrong kind is to privatise an industry.
Nor do we believe that an industry should he free from accountability. It should be accountable to Parliament through the Government (through a Minister) or to its shareholders. The White Paper is ambivalent about the industry being accountable to its shareholders. On the one hand, the White Paper says that it is right that the industry should be accountable to its shareholders, and that that will exercise a beneficial influence on the actions of managers, directors, and so on; but, on the other hand, it compares that with accountability to the Government and thinks that one is much less than the other. Accountability is necessary in each case.
We judge each privatisation proposal on its merits. We try to see where the national interest lies, but we state that it is up to those who want to make the change to prove that the change is in the national interest. The onus of proof lies on whoever wants to make the change, whether from nationalisation to the private sector or the reverse.
We believe that where a natural monopoly exists, the natural place for that monopoly is in the public sector. The public should be protected by a public corporation, with all the familiar safeguards that go with it. What is anathema to us is a private monopoly of the kind that gas has clearly turned out to be and, if we are not careful, the industries we are talking about—I know that we are not dealing with their privatisation at the moment, but that is what the Bill is about—are likely to be.
A private monopoly is anathema to us because the protection which the Government say that they can provide artificially through Oftel, Ofgas and all those other bodies which are supposed to have the power to protect the consumer against the commercial driving force of the boards of the privatised industries, would have to be so burdensome as to stifle the enterprise and initiative which is held to be the justification for privatisation.
We conclude that if either a public or a private sector industry is working well, we should leave it

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alone. Water and electricity are held to be highly efficient. When the Secretary of State introduced the Bill in another place on 21st October, he praised the water authorities for their efficiency, labour-saving, high investment and sound financing. As to electricity, he said that the industry's safety record was second to none.
The noble Lord, Lord Marshall, has been universally acclaimed to be a good boss. With regard to the recent hurricane, we all recollect that the managers and workers in the electricity industry coped magnificently with the difficulties involved. Against all that, there must be pretty solid arguments to justify the enormous upheaval that will be involved in privatising those two industries.
Let us look for a moment at water. As we all know, some 99 per cent. of all households are connected to a public water supply. The supply of water is a natural monopoly. That was so stated by the Prime Minister in January 1985 when she said that the water authorities were natural monopolies. It was repeated by the Secretary of State in October last year when he said:
"I recognise that the provision of water services is a natural monopoly".
I repeat, the natural setting for a natural monopoly is a public corporation or public utility where the goal is the most efficient way of serving the public, rather than the maximisation of profit for a shareholder. The Government recognised that in the other place when the Secretary of State, in introducing the Bill, said:
"The business of protecting the environment and the conservation of rivers, and of ensuring that all the disparate interests, including those of the utilities. are protected, is essentially a public sector regulatory function".—[Official Report, the Commons, 21/10/87; col. 770.]
That is why the Secretary of State is setting up the NRA. We accept that if we are to have such a reconstruction, the NRA is essential. But it is difficult to see—we do not yet know the details of the way in which the water industry is to be reconstructed—that there is much scope for competition in the distribution of water. The consumer will still be left with no choice. That is clear. He will have one tap, or two if he has hot and cold water coming from the same source. It will not be open to him to obtain his water from a different source. The only difference that the Bill provides is that he will no longer have the option to pay by volume.
Most of what I want to say about electricity has already been said. I see that the clock is ticking on. We cannot see that the creation of two generating boards in the place of one will provide the kind of competition that is essential to protect the consumer where there is again a natural monopoly which will be turned from a public monopoly into a private monopoly.
We feel strongly that there is nothing in the Government's proposals or the White Paper about protecting the environment, so we conclude that the restructuring of the electricity supply industry does not necessarily involve a change of ownership. The little bit that has been done could have been done by making two generating boards in place of one. It
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could have been done very easily without changing the whole, with all this upheaval. The customer will still face a monopoly supply. It will be a private monopoly instead of a public monopoly. We share the criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, that at the end of the day the consumer will have to foot the bill.
I say to the Government that if these two industries are—indeed they are—working well, if there are going to be all these difficulties in trying to turn them into monopolies with a modicum of competition which will be totally inadequate, why not leave well alone?
I am afraid that the Government have made it absolutely clear that their first priority is not the efficiency of the industry. Their first priority is the transfer from the public to the private sector, according to their dogma and philosophy, of every industry which rests in the public sector. We know why they are going to do it. They are going to do it because at the end of the day the Government will get a once-for-all windfall which will not be available to any future government; a once-for-all windfall of immense proportions, which they will use not for reinvestment either at home or abroad. They will use it for reducing the burden of taxation in a way which inevitably helps those who already pay the larger share of the burden; that is to say, it will help the rich rather than the poor. It will accentuate the divide between the haves and have-nots
It will, in turn, result in the sucking in of foreign imports and will thereby imperil the one sensitive, vulnerable part of our economy which even noble Lords on the other side of the Chamber accept; namely, the balance of payments. That is what will come if this Bill goes through and the Government's proposals go through with it.
12.20 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I should like to thank my right honourable friend in another place and my noble friend the Leader of the House for the exposition of the Bill which he gave us, delivered most lucidly and with his usual charm and persuasion. I may say that it was very far from the ravaging King Kong suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel. It all seemed very sound and sweet, though I have one or two comments to make.
My noble friend referred to the debate which I raised here on an Unstarred Question two years ago on the White Paper which was produced at that time on the Government's plans for privatising the water industry. My major objection to the proposals which I explained to the House was the constitutional one. At that time the Government's plan was to privatise the regional water authorities, complete with their existing functions. They would then become owned by private shareholders, being made responsible for the statutory regulatory functions under the 1973 Act and for the statutory water quality standards under the 1974 Control of Pollution Act and the EC regulations. The Government have met my objection satisfactorily by creating the National Rivers Authority.
Here I take up a point which the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, made. It is curious that the National

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Rivers Authority, which after all will be a very important statutory body, is only mentioned in the Explanatory Memorandum and is never mentioned in any of the clauses. It would have been normal to take powers specifically in one of the clauses, anyhow—perhaps in a subsection of Clause 1—to give a definition of what the National Rivers Authority will be. My noble friend may care to look at that.
He has told us that this is the paving Bill for privatising the water industry and that we shall get substantive legislation in the next Session. The Bill will split the industry into a National Rivers Authority appointed by Parliament, responsible for statutory functions, and 10 regional plcs responsible for the operating functions. I do not know whether or not the Government took note of my earlier observations, but they certainly met my observations completely. Of course, they do so at the price of splitting the industry.
My second major point is that in last summer's general election my party, as my noble friend rightly said, campaigned on privatisation policies, specifically mentioning water. Thus the wish to do this has been fully endorsed electorally. Indeed, governments all round the world are now busy privatising. Even Mr. Gorbachev is trying to do so. So I do not think I can continue to oppose this in principle, though I doubt whether there will be much joy in it for the Government or anyone else.
The economic structure of the industry is one of static demand plus huge environmental responsibilities. So profit prospects are not good. I accept that in principle my noble friend is entitled to do this; therefore I must give the best support I can to making the Bill as good as it can be when it comes along next year.
First, let me say to my noble friend that the Government's statement on the NRA is in my view entirely satisfactory, clear and rational. But inevitably it amounts to a process of amputation limb by limb of the functions of the existing regional water authorities and their transfer to the National Rivers Authority. This is painful reading to all who have worked so hard over the past 14 years to make a success of the Water Act 1973, with its concept of integrated river basin management which is generally acknowledged by water engineers to be the best in the world. However, given the Government's decision to privatise, this is the price that has to be paid for the strengthened incentive, which I recognise, towards management efficiency which my noble friend believes he can achieve with privatisation.
Certainly the NRA needs a regional structure, to which my noble friend referred, and it must be in constant contact with the life of the rivers on the ground. Rivers are living things and arouse strong local loyalties and passions. This is to be achieved by taking over the regional water authorities' regional committees for land drainage, fisheries and navigation where appropriate. But it implies taking over some thousands of staff from regional water authorities and creating the NRA, turning it into a quite hefty organisation. There is a danger of an overlarge bureaucracy growing up, and, more serious, a duplication of expensive professional services such as
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monitoring and hydrometric work which will also be needed both by the NRA and by the new private water companies for their functions.
I have heard that the regional water authorities are now making doubtful noises about whether they could offer contract services to the NRA to perform some of these functions for the NRA in order to avoid duplication. I urge my noble friend to look at this very closely, to try to make sure that where possible the new private water companies on contract perform professional services, in order to avoid duplication by the NRA, consistent of course with the independence of the NRA.
I now turn to the financial structure. As my noble friend has told us, the water plcs are to be free to make the best profit they can for the benefit of their shareholders. My noble friend has told us that the charging limits will be laid down for each plc by the director general of water services. The water quality objectives will he laid down by the NRA. Within those parameters, the water plcs will he free to make the best profit they can and pay the highest dividend that they can to their private shareholders—the new owners of the industry.
I believe that that is a mistake both in principle and in practice. The better structure is that of the existing private water companies—a statutory limitation of dividend—where the surplus goes to reducing charges to the customer. This system has been tried and tested by the private water companies over many years and it works very satisfactorily.
It also has the initial attraction of eliminating the need for the impossibly difficult task of the director general of water services of annually fixing the charge level for each new water company which is consistent with its making a profit and not charging too much to the consumers.
In my view there are two main reasons why that preference should be accepted. I believe that most people will feel an ethical objection to the idea of the water charge they pay to a monopoly supply company providing a profit which pays an increased dividend to private shareholders. The weight of that objection is obviously a matter of opinion, but I believe that that is cogent.
The second reason is a practical one and relates to the long-term capital needs of the water industry. The capital expenditure of the industry now runs at about £1 billion a year. It is the major element in the annual increase in water charges which everybody dislikes. This heavy rate of capital spending will not decrease. On the dirty water side, in addition to renewal and expansion of treatment works and long-sea outfalls there is the formidable liability to renew the greater part of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of sewers. The water authorities have been diligently surveying these buried assets. In my notes I have put a query after that word, as I do not know whether they are assets or liabilities. But the ultimate cost of renewing or replacing these is unknown. Nevertheless, it will be large and it will stretch over many years.
The clean water side is probably well provided for as regards supply for the present; but transmission problems are comparable in scale with the sewers. The present ad hoc policy of "repair on burst" needs

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to be replaced by a comprehensive programme of repair and renewal again involving huge long-term expenditure.
Then from time to time there will be windfalls of the kind that we have just had of de-nitrification which will cost the industry something in the order of perhaps half a billion pounds. That kind of thing may arise as a proposal from the EC or by some environmental matter which blows up from time to time. That is inevitable. The industry is basically concerned with protecting the environment.
Unlike conventional industry, the continuous heavy capital expenditure for the water industry is to be seen against the background of a virtually static demand. So despite the economics of modern technology, the trend for charges is inevitably upwards.
One or two private water companies may have scope for private property development, but the heavy weight of capital expenditure will continue as now to be the major influence on the annual increase in charges. I ask my noble friend in all seriousness whether he really sees the new private water companies, clobbered as they are with this big capital expenditure and with increased charges, ever considering paying an increased dividend to their shareholders? I just do not believe there is scope for that.
I suggest to my noble friend that the proposal to free plcs to make an unlimited profit is unsound in principle and impractical in practice. I hope that he will give further thought, and that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will also give further thought, to turning to the statutory structure of the existing water companies.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, mentioned the problem of preparing for privatisation by completing an audited statement of the existing assets. That of course clearly has to be done before going to the market. I have never seen such a statement, but I think that it would be a formidable undertaking.
I wish to add one point about the metering trials. Yes, I am sure that this measure is absolutely right. Clearly when the new community charge comes in, the exposure of the existing rates basis for charging becomes even more theoretical so the introduction of meters must be right. There is also the constitutional point that for the private companies to go on indefinitely levying what is in fact a tax in principle as the noble Lord, Lord Williams, said is most undesirable even in the interval up to the year 2000. I am entirely in favour of compulsory metering.
I have one point on tariffs which I should like my noble friend to consider. When the government are constructing the tariff structure, they should construct the tariff on the basis of a small fixed charge for a minimum quantity of water which would he sufficient for small households with low incomes, such as retired people and others, so that the quantity measurement would only come on after consumption of that minimum amount. That would relieve households with small incomes of anxiety about the use of water. It would possibly save them anxiety
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about hardship as a result of hygiene. That is a small but I think important point as regards the community as a whole. Apart from that, the metering arrangements seem to me to be good. I was glad to see in Schedule 1 that the cost would fall on the industry. It is a very tepid welcome that I give to the Bill. I hope that my noble friend will take note of my points.
12.36 p.m.
Lord Elliott of Morpeth: My Lords, I am very pleased to follow in this debate my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford. My noble friend has a very detailed knowledge indeed of the water industry which I think we all recognise him to have. In fact I think his experience in the water industry is possibly unique. I do however have some experience myself and I declare an interest. I am at this time chairman of one of the bigger statutory companies. I am a vice-president of the Water Companies Association and for 12 years I had the honour to be the president of that body.
I have no objection at all to privatisation in principle. This Government's privatisation programme is one of the main reasons for their outstanding successes. To roll back the frontiers of state ownership and to provide the nation's utility services with the greater strength and direction of purpose which life in the private sector brings must be to the benefit of all. Not only is the improvement of services encouraged, but privatisation means that the substantial drain on the public purse is eliminated.
I was so very pleased to hear what my noble friend Lord Nugent said about the statutory model in the industry. The statutory water companies have been in existence for a very long time. They have served society for a very long time. In July of this year, I hope, I shall preside over the 143rd annual general meeting of the Newcastle and Gateshead Water Company, and I shall be very proud to do so.
For several hundred years, in some cases, the companies have demonstrated to the public that they give a very good service indeed. Therefore, it is wholly appropriate as I see it that the water industry can he privatised in that a quarter of it is privatised already. Something like 25 per cent. of the population of England and Wales receives its water from the statutory companies.
The companies vary in size. The largest supplies a population of 1·3 million, but all of them are completely in the private sector. Their shares are listed on the Stock Exchange and are traded in the normal way. They raise money for capital works by making new issues of stock, if I may say so, without any difficulty at all.
They are liable to corporation tax. They are not a drain on the public sector borrowing requirement. Where they differ from public limited companies and others in the private sector is that Parliament in its wisdom has subjected the companies to a series of financial controls in order to make absolutely sure that the consumer is protected against the abuse of a monopoly.
In any monopoly situation there must be some form of regulating mechanism because the consumer is captive. In the normal commercial world the

