Lords Sitting of 5 April 1989

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Guildford.

Bathing Water Improvements: Costs
Lord Ezra Lord Ezra asked Her Majesty's Government:
What capital expenditure they have in mind for the improvement of those designated bathing areas which fail to comply with the EC bathing water directive, and who will be responsible for carrying out the work.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, we are discussing with water authorities the practical and financial implications of bringing non-complying waters up to the directive's standards by 1995. In 1989–90, water authorities expect to spend over £100 million on schemes to improve bathing waters. After privatisation, the individual utility companies will be responsible for carrying out the work, while the National Rivers Authority will ensure that improvement programmes are implemented and satisfy bathing water quality standards.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, will the Minister first indicate why it has taken so long to get our bathing beaches up to the standards of other countries, especially as measures to that effect were envisaged as long ago as 1973 in the Control of Pollution Act? Secondly, is it right that the cost of getting our beaches up to the right standard should be borne exclusively by the users of water? Should they not be borne by the public at large which benefits from those beaches?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, as for the time of getting the beaches up to the right standard, it would have helped if the Labour Party, with a little bit of Liberal support, had nominated some beaches before 1979 when we took power. We were the first Government to do so. We were again behind to start with. We are well up to the average standard of Europe. We are the only country to have put a decent and full programme, designed to meet the standards in full, before the Commission.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the standard of other countries, to which the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, referred, gives a different picture to the standard being asked for by the European Commission? Is he aware that most of us have personal experience of bathing in the waters of the Mediterranean from the countries round about—France, Italy, Greece and Spain—where the waters are anything but clean? Is my noble friend aware that he is right to say that our programme of cleaning up our bathing beaches is a vigorous one
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and is effectively cleaning up the huge arrears that we inherited?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. The total cost of cleaning up the bathing waters to meet the standards in full will cost about £1 billion.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, is the Minister aware that of the 354 designated beaches in Britain which should conform to the Common Market directive, only 251 do so? That means that we have more than 100 beaches that do not conform to the Common Market directive. Do any of them constitute a health hazard? Are any of them threatened with closure?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, on 21st February I answered a Question about the quality of bathing waters in 1988. In England, Northern Ireland and Wales 254 bathing waters out of 380 met the standard. That was a substantial improvement on the 1987 figures when 206 out of 370 met the standards. As to a health hazard, the chances of catching any disease from swimming in an area that does not meet the standards is very small. If the water authority considers that the bathing water is unsafe, I am sure that it will seek medical advice.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, is it not true that the Government are presently talking to the water authorities about accelerating their programme for cleaning up our beaches? Is it not also true that the establishment of the NRA will be much more effective in ensuring the delivery of such a programme? Will my noble friend give some figures which compare the 1988 expenditure with that of 1979?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the NRA will be of enormous benefit to drinking water and bathing water customers. We seek to intensify the programme of improvements to bathing waters so that we meet the directive in full by 1995.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, will the Minister answer the second part of the question that he was asked by my noble friend Lord Ezra relating to who should bear the cost of cleaning up such beaches?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I thought that the noble Lord asked me three questions of which I answered two. On the third point, it is right that the water authorities' customers should be responsible for meeting the cost.
Lord Eden of Winton: My Lords, further to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Mason, am I correct in saying that of all the resorts Bournemouth is the only one whose entire beach area has been awarded the blue flag of purity?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am not sure that my noble friend is entirely right. I do not have the up-to-date situation. I shall look into it and write to him.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, will the Minister acknowledge that in his second attempt to answer the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, he gave a totally unsatisfactory reply? He did not explain why the consumers of water should be required to pay for the historical neglect of our beaches which we acknowledge to have been going on for a very long time. Will he now explain why the public as a whole rather than the consumers should be required to pay for the cleaning up of our beaches?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, with water we are talking about virtually the same number of people. But it is right that the customers, the polluters, should pay, and the charge be put on to the customers.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, are we not in danger of over-concentration on beaches because of objectionable matter that becomes stranded on them as a result of the high tides around our coast? Like myself, noble Lords might go snorkelling in the Mediterranean. Will the noble Earl not agree that there is nothing on the beaches there because the sea is tideless? But, my goodness, underwater the horrors that we encounter have to be seen to be believed.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am sure the whole House will agree with me that the bravery of the noble Earl in going snorkelling in those waters is to be commended.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, can my noble friend please tell me which members of the public are not consumers of water? Surely the difference is, to put it mildly, semantic.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I believe that most of us consume water.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, with regard to the noble Earl's unjustified references to the Labour Party, is he not aware that beaches, roads, streets, parks, trains and everywhere else have been dirtier since the present Government came to power 10 years ago? Can he give the House a guarantee that after privatisation the private owners will be able to meet the cost of making the beaches cleaner? He has not done that so far.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I do not think that I was wrong in saying that the Labour Party had not nominated any bathing beaches or bathing waters although the directive came into force early in 1976. There were three years in which the Labour Party could have got its act together but it did not do so.
With regard to privatisation and whether the utility companies in the future will be able to meet the cost, I am sure that they will. But that is also a subject we shall discuss in great detail in the near future.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that the cleanest beaches in the
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country are those of Caithness but that they are too cold for bathing?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I believe that the beaches in Caithness are of worldwide repute but my noble friend is absolutely right that there is not a nominated bathing water in Caithness.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether the main cause of beaches not being up to standard is sewage pollution? Will he say what is the main cause?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, to a large extent it is sewage pollution from the short sea outfalls built by our Victorian predecessors. Those out falls are not satisfactory. But the long sea outfalls which are replacing them are environmentally satisfactory.

William Trimble: Sentence
2.45 p.m.
Lord Grimond Lord Grimond asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the result of the inquiry by the Lord Advocate into the case of William Trimble.
The Lord Advocate (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie): My Lords, William Trimble was charged with and convicted of assaulting Mary Jane McGhee, aged seven months, by striking her about the head, body, arms and legs, all to her injury. He had admitted to the police that he had slapped the child on various occasions but made no admission beyond that. Having regard to the requirement of corroboration, I have concluded that no more serious charge could have been proved against him. The forensic evidence available to the Crown could not establish a connection between the admitted assaults and her death on 25th May 1988.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, if it is in order, may I ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate whether he is aware of how glad we all are to see him answering Questions for the first time?
However, may I then pass on to ask whether he really considers that this is a satisfactory outcome to the case? Will he bear in mind that the child died by choking in blood while being beaten up? It was found that both her legs and her arm had been broken over the previous month and that pins had been driven into her stomach and the soles of her feet. For this Trimble was sentenced to three months. If he was guilty of that, why was he not guilty of murder? If the Crown could prove that he so assaulted the child that she died, why was he not accused of murder, as he certainly would have been had she been an adult?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, with reference to the first part of the noble Lord's supplementary question, I am very grateful to him for his remarks. However, I am unenthusiastic about making too frequent an appearance at Question Time. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord that his summary of what was proved against Trimble is wholly inaccurate. All

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that was established against him, and indeed could be established against him, followed an admission that he had on a number of occasions slapped the child; he was then charged with the assault. There was certainly no evidence that would have linked the injuries that he caused to her death.
Perhaps I may assure the noble Lord that had there been such evidence which would have allowed a charge of murder to be brought against him, it would have been done. This certainly was not a case of the Crown exercising its discretion to restrict the charge in any way.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: My Lords, as I understand the position in this case, the learned sheriff who presided over the proceedings reached the conclusion of guilt on the part of the accused by a process of elimination. It could only have been the man or woman living with the child who caused the injuries. Can the noble and learned Lord explain to your Lordships' House why that principle of law could not have been applied in a jury trial where the sentence would have been considerably higher than three months?
I ask your Lordships to bear with me slightly longer than the House might expect for a question. This is an important case in Scotland. It has evoked considerable press and public reaction. I wish to ask the noble and learned Lord whether he agrees that, on what was a charge of simple assault with no specifically attributable injury, evidence was led by the Crown, albeit with no objection from the defence, of severe and appalling injuries to the child, including the injuries to which the noble Lord, Lord Grimond, has already referred. They caused the presiding judge to complain that the sentence of three months was inadequate.
Will the noble and learned Lord comment on three specific matters? First, what specific injuries did the Crown hope to prove in relation to the phrase "all to her injury" in the complaint? If it was more than simple assault, why was the case taken in the form it was rather than by a jury trial? Secondly, does the noble and learned Lord agree that in cases such as this which cause understandable public outrage and indignation, prosecutors should exercise great care in presenting evidence to ensure that as far as possible only evidence relevant to the complaint should be presented to the court and the public, whether the defence objects or not? Thirdly, was the decision to take the case in this form sanctioned by a Law Officer?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I shall try to answer those points as briefly as possible. First, the noble Lord has my assurance that in future the most careful consideration will be given when a member of the Scottish judiciary indicates that he believes the mode of trial selected by the Crown has been wrong. I confirm that, in order to establish the slapping which had been admitted to by Trimble, the procurator fiscal, as the noble Lord appreciates, led evidence of the autopsy report which detailed injuries. That indicated the slapping, but also included evidence of more serious injuries. It may be surprising that that evidence was allowed by the
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defence to be led without objection. I can only emphasise that there was no corroborative evidence, which the noble Lord will appreciate is necessary in Scotland, to show that these further injuries were caused by Trimble. If they had been, they would have been included in the charge against him. That would have allowed the court, if necessary, the opportunity of satisfying beyond reasonable doubt the need to convict him.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware that while we fully recognise the importance of this matter, it would be far better raised in an Unstarred Question when more time could be given to develop it?
Lord Grimond: My Lords, in view of that intervention, I ask the Lord Advocate whether this does not seem a perfectly proper Question to raise in Parliament. Is it not the case that there was enough evidence before the court for the sheriff to convict Trimble for killing the child? If an adult had hit or slapped another adult so hard that the person died, the adult who committed the assault would unquestionably have been accused of something more than a common assault. I ask again why a higher charge was not brought.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I must say briefly to the noble Lord that on the basis of the forensic evidence there was no causal connection available to the Crown which would have established that the injuries he caused—namely, those due to slapping—brought about this unfortunate child's death on 25th May. But I certainly do not take exception to his raising this matter with me. He is quite right that the case has caused grave concern in Scotland. I hope that what I have said has at least in part allayed those anxieties.

Abattoirs: Humane Slaughter
2.52 p.m.
Lord Whaddon Lord Whaddon asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have any proposals to improve the observance of regulations for humane slaughter of animals in abattoirs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, everyone involved in the slaughter of animals has a responsibility to ensure that it is carried out humanely and in compliance with the legislation. Local authorities are responsible for enforcing the regulations and the Government propose to make it a statutory requirement that they should designate an official to be formally responsible for the supervision and enforcement of welfare requirements in slaughterhouses. Members of the state veterinary service visit abattoirs to monitor and give advice.
Lord Whaddon: My Lords, has the noble Baroness taken note of the article in the Independent of 13th March which reported the most horrific abuses in British abattoirs? Is it not clear that the piecework

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payment system is largely responsible for such abuses? The Government have responsibility for enforcing regulations. Will the Minister take such steps as are open to her to eradicate these abuses?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, it is the responsibility of all involved to ensure that the requirements of welfare legislation are observed, irrespective of the method of payment in abattoirs. I was appalled by the article to which the noble Lord referred and the conditions described. Anyone witnessing cruelty in abattoirs should immediately report the matter to the local authority responsible for enforcement. I wonder whether the writer of the article did so.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, will the noble Baroness say what the Government's attitude is to the use of tenderising enzymes which are injected into animals in abattoirs before death? Is she aware that unless death follows fairly quickly, the animals involved suffer? Is she happy that the regulations are sufficient?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, as I have said, the legislation requires animals to be slaughtered in the most humane way possible.
Lord Gallacher: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the problem with enforcement of regulations would be made easier if the present excess capacity of slaughtering were eliminated in England and Wales? In that connection will she tell the House what has become of the proposals by the Meat and Livestock Commission several years ago for a reduction in capacity?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am sorry, I cannnot answer the last part of the noble Lord's question. As he knows, there are two different kinds of slaughterhouses in Britain. One consists of the export approved abattoirs. Of the 937 abattoirs in the UK, 99 are export approved. These 99 abattoirs account for almost 40 per cent. of the UK production. The export approved abattoirs are in the hands of MAFF and are inspected monthly by the state veterinary service. The abattoirs which are for domestic production only are in the hands of local authorities.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, while I was very interested in what the Minister said, will she tell me what it had to do with the question put to her which, as I understood it, concerned excess capacity?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am not aware that there is any excess capacity.

Agricultural Research and Development
2.57 p.m.
Lord Carter Lord Carter asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they expect to announce the outcome of the Barnes review of agricultural research and
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development and what form the announcement will take.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, on 21st March I wrote to interested organisations attaching lists of the publicly funded research projects planned for 1989/90 in the agriculture and food sectors, together with an indication of the areas of research we expect to be continuing to support from public funds in subsequent years. I deposited a copy of that letter and its annexes in the Library of this House. Following this letter, we intend to hold working discussions with the industry during April and May about future industry funding of near market research.
Lord Carter: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, but is she aware that morale in the agricultural research and development sector is now at an all-time low while uncertainty about the future is at an all-time high? I believe that the Minister indicated there would be job losses in the order of 290 posts. Is she aware that the true figure is likely to be in excess of 600 jobs? Those are jobs lost in agricultural research and development, where Britain leads the world. Can she also confirm that the cuts and the closures that have been announced recently are only the first tranche of the £30 million that was identified by Barnes as near market research and development to be funded by the industry? When will we know the full effects of the entire £30 million?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, of course we are aware of the effect uncertainty has on morale. That is one of the reasons why I have been making announcements. It is worth while clearing up any possible confusion over the number of jobs, which means posts affected. We have made it consistently clear that total job losses this year, 1989–90, are about 290. The breakdown is as follows: 230 reductions in R&D funding, RDS and FCS, and 60 reductions achieving ADAS targets for chargeable advice and increased efficiency, FCS and CVL. Regarding the money aspect, the PES 1988 decision announced last year included a reduction in funding for near market R & D of £5 million in 1989–90 rising to £15 million in 1990–91 and £24 million in 1991–92. In total that is equivalent to £30 million at full economic cost.
Lord Gallacher: My Lords, will the noble Baroness agree that the response so far to invitations to individual firms and trade to accept financial responsibility for near market research has been somewhat disappointing? Does she agree that we have now reached a stage where a decision to apply the near market research category to research stations virtually ensures their closure? In view of that situation, and having regard to the talks she is to have with the industry in April and May, will the noble Baroness make it clear to the industry that in the event of the appeal for voluntary support meeting with a very disappointing response from the industry, the Government will not rule out the possibility of continuing essential near market research by means of a levy on trade?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the situation regarding near market research has been put fairly and squarely to all sectors of the industry. I accept that there is pressure on farm incomes and that farmers and growers are often very small businesses. However, in most cases near market R&D represents less than one fifth of 1 per cent. of the value of output of the various farming sectors. That is a large sum in total, but not in terms of individual contributions from farmers, providing everybody pays their share. Mechanisms exist in most sectors for collecting levies on a voluntary basis. That is the approach we should welcome.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, does the Minister agree that some near market research is in the public interest? If that research is not being conducted by the industry, will the Minister assure us that the Government will continue to fund such near market research?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, we recognise that there are borderline cases. There always are in any categorisation. Perhaps I can make the situation clear with a few illustrations. Work concerning nitrate leaching is in the public good; work to reduce farmers' expenditure on fertiliser is near market research. Animal slaughter work on stunning and animal welfare is public good; work on the influence of slaughter practices on meat quality is near market. There may be elements of near market in work which we shall continue to pay for, but we will not continue to pay for the near market element of it.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, following on the question of the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, if Her Majesty's Government believe that research and development is still needed in agriculture, does the Minister not believe that it is the Government's duty to produce a scheme which would cover all the small businesses? In other words, does she agree that there should be not a voluntary scheme but a levy, which only the Government can impose, so that that necessary research can continue?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the exercise relating to near market research has been carried out right across government and not only in relation to agriculture. No suggestions have been made for compulsory levies (which I believe is what the noble Lord is suggesting) for other sectors of industry in other departments.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, can the noble Baroness say by what amount in real terms the Government have reduced the grant towards agricultural research? Will she agree that agricultural research in Britain is regarded throughout the world as the best in any country, and that it would be a tragedy if the quality of research in this country was reduced? Will she tell the House what steps the Government are taking to ensure that at the end of the day their policy of transference of the responsibility to industry will not damage the position irreparably?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am delighted to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that we have the highest possible standards of research. I can tell him that the PES 1988 also included an increase in funding of £2 million in 1990–91 rising to £5 million in 1991–92 for research in such areas as environmental protection, biotechonolgy and North Sea pollution.
Lord Carter: My Lords, in relation to the question of near market research, does the Minister agree with the report on agricultural and food research produced by the Select Committee on Science and Technology of this House which concluded that the list of research projects identified as near market by the Government does not reflect a government intention to fund research work in the public good and therefore should be reassessed? Will she confirm that if industry funding for such work is not forthcoming work will cease on a large proportion of the projects? That amounts to 30 per cent. of the commissioned work in agriculture and 60 per cent. of the commissioned work in horticulture.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, my department will be making its reply to the Select Committee as soon as possible and I do not wish to pre-empt that reply. In answer to the other part of the noble Lord's question, if industry does not take up near market research, that research will not continue.

Business
3.6 p.m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I should like to say a word about the arrangements for this afternoon's two short debates standing in the names of my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux and the noble Lord, Lord Rochester. As is customary in short debates, the mover is allowed approximately 15 minutes, and the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate. In the case of the short debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux it means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 11 minutes. In the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to propose any formal time limit; but I am confident that noble Lords will keep the length of their speeches within limits that are compatible with the spirit of these short debates.

Water Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Road Users and the Law
3.7 p.m.
Lord Brougham and Vaux Lord Brougham and Vaux rose to call attention to the White Paper The Road User and the Law (Cmnd. 576); and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords as President of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, I must declare an interest in the Motion in my name on the Order Paper this afternoon. RoSPA, together with many other bodies and individuals, presented its views and comments to the Road Traffic Law Review so ably chaired and led by Dr. Peter North. That report, which was published last April, has become known as the North Report. It is full of refreshing and far-reaching proposals which, if implemented—or perhaps I should say when implemented—will have a very significant effect on the campaign to reduce road accidents.
As this is the first time that Parliament has been able to debate the report, together with the White Paper produced by Her Majesty's Government in response to the report, I should like to pay my tribute to Dr. North and his team for such an excellent report.
In recent years there has been a very welcome downward trend in the number of road casualties. When the growth in road traffic is taken into account, that is especially encouraging. But the total figures disguise a very worrying situation for vulnerable road users, particularly cyclists and pedestrians. However one paints the picture of road accidents, they amount to 14 deaths and 1,000 injuries every day on the roads. That is equivalent to an M.1 air crash on the roads every three days, a Clapham rail crash on the roads every two and a half days or a King's Cross fire on the road every two days. Every day 14 families are deprived of a loved one.
Top level inquiries and investigations into national disasters are thorough and exhaustive. Yet the biggest disaster, road casualties, appears to be accepted by the general public as the price we pay for our current way of life. RoSPA does not accept that nothing needs to be or can be done, and the Government certainly do not accept that view either. Command Paper No. 576, The Road User and the Law, is a very welcome response by the Government to Dr. North's proposals. It addresses the problems identified in the report and puts forward proposals for new legislation. The most significant proposal is to do away with the present reckless driving offences which relate to the driver's attitude at the time of the alleged offence and replace them with ones based on driving standards. RoSPA welcomes that move. Indeed, through the RoSPA Advanced Drivers Association, the society is working hard to raise awareness and commitment to improved driving standards. I can do no better than to recommend to any Members of the House who wish to ensure that they have and will maintain their own personal driving standards to write to RoSPA's headquarters in Birmingham for details or see me after the debate.
The White Paper outlines in general terms how good driving might be defined, but I suggest that there is still much to be done. RoSPA is committed to establishing and promoting good driving. The proposal to allow alternative convictions in respect of a less serious offence is also welcomed. RoSPA was one of the bodies that recommended the use of the manslaughter charge and is pleased to see its use
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advocated in the White Paper together with a new offence of causing death by dangerous driving.
The Government's proposals include the introduction of a new offence of causing death by careless driving while affected by drink or drugs. That proposal is particularly welcome in helping to reinforce the point that to drink and drive is a criminal act. If someone is killed as a result, the penalty should be just as severe as for any other life-threatening, irresponsible behaviour. I must say that the maximum prison sentence of five years for that new offence seems rather out of balance when compared with the maximum seven-year sentence for the new offence of acts of vandalism on the road.
RoSPA's National Road Safety Committee recently considered and endorsed the recommendations of the North Report. However, it believes that the penalties for someone convicted of failing to stop after an accident or of refusing to submit to a breath test should be more severe than that person would have received had he or she been convicted following the original accident. We note that the penalties of causing death by careless driving while affected by drink or drugs will also apply to a driver who fails unreasonably to provide a specimen for analysis.
For many years, RoSPA has expressed the view that insurance against the consequences of disqualification following a drink-drive offence is immoral. We therefore welcome the agreement reached with the Association of British Insurers to stop that form of insurance. I note that the companies operating that type of insurance are based outside mainland Britain. I should like an assurance from my noble friend the Minister that the influence of the ABI covers those companies.
There are many cases of accused drink-drivers committing a second offence, sometimes involving a second killing or injury, while awaiting trial. The Government's underlining of the powers available in the Bail Acts is obviously appropriate. However, RoSPA would like to see consideration given to provisions to suspend a driver's licence immediately following a positive screening. To facilitate that provision, we advocate that drivers are required to carry their licences at all times. There can be no doubt that a drink-driver is a danger to the community. For that reason, we believe that he or she should be treated in the same way as any other dangerous person.
I was very interested to hear the views of a man in Manchester who feels that the police doctor used incorrect procedures to take a blood sample. He complained that he had been treated as an outcast by his colleagues, made the butt of jokes at the office Christmas party and generally treated like a criminal. Without commenting on the particular case, it is interesting to note that society is increasingly treating drink-drive offences like other criminal offences.
The proposals will strengthen police powers, but I hope that the main effect will be to make road users more aware of their responsibilities. For example, I was pleased to see encouragement given to the use of roadside warnings by the police. The vehicle

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defect rectification schemes have been most successful. A helpful word by a policeman can do a great deal to reinforce road safety programmes; indeed, reinforcement is an integral part of any effective remedial measure. This is a proper and efficient use of limited resources and I commend the police for their initiative. The police, and those who finance the police, respond to public pressure and I therefore feel strongly that the public should be encouraged to express their view that policing traffic crime is just as important as policing crimes of violence. After all, 10 times more violent deaths occur on the road than through crimes of violence.
The Government propose to amend the law to allow the use of cameras to detect speeding and traffic light offences. Certainly, the evidence from Australia and New Zealand is that such a measure has significantly reduced the number of accidents, but I believe that the use of all accident prevention programmes must be restricted to sites where there is a history of accidents. If cameras are not used sensibly, their installation could well be counter-productive.
One major area that receives very little attention in the North Report is the topic of drinking and driving. The Government propose to carry out a major experiment in the use of retraining to influence the attitude to drink-driving of certain categories of driver convicted of drink-driving offences. I see that proposal as an important part of the continuing campaign and look forward to learning details of the experiment.
The Home Secretary is currently consulting with regard to three proposals relating to police powers to carry out breath tests. RoSPA's policy is to seek unfettered powers for chief constables so that they can decide on the appropriate action necessary to tackle each problem. Again, the police have that freedom in tackling other dangerous situations where lives are at risk. There may well be a half-way house involving a staging of the legislation. Mr. John Home Robertson's proposal in another place to incorporate a code of practice in legislation for conduct in respect of road blocks for screening was very helpful.
We are concerned that the sentences imposed by magistrates throughout the country vary so widely. A greater uniformity of sentencing and greater use of the powers available to the courts will be of major benefit. For penalties to have a deterrent effect, they must be seen by the public to be fairly realistic. There appears to be no logic in the regional variation in sentencing policy. Sentences must also impose a real penalty on the individual concerned. We have seen far too many celebrities pleading that they need their licences simply to carry out charity work. As a charity, RoSPA deplores that argument and cannot accept its viability. The person should have thought of the consequences before acting irresponsibly.
There are many other welcome, common sense proposals in the White Paper, but I shall leave it to noble Lords to read, consider and comment on them themselves. What causes me great concern is the timetable for the implementation of the proposals. Put together, the measures must amount to a major
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new road traffic Act. Unless the Government move now and have their proposals ready for the Queen's Speech in the autumn, I cannot see a new Act coming into force until well into the 1990s. The Secretary of State for Transport has set a target for a one-third reduction in road casualties by the year 2000. That is just over 10 years away. The Government must move quickly; time is running out.
This legislation must be an important part of the Secretary of State's plan to achieve that target. There are also other matters including education, training, publicity, engineering and, above all, enforcement which all require resources. In order for these measures to be effective I urge the Government to ensure that adequate resources are provided to guarantee that the dreadful total of people killed on our roads—14 every day—is reduced by the year 2000 to perhaps nine or 10 at most.
Quite properly the Government are consulting the general public and interested bodies about the content of their proposals, but the public is ahead of Parliament in this case. The North Report received universal applause. It was a breath of fresh air and a vote for commonsense. Of course it will be difficult to frame legislation, but the White Paper provides a good basis for progress. Survey after survey has advocated stronger powers to combat drinking and driving. According to the results of a survey of 10,000 children which is to be published this week, eight out of 10 said it should be the law that when travelling in cars all children should be belted up. The Act only achieves that in part.
I am sure that the public want to see an end to road accidents, and the new laws must go a long way toward achieving that aim. In moving this Motion, I urge the Government to complete the consultation as quickly as is proper and to introduce the necessary legislation with haste. My Lords. I beg to move for Papers.
3.21 p.m.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, the House will be most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, for introducing this debate today. As he rightly said, it gives Parliament a first chance to discuss the North Report and the Government's White Paper. The authors of the North Report and the Government are to be congratulated. I do not often have the opportunity to congratulate the Government but I believe that with this White Paper they have gone a long way toward achieving the right answers.
I should like to thank the noble Lord for setting out so clearly the scale of the problem that we face. I do not want to say much more than that it is unacceptable in a civilised society that such carnage should occur on our roads. We must all seek to find ways of reducing that carnage. It is not a party political matter; we must all put our heads together to make sure that we arrive at the right solution.
In the few words that I wish to say, I do not intend to go into the matter of drinking and driving—not because I believe that it is anything other than one of the most important issues in the report, but because my noble friend Lord Falkland will be dealing with it at some length when he winds up from these Benches.

