Lords Sitting of 25 January 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 Truro.

Arab—Israeli Dispute
Lord Mayhew Lord Mayhew asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are proposing to invite Mr. Shamir to this country, and whether they are satisfied that he has renounced terrorism in all its forms.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, Mr. Shamir has been invited to visit Britain. We look forward to discussing with him how we can help achieve a peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, may we be sure that Ministers who meet Mr. Shamir will impress upon him that there is no chance of peace unless both sides renounce terrorism? Does the noble Lord recall that last year, as Prime Minister, Mr. Shamir was responsible for the assassination in Tunis of Mr. Arafat's deputy and of two other PLO leaders in Cyprus, and also for the killing or wounding of thousands of people in occupied Palestine, including hundreds of children?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it has been the policy of this Government to deplore terrorist acts of whatever kind wherever they occur, and we shall continue to do so.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, is the Minister aware that we know and respect the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, as a member of the Arab lobby in this House, and that we therefore understand his question? Is the Minister further aware, and is he prepared to comment on the fact that Mr. Shamir—whatever Israel's faults—is justified in doubting that the words and platitudes of Mr. Arafat are enough to quell the memory of the atrocities and appalling behaviour of the PLO towards the Jews over the past 10 years?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the important point to bear in mind is that there has been a change in the stance of the PLO. We welcome Mr. Arafat's renunciation of terrorism and we trust that the PLO will live up to his commitment.
Lord Thomas of Gwydir: My Lords, further to my noble friend the Minister's remarks about there being a change of stance, is he aware that the Palestinian National Covenant, which unequivocally aims at the total destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state in the pre-1947 territories of Palestine, is still the accepted covenant of the PLO and is unamended? Is he further aware that Article 33 of the covenant states that there can be no
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amendment unless at least two-thirds of the national congress of the PLO meeting in special session vote for it? Is the Minister aware of any indication having been given during the discussions that have recently taken place with Yassir Arafat that there is likely to be a special congress of the PLO with a view to seeking any amendment of that covenant?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am not aware of any special congress. I think that it is important that we should continue to strive to help in the search for a peace solution. That is what we have been looking for for some time. It was in that light that we welcomed Mr. Arafat's new commitment to such a solution, which was recently reiterated at a meeting with my honourable friend the Minister of State. That is why we believe that an international conference remains the most suitable framework for the necessary negotiations between the parties directly concerned.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that at this crucial time we would welcome talks between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of Israel at the highest level? Can he say whether any plans exist to facilitate such talks and whether there are any plans, for example, for Mr. Waldegrave to visit Israel? Further, may we assume that Her Majesty's Government will have talks on the issue with the new Administration in the United States?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, of course it is important to keep up the momentum of our bilateral relations. That will be achieved when Mr. Shamir comes here and may be achieved before then if visits take place in the other direction. So far as concerns the United States, yes, it is important that its engagement is wholehearted and we welcome the United States—PLO dialogue. We look forward to early contacts with the new US Administration on those matters.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, now that the United States has at last adopted an even-handed policy towards the Arab—Israel wars and disputes, and now that Israel is at last left alone with the necessity of learning how to live according to the usual laws of civilised international relations, would the Government agree that the role of gadfly might now be abandoned by all Members of this House and that the role of dove and negotiator would be a more suitable one in future?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we continue to play our full part in bringing both sides in the dispute to understand the merits of the suggested conference. We shall continue to do all that we can to bring that about.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that many of us in all parts of the House will always honour and respect those British soldiers who were slain and hanged in the Middle East by Jewish terrorists? We quite rightly condemn the occupation of lands by the Soviet Union and other countries and the Government have also condemned the occupation of that part of Palestine which belongs to

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the Palestinians. Will the Government now take it upon themselves to keep bringing that to the attention of the United Nations so that the Palestinians can have back the lands which the Balfour Declaration said and the United Nations agreed were theirs?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it is all very well to look to the past and it is important that we do so from time to time. However, it is also important that we direct our energies toward a policy that will provide a satisfactory future and that is what we propose to do.
Lord Bottomley: My Lords, is it not a fact that since its creation Israel has never had security? There have been five unprovoked attacks upon Israel and continuing violence and terrorism against innocent women and children. I hope that when Mr. Shamir arrives those facts will be acknowledged and that we shall talk with him in the knowledge that after all he represents the only democratic country in the Middle East.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we shall put over whatever points are necessary in order to try to bring about the kind of resolution that we seek. We have to speak frankly with all those concerned and shall continue to do so. I am sure that the point made by the noble Lord will not in any way be lost.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, we all welcome the Government's efforts to find a peaceful solution in the Middle East, but does not the Minister feel that the Government are exerting pressure in the wrong way by pressurising Israel to accept a conference on the Middle East? The only object of that conference would be to establish a heavily armed Palestinian state in the middle of what is now Israel, with its capital in Jerusalem. Would that not fatally compromise the independence of Israel and therefore make it quite impossible for Israel to accept such a conference? Do not the Government feel that it would be much better to try to persuade Mr. Arafat to accept what is now on offer; namely, autonomy on the West Bank and in the Gaza strip?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I should have thought that the noble Lord's question pointed up the importance of the international conference in respect of this issue. I do not think it is possible to find a solution in a matter of minutes across the Floor of the House. It is a complicated matter and that is why we need to have the international conference to which reference has been made.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, is it not a fact that the real trouble is that bodies become lumbered with old, written commitments in which at one time they firmly believed but which they later find are an encumbrance and would like to dispose of? Is that not Mr. Arafat's trouble, as indeed is the similar commitment of the Labour Party to socialism?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I do not think I shall comment on the noble Viscount's last point. I can say
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that there are two basic principles for settlement which have been long advocated. One is the right of all states in the region, including Israel, to a secure existence; the other is the Palestinians' right to self-determination.

Developing Countries: Privatisation Aid
2.45 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby Lord Hatch of Lusby asked Her Majesty's Government:
What plans they have to supply aid for the privatisation of nationalised industries in the developing world.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we have long been active in helping developing countries to promote their private sectors. Advice on privatisation is one element of that. It is widely acknowledged that both the Government and the British private sector have a special expertise here, and we stand ready to consider further requests for assistance.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that at the end of last year the British missions in the third world were given the task of seeking out those nationalised industries in the third world that might be suitable for privatisation and offered financial assistance in so doing? Will he also confirm that at the same time the United States' AID was following the same policy? Is it this Government's policy to export Thatcherism to the ex-colonies?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, all that we have done is to ask our posts in developing countries to keep their eyes open, together with the Americans who share our interest, for cases in which advice on the development of the private sector, including privatisation, might be welcomed. We certainly have no intention of imposing our views.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the ODA held talks with the Adam Smith Institute during the past year and that they discussed the institute's proposal to set up a privatisation unit in the ODA?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, certainly the Adam Smith Institute report, to which I think the noble Baroness is referring, is being looked at carefully. However, we see no reason at this stage to establish a privatisation unit of the kind to which she refers. Our present bilateral aid systems are well able to cope.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, would the Minister regard it as hypothetical if I were to ask him what he would think if, under a future Labour Government, instructions were sent to embassies abroad to keep an eye open for possible candidates for nationalisation and help offered in doing it?
Lord Glenarthur: I should think, my Lords, that it was very hypothetical.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, does the Minister agree that our ex-colonies have made a sufficient mess of things on their own without being introduced to privatisation to enable them to make a still bigger mess?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the fact is that not every body takes that view. Indeed, a number of countries have benefited from the advice given by the United Kingdom. I could certainly let the noble Lord have details.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the great dynamo for development in the developing world historically has been the private sector and that the essence of the private sector is that it does not need advice? It dynamises itself.
Lord Glenarthur: Yes, my Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend. Privatisation is only one aspect of that matter. There are a number of very good instances which I could give him to show how poor countries have been helped in developing their private sectors by both aspects.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the Minister differentiate between the private sector in third world countries and the public sector? Nobody would criticise the Government for assisting the private sector, which has and is doing a good job in many third world countries. But is it not a fact that through both tradition and communal practice many third world countries have collective industries and that if they did not do so there would be no industries there at all? The centre of capital in most third world countries must lie in the government. Historically that is the situation. Are the Government now saying that they will try to break up the collectivisation which culturally and economically is viable in these countries and introduce the British form of privatisation? In many third world countries that would be disastrous to the economy.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we are not helping to break up anything. These countries are coming to us for advice. We can assist them in three broad ways. The first is by encouraging an appropriate environment in which the private sector may flourish, often in the context of structural adjustment. Secondly, there is the identification of public sector activities which could be transferred to the private sector; and privatisation is only one of the mechanisms involved. Thirdly, there are the mechanics of privatisation. These are all helpful. They are matters on which other countries have asked us to advise in many cases. That is all that we are doing.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Lord is introducing an anomaly into his second reply to me. In his first reply he said that British missions were looking for opportunities for privatisation. He is now saying that these countries are coming to Britain for help in privatisation. Both replies cannot be right. Is it the British Government's policy to introduce privatisation into third world countries, or is it the
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third world countries that are coming to Britain for help to privatise what are now nationalised or communal industries?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord is getting himself into the most terrible muddle. There is nothing cloak and dagger about this. Other countries have come to us. We have asked our posts to keep their eyes open because they may find that they can be helpful, and, through that, that we can assist those countries to achieve a sensible future for themselves.