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interests of the customer are looked after by competition and market forces. A business failing to satisfy its customers does not remain in business. Where consumers have a choice, they exercise it.
However, where a monopoly exists, competitive market forces must be replaced by some form of regulating mechanism. In an absolute monopoly situation such as that found in the water industry, I believe that the regulatory mechanism must be absolutely effective. The system of regulating the statutory water companies at this time is based on profit limitation. Dividends are subject to maximum limit and coupled with that, the law requires that any surpluses made by the undertaking are returned to the consumer. The expectations of shareholders under that system are fettered and each company and board can devote its energies to forming judgments as to how its legal responsibilities to the consumer may he discharged.
The statutory company, as we constantly suggest, is consumer oriented. I noted with interest that when the Bill was before another place, Mrs. Virginia Bottomley put it in another way. It was a rather nice way. She said:
"Statutory water companies, based on a philosophy of service, act as mutual companies together with the consumers". [Official Report, Commons, 2/2/88; col. 941.]
That is the system of regulation which has been in existence for a long time; it is well proven and effective. Throughout the privatisation debate in another place, ministers consistently paid tribute to the proud tradition of service of statutory water companies and the great contributions that they have made to the nation's water supply industry. I take this opportunity, as a vice-president of the Water Companies Association, to thank them for their regular tributes.
I should like to turn for a moment to the government proposals. It is proposed that the utility functions of the water industry should be privatised as plcs with no limitation on profits. Instead, consumers are to be protected by a new body which will put a ceiling on prices and lay down standards of service. The suggestion is that shareholder pressure on the utility companies will encourage them to operate as efficiently as possible so that they can produce the maximum dividend which the price-regulated income from consumers permits.
Perhaps I may make this comment about the industry in general. The water industry in this country is a very substantial business. There are 10 regional water authorities and 29 statutory water companies. It is the intention, I understand, that the water companies, under the terms of the Bill, will be brought under the same regulations as the new plcs.
I ask your Lordships to imagine the size of the body which will have to be brought into being to undertake this regulation. The noble Lord, Lord Williams, used the term "quango". I had not heard that term for some time; nor had I heard of King Kong for some time. Possibly it is appropriate. It will be necessary for that body to be absolutely certain that the consumer is properly protected. Such an organisation will have to be very large. It will also be expensive. Where is the money to come from? There is only one source, as I see it, for that money. That is
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the consumer. Whether consumers will be happy about having their water charges increased because of that method of privatisation, I leave your Lordships to judge.
I make clear at this point that I wholly agree with the setting up of the National Rivers Authority. As has been said several times in the debate, we all accept the common sense of keeping the important responsibility for water resources and environmental regulation in the public domain. My remarks are directed at the proposed office of water services.
As my noble friend Lord Nugent and several other noble Lords have stated, the water industry is very capital intensive. From my own practical experience of the industry as chairman of a statutory company, I can confirm that capital investment is constant. It is essential. As anyone experienced in the commercial sphere will realise, the obvious way of maximising profits in a situation of price regulation would be the reduction of capital expenditure, and the potential for that in the water industry—again, I speak from experience—is very considerable. Much of our capital investment is unseen. It is under the ground. A great deal of it has to be scraped, lined and renewed. The mains are constantly in need of repair and maintenance.
In addition to that, water is a long-term business. There has been great criticism in the North of England over the Kielder reservoir. It has been said that it contains far more water than is ever going to be needed. The same was said about the Catcleugh reservoir which is owned by the Newcastle and Gateshead Water Company and was constructed at the beginning of the century. It was obvious to those living and working in the North of England that had the Catcleugh reservoir not been constructed at that time the North-East of England would have been very short of water just after the last war. I give that as an illustration of how long-term, capital investment in the water industry is. One must look ahead 50 or 60 years, or even longer.
If there is a reduction in capital investment, the security of the water supply, both in terms of sufficiency and quality, can be jeopardized in the longer term. I recognise that the Government fully appreciate that potential underinvestment would be dangerous and serious. The Bill proposes that the director general of water services will have a responsibility for monitoring capital expenditure to see that it is sufficient. He must also, in conjunction with his new body, make quite sure that the capital investment has been made. Again, I ask your Lordships to envisage the resources which will be necessary for that official to carry out his task.
One is tempted to say that with all the controls which this new body will have to put on the new plcs, it will be very difficult for the plcs to operate as such. The Government also seek to make it clear, and have done in another place, that the director general will not be responsible for the running of the water undertaking. However, surely effective regulation requires that in fact, if not in law, that will be what he shall have to do.
I therefore go on to pose the question of whether, even given adequate resources, the regulatory system which is proposed will provide protection for the

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consumer which is adequate. As I said earlier, an absolute monopoly must have absolutely effective regulatory control. I have touched on capital investment. However, there are other matters such as water quality, pressure and customer service which are just as vital.
Those of us in this House with experience of the commercial sector will be well aware of the pressures on management to provide the best possible return to the shareholder. I find it difficult to believe, as I am sure other noble Lords will, that any system of regulation can be devised which will permit and encourage shareholder pressure and yet effectively protect the consumer. To put it another way—again, I follow my noble friend Lord Nugent—I believe that the plc ethic and effective protection of the consumer are incompatible in a total monopoly situation. Either the consumers are properly protected and the shareholders are disappointed or it will be the other way round.
Having dealt with the disadvantages of the plc model, in fairness I should like to examine the statutory company model in the same way. As I have said, I believe that the efficiency, good service and value for money which has been provided by the water companies over many years is not in question. What is said, and has been said in another place, is that the regulatory system of profit control provides too little spur to efficiency, since expenditure can be passed on directly to the consumer. That may be so, but it has not been borne out in practice. Before changes in the water authorities' rates of return requirement made comparison meaningless, over two-thirds of the statutory companies charged domestic consumers less than the relevant authorities. Moreover, until 1974 the statutory companies were subject to price regulation as well as to profit control. It was not at the behest of the companies that price regulation was removed at that time.
If this is the only disadvantage of the statutory model, I suggest to my noble friend that it can be remedied much more effectively, economically and simply than can the disadvantages of the plc model. Is there any reason why there should not be a small office of water services created to carry out the same role as that currently undertaken by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission? If that were done, would it not provide an external spur to efficiency? It would be far less unwieldy and much less expensive, but the well being of the consumer could be absolutely assured.
It is for these reasons that I appeal to the Government through my noble friend to give further consideration to the utility services of water, sewerage and sewage disposal—what in the industry we call the core business—being privatised on the profit-limited statutory model adapted as I have suggested. The non-core business would then be dealt with by plcs within the same corporate group. This view is very strongly supported by the CBI.
I apologise for having taken up so much of the time of the House, but I believe that if the Government were to privatise the core business on the statutory model they would find their proposals for privatising
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the water authorities much more acceptable to consumers in business and private sectors alike.
12.53 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, this is enabling legislation and perhaps the last chance of influencing the Government's policy for privatisation of the electricity industry. Since yesterday's Statement, it is clear that no major changes in their policy are likely. Nevertheless, I still think it is not inappropriate to state the objections to the policy; and perhaps at later stages of the implementation some notice may be taken of what I say, since I represent the views of many.
The Government's contention that the cost of electricity can be reduced by privatisation is surely a chimera, and is only used for political argument. Where can savings and increased efficiency come from? The CEGB's power stations are as efficient as modern technology can make them—some say even at the expense of reliability. Some small savings in the number of staff employed might be possible, but comparisons with manning levels on the Continent are not valid because the CEGB provides design and maintenance staff, which should not be counted in making a fair comparison. There will be the ability to buy cheaper foreign coal, but that is a side issue which need not depend on privatisation.
Having said that, I am not in principle against the creation of new privately-owned generating stations, large or small. The difficulty is in formulating a longterm agreement for the use of their potential output. The grid ought to bring in power stations in order of their efficiency to meet the load. In any case, you cannot ship large quantities of electricity over considerable distances without significant loss and also destabilisation of the grid, due to the reactive current component. To dismember the whole of the CEGB and privatise the area boards is simply upsetting something which is working well.
Here I quote from an American's remarks on this subject:
"If you were starting to organise your system from scratch, we'd have a darned good try at selling you our way of doing things with regulated investor-owned monopoly utilities. But if you've got a good system that works efficiently—and we think you have—then don't mess it about.".
If the recent article in the Financial Times represents the Government's thinking, the controls they propose for the privatised industry render the definitions of free enterprise and competition within the industry quite meaningless in this context. The Government seem set on the dogma of privatisation regardless of the circumstances, and I am reminded of the sportsman who shot at anything that moved. The Government seem to desire to privatise anything that trades. However, the Government are not complete fools and I suggest that in this case there are even more important considerations. These are, first, that if new power stations could be paid for by private funding it would greatly reduce the PSBR, and if any existing power stations could be sold off the money would be useful, as it has been from other sources.
Secondly, it enables the Government to escape from the obligation of taking most of the coal needed

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by the coal-fired power stations from our own pits at much higher prices than those of imported coal. This would of course conceivably introduce desirable competition in our own coal industry. Thirdly, there is no doubt a desire to avoid trade unions having the potential power to bring this country very quickly to its knees by a strike in the electricity industry. But in this area we have most sensible and responsible unions. Splitting up the industry could lead to a much more dangerous situation. So much for open government and informing the public of the reasons for government policy.
Finally, if the Government are determined to pursue their policy, regardless of its side effects, into an uncharted sea, I remind them of the CEGB's policy and that of the electricity boards of trying to buy British. I suggest to the Government that in an uncharted sea one should move slowly, first noting any lessons from the experience of other industries both in this country and abroad. In this context they might properly try to get the private sector to fund some new coal-fired power stations. They will privatise the area boards, but that is hardly relevant because it may well increase the costs to the consumer. As it is, the existing arrangements have only to cover running and capital costs: they do not make a profit. Many of us deeply regret the dismemberment of an efficient organisation and the move into the unknown without at least having felt the way forward.
12.59 p.m.
Lord Monk Bretton: My Lords, I should like to give this Bill a word of welcome and I can assure your Lordships that it will be brief but cordial. I do not feel that it should really be regarded as a contentious measure because it is not the measure that is in fact going to privatise water and sewerage: nor is it going to privatise a single electricity-generating enterprise.
On what would be more contentious—in other words, actual privatisation—I am not sure that the subject is strictly relevant to the Bill. I do not intend to say too much about that primary decision at this stage. Perhaps the less I say the better. I am tempted to make a few brief remarks. What matters is not who owns and runs the services, but whether the regulatory framework adequately protects the public. Thereafter it is how the services are best run that we have to consider.
I believe that privatisation has brought some advantages. It can better motivate; it can take a load off the public sector finance; it allows greater flexibility in provision of services, and so forth. In that connection it is fair to mention that since privatisation British Telecom's charges to the public have fallen by nearly 9 per cent. in real terms. There have therefore been some benefits to the customer therein.
So much for politically charged remarks. I shall give the ultimate in shorthand descriptions of this Bill as opposed to the admirable way in which the Bill was introduced to us by the Leader of the House. The Bill does two things. It enables an advance setting up of a shadow organization—that includes in particular the new national rivers authority—prior to
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privatisation. It also provides this pilot scheme for metering water supply.
With regard to the first aspect, I believe that it will provide us with smoother transition in advance of privatisation. It is a much more complicated matter than it looks, and therefore there is much to be said for endeavouring to run in this machinery in good time, and carefully, and to think further about some of the difficulties and problems that have been mentioned today in this debate. Another advantage is that it will probably reduce staff uncertainties in the industries concerned. That is very much to the good.
On the matter of water metering, this has been written on the wall for a very long time. I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, said. He felt that metering would save so little. I believe that that is what we want to find out. We know that a substantial amount of water is supplied by meter as commercial supplies. There is no proposal to introduce universal metering in this case. It is simply an attempt to do so in those areas where it would help the situation most. My feeling is that metering is much more a matter of logistics and not a matter of politics. It is something that is likely to take place anyway. Therefore there is everything to be said for a pilot scheme.
I should like to take this opportunity to make a few remarks about water in particular where it impinges upon rural affairs and the land, a subject on which I am better informed. I say at once that I also have an interest. First, perhaps I may congratulate the Leader of the House and his right honourable friend the Minister in another place on achieving a great meeting of minds in this area since the initial proposals on water privatisation made before the last election. First and foremost, I welcome the decision to retain in government hands the policing function and to set up the National Rivers Authority for the purpose of looking after the environmental aspects thereof, and in particular the matter of pollution.
I believe that whatever may be said for total river basin management, it is absolutely right for government to have retained this policing role and not to have allowed water undertakings to be judge and jury in their own court. That has been very strongly held in both National Farmers' Union and Country Landowners' Association quarters. I know how greatly relieved they are that this matter has been handled in the way that it has. I do not think that such an enormous chunk has been taken out of the total river basin management concept. I understand that it is about only 10 per cent.
The NFU and the CLA are naturally keenly involved in riparian matters. For this reason they are very pleased that it has been decided to retain the regional flood defence committees, formerly the regional land drainage committees; and that the Ministry of Agriculture is to appoint two members out of the 10 or 12, one for agriculture and one for fisheries. They had hoped for three. The proposal was originally for only one. I am glad that they had at least half a loaf; or it might be fairer to say that they received two-thirds of a loaf.
I should like to ask about one point. In forming the National Rivers Authority, will the same balance of