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We welcome the White Paper because it shows a determination to deter dangerous driving while at the same time educating and warning about minor offences. We welcome the sensible provision to change the reckless driving provisions, which have not been entirely successful, and in future to base an offence on the actual standard of driving, leaving factors of inexperience, age and disability to be a matter for the courts in their sentencing policy. It seems to me to be a more balanced approach. It may not be perfect but I believe that we are coming ever nearer to achieving the right balance in that respect.
However, I have two reservations, one of which is in relation to paragraph 1.9 of the White Paper, which states:
"The Government proposes to replace the present offences of reckless driving and causing death by reckless driving with new offences aimed more at the observable standard of driving and less at the driver's state of mind".
That must not be extended into drink-driving offences, in which being under the influence of alcohol or drugs is at least as important as the consequences of the act. It seems to me that that distinction should not be blurred.
The second point that I wish to make about this new offence is in relation to paragraph 2.9, which states:
"The requirements will he met if the state of the vehicle driven is such that a competent and careful driver would not drive at all".
I fully accept that statement but it must not be used as a way of pushing responsibility on to a driver when in fact the responsibility rests with the owner of the vehicle, particularly as regards goods and passenger vehicles. There is sometimes a tendency for responsibility to be pushed down and on to the chap who is driving the vehicle where as it should lie with the owner, who ought always to ensure that his employees are provided with good equipment to drive.
The new offence of causing death by careless driving while affected by drink, etc., is welcome but it is perhaps a little strange that the the two-year period of disqualification which protects the public is so much shorter than the period of imprisonment, which is five years. It seems to me that in most cases a short period of imprisonment is as effective as a long one—that is the experience with many other offences—but a long period of disqualification in fact offers greater protection to the public.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, we are pleased to see the end of insurance against disqualification, which was not quite an incitement to offend but which could certainly lead to a careless approach to driving. It seemed to me and others on these Benches distasteful that people should be able to take out insurance against disqualification. I am glad that the Association of British Insurers has agreed to phase it out. However, as the noble Lord said, one wonders about cowboys from outside the Association of British Insurers and whether the Government will have to legislate in the end. I hope that, as they state in the White Paper, they will keep that point very firmly in mind.
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In Part III of the White Paper there are a number of matters of concern, but let me first comment on paragraph 3.5. We welcome the support for the vehicle defect rectification schemes. They are not to be made statutory but I hope that the Government will do everything possible to support them.
There are difficulties with paragraphs 3.7 to 3.22 in relation to the resources that the Government are prepared to put forward. There is considerable overloading on the traffic commissioners, who have an inadequate establishment of enforcement staff receiving salaries which tend to be uncompetitive. The parallel between what we were saying about the King's Cross fire and the railway inspectorate is too close for comfort. I hope that the Government will see fit to increase the establishment and the salaries of those people who, ultimately, are responsible for making sure that the law is complied with.
Similarly with regard to offences of overloading, county trading standards officers are restricted by limitations on local government finance. It is no good passing laws if they are not to be adequately policed. Deterrence is certainly related to the probability of being caught rather than the severity of the punishment. A lorry driver is likely to be stopped for overloading only about once in four years. Bad operators will measure the chances of being caught as slim against the high profits that can be made from overloading.
Some work recently undertaken in Groningen has shown that a very large number of lorry drivers crossing the Dutch borders have been working hours which are far too long. It should be borne in mind that a lorry arriving at a British port starts with a clean tachograph. There are reasons to believe that the spirit of the law is not being followed in many cases.
In paragraph 4.23, on failure to stop, it seems somewhat illogical to have a new maximum of six months' imprisonment where somebody is killed which is so much shorter than the five-year period for drink driving. It seems to me that it could be taken as an incentive to people who have been drinking and have been involved in an accident of this kind to get away from the scene of the crime. I believe that the matter needs looking at again.
On disqualification generally, which the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, raised, magistrates have shown themselves reluctant to disqualify people who are self-employed or where the loss of the licence will cause loss of employment. Will the Government consider the possibility of introducing a penalty of suspended disqualification—say, two years' suspension? The threat of automatic suspension if a minor offence is subsequently committed would do more to modify bad driving habits than would six months in prison. I put that forward as a matter which might be considered.
There is clear public support for the use of cameras for both speeding offences and failure to stop at traffic lights. However, have the Government considered the possibility also of setting up cameras at zebra crossings, where the law seems to be totally ignored in most cases? There is a zebra crossing not far from your Lordships' House which is almost

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impossible to cross. Is it not possible to train traffic wardens to use these cameras? It seems to me that here again is a resource that is being under-used.
On non-payment of fines, it seems to us that paragraphs 5.12 to 5.15 are rather weak. There is certainly public disquiet at the wilful ignoring of parking restrictions and the non-payment of fines. Even if we have to wait until the mid-1990s for the magistrates' courts to get themselves into the 20th century, it should surely be possible in the metropolis and in large cities for the police to clear fines before vehicles are released from the pound or from clamps.
We have very little time to deal wih this important topic. I have sketched in some of our thoughts. I believe that on top of all this the Government need to consider spending more money on education and propaganda than they do. We have campaigns at Christmas but throughout the rest of the year they are sparse. However, generally we very much welcome the White Paper.
3.32 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, for this debate. In a recent report it was estimated that alcohol consumption in Britain is set to double in the next 20 years with devastating social consequences. With the increase in car ownership, and busy roads, the combination can mean only disaster unless something positive is done to try to curb aggressive, dangerous driving which is stimulated by alcohol.
I am glad that the White Paper (on pages 6 and 7) includes the problem of drinking and driving. Since I chaired the committee on Young People, Alcohol and Crime I can assure your Lordships that by far the most heart-rending letters that I have received have been from people who have had members of their families killed by drunken drivers. There has been dismay by the families at some of the very lenient sentences. I am pleased that the Government agree that there needs to be a stronger response to the tragic outcome of the driver's actions. Can the Minister say when the new offence of causing death by careless driving while affected by drink, drugs or certain other forms of incapacity will come into operation? The White Paper states that it will carry the same maximum penalty as the present Section 1 offence: five years' imprisonment, an unlimited fine, and obligatory disqualification of at least two years.
I should like to say something about a fine. There are two groups of people for whom I feel a fine is not very suitable. One is the poor who, having no money, live on social security benefits. For years I have dealt with many young offenders in young offender institutions. They tell me that when they have no means of paying it, a fine is a passport to further crime. The other group are the very rich who can pay the fine off with little inconvenience and no hurt. It seems to me that, whoever they are and however good their counsel is, if these people have caused death by being drunk they should go to prison. For lesser offences it seems that there should be a more flexible choice of community service orders linked with rehabilitation. For some of the
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smart young men who leave court with a fine, having to do some really useful compulsory community service such as cleaning out down and out hostels and removing rubbish might be good for their souls and make them consider what they have done.
I should like to ask the Minister a question about disqualification from driving. At the present time if a person who has an international driving licence is disqualified in this country, can he still drive in countries other than Britain? If this is now the case, will this be changed in 1992 when Europe becomes more united? It seems strange that if a person is banned in England, he can drive in France.
On page 8 the White Paper states:
"The North Report recommended that licensing authorities should be able to take into account, in considering whether to renew a licence, any evidence that the licensee had persistently served alcohol to customers who went on to commit drink driving offences".
I agree that where possible motorists should be responsible for their own actions. But I have heard young people say that some publicans push the strong beer and lager at them and do not promote the less alcoholic drinks. I hope that the Government will look at this again. It seems that licensees need training and the ones who are not responsible need some encouragement to realise that their promotion of strong drink can lead to disaster involving innocent people.
Page 17 of the White Paper states:
"The Government considers that a major experiment in the use of retraining to influence attidudes towards alcohol and driving is necessary".
Who will run these courses? Will it be the Department of Transport, the Home Office, or a combination of both? Which department will pay?
I welcome this suggestion so long as the scheme is well thought out and funded. Many of the people who will need this rehabilitation will be young, irresponsible people who do not even have licences. Perhaps some of the courses can take place inside young offender institutions run by the probation service. However, I share disappointment with the AA—the Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous—over the fact that there seems to be no emphasis on training to be given in our schools in order to become a responsible driver and road user. So often this country tries to close the stable door after the horse has bolted.
The AA, along with many health education people and myself, felt at the time of the Education Reform Bill that emphasis should be put on the need for teaching the life skills in all our schools including teaching about the dangers of drink and drugs when driving. The AA and Tacade have brought out a pamphlet which is called Smart Thinking About Drinking which I am sure will help. However, only some schools are interested in such important subjects. We need to teach our young people to prevent these tragic accidents resulting in death or permanent injury.
Any of your Lordships visiting one of the seven spinal injury units in this country will know that road accidents are top of the list of causes of people breaking their necks and sustaining permanent

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injury. Prevention is better than cure: in these cases there is no cure.
I hope the Government realise that many people were disappointed that the amendment I moved at 5 a.m. during our discussion of the Education Reform Bill to have life skills taught in our schools was thought not to be necessary by the Government. Perhaps one day this Government, or another government, will realise the need to promote with great vigour the prevention of all accidents.
I hope that the Government will act on this White Paper. I wish to refer to some aspects that have not been mentioned. One requirement is to try to stop the frightening action of lorry drivers who sit on the tail of law-abiding car drivers. So big are the monster lorries that it becomes impossible to move out to pass in the fast lane as vision is obscured. Their drivers have become the bullies of the road. Because they are not allowed in the fast lane, they take it out on the poor car user. I hope that the Minister will do all he can to make our roads safer places.
Having just spent Easter in France, my noble kinsman and I commented on the very good state of French roads compared with our English roads. Good, safe roads, together with responsible road users, are very necessary.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I remember that I also commented to my noble kinswoman on the adverse way in which the French drove on those good roads.
3.42 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux for raising this important subject for debate after being successful in the ballot. He may recall that when the North Report was first published, I tabled a Question in the House drawing attention to it and commending its main recommendations. Noble Lords may be reminded of that because, in a supplementary question, I drew attention to cars speeding down narrow built-up streets with cars parked on each side. I felt that they could not all belong to doctors attending emergency cases or parliamentarians responding to urgent whips. It is only gracious that I should take part in the debate and applaud the fact that the Government propose to adopt most of the recommendations.
There seem to be two main principles in the North Report. The first is that the law should be made more effective concerning very bad driving offences and, secondly, that minor transgressions, which are not serious or dangerous, should increasingly be dealt with by police warning only. On the first of these principles the Government are proposing a new offence—probably to be called "dangerous driving"—to replace the term "reckless driving" in England and Wales. They say it may be necessary for this to be done in Scotland as well. As I am the first speaker in the debate who lives in Scotland, I urge the Government, if there is any doubt, to bring in the new offence in Scotland too.
I am glad to see that there are still to be the lesser offences of "driving without due care and attention"
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or "driving without consideration for other road users". I am glad to note that in future where a driver has been found not guilty of the more serious offence, he will not automatically thereby be acquitted of a less serious offence. Such changes are particularly needed in Scotland as well as in England or Wales.
At the other end of the scale, the second principle—the greater use in future of warnings for minor transgressions, preferably given on the spot—should help to improve the relations between the police and motorists. That should mean fewer bureaucratic and pedantic procedures.
Other noble Lords may join me in this opinion: as a parliamentarian driving a small car, I witness many more cases of dangerous and thoughtless driving than any policeman in a police car can. I am talking of my experience in Scotland and in the London area when I am here. The reason is that the police car can be detected from afar. One sees drivers quickly adjusting their speed or mode of driving. I warmly welcome therefore the proposals to use the latest technology, proposed in the North Report, to assist the police in monitoring traffic and catching offenders.
Cameras and measuring devices can be employed to detect speeding. Surely this is much to be preferred to police cars indulging in a chase, which only leads to further dangerous situations and higher speeds. Of course police cars may have to chase criminals, for example, the getaway car after a bank robbery. But it should not be necessary to chase individual motorists who are speeding. Cameras can also record the offence of crossing red traffic lights. New equipment for these purposes must be proved to be accurate and reliable. It must also earn the respect of Parliament and the public. The Automobile Association has pointed out that if possible the face of the driver should also be recorded. It is not enough for the registered number only to be recorded. The AA suggests that there have been cases in the past of conspiracy to shield the identity of a driver who may be disqualified. I realise that legislation may be necessary for these new pieces of equipment. I shall support it. I wish to encourage development of the new technology to obtain systems which cannot make mistakes and which will win the confidence of the public.
Speaking for myself, I should feel much safer and happier on the roads with such new equipment operating and deterring impatient and thoughtless drivers. Only this morning on my way to the House, another car narrowly missed my stationary car to go past and through a red light. I realise that the frustration of the traffic jams today caused by the Underground problem may have been one of the reasons. But that incident and others like it are alarming to me. I feel that I cannot allow myself to be involved in an accident or any incident of speeding or other lapse. So far I have been successful in this since I had my first licence over 50 years ago. Your Lordships will have guessed immediately that my reason for this attitude is that I have disabled legs. Indeed, I believe that it is more likely that

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someone who has disabilities will be a more careful driver and less likely to have an accident. That may seem a paradox, but it is probably true in general.
When I emerged from hospital after the war in 1946, I had in due course to take another driving test with specially fitted hand controls in the car. A car is essential to me in ordinary life because my walking capacity is limited. If I did not have a licence I should be greatly restricted. As noble Lords may have observed, I can get in and out of taxis only on hands and knees. I mention this personal situation; nonetheless I support fully the intention in the White Paper to enforce rules about medical or physical unfitness to drive. When a person can no longer safely control a vehicle that person should no longer be on the road. I am prepared to accept that if and when it happens to me.
I note that there is to be a new offence in respect of under-age driving. I trust that it is "new" because it will be more effective and will carry heavier penalties than under the present regime. Only last week the press reported the case of a 14-year-old boy driving on a motorway at 100 miles an hour. He had a head-on collision and caused the deaths of seven people, including himself. That kind of behaviour—allowing a child at the wheel of a car—I can describe only as "diabolical". We must try to make such behaviour impossible. Why should other road users be subjected to such a hazard?
I turn to disqualification. The North Report shows that in 1986 there were approximately 33,000 convictions of drivers who were on the road although disqualified. The North Committee estimated them to be about one-fifth of the total number of disqualified drivers at that time. It is clear that a great many drivers who are disqualified for one reason or another are still driving on the roads. I hope that the use of the new technology to which I have referred will be a deterrent, especially if there is acceptance of the recommendation that there should be a camera record of the identity of the driver.
I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted the recommendation that insurance against conviction for drunken driving offences should be made illegal. That should be carried out as soon as possible. There should be no way in which the effects of a conviction for that offence can be reduced. I refer also to driving under the influence of drugs.
I should like to say a few words about bicycles. I know that my noble friend Lord Strathcarron will probably speak about motorcycles, as he usually does. I am glad to see that the Government intend to retain the offences for cyclists. We, in this country, do not have special arrangements for separate cycling paths, as do the Netherlands and Denmark. They may be introduced. My guess is however that it will be a long time before they are widely available in this country.
Offences are committed by cyclists who, for example, ride two or more abreast in the most ridiculous places. Another example is cyclists coming in to a road from the left without looking. They appear to believe that there is a rule of the road which allows that. The only other explanation is
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that they believe that all four-wheel vehicles will automatically be more than two metres from the kerb. Perhaps the Government can do something to promote knowledge and education about such examples because it would greatly help. Bicycles are part of our life but they can cause extreme difficulties in close traffic if the riders do not know the simple rules of the road.
3.53 p.m.
Lord Strathcarron:My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux for initiating the debate. It is an important subject and one about which people often have biased and preconceived ideas. I welcome the White Paper as a whole, although I was disappointed that it did not mention bad eyesight as being a major cause of road accidents and fatalities.
The White Paper contains six paragraphs relating to drink driving. While no one could possibly condone that, figures show that of all fatal accidents only one-quarter are drink related and one-third of those are drunken pedestrians possibly solely responsible for their early demise. There could be a case for breathalysing drunken pedestrians if they reached three times the driver's limit, for example. After all, an innocent driver could be killed or injured while trying to avoid a drunken pedestrian.
My view has always been, and will always remain, that far more accidents are caused as a result of defective vision than alcohol. Whenever I have raised the subject the official reply has been that there are no figures to prove it. Of course there are not. I have never heard of a case where the driver's eyesight has been tested after an accident: breathalysed, yes; eye tested, no. I must conclude that the reason for the lapse is that to be over the limit is not respectable but to have poor eyesight is. Therefore no one is in the least bit interested in doing anything about it.
While on the subject of eyesight and visibility, I was pleased to read that the Department of. Transport, in its road safety publicity programme, proposes to make conspicuity the focus of a campaign in November.
In some countries the elderly and children are encouraged to wear reflective discs below waist level so that they can be seen by motorists using dipped headlights. When motorcycling I always wear a yellow fluorescent heavy-duty anorak, as worn by the police and people working on motorways. A cheaper and just as effective a method for being seen in the half light is to wear a fluorescent belt and diagonal shoulder straps. They are available for anyone to buy at a modest cost. It has been estimated that 30 per cent. of all road accidents involving injuries occur at night, so being seen is most important.
Turning to other aspects of the White Paper, I welcome the fact that some offences are dealt with by written warnings. However, of the 8.9 million alleged offences only 2 per cent. of motorists received warnings. That is a small percentage indeed. I believe that it was the Lancashire Police who, before the war, mounted a campaign to advise motorists rather than to prosecute them; they were called "courtesy

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cops". That was most successful and did much to enhance the relationship between the police and motorists.
As regards construction and use, I am pleased to note that vehicle defective rectification schemes are to continue. I note that 300,000 notices were issued in 1987. If a defect occurs between MOTs the motorist may not be aware of it. In the majority of cases he will welcome the chance to put it right without being prosecuted. It also helps to seal the relationship between motorists and the police, which I believe to be of the utmost importance.
The report contains little about motorcycling, apart from penalty points for unlawfully carrying a motorcycle passenger, which will be increased from one point to three. I believe that to be acceptable and I am pleased that no further restrictions are recommended for motorcyclists. Apart from the fact that there is no mention of eyesight testing, I welcome the White Paper.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I should like to thank—
3.58 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, I believe that I am first on the list. I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux for introducing the government review of the North Report. I should like to congratulate all three Ministries on the review. It does not implement in full the North Report. However, when I first read the report, I considered that we were going down many roads much too quickly and were almost a danger to the public. Therefore, I should like to congratulate the Government on the White Paper before us today. I can also say, with its authority, that the Magistrates' Association extends a warm welcome to the review as it is now. In my view it is both comprehensive and complicated. It does much good in many of the spheres we are debating.
There are 8.9 million alleged offences each year on the roads in this country. That is a vast number. Of these 2.1 million, or 24 per cent., are dealt with through court proceedings—the sphere in which we are mostly interested today. In passing, I should like to say to my noble friend Lord Strathcarron that yet again he brings the eyesight problem before your Lordships' House. As he knows very well, many of us have done the same over the years. We are still amazed that the Department of Transport does not seem able to realise that defective eyesight is a major cause of accidents.
Drinking and driving is, because of its terrible consequences, a major concern of the White Paper we are discussing today. We are told that as many as 25,000 cases—roughly one-tenth of total road accidents—may be caused by drinking and driving. Therefore, I welcome the new offence of causing death by careless driving; namely, where the driver is affected by drink, drugs or certain other forms of incapacity. The deterrent sentence of five years is of course a maximum and unfortunately magistrates and judges, when such a case reaches them, are
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very loath to impose the maximum deterrent on the defendant. There is also an unlimited fine, which I imagine is supposed to accord with the defendant's means, and there is also mandatory disqualification. I believe that that is very welcome indeed.
The disqualification mentioned in paragraph 2.45 of the White Paper is to be welcomed. I should like to direct the Minister's attention to paragraph 2.38 and the Bail Act. If a magistrates' court decides to convict a defendant of a charge which disqualifies him from driving and takes away his licence, I understand that—this certainly used to be the case—if he is found guilty and appeals, he may ask the magistrates whether, pending the Crown Court hearing, he can have his licence back or continue to use it. I believe that that is wrong. I think that if one is disqualified and found guilty of drinking and driving and one then elects to go to the Crown Court on appeal, one should have one's licence taken away in the interim period, which, unfortunately, could be a very long one, as we all know.
I also welcome the points differential. That has been raised from 8 points to 10 points for failing to stop after an accident. That may seem to many people a heavy points fine, but I am informed by the police that many motorists have slight accidents which do not impair the use of the car and then go away, having been drunk at the time. Perhaps the 10 points may serve as a deterrent.
I also welcome the written warnings. If you are apprehended by an officer in uniform and that officer says, "I have seen you driving in an erratic manner", or, "I have seen you driving dangerously" or whatever, and he gives you a friendly but fairly—and I think the two can be amalgamated—severe warning instead of taking you to court, I believe that that will be a deterrent for the car driver and it will also save a lot of court time.
Cameras have already been referred to. I am sure that, if the public realise that the cameras have been thoroughly tested by the departments concerned, they will be accepted, and I am quite certain that they will be a deterrent. One often sees glass in the middle of a road at a crossroads indicating that there has probably been an accident caused by somebody jumping the lights. Given a camera, those people could be caught
I am so glad that the Government did not go down the road of increasing the possibility of clamping as the North Report advised, because I have seen—as I am sure have other noble Lords—cars clamped in ridiculous positions where they cause far more trouble than if they were simply removed.
I should like to refer to two problems faced by the magistrates' courts, where all the offences with which we are dealing today will start their lives. I am told that there are over 100 vacancies for court clerks. That does not appear to be very many but it means that the courts in question cannot sit. Whether or not the court clerk has officially passed his exams, without a clerk the magistrates' court cannot sit. Therefore, those vacancies mean that a great deal of time has to be wasted and that the defendant too has to wait much longer than he perhaps should before his case comes to court.