Spokes Report: Further Action
2.52 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone asked Her Majesty's Government:
When an inquiry by the Social Services Inspectorate into the present state of social work services for mentally ill people in the London boroughs of Bexley and Lewisham can be expected following the report on the care and aftercare of Miss Sharon Campbell.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the Social Services Inspectorate is in discussion with the London boroughs of Bexley and Lewisham specifically about their responses to the Spokes Report.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Can he give any idea when this inquiry may start? It seems some time since the report on Miss Sharon Campbell was made.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, as part of its joint work with the Health Advisory Service, a visit focused on services for mentally ill people is currently taking place in Bexley and a similar exercise is planned for Lewisham later this year.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, can the noble Lord inform the House of the extent to which the London boroughs of Bexley and Lewisham have already carried out the recommendations of Mr. Spokes's report to which reference was made in the Question?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, if the noble Lord is referring to disciplinary action, with regard to the London borough of Bexley, two members of staff criticised in the Spokes Report have both left the authority. With regard to Lewisham, the case worker criticised in the report no longer works for the authority.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, bearing in mind that the inquiry of Mr. John Spokes dealt with the urgency of improving the quality of community care, on which Sir Roy Griffiths has made important recommendations, is it not now a very serious matter that the Government are still refusing to give any lead either to the authorities or to the public on this patently serious and sometimes tragic issue? Will the Minister give an assurance that at least by the time the presentation is made on Tuesday there will be a Statement about the Griffiths Report?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, we are very conscious of public feeling that our response should not be too long delayed with regard to the Griffiths Report. We hope to put forward our own proposals in the near—and I emphasise the word "near"—future.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, in the light of recent history does the Minister agree that the Secretary of State should keep the social work services under constant review?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I do, and we are.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, bearing in mind that an element in these tragic cases is the over-heavy work load of social workers, can the Minister tell us what steps the Government are taking to monitor the staffing levels of social services departments—in particular in London where one sees that they are inadequate in line with their resources—and to ensure that further resources are made available to them?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, with regard to the specific recommendations of the report, we have provided an additional £1 million in the present financial year towards a balanced programme of improvements to training.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, will the Minister explain to us what he means by keeping the social workers "under constant review"? It is one of those bland phrases that we constantly hear. What on earth does it mean? There are thousands of social workers. What is the Secretary of State going to do?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, as I am sure the noble Baroness is well aware, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State keeps all matters concerned with health under review.

Christmas Card: Religious Theme
2.56 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone asked the Chairman of Committees:
Whether it would be possible in future to have at least one House of Lords Christmas card each year with a Christian religious theme.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, responsibility for selecting the House of Lords Christmas card rests with the Sub-Committee on Works of Art. I understand that the sub-committee will meet for that purpose in the next few months and I have no doubt that it will bear in mind the point made in the noble Lord's Question. I understand that it has been the general policy of the sub-committee to select a single picture card with a House of Lords or at least a parliamentary theme, very often a work of art from within the Palace of Westminster.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Does he agree—I hope the Sub-Committee on Works of Art will also agree—that it would be very nice to have a card
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which was relevant to Christmas and which celebrated the Christian occasion rather than simply a good work of art picture which means nothing?
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I am sure that the subcommittee will take note of the noble Lord's remarks. It is difficult to reconcile having a card that is specifically a part of the House of Lords and relevant to it with one that has a Christian religious connotation. There was once a card with a picture of the angel in the Crypt; and on one occasion there was a picture of the seven bishops being found not guilty. I shall certainly draw the matter to the attention of the sub-committee.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, would it not be a Christian act to sell the cards for a charity or charities as many other bodies do?
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I do not quite understand how we would do that. These are cards of the House of Lords, available for its Members to send on its behalf.
The Lord Bishop of Truro: My Lords, on behalf of this Bench I am sure that I can welcome the first Answer to the Question. However, will the noble Lord bear in mind that the Christian message is based on the Christmas story, as are the works of art which depict that story? It issues in the great Christian themes which all religions and none wish to promote in the country. They are the great themes of the dignity of human beings, hope, love, good will and peace. I should have thought that the noble Lord and the sub-committee might bear those themes in mind in considering the message that is printed inside the card as well as the picture on the front.
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, that seems a sensible suggestion. I am quite sure that it will be taken into account by the sub-committee when it makes its next decision.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, it may interest the noble Lord to know that my Christmas budget provides for 75 Christmas cards, 50 secular, which I buy here, and 25 religious cards, which I have to purchase elsewhere. If I am at all representative in the House, the effect of having a religious Christmas card would be to increase the turnover by 50 per cent.
Lord Aberdare: That would be very welcome, my Lords.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, will my noble friend take into consideration the fact that some of us—I include myself—rather like the chaste design of the portcullis in preference to anything else?
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I am sure that that will continue to be available. As the noble and learned Lord knows, it is a smaller and less expensive card and one that is very suitable for airmail postage.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, is not the noble Lord aware that the story of the rising sun is vastly older than Christianity and that it is getting on very well without any Christian assistance?
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I do not think that I can answer that question.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I think I speak for a good many Peers. Is my noble friend aware that the design and choice of the average picture Christmas card with which he provides us are very much to my liking and that I send the card out to about 300 friends every year? It is much enjoyed by my friends and he could not do better than his arts committee is now doing.
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I am sure that the chairman of the sub-committee and its members will be very grateful to the noble Lord.
Lord Gibson: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Works of Art Sub-Commmittee always looks with the greatest care and constructively at any suggestion made by any noble Lord, whether made to your Lordships' House or to the committee directly?
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, that seems to me to be a very Christian attitude.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, do our cards have to be so big and heavy? Would it not be possible for the picture card with its envelope to weigh under 10 grammes so that it could go at the cheapest postal rate?
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, that has already been discussed in the sub-committee. There are possibilities of that kind. The present thought is that the smaller card is suitable for airmail. To have the quality and a decent reproduction on the larger card it is rather more difficult to bring it down to 10 grammes.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will not consider it to be a jarring intervention, but some of us feel that the larger card is rather expensive. It costs four times as much as the equivalent card in another place. I understand that the same firm produces both cards. Is it possible for that aspect of the matter to be looked at?
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, another place has a much larger turnover of cards; about five or six times as many. It also undertakes a large part of the administrative arrangements within the Fees Office of another place. I do not think that our card compares badly with equivalent cards that one can buy outside.

The Conduct of Foreign Relations
3.2 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead Lord Jenkins of Hillhead rose to call attention to Her Majesty's Government's method of conducting relations with foreign countries; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, one or two noble Lords have expressed a little uncertainty as to exactly what I had in mind with this Motion. Therefore I shall begin with a word of explanation. What I intend is not a compendious tour d'horizon of the substance of our relations with every important country in the world but rather a consideration of the style of conducting foreign policy; at the balance of power between 10 Downing Street and the Foreign Office; at the deficiencies or otherwise of the foreign service; at the advantages or disadvantages of megaphone diplomacy and government by indignation; and at the exercise of effective influence within the European Community.
First, I shall consider the state of relations across Downing Street. Historically there has been a good deal of fluctuation in the balance between the Foreign Office and No. 10 Downing Street. Until 50 years ago Prime Ministers who interfered substantially in the conduct of foreign policy were very much the exception. There was Disraeli, who was most exceptionally present at a diplomatic conference and with Bismarck stole the limelight at Berlin. There was Salisbury, who did not need to interfere with the Foreign Office. For nearly the whole of his 14 years as Prime Minister he was primarily Foreign Secretary and ran the government rather in his spare time, with 10 Downing Street as an outstation of the Foreign Office. There was Lloyd George, who, according to Curzon, treated his Foreign Secretary as a valet, almost a drudge, but in whose crashing downfall foreign policy certainly played a major role; and there was Neville Chamberlain, the 50th anniversary of whose diplomatic triumphs we have just been celebrating.
At the other end of the scale there was Baldwin, who looked amazed at Austen Chamberlain, his Foreign Secretary, when he asked him for advice, saying, "But you are Foreign Secretary"; and nearly, but not quite, Attlee. It was certainly under the latter that the Foreign Office played its most dominant role in the first half of this century and under Ernest Bevin set up, for a mixture of good and ill, the main lines of British foreign policy which have persisted to the present day.
The crucial good was the Atlantic commitment of the United States, which has been the single most important factor in making post-1945 so different from post-1918. The ill, in my view, was the beginning of the semi-detached attitude to Europe which was enthusiastically continued in the Eden Foreign Office and by most subsequent British Governments. Some would add the Middle East, but I have never there felt the simplicities of certainty.
It would not be possible today for any Prime Minister to play such a self-effacing foreign policy role as did Baldwin or Attlee. The impact of the White House and of presidential diplomacy, the 13 year-old habit of yearly Western economic summits and the only slightly older introduction of European councils into the affairs of the European Community combine to preclude that. But this does not mean that foreign policy is best conducted when a Foreign Secretary is frequently overruled or when the foreign service, with the exception of a few favoured