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representation be accorded to the Ministry of Agriculture? I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell me something about that.
In conclusion, perhaps I may say that the Government deserve congratulations on progress to date. I wish the Bill every success and an easy passage.
1.7 p.m.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to your Lordships for taking part in this debate. It has been interesting. It has well illustrated the close attention that your Lordships always pay to the water industry as part of our concern for wider environmental matters. Although some of the points that have been put to the Government have not been uncritical, this has been a short debate that has shown a depth of knowledge and experience of the water industry, and of the power industry, which would not necessarily have been matched elsewhere.
The noble Lord. Lord Williams of Elvel, in his later remarks in a robust speech, suggested that the doctrine of the mandate did not necessarily pertain with regard to the proposals of the Government to privatise both water and electricity. I felt that my noble friend Lord Monk Bretton gave a quiet and effective reply. He thought that privatisation had carried with it advantages for other industries over the past few years. My noble friend Lord Elliott was very robust in expressing his support for privatisation, although my noble friend made no secret of the fact a little later in this speech that he would like to see privatisation on a rather different basis than the one put forward in the proposals of the Government at the present time.
Perhaps I may make one very simple point of which I think we are all aware but it is worth making for the record. This is a Bill that does not represent the measure to privatise either the water or the electricity industries. We intend to bring forward in due course, as soon as we can, the main Bill to privatise both water and electricity.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, before the Minister strays too far from the point that he was making about the mandate, I should like to point out that it has been stated that at the last election the Conservative manifesto did not include a reference to water but, having regard to the fact that the progress of water privatisation had come to an abrupt halt, the impression given was that it was no longer part of the Government's policy. Is the noble Lord in a position to throw any light upon that assertion?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I shall correct myself in a few moments if I am misleading the noble Lords. My memory is quite clear that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment made an important speech early in the election campaign during which he made absolutely clear the Government's position as regards intended water privatisation. Early in my opening speech I covered the ground which, in effect, was covered by my right honourable friend's speech in May of election year.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, perhaps I may remind the noble Lord of the manifesto on which his party fought the election. The proposal appeared in it, stating that the Conservatives would,
"establish a National Rivers Authority to take over responsibilities for ensuring strict safeguards against the pollution of rivers and watercourses and to pursue sound conservation policies. The water supply and sewage functions of the water authorities will be transferred to the private sector".
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, is reading from my party's manifesto. I am delighted to see that the noble Lord sees fit to have a copy of the manifesto on the Bench beside him——
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I was reading from the National Rivers Authority document.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am sorry. I am mistaken as to what the noble Lord was reading out. I remember that document very well. An important consultation document, it was followed by a second document just before Christmas. That led us through to the position in which we find ourselves today of having a paving Bill which will lead towards the main privatisation proposals that we have not yet reached but that will need to be the subject of privatisation Bills.
I should like to stick to the point that I was making to the noble Lord, Lord Diamond. It is that in an important speech early in the election campaign my right honourable friend the Secretary of State made the Government's position absolutely clear. It was the ground covered by my right honourable friend to which, among other matters, I referred in passing earlier in my speech. I was pointing out the fact that we have not reached the main privatisation Bills because my noble friend Lord Nugent said that the National Rivers Authority is not mentioned in the Bill. That is because at this stage the Bill does not and could not establish the NRA. Instead, Clause 1 empowers bodies to prepare for transfer of property or functions to other bodies—not merely the NRA but a variety of public limited companies. That is why the drafting is probably right although, as with everything else my noble friend puts to me, I shall look again at the point he made.
I turn to deal with the second part of the Bill. Several noble Lords have expressed concern that compulsory metering could mean hardship and even threaten public health standards. That was said by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, and it was echoed elsewhere. The noble Lord suggested that there is at present a rising trend in the number of disconnections made by water authorities. The evidence does not bear that out. The figure for 1986–87 showed that approximately 7,400 disconnections were made by the water undertakers; that is about the average for the last decade.
As regards the future, to which the noble Lord quite rightly referred, I can advise your Lordships that water undertakers already observe a stringent code of practice in respect of disconnections. As a result, they cut off a water supply only as a last resort. That code of practice will continue to apply over water authorities' utility once the water authorities' businesses have been privatised.

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From the considerable experience of metering overseas, and in the major area of non-business metering in the Malvern area where it has existed for about a century, there is no evidence to suggest that metering discourages essential use. I believe that my noble friend Lord Monk Bretton is right to say that one of the reasons for metering is that we wish to see whether it is possible for water to be used with greater care than is sometimes the case.
The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, suggested that metering would almost inevitably lead to a reduction in demand of approximately 4 per cent. and he considered it far better to concentrate on the detection of leaks. One of the purposes of the trials is to discover whether metering leads to a reduction in demand. In 1985 the Department of the Environment water authority committee concluded from its study of experience overseas that a reduction in both indoor and outdoor use is possible. The committee also took the view that metering will lead to the better detection of leaks, and the trials will prove whether such reductions are possible.
I believe that metering is unlikely to lead to a greater number of disconnections due to increased charges. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, the code of practice will exist in the future in the same way as it has in the past.
I should now like to give two assurances which I did not include in my opening speech but which it may be useful to have on the record. In opening, I mentioned that Clause 3 re-enacts certain provisions of Section 30 of the Water Act 1973 which regulates water authority charges. Some concern has been expressed—although not by your Lordships today—about the direction-making power within the provision vested in my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. The clause as drafted retains a power to compel water undertakers to comply with directions given by my right honourable friend relating to the composition of charges. The power has never been used but the Government have agreed with the Water Companies Association that the Bill should be amended to make it clear that the Secretary of State's power of direction under the provision does not prejudice the statutory companies' abilities to provide a reasonable return on capital so long as they remain under their present financial framework.
The second assurance I should like to give relates to the scope of consultations on proposals of water undertakers wishing to carry out trials. It has not been raised by your Lordships but it has been raised many times in another place and outside the House. The Government accepted a suggestion from the Opposition in another place to ensure that the Secretary of State must also have regard to consultations with consumer bodies as well as with consumers. We intend to amend the Bill accordingly.
I should like to answer some of the points raised by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Williams, waxed eloquent about the difficulties as he saw them in valuing water authority assets prior to the moment of privatisation. I was a little intimidated by the noble Lord who not only appeared to be blinding me with science but was possibly frightening me off ever getting as far as being party to bringing forward the necessary prospectuses. Yet as I listened to the noble
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Lord there was a hint of the old adage about trying to find a difficulty for every solution.
The fact of the matter is that the value of water authority assets has been put by some people at £27 billion, and I think that that is how they stand in accounts. That represents depreciated current replacement costs of assets which are in use. The noble Lord will be the first to say to me that that is not the worth of the assets. The value to be put on the business as a whole, of which assets are only one part. will depend on many things: profit levels, investment needs and investment opportunities. The market will determine the value and Her Majesty's Government will ensure that the value is obtained.
The noble Lord then said, "How do you account for the split-up of water authority assets into the National Rivers Authority components?" Most of the existing assets, including all the reservoirs, expect to transfer to the public limited companies but some of the assets will go to the NRA. The water authorities will be expected to produce schemes of organisation which, among other things, show what assets are going to the NRA, and our accountants and those of the water authorities will be working closely to ensure that all the prospectus's accounting requirements are met.
The noble Lord took me to task—or rather took the Government to task—because Clause 2 gives water companies the power, as the noble Lord said, to levy taxes and to fix charges as they feel fit and therefore Clause 2 is nothing more or less than a taxation. With respect, I do not believe that that is so. The ability to fix charges as they see fit is constrained by the requirements of Clause 3(3) which I spoke of in my opening speech. I shall not go over that ground again except to say that perhaps the noble Lord will remember that the requirements are that charges must have regard to costs and not show undue preference against any class of persons. These requirements have ensured fair charges in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Nugent for his support for metering and I am grateful to him for his support for the concept of the National Rivers Authority. My noble friend and, indeed, my noble friend Lord Monk Bretton both made the point that it is important to have it seen to be the case that the public limited companies of the future are not judge and jury in their own cause. That is something which both my noble friends feel the setting up of the NRA will achieve and will also meet the point which has been put sometimes about a need for a competent authority in European Community terms. Both my noble friends referred to the importance of the NRA from an environmental standpoint.
My noble friend, Lord Nugent warned about the dangers of having an overlarge NRA. It will be important to see how much work may be contracted out—another point which my noble friend particularly put his finger on. My noble friend also asked whether the Government would use their best endeavours to see that contracts were made possible. The nature of the work involved in each of the NRA's different functions is varied. Work such as land drainage can be very different in various parts of the country. Therefore, there will be different durations

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of contract and the choice of different arrangements will need to reflect that. We anticipate that there will be a varied pattern of arrangements, as there is at present, in the way in which work is carried out by different authorities.
My noble friend also asked about the hydrometric network and whether or not it is important to see that there is not unnecessary and wasteful overlap. The hydrometric network measuring rainfall, ground water and river flows is needed by both the NRA and the plcs—hence the difficulty. The aim would be to avoid unnecessary duplication by exchange of information wherever possible, and detailed arrangements will have to be worked out, depending on local circumstances.
My noble friend, together with my noble friend Lord Elliott, made important points about their desire to see the profit-limited statutory model being used as the basis for this privatisation. As regards the 28 statutory water companies, we have said that we intend to bring them into the framework of economic regulations which will apply to the privatised utilities plcs. That will include charges control, existing government controls over the statutory companies' dividends and related matters that will be ended. It will then be for each statutory company, or rather for its shareholders, to decide whether it wishes to continue in its present form or to opt for conversion to a public limited company.
The Government carefully considered whether to privatise this industry on the statutory water company model, but we have rejected this approach for two main reasons. First, we do not think it is sensible to write out the constitutions of the new utilities in pages and pages of statute with all the inflexibilities that involves. The plc model under the general framework of the Companies Acts avoids those difficulties. Secondly, the statutory water company model, although it has served us well for many years—and my goodness me, my noble friend Lord Elliott had every right to be able to claim that he is involved in a part of the industry which has a proud record—is set up with a constitution which does not contain within it the stimulus inbuilt to efficiency.
If I may say so, that may be all right for the statutory water companies that we have known producing water supplies. We shall be talking about rather different companies because there will be companies of the plc status in the future which will not only be providing water but will be involved in sewage disposal and sewage treatment. The stimulus is provided by the plc model under a price control regime because share is the one we have favoured because shareholders will have an incentive to make their companies more efficient and so more profitable. However, I have listened carefully to both my noble friends and I shall be drawing the whole of this debate to the attention of my right honourable friend.
My noble friend Lord Nugent ended by saying that measured tariffs should include a free or cheap allowance to encourage water consumption for essential purposes. A number of different tariffs will be tested in the trials, including some which include
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a free allowance within the standing charge and also rising block tariffs incorporating a cheap block.
Perhaps I may briefly make one or two quick points on electricity before I finish. The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, made the point that the creation of two generating companies will not provide competition and that the consumer will still be subject to a monopoly. With respect, I believe that that is a little less than fair. The privatised electricity distribution companies will have a wide choice of sources of generation: the two new generating companies, existing and new private generators, the distribution companies if they wish to generate themselves, and supplies from Scotland, France and elsewhere. Competition will provide downward pressure on costs and prices and we believe will thus benefit the consumer. There will also be competition between the distribution companies through comparison and emulation and there will indeed be an effective system of price regulation to protect the consumer.
The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, made the point that the grid is very important and the proposals of the Government will risk destabilising it. However, the grid will be retained as an integral national network. It will direct power stations so as to meet demand at the lowest cost and the major advantages of the grid with a merit order of an operation will be maintained. What will be different is that the grid company will operate on the basis of contractual relationships with generating and distribution companies.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, that is not the point I made. I was saying that there is a limit how far current can be shipped economically. If it is shipped too far the reactive component will destablise the grid. It is a technical point that I made, and nothing else.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, perhaps I may look again at the point made by the noble Viscount. If I have missed anything I shall write to him.
The noble Viscount referred to shipping, and this brings me to the final point. The noble Lord, Lord Williams, and other noble Lords asked what effect the Government's proposals will have on British Coal. I simply say that coal will continue to be the major source of fuel for electricity generation for years to come. British Coal has increased its productivity by 50 per cent. in the past four to five years. Perhaps I may add that investment has absolutely poured into the industry. I believe I am right in saying that we have seen some £6 billion invested by the Government in the coal industry since 1979, with £2 million a day being invested, and that has led to the provision of much better machinery. This will mean that in looking for contracts—because that is what we will be talking about for the future—British Coal, on the doorsteps of the power stations, will be in a very stong position.
I conclude by thanking your Lordships for taking part in the debate. The Government are committed to the genuinely popular ownership of industries which have been nationalised in the past. This Bill will help to achieve that objective in two of the most significant industries in this country. However, in the water

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industry there is the additional objective, particularly mentioned by my noble friends Lord Nugent and Lord Monk Bretton, of helping to achieve the birth of the National Rivers Authority, with all the benefits we intend that that will have for the management of our river systems and our other river resources. The Bill is but a preliminary step on the road to the major changes which lie ahead, but it is a vital first step and once again I commend the Bill to your Lordships' House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Business
1.33 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, with the leave of the House I should like to say a few words about the Unstarred Question in the name of my noble friend Lady Cox. There is of course no time limit applied to Unstarred Questions, but I think it is generally accepted that these should he at least noticeably shorter than the time allowed for short debates. As there are 15 speakers on the list I know that noble Lords will bear that in mind, in addition to the fact that your Lordships like to pay particular attention on a Friday to the interests of the staff of the House.

Christian Teaching in Schools
Baroness Coxrose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that all state schools provide a Christian act of worship and Christian religious education for all children whose parents request them.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to open this debate, because it reflects widespread concern. Parents and teachers from as far afield as London, Bristol, Derby, Preston, Newcastle, Bradford and Manchester have expressed grave anxiety over the failure of many schools to keep the law, as embodied in the Education Act 1944, to offer pupils opportunities for religious worship or instruction in the basic tenets of the Christian faith. In a nutshell, this debate is about the concern that, as a nation, we are in danger of selling our spiritual birthright for a mess of secular pottage.
I stress that I recognise that the situation is complex and that it is important not to oversimplify the issues. Therefore, in my opening speech I will merely attempt to survey the situation, to indicate the nature and extent of the concern to which I have referred, to offer a brief analysis of some of the issues and to raise some questions for clarification and consideration; questions which I believe are particularly timely given the impending advent of the Education Reform Bill in this House.
I am extremely conscious of the fact that the subjects of this debate touch on matters of deepest conviction which transcend party political commitments. I am therefore most grateful that noble Lords from different parts of your Lordships' House will be contributing their wisdom, knowledge
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and experience to help us to achieve what I hope will he a constructive discussion of issues which I, declaring an interest as a Christian, believe are of the greatest importance to us as a nation.
Perhaps I may briefly explain my choice of the wording of the Question before us. Some people have criticised it, saying that the words "whose parents request them" make it too narrow because, legally, Christian education and worship should be available to all children. I agree, and I should like to see that achieved. However, I have chosen this form of words because it highlights the extent to which we have failed to fulfil the law. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that some parents who want, and even request, Christian worship and Christian-based religious education for their children are being explicitly denied them.
I will first discuss the issue of worship and then turn to religious education. The Education Act 1944 requires schools to begin the day with collective worship, attended by all pupils unless their parents request otherwise. Although it was not stated that the act of worship should be Christian, it was clearly Parliament's intention that it should be so. For example, during the debate on the 1944 Act in your Lordships' House the late Lord Selbourne, speaking for the Government, stated:
"It is the intention of the Government and of the Bill that the religious instruction required to he given shall he Christian instruction, and that the corporate act of worship shall he an act of Christian worship.".
The extent to which this law is widely broken is illustrated in a survey by The Times Educational Supplement in December 1985, which found that only 6 per cent. of maintained secondary schools came close to obeying the Act's requirement that each day shall begin with collective worship involving all pupils.
Let me hasten to say that, as the current Education Reform Bill recognises, this failure to keep to the letter of the law may often be due to logistical difficulties—for example, the lack of a hall of sufficient size to house the entire school—but as just over 20 per cent. of schools held full assemblies at least once a week one can presume that they had sufficient space. Further, almost 10 per cent. reported never holding an act of worship and only 30 per cent. still expect their pupils to sing a hymn.
Some schools give other reasons for this failure to comply with the law; for example, that they have a majority of pupils of other faiths. However, head teachers who respect the spirit of the law have adapted to these situations by providing, for example, for worship for pupils of different faiths. There is no justification for breaking the law by denying the act of Christian worship for all pupils whose parents do not wish to exercise their right to withdraw their children from it. Repeated opinion polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of parents want their children to have a Christian-based act of worship at school.
What is happening in too many of our schools is not only a failure to comply with the law—though that is serious enough—but also a failure to provide young people with a spiritual experience of worship and with an opportunity to become familiar with