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Also, the Crown Prosecution Service will have a problem in dealing with some drinking and driving offences. It does not see the defendant and has not witnessed the accident, and I believe that it faces much difficulty. There have been many cases where the wrong charges have been brought. I do not lay any blame. Perhaps it is because there is too little experience but certainly throughout the country the Crown Prosecution Service is not, however hard it tries, as good as we all hoped it would be when it was introduced.
I believe that this review and the impending legislation will deter and will also, because it deters, reduce the number of accidents—and that, after all, is the end product which we all desire.
4.8 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, perhaps I may first apologise to the noble Baroness for trying to jump in ahead of her, as a result of having lost my most up-to-date pair of glasses. Perhaps I may also thank the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, for making this debate possible.
In any discussion on road traffic laws it is worth remembering that the United Kingdom has almost the lowest road accident fatality rate in the entire world, and which has steadily declined year by year over a long period. That puts some of the shrieking headlines of the "Stop this Road Carnage" variety into perspective.
It is also worth noting that 50 or 55 years ago, when there were 17 or 18 times as many fatalities per vehicle on the road as there are today, there was very little worry or concern expressed by the government, the press or the general public. Were the Britons of 40, 50 or 60 years ago exceptionally callous, or is it that today we are exceptionally safety obsessed? It is interesting to speculate. Having said that, nobody would quarrel with the Government's wish to reduce vehicle road accident casualties by one-third by the year 2000 provided that it can be done without economic dislocation or excessive interference with personal liberty.
I now come to the specific recommendations of the White Paper. Last year the Government were good enough to accept my proposal that the minimum period of disqualification for causing death by reckless driving should be raised from one year to two years. I am, therefore, naturally glad that the new minimum disqualification period of two years is being extended (paragraph 2.13) to cases where dangerous driving results in a manslaughter conviction. It is also good that the law is being tightened up in order to counter the unexpected difficulties that have been found in practice in the interpretation of the word "reckless".
Particularly interesting to my mind is paragraph 2.31, intended to deal with people who are unfit to drive a motor vehicle by reason of temporary incapacity due to "fatigue, somnolence or temporary disability". I have long felt that a large number of accidents happen as a result of drivers falling asleep at the wheel, though obviously very few drivers are quite so silly as subsequently to admit that to the police for fear of losing their licences.
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We then come to the emotive topic of drink-driving. The trouble in that respect is that a substantial section of the public has been led to believe that if drink and driving were to be totally divorced nobody would ever again be killed or injured on our roads. However, government statistics indicate that only 19 per cent. of fatalities and 10 per cent. of injuries on the roads can be ascribed to drink. Even those statistics may be suspect; in other words, exaggerated.
Let us take the case of a driver who is slightly over the limit and has stopped at an intersection, where the traffic lights are red, with his handbrake on. Coming up fast behind him is another driver, perfectly sober but who has just had a flaming row with his wife and is accordingly not looking where he is going. He crashes into the back of the stationary car; people are injured, possibly seriously. The police arrive, breathalyse everyone concerned and naturally find that the stationary driver is over the limit. Is it not highly likely that such an accident would be listed in the statistics as one involving drink, even though drink clearly played no part whatever in causing it?
Mr. Auberon Waugh sometimes goes over the top—indeed, he frequently does—but he is surely right in claiming that the present drink-driving hysteria is well on its way to ruining social life in the country, where people have to drive 20, 30 or 40 miles to a dinner, Sunday lunch, a wedding reception or whatever. For obvious reasons the situation is not quite so bad in urban areas.
That brings me to the question of random breath tests delicately touched upon in paragraph 2.46. Frankly, the idea of consultation is something of a cop-out. Why not have public consultation over water privatisation or the re-introduction of the death penalty? If the Government are thinking of introducing random breath tests, they should be prepared to incur the odium themselves and not seek to shuffle the responsibility on to the public at large. I very much hope that they will not do so. Just as the searching of young people in the streets—the "sus" law as it was known—led to great hostility towards the police on the part of young people, so random breath tests will lead to greater hostility towards the police on the part of motorists at large. There would be humiliation, or at any rate indignity. There would be missed trains, missed planes, missed job interviews and missed business appointments. For people suffering from chronic middle ear or sinus trouble the effort of blowing hard into a tube could cause distress and possibly pain and in many instances almost certainly aggravate the condition.
What is more, random breath tests do not show the presence of drugs. Approximately 12 years ago a doctor friend assured me that more road accidents were caused by drugs than by drink. He was not only referring to illegal drugs—for example, cannabis, which was smoked much more widely than it is today—but to perfectly legal and often prescribed drugs such as painkillers, anti-histamines and, above all, tranquillisers. It will be interesting to hear the Government's reply to that assertion on the part of my doctor friend.

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I now refer to the offence of failing to stop after an accident. This offence ranges from the extremely serious, where a person is killed or injured—the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, referred to this—to the extremely trivial, where in the dead of night a motorist reverses into a gate post and knocks off a flake of paint the size of a thumb nail. All the more pity, therefore, that the Government have seen fit to introduce such a narrow penalty points band of between eight and ten. I urge them to reconsider and permit the same seven-point spread as applies to the offence of careless driving.
I am not happy about the proposals in Chapter 4 for forfeiture. Where a large fine in the region of £1,000, £5,000 or £10,000 is justified, it should be imposed openly and not in a roundabout manner by the offender having to forfeit his car. On the use of cameras, until such time as speed limits are more realistic, I am not happy at the suggestion that they should be used to catch speeding motorists. But if they are used merely to catch people jumping red lights, I have no objection at all and would heartily endorse such a suggestion. Re-testing should not be used purely as a punishment but only when justified by a consistent record of bad driving. Above all, the proposal to abolish penalty points in cases of car theft and taking cars without consent is surely wrong, particularly in view of the number of deaths caused by joy-riders in stolen cars in recent weeks, about which we have all read.
Not everything can be achieved by legislation. There is a great deal that the police can do to enforce the existing law more rigorously within the present penalty structure. One has in mind the tens of thousands of people who drive without lights in conditions of poor visibility, who bunch together far too closely on motorways and dual carriageways at speeds of 70 miles per hour plus and who drive through red lights, as has already been mentioned. This offence is particularly prevalent today since compulsory seat belts have made drivers feel more secure and over-confident and hence often inattentive. Above all, the law on the carrying of insecure loads should be much more rigorously enforced. Goods vehicles—indeed, passenger vehicles—which carry insecure loads present a terrible danger to motorists and motorcyclists who are following behind them.
Finally, the Government themselves have a most important responsibility, quite distinct from legislative action against faulty driving. The very worst accidents are those involving vehicles colliding at combined speeds of 140 or 150 miles per hour. The Government should resolve to proceed with all haste to ensure that impregnable safety barriers are erected along the length of central reservations of every motorway and dual carriageway in the country.
4.18 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the Motion of my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux reminds us that certain parts of the North Report have already been implemented and the changes that we discussed some months ago came before us on
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1st March. At the time we discussed those changes in this House my noble friend the Minister told us that he would put in place a mechanism for monitoring the effects of the changes. I hope that this afternoon he can tell the House a little more about the mechanism.
My noble friends Lord Strathcarron and Lady Macleod of Borve referred to eye tests, which is a subject we have debated in this House on many occasions. The last time on which I exchanged views with my noble friend who is on the Front Bench this afternoon he said that he would ensure that, of the millions of pounds that had been set aside for further research into motoring matters, he would try to ensure that some was used for gathering the information that my noble friend Lord Strathcarron called for. I wonder whether this afternoon he can tell us anything further about that.
In the earlier remarks of my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux he drew attention to the anomaly that arises in the government White Paper between the five-year term of imprisonment for causing death by careless driving with a drink involvement (referred to in paragraphs 2.26 and 2.29) and the seven-year term of imprisonment for endangering other road users (referred to in paragraphs 3.2 and 3.3). That seems to make nonsense of causing death while being drunk. I am tempted to suggest that perhaps that causing of death could be looked into by your Lordships' Committee which is considering the question of murder at the moment—because causing death by driving while drunk is just that. I believe that it is not unwise to use such a description because of the serious nature of the offence.
The North Report speaks about one in four disqualified drivers who flout the law and who apparently get away with it. It is an extremely difficult offence to detect and it is almost by chance that a disqualified driver is caught unless another offence has been committed. When we come to deal with a Bill containing this and other matters, we should look at that question very carefully. I perceive, as I believe also did my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy and the noble Lord, Lord Monson, some difficulties as regards paragraph 2.31, which relates to the new offence of being unfit to drive due to fatigue, somnolence or temporary disability. That will be extremely difficult to prove I envisage an enormous schedule having to be devised so that people can understand when they may or may not be committing an offence.
The White Paper also proposes what can only be described as a return to the offence of dangerous driving. The definitions of reckless and careless driving are to be changed. I believe that that in turn will cause precisely the same difficulties which we experienced in 1930 and onwards and which brought about changes later on. If I recall correctly, there were cases where the magistrates of their own volition reduced the offence to the lower one because they had the power to do so, or they entered into some kind of plea bargaining. I cannot conceive that as regards motoring offences or any offences at all we would wish to enter into plea bargaining. I do not

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believe that the definition set out in the White Paper is clear or objective as to what is intended.
I wish to pose a question to the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, and perhaps he can give me the answer after the debate. He made the rather sweeping statement that the chance of a driver with an overloaded lorry being caught happens once in four years. I wonder where he gets that information. My experience in the haulage industry suggests otherwise. He also suggested that we might use wardens for policing duties. I hope that we do not get into the very dangerous practice of using other bodies for what are essentially policing duties. In this country we have been able to maintain one police force, though I know it is broken up into different areas. We have refused to have a separate traffic police force, a motorway police force and so on. I hope that the Government will not be persuaded that they should in any way change the structure of the police.
The Association of Chief Police Officers has now asked that the police should have unfettered powers for breath testing. That is a point that the noble Lord, Lord Monson, raised. In his statement in another place on 1st February the Home Secretary invited consultation and opinions on three points. It is right and proper that he should do so. The three alternatives were to make no change to the existing powers, to consolidate the existing powers or to introduce unrestricted powers to require a breath test. Public opinion has changed greatly about drink-driving offences. The police have totally adequate powers in current legislation—though the two parts are separate in the Act. The police authorities have now decided that public opinion is such that they can go for additional powers.
There is a certain ignorance by the public of the powers contained in existing legislation. Those powers give the police all that is necessary. We should stay with the existing powers and consolidate them for ease of understanding. I do not believe that in matters of this kind the police should be given unfettered discretion subject only to a code of practice or guidelines. They should work within the law as set down, not subject to codes of practice.
The other question I wish to raise this afternoon concerns imperatives. I can guess what my noble friend will say if I ask him when we can expect legislation on the White Paper. I shall save him the embarrassment of giving me the stock answer by not asking the question. However, I urge on him the imperative need, for all the reasons given by noble Lords in this short debate and by the public in general, to make yet another onslaught on road safety and fatal and serious injury incidents where motor vehicles and pedestrians are concerned. That imperative is great. I hope that he will use his very best endeavours to ensure that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport secures a legislative slot for this necessary legislation at the earliest possible time.
4.29 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, the House will be obliged to my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux
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for having initiated this very timely debate. I have a dual interest to disclose. I am a fairly longstanding honorary vice-president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, though safety in the home was my original forte, and a newly elected honorary president of the College of Driver Education.
One of the main aims of the college is to educate learner drivers. There is a great deal of concern about the proliferation of driving schools at the present time. I would be the last person to launch an attack on driving schools, many of which are extremely reputable, but one has only to travel in a built-up area at a busy time to see a car driven by a young learner driver with an instructor who singularly fails to persuade the driver to keep to the left of the road. The traffic is thereby held up. This proliferates the offences which are largely the subject of the interesting report by Dr. North.
I wonder whether the Government will consider putting greater emphasis on subjecting driving schools to more frequent inspections. I cannot help thinking that there is a link between the number of accidents caused by inexperienced drivers and the fact that in the late 1980s some of the driving schools are not of the same standard as existed 30 years ago, although of course there is far more traffic on the roads now than there was at that time.
Since I was the victim of a mugging attack some 10 years ago I have not driven a motor car. I did not drive a great deal before then. This has given me more opportunity to see for myself some of the things which happen on the road. My wife is an experienced driver and a magistrate and therefore has a special responsibility to drive carefully, which she does. I should like to follow my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy in referring to cyclists. For many years I was a keen cyclist. It is an admirable and healthy pastime. It brings one to one's destination quickly, and, as I say, is a healthy form of exercise. However, too many young people cycle without lights and proper brakes. They do not have to carry insurance. In Surrey where I live I see youngsters of eight and nine cycling without lights around country roads. They could cause serious accidents.
A few years ago I was knocked down in London by a cyclist. A youngster of about 16 overshot the lights. I was not badly hurt but I lost a good deal of blood. The accident could have been very much worse but it would have been difficult to prosecute him. If the person involved had been eiderly or disabled the consequences would have been too dire to contemplate. The paragraph in the report about cyclists is a valuable one. I notice that the penalties have been increased. It is a difficult matter to enforce but it will be one for the law authorities to follow up as far as they possibly can.
Paragraph 4.23 has come in for some discussion. Six months' imprisonment is an inadequate sentence for this offence. A person must know if he or she has hit somebody. The impact of hitting a human being is enormous. I hope that some consideration will be given to increasing the sentence in this respect, especially if the driver involved is trying to avoid a breath test.

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The contents of the report are in themselves valuable. Enforcement will be the most important test. The magistrates' courts will have an important responsibility. I do not agree with the rather dismissive views of the noble Lord, Lord Monson, on the number of road accidents in this country. There may be fewer than in France but there are still 4,000 to 5,000 too many. The committee chaired by Dr. North has produced a valuable report and I hope that its proposals will be enforced as soon as possible.
4.35 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, on his good fortune in having been successful in the ballot and thank him for giving us the chance to talk about both the North Report and the Government's White Paper, both of which are admirable in many ways, although from my point of view—perhaps some noble Lords will not agree with me—in one respect the North Report, and not so much the Government's White Paper, falls rather short of what I should have liked. I refer to the areas relating to alcohol and to drinking and driving.
It is curious that of the two briefing papers which I received from two major motoring organisations—presumably other noble Lords taking part in the debate will have also received them—one made no mention of drinking and driving. The other, to be fair, mentioned it a good deal. This highlights in a way, as did some of the speeches this afternoon, a reluctance to get to grips wih the problem of drinking and driving. It is this point which compels me to concentrate my speech on drinking and driving.
One cannot ignore the magnitude of the problem. I cannot go along with the noble Lord, Lord Monson, on this point, or with the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, although I agree with him about concentrating on eyesight. As a fellow motorcyclist, I know how important that is. With motorcycling drink and riding, as distinct from drink and driving, is a serious problem, especially among young people.
If the figures have not improved in the past few months, we can expect three people a day to die as a result of contact with a drunk driver. That is more, statistics tell us, than will be murdered in a day. Another 55 men, women or children will be seriously injured. That is more, if one agrees with current statistics, than will be mugged or assaulted in the streets of Britain today. In the past eight years 137,000 people have been killed or injured. That is because drivers have had too much to drink and have caused a fatal accident.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, would the noble Viscount give way for a moment? I am grateful to him. We have more time than we expected but I shall take up only a minute. It is simply to say that the North Report does not go into the drinking side of offences because the committee was not asked to. I agree with what the noble Viscount said, but to be fair to the North Committee, in its conclusions on page 276, paragraph 23.7, it says:
"The specific drink driving offences are not matters which we have been asked to examine; but a number of our recommendations, taken together, should have a significant impact on drinking and driving".
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The Government in their White Paper have of course gone further, as they said, and taken in more on the drinking offences side. But I thought that to be fair to the North Committee one should make it clear that it was not asked to look into drinking and driving offences.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. He is absolutely right. Perhaps it was my passion about the subject, but I agree with him that the Government have taken this up and their recommendations and proposals are highly acceptable. I hope that they will even go further than they do in the White Paper.
The police use of the breathalyser has helped, and also the Government with their advertising campaign have had a significant effect on drinking and driving. Nevertheless the costs—which I think are again accepted by the Minister's department—are quite staggering. Each fatal accident costs society half a million pounds. One can see that the cost of any innovative scheme that reduces the number of fatalities resulting from drinking and driving must be set against this staggering figure. Of course the total drink-driving bill in this country in terms of days lost in production, demands on the health service and damage to property runs to somewhere around £50 million or £60 million a year.
I am disappointed also that the Government in their White Paper have not shown an indication that they will go further into the examination of the nature of drink and driving in this country. It is connected with our alcohol culture, which varies somewhat from that of other countries but is similar to that of many other developed indusitrial countries and many of our neighbours. In many respects we are better than other countries. France has a horrifying record of death as a result of drink, but generally the social patterns connected with it are somewhat different. Having spoken recently to some French friends, I believe that accidents are common in France as a result of people eating in restaurants and drinking wine. They come out not necessarily in a drunken state, and not necessarily with a very high blood alcohol content but nevertheless in a soporific state in which they are not paying attention, and that often results in fatal and horrifying accidents.
Of course in this country attention has been concentrated on young people—often what we call the young, semi-skilled male who drinks lager, and plenty of it. He goes out in his car and has an accident which could be fatal or could cause serious injury. The Government's campaign targeted against these people has had some success. However, we must not forget that just under half of the total number of accidents are attributable to people over the age of 30, and many of these people have identifiable drink problems—not driving problems, but drink problems. This is an area in which there is some confusion in this country. Drink and driving are seen as a driving problem rather than a drinking problem.
In some ways our neighbouring countries, particularly Germany, have gone a lot further than we have in tackling the problem and in setting up a system

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whereby offenders who have offended more than once, and where an accident or a fatality has resulted, have to undergo treatment. This is paid for at their own expense, which gives plenty of motivation to the subject. Their problem is analysed sensibly by psychiatrists and other trained people, and they are put on a course that has produced significant results in Germany. In fact it has reduced by about one-third the number of offences which are recommitted, so that recidivism in Germany has been significantly reduced.
The cultural background to drink and driving has not been properly tackled. There are one or two isolated surveys. Indeed the Nottinghamshire accident study, which took place some time ago, revealed that 50 per cent. of drinkers were classified as heavy drinkers. This is under the recognised scale of definition, the general household survey definition, which relies on numbers of units. About 25 per cent. were moderate drinkers and 23 per cent. were frequently light drinkers. The heavy drinkers were, more often than not, people with a drinking problem who required help in their life generally rather than just in the area of their driving.
What is clear from this and other studies is that the association of drink driving with drink problems is very much more serious and much wider than people thought. If I am right, an offender who had been twice caught with two and a half times the allowable level of alcohol, or who had refused to take a breath test, or had one offence of each kind, was considered to be a dangerous, high-risk offender. I certainly welcome the Wakeham Committee's decision to ask the Department of Transport to consider extending the defnition so that drivers who have two or more disqualifications for drink-driving will be required to satisfy the licensing authority before they got their licence back that they did not have a drink problem. That is a welcome suggestion, and I hope that this will be seen in future legislation.
To sum up, I think that drink is a major problem. It has been tackled and it is reducing, but the attitude of the country at large needs to be changed towards drinking and driving. That should start in the schools. I hope that the Government will support any moves to increase teaching in schools about the harm that can come from abuse of alcohol, in particular in connection with driving. I would ask them again to look closely at the German experiment to see whether we cannot produce a system that goes some way to treating people and finding out the background of offenders so that they could be taken off the roads to prevent future offences.
4.48 p.m.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking Dr. Peter North and his colleagues for carrying out this review of road traffic law, which involved some 55 meetings, and for presenting at the end of the day a first-class and excellent report of that review. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux, for his timely debate, which has enabled us to not only debate the review report but also the Government's White Paper.
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I am generally in agreement with the main conclusions of the review report and the great majority of the 137 recommendations, although there are some exceptions with which I shall endeavour to deal in my short speech. The same principle applies to the Government White Paper. In general one can agree with its main points, but again there are some points on which I shall show some disagreement. Generally the motoring bodies take a somewhat similar view of the Government's White Paper.
We have heard details of road casualties, and I shall not weary the House by going through them again. However, it should not be overlooked that the latest figure announced by the Department of Transport only a few days ago showed that there are now 23.3 million registered vehicles on our roads. That gives some indication of the problem with which we are faced. One has a large number of points with which to deal, especially as there are 137 recommendations in the North Report; but I shall be able to deal with only one or two.
At the outset perhaps I may ask whether much of what is now proposed will be upset by proposals being considered by the European Commission. Noble Lords will have seen the Guardian newspaper of 27th March which carried a report of the proposals being considered by the Commission which could have a far-reaching effect on our existing law and the Government's White Paper proposals. Ministers have made certain comments about the Commission's proposals, but what is the real position? Perhaps the Minister will tell us when he comes to wind up. As other speakers have said, while the Minister can give us no definite assurance, I should like to emphasise, as have other noble Lords, that we must have legislation on that matter in the next Session. The position is too serious for it to be put off. There is sufficent time for the Government to consider legislation, especially as when the North report was first issued the Government said that they had made their decision on many of the proposals. Draft legislation must therefore be available for implementation, especially if the Government are going to carry out their praise worthy objective of reducing road casualties by one-third by the year 2000.
The Government have stated that they intend to issue a clear and simple guide to traffic law to complement a planned revision of the Highway Code. I believe that that is vital. That is another reason to have legislation next Session. Road traffic law deals with congestion and road safety. The Minister may give the same answer as he has previously given: that it will be as and when legislative time allows. We must have early legislation on the Horne Report (which was published as far back as November 1985) to deal with street works. They have a considerable effect on congestion and road safety.
I have taken three quotations from three paragraphs in the North Report which are worth repeating. I put the three together:
"The bulk of road traffic law aims largely to avoid accidents rather than enforce".