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members, is regarded by 10 Downing Street as less ideologically sound than even the Bench of Bishops or the ancient universities.
The Foreign Office is the only one of the three great traditional departments of state of which I have not been temporarily—nominally, if one likes—in charge. But I have nonetheless had exceptional and considerable opportunity, and from an unusually detached position for a British politician, to observe the British foreign service in operation and to be served directly by several of its most outstanding members as well as by diplomats from other countries. This experience has led me to the firm conclusion that, first, the foreign service is by and large of very high quality. Indeed, I have sometimes wondered whether a disproportionate amount of our top quality public service talent is not concentrated there. Secondly, in my experience, the foreign service is effective at safeguarding and promoting the interests of this country. I can think of one or two rather isolated examples where, as a result of being too stridently demanding, I have seen a senior British diplomat achieve less than he might have done. I can think of none of any significance where I have seen a legitimate British interest thrown away.
It very much depends on whether one believes that the object of foreign policy is to achieve results or to strike attitudes. At the beginning of December we saw a rather striking example of that dichotomy in the notorious case of Father Ryan. At the end of a week or so of explosive headlines, I was left in serious doubt as to whether the Government had wanted him extradited to this country, or whether they preferred the pleasures of expostulation to the reality of a trial.
If they wanted him here, they could hardly have gone about it in a more counter-productive way. If the prejudicial statements made in the House of Commons had been avoided and the matter left to a little quiet diplomacy by our much maligned diplomats, I venture to think that there would have been a better chance of his being delivered for trial.
That leads me to what I referred to at the beginning as "government by indignation". It has achieved quite ludicrous proportions. On that occasion at the end of November and in the first days of December, each morning we read, by courtesy of Mr. Bernard Ingham and the lobby system, a daily report on a kind of Richter scale about the force of the previous day's volcanic eruptions. There was more variation in direction than in intensity. One morning the Prime Minister was "seething with anger" against the Belgian Government and next she was "boiling with rage" against the Irish Government.
It is not totally new that the Downing Street press office should think that it owes the nation daily spiritual guidance. That is not only on the level of the Prime Minister's indignation but also on the standing of various Ministers. I have known some fairly odd things take place in the past under previous Prime Ministers, and not all of one party. But it seems to me that the present practice piles Pelion on Ossa and is not by its very nature likely to be the most skilful or sensitive way of conducting foreign relations. I believe that lessons were learnt from the incident of the Queen and Mr. Gorbachev and that that is
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unlikely to be repeated. It was remarkable that the Government's hypothetical advice to the Sovereign about an invitation which had been neither sent nor received should be announced in advance by an unattributable briefing.
A view exists that this is all more than made up for by a robustness which gives British interests a special protection and has greatly increased our influence abroad. I do not deny that in the recent past top level relations with the United States and the Soviet Union have been good. That is a major factor. But we have firmly decided—and the Government have frequently proclaimed it—that the European Community should be both a focus and a vehicle for much of our foreign policy effort. I do not believe that there we exercise an influence conmmensurate with our desire or our much proclaimed new economic strength.
Since the late 1940s nearly every British government, perhaps with the exception of that of Mr. Heath, have mishandled our relations with the Continent of Western Europe because we have failed to understand the force of the European idea and, in particular, the importance to it of a sense of political direction and ultimate purpose. It is not that there is a great danger of our being swept along faster than we want to go. On Monday the noble Lord, Lord Roll, rightly said that lack of progress in the Community is a far greater practical danger than premature federation or uniformity.
The practical divide is not so great as the theoretical divide. However, an unnecessary theoretical battle between us and most of the rest of Europe can nonetheless do enormous harm to us and the interests of this country. On Monday I was most struck by the difference in tone between the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham. They are both practical men with a business background. It is probable that what they want to achieve at the end of the day is not vastly different. However, with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Young, the difference which came across clearly is that one understands Europe and the other does not.
The noble Lord, Lord Cockfield—who must wonder whether warm congratulations, in which I fully share, are a wholly adequate recompense for being kicked out—has been accused of "goingnative". If that means a comprehension of the forces with which one must deal, I wish that more people would go native.
In any event, the concept that a British Commissioner who becomes part of the core of the Commission, instead of standing ineffectively on the periphery, and who understands the force of the simple concept which has inspired people as different as Monnet and Soames, Spaak and Schmidt —the idea that someone who has grasped that has sold out to the Euro-fanatics is hardly a contradiction of the sin of semi-detachment which has so damaged our European influence from the beginning.
The fatal view is that our relations with the Community are a zero-sum game: either they win and we lose or vice versa. It simply is not the case that intransigence mostly pays. I shall never forget the

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second major crucial issue which occurred during my time as President of the Commission. The first was the creation of the European Monetary System, when there was for me deep disappointment that my own country was the only one which stood out of the scheme which I had tried to initiate. However, although there was disappointment there was not embarrassment because, as was my duty, on that issue I was manifestly playing a European rather than a British hand.
The second crucial issue was the first major round of Britain's budgetary dispute with the Community. I was convinced of the essential justice of Britain's claim and believed that a fair settlement was crucial to Britain's healthier relations with the Community and was also in the interests of Europe as a whole. But I believe that a more partial view of my motives may sometimes have been taken in Paris and perhaps also in one or two other capitals.
The position was made much more difficult by the Prime Minister's method of negotiating—or rather, demanding, because there was very little negotiation. At the second European Council on the issue, a very good offer was made by Chancellor Schmidt and President Giscard. The Prime Minister turned it down flat. Another month of bad temper and unnecessary labour had to be spent on putting together an alternative solution. In substance it was no better, but it was cosmetically different. It was skilfully negotiated by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, after a marathon session. Nothing was gained by the delay but a great deal of exhaustion was caused and a great deal of goodwill lost.
Therefore, I believe that without in any way sacrificing legitimate British interests, we could exercise a much more central and beneficial role in the affairs of the European Community. That would require a change not so much of substance as of style. However, I believe that that would in any event be desirable in itself. A little more confidence in the qualities of our foreign service, a little less stridency of tone and a little more regard for the authority of the Foreign Secretary, who, in my view, has on the whole done a very good job, would enable results to be achieved and Britain's influence to be more effectively deployed. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.20 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for giving me this opportunity to dispel some of the current popular myths about the Government's conduct of this country's foreign relations. Indeed, his speech itself reflected some of those myths. I shall therefore try to explain why I believe the noble Lord's views are in some cases misplaced and why his apprehensions are unfounded. As with the leave of the House I shall have the chance to reply to this debate, I propose now to concentrate on the fundamental principles underlying the conduct of our foreign relations. I will deal with other aspects in detail when I wind up.
Perhaps I may begin by stating what our foreign policy is for. Methods and means after all only exist to service particular ends. The objectives of our foreign policy are threefold: to enhance the security
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and prosperity of this country: to promote and protect our interests overseas; and to work, with allies, partners, and others to advance freedom, resolve conflicts and increase prosperity elsewhere. These objectives are quite clear. They stem from fundamental views that we have traditionally held and upheld. And they have been consistently, collectively and effectively pursued by Her Majesty's Government.
We cannot afford not to conduct our foreign relations effectively. We have worldwide interests to protect. We are responsible for 16 dependent territories across the globe. We export 27 per cent. of our GDP. We are the world's second largest overseas investor. Five million Britons live and work abroad. Global problems also affect us and we cannot tackle them alone. Whether it be the fields of arms control. combating terrorism and drugs, playing our part in the management of the world economy and environment, we need to work with others. Multilateral consultation and negotiation are a growing element in our diplomacy.
We live and work in a rapidly changing world. Who could have foreseen, for example, only a few years ago, the transformation that has taken place in the climate of East-West relations, or the new sense of purpose that characterises the approach of the UN to regional conflicts? The conduct of foreign policy must be flexible enough to adapt to such changes in circumstances. That is where the analysis of those who believe in a fixed strategy or rigidly-defined priorities, fails. We must be certain of our objectives—that is fundamental to any concept of policy.
The framework of our foreign policy is also determined by the treaty and other obligations and commitments that we believe can best secure our objectives. Thus, our active participation in NATO, in the European Community, the U N and the Commonwealth is unquestioned. But new opportunities may require new approaches, a reassessment of priorities or a change of emphasis. Recognition of this reality lies at the heart of the pragmatism which has traditionally characterised British foreign policy.
In all this, ultimate responsibility for policy and its conduct rests with Her Majesty's Government. It is a collective responsibility. It devolves principally upon my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Both enjoy the immense advantages of long incumbency. This year sees the 10th anniversary of the election that returned the Conservative Party to office, and the Prime Minister to her present position. She is already the longest-serving Prime Minister this century. Yesterday, my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State became the longest-serving continuous holder of his office since Sir Edward Grey stepped down in 1916. The combined experience of my right honourable friends spans changes of leadership in many other countries. They have also seen numerous British ambassadors and officials come and go. Their experience has given direction and consistency to the conduct of our foreign relations.
Perhaps I should now tackle the first myth about our foreign policy—a myth regrettably reflected in