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some of the most precious expressions of Christian faith which are part of this country's heritage, with the scriptures and with prayers and hymns, which have been the spiritual resource of incalculable value for countless people in times past and present.
This is a dreadful betrayal—and I mean "dreadful" literally. Even if young people do not appreciate the experience of worship while they are at school, it provides them with an opportunity to become familiar with some of the deepest expressions of the human spirit and for those to enter into their minds and hearts to be available as a resource in times of need later in life. Anyone who has contact with people who are in extremis is aware of how often they find comfort in the prayers, hymns and psalms learnt, sometimes reluctantly, in childhood. To deny young people the opportunity to become familiar with these spiritual resources is to leave them bereft indeed.
It is against this background that examples of such denial need to be seen. The parents in Dewsbury, who are reluctantly keeping their children out of school, are doing so partly because that school refuses to provide a Christian act of worship. It seems the ultimate irony that this is a Church of England school. I cannot help but wonder how the Anglican Church can have allowed that situation to develop. Moving South, a parent told me that at her child's school the head refused to allow the Lord's Prayer because he claimed that it is out of date. Why should these schools be allowed to deny parents the right to Christian worship? It is not good enough to say that we are no longer a Christian society. T. S. Elliot in The Idea of a Christian Society claimed:
"A society has not ceased to be Christian until it has become positively something else".
As a nation we have not yet declared ouselves to be something else. A survey published by the Bible Society in 1983 found that 85 per cent. of the population in England declared that they thought of themselves as Christian and only 7 per cent. declared a commitment to a non-Christian faith.
I now turn to a brief discussion of trends in religious education. With leave, I will use the abbreviation RE in the interests of brevity. Before discussing the cause for widespread concern I must stress that there have been some very good developments as exemplified in the 1987 agreed syllabus for Surrey. Parents and teachers in many other places have expressed anxiety over two issues. One is the dilution of Christian teaching in a multi-faith mish-mash. The other is secularisation by concentration on social and political issues.
For more than 20 years after the 1944 Act, RE syllabuses were Christian-based, but over the past 15 years many have been influenced by the Shap working party on world religions and have developed multi-faith syllabuses in which Christianity is treated as just one among many faiths and perhaps not even the predominant subject for study. Moreover, some multi-faith syllabuses are so worded as to allow inclusion of secular and political creeds such as humanism and the militant atheism of Marxism. Their inclusion seems, to say the least, a contradiction in terms. Of course there is a strong case—and I must emphasise this—for including some
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teaching about the other great world religions, especially in a society where these religions are practised. Such teaching can increase understanding and respect, which are essential values in a pluralist society. But that is very different from presenting young people with a position of extreme relativism in which all belief systems are presented in a value-free hotch-potch as exemplified in a book which I am told by teachers is widely used in RE. It is called Beginning Religion. I shall place a copy of this book in your Lordships' Library.
It shows page after page of grotesque and sometimes frightening pictures of religious rituals such as human sacrifice and a spine-chilling photograph of an Aborigine initiation ceremony. The Lord's Prayer is discussed on the same page as Shamanism. There is considerable emphasis on the occult. This edition actually suggests that children should try to find out what happens at a seance. I gather this has been omitted from a later edition. However, preoccupation with the occult and with phenomena such as witchcraft is a recurring theme in many RE courses.
Parents in York report that a class used all its RE lessons for a whole term to learn about witchcraft, including the use of videos of witches' covens. A number of RE inspectors in ILEA sent a letter to all schools warning against the traumatic psychological effects of teaching the occult in London's schools.
How has this situation deteriorated so drastically? Some of the developments are, I suggest, a result of confusion of multi-culturalism, multi-racism and multi-faith education. The fact that Britain is a society of many races and faiths is highly significant. But many who have come to live here from other countries, especially from the Caribbean, are Christian. Christianity remains the dominant religion in this country, and without an understanding of Christianity no real appreciation of our history or our culture is possible.
Moreover, this fact is recognised by many people of other faiths who are very keen to send their children to Christian schools and are not at all averse to their having what they expect to be a predominantly Christian-based education. As regards teaching their own faith, many of them would far prefer their young people to be taught this by their own religious leaders rather than to have a half-baked presentation from schoolteachers. Such instruction in school by their own religious leaders is also allowable under the 1944 Act. So it is important to put recent attempts to broaden RE into multi-faith syllabuses into context. The initial endeavours to include an understanding of other faiths were laudable. But that does not justify a transformation of the entire RE syllabus into a kaleidoscope of shallow ideas about myriad belief systems from Shamanism, ancestor worship and the occult, to a study of other faiths which leaves pupils ignorant of the basic tenets of Christianity.
Graham Turner, in the Daily Mail of 25th November 1987, describes a school in Sussex where children said that they learnt about Hinduism and

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Sikhism, but hardly anything about Christianity. He writes:
"Eleven Out of 15 youngsters said they had no idea who Pontius Pilate was. 'Wouldn't even know how to spell it'. said one. 'Not a clue who he or she is', said another".
Some of the most surprising teaching material has been produced by an organisation with the word "Christian" in its name: the Christian Education Movement. Its book on Spring festivals gives graphic accounts of the Chinese New Year, of Krishna festivals, before coming to the Jewish Passover and then giving only a very cursory account of the Christian Easter, before concluding with "Making a Mobile for Chinese New Year".
As regards older pupils, the new GCSE syllabuses do not help. The previous GCE and CSE syllabuses, although multi-faith, remained predominantly Christian. But now the national criteria for GCSE state that syllabuses will he based on the study of one, two or three of the major world religions, and it will be possible to have no Christian content at all.
One of the most disturbing aspects of these developments is that some Christian teachers feel unable to teach this new-form RE because they feel it is a betrayal of their faith. Another cause for concern is the predicament of some parents. For example, in Manchester some parents wish their children to have a predominantly Christian-based RE. But Manchester's multi-faith syllabus is integrated into other subjects and consequently the authority has ruled that it is not feasible for these parents to exercise their legal right to withdraw their children from RE which they find unacceptable. This is another example of the way in which the provisions of the 1944 Act are being violated.
Before I begin to draw a conclusion perhaps I may briefly mention the other aspect of RE which many parents are finding unacceptable. I refer to its use for partisan political purposes. For example, the GCSE religious studies syllabus from Doncaster is heavily laced with CND material with no comparable discussion on defence and disarmament or alternative views. The syllabus from Alperton school in Brent shows how RE is to be part of an integrated humanities course with highly politicised messages. Of course there is a case for consideration of social, political and moral issues from a Christian perspective. But that is a world away from using RE to legitimate one-sided, simplistic answers to complex, controversial problems.
I conclude by raising a number of questions in an attempt to search for remedies for these widespread concerns. First, perhaps I may ask the Minister what is the response of the Government to the suggestions that I believe are being made in another place—certainly in many other places—that RE should be one of the foundation subjects in the new core curriculum and that it should be predominantly Christian. Secondly, I ask my noble friend what the Government intend to do about the current failure of so many schools to provide a Christian act of worship. I understand that some rewording in the Bill is designed to solve the logistical problems. However, is anything more substantial being envisaged to put a stop to a situation in which the law is being constantly violated?
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Thirdly, perhaps I may draw my noble friend's attention to the fact that there has been a mushrooming of new religious schools established at great personal cost by parents who feel that the Government have failed them by allowing the situation to deteriorate to the extent that I have indicated. There are now more than 60 new Christian schools and others about to open. This dramatic—one might say "desperate"—growth rate reflects our failure as a nation to provide state schools which enshrine the moral and spiritual dimensions of education. I shall never forget a West Indian parent-governor at the Christian John Loughborough school in Tottenham saying that the local schools had failed so miserably that he used to have to send his children back to Jamaica to get a good old-fashioned British Christian education. But since the John Loughborough school was set up, he could send them there. But that is an expensive option and these new Christian schools run on faith and a shoestring. May I ask my noble friend whether the Government are able to suggest any ways in which they may be able to give financial help to these schools, many of them set up because we have failed to provide the Christian based education required by law.
My final questions are not for my noble friend the Minister but for all who care about the future of Christianity in this land. Perhaps they should be addressed especially to the major Churches, which are in a particularly influential position in which they could have protected, defended and enhanced the preservation of a predominantly Christian-based RE and religious worship in our schools. But judging by the developments we have witnessed and by some of their own reports, such as the Durham report. they appear to have condoned or even contributed to the dilution, and in some places the demise, of our religious heritage.
Many parents and teachers feel that they have looked in vain to the leaders of our Churches for a stand against the erosion and loss of Christian teaching and worship in our state schools. What other representatives of any world faith are so permissive about a dilution of their faith into a syncretistic relativism which implicitly or explicitly undermines its distinctiveness and its authenticity? Will the Church leaders speak out in defence of Christian education and worship, or must the people continue to protest alone, and to seek solutions at great personal cost and sacrifice? I cannot help but feel that the true guardians of the faith in our schools today are found not in the main body of the hierarchy of the Churches, or in the councils of Synod. but among the grass roots Christian communities up and down the land, among local parents, teachers and clergy. Perhaps they will prompt those in authority to take action before it is too late and before even more of our young people are denied an opportunity to study and to worship in the Christian tradition which is their spiritual birthright.
1.53 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, in beginning her remarks the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, referred to opening a debate. This is an Unstarred Question. There is no Motion on the Order Paper. We are not asked for Papers. We are

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merely asking for an answer. I should have thought that it was possible to get a fairly short answer to a specific question. However, if Friday afternoon is to be the occasion for a full dress debate on a thorny subject of this kind, I think that the Procedure Committee ought to have a look at it. I am sorry to start on this reproving note. I have high regard and great respect for the noble Baroness, but I think she raises this deepy controversial and serious matter at the wrong time and on the wrong day. Why then did I put down my name?
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I thought I would ask that question so that I can give a simple answer. I put down my name merely to suggest to the noble Earl who will reply to the Unstarred Question that the answer ought to be "Not at all". Mine is not a religious approach in any sense at all. My approach to this matter is humanist. I merely wanted to enter a caveat and claim a place in the debates which we shall almost certainly have when the Education Reform Bill comes to your Lordships' House.
I shall be very brief indeed. I have the privilege to follow the noble Baroness but the disadvantage of not knowing what other noble Lords will make of this occasion. She has taken full advantage of it and I do not blame her for that. I admire the way the noble Baroness goes hotfoot along the corridors of power and in and out of your Lordships' House pursuing some noble cause or some matter upon which she feels passionately. I wish there were more noble Lords and noble Baronesses to do the same. We would really be a very live body if it were so. However, I am not going to be drawn this afternoon into this deeply sensitive and controversial matter. I am content to say that when the time comes I shall be glad to have the opportunity of saying a great deal about the history—particularly the history—and in my opinion the economic and social consequences of our obsession with religion in education in our schools.
I do not believe that there is any such thing as religious education. There is religious indoctrination, which is a different matter altogether. That is really what we have. I content myself with those few remarks just to give some indication of the line I shall take when the time is appropriate for me to do so. In the meantime, I shall leave the debate to other noble Lords who have put down their names. It does not take 12 apostles to support the noble Baroness to get a simple answer out of the Minister to a simple question. Now he has an ample choice of replies: "As soon as possible" is one; "Not yet"; "In due course"; "The matter is under active consideration" are others. We could all think of the answers that the Minister might give. I suggest that whatever answer he gives it should be as brief as that and then we could all go home. That is all we want to know. As for the rest we can deal with the matter ad nauseam—that is what it will be—when we have the main debate on the Education Reform Bill.
With that I have made my contribution to the appeal to the Minister to reply to the Unstarred Question of the noble Baroness.
1.58 p.m.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, the noble Baroness is to be congratulated on the way in which she has introduced this important subject. This is not a party matter and I speak only for myself. I was tempted to say that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread", but I realise that that would hardly be courteous to the present company. At the same time I must admit that it is my heart that has led me to speak today and my head is still trying to absorb the complex details.
We are debating a Christian act of worship and Christian religious education in our state schools. The first question we have to ask is whether Christianity as a religion is worth promoting. My convinced answer is that it certainly is and I believe it to be vital to our national well-being. In his book The Heart of Healing, published in 1971, George Bennett, an Anglican parson, said this:
"Society does not generally realise how much it owes to the spread of Christianity. Once a country's life has become permeated by the faith which we all so easily take for granted, that country becomes healthy, prosperous and happy. But now we live in days of change, and one dreads to contemplate what might be the eventual results if our permissive society gains ground".
It is no coincidence that Christianity at its best is so closely linked with beauty of architecture, of music, of language. I accept the truth of the saying that ugliness is one sign of a wrong attitude to life.
I am disturbed by the words of Christ that tell me to take up my cross; but I have rejoiced at the sound of Mozart's Ave Verum sung in the great cathedral of San Marco in Venice; at Kathleen Ferrier singing the Angel's Farewell to Gerontius in the Festival Hall in London, or merely watching cricket on the county ground at Worcester with the Anglican cathedral dominating the scene from across the river Severn. I believe Christianity offers the most profound teaching the world has ever known and at times its language is sublime.
I support the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, wholeheartedly in her plea that Christian religious education, and, as part of it Christian worship, should be provided when parents request it for their children. I accept that that requirement raises many difficulties, not least that of staffing. However, I believe that the problem can be overcome, given the will. I shall be most interested to hear what other noble Lords have to say on this matter. It is of course essential in our society today that other faiths should be accepted, but Christians still form a clear majority. In 1944 anything else was not even considered.
In an interesting debate on religious education in February 1977 in your Lordships' House the noble Lord. Lord MacLeod of Fuinary, quoted a delightful, if disillusioned, poem by an RE teacher, Mrs. Sanderman, called "I only teach RE".The poem starts,
"Oh, no, I am not a Christian, a Moslem or a Jew.
Involvement would unsettle my objective point of view".
It ends by stating:
"Their spiritual development does not depend on me. No let them get their faith elsewhere, I only teach RE"
The whole poem is well worth reading in that it succinctly emphasises the dangers of too broad an approach to religious education by teachers who are often not genuine believers.