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"Unfortunately road traffic law often fails nevertheless to prevent bad driving".
North,
"see road traffic law as an instrument to promote good driving by discouraging bad driving".
I was then somewhat surprised to see paragraph 2.29:
"There is little firm information on the contribution which road traffic law and its enforcement make to road safety, the free flow of traffic and the preservation of amenity".
The report refers to some limited research which is being undertaken on those matters, but urges that there must be more research. If what North says on that matter is correct, extensive research must be undertaken in the not too distant future. North also said:
"No law will be truly effective if it fails to command the confidence of the community".
All noble Lords will agree with that statement. It would appear also to be the Government's aim as set out in their White Paper proposals. If that is to apply, there must be enforcement. It is useless to have good laws if they are not properly enforced because that reduces their value to the community. Enforcement means that the Government must ensure that there are adequate resources—that is, police resources and, where necessary, resources for the local authorities.
The North review paid a great deal of attention to the consequences of offences and whether one should bear in mind the driver's state of mind. North states that the one objective test should be that of bad driving. A number of noble Lords have referred to the Government's decision to change the present offence of reckless driving to dangerous driving.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, referred to one of the two ingredients involved in the standard of driving, which the Government have said they will follow and which at present apply in Scotland. He quoted that ingredient; but a second ingredient was mentioned in the White Paper:
"The driving must carry a potential or actual danger of physical injury or serious damage to property".
The North review did not refer to the types of risk which might result from very bad driving. It would appear that that omission was intentional. It was considered that there would be a danger that a new very bad driving offence might be difficult to establish. In the light of what the North review said, why has that criterion been added?
Other questions are being asked: will the new offence of dangerous driving have sufficient impact on the driving public? Does it give a clear message of deterrence to the public? Will not the Government's proposal leave too great a gap between bad driving and careless driving, especially as in the White Paper the Government declare their intention to retain the lesser offence of driving without due care and attention?
Although I want early legislation, that change from reckless to dangerous driving will require careful consideration, and I hope that that will be given without holding up the legislation.
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Noble Lords have referred to the use of new technology with the introduction of cameras for speeding and traffic light offences. Speeding can of course be a dangerous offence; but nothing can be worse than the jumping of traffic lights. I travel from the suburbs to the House every day, and I see that going on at crossing after crossing even where there is a yellow box traffic system. Frankly, that is something which needs urgent attention. If there is to be public acceptance of and confidence in the use of such equipment, there must be a recognised standard. We must avoid what took place concerning radar equipment. That took pressure on three occasions—in Committee, on Report and Third Reading—before the Government decided that a standard of equipment must be established and that it must be approved by the Secretary of State. Clearly, the standard must be one which is laid down and approved by the Secretary of State.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, referred to the necessity of identifying the driver. That is clearly necessary because unless the camera can identify the driver, there will be difficulty in prosecuting cases. It may not always be practicable for the car to be stopped immediately. If it can be done, then the driver can be identified. I believe that both motoring organisations accept the principle of the use of the new technology. It has been urged, especially by the AA, that if it is intended to prosecute, a notice should be sent by recorded delivery within 48 hours. That is essential in the interests of natural justice both for the prosecuting police and for the individual concerned.
All I shall say about drink and driving is that in general I support the White Paper proposals on that important matter. I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, that the public are gradually becoming more vigilant on the question of drinking and driving. That is a healthy sign. Despite the fact that it was not in the terms of reference, I was surprised that the White Paper makes no reference to random testing. The Government were not committed to consider in their White Paper only what North considered. They could consider proposals for the reform of road traffic law as they thought fit. The matter of breath testing is dealt with in the North report in paragraphs 3.8 and 3.9. It seems to me that they approve of the view of the Association of Chief Police Officers that present police powers are sufficient, and that the police will not require random testing because they can always do that now if they so wish.
I note, as other noble Lords have said, that paragraph 2.46 of the White Paper indicates again that the Secretary of State is to carry out consultation on the matter. I hope that the consultation will proceed fairly quickly. I believe that many sections of the public are prepared to adopt random testing if a sound case can be made out and if testing can be exercised by the police in the correct and proper manner.
I also accept what the Government White Paper says on the proposals for rehabilitation of convicted drink drivers. It is proposed in the White Paper that such schemes in selected areas be carried out over a

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period of at least five years, in order to enable a proper evaluation to be made.
However, no reference is made in the White Paper to complementing this with a similar experiment in schools in the same selected areas. I wish to support what has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and by the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, on the need for education. While that may not be considered a matter for the road traffic law, I hope that the Government will have something to say on education concerning the general effects of alcohol, and that road safety should be included in the core curriculum subjects in schools. Looking back, I understand that the 1967 White Paper on road safety proposed that road safety should be taught in the schools. Here we are, 20 years later, with not the slightest reference to it in the present government White Paper.
The only other point to which I wish to refer is that I cannot understand why the White Paper supports the rejection of the North proposal that the clamping and removal of vehicles should be extended to unlicensed vehicles or where there are outstanding fines against the registered owner. Paragraph 5.10 of the White Paper argues that such extension runs the risk of undermining public acceptance of the need and desirability of clamping, and removal of vehicles. There are 23 million vehicles, and I am sure that most of the driving public strongly resent that some owners get away with not paying for their car licences and also with not paying their fines, although they have properly been found guilty in a court of law.
In conclusion, perhaps I may say that my attention has been drawn to complaints that the decision to clamp or remove a vehicle is not always under the direct supervision of a police officer. I understand that in a letter to the AA the Metropolitan Police have admitted that clamping and removal is being authorised by the police on the telephone to the appointed contractor. I would draw attention to a statement made by the then Minister of State of the Department of Transport, Mrs. Lynda Chalker, on 26th October in another place. She said:
"the constable on duty must always be in charge and supervise the uniformed vehicle removal officers".—[Official Report, Commons, 26/10/82; col. 952.]
That is the contractors. I understand that in the 12 month period from October 1987 to September 1988 the charge payable following vehicle removal was waived or refunded in no fewer than 2,292 cases. Why, my Lords? Are we to assume that the police procedures or the police interpretation of the law is radically at fault, and that is why it had to be done?
Finally, these procedures for clamping and removal must be led by the police themselves, directing the clamping and removal contractors. With those criticisms, by and large I welcome the White Paper and look forward to early legislation.
5.4 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord
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Brougham and Vaux for enabling us to discuss this very important package of proposals. I know from my noble friend's work as president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents that he shares the Government's concerns on road safety and I am grateful to that organisation for its support for the measures described in the White Paper.
With other noble Lords, I would like to pay tribute to the work of Dr. Peter North, who chaired the Road Traffic Law Review, and his members, whose report led to the publication of the White Paper. The Government accepted the great majority of Dr. North's proposals in publishing the White Paper and I am pleased to say that the measures proposed continue to receive generous support from a very wide range of individuals and organisations. I am sure that Dr. North will appreciate the debate held today and your Lordships' expressions of support for his recommendations.
The proposals in the White Paper should be seen as a major part of the Government's wider package of road safety initiatives, which was set out in the road safety review report of May 1987, Road Safety: The Next Steps. As such they will make a very significant contribution towards achieving the main objective of the review, which is to reduce the number of road casualties by one-third by the year 2000, from their present levels of over 5,000 deaths and 300,000 injuries. The underlying intention is that the proposals should improve the structure of road traffic law and thus make it more comprehensible and acceptable to both road users and those whose job it is to enforce the law.
It may be helpful to your Lordships if I briefly outline some of the major proposals in the White Paper. Many noble Lords have mentioned the dangerous driving provisions. The existing "reckless" driving offence, which has given rise to difficulties of interpretation in courts in England and Wales, will be replaced by one of "dangerous" driving. The new offence will be based on the objective tests of whether the bad driving created a danger and whether the standard of driving fell far below that expected of a careful and competent driver. This will relieve the courts of their present burden of trying to establish the driver's state of mind at the time of the offence.
Moreover, our approach follows helpful precedents in Scotland where "reckless" has been interpreted more objectively and has therefore not given rise to the same problems in bringing successful prosecutions. They are designed to ensure that the new offence does not catch the driver who makes the kind of careless error which all drivers are likely to make from time to time.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, asked why the period of disqualification for causing death by dangerous driving is only two years whereas the period of imprisonment is five years. The period of two years' disqualification is the minimum period which must be imposed. The five year period of imprisonment is of course the maximum penalty. It is open to the courts to impose a longer period of disqualification, extending up to life, if they consider the circumstances merit it.

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There will be a new offence to catch those who intentionally obstruct roads or interfere with road traffic regulation devices. Noble Lords have referred to a possible disparity between the maximum penalty for this offence of seven years' imprisonment and the maximum sentences for other offences. The maximum of seven years is set in recognition of the wilful nature of the offence and its potentially extreme consequences and reflects the recommendation made by the Criminal Law Revision Committee.
On the subject of drink driving, to which so many noble Lords have referred, the White Paper demonstrates the seriousness with which the Government regard those who drive while over the limit, in particular those who do so and whose bad driving causes death. In 1986 some 950 road users were killed in accidents where at least one driver or rider was over the limit. This represents one-fifth of all road fatalities. Overall, some 25,000 casualties resulted from drink/drive accidents—approximately one-tenth of all road casualties.
The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, stressed the need for government action to tackle drink problems. I can assure noble Lords that we take the matter very seriously. Much work is being done, co-ordinated by the Ministerial Group on Alcohol Misuse which is chaired by my right honourable friend the Lord President. There will be a new offence of causing death by careless driving while unfit through drink, drugs or certain other forms of medical incapacity. In order to recognise the wilful nature of the offence, it will carry a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment. The Government announced a period of public consultation on 1st February on possible changes to police powers to administer breath tests throughout Great Britain, to which a number of noble Lords have referred. Decisions will be taken in the light of the responses to the consultation which ends on 30th April.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Monson, disapproves of this consultation. However, noble Lords may be interested to know that so far over 2,000 people have taken the opportunity to make their views known. The comments that have been made in your Lordships' House this afternoon will obviously be taken into account in the consultation.
The high risk offenders scheme, which deals with drivers whose dependence on alcohol presents a serious road safety risk, will be expanded to include all drink drivers who are disqualified once for driving while 2½times or more over the legal limit, have had any two drink drive convictions within 10 years or are disqualified for refusing without reasonable cause to supply a specimen for analysis. These drivers will have to satisfy the medical branch of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre that they do not have a drink problem before they are allowed to drive again. The scheme produced some 200 cases in 1987 and this figure is expected to rise to something in the order of 600 cases by 1990. I hope that that will be encouraging to the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland.
I shall now deal with the matter of driving while unfit. The present offence of driving while unfit through drink or drugs will be extended to include
1130
drivers who are unfit to drive as a result of any other physical condition, including temporary conditions such as sleepiness, fatigue or temporary disability, where these are severe enough to cause the driver to be a danger to the public.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy and also to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, for what they said in support of this proposal. In reply to my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth, I should say that I do not envisage that legislation will include a long schedule seeking to define all the cases that would constitute unfitness. As with the present offence, we expect that evidence of unfitness could come from a medical examination.
Drivers convicted of certain road traffic offences will have to pass a new, longer driving test before they are allowed back on the roads following a period of disqualification. The new test will be conducted by my department's own examiners and will be introduced on a phased basis, starting with those convicted of the new dangerous driving offences. In time it could also apply to all those disqualified as a result of careless driving and other accident offences.
For drink drivers the Government also propose a major experiment in the use of rehabilitation courses to influence attitudes towards alcohol and driving. Some voluntary schemes exist already, but the Government would seek powers to allow the courts in selected areas to order those convicted of drunk driving offences to attend such courses. Any experiment would take the form of a research programme which would enable a variety of courses to be established and their impact in reducing the level of re-offending monitored. I hope that the courses will be run by a variety of organisations. Offenders will be required to make a substantial contribution to the cost of the course, subject to an assessment of means.
My noble friend Lord Auckland suggested that more should be done to check the standards of driving instructors. We are taking steps to weed out unsatisfactory instructors; that is, those not able to reach the improved standard laid down by the department in 1985. We have taken, and we are continuing to take, steps to make the ADI qualifying examination more effective.
I now turn to the confiscation of licences. It has been suggested that the police should be able immediately to suspend a driver's licence if he fails a breath test. It would be inappropriate for the police rather than the courts to exercise this function. The White Paper draws attention to the powers which already exist under the Bail Acts to prevent a drink driver from driving while there is a risk of a further offence being committed. The White Paper also welcomes local initiatives by the courts to ensure that drink drive cases are dealt with very quickly.
I shall now deal with the new technology, to which a number of noble Lords referred. The purpose of enforcement technology is to reduce road accidents by improving compliance with speed limits and traffic signals. It is not intended as a means of catching more people simply for the sake of doing so. Enforcement by conventional methods, that is,

1131
pursuit and stopping, is often difficult and dangerous, and in some places virtually impossible. But it is often in precisely those places where non-compliance is most dangerous; for example at contraflows, roadworks and major junctions. Technology will enable the police to enforce the law effectively in such places for the first time.
Concern has been expressed in the press and elsewhere about strict owner liability in these circumstances. This is not our intention. The aim is to ensure that the person who commits the offence pays the penalty. Because drivers will not be stopped at the time of the offence, it is inevitable that responsibility for identifying the driver must rest initially with the keeper. Such a duty already exists in road traffic law and my officials are considering with the police and the courts how the scheme will work in detail. It has been suggested that the driver should be identified in the photograph. However, in some cases, there are technical problems. It is certainly not our intention to require the police to stop the vehicle, as one of the main reasons for using cameras in this way is to avoid the difficult and often dangerous pursuit of vehicles.
It is desirable that a reasonable time limit is set for the issue of notices of intended prosecution following the detection of an offence by camera. We do not, however, wish to set a limit which would be difficult to achieve in practice, as this would allow many offenders to escape prosecution on a technicality. We will bear in mind the views expressed in our further discussions on enforcement procedures. The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, expressed a view on this subject.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, suggested that traffic wardens could be employed in the use of cameras to detect speeding and traffic light offences. In the case of traffic lights, the cameras are designed to be operated automatically. They do not require the immediate presence of a police officer. However, some cameras are adapted for use in police patrol cars. In these circumstances it would not be appropriate for traffic wardens to be involved in the use of the cameras.
A few police forces are already testing equipment in use and we will monitor the results. Legislation will introduce requirements for such equipment to receive type approval from my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to ensure that it meets standards of accuracy and reliability. I hope that that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Underhill. There will be further consultations with the motoring organisations and others on the introduction of technology as proposals are developed.
The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, and others referred to the subject of wheel clamping and removals which must always be authorised by the police. It is, I understand, a matter of operational policy that police officers accompany clamping teams in order to authorise clamping on the spot. We are not aware that "remote" authorisations are taking place, but I would be glad to have details of any specific cases. The number of instances where the charge has been refunded is very low in relation
1132
to the total number of removals carried out; it is only about 1 per cent. The fact that refunds are made suggests that the police do exercise a sensible degree of discretion in cases where there are mitigating circumstances.
My noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux has suggested that the penalty for failing to stop after, or report, an accident, should be more severe than that which the driver would have received had he been convicted following the original accident. We have already increased the penalty points by order for these two offences to a new higher range of eight to 10 points. As my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth said, these and certain other changes came into effect on 1st March this year. Incidentally, I can confirm that arrangements are being made to monitor their effects. I shall write to my noble friend about that. The White Paper proposes a further increase in the maximum penalty for the offences to include up to six months' imprisonment, as applies to drinking and driving. This should strengthen the courts' powers to deal with the worst cases.
It has been suggested that failure to take a breath test should attract a more severe penalty than that for the drink drive offence itself. However, the general principle in setting penalties for criminal offences is that the maximum penalty should reflect the seriousness of the offence. It would be inequitable to have a greater maximum penalty for failure to provide a specimen for analysis than for the drink drive offence itself. However, under the Government's proposals to expand the high risk offenders scheme, the person who is disqualified for refusing without reasonable cause to provide a specimen for analysis would be referred to the medical branch of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre.
The North Report also made a number of recommendations requiring non-legislative action of one kind or another to complement the legislative changes. Specific recommendations have in all cases been taken up and consultations will be initiated with the representative bodies of the courts and police, including local authority associations, on the detailed implementation of some of the proposals. For example, we are following up the recommendation that there should be better co-ordination of research between government departments and between departments and the police as well as looking at possible new areas of research.
My noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux and a number of other noble Lords asked for an assurance that the agreement negotiated by the Association of British Insurers covers those companies operating offshore which offer insurance against the consequences of disqualification. I am happy to give that assurance. We welcome this self-regulatory approach as it avoids the need for legislation and will take effect much more quickly. However, as the White Paper states, we remain prepared to introduce legislation if for any reason the agreement fails.
The Government are well aware that with such a wide-ranging package of legislative proposals it would be important to ensure that everyone has a clear understanding of the law and of the road safety problems which it seeks to address. We shall ensure that consultations are undertaken with all concerned

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with a view to producing a clear and simple guide to the law.
The department also recognises the importance of road safety education in schools. Every opportunity is taken to encourage its inclusion in the curriculum. A wide selection of road safety material, including leaflets, posters and video teaching programmes, has been made available to promote road safety education in schools. The Transport and Road Research Laboratory is undertaking a project to develop and test a new code of practice for road safety education in pilot local authorities. That project is now well under way.
I should like to try to answer one or two more points. My noble friend Lady Macleod of Borve drew attention to the shortage of clerks in magistrates' courts. That is a serious problem and all concerned are trying to alleviate it. Measures taken include a new pay rise just awarded, the approval of 25 trainee clerk court posts and encouraging magistrates' court committees to apply for some of those posts. Also the Home Office is improving recruitment literature aimed at school leavers and those in higher education. In addition, we announced in March a review of magistrates' court procedures.
Turning to resources for education, training, publicity and enforcement, I can assure noble Lords that road safety is one of the Government's top priorities. We aim to ensure that the substantial amounts of money which are already spent on road safety are used effectively. We are encouraging local authorities to develop the sort of low-cost road engineering schemes which have been shown to be particularly cost effective in terms of reducing casualties. We are targeting spending to give priority to reducing casualties among children and other vulnerable road users such as cyclists and motor cyclists. We are spending more on research into key areas such as driver behaviour and urban traffic accidents, in which 80 per cent. of fatalities occur.
The noble Lord, Lord Monson, suggested a heavier fine rather than forfeiture of the car. We consider forfeiture appropriate in cases in which a serious road traffic offence has been committed and where the court considers the penalty of disqualification and a fine inadequate for the offence. Stopping short of imprisonment, forfeiture provides an additional penalty appropriate to the offence which will also strengthen the effect of disqualification by making it more difficult for the offender to drive in defiance of the order.
On the question of fines, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, the courts already have the ability to impose a lower fine where the offender has limited means to pay. That does not affect road traffic offences alone. More generally, the Home Office is running an experiment on linking fines more closely to poorer offenders' means. We shall await the outcome of that initiative before considering further action.
In relation to consistency of sentencing, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux, the Home Office will be monitoring the level
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of sentences awarded throughout the country and will make the results available to the courts.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, asked whether local authorities and the traffic commissioners will have sufficient resources to implement the proposed extension of prohibition powers and whether their salaries might be increased to compensate for the additional workload. We shall be consulting local authorities and others on our proposals to extend powers to prohibit the movement of unsafe vehicles and shall have to take those aspects into account.
The noble Lord also suggested that liability for the dangerous state of a vehicle should lie with the owner rather than the driver, particularly in the case of passenger service vehicles. Under the operator licensing legislation it is already the responsibility of owners of goods and passenger vehicles to maintain vehicles properly.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, suggested that more should be done about the behaviour of heavy goods vehicle drivers on motorways. The average speed of heavy lorries on motorways is 54 miles per hour and the maximum allowed is 60. Heavy lorries are already restricted to the first two lanes and only a minority of drivers are at fault. The accident involvement rate of heavy lorries is much better than that for cars and motor cycles, but there is always room for improvement.
The noble Baroness also asked whether a person banned from driving in this country could use an international licence abroad. If somebody is banned in this country he can still drive abroad on an international driving permit issued by a motoring organisation. However, a foreign driver disqualified by a British court is not allowed to drive in this country on an international driving permit or foreign licence. I shall consider the noble Baroness's suggestion for change as part of our consideration of the Government's response to the proposed draft EC directive on driver licensing, to which the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, also referred. Those proposals could have some effect in certain areas—for example, driver licensing. However, they are still only proposals and negotiations on them are at an early stage. We do not expect them to hinder the achievement of the proposals in the White Paper.
Above all, the Government are committed to the principle that, while the law is an important aid to safety, its success depends on public acceptance that the law is sound. The Government attach the greatest importance to getting the proposed changes right so that they command the widest possible support and work well in practice. We do not want to pillory motorists or make life more difficult for them. That is why one of the most important aspects of both the North Report and the White Paper is the intention to avoid treating motorists as criminals wherever that is practical. However, where genuinely serious offences have been committed and people have been put at risk, the proposals of the White Paper will allow the law to deal more effectively and appropriately with those responsible.
Several noble Lords have asked about the timing of that legislation. The House will not be surprised that I can go no further today than the traditional answer—as soon as parliamentary time allows.