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the noble Lord's remarks—that the Prime Minister plays too prominent a role, and that her contribution is not a wholly constructive one. I am somewhat astonished by criticisms of this kind. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister's international stature and authority are great assets to our diplomacy, and my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State works closely with her. Noble Lords might not like the fact, but she is an eloquent and effective spokesman for the values in which we believe. It is surely right to speak frankly in defence of those values. The warm personal relationships she has established with other world leaders have served this country well.
Those who seek to criticise my right honourable friend's role sometimes seem to forget that holders of her office have traditionally been prominent in foreign affairs. The noble Lord gave instances of the past. I am sure that the noble Lords, Lord Callaghan of Cardiff and Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, who I see in his place, would not disagree. I seem to remember, for example, the idea of a Commonwealth mission to Vietnam, and the "HMS Tiger" talks on Rhodesia. Both were personal initiatives, doubtless undertaken with the best of intentions. The fact is, as the noble Lord knows full well, that it is cabinet government which gives the Prime Minister an essential role in the formulation and presentation of policy. To suggest otherwise is to be inaccurate about the past and mischievous about the present.
Another school of thought perpetuates another myth. It is in a sense the other side of the same coin. It is the idea that there exists some sinister and pervasive "foreign office view"; one that insinuates itself into the foreign policy-making process and corrupts the otherwise healthy instincts of Ministers. This is an extraordinary allegation. Ministers formulate policy. Officials inform, knowledgeably; they advise, wisely; and they implement, faithfully. But it is Ministers who make the decisions and justify them to Parliament. As I have indicated, in many cases they can often draw on an experience in office longer than the time they have been served by their officials.
In the conduct of our foreign relations we are well served by the dedicated professionals of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for his recognition of their skills. Their abilities allow us to build on the experience and prestige of my right honourable friends. This country is better thought of abroad as a result.
Clear objectives, the authority and experience of my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, able professional personnel: these are all assets our foreign policy enjoys. There are others. As I have mentioned, there is our membership of NATO, the EC, UN and Commonwealth; and also good established bilateral channels of communication, notably with the United States, (a point made by the noble Lord); our commitment to a strong defence; our economic recovery as a result of this Government's policies, and the respect it has earned us abroad; and our language and culture which are reflected in many countries and admired in many more.
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An effective and successful foreign policy means applying these assets successfully. That is exactly what we have been doing. Through bilateral and multilateral contacts, through public and private representations, we have worked to advance our objectives. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, spoke of megaphone diplomacy; but megaphones are only necessary for a dialogue of the deaf. That is not the sort of dialogue we seek. Rather, where we have differences with others, we identify and acknowledge them so as to be better able to look for common ground.
The range of tools available to our diplomacy includes neither megaphones nor hearing aids. Sometimes it is necessary to make clear and forthright statements on important issues. Public statements inevitably attract the most attention, but much patient work goes on behind the scenes.
Precisely this combination of a firm stand in public and much detailed groundwork in private characterised our long pursuit of a more equitable British financial contribution to the European Community. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, was a member of the government whose renegotiation of our Community membership failed to resolve this fundamental question. If he dislikes the kind of diplomacy that thumps the table in order to resolve a difficult problem, how much more must he dislike the diplomacy that thumps and achieves nothing?
There is more that I should like to say about our attitude to the European Community, since the noble Lord expressed dissatisfaction with it in a number of important respects. But I hope he will understand that I should prefer to return to this subject at the end of our debate when others will have had the chance to make their opinions known.
I am sure that we shall hear a wide range of opinions expressed this afternoon. I hope however that we can agree at the outset on our objectives and on the need for a policy to serve them effectively. I am convinced that this Government have turned the conduct of foreign relations successfully to this purpose.
3.31 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for enabling us to have this debate, and for his impressive opening speech. We are also thankful to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, for giving a government view of the Motion.
How governments conduct foreign affairs, how they formulate foreign policy and the relations between the Prime Minister of the day and the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary—and generally between No. 10 Downing Street and the Foreign Office—are not only interesting topics but they are of crucial importance to Parliament and the nation. In this House we are fortunate to have noble Lords who have held the highest offices of state and others who have been ambassadors and permanent secretaries in the Foreign Office and who therefore have immense experience of the matters under discussion. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, said, our Foreign Service is of the highest quality. I agree entirely with that.

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I am sure that all the many experts in this House agree that while successive governments pursue policies which are in general design and objective not dissimilar, every Prime Minister and every Foreign Secretary brings his or her own style to the task. That is no had thing. What would cause disquiet is a radical switch in foreign policy objectives or a series of misjudgments which might damage relations with allies or affect Britain's reputation generally. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, drew attention to this, particularly in the context of the Community. I am sure that Ministers will pay careful heed to what the noble Lord said because he speaks with considerable authority in this field.
I am probably old-fashioned, but I still believe that the parties represented in our Parliament should, if at all possible, seek to achieve a bipartisan foreign policy. Although there have been peaks and troughs, this has been, on the whole, a tradition in this country. This means that the Government should take careful account of Opposition views, especially on major issues. The onus is mainly on the Government; but all oppositions must also avoid raising niggling, petty objections on every issue, great and small, for short-term political advantage.
There are times when the Opposition must voice their criticism clearly as a matter of public duty; for example, on the occasion of the Suez crisis or currently on the Government's policies on southern Africa.
We know that some Prime Ministers, and indeed many Presidents of the United States, have assumed office without a close knowledge of foreign affairs. Others have been fortunate to have wide experience. I am sure the Prime Minister concedes that she was probably in the first category. She was therefore fortunate when she entered No. 10 Downing Street to have the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, an old hand, to guide and advise her as he did on the Rhodesian problem. It is to Mrs. Thatcher's credit at that time that she accepted the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and changed her position. This of course led to the subsequent settlement of that long-standing problem. That was an example of close and effective co-operation between No. 10 and the Foreign Office. It was also an example of a successful bipartisan approach to a major issue.
It is also generally true that the longer Prime Ministers remain in office, the greater their interest becomes in foreign affairs. That is inevitable, especially in these days of rapid travel and communication; though even 70 years or so ago Lloyd George was much criticised for spending too much time in Versailles and too little in the House of Commons. Honourable Members expecting to see him in the House were disappointed because he was not there; they only saw his pictures in the newspapers with Presidents Wilson and Clemenceau and Signor Orlando. Lloyd George had a great responsibility to discharge in Versailles but the view of some was that he overdid it a bit.
As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, suggested, the ideal is to get the balance right between Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. If the Prime Minister wants to do all the work, then he or she should take on the Foreign Office portfolio as well. In 1924
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Ramsay MacDonald, who had always taken a close interest in foreign affairs, did just that, largely upon the advice of Arthur Ponsonby, the grandfather of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, who correctly predicted that he would not be in office for long and that it would therefore be possible for MacDonald to combine both great offices of Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. I think it is now generally admitted that Ramsay MacDonald was an effective Foreign Secretary but he was also criticised, as Professor David Marquand tells us in his excellent biography,
"for devoting too much of his attention to the mysteries of foreign policy and too little to urgent domestic problems of employment and economic stagnation".
The present Prime Minister has played an increasingly active role, and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, referred to her style and some of her incursions into foreign relations. It is impossible at this stage to make a full judgment of the right honourable lady, but we are entitled to comment on certain aspects of her policies. As has been said, she is now one of the longest serving national leaders. She has a reputation for what some would call plain speaking and what others have seen as tactless outbursts; and she has formed relations with other world leaders, notably President Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev.
Britain is not a superpower. Our influence is most significant when we work constructively through our alliances and associations. Those were listed by the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, in his speech—the Community, NATO the United Nations and the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister has used these platforms to air her views; but she has not always done so to the best advantage and that must be conceded in this debate. She has been described as "meddlesome", "interfering" and "negative". There are times when one has the impression that the Foreign Secretary is tiptoeing softly behind her carrying a large oil can.
It is possible to underestimate the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, but I have a great deal of respect for him and for his patient and reasonable handling of foreign affairs. It has not always been easy for him. He handled the Hong Kong problem skilfully, supported by the Prime Minister after her hiccup in Peking. When he is going around the capitals of the world I must confess that I feel quite relaxed and satisfied that his calm diplomacy will not let this country down.
During her 10 years in office the Prime Minister has developed her own methods. That is not necessarily a bad thing provided of course that there is agreement and understanding between her and the Foreign Secretary. In his recently-published memoirs the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, makes the following interesting comment. Given the respect with which he is held throughout this House I believe that we must note his comment very carefully. He said:
"Margaret Thatcher evinced at times a distrust of the Foreign Office, a determined attitude that it didn't stick up for Britain and was softly conciliatory when the reverse was needed. I found that this sentiment was never far from the surface and could erupt in impatient hostility unless ably countered …".
That was the view of the noble Lord.