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What can be said about demand? I understand that there is an increasing number of new Christian schools being started in this country as parents become more concerned about values prevalent in some state schools. Some parents are simply worried about declining moral standards; others find that the teaching is inconsistent with the Christian faith.
My elder daughter teaches in a small Christian school in Rochester. When the school was started about 20 years ago, it was very much on its own. Now it has contact with many other Christian schools which have since been established and others which are in the process of being started. Some, like most independent schools, are fee paying; but others have nominal fees or no fees at all, relying on gifts—the noble Baroness touched upon that point. Therefore the ability to pay is not a criteria for accepting pupils. My daughter says that they have many more applications than they can accept. Even if more independent schools were started they would not be able to meet the needs of all the parents who wish their children to receive Christian teaching, free from what has all too aptly been described, in some cases, as actual persecution.
I should like to ask the noble Earl in his reply to answer two questions of which I have given him notice. First, it has been said that there is strong evidence that the vast majority of our population desire religious education for their children. That was the noble Earl, Lord Longford, in 1977; and the noble Baroness also mentioned this. Does the noble Lord agree that that assertion is true?
Secondly, the great majority of our independent schools—those selected by parents—do have religious education and an act of collective Christian worship. Will the noble Earl say whether he knows of many independent schools that might be termed totally secular?
I agree with the view that education which excludes religion altogether is not proper education. We need fully developed people, not merely brilliant scientists or mathematicians and so forth. On the 18th May 1977 in this House the noble Lord, Lord Blake, sought to call attention to the lack of an adequate Christian content in religious education in local education authority schools. He closed his speech with such wise and telling words that I hope your Lordships will bear with me if I repeat them. He said:
"My Lords, I would end by simply saying that the danger is not so much positive hostility to Christianity, though this does [not] exist in some quarters. The danger is, rather, that a generation will grow up which has not forgotten, but which has never even known, what Christianity is about and has never had an opportunity to know. I am not pressing for evangelism or for indoctrination; I am pressing for knowledge. I hope of course that knowledge will lead to belief, but it may not in every case or in quite a number of cases. What in my view would be a real tragedy would be an education which, by apathy. omission or neglect, deprived the coming generation of a whole dimension of their Western cultural heritage and left them ignorant of one of the most important aspects of human existence".—[Official Report, 18/5/77; col. 713].
I can myself only end by humbly saying that I wish that I had written those words myself. They remain all too relevant.
2.5 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Truro: My Lords, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me, should this debate
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continue after 3.30 p.m., if I leave before the end for distant parts.
No one with a concern for the contribution for the continuation of the Christian tradition in our schools will be other than sympathetic to the matters raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, in her Question. Because the Church shares with the Government the belief that the spiritual dimension is such an important element of education it is watching with great care the way in which the Education Reform Bill treats school worship and religious education in our country. When the Bill comes to your Lordships' House, the bishops will want to contribute in a major way to the debate on that aspect of the matter. Meanwhile, I am sure they will welcome the opportunity provided by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for views to be aired at this stage; those views will be studied with special interest in the Church.
I have no wish to make excuses for failures in the field of school worship and religious education. National attitudes have changed, especially since 1944; fewer people go to church and there are fewer teachers to conduct the act of worship or to teach the religious subject. Of course, many more people in these islands represent other faiths or none at all.
The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, was not prescribing—nor would I wish to do so; nor indeed would I want to—just to defend Christian leadership. I should just like to say with respect to the noble Baroness that all of us who claim to be Christian have some degree of responsibility in the matter. All of us in this House will be eager to see how the Government handle those two matters when the draft Bill is presented, together with any amendments which the Government, or others, put forward.
Like one or two other noble Lords, I should like to ask several further questions which are implied by the original one.
The first concerns the act of worship. How frequent, I wonder, is that intended to be, according to the terms of the Question? There is nothing in it to suggest that specifically Christian worship is to be provided daily or even regularly. Is it to be in addition to multi-faith acts of worship or as an alternative? I believe that the Secretary of State has said that he would welcome invitations to be given to local clergy and ministers for that purpose. I wonder whether that is so.
Christianity is described, and has been described in the debate, as the dominant religion or, perhaps, as was put in another place a little more modestly, as the lead religion in this country.
I ask myself, and your Lordships, whether that implies that other faiths are seen as anti-Christian. Or could it be, as I believe, that all faiths, like all human beings, have a touch of the divine about them, and that in consequence all of them point in some way to Him who claims to be the fulfiller of all truths'? I know that many Asian parents, for example, are happy that their children should receive that Christian religious education in some Church schools. Religious education, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, is not the same as indoctrination. I should be glad to engage in a modest conversation with him at some future time about semantics if that is how he sees it.

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Those Asian parents of whom I speak are happy and eager that their children should experience that Christian worship. To experience worship of any sort is not the same as to find oneself required to make an act of personal commitment. Those parents believe that it is at least a vital part of this country's history, the country to which they have come, and where, of course, many of them have now been living for several generations. They admire the Christian ideal for life: to love the Lord your God; to love your neighbour as yourself. They want for their children Christian standards—honesty, self-control, compassion, forgiveness, humility, self-sacrifice and service to others. Those of course are not exclusively Christian, but they have been taught, practised and lived for many generations. They are Christianity's great contribution to our national life, to say nothing of the faith from which they spring. We cannot wholly separate faith from morality. How we see the universe largely determines how we live and what our attitudes are.
So, I ask those questions and how the matters which we are debating are to be enforced in the schools. It must be said that the great and, to many of us, wonderful Act of 1944 has not been wholly successful because it has been found so difficult to insist upon the daily act of worship whether or not it be Christian. Of course, how difficult it has been to enforce the teaching of religion throughout our schools.
Some serious questions arise on that score as well. There has been mention of the agreed syllabi. They are said to be unsatisfactory in many places. I know that that is true. Are there to be, I wonder, in the course of the presentation of the Education Reform Bill, some new guidelines or even stipulations about the composition of those agreed syllabi? How will they be enforced when qualified teachers in that subject are, alas, so scared—I should have said scarce? Perhaps that was a Freudian slip. Will the Government give more encouragement, and perhaps better status, to teachers of religious education in our schools? I could become anecdotal about that.
There is also the sensitive issue of whether or not religious education should be part of the core curriculum. I should not wish at this stage to rehearse the arguments. They are many, and it will he a very sophisticated debate that we shall have later on. Those are probably not matters for today. I look forward, however, to hearing or reading the Minister's reply and still more to following the debate on the Education Reform Bill when it reaches your Lordships' House. Let it just be said from this quarter of the House that I, for one, am delighted that this question has been put to us and that we have been able to spend at least a short time on it. I can assure the House that I for one should want to answer the question very simply. Indeed we were reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, that it is basically a very simple question. He had a very different answer from the one I would want to offer. My answer would be simply, yes.
2.15 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend Lady Cox for posing what I believe is a very
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fundamental Question and one which I hope will be given a great deal more thought. This is despite the words and probably the right advice from the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, that now is perhaps not the time to enter into the debate. Nevertheless I shall take advantage of the opportunity presented to me.
As I mentioned briefly in my maiden speech in your Lordships' House, education is very much about the academic, the moral and spiritual welfare of our children. Religious education in our schools is not necessarily about making little Christians of our children. If that were the objective, then one could say that we had signally failed. But, as has been suggested, it is their birthright to know of the history, the culture and the tenets of the religion in order that we may lay down foundations and in order that they may later make choices.
However, I must express surprise and, I think, disappointment at some of what has been said by the right reverend Prelate and his colleagues in the Church. I support them in being concerned about the Education Reform Bill and the place of religious education within it. But my question to them is: where have they been over these past years as this subject in our schools has been very much in demise? Where were they as I sat around the table with my colleagues on the Standing Conference for Religious Education, fighting like a tiger to retain an element of Christianity as a predominant part of religious education in the curriculum? I went to see a bishop, putting a heartfelt plea for his support in the work we are trying to do. A quarter of the conference, like a quarter of the conferences in many counties, is made up of Church of England appointees. They were not the people to whom I could look for support. That was a great disappointment to me.
In answer to the right reverend Prelate who asked whether we see other religions as anti-Christian, my reply would be a resounding, no. I do not see other religions as anti-Christian but I believe the teachings of Christianity about tolerance of other people and other religions is a very real part of learning about Christianity.
Next, I wish to mention the Bishop of Durham—not, I hasten to add, the present Bishop of Durham but a predecessor, the late Ian Ramsey, who, I believe, was responsible in part for much of the nature and the way in which religion is taught in our schools. It has certainly given rise to much of our present concern. Two particular aspects were advocated, an open pedagogy approach to religious education and the setting up of standing conferences, one of which I have just described, where a flexible approach to the 1944 Education Act was advocated. Unfortunately, this is where world religions, humanism even communism, and various nonreligious stances were seen to be treated as alternatives and equal to Christianity. Much of what the World Council of Churches was saying was supportive of this and the discovery approach—the quest for meaning and the search for values required of our children, very often too young to cope.

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I refer to Education and Indoctrination by Roger Scruton, Angela Ellis-Jones and Dennis O'Keeffe. I quote from their chapter on morality and religion:
"A teacher who sought to induce moral principles in his pupils by asking them to explore the various 'alternatives' would be engaged in a self-defeating task. We do not discover the moral reality of murder by giving it a try, nor do we come to a better understanding of the evil of rape or torture by experimenting with a variety of points of view upon them, or by trial and error …The issues here are immensely difficult. But two thines ought to be made clear. The first is that finite creatures have need of morality if they are to survive. They also…have need of religion…Children. as Aristotle put it, enter the palace of reason through the courtyard of habit, and in morality and religion it is the habit, not the reason, which counts. No parent. anxious for his child's welfare, could wish him to be deprived of morality; and most parents would wish their children to have a basic familiarity with the tenets of religion, and the kind of meaning that it imparts to our experience".
BBC "Panorama" on 17th December 1984 reported that,
"currently eight out of ten parents favour the presentation of religious education in schools.
Furthermore, Christianity is part of our cultural inheritance. Without it, much of the literature, and philosophy that we have inherited, and the basic forms of our law and institutions, would be unintelligible. Its language, its melodies, and its moral presence arc revealed to us in all our surrounding world, and a child who was not brought into contact with it would be a stranger in the society to which he is destined…The exposure to alternatives may defeat the purpose of religious education as much as it defeats the purpose of morality: it offers to place idle curiosity where there should be certainty and trust. The crucial feature of religious belief is that. unlike political belief, it is essentially addressed to the individual, his conscience and his salvation. It is a guide to life and a source of confidence".
What we have heard by educationists, and sadly sometimes supported by our Church leaders, is a kind of intellectual indulgence. We have had the advocacy of Ronald Goldman in 1964 and of course that of Piaget, who argued that children at a young age were not able to grasp the tenets of religion. Therefore they indulged in the thematic approach and learnt more about the wool of the sheep and the goings-on of the shepherd and very little about the teaching of the Bible.
I have already hinted at my own experience as a member of a standing conference in Cambridgeshire. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for making one more quote. I had to fight particularly hard after having to concede defeat on very much of what the syllabus had to say to put in the following sentence:
"This Conference, while recognising that pupils' cultural and religious backgrounds will vary, believes that we have an educational responsibility to see that Christianity is the religion which is studied in the greatest detail".
It took many months to have that put into the syllabus.
We can all be anecdotal but there is not time to go on and on and I shall give noble Lords just two examples of incidents that made their mark on me. One such incident was the child who died just before his fifteenth birthday. Throughout that child's secondary school life the closest he came to Christianity in his religious education was during the term in which he died when he was studying the Turin Shroud as a detective story. He had of course covered witchcraft and a number of "isms" including Marxism.
I also refer to a personal experience gained when visiting a school one day at harvest festival time when the children were taught to believe that planting the
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seeds in the ground and seeing them grow was magic. I am also reminded of Birmingham in 1974, when, after its syllabus had been produced, objectors complained about the inclusion of communism as one of the "isms" in that syllabus.
I have to put on record my admiration for Peter Shepherd and the work of West Sussex County Council in the way it set about preparing its religious education agreed syllabus. It really is a model and I recommend that your Lordships read it. That council also went out of its way in the preparation for that document to survey the people whom it served. It found what the "Panorama" programme also found —that the majority of people in our community want a Christian-based religious education syllabus in our schools and that the people who were opposed to it were many of the people who formed the standing conference on education and some of the Church leaders.
We must be concerned not only about the children with supportive backgrounds whose parents have a positive view in wanting their children to have religious education in school. It must also include those children from families who are not supportive or who are inadequate for one reason or another. I believe that we owe it to those children to give them a framework. After all, school will be the only anchor in their lives. Therefore, we have a duty.
Perhaps I may be presumptuous enough to suggest some ways forward. First, we must get away from the mixing-bowl approach to this great subject. Secondly, we need a clearer statement of aims for the subject. Thirdly, we need closer scrutiny of some of the agreed syllabi. I believe that they have been scrutinised only cursorily in the past. Fourthly, we need enhanced status for the subject and the teachers who teach it.
Returning to the words of the Motion, it asks for a Christian act of worship for all those children whose parents request that. I have made a plea for those who take no view in the matter. However, we need to remind ourselves that such matters are not compulsory. For children whose parents do not wish them to have such acts of worship, there is no compulsion. They have the power and ability to opt out.
I wish to end, again presumptuously, with a quotation from the Bible:
"If we have no vision then the children perish".
Baroness Seear: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, perhaps she can confirm, on reflection, that she did not intend an attack on the late Ian Ramsey, who was, to many of us, a guiding theologian and guide.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I was not attacking that gentleman; I was attacking some of the things that he advocated.
2.20 p.m.
Lord Ashbourne: My Lords, I should like to say at the outset how grateful I am to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for putting down the Motion and thus permitting the exchange of views on this important topic. I find myself largely in agreement with the