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I am grateful to all noble Lords for a most stimulating and constructive debate and for their generous expression of support for the general thrust of our proposals. It is clear that there is much further work to be done and wider discussions to be held on a number of detailed matters. The Government will be taking those forward vigorously in the coming months.
5.28 p.m.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, first, perhaps I may thank my noble friend the Minister for his very full and helpful reply. I know that I shall read with interest what he has said and I am sure that many others will do so too. Secondly, I should like to thank all noble Lords and Baronesses who have taken part in this short debate today. As my noble friend said, the North Report made recommendations which do not require legislation, and I hope that he can bring forward some of those recommendations as soon as possible.
If I thought that moving for Papers today would produce a Bill in two or three weeks time, I should do so. However, as my noble friend said, it is a question of "wait and see". With sincere thanks to all noble Lords who have spoken, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Training
5.29 p.m.
Lord Rochester Lord Rochester rose to call attention to the changes which Her Majesty's Government are seeking to effect in this country's attitude to training; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am privileged to speak to the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. It has been prompted by a recent article by Dr. K. B. Everard who was at one time head of education and training at ICI. I am also indebted to Mr. Basil Murphy, Director of the British Association for Commercial and Industrial Education, for his contribution to what I wish to say.
It is plain from the White Paper, Employment for the 1990s, that the Government aim in their proposals to effect what may reasonably be called a cultural change in the nation's approach to training. They should certainly not be reproached for that aim but, in my view, they are to be criticised for the way in which they are going about it. The White Paper exhibits an impoverished conceptual understanding of how to bring about change.
The document outlines a new structural framework for training nationally, but not a strategy or policy involving Government, employers, training providers and others. The New Training Initiative of 1981 was widely seen as a national training strategy and employers, trade unions and educational and training organisations were all involved in its formulation. I believe however that there is only one passing reference to it in the White Paper. When the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, replies
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to the debate—I have given him notice of this question—perhaps he will be good enough to say whether that initiative is still in place, whether it has been superseded by the principles enunciated in Section 4 of the White Paper or whether a policy has yet to be determined within the framework now proposed.
In 1989 one would hope to find in such a document some recognition of up-to-date processes such as that in ICI, with which I was involved in the strategy, for gaining acceptance of change. The extent to which the paper relies on rhetoric suggests a command model inappropriate for its purpose. The point seems to be recognised in paragraph 5.17 which states:
"It would be wrong to impose from the top a national structure, and to suppose that this would capture local support and local energies".
The rest of the document hardly suggests that that statement carries conviction with the Government.
The paper is written as though the only people in need of training are those in industry and commerce. For instance, paragraph 4.21, dealing with the need for standards and recognised qualifications based on competence, states that the Government's objective is to see standard-setting bodies established thoughout industry and commerce. Why is there no expression of a similar desire for the Government's own employees?
The Government's view is that local delivery of training should be employer-led. But how should "employer" be defined? The White Paper seems to ignore the fact that the wealth-spending public services can and should contribute just as much as the business sector to our prosperity by becoming more effective. We are all part of a complex, interdependent society in which the public services, including national and local government, should promote a training culture like everyone else. Yet the White Paper contains hardly a mention of what still needs to be done in those services. Indeed, we read in paragraph 6.20:
"Developing training through life is not primarily a Government responsibility".
It certainly is.
Under the leadership of Sir John Harvey-Jones, ICI's change programme began to bite only when head office was seen not to be exempt from it. Credibility is lacking if, in such a strategy, there is no acknowledgement that its originators are also in need of reform. The Government are the initiators of the programme that we are discussing. And they are at least as much a part of the problem as wealth creators. About the only indication that that point is recognised comes in paragraph 6.27 of the White Paper which states:
"Twenty Government Departments have already joined the [management] Charter Initiative, reflecting the need for professionalism in management in the public service as elsewhere in the economy".
Within the new framework, training and enterprise councils are to be established at local level to plan and deliver training. It appears that they are to be staffed and run by employees of the Training Agency, the latest national body to have been set up in that field. Given the lack of expertise in training

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matters of senior executives in industry, who are largely to comprise the councils, and their understandable preoccupation with other duties, it will no doubt fall to those agency employees to provide the professional support too. In that case, can the councils really be deemed to be employer-led?
For some years, I was chairman of one of the old district manpower committees set up to advise the Manpower Services Commission, as it then was, on training and employment problems in the localities. It was no fault of the people who serviced those committees that they had neither the managerial competence nor the training experience needed to help effect change. I do not suggest that the new councils should be packed with professional trainers, but I believe it is important that, independently of the Training Agency, the councils should have access to experienced professional advice. On that point, is it helpful that local representatives of education and of trade unions should be given only such a minor role in the partnership about which the Government talk in the White Paper's concluding paragraph?
There is also the demographic problem. That will affect recruiting and training, not simply where young people are concerned, but right across the working population. It will necessitate a vast on-going programme of retraining. Where are all the trainers to come from and who will train them? The Government should encourage a massive expansion of training resources as members of the partnership that they have in view.
The conclusion of paragraph 4.45 is that the training system must co-operate with the education service—not the other way round. Does that imply that the education service has all the answers and is less in need of relevant training than everyone else? It is significant that, while a lead body for training and development is already in place, there is no equivalent for education or, better still, a single body for learning. As has been aptly said, education and training should be presented as a seamless robe.
The principal premise of the White Paper is that employers will now see the training and continuous development of their people as of cardinal importance and that investment in people is of greater long-term benefit than investment in hardware. Alas, history, and indeed the reason why this White Paper has been produced, hardly support the premise. In my experience, good training takes place in organisations when there is pressure within the system to make it happen, such as a leader who is demonstrably interested in the development of the people whom he is leading. Surely there is a role for government here. The levy grant system has been tried and, some would say, found wanting except perhaps in the special case of the construction industry. What about tax benefit? It appears to work in the United States and France. Might it not be tried in this country?
The other day I was interested to learn from the Engineering Industry Training Board that Hilary Steedman of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has done a great deal of comparative
1138
work on industrial training in France and the UK. She regards the level of achievement of French craft and technician trainees as significantly higher than that of their British counterparts. She also considers the system of publicly funded training in France to be a major contribution to the high level in both quantity and quality of engineering training. Interestingly, young people in the 16 to 18 age group have effectively been eliminated from the French labour market; they no longer provide a pool of cheap labour. In the improving employment situation in this country it is high time that the Government took effective action to ensure that here, too, the years between 16 and 18 are treated as a period of training and education for all.
I have already acknowledged that the Government can fairly claim to be trying to effect a cultural change in this country's approach to training. They are planning to do it by means of new systems and structures. Structures can help, but attitudes are paramount. I suggest that the approach of the White Paper is mechanistic. Knowledge and skills are one thing; attitudes are quite another.
Like Dr. Everard, of whom I spoke, I favour the American definition of a competency as,
"an underlying characteristic causally related to superior performance on the job".
So defined, competence embraces personal qualities such as purposefulness, creativity, drive and concern to evoke positive energy and commitment. Education and training should turn people on and not just give them a vocational qualification. It must be doubtful whether schools and universities—I speak as one who until recently was chairman of a university council—are quite as good at achieving that as some of the leading agents and consultants in the private sector have proved to be. Therefore, it is vital that the skills and experience of such people should be fully used.
Paragraph 6.19 of the White Paper rightly states:
"Everybody can benefit from training. Nobody is too old, too junior or too senior or in too specialised a job".
Be they ever so high, that presumably includes senior civil servants and politicians such as ourselves.
If I am challenged to say what kind of training is required for the management of change, I can respond only by drawing on my own experience. It includes training that provides for analysis of the qualities that are needed for leadership. Perhaps I may suggest a few of those qualities: the ability to formulate objectives that are clearly defined, understood and, so far as possible, accepted by those required to implement them; identifying and making use of the talents of all those engaged in the enterprise; knowledge of factors such as responsibility, achievement and the recognition of achievment that motivate people to give of their best; and understanding the effect of one's own behaviour on other people. It means enabling those who have to manage change to identify, confront and overcome obstacles based on such things as fear and habit that stand in the way of what they are aiming to achieve. It involves training in joint problem-solving and much else that there is no time to mention now.
It is right that I should conclude on a note of humility. The problem that we are discussing is complex and of long standing. It is far easier to analyse than to solve. However, in my experience, the best hope of solving it at last lies in working together to ensure that all those who have a contribution to make can share in the enterprise. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.45 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, the House will be extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, for giving us the opportunity of this short debate and, if I may say so, for the way in which he has so clearly set out the issues and his concerns against the background of all his experience in this field. I agree with much that he has said. I am sure that no speaker in the debate is likely to disagree with the somewhat bland but absolutely true definition of the aims of the White Paper as set out in the foreword, in which the Secretary of State for Employment states that:
"we must invest in the skills and knowledge of our people and build up industry's skill base, through a strategy of training through life, to enable Britain to continue to grow and to generate jobs".
The Government's plans for the new framework for achieving that aim are on three levels. I shall confine myself to commenting briefly and in a rather general way on the key proposal to which the noble Lord specifically addressed himself; namely, the proposal to ask private sector employers to take the lead role at local level in assessing local training needs and in planning and delivering training, including that provided by government training schemes. The noble Lord was kind enough to send me a copy of the article from the journal Transition, to which he referred from time to time in his speech. In that article the author, Dr. Everard, certainly questions strongly whether the Government's approach is the right one. He feels that by exhorting employers to improve their ways and by using what he describes as a "command model of change"— that is to say, putting responsibility fairly and squarely upon the shoulders of the private sector—that approach will be limited in its effect. He says that it is:
"far better to lead by example and build up pressure between managers in the public service and the business sector so that they vie with one another to perform more effectively and apply modern training approaches to that end".
I understand what Dr. Everard says. It is a laudable aim, but I truthfully doubt whether we have yet reached a point at which that could be achieved to any major extent, or at any rate achieved with any rapidity. The two sectors think and act so differently and their motivation is so different that, in my view, to get them to vie with one another in the way and to the end described would take a great deal of time and, I should have thought, not a little political negotiation. In this matter time really is of the essence.
Training needs are changing very fast. As the facts and figures set out in the White Paper make abundantly plain, we are now moving into a period when, if industry is to stay competitive and work
1140
people are to be capable of doing the jobs required of them, it will be of the utmost importance that firms large and small invest much more in training, that workpeople understand better the value of training to them as well as to their firm and that the training which is arranged locally is the right training for the jobs in that locality.
Many firms are already convinced. Anyone who has been involved in the National Training Award over the past year or two—as the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, and I have been—will have been impressed with the number of firms, from the largest to the smallest across the country, which have proved to themselves how training can transform their commercial success. However, too many firms do too little. Many small firms—where increasing numbers of people work—and many people who work for themselves, do not involve themselves in training and can find no suitable training in their local area. This, combined with the fact that fewer young people will be coming on to the labour market so that new and constantly changing jobs will have to be filled by older people who are as yet untrained, or trained for something else, means that firms which do not train and retrain will become uncompetitive and simply die.
In his article, Dr. Everard remarks that the White Paper proposals,
"epitomise the wide conceptual gulf between the Government and successful companies about ways of making desirable things happen".
That may be, and often is, the case. But is it so on this occasion? Surely, by proposing that urgent change and improvement in training should be led by a group, two-thirds of whose members would be local private sector employers and one-third people from the world of education, trade unions, voluntary organisations and the like, the Government are seeking to bridge the gulf. They are doing more: they are proposing to walk across the bridge and to accept the culture of those on the opposite shore.
In proposing the new training and enterprise councils, the Government are surely saying, "We accept that we, the Government, and local government, as public sector employers, for various well known reasons can often move only rather slowly and ponderously. We accept that what is needed locally at the present time is something nearer the ways of successful private sector firms. Swift responsiveness is needed, flexibility, and a pragmatic approach, without which attributes private firms cannot survive." The Government seem to be saying, "We accept that you people from industry and commerce have long been impatient with our government ways and the ways of our tripartite quangos. We know that you have envied the German employers who control their own training system and who jealously guard that right. So here is the chance to take the lead yourselves and to do it your way with your laudable sense of urgency, freedom of action, and ability to be quick on your feet."
The Government would say this to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, as well as to the world in general. "Of course the training needs of your area will include the needs of the public sector as well as private sector employees. The training you will be

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providing will be across all sectors. But it is your private sector dynamic which is to form two-thirds of this managing group. It is up to you to get things going: training in firms and by firms, local delivery of YTS, employment training and other government schemes, working with schools, colleges and voluntary organisations and the rest."
Will it work? I believe that, if local employers will rise to the occasion—and it is very much in their interests that they should—it will work. There is of course the question of how big the areas covered by each TEC should be. Private sector employees are anxious that their time and effort should be used economically by working with areas which are large enough to be economic with time but still small enough to be local.
At a recent meeting of the Scottish Grand Committee in Edinburgh which discussed the Scottish White Paper that has to be read along with this one, but in which employer-led groups are also the key, the Labour Party's Scottish employment spokesman, Mr. Henry McLeish, was reported to have expressed the view that councils, unions and educationists were probably better equipped to decide on training issues than industrialists. I do not think that I agree with that, but I expect there will be people who do. Whatever criticisms are made of the scheme, whatever is said in defence of the status quo, and whatever changes are recommended—and there are many that might be; the noble Lord has suggested some of them—I hope that the Government will stick to the broad thrust of this part of the White Paper. I believe on the evidence of the problems that have increasingly beset the 1981 style of working, on the evidence of the German system for training, and on the evidence of discussions among employers at which I have been present recently, that this part of the Government's plans is a workable way ahead.
5.56 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, on his good fortune in initiating this debate at such an opportune time, only three weeks after the breakfast-time launch of the training enterprise councils—a launch in four cities with live video links, coloured lights and music, I am told.
It is about training enterprise councils that I wish to speak. They are to deliver the government training schemes, taking over responsibility for YTS, ET, the Business Growth Training Scheme, Small Firms Service and Enterprise Allowance scheme. They will also work on separate initiatives to improve training or ease labour market difficulties.
I am interested in how these initiatives from the Department of Employment and Mr. Norman Fowler link with the activities of the Department of Education and Science and Mr. Kenneth Baker, who, less than a month before that extravagant launch, was making a speech on "Further Education, a New Strategy", to the Association of Colleges of Further and Higher Education. It was a speech evidently meant to be of importance since it was printed afterwards as a glossy brochure. The aims were
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evidently very similar to those of the TECs: the enhancement of the skills and training of those over 16 and preparing them for the labour force—the skilled labour force we so desperately need and have so signally failed to produce compared with our neighbours in Europe and Japan. Mr. Baker made no reference to the TECs in his speech. What liaison has there been between the two departments, I ask the Minister?
I should like to hear from the noble Earl about the extent of local authority involvement in the new set-up. Eighty to 100 of these TECs are proposed across the country The TECs will be controlled by a board of between nine and 15 directors who will be there in their own right—not as representatives of employer organisations such as the CBI, the Institute of Directors, or chambers of commerce. Therefore no substitutes or alternatives will be allowed at meetings. We have heard that two-thirds will be private sector employers, at the level of a chairman, chief executive or top operational manager at local level of major companies. They,
"should command support in the business community across the whole of the area to be covered."
The other third will be made up from among chief executives or their equivalents in the public sector, again selected as individuals in their own right.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, commented on the make up of the board, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, but taking rather different lines. Will these people, forming the two-thirds, come forward? Local authority representation will clearly be very limited. Principals or chief officers may have an education seat. It is not clear whether elected members will be weclomed by the Secretary of State, who will oversee all appointments. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten us upon that. The whole set up, locally based, seems very like an alternative to local government. The need to set up channels of communication is emphasised throughout. But lines of accountability are not clearly drawn. May we hear something about how that will work?
For all the references to partnership and community, the TEC prospectus makes very little mention of how the TECs will work with the statutory providers. Although the TECs will not have responsibility for work-related further education funding, for the careers service or for TVEI, the breadth with which their remit has been drawn implies that LEA responsibilities cannot remain unaffected by their activities. There is an explicit clash with the Education Reform Act, where the authority is given the responsibility for setting the strategic framework for the provision of further education in its area, and, as DES Circular 9/88 makes clear, it,
"determines what changes are needed for the existing broad pattern of provision in order that it meets the changing needs of the population".
I should say a word about the funding for work-related further education. The argument that it should now be restored to LEA's main programmes is now very strong. This year's Public Expenditure White Paper unexpectedly showed a cut in the budget for the Department of Employment's training agency from £117.5 million to £112.5 million. Only

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four LEAs in England and Wales will get increased funding from this source in this financial year. One of the main justifications put forward by Ministers for the transfer of resources in 1984 was the existence of MSC as a semi-independently operating, fast-moving quango. Now MSC has been abolished and the training agency is simply a part of the department. Further, as LEAs are having to recast their planning in order to meet local management and other requirements of the Education Reform Act, it makes even less sense that there should be a sub-plan for that part of work-related FE which is funded through MSC's pale successor body. Some of Mr. Baker's speech to ACFHE could mean that he was intending some changes, including restoration of the FE monies to DES-led main programmes. Is that so?
The question we have to ask is whether the TEC initiative is likely to redress the lack of suitable training provisions in the United Kingdom. It will not provide a responsive vocational education and training system which is so urgently needed to raise skill levels. The same British companies which have so ruthlessly cut back on training provisions for their own employees in the last decade have now been handed £2 billion of public money and told to take care of the nation's needs. The number of apprentices in Britain has plummeted from 272,000 under Labour to 93,000 in 1988. The Tories have ended the training levy, abolished most of the industrial training boards and cut the number of skill centres by a third.
British companies spend about £350 million on training, 0.15 per cent. of Britain's labour costs. This can be compared with Germany, which spends 2 per cent. Japan produces 15 times as many qualified technicians per head of population as the UK. Is that a good omen for the new enterprise councils, so-called? What can we expect?
Like the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, I suggest that there is still a strong argument for either positive tax incentives or legal compulsion on employers. The TECs are essentially a voluntary structure and there is no obvious reason why employers at large should be stirred by them into a far greater commitment to training. The MSC published in 1988 a guide to the existing tax position on education and training, clearly showing the present possibilities, which, for companies, basically mean that they can offset against tax donations which they make to appropriate bodies or some of the costs which they incur in securing training for employees. What the booklet well illustrates is the very restricted nature of the reliefs for individuals and the limitation of offset to the total costs of provision; that is to say, a disincentive against providing is removed but there is no actual incentive to make the provision.
The other way of tackling the general shortage of training available to employees is to give them a statutory entitlement to which the employer must respond. Perhaps present Ministers would not favour such an approach because it smacks of control on private industry. But the situation surely demands it.
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I should like to ask the Minister where the national vocational qualification and the National Council for Voluntary Qualifications fit into the new scheme. Mr. Baker dealt defensively with the subject of vocational qualifications in his February speech. He said that NCVQ "is going to deliver". As it is two and a half years since the review of the vocational qualifications and the establishment of the NCVQ with a White Paper and some confident statements about the future, the accreditation of only 83 qualifications in that time—reported in Hansard of 14th February—seems a modest achievement. The White Paper carried a hint of compulsion:
"The Government will not hesitate to act should it appear that legislation is necessary to make the NVQ effective".
The nonsense of the separation of education and training is illustrated by NCVQs having an industry-led lobby for training development but not yet one for education, or one for both as the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, said. Is that to come?
I remind the Minister that Section 120 of the Education Reform Act echoes the splendid assertion of the Industrial Training Act 1964 that:
"The facilities for further education that may be provided by a local education authority … shall be deemed to include and always to have included facilities for vocational and industrial training".
What we want to hear is how much the two departments, the Department of Employment and the Department of Education and Science, are co-operating. Where is the responsibility for the funding for the educational side of the training to lie? How much are local authorities, and more particularly LEAs, to be involved in the planning and delivery of the training that we all agree is so badly needed. The LEAs have a background of solid achievement in increasing access to further education and progressively extending its coverage. Mr. Baker seems at last to have discovered its worth and its possibilities.
If the local promoters of the TECs acknowledge the contribution that the local authorities can make, a beneficial partnership can develop. Locally, employers may realise the need for a partnership of equals. The TEC prospectus apparently does not, and local authorities will require assurance that good relationships locally will not be overtaken by the application of policies and perhaps prejudices held centrally. I understand that next week the Director General of the Training Agency will be meeting some people from the local authorities. I hope that the points which have been made in this debate, including those I have put forward, will be appreciated and that notice will be taken of them.
6.7 p.m.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, as has been said by previous speakers, we are all in the debt of the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, for beginning and launching us on this debate on the training aspects of the White Paper. So far it has been a very good debate. I have agreed with almost everything that has been said. Nobody can disagree, I should have thought, with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, said about the role of the Government in training, and some of the criticisms he made (which I want to

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echo) about the role which the Government see they have in relation to the future of training. I also agreed with much that the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, said about the need to expand training, particularly for the small employer, and the difficulties we have had in the past in getting small employers to take their share of training. I agreed with everything which my noble friend Lady David said, and I look forward with great interest to hearing the Minister answer some of her questions.
Essentially what is being said this evening is that we think the Government have the right objectives. However, we have doubts about whether the Government have the right methods. One must ask employers to spend more per head on training. Of course £18 billion a year is a fraction per head of what is spent by our other major competitors. Of course the employers have to spend more. Of course the Government are right to say that there must be an improvement in the quality of training and prescribe standards and external tests.
Training in future must focus on post experience and on the seven-tenths of the labour force which will still be there in the year 2000. That will be the Western Front of training over the next 10 years. However, as the White Paper states, the education system must be more orientated to work preparation, to the relevance of what is taught in schools and colleges, and to what is required when people enter the world of work. All those objectives are right.
The problem is the Government's attitude not to employers but to themselves. It is their attitude to their functions. First, I believe that the Government are abandoning the ship and bailing out. They are creating many objectives for employers, but they are not providing the means by which employers can be expected to carry them out. Secondly, they are creating a bizarre, overlapping surge of institutions, as was said by my noble friend Lady David. It is a cross between snakes and ladders and frivolous pursuits. If one tries to work out the responsibilities and duties of the different bits and pieces of the institutions which the Government attempt to create, I suggest that it is a maze and a confusion.
We must say that they are abandoning ship. After all, what can one think when one reads in Employment for the 1990s at paragraph 4.2:
"As unemployment falls the level of Government funding can be expected to adjust accordingly"?
In other words, it will fall.
"employers and individuals must accept a correspondingly increased responsibility".
In other words, it is "more and more for you boys, and less and less for us".
My first question is: what is the rate of the rundown? We are now spending approximately £3 billion on training, according to the White Paper. That is 16.5 per cent. of what is spent by employers. What is the rate of the rundown? When will it fall to £2 billion and £1 billion? When will it fall from 16.5 per cent. to 10 per cent. and 5per cent? Will they bail out completely if unemployment falls enough?
What are we to make of the dismantling of the rest of the Industrial Training Boards and their
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replacement by the non-statutory talking shops? They have no powers to raise levies or to force anyone to do anything. What are we to make of that situation but bailing out? What are we to make of the fact that the Government are leaving alone the construction ITB? The reasons they give for doing so—high labour turnover, a large number of small firms and a great deal of self-employment—would apply to a large part of distribution, hotel and catering. If those are the reasons for leaving alone the construction ITB, I ask the noble Earl: why not leave in place some of the other institutions?
What is the evidence that where the ITBs were abolished in 1984—the White Paper states that they have not come up to scratch—that resulted in skill shortages being met? What is it about the record of the Skills Training Agency which makes it ripe for privatisation? The Government say that it does not make a profit. It was never intended to make a profit. The Government say that some of the places on some of its programmes are not full. Perhaps they are too expensive. The whole notion of the Skills Training Agency, or the skills centres, was that it would fill the gaps. They would provide the training that industry could not be expected to provide for itself; that is the non-commercial training. Therefore, how can the non-commercial nature of the Skills Training Agency be taken as a reason for abandoning it and sending it out to privatisation?
One knows what the noble Earl will say. In the White Paper the Government have advanced three justifications for bailing out and for abandoning ship. First, only if they abandon the scheme will the employers accept their responsibilities. That is what the Government tell us. Secondly, way back in 1969 we tried to lead training by government sponsoring. Thirdly, employers in other countries—such as Japan, the United States and Germany—operate such schemes autonomously without their governments spending as large a proportion of the total spending budget on training as we spend. Those are the justifications put forward by the Government.
There are several things to be said. First, we know that British employers are congenital poachers. We know that they believe that it is not worth training if they can poach from other people. We know that that has always been the case. We know that, historically, we never went the way of most other European countries in following the German model after the First World War. We could spend a great deal of time debating that subject; but that is not the critical point. The critical point is that there is no major indication.
The Government do not put forward any evidence to show that there has been a change in the basic approach of the great majority of employers to training. The attitude is: train as little as you can. Most employers in this country believe that it pays to train only if one is both a market leader and a wage leader. They may be right, as they see it, in the short term. It is thought that if you pay more than other people, nobody will poach your labour. But if you are not a wage leader and market leader—as is IBM—there is little point in training because all you