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Of course there is a time for plain speaking if that is clearly in the interests of the country and if it has the support of the Foreign Secretary and of the Cabinet. As we know, foreign affairs is the second subject on the Cabinet agenda every Thursday morning and Ministers have the opportunity to express their views on major issues at that time. If the Prime Minister speaks with the accord of her colleagues and with the agreement of the Foreign Secretary then, even if we in Opposition may disagree with what that policy is, we cannot complain. It is government policy decided by agreement between the Prime Minister, who is primus inter pares, her chief foreign affairs Minister and her colleagues in the Cabinet.
But the reflections of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, must cause some unease. Noble Lords may have read a recent book on British foreign policy since 1979 that I found most revealing. Mr. Bulpitt of Warwick University writes this in the book:
"Between 1979 and 1987 British foreign policy was presented as the policies of one woman, so that in many aspects this method became the message".
While the Prime Minister has many admirers at home and abroad, it is also true that her handling of foreign relations has often caused tension and unease and brought about unnecessary discord between Britain and friendly nations. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, has given examples of this and the reactions of our European partners to them. There was the interview given by the Prime Minister in the United States in November when she made a partisan remark about the main issue of the Canadian general election that was taking place at that time. Mr. Turner, the former Canadian Prime Minister said:
"I can only say with considerable regret that Mrs Thatcher's comments are inappropriate".
She should not have behaved like that in a foreign country. I believe that there should be general agreement in this House that her action was misguided. It was not a myth but a fact.
The way in which she handled the Patrick Ryan case to which reference has been made, whatever the merits, did nothing to improve the relations with Belgium and Ireland. If it was in the public interest that Patrick Ryan should be extradited to this country, the handling of the matter by the Prime Minister made sure that he was not. Finally, the premature warning that the Queen would not be advised to visit Russia was crude and unhelpful. I say again to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, that these are surely not myths.
The way in which policies are worked out is one thing; the way in which they are handled publicly is another matter. We must hope that policies are the end product of close consultation and that the Prime Minister's subsequent handling of those policies when she does intervene is agreed upon by the Foreign Secretary and the Cabinet. If the Prime Minister starts shooting from the hip heaven knows whom she may hit next.
But the Prime Minister does have important contributions to make. She described her relations with President Reagan as "very, very special" and there is no doubting their real friendship. She has also
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said that President Gorbachev is a man she can work with and that is encouraging. These relations can be put to good use provided they are seen in the right perspective.
However, friendships do not add up to a foreign policy. We must realise that our strength comes from our partnerships and alliances and the way in which we strengthen our influence within them. In the book on foreign policy to which I have referred, Mr. Michael Smith makes a perceptive remark. He writes:
"British policies have become more regional and European while American orientations have become a strange hybrid of globalism and insularity. Personalities can delay or divert this process, but they cannot halt or reverse it".
I believe that the House will agree that there are more opportunities today to create international stability and to move towards substantial disarmament than have existed for many decades past. With our allies and with wise leadership we can contribute towards this. If we do so I know that the House will give its full support.
3.46 p.m.
Lord Greenhill of Harrow: My Lords, in a discussion on the conduct of foreign relations, I might be considered a prejudiced witness as for 25 years I was a member of the diplomatic service. I have however for approximately the same time been engaged in other occupations in what the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry seems to enjoy calling the "real world". I hope therefore that in this discussion I shall not be unduly partisan.
One of the occupations in which I have not engaged has been party politics. I should therefore like to try to avoid dealing as directly with current personalities as some of the previous speakers. I am bound to say that when I first saw the Motion on the Order Paper it seemed a little opaque. I did not know whether the noble Lord wanted us to discuss the direction of British policy or the means and mechanics by which the Government tried to implement it. But all this has been clarified by his extremely interesting speech which reminded us that he is a distinguished historian as well as a statesman.
In the debate on the Address last November 1 drew attention to the formidable foreign affairs agenda that faced the British Government. But I suggested that there was at last a hope that some long deadlocked problems showed some promising signs of solution. I concluded that there might be opportunities for initiatives by the British Government either alone or more likely in concert with others in alliances or through the reviving United Nations Organisation. I believe that subsequent events have confirmed those views and that the general thrust of the Government's policies merits our support. In East-West relations, in arms control, in disarmament, in the Middle East and in other regional problems, even in southern Africa, in my view Her Majesty's Government are aiming in the right direction and they are well equipped to contribute positively. On certain questions I am glad to see that the Government and the Opposition are coming nearer together. The recent exchange between Mr. Waldegrave and Mr. Gerald Kaufman illustrated that very clearly.