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noble Baroness, although my knowledge of religious education is clearly much less extensive than hers.
Nevertheless, we have only to look at the state of the nation to see how crucial and timely today's debate is. It always surprises me that whenever the Government are defending their record concerning the health of the nation, they invariably do it in economic terms. We hear that the economy is vibrant and growing at X per cent. per annum. We are told that inflation is low and shows no signs of increasing. We hear that the money supply is under control, that unemployment is falling and that unit labour costs are very competitive. That is encouraging and I should not wish to belittle the achievements of the Government in that regard. In fact, giving credit where credit is due, I take the view that the British economy is now in better shape than at any time since 1945.
However, is that really what we are talking about when we look at the health of the nation? Surely a much truer indication would be given by examining the divorce rate, which is now the highest in Europe; by examining the abortion rate, which is up from 6,000 in 1968 to 275,000 in 1987; and by assessing the increase or decrease of violent crime, muggings, rape and child abuse. Surely those figures indicate far more accurately the moral state of play in this country. If I may say so, they portray a pretty dismal picture. The sort of adjectives one might use to describe the overall health of Britain would be "pitiful", "depraved" or "appalling".
Perhaps I may turn to the cause of that unhappy state of affairs. Noble Lords will judge for themselves in that matter, but it seems to me that there are three principal reasons for the collapse of moral standards in this country. First, there is the failure of the Government to support the family in any meaningful way. After their nine years in office, it is still cheaper in some circumstances to live in sin than to live within marriage, which is a ludicrous state of affairs. We can only hope that the Chancellor will put this right on 15th March when he presents his Budget. Indeed, the right honourable Member for Finchley is herself frequently making statements which are supportive of the family, though regrettably her actions do not always match her words in this regard.
Secondly—and I hope I shall not offend the right reverend Prelate who sits in front of me when I say this, because I do not wish to be offensive in any way and I enjoyed his earlier intervention —there has been a complete failure on the part of the established Church in this country to communicate the gospel in a manner which is both relevant and meaningful to ordinary people in today's terms. There are of course happy exceptions, but in general our churches are pathetically empty because they fail to meet the needs of ordinary people in 1988.
Thirdly, there is the failure of parents to devote enough time and energy to bring up their children effectively and in a manner which will meet their needs in body, mind and spirit. Generally, their bodily needs are fairly well met; their mental needs are met in some degree, depending on circumstances; and their spiritual needs are met scarcely at all. Thus at the end of his formative years the child is quite
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unbalanced, and the result can be seen by scanning the headlines of almost any newspaper you choose to pick up.
This is a Christian country and at one stage in the Coronation service the Archbishop hands a Bible to the Monarch with these words:
"This is the most valuable thing this world affords. Here is wisdom. This is the Royal Law. These are the lively oracles of God."
Are these not weighty words, and are they not just as relevant to her subjects as to the Monarch herself? As the Coronation service is essentially a State occasion, surely we ignore these words at our peril. Perhaps I might also add that in 1987 the Bible was easily the best selling book in this country, which clearly demonstrates people's hunger for spiritual food.
Your Lordships will be glad to hear that I am finally, and by a somewhat circuitous route, coming to the point. That is of course the relevance of a Christian act of worship and Christian religious education in state schools. Following a recent Question put down by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, in this House on 4th February, the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Fawsley, showing his usual wit and charm which is so much appreciated by your Lordships, in pressing the Minister (the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper) had this to say at col. 1188:
"Does she further agree that trying to teach RE and leaving out the act of worship is like trying to teach astronomy and leaving out the stars?"
Noble Lords will judge for themselves, but it seems to me that we are slipping at a disturbing rate into a slough of despond so far as the moral health of the nation is concerned. Observing the failure of the Government to support the family, the failure of the established Church to faithfully proclaim the gospel and the failure of parents to prepare their offspring for the rigours of this life, let alone for the next, it seems to me that the only chink of light is that our schools should offer a Christian act of worship and Christian religious education, so that our children should have at least some sure Christian grounding in their formative years. I therefore wish to make clear my wholeheared support for the noble Baroness and to thank her for letting us have this opportunity to air this important subject.
2.35 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, I should like to begin where the noble Lord, Lord Ashbourne, left off by thanking the noble Baroness on behalf of your Lordships' House, and on behalf of the laity of this country, for taking a lead in ensuring that this matter is properly discussed.
Before I come to the point, I should like to tilt a lance—not for the first time—against my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. He calls himself a humanist. He is nothing of the kind. I do not think that he knows what humanism is. I wonder whether he has ever read Pico de la Mirandola's dialogue between God and Adam which was the foundation of Renaissance humanism. Has he read the Cambridge Platonists of the late 17th and early 18th century'? I doubt it. What he is is an old-fashioned 19th century rationalist born out of his time. But we shall splinter another lance together

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when the education Bill is discussed. In case noble Lords think that there is anything personal between myself and the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, we have been old friends and colleagues for many years. It is nothing new if we sometimes fundamentally disagree with one another.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl. Will he allow me then to call myself a dissenter? I think that that is fairly understood.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, a universal dissenter. Perhaps I may start with a couplet from Hilaire Belloc. What is it that,
"Surrounds the horizon of my memories Like large and comfortable trees?"
It is family prayers before breakfast in my grandfather's large Victorian household. At Edward VII's coronation my grandfather was the same age as I am now; that is, 80 next birthday. Having lived through the reigns of George V, William IV and Victoria he was getting set in his ways, as indeed I am now. The whole household met before breakfast, servants and all, and my grandfather read the prayers and the blessing at the end. On Sundays, there were evening prayers as well. I went there very frequently because my grandfather's home was used as a quarantine station when either I, or my sister, had one of our usual childhood infections: measles, mumps, whooping cough, chickenpox, German measles, colds, coughs and sneezes, and all the rest of them. When one of us had one of these infections the other was exported to my grandparents. I was therefore accustomed to living in their household.
At my prep school we had prayers before breakfast every morning, and of course evening prayers on Sundays. When I went to public school I found the same regime as I would have found had I gone to Oxbridge, which I did not. Finally, I joined your Lordships' House where we begin our proceedings every day with prayers as an act of corporate worship. It therefore seems to me very natural and proper that we should have an act of corporate worship to begin our proceedings every day, although this happens after lunch while in my grandfather's household it was before breakfast.
However, there came a very significant pair of events. Thirty years ago there came into existence the permissive society, which eroded our morals, and a sort of petty Fabian Butskellism, which eroded our economy. I am now concerned with those who are maturing into middle age and who were brought up under those two regimes. If we take a professional career as running roughly from 25 to 65 years of age, with a midpoint of one's career at about 45, those who are now 45 were those who matured during the beginning of the permissive society. Are we surprised at the result? Those supporting the noble Baroness are the survivors of a shipwreck to whose navigation the episcopate contributed very little. It is the laity who are fighting like Christian soldiers and who have no illusions about how hard they have to fight in order to set the episcopate a good example.
I turn to Ronald Butt in The Times of the day before yesterday. With your Lordships' permission,
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perhaps I may quote his last paragraph. He was exploiting the theme that appetite grows by what it feeds on:
"As people lose their ability to be shocked, those predisposed to violence are encouraged by the moral climate to assume that society thinks that violence is all in a day's living. The pretence that it is required for the 'integrity' of the programme is largely bogus. Until the age of film, books and plays addressed the realities of violence and sex, without being invited to use the voyeur's peephole. The truth of the matter is that if the cultural climates were healthy, television producers and programme Commissioners would know what was right to transmit without guidelines, watersheds or arguments about censorship. The fact that these loom so large in the argument indicates that something is gravely wrong in the state of mind with which they approach their responsibility".
What was gravely wrong was the upbringing that they had in the foundations of the permissive society.
I should like to pass to a quotation from Paul Johnson in the Daily Mail of 8th February. He was blunt and almost unkind about what he called the "chattering classes". He describes the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York as the "establishment made flesh". He insisted on the truly more representative views of the noble Lord, Lord Mason, on the other side of the House in the context of Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill. He wrote:
"So mixed-up were the bishops that, when it came to a vote, three. including the Archbishop of York, voted against the clause, two voted for it, and all the rest abstained".
For the sake of intellectual honesty I should like to point out that, so far as I know, "all the rest" consisted of one member of the Bishops' Bench. During the course of the debate on Clause 28, I at one time counted six bishops. Five are accounted for, so I assume that one abstained. Therefore, to say "all the rest" is something of an exaggeration. Paul Johnson continued:
"Why are the bishops so confused'? Because so many of them have abandoned their traditional role as custodians of the moral law and joined the Chattering Classes. As such, they have drifted apart from the real nation".
Those are harsh words. I do not know whether I should be justified in applying them to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro. I shall read what he said with care in Hansard tomorrow. His speech was highly texturised and needs careful examination. However, I hope that he will draw the attention of his right reverend colleagues to this debate and to the fervent wish of the laity that they give more militant leadership as they would be giving in the Christian Hindu population in India and not drift with the permissive tide.
2.42 p.m.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery: My Lords, as a result of my fascination with the early life story of my noble friend Lord Halsbury, I should like to give a brief word of explanation as regards my standing in this connection. I claim and profess to call myself a Christian, having been baptised into the Church of England in infancy. As the years went by I served the Church in various capacities: as a sidesman; a server; a churchwarden; a member of the parochial Church Council and Diocesan Council; and as captain of the tower. Some noble Lords may not know that that is a resounding title belonging to the leader of a band of bellringers.

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Approximately 15 years ago I asked for and received permission to transfer my obedience—if that is not too strong a word—to the Orthodox Church, to which I still belong. I mention that in the hope that it may convey the idea—not that I am being impertinent in talking about a Church from which I have no apostacy—that I can speak as a former Anglican looking out from the inside and as a present Orthodox looking in from the outside. That may convey the idea that I have given some thought to the questions I wish to ask, however sketchy may be my ideas of the answers.
I should like to ask, first, why the Lords Spiritual are represented only by the duty bishop. The original Question seems to have been partly forgotten by some speakers. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, said that he might offer the answer, no. The right reverend Prelate said that he would certainly offer the answer, yes. The Question asks what steps the Government are taking? I hardly think that either of those previous answers is relevant.
The question is: what are the Government up to? No more than the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, do I want to enter into a dissertation on various academic subjects, but what is not an academic subject is the question of what is religious instruction or religious education. I enter a plea at this moment for the total abandonment of the expression "RE". To my way of thinking, that is a rubber stamp that has no meaning whatever and comes down with devastating effect, blotting out any Christian or religious content that the expression may be intended to have. It is like PT; something which is taught. You cannot teach education and you cannot learn education unless you happen to be a student in a teachers training college. Something else should take its place.
What is the function of the Church? To my way of thinking, it is to mediate from God to man—I do not know whether I should be contradicted on this, but if the right reverend Prelate or anybody else cares to contradict me I should be happy to hear it—and to understand and expound for the benefit of the faithful, or hopefully faithful, the words of the 11th and 12th verses of the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John, which states:
"As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even them that believe on his name: which were born. not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh. nor of the will of man. but of God".
What does that mean? If I want to know what it means I should be able to ask a bishop. I am not being personal. I believe that is what the Church exists for and that must be the foundation of all religious education, which must begin with small children. How does one begin with small children? You cannot teach them that sort of advanced doctrine. The teacher should know from the very outset that that explanation of what it means to become the sons of God should lie at the far end of the path on which he is setting the first trembling footsteps of his pupils.
They may not go very far. Where will they start? I suppose they will start with the idea of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and God as a benign father sitting up in the sky. Many people do not reach any further than that. I have one particular friend I can think
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of—and I probably have many—who never reached any further than that. One friend I am thinking of is a man of about 60 who does not believe in God at all and once said to me that he did not understand how I could either. I then discovered on talking to him that the God in which he did not believe was a god in which I could not believe any more than he could. It was simply the old man in the sky, with which he became stuck at school and never progressed any further. I feel that something must have been wrong with the instruction that that man received. I did not offer him any instruction because it is a little late now.
The first part of the Question deals with the daily act of worship. I am not quite sure what that is intended to signify, but I think it means morning assembly, which could be conducted by anybody who is competent enough to think of a prayer and a couple of hymns. Is that what worship really is? I found a definition in a dictionary which said what worship really means. It states:
"To show profound religious devotion and respect to, adore or venerate God or any person or thing considered divine".
Is that what one gets in morning assembly? I dare say that it does not particularly matter. The psychological benefit can well be achieved, as it may well be achieved, by our prayers at the opening of the day's Sitting in the morning or the afternoon.
However, is it possible that this is too frequent an occasion for a "devoteness" (if there is such a word) to remain in the minds of those who experience it? Should it be less frequent? I do not know, but they are important questions. It is easy to say that morning assembly is sacred and that we must cling to it, but I have a feeling and a fear that perhaps people may grow up to think for the rest of their lives that worship—a profound, deep and important word in anyone's life—is simply a couple of prayers and a hymn in an atmosphere of chalk dust and floor polish.
This is slightly symptomatic, to me, of much that has gone on in the Church over a number of years. I have seen the great and glorious, divine liturgy of St. John Chrysotom reduced through the Mass, through the Holy Communion, down to strange distortions and changes that have been brought about, until it has become known in its shortened form by a number. I wonder what St. John of the Golden Mouth would think now of what it has become. With that have gone changes in the language, in the liturgy itself, until we have a departure from the old uniqueness of the English language in using for the divine a particular pronoun. God alone was addressed as "Thou". Now he is addressed at times, I understand, as "You" and his son is—the second person in the Trinity—referred to as "Your Son". I confess to a feeling, which perhaps will not endear me to some people, that the God depicted by Michaelangelo on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, or by Blake as a figure of enormous majesty, has been reduced to something not really distinguishable from a child's own father or grandfather, perhaps even wearing a collar and a tie. It seems to me that somehow the whole idea of religious education or instruction has gone. Mysticism has gone; the magic has gone, and mostly the poetry has gone.