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will do is spend your money, and other people will poach your labour.
What is the evidence to show that there has been such a major change in the attitude of British employers outside the areas of the ITBs so that the Government can afford to abandon training and run down the expenditure as unemployment falls?
The second defence is: we tried it all in the days when we had the training levy. There are three points to be made about that. First, at its most expressed form the training levy lasted for fewer than five years. In 1973, five years after it was up and running, it was as a result of considerable pressure from those who refused to avail themselves of the moneys that the Government turned and ran and allowed firms to be excluded from the levy. They allowed the exemption system, put the cap on the levy and the whole system reversed.
Secondly, it is true, as the Government say, that the ITBs:
"did not succeed in raising standards and quantity to the level of major competitors".
In five years, my Lords? Is a 300 per cent. increase in the volume of training in five years to be the test of our training levy system? The post-1974 system—the emergence of the voluntary system—has not succeeded in raising the standards and quantity to the level of our major competitors. If anything, most people believe that we are even further behind.
Thirdly, the return to modest centralisation under the MSC in the 1970s might have made a major impact were it not for the fact that it became increasingly embroiled in special programmes and employment initiatives. Therefore if we had received the kind of public involvement and commitment to sponsoring training and providing the institutions in schools and afterwards, such as existed in Sweden, France and Germany—if we had received that for a fraction of the time; say, for only 20 years let alone 40 years—it might have been said that the levy system had failed. But that cannot be said in the time that has been available.
The third defence of the Government is that there are countries, such as Japan and the United States, where employers accepted those responsibilities from the beginning; and there the great majority of expenditure is employer-led. There are several things to be said about that. First, the figures are notoriously elusive. The Japanese have their usual invisible subsidies, their incentives and their buried tax allowances. They have them for training as they have them for everything else. In the United States much of the public expenditure on training is buried at state and municipal level and does not appear in the federal figures.
In Germany, in most of the calculations on public expenditure on training, the spending of the Federal Office of Labour, which spends out of the unemployment benefit, is not listed in the figures. It is very doubtful whether those three countries or any other major country spend less on public training than we do. In any case, they are doing so from a much higher base over a much longer period. If we could show that our employers were as committed to
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training as theirs, we might begin to relax the proportion of public involvement in training.
Finally, I turn to the institutional mess which I consider the Government have made, so far as I can understand sections 4 and 5 of the White Paper. In case the House should think it over simple, I should perhaps say that this only applies to England. The position is much more complicated in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In England, we do not have three levels, as the noble Baroness said; we have five, six or seven levels. At the top there is the Secretary of State. He has drawn back some powers from the MSC although it is not clear how many. Underneath the Secretary of State there is the Training Agency, formerly the Training Commission, formerly the Manpower Services Commission. Underneath the Training Agency, or maybe alongside it because it is not clear, we have the national training task force (the NTTF) complemented, parallelled and related to the work of the NCVQ and the NCITO which brings together all the voluntary training boards. Underneath that third level there are the remaining ITBs. Alongside those ITBs we have the new non-statutory ITOs. We do not know how many ITOs or ITBs there will be, but at least one will remain. We do not know when the ITOs will replace the ITBs or what the relation ship will be between them. However, that is only the fourth level.
At the fifth level we have a hundred or so of the new training and enterprise councils. Why there are to be twice as many as the old agencies from the Training Agency, I do not know. But, of course, the local agencies of the Training Agency will still be there in case the training and enterprise councils do not cover the whole country. Therefore, there may be 150 bodies, or there may be fewer.
Underneath those five levels we have the actual providers of training. None of the others provides training. At the bottom we have the people who provide the training and who probably make the money out of it; namely, the contractors. They will be contracting to one or other of those five levels in England. It is much more complicated in Scotland and Wales, and I do not understand the Northern Ireland situation. If one wants a seventh level there are the actual trainees who sit at the very bottom and receive the training.
I suggest that that is much more complicated than it was at the time of the MSC, the ITBs and the original legislation. One can see that it is a mess—a remarkably similar mess administratively to the White Paper on education. There are many resemblances too to the administrative mess in the White Paper on the National Health Service and elsewhere.
This is what results when you apply three simple tests: there is nothing in it for the trade unions and tripartism is done away with; there is nothing in it for local government which does not vote for us; there is as much room as possible for superannuated employers who, hopefully, think like us. Whether you get them and how good they will be depends on how much you pay them. Why should a thrusting entrepreneur or a wealth creator who is any good in

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a Thatcherite society spend his spare afternoons sitting on enterprise councils? He must be a fool. He cannot believe his own convictions. He may send his grandfather. It all depends on the rate.
Fourthly, the whole thing must cost less than before. It must all help to reduce the national debt to vanishing point. Our argument and that of the noble Lord is that training is far too important—far too important for all of us—to be messed about in this way.
6.25 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, although his is not on all occasions an easy act to follow. Today is one such occasion. The debate has two very important facets. Why do we need a change of attitude towards training? And how are we to get it?
The burden of what I wish to say is that I do not believe that the Government's proposals, neither their White Paper nor their whole approach to training, begin to measure up to the size of the problem we face. That is why, first and foremost, we need a change of attitude. That change, as the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, said, needs to start at the top with the Government so that they get a totally different idea of training needs and how they should be achieved.
We need more and much better training. We need more because the level of training which has gone on for years among our competitors means that they now have a far better trained labour force than we have. Of course, they are continually improving their training. It is not as if they stand still and conveniently wait for us to catch up. They are going ahead all the time while we are still fiddling with the problem. Indeed, as implied by several speakers, in the view of many we are going backwards. Therefore, we have the problem of competition in training and a horrifying backlog of untrained people in our labour force. This stems from our neglect of training in the past and through embarking upon improved training programmes which have undone the good brought about by previous changes when we should have waited to see whether those programmes would deliver the goods.
We need far better training for those coming out of our schools. We do not want—I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady David—to go back to the old apprenticeship scheme. We need to go on to something far more appropriate to what is required in the industry and commerce of today and tomorrow. The problem is not that we did not have enough apprenticeships; it is that we have not developed the new styles and ways of training which modern industry requires. That is what training boards were beginning to do very successfully before the ground was cut from under their feet.
In a remark made extraordinarily shortly after he had put through the Education Reform Act, Kenneth Baker said that the years between 16 and 18 should be years of training and education and not years in which youngsters were being used as part of the labour force in the ordinary sense. Why he did not consider that when the education Bill was going
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through and incorporate that into the Bill passes my comprehension. It is a development we should like to see. However, we do not see it in the training White Paper. Why is it not there? I suppose it is because the Department of Education and the Department of Employment are unable to get together to decide what they really wish to do.
We need to pay a great deal of attention to the training of people who have not had training in the past. I refer to that large section of the adult population which, with the demographic changes, the expansion of industry and the opportunities available from the opening up of Europe, will need to be trained. Adults will need to be trained. The employment training scheme, although it has some merit, is certainly not adequate to deal with the demands and need for training among the adult population. Not least, may I add, we need to give far more training to the many women who would like to go back into the labour force if adequate training is available. The need for an increased quantity of training does not seem to be reflected in the Government's proposed programmes.
It is not only a question of quantity but of the quality of the training process. As I listen to people who appear to think that they have some knowledge of training, I am horrified at what they think passes for training. The Government do not seem to understand that training today has become a highly expert process, that properly done training is as far away from the old "sitting next to Nellie" process as it is possible to imagine. Yet one is told that training is going on throughout the country in companies where they do not begin to understand what modern training is all about, how the people who have really developed expertise in training set about it and what knowledge, skills and experience are required to get training properly done.
We need a huge expansion in the number of people who are able to train properly and who understand professionally what training is all about. The Government appear to think it enough to get together groups of employers who can spare time on a Friday afternoon to meet, whether or not they have done their week's work in the enterprises in which they are employed; people who have not applied training in their own concerns and who have refused to take advantage of the new developments in training. In fact, they are not so new. They have been around for a long time if people had had the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the willingness to make use of them. Do the Government seriously think that those people are going to be the spearhead of the great new advance in training in this country? If so, they will have to think again.
The available people will be either those who have the time and can be spared by their firms—in which case we are better without them because if they can be spared by their firms they can be spared by the training and enterprise agencies—or they will be people with too little clout and too little knowledge to achieve anything very much at all.
Of course, there are some important exceptions but those of us who worked on the area manpower boards know perfectly well that it was extraordinarily

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difficult to persuade employers who were capable of doing the job to give up the time to attend. What is the concrete evidence that industry will find these people with the knowledge, expertise, the time, the drive and the willingness to do the job which until now neither in their own companies nor in the area training boards have they been able to do? Why this sudden change? Without such people we shall not get either the quantity or quality of training.
We need a change of attitude among not only employers but among the people for whom training is intended. It should be intended, of course, for everyone from top to bottom. If the Government had thought about this matter years ago we would not be in the mess we are in today. If we had had tip-top management training over the past 15 years, as have many other countries, we would not be worrying about training inside enterprises because tip-top managers, properly trained, would have ensured that employees throughout their organisations were getting the necessary training.
Have the Government given any encouragement to that kind of management training? Have the Government taken on board that the best kind of management training is that which is closely linked to organisational development. Organisational development linked to management development is the way in which to get results. That is only achieved with people who fully understand what these complex concepts mean and know how to apply them. There have been attempts in universities and business schools to develop this expertise. In places, it is done extremely well. However, in the great majority of cases, people would not even know what I am talking about.
Training is not only a matter of giving people the opportunity to learn; they have to want to learn. People must feel that it is worth their while to be trained. There must be the attitude that training is an opportunity which must be seized. There is precious little evidence of that kind of feeling in this country. There was difficulty enough to persuade youngsters to join the youth training programme; partly because the schools did not understand how important it was and gave very little encouragement in the early days and partly because there was a strong feeling which parents and schools (not all of them, but many) shared—that it was better to get what was called a "real job", even if no training was involved but where a little more money could be earned rather than take the opportunity to learn. The great danger now is that with more jobs available youngsters will be encouraged, from a number of sources, to take those jobs with no training even though training is available. Unless we can develop the attitude in the schools, among parents, and in youngsters, that training is worthwhile we are wasting our time in seeking to encourage it.
Quantity and quality are what we need, but there is no evidence that we are going to get it. How are we to get that quantity and quality? The Government could have learned a great deal from some of our competitors. The Japanese have been good at getting people to understand why training is valuable for them. As my noble friend Lord Rochester said
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earlier, a small number of our greater companies have done exceedingly well in working through the difficult process of persuading people to collaborate in the development and delivery of training. It cannot be done by command process. You cannot make people learn. You cannot make people train. You can only make people want to learn or to train. Once they want to do that, your difficulties are at least halved. How can that be done? A great deal of work has gone into discovering that. The Government could have learned a lot from those people whom they greatly despise—the social scientists in this and other countries who have worked at the question of how to obtain a collaborative, participative approach where people feel that they have put something into the development of a training plan and are anxious to take part instead of having it imposed upon them as a command from above.
However, that kind of approach requires such a revolution in government thinking that one despairs of it ever happening. If the Government understood it they would be putting in their own changed programmes in local authorities, in health and in education in a totally different way. The Government do not understand: that is why those of us who care about training are almost in despair at the programme put before us.
6.38 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I too welcome the opportunity again to debate in your Lordships' House the important subject of training. I express my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, for introducing the subject, and, indeed, for the manner in which he introduced it. I share very many of the views he expressed.
The Government's views on this whole question are well known because we have the White Paper Employment for the 1990s. The question before the House this evening raises the whole issue of a training culture. By that I take it to mean not only public attitudes to training and the part that the Government play in forming those attitudes but also the structures created in order to deliver training of the type and variety felt appropriate to cope with our situation. My noble friend Lord McCarthy has this evening said a great deal about the structures. I cannot improve on what he has said. The Government have made clear what they think.
The belief clearly set out in the White Paper is that training is mainly a matter for employers and for privatised organisations. That is a departure from the thinking of previous governments, including past Conservative ones. It was a Conservative Government who introduced the Industrial Training Act in the 1960s. That and subsequent legislation created the industrial training boards that the White Paper seeks to abandon or to turn into non-statutory bodies. Yet, as my noble friend Lord McCarthy said, the industry boards have been successful. It would be unjust to lay at their door the failure, comparatively speaking, of training in this country. But matters would have been very much worse without the ITBs. The Engineering Industry Training Board, for example, has had some success in spreading and

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sustaining training. It is also having success in changing the image of the industry so that it is now increasingly seen as offering career opportunities for women.
It has been able to persuade employers to train women from their current unskilled workforces, pointing out the desirability of doing this since training is thus being given to people who are already familiar with the company and who have already developed company loyalty. Quite clearly, in-house training of that kind is necessary and desirable. In conjunction with a number of universities, programmes have been designed to enable young women to make informed decisions about engineering as a career. The board's annual report provides details of an impressive amount of work done, including accounts of companies that have actually been assisted to effect a complete turn-round from near collapse to profitability as a result of training programmes.
Here we have a body that is tripartite, with representatives of unions, including my own, as well as employers and educationists. It, and the Construction Industry Training Board, to which reference has already been made this evening, are parts of the present structure, which can be seen to have worked to some degree. There is no evidence at all that non-statutory bodies with a predominance of employers will do any better. In fact the contrary is likely to be the case. In any sector where there is a prevalence of small enterprises, regulation will be very difficult indeed without some form of statutory backing. The Government should be prepared to build on what has been reasonably sucessful in difficult circumstances.
One of the reasons for the decline of skill training was the manufacturing industry recession in the 1980s, when apprenticeship training seems to have collapsed. That could not be laid at the doors of the ITBs; it was entirely outside their control and due to a number of factors, including government policies.
Furthermore, as we have heard this evening, a well-trained workforce depends on having a well-educated workforce. There is a vital need to expand secondary school mathematics and science education for girls, as well as for boys, to ensure that those entering the workforce have the necessary basic competence to profit from further training. That has been dealt with in the admirable speech of my noble friend Lady David this evening. She spoke about the need to ensure that there was liaison between the government departments responsible. Access to training also needs to be made available to those who have left full-time education. Access to training and retraining needs to be available throughout life. For all this, adequate resources are required. The Government appear to expect employers to pay. Employers should play their part in providing the necessary funds, but there is also a national responsibility. Public funds have to be made available at an adequate level.
The Government's White Paper refers to maintaining a partnership on training but proposes structures that are unlikely to foster the kind of partnership likely to deliver. On past showing,
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employers are unlikely to give the voluntary commitment for which the Government ask. As has already been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, employer participation at area manpower boards, for example, was often poor compared with that of other people present; namely, the trade unionists and so on. The proposed structure of the training and enterprise councils is not tripartite. It is said in the White Paper that individual unions may be represented if they support the aims of the council. However, these aims are such that no union is likely to say that it would not support them. There is no suggestion either that disadvantaged groups such as ethnic minorities should have any representation. Neither is there anything about partnership at enterprise level.
Whatever the Government think about union representation—and the White Paper makes it very clear that they do not like collective representation and are all for an individual approach—the fact remains that many millions of workers still belong to unions. Particularly in large enterprises, unions tend to be strong and with well established systems of industrial relations and collective bargaining. That is particularly true of manufacturing industry. These are the structures upon which governments in the past have been willing to build. Unions are committed to training, whatever criticisms they may have had of various schemes introduced by the Government in the past. They have a role to play and they should not be deliberately excluded, as would appear to be the Government's intention.
Furthermore, in any kind of training culture, employees, those about to enter the workforce and those currently unemployed should have certain rights to training. First, there should be a right to some training each year with paid time off or a proper training allowance. I do not believe that that can be emphasised too much. There should be paid time off or a proper training allowance. That is what happens in Sweden where training and retraining are accepted as a fact of life and proper allowances and support are available for people when they are undertaking training. Secondly, there should be a right to training regardless of sex, race, religion or disability and regardless of the job performance.
Thirdly, there should be a right to take part in decisions about what training would be most effective. Finally, there should be a right to nationally and internationally-recognised standards of training. That is the kind of training culture for which we should be aiming. I do not believe that it is sufficiently outlined in the White Paper; neither is there any indication that the Government understand the changes in attitude that have to be created in order to make progress. Unless we are prepared to do this, I believe that the proposals in the White Paper will not remedy our situation at all. Indeed as the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, indicated, we seem to be going backwards rather than forwards.
I again welcome the oppportunity afforded by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, to debate this subject, and I support very strongly what has been said by almost everyone who has spoken.
6.47 p.m.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I should like to join with your Lordships in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, for introducing this debate. Underlying its general reference to training, the noble Lord offers us an interesting approach. He does not seek to look at the Government's present plans for training just on their own or in isolation. Rather he wishes to establish what different attitudes towards training the Government are trying to promote. Clearly some of these attitudes are directly evident from the new systems and mechanisms proposed in the White Paper. Others however are only to be inferred indirectly. That is why it is so constructive and useful to operate within the context of this kind of debate. As a result, we need not become bogged down with the contents of the White Paper itself. Instead we can focus, as your Lordships have done, on various connected themes about training and thereby, in the light of these connections, can attempt to judge which changes of attitudes towards training may now be desirable and practicable.
This White Paper, as with all White Papers, is concerned in the first place as background with certain facts or descriptions of conditions before it comes later to deal with certain prescriptions and recommended actions. Thus, in the first place it draws our attention to the international scene in which training has to take place in the 1990s. There is the European Single Market after 1992; the continuing competition from South-East Asia and elsewhere; the declining number of people coming into the British workforce; ever-advancing progress with technology, and so on. These are some of the factors with which we already know we have to contend and whose the impact on training no one would really seek or bother to deny.
Even so, if not contested, these facts are still not especially acknowledged. After all, the individual workplace or training centre is a long way from the international market. Therefore, perhaps the first thing that should be said about the country's attitude towards training is that, if this attitude does not contain enough awareness of the realities of trade and competition, then the background to the problem of training will not be seen for what it is and, equally, policies and remedies which address the problem will not be accepted for what they are trying to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, asked whether the new training initiative of 1981 is still in place. He asked whether it had been superseded by paragraph 4 of the White Paper and whether policy has still to be determined. The broad aims set out in the new training initiative of 1981 are still valid and the principles set out in paragraph 4 of the White Paper describe how the aims should be met in the context of the challenges facing the country today.
When we move from the background to the prescription and meat of the White Paper, the Government also seek a pragmatic understanding of and attitude towards training. As is well known, the Government's reasoning is that, since competition for goods and services will be even more testing in
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the 1990s than in the 1980s, the responsibility for training should be to a greater extent in the hands of employers—the people who have to take on and adjust to this challenge from competitive goods and services. Some noble Lords, I know, are concerned that too much responsibility for training is to be given to employers. Nevertheless we are proposing only a shift to employers in responsibility for training. It is not an abandonment by the Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, said that training through life is a government responsibility. The Government have contributed record expenditure —almost £3 billion per annum—to training and enterprise activities and fully accept the need for government commitment in this area. But training is a shared responsibility and employers need trained and adaptable staff to be competitive. Training and enterprise councils give employers a unique opportunity to lead the drive for training at local level. What is envisaged is simply the formation of a different partnership between Government and employers.
The noble Lord also asked whether training and enterprise councils will really be employer-led. Training and enterprise council boards of directors will be drawn from senior figures in local business and other leaders in the community. The board of directors will set the strategy and take decisions on training and enterprise activities. They will benefit from the help of Training Agency staff who will work for the TECs on secondment. But those staff will be entirely answerable and responsible to the board. Training and enterprise councils will indeed be employer-led.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, made comparisons with international competitors. In West Germany, which has been very successful industrially, it is the local employers, through their chambers of commerce, who have a leading role in training. There is no reason why our local employers cannot help Britain to be equally successful. The noble Lord also asked what is the point of dismantling the industrial training boards. All the ITBs except the construction ITB raise funds by levy from a minority of their firms and rely increasingly on income generating activities which they operate. This is the path which the Government advocate. Employers are the primary customers of training and their support is necessary to be successful. It will be up to the industry concerned to put up proposals on the shape of successor bodies.
The noble Lord developed the theme further on ITBs. He asked why only the construction ITB is acknowledged as having special considerations when other industries have similar problems. It is surely a question of degree. The White Paper deals with each of the remaining ITBs board by board, and it is in this context that the Government acknowledge the greater difficulties in moving towards non-statutory training arrangements for the construction industry.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, if the work of the industrial training boards was supported by only a minority of employers in industry, does it

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not demonstrate that the majority of the employers voluntarily decided not to participate? How does the Minister propose to change their attitude by this new arrangement? It is a simple question.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, the noble Lord suggests that the new arrangement is something radically different.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Yes.
The Earl of Dundee: In one sense it is not different at all. It is simply an evolved way of addressing the problem. He will not find anything radically different in the contact which he fears.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, the noble Earl has been kind enough to refer to several of my questions but has not answered any of them. I want him to answer one question on ITBs. What is the evidence that things have got better in those areas where the Government have abolished ITBs? In 1979 the Government put forward plans to abolish a large number of ITBs. What evidence is there that training has become better in the areas where the ITBs were abolished as against the areas where they remain?
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, if the noble Lord studies recent experience he may not find that matters have become radically better. At the same time he will not find that matters have become radically worse. He must give a chance for our new proposals to work. There is every chance that they will work. We are distinguishing between one category of ITB and another. As the noble Lord pointed out himself, there is a distinction between the construction ITB and the others. We are perfectly prepared to put that in a category of its own.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, will the noble Earl be good enough to answer some of the points I made about the EITB? What is the Government's intention in that regard? What special circumstances relate to the CITB which do not relate to the EITB?
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, as the noble Baroness implies, there is a quite strong link between the EITB and the CITB. I am anxious in my remarks now to deal with the general context of the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, which is about attitudes. I am anxious not to be drawn into too many detailed responses. I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me if I do not spend a long time in that vein.
My noble friend Lady Carnegy pointed out the need for TECs to reflect the responsiveness and values of the private sector. I am grateful for my noble friend's support for the TEC proposals. I entirely agree that TECs will help to bring a commercial and swift response to training and enterprise needs. Training and enterprise councils are about getting better value for taxpayers' money, and that of course is entirely to be welcomed.
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My noble friend also said that employers are concerned that TECs should cover an area large enough to be viable yet remain local. She asked whether this would always be the case. It will be for individual TECs to agree the precise boundaries of their geographical area, but the average TEC will have a working population of a quarter of a million people and only in exceptional cases will they have fewer than 100,000. This should ensure that TECs are both large enough to be viable and small enough to retain a sense of local community.
I do not want to discuss the precise balance of the prescription for training of this new partnership between Government and employers. Nor do I wish to discuss the particular operations as conceived for training in enterprise councils. What is instead at issue in this debate is whether employers who are directly in touch with market forces and international competition should be far more prominent than they have been in influencing what training is carried out, and whether this kind of attitude to training as a means to business success should be encouraged in the country. On that issue it is the Government's contention that if such an attitude is not now cultivated, and if employers do not substantially decide about training, then the workforce will not be able properly to meet the challenges of the 1990s.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, asks if the private sector really wants to be involved in TECs. She also wonders whether the TECs are a replacement for local government. On her first point, I am glad to say that there has been an excellent response from the private sector and that we are expecting a number of early applications to establish TECs across the country. Regarding her second point, I can assure the noble Baroness that TECs will be encouraged to work with all the existing power bases and interests in the community, including local authorities.
Yet, while employers can best direct training to the advantage of national trade and competition, can they also do this to the advantage of the local community and the individual trainee? Again I do not want to be drawn into a description of the particular ingredients of local training arrangements. The general issue is whether employer-led training is in the best interests both of national trade and of the local community. The Government's view is that these two are inseparable. A successful and prosperous nation depends on the enterprise and competitiveness of its local communities. This is why TECs are about enterprise in the broadest sense as well as about training, and thereby are able to serve both national and local needs.
Regarding the individual employee and trainee I turn now to some indirect inferences and assumptions arising from the White Paper. Your Lordships may wonder what is the Government's attitude towards skill and competence in general. Is it simply the attainment of qualifications, or do we aim for the wider goal of adaptability and motivation to meet the challenges of the future as well as for excellence at work today? What we really should have of course are relevant qualifications—that is, qualifications which not only satisfy today's known