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In European affairs there is room for domestic argument. But I believe that Monday's extremely interesting debate showed that the majority of us accepted a policy that involved a series of practical steps rather than prematurely debating ambitious goals. The number of people in other countries who favour the same line will become increasingly apparent.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, has criticised megaphone diplomacy. In my view, megaphone diplomacy can be sometimes right and sometimes wrong. After all, Sir Winston Churchill's famous Fulton speech was an example of beneficial megaphone diplomacy. There is also a useful variation of megaphone diplomacy which is sometimes referred to as "Jericho diplomacy". It is the policy that when faced by an obstruction you march round and round it making as much noise as possible in the hope that the obstructing walls will eventually come tumbling down. The Prime Minister did this very successfully when she succeeded in getting a much more substantial rebate from the European Community. She was criticised at the time, but I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, was one of her critics then.
It is highly desirable and indeed essential that Prime Ministers and departmental Ministers should make public policy speeches about foreign affairs. They are usually the best judges of when it is appropriate to do so as they naturally have domestic as well as foreign targets. A comparatively recent development, and one not welcome to me, is that in this country we no longer have a large measure of consensus on foreign policy. There is therefore a temptation for politicians on both sides to speak too loudly and often too soon. It seems to have become customary to react to any event or development immediately in order to get first place on the television or the radio. This produces an immediate reaction from Opposition spokesmen and from other governments whose actions are criticised or applauded. In very quick time there is a crisis in relations which makes constructive diplomacy more difficult. Nevertheless, I see no alternative and we have to get used to it. I do not see that Ministers are likely to resist immediate access to the television screen, but we must hope that they will from time to time look carefully at the possibility that an immediate, excessive political reaction may create long-term obstacles to a good solution in the interests of all.
But it is right in my view that government leaders should have a high profile. No one can deny that our international status has benefited from this and that we are held in higher esteem now than at any time in the past three decades. But I regret to say that this esteem is from time to time diminished by the decline in British manners, to which the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, refers in his autobiography, and by the loutish behaviour abroad by people of all kinds.
As the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, mentioned, we are extremely fortunate in having a Foreign Secretary who has long and continuous experience in international affairs, both as Chancellor of the Exchequer and in his present post. There are those who criticise him and question his ability and the
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ability of his department to offer good advice to the Prime Minister and to the Cabinet as a whole, which is ultimately responsible for approving foreign policy. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, however, has spoken well of the Foreign Office but there are others who maintain that the vision of the Foreign Office is too narrow. They say that it should be more open to ideas from outside. This is a longstanding view which to my knowldege is totally misplaced.
Foreign Office Ministers and members of the Diplomatic Service do not live in a world of their own. They are influenced by what is said in Parliament and by other powerful Whitehall departments. They read the newspapers of our own and other countries and they are bombarded by television and radio pundits. They are in touch with the opinions—the useful and powerful opinions—of the academic world. Their views are also informed and influenced by the flow of opinion and information from our missions abroad and from their official contacts with foreign governments. They also have access to the products of our intelligence services. They clearly cannot be faultless. They make misjudgments and mistakes.
Those who distrust or doubt the Foreign Secretary and his advisers believe that the Prime Minister needs a group in No. 10 to second-guess them. To a large extent a Prime Minister already has this. He or she has contacts of their own. There are highly competent people in the Prime Minister's private office. There is the joint intelligence committee on which several departments are represented, and there is a senior Cabinet committee of the most influential Ministers. In our own comparatively recent history and in the example of the United States we have seen how a rival centre of official advice carries serious risks. These risks are of course diminished if the relations between the group in No. 10 and the Foreign Office are cooperative and not confrontational.
Some years ago a senior Commonwealth Prime Minister tried a personal staff of this kind. I asked one of the members how the staff got on with civil servants. He said, "We don't talk to them; we only talk to Ministers". That is the way not to do it. It is unfortunately human nature that two centres of official advice more often than not foster departmental rivalry. This was certainly the case in the United States in my experience when the State Department was constantly in conflict with the assessments of the CIA. Prime Ministers certainly want and must have first-class advice. In the limits of my experience there is no reason why the present system cannot provide this. It taps all relevant sources.
Do our missions abroad do a good job? I believe they do, provided they are given adequate resources. Those Members of the House who served under the noble Lord, Lord Aldington, on the Select Committee on Overseas Trade were able to see for themselves when we visited Tokyo just how efficient an embassy can be. There are occasions when missions fall short but the view of several committees of this House and of the other place confirm the generally high standards.
In summary, this country is well placed both in personalities and in machinery to take a proper place

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in the development of a safer world. There is greater hope now than for many years for the solution of some obstinate problems. I believe that we can help.
3.58 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for his choice of an interestingly worded topic for the Motion today. The whole discussion raises the question of why we have a Foreign Office. It has not been raised yet, but it used to be raised in circles which looked forward to rapid European integration and could see the time coming when policies could be formulated, at least among the West European countries, by meetings of functional civil servants—the idea that civil servants from, for example, Departments of Transport could meet and settle everything. One would have a kind of function merge, to use computer language. That has not happened and could not happen. As long as sovereign states remain, sovereign states with sovereign democratic parliaments, each of them will need a Foreign Office, simply because there is no one else to give orders to those who are carrying out the negotiations and to set their terms of reference.
In his interesting speech, the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, set out some aims of national policy. I do not think it matters where they came from. I do not know whether they were new or old and, if old, whether they have been endorsed by many recent British governments, but they certainly are the sort of thing that successive British, French, German, Soviet, U.S. and all governments set themselves on those occasions when they do anything so dangerous as to draw up a list of national policy aims.
I should have liked a lesser emphasis on preserving and maintaining the interests of this country and a greater emphasis on doing what this country best could to attain a certain general condition of the world. But what condition would that be? How should the desirable condition of the world be defined? Obviously it would be peaceful, it would be prosperous, it would be just, and so on. Then, reasoning back from that, what is the best detailed general line of conduct for a given nation having our characteristics? For instance, being roughly democratic, being middle-sized, speaking a world language, and so on. A rational list framed according to that procedure could, I imagine, become rather more useful as time goes on.
We are now seeing—this has not been mentioned —the growth of political co-operation among the countries of the Community through the mechanism which used appropriately to be called PoCo because there was indeed molto poco of it. There is now some more and, no doubt, the time will come when it becomes molto enough to allow a formalisation of it with the consequent effect on the national foreign offices of the countries concerned. In the meantime, I do not think that we can go much faster than we are going in that direction. Indeed, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, that that does not depend on whether a given Prime Minister takes up a strident or a conciliatory attitude towards his or her colleagues in the European Community.
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There has been this recent eruption—principally, I think, in The Times newspaper—of what looked like a campaign but then did not really turn into one, for the Prime Minister to have her own foreign policy unit in No. 10. The suggestion was quite boldly framed by some apparently very eccentric people as being something which would enable her to override the bad advice from the Foreign Office because it would have sole possession of a higher truth; namely, a truth which did not come from observing the lie of the land beyond our shores, but from higher principles altogether. We should be glad that we have not heard any more of that suggestion.
I must say in passing that I was surprised that the Foreign Secretary found it necessary to take part in that discussion. I do not know whether we should infer from that that its wings did brush him more closely than we should have wished. I shall, however, return to the Foreign Secretary later on.
Of course the Prime Minister can be his or her own foreign secretary, as Lord Rosebery was—a fact pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins. In which case he can and does use the existing Foreign Office and, one hopes, trust it.
A noble Lord: It was Lord Salisbury.
Lord Kennet: I am sorry if I said Lord Rosebery, it was of course Lord Salisbury. On the other hand, if the Prime Minister is not being his or her own foreign secretary it is a recipe for absolute and immediate disaster that there should be a separate department to serve him or her. In this day and age prime ministers should not be foreign secretaries. The present one has not been and if she were ever to take on that duty—I do not attempt to disguise my own view—I believe that it would be an absolute disaster too.
The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, said that the Prime Minister stands for the things in which we all believe. Well, she does not, you know. The only thing which we believe that she stands for is that the interests of this country should be interpreted and pursued as best one can. But what they are is an issue upon which we are very sharply divided. Many of the values she proclaims around the world are matters in which not many people in this country believe. It would make an easier relationship with other countries, and an easier relationship internally in this country, if she were to examine on which points she does express the generally held view of her people, and on which she does not. She is a Prime Minister whose convictions and whose courage run very far in advance of her comprehension. It would be possible for her to know this and the better, by knowing it, to benefit us from her great courage.
I should like to endorse everything said by the Leader of the Labour Opposition about Sir Geoffrey Howe. Life with Mrs. Thatcher and without Sir Geoffrey Howe would be almost too alarming to contemplate. If she had anyone less skilful as Foreign Secretary, less calm, less broad in his approach to the world, then the country would be very poorly served indeed.
Kind things have been said about the quality of the British foreign service, and I endorse them. We have