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The Government are being asked in this Question what they are going to do to ensure that it should be restored; at least, that is my understanding of the Question. What do the Government propose to do to cause the Church—it must be the Church; the Government cannot do it themselves—to set up a proper organisation to establish syllabi for instruction in matters of the divine? The matter is urgent and vitally important, and I greatly applaud the Question tabled by my noble friend.
2.53 p.m.
Lord Swinfen: My Lords, I should like to turn the Question on the Order Paper round. We have already heard that some 87 per cent. of the population in the country is Christian or professes to be Christian. The vast majority will only attend church on three occasions in their lives or in other people's lives: at their own or someone else's baptism; their own or someone else's wedding; and their own or someone else's funeral.
That does not mean to say that they are not Christian. They live by the standards that they understand to be Christian. They would be horrified if anyone said that they were not Christians. I do not believe that one must go to church regularly to be a good Christian. In fact, often those who go to church regularly, perhaps two or three times on a Sunday, arc appalling Christians for the rest of the week, not living by the tenets of their faith at all.
I am sure that the vast majority of those who call themselves Christians and have children do not themselves feel capable of teaching their children properly about Christianity and how to be good Christians. They very much hope that this will be done for them at school by someone whom they think is better qualified than they. Therefore can my noble friend assure the House that Christian clergymen will be invited into schools to teach Christianity? The schools should also invite the clergymen of other religions, particularly those religions which are popular in the area, to teach about their religions. Can the noble Lord please confirm or assure me that a Christian act of worship and Christian education will be provided for all children whose parents specifically do not wish them to be withdrawn from such worship and education?
Over the past 30 years or so we have had a terrific influx of people into this country of religions which are other than Christian. Yet this country has been basically Christian for something like 1,400 years. Our way of life, our toleration of the ideas of other people, is experienced frequently in your Lordships' House by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, who very often finds himself the only person speaking from his point of view. In some other societies he would have disappeared a long time ago. I hope that we are going to continue to be tolerant. I do not always agree with the noble Lord; but I very much enjoy his speeches, and I respect his point of view. That tolerance arises from my Christian upbringing. Our law, toleration, customs, culture and the way we organise ourselves in society, are all based upon Christianity.
In order that those of other religions can be fully assimilated into this great nation of ours while they do not have to be made Christians, I feel that they
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should be taught the tenets of the Christian religion so that they can understand why this nation works as it does. We have in this House quite a high proportion of members of the Jewish faith. I am sure that the vast majority of them understand the differences between their faith and Christianity and that they were taught those differences at school. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, calls himself a humanist. I do not see the difference between humanists, Mohammedans, Hindus and Buddhists because they all need to understand the society in which they live. Can the noble Lord therefore assure the House that all children will be given this basic instruction in the religion that is the majority religion and the state religion of the country?
2.59 p.m.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject. If I may say so, she is a modern St. George attacking the dragon of ignorance and unbelief that is undermining our society. But I wonder whether her lance is the most effective weapon to kill the dragon in the 1980s. Is it appropriate to the condition of our schools and society to prescribe that the act of worship in school assemblies and the form of religious education should be explicitly Christian? The values which we have inherited have come to us through centuries of Christian teaching. Like the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, I had the advantage of going to family prayers every morning as a child, with the family on one side and the servants all filing in on the other side of the dining room table. Would it not be more effective in transmitting the values that we cherish and respect to leave it to the discretion of teachers and school governors to decide the form which the transmission should take? It is no good trying to push Christian forms down unreceptive throats.
One thing is clear. It is the teachers conducting the assembly in schools who discharge the practical responsibility of getting the message across. To carry conviction, they must do it in the way they judge to be best for the particular conditions of the school. An attempt to force them into a prescribed mould would probably be counter-productive or at least ineffectual. It is unlikely that public opinion would support efforts at enforcement against the judgment of head teachers and governors any more than has been the case in the past 20 years under the 1944 Act. Rules from the centre would become dead letters.
Clifford Longley observed in The Times earlier this week that the schools operate against a background culture of agnosticism. We may not like it but this is where we are. Most parents have no commitment to any Christian denomination or belief. Children are being reared in a largely pagan or non-Christian atmosphere of worship of Mammon. What after all is the main object of religious education? Is it not for teachers to transmit to children a respect for truth, compassion, a sense of service, the other Christian values and to develop the capacity for free inquiry that enables them to form independent judgments? The task, delicate, difficult and more important, as other noble Lords have said, than any other part of education, is to ignite and cherish the flame of true values in the heart and mind.

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Sometimes as in Church schools with committed Christian teachers the Christian framework of worship and instruction will be effective. Sometimes perhaps a reality of worship may be achieved and transmitted—rare I think. But the general object is to transmit the values, not the framework. Teachers and governors must be free to decide what methods should be employed. If they are helped by the increased support of parents and communities, we may again begin to move upwards to a stronger positive acceptance of what all the main faiths have seen as the necessary principles of a humane society.
In conclusion, I should like to pay tribute to the right reverend Prelates who have come under a certain attack in this debate. They, I think better than anybody else, can appreciate the difficulties that confront all those who are engaged in this immensely important task of trying to transmit the values.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may put a point to him. He questioned the efficacy of teaching RE to unreceptive children. On that basis, we would not teach maths and probably would not even send our children to school.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords I can only say to the noble Baroness that I think it is a different sphere in teaching. To impart forms of knowledge is a much simpler task than seeking to transmit values.
3.5 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I warmly welcome and congratulate the noble Baroness on her brilliant speech to the House. It was, if I may say so, typically brilliant, especially at this pertinent time: just before we embark on discussions in the Education Reform Bill.
We are asking the Government to ensure that there is a Christian act of worship and Christian education in all state schools. An act is doing something; it is not just a lesson by a teacher who might not be a Christian and who therefore may not believe in what he or she is saying. An act of worship means prayer and perhaps a hymn. Perhaps "Onward Christian Soldiers" would sometimes be appropriate.
We all know that there are far too many children becoming adults in our schools who have no faith and no Christian or any other religion. The Christian religion is part of our country, part of our heritage, with the Queen as head of the Church and the nation. For that reason, if for no other, religion must be taught and an act of worship made part of the curriculum in each and every school.
We are aware that many parents are without a religion and therefore without a faith. That fact is a sad off-shoot of the permissive society, as the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, has already said. But that fact does not excuse parents from abrogating their responsibilities and asking the schools for tuition for their children. It is the children's right, as the noble Baroness has so eloquently said.
However, we have a dilemma. In my view teachers cannot be expected to teach something in which they
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do not themselves believe. It would carry little conviction with the young minds of today. It is quite possible that those who appoint school staff and boards of governors will be unable to find suitable staff in certain areas. As my noble friend, Lord Swinfen, said:
"In these circumstances I think that the parish priest should be invited and, indeed, welcomed into the schools to take the act of worship and give religious tuition".
I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister can tell us whether his and my noble friend the Secretary of State would welcome that idea. In my view this issue is most important for future generations. A sound grounding in religion is one of the most precious bequests that we can leave to our children.
I conclude, because time is running on, with a short story that actually happened in your Lordships' House. I gave tea to a barely two-year old little girl the other day in your Lordships' dining room. She looked at the ceiling and said "Church, church!" But, after a very large ice cream, she said, "Church, where is Jesus?"
My Lords, there is hope for future generations.
3.10 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, my noble friend Lady Cox, in her inspiring and rousing speech, has given us all an opportunity to stand up and be counted. All of your Lordships, with one noble exception (whom I should like to congratulate on his unusual and deliciously short speech, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, when he decided to jump off his episcopal fence and speak his own mind) have done just that.
Great Britain is supposed to be a Christian country. We have an established Christian religion. It is down in our statute books that that religion should be taught in our state schools. It is our duty to see that there is an act of Christian worship in our schools. We cannot all sit around with our heads in our hands, listening to the cocks crowing and saying, like St. Peter:
"It is nothing to do with us. We cannot do anything about it".
Our Christian faith is dear to us. It gives us courage and support when we cannot go on any more. The basis of that faith is laid in childhood.
"Among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found"
is part of the Collect for the fourth Sunday after Easter.
The world will continue to change. Do we not want those same joys of the spirit to go on into the next generation? The words of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and our hymns have been a great comfort to many people in times of deep stress. I remember during the war that two of my aunts (my noble relatives) were air raid wardens in Lambeth. They were in the post at Kennington Road when it was hit by a bomb. That bomb buried 19 people alive. They were sitting knee-deep in water, in the dark, for nearly three days before they were dug out. During that time, my aunts kept up everyone's spirits by repeating aloud all the hymns, psalms and passages from the Bible that they could remember. Of those 19 people, five came out of the hole alive. Two of them

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were my noble relatives. Last night on looking through their Bible, I found the 40th Psalm marked:
"He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock".
Their friend, the late Bishop of Kingston, F.O.T. Hawkes, who christened me, once wrote:
"You must realise that you are in God's loving keeping, and in his loving arms no evil can come to you".
We in your Lordships' House are blessed with the spiritual benefit of daily prayers. Let us see that that blessing and comfort can be shared also with the children of our nation.
3.15 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I too should like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for putting her case so well, and so movingly, if I may say so. I should like to concentrate on the Christian act of worship rather than on Christian religious education. I go further than the noble Baroness. although I quite understand the reasons for her wording, and should like to enlarge the question to ask whether at least a brief act of traditional Christian worship should not automatically be provided for all children, unless their parents specifically request otherwise. I say brief because it is counter-productive to bore children, and I say traditional for reasons which I shall come to. This has nothing to do with fervent religious zeal, something which I totally lack myself and tend to be suspicious of in others. It has everything to do with what, at the risk of sounding sententious or melodramatic, might be described as first our English heritage and secondly what sociologists would term social cohesion. That is not a phrase one particularly cares for, but at least everybody can understand broadly what it means.
More than 25 years ago some Moslem friends of mine from the Indian sub-continent sent their son to a well-known English public school, and asked if I could possibly pay him a visit from time to time. When I took him out for the first and, I fear, the only time, since the school was rather a long way from London, I was extremely surprised when he asked me to be sure that I got him back in time for evening chapel. He then revealed that notwithstanding his Moslem background, he attended school chapel as a matter of course, though not necessarily participating in every prayer. I found this highly praiseworthy.
So far as I could establish, the motivations of his parents were threefold. First was the commendable feeling that when in Rome it is only polite to do as the Romans do, provided it does not clash with your own deeply held convictions. If only more people felt that way nowadays! Of course, this was helped by the fact that in Islam Jesus is a highly revered Moslem saint. The second motivation was, I suppose, a natural desire that their son should not stand out too much from the crowd at a time when conformity was prized, particularly in English boarding schools. The third was the desire that, without abandoning in any way his Indian Moslem background, their son should have a proper English education. For this to be successful it was necessary not only to be acquainted with secular literature and poetry from Shakespeare
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onwards but with the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, and with at least parts of the Book of Common Prayer.
Several years earlier I myself spent more than a year at a boarding school in the United States. Every conceivable Christian denomination was represented there from Christian Scientist to Greek Orthodox. In addition, about 30 out of the 500 boys were Jewish by religion; but to the best of my memory every single boy attended the short morning assembly at which we said together the Lord's Prayer—the traditional version, it goes without saying—and nobody objected. After all, as one of the Jewish boys said to me, "Let's face it, the Lord's Prayer is a Jewish prayer", and of course he is absolutely correct so far as its origin is concerned. Whether saying this prayer every day made us any more virtuous, I cannot be sure, but at least it helped in some sense to bind us all together.
Furthermore, if those boys without a strong Christian background had not been given the opportunity of learning it, they might well have found themselves isolated from their fellow citizens at various times later on in life. Surely every schoolchild in this country, whatever their parents' beliefs, should have some minimal knowledge of' those prayers, psalms and hymns which to some extent transcend religious boundaries and which have for generations been loved throughout the English-speaking world. One thinks of the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, Christmas carols and all those hymns with the best tunes which are not excessively sectarian in character.
Naturally, we are not only concerned with traditions or with aesthetics. As the right reverend Prelate suggested, one would hope that much of the moral and ethical message would sink home in a way which would please even wholly non-religious parents. In this context, I well remember my first visit to Turkey in 1953, when I met a number of anticlerical intellectuals and professional people, heirs of Atatürk, one might say, who were busy nonetheless in trying to promote a revival of Islam, a religion in which they themselves scarcely believed, in order to curb the growth of crime and juvenile delinquency.
If a childhood acquaintance with the best known prayers, hymns, psalms and Bible passages happens to be of use and comfort later on in life, at times of personal crisis, war, national emergency and so on, so much the better. But even if this teaching does no more than ensure historical continuity together with imparting a reasonable degree of cultural and social unity to our society, it would still be entirely worthwhile.
3.21 p.m.
Lord Airedale: My Lords, I apologise for inserting myself at this point, but I promise to be extremely brief. I hope that a parent's request for an act of worship and a parent's request for Christian religious education will be treated quite separately and distinctly, as I believe that in this country we have many non-Christian parents who would be perfectly satisfied that their children should be brought up in their own religious beliefs and who indeed would be deeply unhappy if it were to be otherwise.

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What they earnestly want for their children is the ability really to appreciate and understand Western art and culture which draws so very strongly upon Christianity for its inspiration. I suppose that a non-Christian person looking (shall we say?) at the Adoration of the Magi by Rubens or hearing a performance of Handel's Messiah would say, "Here undoubtedly is a stupendous work of art. How I wish I could really understand what it is all about".
If we can fill that gap in the knowledge of our children in the course of educating them, enabling them, if they choose to take advantage of it, to understand Christianity and fully appreciate Western art and culture, we shall be doing them a good service. Perhaps some of them will take advantage of it.
3.22 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I must confess that I was somewhat surprised to see the Question of the noble Baroness on the Order Paper, considering that the Education Reform Bill is being discussed in another place at this moment and that we shall be discussing these very questions when the rather controversial Bill reaches us after Easter. Nonetheless, I always admire the way the noble Baroness speaks, and her eloquence.
The right honourable Kenneth Baker constantly compares his Bill with the 1944 Act of Mr. Butler. That Act was a real reforming Bill and its genesis was very different from that of the present Bill. Several years of genuine consultation with all parties and particularly with the Churches had contributed to the wisdom and long life of that Act. The consultation was not, as now, a few months of consultation during the summer months when a lot of people connected with education were on holiday and when not a vast deal of notice was taken of the responses to the consultation documents.
However, unusually, some notice was taken of the responses to the questions on revision of Sections 25 and 26 of the 1944 Act which concerned the clauses dealing with collective worship. The noble Baroness quoted them.
The 1944 Act was concerned to provide a legal basis for what was then the norm in most schools. It was probably expected that the collective worship would be Christian but it was not so stated in the Act and it is not the law.
Section 26 specifically states:
"the collective worship … shall not, in any county school, be distinctive of any particular religious denomination".
But 40 years on, with the structure of our multi-faith, multi-cultural and multi-racial society so changed. the situation is very different. I have read that in one Church school in Blackburn 96 per cent. of children are Moslems. It is the neighbourhood school.
There has been a good deal of writing on the subject of education in our multi-cultural society. The Swann Report on the education of children from ethnic minority groups in 1985 said:
"Given the miltiplicity of beliefs now present in society, it is not surprising that we have received much evidence about the difficulties generated by the requirement in the 1944 Act for the daily act of collective worship and the provision of a particular form of religious
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education. We therefore believe that the government, in consultation with religious and education bodies, should look afresh at the relevant provisions of the Act to see whether alterations are called for after an interval of forty years".
The National Association of Head Teachers set up a working party to consider possible revisions of Section 25. Recommendations were made calling for changes in the wording of the Act to provide a legal basis for school worship to be held less frequently, delegating responsibility to governors in consultation with the head,
"to determine the nature and frequency of acts of worship".
The Select Committee on Education in another place also made recommendations proposing amendment of the law.
The reality is that a collective act of worship for all pupils is a physical impossibility for many schools, and it has not been happening. That is recognised in Clause 79 of the Baker Bill. We are glad that the Government have listened, at least partially, on that subject. The clause gives choice and flexibility and the schools can respond to local circumstances. That is very important as local circumstances are so different.
The act of corporate worship can take place at any time during the day and in groups rather than in a single body. That has been generally welcomed by the Churches. I am surprised that it is left that all pupils on each school day shall take part. I do not believe that that is practicable or that it is likely to happen. However, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, who has been persistent in asking questions on the subject, is satisfied with Clause 79. On one of his questions on the subject in July 1986, I noted the contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln. He said:
"Is he further aware that both the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London … have spoken of their wish for greater flexibility in the approach to the law—not with regard to the flexibility of their conviction that religion should be part of the total education experience, but with regard to the fact that the whole education scene has changed greatly over these last 40 years and that many people, including the Churches, hope that this matter can be approached with greater flexibility than it is now?".—[Official Report, 17/7/86; col. 1015.]
The noble Earl, Lord Swinton, speaking for the Government, agreed. With some reservations there seems to be general agreement on what will happen, even if the noble Baroness and noble Lords who support her are not totally satisfied.
As regards the request by the noble Baroness for all schools to provide Christian religious education for those children whose parents request it, it is asking too much and again it is hardly practical. Indeed, would all children (some of' them post-16) want it? The 1944 Act made RI a legal requirement in all schools, with an opportunity for parents to withdraw their children. Clause 6 of the new Bill ensures that that is complied with. Nowhere is it specified what religion is to be taught. Again, 40 years on, there is a need for a new look.
The changes that have happened in our society have forced local education authorities to change, and that is reflected in the agreed syllabus that each authority has to produce. I shall quote from Birmingham's syllabus:
"A generation ago the purpose of religious education in county schools was to nurture pupils into Christian faith … In the present