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skill needs but also lay the broad foundation on which future but unknown skill requirements can be built. In this way, the attainment of relevant qualifications marries in with the wider goals of producing a more competent, adaptable and motivated workforce.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, asked why is there not a lead body for education and training under NCVQ? There is a lead body for trainers which is seeking to establish standards of competence relating to all training functions. Discussions are taking place on the need for, and the role of, a lead body in the field of education. Standards developed in other sectors, including that of trainers, will have a potential application to a number of functions in the education sector.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, asked if TECs will really produce quality training. They most definitely will, because TECs will agree a performance-based contract with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment. The contract will specify targets for job entry after training, qualfications gained, business survival rates, etc., and this should help improve what employers and trainees most want from training, which is of course results.
Another theme is the Government's attitude and the country's attitude towards small businesses and large ones. It has been alleged that our present measures set out to improve the performance of large businesses, but do not do enough for small ones. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, expressed concern about the training of managers, and asked what the Government are doing about it. We all share the noble Baroness's concern. That is why the Government, through business growth training, are providing help to employers to develop their management skills in the context of managing change and growth.
The new training partnership, to which I referred earlier, will take fully on board the special needs of small firms. Indeed, the recently announced new programme of business growth training, which will be largely administered by TECs, is specifically designed to encourage and help small firms to plan training as part of their overall business strategy. The Government are therefore very much concerned to change the attitude of small firms and to help to put training high on their agendas.
What may also appear to be inconsistent in the present approach—and the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, made this point—is the emphasis placed on the role of the business sector. The public sector is of course not exempted from government exhortations to improve training performance, yet the emphasis must be on the wealth-creating private sector, which drives the country's economy. Moreover, your Lordships will be well aware of other initiatives to make the public sector more responsive to commercial pressures and to compete with the private sector in some of the services which it provides. Clearly it will be those who train, whether in the public or the private sector, who are most likely to be successful.
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The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, inquired whether the Government will reduce expenditure on training, and at what rate. I should say that I am grateful that the noble Lord supports the Government's objectives, even if he cannot support the means, which I appreciate he does not. The Government's public expenditure plans published in January 1989 continue to show a substantial commitment in training and expenditure up to the years 1991 and 1992. As the noble Lord knows, expenditure beyond that date has not yet been settled.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, asked whether we rely on employers to deliver training in TECs. The best of our employers have an excellent record for training. That is often the secret of their success. One of the key roles of TECs will be to encourage employers to recognise the value of training in their business strategy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, questioned whether employers have the time to commit to TECs. I know the great commitment that the noble Baroness has made to the area manpower boards, where employers and others also give their time freely. There is concrete evidence that many employers around the country are prepared to give time to TECs. We hope to make that commitment not too onerous, but we are not prepared to stint on quality. We shall only accept employers who are chief executives or equivalent in their firm, and the signs are that we shall succeed.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but why does he think that chief executives are going to be expert in the training field? I do not understand the argument.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I would always hope that chief executives would be as expert as they can be, but expertise does not have to be confined to chief executives. Certainly we do not want to be pedantic or too restrictive about who comes in and who cannot come in. At present I think it is our idea that we would encourage as many chief executives as possible to come along.
I know that there is concern that we still have a divided attitude towards education and training. Of course it goes without saying that there should be as much co-operation as possible over training between schools, colleges and other training establishments. The noble Baroness, Lady David, referred to LEAs and the strategic goals for education. In view of the TECs' strategic role for training, she asks how the two will be married together. It will of course be important for TECs and LEAs to work closely together and to share a common strategic approach. The Training Agency, through its contracts with TECs and the work of LEAs on plans for work-related further education, is well placed to help forge that link.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, also asked how TECs will work with the Department of Education. TECs will be an important source of advice and expertise on educational issues and will be able to offer informal advice to the Training Agency and to the Department of Education.

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The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, said that the seven levels of programmes and structures in the training agency are an administrative mess. I hope that he is not entirely correct! The Government's proposals in the White Paper are designed to bring coherence to the Training Agency's training and enterprise activities. The noble Lord is critical of our success. I make no apology for the many positive initiatives that the Government have undertaken, which have now brought unemployment below 2 million.
The co-operation that is desired in the area of training and education is exemplified by the need for both education and training to prepare people for a highly technological and fast-changing society. That requires a broad and balanced education and training programme which, nonetheless, does not lessen our traditional liberal attitude towards the provision of education. That is why under the Government's various provisions for young people we are trying to make education and training more relevant and responsive to industry's needs.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, asked whether the Government were content with the work-related further education programme now that the MSC has been abolished and whether the funding of the programme would remain the same. The answer is, yes. Her Majesty's Inspectorate reported that the programme provided a powerful incentive for LEAs to introduce planning and policy for further education. The abolition of the MSC does not affect the programme. The recent public expenditure White Paper forecast expenditure on that programme to increase from £112.45 million in 1989–90 to £115 million in 1990–91.
The various issues that we have all looked at during this debate constitute some of the themes affecting different attitudes towards training. In that context, the White Paper's proposals can be seen as a major step forward and as containing measures which are entirely consistent with the attainment of wider goals. These measures are, above all, about enterprise; about enterprising employers and individuals, and about people who must also possess that unity of purpose and attitude which we have been discussing today.
7.12 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, we will all wish to study carefully the response of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, to the points that have been raised in this short debate. I must confess that my first reaction was one of disappointment. He was correct to say that we have been talking about attitudes, especially those of the Government in relation to their behaviour. If I may so with respect, to a large extent the Minister in his response was deploying the very attitude that I and other noble Lords have criticised: "There, there, my friends, there is no need to worry, everything is under control. There are a number of things upon which we do not disagree very much. However, you must understand that in these matters the Government know best, and no other approach is the right one—and thank you very much".
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The best way to hamper change is to stifle initiative down the line, to refuse to be deflected by the voice of experience and reasoned argument from the course that one intends to pursue and to discourage people from becoming involved in helping to manage what has to be changed, unless of course they are established members of the hierarchy. To judge from the Government's response, they have not grasped the counter-productive effect that their present attitude is bound to have on what they are seeking to achieve, especially in failing to build, as has been said by a number of noble Lords, on the foundations that have already been laid, and in failing to be willing to enable all those having a stake in the problem, as I tried to say in my earlier speech, sharing in this important enterprise. I hope that in the light of some of the things that have been said this evening the Government will again think carefully about all this.
It remains for me only to thank all noble Lords who have taken so much trouble to take part in the debate. I for one have learnt a number of things. I trust that the debate will help to influence public opinion in the vital matter that we have been discussing. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers by leave, withdrawn.

Teaching Council Proposal
7.16 p.m.
Lord Glenamara Lord Glenamara rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will establish a general teaching council for England and Wales.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, professional self-government has long been the aim of teachers who are concerned about the standards of their profession and the public esteem for it. Indeed, one of the earliest attempts at giving teachers professional self-conduct took place in the early years of the last century when Queen Victoria gave a charter to the College of Preceptors, a body which is still pursuing that objective.
In 1965, the then Labour Government established the great General Teaching Council in Scotland under the Training Council (Scotland) Act. In 1969, I took the initiative of setting up the Weaver Committee to plan a general teaching council for England and Wales. That committee produced a positive report in favour of a general teaching council but unfortunately it came to grief because of inter-union rivalry.
The need and the desire for professional self-government are greater today than they have ever been. The prospects of agreement about it are much better than they have ever been. I shall explain why in a few moments.
I do not wish to introduce a note of discord into the debate, but in my view—I have been associated with teaching all my adult life—the morale of the teaching profession is lower than I have ever known it. Teachers have lost the right to negotiate about their pay and conditions of service; they have lost the right to develop their own curriculum, which they have enjoyed since Robert Lowe's revised code came to grief in the middle of the last century; they

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have lost the right to decide what to teach. That is now decided in the greatest detail by the Secretary of State. Time spent on each subject is no longer a matter for their professional judgment. Indeed, the way in which teachers do their work in England and Wales is now more closely circumscribed than in any Western country and most countries in the Eastern bloc. All this has been imposed upon them and their morale is at an all-time low. A generous government—and I hope that this Government are generous; they are continually telling us that they are—would try to restore that morale.
One means of doing so would be to accord teachers a major, generous measure of autonomy under a general teaching council. By that I mean a statutory independent professional body for the education service, analogous to the GMC, established by Parliament in 1858 for the medical profession or the GTC, which I have just described for Scotland, created by Parliament in 1965.
However I do not wish to give the wrong impression. I am not advocating a general teaching council simply as a means of enabling the Government to make amends to the teachers for all the indignities that they have suffered in recent years, but because it is surely a sensible, democratic and efficient course to take at this time, if the Government want a teaching service of high quality with pride in itself to carry out the 1988 reforms. It is worth remembering that only the teachers can make a success of the Education Reform Act 1988—only the teachers, not the DES or anybody else.
I said a moment ago that the prospects for agreement today are better than they have ever been. Let me explain why. In 1984 the University Council for the Education of Teachers, at the request of the bigger teaching unions, set up a forum of 17 teacher bodies involved in education to plan a general teaching council. It was under the chairmanship of Professor Alec Ross, who is very well known to many of us and particularly to my noble friend, one of the Deputy Pro-Chancellors of Lancaster University.
In the short period of three years this forum has reached agreement on the principles, the role and the functions of a general teaching council. That is quite a remarkable achievement, because those three years, 1985 to 1987, were not marked by professional unity on any other issue. But they reached almost total agreement on this. Having reached agreement, the UCET-sponsored forum then began to consult much more widely and to share its thoughts with other bodies; to be precise, another 16 bodies. They ranged from the Association of County Councils through such bodies as the CBI and the DES itself and the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals to the TUC.
The education management unit in the Institute of Education in London University has also been holding a series of seminars with the same consultative purpose. In the month of March it has held six seminars: in the University of Manchester, the University of Warwick, Salisbury College of Technology, Huddersfield Polytechnic, the University of Wales and the University of London.
This work has gone on and the whole process—the original UCET forum, the 16 other bodies I have mentioned and the seminars—show a remarkable and commendable determination to get the plan for a general teaching council right this time. I can think of few, or indeed no, initiatives in the field of education which have been so thoroughly pursued and prepared as this has. I understand that the process of consultation will end next month, and I am told that the Secretary of State will then be invited to convene a national conference. From it he will pursue the idea of professional autonomy through to legislation.
I should be deceiving the House if I gave the impression that throughout all this consultation period everything has been agreed. One important point has not been agreed—the method of electing the governing body of a general teaching council. But all are agreed on two most important points about the governing body. First, it must contain a majority of registered teachers. Secondly, it must contain representatives of the wider public interests in education—parents, governors, local authorities, churches etc. One of the flaws in the Weaver Report was that it did not provide for this.
A major area not agreed is whether the teacher majority should be elected by a ballot of all registered teachers—I strongly believe that it should be—or whether it should be based upon the membership of existing unions, with the kind of representation they had on the now defunct Burnham Committee. That is a method which would cause great conflict of interest where difficulties arose in disciplinary matters.
If the Government eventually legislate, they will almost certainly have to make the decision themselves, as the Labour Government had to do in the case of the Scottish GTC. But I very much hope that the Government will not say that they cannot proceed without agreement on the point, because it will never be agreed among the teachers' unions themselves. I can tell them that now. But to say that the Government cannot proceed because 5 per cent. has not been agreed, when 95 per cent. has been agreed, would be grossly unfair.
The broad purpose of a general teaching council is that teachers themselves should control the ingress to and the egress from their profession; they alone should have the power to confer or to withdraw the licence or the right to teach, with of course provision for an appeal to the High Court. In exercising its disciplinary powers, the council would have to develop some kind of professional ethic. It could be a kind of Hippocratic oath, or it might be an agreed code of professional conduct of the kind which some unions, notably the Professional Association of Teachers, have developed in recent years.
From the broad purpose of controlling the ingress to and egress from their own profession, a number of other functions would flow. I shall not discuss them in detail because I took the liberty of sending the Minister the committee's detailed proposals. Clearly teachers must have a major voice in the training of teachers, both the initial training and the in-service training, just as the Inns of Court in the

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noble Lord's profession and the Law Society have a major voice in the training of lawyers.
The nature and length of the initial training should be matters for the profession itself. This accreditation function would also apply to in-service training. The GTC would also lay down the ground rules for induction, whether the induction of newly qualified teachers or, for example, the induction of newly appointed head teachers. So it must have a major voice in the training of teachers.
Having said that, perhaps I may recognise at once that this is one of the major difficulties as regards the DES. They might argue, as the officials in the DES did in 1969 and 1970, and as they will certainly argue in 1989, that the Government themselves must be able to ensure that the supply of teachers is always adequate to implement public policy. I agree that they should. They then go on to say that there is a conflict between this need, which the DES must retain, and giving the general teaching council a major voice in the training of teachers. I do not believe that there is a conflict. I have never believed that there need be a conflict; and nor does the UCET forum. I do not believe there is a conflict any more than there is a conflict between the need to ensure that the health service has an adequate supply of trained doctors and the involvement of the General Medical Council in the training of doctors.
There is a shifting equation between the supply of teachers and their entry qualifications. However, that need present no insuperable difficulties given good will on the part of the DES and of a general teaching council. That would of course depend on where the line were drawn between the GTC's strict accreditation function and its advisory function. Where that line was drawn would be a matter for negotiation between the Secretary of State and the UCET forum.
Finally, a general teaching council is not an end in itself. However, I believe it could be a means of achieving a high degree of unity of purpose in carrying out the public will, as expressed in legislation passed by Parliament on education, in the best possible way. It could help to create a recognised, respected profession united in public service. It would not solve all the problems of the education service overnight, but I believe that its establishment would be a recognition that they can only be solved by a united, self-respecting teaching profession.
All I hope is that the Minister will give some sympathetic encouragement tonight to the teachers who have served on this forum and worked so hard over the past three years to achieve almost complete agreement. I further hope that the Minister will give some hope to all teachers that they are at last recognised as a profession in fact as well as in name.
7.31 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, the noble Lord and I have faced each other across this Floor in education debates more than once. It is a particular pleasure that, for once, we are agreed, although we did not necessarily come to these conclusions by entirely the same route. Certainly the conclusion which I wish
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to support is the hope that the Government will look sympathetically upon this proposal. It is not I believe in any sense a party political matter.
In 1983 I had the task of presiding over a committee composed of Conservatives interested in education. The committee had to prepare the education elements in the 1983 General Election manifesto. The committee was representative of the educational world. One of the conclusions of the committee was that a general teaching council for England and Wales should be set up. This is relevant to the explanation and the detailed information on the current state of play for which we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, because that suggestion was turned down for inclusion in the manifesto by the then Secretary of State who is now the noble Lord, Lord Joseph.
As I remember it, the argument produced by the noble Lord, Lord Joseph, was that it was not possible to devise a regulatory body of the kind which the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, sketched out for us tonight. The noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, also suggested the kind of functions which it should have. The functions suggested then were very much the same as they are now. The noble Lord, Lord Joseph, said the body would simply become another weapon for teachers' trade unions to use in their conflicts with the Government over matters such as pay and conditions. Those conflicts are perhaps endemic. It was my view then, and it remains my view now, that it is possible to devise a system of election to such a body—the alternative system which I think the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, approved of is a possibility in this connection—which would not run this risk. It would be perfectly possible to elect the body on a regional basis of teachers from particular areas of the country. Such a body could ignore the fact that those teachers were members of one trade union or another because they had respect among their professional colleagues and were known for their own good works as head teachers or in the classroom. Therefore, it seems to me that the argument which was then put forward is not a valid one. If it is not a valid argument and if another body can be devised, as separate after all as the General Medical Council is from the BMA, that should surely be welcomed by people of all political parties or of none who are interested in education.
This is a particularly good moment at which this subject should be raised again, not merely because of the detailed work which has gone into it over the past five years, but also because we are witnessing—and are likely to continue to witness—a major upheaval in the production, education, training, and certification of teachers in any event because of the fast changing nature of the educational scene. The proposals to increase the number of those who have received on-the-job training after becoming graduates, as against those who go through a teacher training course, are issues on which the Government have an opinion and on which various other people have opinions. These issues can be debated either way, no doubt; but they are certainly appropriate for a general teaching council to look at. They are not appropriate issues, say, for the teachers' trade unions to look at. In their recent conferences they showed

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a very wide variety of attitudes; and if I may say so, sometimes they showed a wide variety of prejudices.
If we assume that there will also be, as one would hope, an expansion of the role of the schools—this may have been discussed earlier this afternoon in our debate on training—that again makes it appropriate that there should be a professional body to ensure that the balance between education and training, for instance, is preserved. I know this concept perhaps may not appeal to the Department of Education and Science for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, gave. I am also well aware that at the moment the Government are not in a very favourable mood as regards professions. Yet I should have thought it is quite clear that if we are to make progress as a society, the building up of a professional sense of obligation at all levels in the educational profession—this is becoming increasingly necessary in higher education as well—and the preservation of, or enhancement where it exists, of a similar sense of professional obligation is an absolute condition of making satisfactory changes to meet the new demands upon our society.
It is wrong to think that the existence of autonomous professions in any sense detracts from the national interest. Properly viewed, self-governing, autonomous professions contribute to the national interest by enabling people to express their own devotion to the particular tasks which they have to perform. If that is generally true, it must be true of teachers.
If we are to ask people to undergo what is nowadays described as the stress of the teaching profession (some aspects of which have been drawn to our attention in the report of my noble friend Lord Elton) I think that at the same time we should give teachers the feeling that they are part of an appreciated profession, and that they stand high in the public confidence. In that respect, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara.
I believe that that confidence would be greater if teachers' corporate contribution was made largely through a general teaching council, and the unions were left to what is their natural habitat: negotiations on matters of pay, hours of work, length of holidays and so forth. I think there is a distinction to be made, and I should be disappointed if Her Majesty's Government and the present Secretary of State showed the same negative attitude as we found in 1983.
7.41 p.m.
Lord McNair: My Lords, it was predictable that the essential background information or factual agenda for this debate would be clearly and cogently provided for us by the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara. We foresaw that and we were not disappointed.
It was possible to interpret the Question as drafted by the noble Lord either as just that, a question, or as a request. Clearly it is a request and it is a request which I should like strongly to support. Perhaps I may say how delighted I was to hear the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, support it and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, was equally pleased.
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Perhaps I may give some of the reasons why I and some of my political colleagues would like to see a general teaching council established as soon as possible. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, that this is not a party political matter. The first reason is morale. There is a clamorous and urgent need to improve the morale of our teachers. Morale and status go together. We and the teachers see that doctors, lawyers, vets and many other worthy professions have long had their equivalent of a GTC. In our eyes the teachers are at least as important as the members of those professions.
I should go further and argue that the educators of a population are its most important members and that their influence upon the future, for good or ill, is greater than that of any other professional group, not excluding politicians. I think that Plato got that right. Perhaps the only exception would be the really great philosphers, scientists and artists, but they are freaks of nature. One cannot do anything about them except hope that they will crop up from time to time.
Our first reason therefore for wanting to see a GTC is that, if intelligently and unselfishly established, it would go a long way to raising the morale and enhancing the standing of the teaching profession in our society.
I turn now to my second reason, although all these reasons tend to overlap. It is possible to believe and difficult to doubt that, if a general teaching council had been firmly established with something of the traditional authority of the General Medical Council, teachers would have been spared some of the indignities they have suffered in recent years. The Burnham rug has been yanked from under their feet with no replacement except an advisory council appointed by, guess who? Is it not called an interim advisory council? One may ask, how long is "interim"? If the noble Lord can tell us, we should be interested to hear when we can expect some news of Burnham's successor.
Negotiating rights over teachers' pay and conditions have been abolished, if I am not mistaken, making teachers somewhat less advantaged than municipal refuse collectors, as our dear friends the dustmen are now called. Surely those and other humiliations would have been averted, successfully resisted, or perhaps not even contemplated if we had had a GTC.
My third motive for supporting the request concerns the public attitude towards education. As I said earlier, these arguments tend to interweave and overlap. I am afraid that recently there has been a tendency to downgrade and cheapen the way in which we are asked to look at education. It may be partly because I grew up in a university town that I have always felt a deep reverence for learning. I have acquired little enough of it but I have retained my reverence for it. Yet nowadays we hear parents described as consumers of education—parents, not children. I did not consume my education, I absorbed it, or some of it. It is not and cannot, without catastrophe, be regarded as a commodity. If teachers had a well-established and properly constituted GTC, as solicitors for the time being have the Law Society, that of itself would help to

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remind us and the teachers what a precious thing it is that they transmit to their pupils.
I come to the last of the reasons that I shall give tonight for supporting the request of the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara. We must have something to protect education against excessive interference by governments, all governments, present and future. During those long, hot, plague-ridden nights of last summer we loaded the Secretary of State with new centralising powers. From this side of the House perhaps I should say that we failed to prevent him from accumulating them. He reminded me of the dung beetle in the "Insect Play". As we kept on saying, nobody knows who will be Secretary of State in years to come. Whoever it may be, if he is wise and if he has a truly humane attitude towards education and a little of the reverence which I spoke of earlier, then I believe that he will be not just glad, but relieved, to share some of those powers with a general teaching council.
I should like to conclude with a few brevities. The composition of a GTC is much debated. I know that I am not qualified to dogmatise on that subject. However, I hope that it would avoid the fallacy of corporatism. We do not want a sort of educational Neddy. We should hope that most of its members would be elected by their colleagues, one teacher one vote. We should also hope, as has already been mentioned, that there would be an element of regionalism in the elections and that the voice of the Cornish teacher or the Welsh teacher would not go unheard.
Finally—and I mean finally—perhaps I may end with a question which I do not expect anyone to answer but which I should like to place on the record. If and when we get a general teaching council, is there any reason why the independent sector of education should not also be represented thereon? I do not like to see the private and public sectors diverging ever more widely. Perhaps this might be a way for them to keep in touch.
7.49 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Glenamara for raising the Question this evening. I believe that no one has done more than he over a good number of years to bring this request to the attention of various bodies. We might differ a little among ourselves about dates, but I believe from my research that he intended to bring the matter forward in 1970. Unfortunately, he left office at that point and the incoming government did not pursue the proposal. We shall not argue about exact dates, but I agree with my noble friend that the Scottish council was set up in 1965.
Much work has been done on the matter over the intervening years. I have been connected with various educational establishments over that period and have never known a time when one was able to get 17 organisations—both unions and associations —to agree in the way that they have agreed on this subject. If my memory serves me correctly, the only association that is not quite happy at the moment—and I say "at the moment"— is the National Associ-
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ation of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. The remaining associations are quite happy about the matter and I am sure that the NASUWT will probably think differently in the course of time.
Much has been said regarding the morale of the teaching profession. Having listened to and read the debates that have taken place over the Easter period, I believe that nothing would restore teachers' confidence more at the present time than the setting up of a general teaching council. Teachers now crave something to inspire them and give them the professionalism that they so badly need as a national base. I am sure that that would be a great thing for them. If the Secretary of State wants to redeem himself in the eyes of the teachers, that is certainly one of the ways in which he can do so.
There has been a certain amount of confusion regarding the role of the council. Having read all the documents and debates, I am sure that no one wants the council to take the place of the trade unions. It is recognised that the trade unions will deal with something different—pay and conditions—but that the general teaching council will deal with the professionalism, training and discipline of teachers. It is important that they should have such a body.
I do not want to become too involved tonight because this is the wrong time and the wrong place to go into the detail of who should be the representatives, who should constitute the body and from which regions they should come. Those matters can be sorted out among teachers. I want to pay tribute to Professor Alec Ross of Lancaster University who has done so much, as my noble friend Lord Glenamara acknowledged, to steer the committee in that direction.
Everyone who takes part in this evening's debate will certainly support the request—it is a request, but a sincere request—on behalf of my noble friend Lord Glenamara. I hope that the Minister will take this request seriously. If he wants to do something good to help the teaching profession a t the present time, he should set up the council as quickly as possible.
7.54 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, perhaps naively, I have always thought it self-evident that there should be a general teaching council to compare with the associations governing the medical, dental, legal and other professions. I well remember my hopes when my noble friend Lord Glenamara set up the Weaver Committee. That seemed to me to be a milestone, although he was correct about the reason for its failure. I must say—I shall deal with this point later—that that issue would still be a major problem now. That point has already been made in the debate and it is perhaps worth repeating.
A great deal has also been said about the structure and organisation of a general teaching council, and that is absolutely proper. It is a major matter. There is no doubt that there will be great disagreement if and when it is established. However, my short contribution tonight deals with the case for a GTC. I make that point because, as has beery mentioned by at least three contributors to the debate, the