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a good foreign service, and we are lucky to have such a good one. However, we want to avoid complacency. I do not think that it has always necessarily been the best. There have been two or three people in it over the past 40 years who have risen near the top, despite a degree of overestimation in their own abilities and underestimation of the opinions of other persons and other countries. Indeed, two or three absolute fools have shot through the firmament, but they have not done much harm in the end and by and large the standard has been extremely high.
Over the years the Canadian foreign service, especially in the Third World, could have been an example to us which we did not always follow. And in Europe I have been much impressed by the standard of technical performance—which says nothing about the policies from time to time of their government—of the German foreign service. I believe that we could, certainly in the past, and possibly still now, have something to learn from both of those.
One thing which we may unreservedly welcome is that the great impetus of the 'fifties and 'sixties to commercialise the Foreign Office and the foreign service is now forgotten. The task of promoting the commercial interests of the firms of a given country is not historically especially close to the task of diplomacy and of achieving harmonious relations with other sovereign governments. It has its bearing; but it is not on the same main line, and it was rather a mistake ever to think that it was.
Traditionally, those who opened up the world to British commerce, and the sale of British industrial products, did not rely on the ambassador or the consul too much. The personage of the commercial counsellor had not of course been invented in the great days. In those days, from the 13th century right up to the early 20th century, the person they relied on was their agent on the spot—that is, a native of the country concerned—and on an increasingly sophisticated network, cohabitation, and interaction between the agents of different countries, different industries, different firms in a given country; so as to build up a more light-footed basis of trading and trading knowledge and one which was less hampered by the sovereign interests of the sending country, which can indeed get dreadfully in the way of trade.
Therefore I am glad that the commercialisation of the service is going no further. However, is it not surprising that hiving off these duties—privatisation of advice from government to traders, merchants and industrialists abroad—has not been more to the fore? The Government could logically hive off those functions to the private sector while of course keeping up a central core of advice and keeping in touch with everything that goes on. The reliance by the private sector of industry and trade on government advice abroad has been simultaneous with, perhaps in part has caused, the relative collapse of British industrial exports over the past 30 years.
Lastly; the Queen and the invitation to Moscow. If the Soviet invitation ever had been given—it must have been expected—would it have been to the Queen solely as the Queen of this country or would it have been to her partly as head of the Commonwealth? It
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is difficult to disentangle the two functions and sometimes it is highly undesirable to try: but when the Queen is invited on a state visit to an important country does the Prime Minister convey to the Queen the advice only of the United Kingdom Government or does the Prime Minister also convey the advice of the Commonwealth Secretariat or individual Commonwealth countries? If the Prime Minister does not convey that advice, who conveys it to the Queen?
I realise that that is an opaque area about which little knowledge exists. The matter should be looked at in a future debate, or in some sensible way, first, to find out what happens and then to see if there could be an improvement. It could be part of a general examination of the whole relationship between the Queen in Parliament and the majority in one of the two Houses of Parliament which might become—I shall not say crucial—a lever, or possible spark point in the future, the longer the majority in the House of Commons continues to represent a minority in the country.
4.12 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for introducing the debate. My enthusiasm for the debate is slightly tempered by a point which he made at the beginning of his speech, as did the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, and I was not sure that I understood what his purpose was in putting down the Motion in the terms that he did. I therefore listened with great interest to what he had to say and now of course we know what his purpose was. He identified, and I think that I wrote them down correctly, five guiding principles as to why he thinks that the Prime Minister has too much effect on our foreign policy. He especially dislikes her style.
I speak as someone who was recently a Foreign Office Minister for four years. During that time I had the advantage, and enormous interest, of travelling to some 60 different countries. I can only say, speaking from my experience then, that the Prime Minister was held in high regard throughout the world. She was admired for her courage; for the fact that she stood up for Britain around the world; and for the Government's economic policies.
I can assure your Lordships that I had some unexpected and unusual conversations, not merely with governments which might be described as right wing but frequently with governments which were unquestionably left wing, which were trying to find out about Britain's economic policies and how we had succeeded in reversing Britain's relative longterm economic decline. One must recognise the influence that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has had—a point to which I shall return.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, began by talking about the European Community. We all know and appreciate the great work that he has done in Europe and his great knowledge of the Community. In no way do I pretend to be an equal expert; but I look upon myself as someone who is committed to Europe. I made my maiden speech in your Lordships' House in 1971 in support of the principle of Britain's entry to the Community. I have

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always stood as someone who is a great supporter and believer in the great European ideal. I look upon the whole development of Europe as unquestionably one of the great political developments since the Second World War.
What has happened over what is regarded as the style in Europe is that there have been great differences of opinion about what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister meant in her speech in Bruges. Often what was reported in the press bore little relationship to what she said if one read the speech. That is often the case when one reads what is said and compares it with what is reported.
Basically, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister set out in that speech five principles about Europe. The first was the willing and active cooperation between independent and sovereign states. The second was that Community policies should tackle problems in a practical way. I should have thought that that was something that most people in this country firmly support. It has been not only the work of the Foreign Office, to which I shall come in a moment, but the work of the Prime Minister which has made enormous improvements to the budget of the Community and Britain's share of it. The Prime Minister has also intervened to do something about the common agricultural policy, which everyone understands has become expensive and out of control and in many respects has had extremely damaging effects, especially in the Third World. We must give credit where credit is due.
The Prime Minister said that the Community's policies should encourage enterprise; that Europe should not be protectionist. There again, one of the greatest economic dangers in the world today must surely be that there might be a trade war between Europe and the United States in which both would be bound to be the losers. That would be damaging and needs to be avoided. Secondly, protectionist policies would be dangerous to Third World countries.
The final point was the importance of European defence through NATO. I believe that those views reflect what the majority of British people think about the Community. I do not believe that at present most people in this country want something like a federal system. I greatly respect the views of my noble friend Lord Cockfield—unfortunately I could not be here on Monday to hear the debate, but I read it—and I recognise that he holds firm views. Who is to say that he will not be proved right and that we shall not have a single European currency by the year 2000? However, I do not believe that at present most people in Britain think of that or a central bank or close political alignment as priorities. We are moving in a pragmatic way towards Europe. A great many practical steps are being taken. From my experience in business as a director of a bank and a business, I know that an enormous amount of thinking and planning is going on for 1992. I hope that that is going on up and down the country, because there are enormous benefits to be gained. However I am not sure that we would gain anything by leaping into great decisions which would not have the support of people. That would be very divisive. It is right that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister
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should spell out clearly what some of these things are. Some will move more quickly, some more slowly and after all, some people will not even move at all as regards the European Community. I think that we have got this about right. The great point at the moment is that we should be making preparations for 1992 and the benefits which that will bring, not only to ourselves but to the whole of Europe.
Perhaps I may now turn to the reality of the relationship of the Prime Minister with my right honourable and learned friend Sir Geoffrey Howe and to the Foreign Office. I believe that the Foreign Office not only exists to implement the policy of the Government but it builds on the tremendous experience—my noble friend Lord Glenarthur drew attention to this—of both the Prime Minister and the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, made the point, with which I agree, that we as a country have benefited enormously from the particular relationship between the Prime Minister and President Reagan. I have not the slightest doubt that there will be a good relationship between the Prime Minister and President Bush, just as I believe—and I am sorry that he is not in his place this afternoon—that there was
a very good relationship between the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, and President Carter. It is in the interests of Britain that there should be a good personal relationship between our Prime Minister and the President of the United States.
As the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, said, the fact that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister had said that she could do business with Mr. Gorbachev signalled that this was going to be a good relationship. We are already seeing the benefits of that. I believe that there are very many instances in foreign affairs in which the fact that there has been a good relationship between two Ministers has enabled foreign policy to progress.
Having said that, I worked very closely with my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary for four years. I was very glad indeed to hear the tributes that have been paid to him personally. The country has very often owed far more than it knows to his patience, his unending good humour and his very great negotiating skills. I watched them closely in the negotiations on Hong Kong, to which reference has already been made. I know that his negotiating skills have been used extensively in Europe, in the whole area of arms control and on the big issues of the Middle East, and they will be so used in the future. Nothing would be more unfortunate than to think that he has been other than a very great Foreign Secretary. The country should be grateful for what he has done.
He is well served by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I cannot claim, like the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, to have had 25 years there, and perhaps some people may think from what I say that I too have been brainwashed in some way. I have been told from time to time that one of my faults is being too outspoken, but perhaps I may be forgiven for what I say. One of my ministerial responsibilities was administration and I was very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, and others have paid tribute to the high calibre of people in the Foreign Office. We