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circumstances religious education is seen as an educationally valid component of the school curriculum, subject to the same disciplines as any other area of study. It is thus directed towards developing a critical understanding of the religious and moral dimensions of human experience and away from attempting to foster the claims of particular religious standpoints".
A comparative study of Church and county schools entitled Faith, Culture and the Dual System, by Bernadine O'Keefe, in 1986 has a very interesting chapter on RE. What it shows is a vast diversity in the amount, methods and aims of the schools in the survey. There is diversity even within Church schools. Some teachers were concerned to promote a religious response, but the comments of other teachers show that while their aim is still pupil-centred, the personal beliefs of the pupils are not the teachers' concern. One said:
"The main aim is to understand the significance that religion can make to human life and experience. How religion can affect the whole of someone's life. I am not trying to turn Out good Anglicans, but to show them that a religious outlook on life is still a viable option in the 20th century. I want them to think about ultimate questions".
The report comments;
"These replies support much of the current thinking on religious education, which sees the main aims of exploring the nature of religion in terms of beliefs, practices and interpretation, rather than one of establishing or even nurturing faith".
In a non-Church school, that seems a reasonable aim to pursue. Another teacher said:
"The main aim is to acquire a reasonable knowledge about world religions, including Christianity".
These extracts focus attention on RE and the impact it can have in playing an important role in bringing about changes in attitudes, countering misunderstanding and challenging prejudices and stereotypes. It is very wise, in my view, not to demand Christian religious instruction in a socity such as ours at the end of the 20th century. A greater understanding of other people's beliefs and way of life is essential for harmony in society. What I would plead for is a wide discretion to be given to LEAs and heads, and not for central direction. I was glad to see in an article written by Mr. Baker in The Times on 1st February these words:
"I want to hold to the principle established in the 1944 Act that the nature and content of RE should be locally determined. I am against central prescription in this sensitive area".
I hope he holds to that: flexibility is essential. It is there now and should not be discouraged. If parents want specifically Christian religious education, most have the opportunity to choose a Church school for their children. The Schools Council's view was that the tradition of our national life has been largely shaped and sustained by behavour and ideas closely associated with the practice of religion, and particuarly of Christian religion. Since education involves a thorough exploration of' the environment and the received culture, this source of our national heritage should be studied and appreciated. An investigation of religion and its claims is thus an important part of our education in Britain, whether the pupils have any religious affiliation or not. I would add that they should have a knowledge of the Bible and also of the faiths and cultures of other races who now form part of our very diverse society.
That society presents challenges for all schools. many RE teachers have not yet equipped themselves fully to cope with the change. There are many implications for the training of our teachers and for
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in-service training. This is something that the Swann report stresses, and I hope that when the Minister replies he will have something to say on this last point.
3.34 p.m.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the Government welcome this opportunity to debate an important subject and are grateful to my noble friend Lady Cox for raising it for discussion. The serious contributions made by your Lordships have served to emphasise the importance with which we regard this matter.
Many countries find it impossible to contemplate providing for either religious education or worship in schools, regarding such matters as separate from the education process and more the preserve of the family and the Churches. That schools in this country have successfully provided religious education and worship for many years is, I think, a testimony not only to the success of the 1944 Education Act but also to the tolerance and understanding of the British people in overcoming the barriers of different faiths and denominations.
The Government have consistently made clear the importance they attach to both religious education and to worship in our schools. Both are required by statute. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, that we have no intention of changing this. The response from parents and others to the national curriculum proposals demonstrates continued support for the subject. My noble friend Lady Blatch also mentioned recent evidence of eight out of 10 parents supporting the place of religious education in our schools.
Clauses 6 and 15 of the Education Reform Bill will serve to strengthen the existing requirement for religious education in schools making clear the duty to provide instruction and establishing a complaints procedure to ensure that the law is upheld. Clause 79 of the Bill, while giving schools greater flexibility in mounting collective worship, at the same time reaffirms the requirement for daily worship in all maintained schools for all pupils unless withdrawn by their parents.
I shall come in a moment to the central theme of this debate; that is, the place of Christianity within religious education and worship in schools. But first I should like to say a little more about religious education in relation to the Government's proposals for a national curriculum.
There are very good reasons why religious education should not be a foundation subject in the terms proposed for legislation on the national curriculum. That was one of the points raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro. At present, what religious education is given in schools is determined locally. This local discretion would be threatened if religious education were a foundation subject, as would the present right of parents to withdraw their children from the subject. It could mean that the content of religious education in Church of England, Roman Catholic, and Jewish voluntary schools would be taken away from governors and instead determined centrally and inscribed in tablets of stone. I would therefore agree with the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, on the undesirablity of this.

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It is suggested by some that religious education could be a special case retaining the local discretion and right of withdrawal while still calling itself a foundation subject. This would be the worst of all worlds; a foundation subject without an automatic requirement to teach it to all pupils. It is far better surely to rely on the existing provisions of the 1944 Act, suitably strengthened by the provisions of the Education Reform Bill. I can assure your Lordships that, despite what many appear to believe, the Government's decision not to include religious education within the national curriculum is intended to protect the subject rather than devalue it.
In moving to the main purpose of the debate, I should like first to comment on the place of Christianity within religious education. Those responsible for drafting the 1944 Act would certainly have envisaged that the religious education in our schools would be predominantly Christian in character. However, nowhere in the Act is there any requirement that religious education should be Christian. The Act simply requires that religious education should he provided in all county and voluntary schools; that in county schools it should be non-denominational; and that it should be given in accordance with the agreed syllabus.
Ever since the Act came into force there have been debates similar to ours today on the meaning of the 1944 religious education provisions. This continuing debate has both witnessed and contributed to a change in the way religious education is perceived in its aims and the way it is taught and in the content of the subject. Initially, the agreed syllabuses concentrated on study of the Bible, reflecting not only the predominance of Christianity and Judaism but also a particular view of the "instructional" nature of the subject to be taught in schools.
Over a period of time both the Churches and those directly concerned with teaching religious education, particularly in county schools, have come to see the subject more as a means of exploring beliefs and values rather than that of instructing pupils in the tenets of a particular faith. Furthermore, with the gradual development of what is now a multi-faith society there has been a growing recognition that religious education must provide an opportunity to examine and understand faiths other than Christianity.
However, we should not exaggerate the shift of emphasis that has occurred in religious education. Evidence from Her Majesty's Inspectors shows very clearly that, generally, Christianity is still at the core of religious education in our schools. The central place of Christianity is ensured by the agreed syllabus procedure, which automatically involves the Church of England in the preparation of agreed syllabuses and gives the established Church the right of veto. But the Church of England and the other churches have quite rightly recognised the important part religious education must play in establishing greater understanding and cohesion within society.
The question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, is to ask what steps the Government are taking to ensure that all state schools provide a Christian religious education for all children whose parents
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request it. As I have already pointed out, contrary to the overall impression given by my noble friend Lady Cox, the evidence available shows that a study of Christianity remains central to the religious education provided in all our schools. The Government accept that there are some parents who would wish their children to have exclusively Christian religious education. Such preference is already provided for by the 1944 Act partly by the right of parental withrawal, but also by the option available to parents to send their children to aided denominational schools.
It can of course be argued that not all parents have access to aided schools where they can be guaranteed religious education wholly in accordance with a particular faith. But where they do not, there is no reason why pupils withdrawn from religious education in maintained schools should not receive tuition in accordance with their parental preference. The 1944 Act specifically provides for such circumstances, and allows alternative religious instruction to be given during school hours either on the school premises or elsewhere. There should be no question therefore of children being obliged either to participate in religious education with which their parents do not agree, or to receive no religious education at all.
As the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, have said, there have been a number of instances in recent years of local communities opening independent schools where there is a particular religious emphasis. This is not an exclusively Christian phenomenon and there are also Jewish and Moslem schools on the Register of Independent Schools. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I understand that there are schools catering for almost all philosophies and faiths, as well as some which pursue an entirely secular curriculum.
I am afraid however that there is no possibility of the Government providing financial assistance to independent schools in the way that the noble Baroness would clearly like. Were we to do so, the very independence which is enjoyed by such schools would inevitably be eroded. The taxpayer would rightly expect controls to be imposed on how his money was being spent and there would be constraints which independent schools would find unacceptable.
My noble friend Lady Cox has also raised the question of the provision of Christian worship in schools. I have already mentioned Clause 79 of the Education Reform Bill. I can answer the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro by saying that this preserves the requirement for daily collective worship in all maintained schools.
The content of worship is I think more problematical than the content of religious education. There is no statutory procedure for collective worship analogous to the agreed syllabus procedure for religious education. Furthermore, the 1944 Act is entirely silent on the form collective worship should take, other than the requirement that for county schools, worship should be nondenominational in character. There is certainly no requirement in the 1944 provisions that worship should be Christian, although in practice the

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Christian tradition has been and still is at the core of the worship provided in most maintained schools. It is therefore for the schools themselves to determine content, although it is clear that what is provided must be a genuine act of worship and not just a secular assembly merely providing a means for school announcements and serving an entirely administrative purpose.
I suggest that a debate on the precise meaning of worship would occupy your Lordships for many hours, without reaching any clear conclusions, with respect to my noble friend Lord Cork and Orrery. In many schools, particularly those where Christianity is the accepted religion of the vast majority of pupils, worship should, we believe, be seen in the terms described in the Newson Report. The report argued:
"Corporate worship is not to be thought of as an instrument of education—though it is that—but as a time in which pupils and teachers seek help in prayer, express awe and gratitude and joy, and pause to recollect the presence of God".
Clearly the mounting of worship for pupils of different faiths is a more difficult matter, requiring great sensitivity by the teaching staff. However, many schools have found ways appropriate to the setting to hold acts of worship which celebrate and reflect shared values, common to all communities. To some extent the lack of prescription in the Education Acts has allowed collective worship to develop to take account of the changing nature of society. In the Government's view, this change is inevitable if collective worship is to retain one of its prime purposes, that of an occasion which brings pupils together in collective contemplation of matters spiritual.
This was spelt out very clearly in a number of responses to last year's consultation exercise. For example, the response from the Christian Education Movement stated:
"It is important that any worship by sections of the school enshrines the principles of present collective worship and does not separate pupils by Christian denomination or by faith. Where there is a wide range of faith communities represented among pupils worship must acknowledge this plurality".
This I think serves to emphasise what the Government see as the unifying purpose of worship in schools. We would not wish to see a situation where children in maintained schools are divided into separate acts of worship for different religious groups. This would in the Government's view run contrary to the aims of collective worship that I have already described.
The question raised by my noble friend Lady Cox is to ask what the Government are doing to ensure that all state schools provide a Christian act of worship for parents who request it. As with religious education, so it is with collective worship. For parents who specifically want their children to participate in an entirely Christian act of worship, without any reference to other faiths, the option exists to send their children to denominational voluntary schools. If such schools are not conveniently available, parents have the option to withdraw their children from collective worship and schools may allow parents to organise separate acts of worship on the school premises should they so wish, be they Christian, Moslem or Jew. I sincerely hope, however, that most parents would recognise the value of a truly collective act of worship in schools, which while not necessarily exclusively
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Christian is nevertheless a meaningful act with spiritual content. Such spiritual content might help to lessen the anxieties of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, concerning the decline in moral standards.
I hope that what I have had to say provides your Lordships with reassurance that the Government fully support the place of both religious education and collective worship in maintained schools and that practice in the vast majority of schools still reflects the dominant place of the Christian faith within our society. In the Government's view, it is of the utmost importance that all children, whatever their ethnic and religious background, should be introduced at school to those Christian beliefs and values which permeate our traditions and culture. I hope that reassures my noble friends Lord Swinfen, Lady Macleod and Lady Strange. It is entirely appropriate for Christian and other clergy to be involved in religious education and collective worship in schools.
The Government also believe that religious education in maintained schools should provide all children with some understanding of faiths other than their own. Similarly, where there are pupils of more than one religious background, schools should devise forms of collective worship which have meaning for all pupils.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady David, that we must recognise the nature of the society in which we now live. We are no longer a predominantly Christian nation and our schools reflect the multi-faith nature of Britain in 1988.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, the noble Earl said that we are no longer predominantly a Christian nation. There may be a sense in which that is true although I hope it is not, but so far as the other faiths are concerned, the proportion in this country is still very small.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I accept and understand the point that the noble Earl makes.
The part played by schools in ensuring religious tolerance and understanding is an important one and is successfully achieved in many maintained schools through religious education and collective worship. At the same time we must continue to take account, so far as possible, of strongly held religious convictions, allowing parents a clear choice. The Government believe that the present statutory provisions concerning religious education and worship preserve that choice. We also believe that the enforcement provisions contained in the Education Reform Bill will in turn ensure that the law is properly enforced and that all children are able to benefit from religious education and collective worship in our schools.

Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Bill
Returned from the Commons to enable corrections to be made to certain amendments; the amendments accordingly were corrected, and the Bill returned to the Commons.
House adjourned at ten minutes before four o'clock.