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morale of teachers at the moment is the lowest that it has ever been. Anyone who has been associated closely with teaching for any length of time must agree that that is the present situation.
I said that I thought that the setting up of a GTC was self-evident because there can surely be nothing more important than the education of a human being. We are talking not only about instruction in particular subjects, important though that is, but about what philosophers have said over the years about the education of the whole man. That includes, among other things, the inculcation of moral and ethical standards, civilised behaviour, aesthetic appreciation and, not least, the development of healthy living. The raw material, if I can use such a phrase, is a young person who often has little or no desire to be influenced in such matters.
The task facing the educator is therefore a daunting one which requires not only thorough training of a high standard, but must be combined with personal qualities that are not always required or found in other professions. I believe that, if we add to all those matters the sheer pressure of dealing day in, day out, with 20 or 30 young people, each with his or her own distinctive personality problems, even the most cynical of critics must admit that teaching is not only an honourable but a difficult profession and therefore worthy of a professional body such as a general teaching council.
Because of those important matters—I hope that noble Lords will accept that they are important—we must ask why a council is not already in existence. First, there is no doubt, at least in my mind, that for a long time academic standards were too low. The length of training—I am thinking of the former two-year and three-year courses—was much too short and it was simply not always possible—I realise that there were exceptions—to achieve high standards in what was, after all, a combined course of academic study and professional training.
However, that state of affairs has now passed. Teaching is becoming a graduate profession, as it should be, which not only ensures higher standards but, equally important in arguing for a general teaching council, earns the respect of parents and the public generally. In that regard it could be argued that, with its multiplicity of further training, re-training, refresher courses and the like, the teaching profession is ahead of other professions.
A further reason why there is no teaching council —here I make a criticism of the teachers themselves —is that there has been little effort or initiative from the profession for such a body. That is the reason, so the Government say, why they have done nothing about a general teaching council. I can understand that view, but I do not accept it from this Government because they have done so much to denigrate teachers.
The decision to remove negotiating rights was almost unbelievable and will rankle for many years after the restoration of those rights. The recent decision to recruit licensed teachers into schools and other educational institutions is the biggest demonstration yet of the contempt that this Govern
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ment show for the teaching profession. Imagine a licensed doctor or a licensed dentist who is learning on the job!
As I said, the teachers can be criticised in this matter but there is no reason why the Government themselves should not take the initiative in establishing a council. It would not only be a recognition of the nature of the work, but over the years would raise standards. Some of my noble friends may not agree but I am sure that among teachers generally, in spite of the apparent lack of it, there is a desire for a recognised professional body. A little pump-priming, as it were, from the Government, in my view, would soon bring about the necessary change.
In the past two or three years there has been criticism—not entirely justified—of action taken by teachers, and I refer to the withdrawal of services from out of school activities, from the school itself and so on. I am no great supporter of industrial action, particularly in the field of education, but I do not know what else could have been done against a government who have shown such an uncaring attitude toward people with such an important and difficult job to do.
I mention these matters because I believe that in the long term a general teaching council would make a significant contribution toward the resolution of such problems. A sense of status and professionalism is bound to have an effect. I believe that an initiative from the Government would not only create good will where it is at present badly needed but would demonstrate a genuine concern on their part. It is not only inevitable but proper that the teaching profession should be compared with other professions in the call for an overseeing professional association or organisation. Some of my remarks have already dealt with some of those points.
I draw attention to the intrinsic nature of the work. It is far from easy. The fact that teaching more than any other profession, leads to a greater number of breakdowns is an indication of the pressure that is brought to bear on teachers. We must also consider the comparative value of the professions to society. All of them are important, but I hope that my remarks have shown that teaching ranks equally with the other professions. By its very nature, however, it has a disadvantage. In law, medicine and other professional fields the client often, though obviously not always, receives a quick or fairly quick answer, response or solution to the problem posed. That is obviously advantageous to the professional concerned. That is never the case in education. Therefore it is inevitable that pupils, parents and the public generally often have doubts, reservations or disagreements about the work of the educator. It often gives rise to the sometimes or indeed often heard phrase "anyone can teach".
It is worth summarising the demands made on a person who wishes to enter the teaching profession. The Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education supervises teacher training courses. There is therefore right at the beginning an external setting of standards. Obviously entrants must have A-levels or degrees relevant for the course. They must

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complete a course which usually lasts four years, have adequate periods of supervised teaching practice (which is properly becoming more important) and have suitable personal qualities. Those general requirements are certainly no less than the requirements of other professions.
The annual report for 1987–88 of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools has been much quoted recently and not least in this House. I close my remarks with yet another quotation. He said:
"Too many teachers feel their profession and its work are misjudged and seriously undervalued".
I do not say that the establishment of a general teaching council would entirely meet that misjudgment and undervaluation but I believe that it would make a significant contribution toward doing so. I hope that the Government and the teaching profession will soon take action in what many people consider would be a major step forward.
I conclude by expressing the view that the contribution to this debate made by my noble friend Lord Glenamara is the most significant speech on this important issue that I have heard for many years. His contribution and that of other noble Lords, added to the atmosphere and feeling in the teaching profession—perhaps in the country at large, and certainly as far as parents are concerned—leads me to believe that the time could not be more suitable for the Government to take an initiative. I hope that they will take notice of what has been said tonight.
8.5 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Glenamara on his admirable speech raising this Question tonight. It is very satisfactory that he should have asked the Question. He was Secretary of State when the Weaver Committee was set up to make proposals,
"for the establishment and operation of a council through which teachers in England and Wales can exercise a measure of self-government",
and it was only last month that a discussion document called Towards the General Teaching Council was published by the Education Management Unit of the University of London Institute of Education. So the time is ripe for a new look and a new assessment.
On the 8th July last year my noble friend Lord Dormand asked whether the Government would set up a general teaching council. The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, responded to the effect that the Government had consistently made it clear that they were prepared to consider the case for a GTC on the basis of a specific proposal likely to command widespread support and serve the interests of relevant parties—parents, pupils and employers as well as teachers. She said that no such specific proposal had been received. I hope that it will be received before too long.
Talks have been going on under the aegis of UCET, and one hopes that a specific proposal will emerge as a result and that it will have the support and agreement of all the teaching unions. The failure to reach agreement no doubt gives the Government an
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excuse—if such they want, and they may—for not going ahead with the idea. However, it seems that 17 major professional associations are now in agreement, and that is very encouraging. We have a discussion document produced as a result of those talks.
A GTC would be committed to maintaining professional standards of conduct arid professional discipline—matters which are now dealt with by the DES. It would determine minimum qualifications for entry into initial training and the nature and length of that initial training. It should be involved in in-service education and training, retraining and re-entry to the profession. It should be involved in advising the department on the supply of teachers.
The crisis in teacher supply and the shortage of teachers, particularly of the subjects that make up the core and foundation curricula so soon to be embarked on, which was highlighted a month ago in a very good debate opened by my noble friend Lord Stewart of Fulham, points to the need for someone to advise on present and future needs as the DES and Ministers have failed so dismally to do so. They appear to have no comprehensive plan. They have been woefully negligent in letting this crisis arise.
Over the past two decades we have achieved a graduate teaching profession for schools, as my noble friend Lord Dormand said. Unqualified instructors have been retrained and graduates without a teaching qualification have been admitted only in exceptional circumstances. Much of the pressure for that improvement came from the former Advisory Committee for the Supply and Education of Teachers and its predecessor, ACSTT. Those bodies were set up as a result of the Weaver Report. They represented the teaching profession and the employing authorities.
ACSET produced an important set of recommendations on initial and in-service training and on training to meet special educational needs. Its recommendations were accepted by the Secretary of State, who then set up the Council for the Accreditation of Teachers (CATE for short) to ensure that training institutions met the criteria within a few years. ACSET could be seen as the governing body which could recommend review and revision of CATE as an executive body, but ACSET was discontinued five years ago and there has been no replacement body to advise the Government on teacher supply and education. So CATE is left without a channel for professional support for any changes in its work. I understand that there used to be a branch of the DES that concentrated on forecasting the needs of the teaching profession both in numbers and subjects, but that is no more. Therefore a professional body such as the suggested GTC is very badly needed.
Mention has been made of the GTC for Scotland set up 24 years ago. That gives an excellent precedent. It consists of 49 members, of whom 30 are registered teachers. The council fulfils a range of professional duties, including control of entry to the profession, the exercise of disciplinary powers, the accreditation of initial courses of professional training, the provision of advice to the Secretary of

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State on questions of supply and demand and the maintenance of a register of persons deemed fit to teach. As such, the GTC is a statutory body requiring the registration of all teachers serving in the public sector in Scotland. It provides a model that is known to work.
It is fair to say that some people in the education world are suspicious of the way that a GTC could develop and suggest that self-regulating professional bodies can initiate and perpetuate restrictive practices. Opticians, pharmacists, doctors and nurses have on occasion been known to put their own interests above the needs of the National Health Service's patients. The people who are suspicious of the GTC fear that it might promote the wrong kind of professionalism; defensive, aloof, elitist and remote. However, I would say that there is above all a pressing need to raise the morale of teachers. The establishment of a GTC would at least help to give teachers some new self-respect and to raise their morale, and it could help towards a much needed unity in the profession. The UCET working group is proposing that a GTC be established as the statutory independent professional governing body responsible for teacher qualification, registration, supply, training, professional discipline, research and external relations. The approval of teacher education courses through the Council for the Accreditaton of Teacher Education would be transferred to the GTC and the registration and professional disciplinary powers of the DES would also need to be taken over by the council.
There is the question of the composition of the council. Perhaps here there could be problems, as my noble friend Lord Glenamara said. The UCET paper calls for an independent governing body analogous to the GTCS and other professional bodies like the GMC. Yet the document proposes a composition which is representative in nature and not modelled on the GTCS or the GMC. For example, it proposes indirect representation through teacher unions on the basis of the former Burnham Committee. The GTCS, however, is composed of a majority of teachers who are directly elected by individual teachers themselves every three years. Other members are appointed from the universities, colleges of education, and local authorities, together with a few lay people. Similarly, the GMC is composed of a majority of directly elected members of the profession together with some appointed members representing medical educational interests and some lay people. I believe that the lay people are important. The Law Society is composed in a similar way.
Although teacher associations are rightly concerned about professional matters as well as pay and conditions, it could cause a conflict of interest if they were directly represented on the GTC. For example, it would be difficult to justify a situation whereby a teacher accused of professional misconduct would be defended by a union official before a disciplinary body which included a representative of his or her union. Also, the result of different associations disagreeing with each other on fundamental issues could be professional
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standards being based on the lowest common denominator. To build the GTC around the former Burnham Council or Schools Council structure would be a recipe for disaster.
One matter for which the GTC would not be responsible would be pay and conditions of service. That should be quite separate and in the hands of the employers and the unions. The GTC should be a professional body responsible for standards in the profession; that is what we would support. The Government should give it the finance to get it off the ground. Some funds would no doubt be directed from the DES, but eventually it would be best if it were self-financing through moneys raised from the registration of teachers.
I hope that, when the three-month discussion period is over at the end of June and firm proposals are coming from this discussion paper, the Government will accept the advantage of a general teaching council which has been supported by all Members who have spoken this evening. The unanimity has been quite remarkable and I am sure gives much pleasure to my noble friend who asked the original Question.
8.15 p.m.
Lord Henley: My Lords, the House, as I think every speaker said, listens with very great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, who is a former head teacher and a former Secretary of State for Education and Science. I listen to him with even greater respect as a fellow Cumbrian and a fellow graduate of Durham University, as also I believe is the noble Lord, Lord Dormand. Everyone in the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, for initiating this interesting debate.
The Government welcome this debate and the discussion on what is, after all, a most important topic: the status and value of teaching as a profession. The Government are sometimes accused of undermining the teaching profession, of being critical and never praising its members. I have to say bluntly that that is not true. Of course we value teachers and the job that they do. Of course we value their dedication, hard work and professionalism. Ministers in the department take every opportunity of praising teachers. The fact that the media may choose not to report them when they do so is another story. There are many excellent teachers in our schools. They deserve recognition for the good work that they do. The Government do not need to be convinced that teaching deserves wider respect among the public at large. Indeed, it is part of our aims to secure greater public esteem for teachers and value for the work that they do.
The noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, asks a direct question: will the Government establish a general teaching council for England and Wales? I am afraid that I do not have a simple yes or no answer. The Government have no present intention of establishing one. The noble Baroness, Lady David, mentioned the Question in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dormand, last year which my noble friend Lady Hooper answered. I shall repeat that Answer. We have said repeatedly that we are prepared to consider

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the case for one on the basis of a specific proposal put to us. That is a fair statement and a coherent position. It might help the House if I explain why.
Without spending too much time on the details of the history lying behind moves to establish a general teaching council, something by way of background might be of help to this House. Discussions within the teaching profession about self-government and the establishment of a general teaching council go back a very long way—indeed as far as the last century, as the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, mentioned. Between the Wars, there was a voluntary registration council, but it has lapsed.
More recently, but as long ago as 1969, the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara—as he mentioned—established a working party under the chairmanship of Mr. T. R. Weaver, who was a distinguished senior official of the Department of Education. The working party published its report A Teaching Council For England And Wales in 1970. That report proposed the establishment of a council whose functions would include keeping a register of teachers, where registration would be a condition of appointment to teach in sectors of education including maintained schools, exercising responsibility for professional discipline, and controlling standards of entry to the profession. The teaching unions were represented on that working party; but in the event, discussions among the unions following the publication of the report did not lead to unanimity, and the then momentum for the establishment of a council petered out.
More recently, moves have been initiated by the College of Preceptors, by the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, and the so-called independent initiative led by Mr. Gerald Smith. A few other individuals have had, and maintain, a special interest in the subject. Generally, all these discussions have failed to make sufficient progress to demonstrate consensus on the wide variety of issues that arise. They have not found unanimity of purpose across the profession or among the teacher unions. There has been a great deal of talk. But it would appear that a general teaching council is not an idea yet whose time has come.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, does not what the Minister has just said apply to the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers Forum discussions? Surely agreement has been reached to the extent of 95 or 97 per cent. Is he really saying that there is not sufficient agreement to go forward?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I understand the point that the noble Lord is making. I have said that the Government will consider proposals if there is unanimity and they come forward. I said that earlier. As we have said repeatedly, we are prepared to consider the case for a GTC on the basis of specific proposals put to us.
The noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, and the noble Baroness, Lady David, both mentioned Scotland. As they said, it is relevant to the case that Scotland has had a General Teaching Council since 1966. Noble
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Lords will be aware that for historical reasons education in Scotland is entirely separate, and administered separately, from that in England and Wales. There are many differences between the systems, of which the council in Scotland is but one. I believe that the principal difference in relation to the establishment of a GTC in Scotland, as opposed to one in England and Wales, is that in Scotland there is only one sizeable teacher association, and therefore unanimity was easier to reach.
Against that background, we do not see a clear call from teachers themselves for the establishment of a general teaching council. It does not seem to be at the top of their list of priorities. The department has had no significant correspondence from individual teachers pressing for the establishment of one. We have to consider whether teachers want a council; what would it be established to do; how would it be constituted, and with what representation?
I have to say that the establishment of a general teaching council is not a priority for the Government. We have no present intention of establishing one or of taking any initiative to change the present arrangements for the regulation of the profession. There is no evidence that those arrangements work less than well.
Some might argue that if there is no active call from teachers for the establishment of a council, there is at least a passive call. They will say that teacher morale is not high and that the establishment of a council will bolster the image of teaching as a profession and help to counter low morale, which I accept that every noble Lord who has spoken in the debate has stressed.
I do not propose to enter a discussion on whether teacher morale is high or not. The answer will vary with individual teachers, just as with any other collection of individuals within an occupational group. But let nobody say that the Government are not concerned with teacher morale; of course we are. We believe that teaching is an exciting and attractive career. We aim to make education among the foremost and most important issues of the day, as it should be. The education of our people is vital to our national well-being and future prosperity. With the Education Reform Act 1988, teachers are placed where they should be—at the centre of our initiatives to provide better education for all our school pupils. Teachers, as some noble Lords said, are the key to those reforms. We are convinced that they will gain recognition for their role and that this will itself help to bolster teacher morale.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, the Minister has just left the point I intended to ask him about. I hope he will forgive me for intervening. Do the Government believe that a general teaching council is a good idea? If that is their view, surely there is no reason why they should not take the initiative. I believe I used the words "pump-priming" or something like that. If it is a good idea, why should they not take the initiative, knowing all the time that there are immense difficulties? We all recognised that in making our contributions. The Government might create good will in doing that and at the end of the day come out with a GTC

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which will benefit all the people about whom the Minister is talking—children, the nation generally; indeed everyone.
Lord Henley: My Lords, the noble Lord will accept that I said that this was not at the top of the list of government priorities. But as I said at the beginning, and I cannot repeat this more strongly, we are prepared to consider the case for a council if specific proposals are brought forward.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. That is not the point I am making. I am saying that, if the Government think it is a good thing, why do they not take the initiative in the hope that it will come about?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I have said that the Government do not put it top of their list of priorities. We do not see it as vital, but if proposals come forward from all interested bodies, the Government will certainly consider them. I feel that that is an answer to the noble Lord's point.
I was speaking about bolstering teacher morale and the fact that teachers are among our most important agents for change. As the noble Lord, Lord McNair, said, there can be no higher calling than to have charge over young people as their characters and attitudes are being formed and as skills and knowledge are being acquired. There should of course be adequate rewards and remuneration.
I am sure that I do not need to remind the House that the Government have accepted in full the recommendations of the Interim Advisory Commit tee on School Teachers' Pay and Conditions. Those recommendations will mean a 6.3 per cent. increase in the teachers' pay bill and an increase of over 40 per cent. in teachers' pay since March 1986. The noble Lord asked how long "interim" was in the title of the interim advisory council. The Government continue to discuss new negotiating machinery for pay with the teacher unions and the local authority employers. They have said that they hope to have new machinery in place for the pay settlement in 1990.
These are the positive steps that we are taking to ensure that teachers' morale is healthy. But I have to ask whether, indeed, morale is low at present when it has been shown that less than 1 per cent. of teachers leave the profession for other paid employment. It is also the case that some 25,000 people enter or re-enter teaching each year. Surely these are not signs of low morale.
What, then, about the argument that the establishment of a general teaching council will help the standing of teaching as a profession? It rests on rhetoric. We are told that doctors, lawyers and so on have similar bodies and, therefore, teachers should have one if they are to achieve the status of doctors and lawyers. But I fear that that is assertion and not argument. It does not take sufficient account of the difference between professions which are employed and those such as doctors and lawyers which are largely self-employed. The case is not proven.
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The noble Baroness, Lady David, said that the existence of a general teaching council will somehow have an affect on the supply of teachers and help to combat teacher shortages. I do not intend to go into the question of teacher shortages here in detail. As noble Lords will remember, we had an interesting debate on this less than a month ago. I urge noble Lords to read the contribution of my noble friend Lord Davidson. He set out persuasively and in detail the steps that the Government are taking to counter teacher shortages. Teaching is already an attractive career. We have had very good responses to our publicity and advertising recruitment campaigns. Our action programme on teacher shortages is demonstrably having success. It is far from obvious to me how the existence of a council would in itself help to encourage more people to enter the teaching profession in shortage subjects.
Baroness David: My Lords, when I was talking about doing something about the supply of teachers, the problem was working out what would be needed for the teaching profession in the future. It was that kind of supply argument that I was making.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I accept the point that the noble Baroness has made. I am sorry if I missed it while listening to her.
The noble Lord, Lord Dormand, mentioned licensed teachers. The position of licensed teachers has been represented by some as being a new way of getting untrained teachers into the classroom on the cheap. The case is the opposite. At present anyone can become a qualified teacher, whatever his or her background or experience, simply on the recommendation of a local education authority. No specified educational requirement and no obligation to subsequent training are necessary. In future, licensed teachers will require a minimum of two years' full-time equivalent higher education. It will allow the entry of some excellent holders of higher national diplomas. Each licensed teacher must have a personal training plan proposed by the local education authority. The new arrangements will be simpler but much more rigorous than at present. They will establish a better defined alternative route into the profession.
It is, I think, without question that the establishment of a council would mean a profound change in the way that the teaching profession is administered and regulated.
The first consideration is whether a council should have a statutory base and whether registration should be compulsory for all teachers. One would then need to consider how such a body should be financed and whether it should be supported wholely or in part by government or self-financed by an annual levy of registered teachers.
There are important questions as to what the functions and composition of the body might be. Most obviously, it would need to maintain a register of qualified teachers, but it would perhaps need to advise on or actually bestow qualified teacher status and regulate standards of entry to the profession. The body would need to promulgate a code of conduct and to enforce it and discipline within the

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profession. Ultimately, it might have to advise on or have the power to remove names from the register.
Would such a body also have subsidiary functions? Would there be a role for it in advising on the content of initial and in-service training for teachers? It might also have a role to play in the important matters of teacher supply and the professional development of teachers, including annual appraisal.
There are many questions here. It is without doubt that the establishment of a council would mark a most significant change in the conduct of the teaching profession. In the light of that, the Government's attitude is not unreasonable. We have asked, simply, to see evidence that there is a demand for such a body from teachers themselves. We have also asked for evidence that such a body would be constituted to serve the interests of all the parties concerned and not just teachers. We should need to be sure that the body could serve the interests of both parents and employers.
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The only substantive discussions which are taking place at the moment are those led by the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers. We have asked to be kept informed of the progress of those discussions, and Professor Ross, who is chairing them, has kindly undertaken to do so. The Government have said, and said repeatedly, that they are prepared to consider the case for a council on the basis of a specific proposal which is likely to command support from the interests I have mentioned. No such specific proposal has yet been forthcoming. But, should such a proposal be put to us, we should be happy to consider it. That is a reasonable attitude. That is a balanced attitude. I hope that this House will agree that the Government have been and continue to be open and fair-minded on this important question.
House adjourned at twenty-six minutes before nine o'clock.