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are very fortunate there and also we are fortunate that the Foreign Office is still recruiting some of the most able graduates from our universities, despite the temptations of often far higher salaries in other jobs for these young men and women, who are actively headhunted by many people. One is very struck by, for example, their skills as linguists. It is probably, person for person, as good as or better than almost any other foreign service in the world. I well recall a time when I did not myself have ministerial responsibility for China. I was asked to host a lunch for a Chinese mayor at which half the people present were Chinese and the other half from the Foreign Office. I suddenly realised that I was the only person at the table who did not speak Chinese. That was a very unusual occasion but it brought home to me in a real way the kind of skills we have, skills which we could use to advantage.
There is one other point which I wish to make about the Foreign Office and which we forget today. What is often seen by the outside world as an immensely glamorous job is a very dangerous one today. It may not be necessary to say so in this House but in the four years when I was there a member of the Foreign Office was assassinated, as was a member of the British Council. There were a good many people who were threatened, and I remember that one young girl in a Latin American embassy came to a party when she had only just come out of hospital, having been stabbed while waiting for traffic lights which were red to turn green. The kinds of dangers our people abroad are up against are real and I am sure that none of your Lordships has visited an embassy abroad without being struck by the fortifications around the embassy. They are there because they are necessary, and that is something to bear in mind.
As a consequence of our success—and I think it has been a success—in foreign affairs we have been able to build on the expertise of Ministers who decide the principles of Foreign Office policy. But we carry our policy through by the skilful negotiations of our people who are professional diplomats.
Perhaps I may refer briefly to three areas. One only has to look at the whole area of disarmament, where we have a very real input into conventional arms control and where we are part of the negotiating team. We have made a real input into the whole area of the control of chemical weapons, particularly on verification and on the principles of NATO's arms control position. The 50 per cent. cuts in the United States and the Soviet strategic arms, the chemical weapons ban and the elimination of the conventional imbalance in conventional forces were agreed between the two principals, President Reagan and the Prime Minister, in 1986. The detailed working out, where there has been a measure of success, comes from our professionals. If we look at the Middle East, again we played a leading role in the work at the United Nations which led to a ceasefire between Iran and Iraq. We initiated and drafted Resolution 598, which set the terms for an international settlement of the Gulf conflict.
Commercial work has already been referred to and I think that we often forget that 30 per cent. of Foreign and Commonwealth Office frontline
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resources overseas, and a significant proportion of those at home, are devoted to supporting United Kingdom commercial effort, particularly our exports. This strengthens the economy of the United Kingdom and it therefore helps Britain's foreign policy.
Perhaps I may conclude on that point, where I began. I believe that since 1979 we have seen that Britain's role in the world and the respect and regard in which Britain has been held have risen. That is due to a number of factors, not least the success of Britain's economy and certainly not least the success which the leadership of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has given to the country. However our success abroad is equally important in the work of my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, who, by his tenure of office and his skills, has also put his stamp on what has been done both in Europe and in the great negotiations which are going on.
We must all surely want success in our foreign policy for the very reasons set out by my noble friend in his speech, because the aims of' the foreign policy may be very big words like "peace" and "prosperity in the world" but, after all, they are what we all want.
4.30 p.m.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I must begin by apologising for the fact that owing to a long-standing prior commitment, I shall be unable to stay until the end of the debate. Secondly, I should like to say at the outset that, contrary to what some Members of the House may be expecting, I am not going to devote any time this afternoon to the Diplomatic Service, although it may be quite well known, at least among some of your Lordships, that I have some experience —perhaps not as much as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, or the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill. However, it is experience in a rather different context of our embassies and high commissions overseas, of the Foreign Office in London and of relationships between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and home departments.
Something I should like to say however—and I have listened with great interest to what others have said about this—is that I do not think anybody ever doubted the high calibre of our foreign service. What some of us doubted when we looked at it in the late 1970s was whether the best use was made of that high calibre at all times. The noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, made one or two points that I would perhaps on another occasion like to take up; but this afternoon I want to concentrate on some of the issues already raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead.
It has been said by some commentators that the Government have achieved a new-found confidence in their relationships with other countries. It has been argued that this greater self-confidence since the mid-1980s is based on a much stronger economy. I would contend that the self-confidence is in fact apparent: indeed, it often takes the form of overbearing and arrogant over-confidence. However, I cannot accept that it is built on a substantial and long-term improvement in the nation's economic position. If we accept the importance of a country's economic

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strength in determining its significance and "clout" in the role it is able to play in the world—and surely we must accept this—then there is no justification for the apparent belief that Britain is now in a stronger position to dictate to foreign powers or to get its own way in either bilateral or multilateral negotiations of various kinds.
The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, talks about myths; but he is guilty of spreading just such a myth in referring to our economic recovery, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Young. On the contrary, Britain's underlying economic weakness continues, and no amount of propaganda, either at home or abroad, can hide it from the discerning observer. Since the end of last summer we have had a series of appalling trade figures, which demonstrate more clearly than anything else Britain's failure to earn its living by selling goods abroad. Unemployment still stands at around 2 million, which represents a terrible waste of human resources. Since 1979 manufacturing output has gone up by only 4 per cent., compared with 35 per cent. in the USA and 40 per cent. on average in Western Europe. In GDP per head, Britain is far below most of its competitors in the other OECD countries. Within three or four years North Sea oil, which has helped to shore up our persistently weak economy, will run out. No, my Lords, in the central area of international economic relations Mrs. Thatcher and her Ministers have no reason to be self-confident.
In spite of the harsh reality of those facts, Mrs. Thatcher continues to prance around on the world stage as if this country had not lost its empire, had not slipped even further behind other nations economically and had not had to accept its military insignificance in relation to the superpowers. Continuity in office, which several of your Lordships have already referred to, may have turned the Prime Minister into a world leader who has been around longer than most. It has not, in my view, turned her into a statesman who both accepts Britain's much reduced power and behaves accordingly.
The most important adjustment required is a willingness to accept that relations with foreign countries must increasingly be conducted through multilateral channels. As a middle-ranking European power with a much less successful economy than that of West Germany and a rather less successful economy than that of France or even of Italy, the Government need to accept that our chances of influencing other countries will be greater if we throw ourselves wholeheartedly into trying to make Britain's voice effective within Europe. In this respect, as in others, I strongly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, has already said.
While of course it would be foolish to abandon the strong links with the United States that were maintained and developed during the post-war years, I believe that Mrs. Thatcher has relied much too heavily on the special relationship at the expense of fostering good connections with Europe. Mrs. Thatcher's friend, President Reagan, has now retreated to his ranch in California; and in spite of what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has said, I
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think it is doubtful whether the present or any subsequent Prime Minister can repeat the act with President Bush or with any of his successors. Even Mrs. Thatcher's pal, President Reagan, did not tell her in advance that he was going to invade a Commonwealth country. It is in fact dangerous to rely too much on personal factors in the pursuit of foreign policy, as my noble friend Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos said.
As a result of the Government's relative neglect of Europe with respect to cultivating friendships in favour of the USA, the Bonn-Paris axis continues to be the dominant relationship in Europe, leaving London all too frequently on the sidelines. Devoting a substantially greater proportion of GDP to defence than either of those countries has done little to alter the balance of power within Europe; nor can it be claimed truthfully that it has made or will continue to make much difference to our relationship with the USA. Our military might is so minuscule in relation to that of the United States that a percentage off the proportion of GDP that goes to defence would hardly alter the balance between Britain and the USA.
Continuing to run an overstretched defence budget is another symptom of the illusions of grandeur of our Prime Minister. It also represents a failure to understand that our security is not just a function of how much we spend on our military effort, but it is also a function of other things. Some of the recent investment in arms would have been better spent on non-military scientific research, on government support for innovation in new technologies, on training, and above all on aid and development in the Third World. All these things, I contend, would have done more to enhance our international reputation.
One of the happiest international developments to take place in recent months has been the resolution of the conflict in Namibia and concomitant improvements in the situation in neighbouring Angola. The successful outcome of the agreement to establish at long last an independent Namibia depends on the willingness of the major industrial countries, including Britain, to fund United Nations efforts to get the new county operating. This of course will include a peace-keeping presence and the organisation of connections. It is in Britain's interests to promote peace in Southern Africa; and Britain also has a moral obligation to do so. Instead, I am afraid that Britain has led the haggling over the provision of funding for this activity. It is a disgraceful example of the Government's petty meanness in supporting an international agency in vital work to promote peace and justice in the world. It well-illustrates the Government's mistaken priorities, when the costs involved are compared with our over-inflated defence expenditure.
Turning to a rather different subject, the protection of the environment—both within Europe and globally—has become an important item on the international agenda. The Prime Minister's recent conversion to a green approach has manifested itself in quite a lot of rhetoric about the global environment. However, we can only improve that global environment with more support for less developed countries, whose own activies which are

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damaging to the environment are frequently a function of their extreme poverty. It really is hyprocrisy to to talk about improving the global environment at the same time as keeping aid to the third world at a level well below that provided by many other western industrial countries. Within Europe, despite the rhetoric, the Government's record until recently has been to drag their feet on such important matters as radioactive emissions into the sea and sulphur emissions into the atmosphere. On social and employment issues the Government's record in Europe is equally poor. They recently used their veto to prevent progress being made in relation to equality for women at work, despite the fact that a number of the changes involved actually brought other EC countries into line with improvements already achieved in Britain.
In general Britain's approach to discussing these and other matters in Europe has been both nationalistic and chauvinist. An issue where the Prime Minister perceives sovereignty is at stake, regardless of the intrinsic merits of reaching a common European position on it, evokes a hard-line refusal to discuss it. A good recent example of this is border control. Eventually the Government will be forced into accepting that agreed European regulations will be needed, and absolutely nothing is achieved by initially taking a nationalistic stance and refusing to co-operate. Instead the benefits of positive but hard bargaining at the outset are lost, and the end result is frequently a rather ungracious and grudging acceptance of the outcome of such multilateral discussions, because in the end we have no other choice but to accept.
Conducting relationships with foreign countries requires a mixture of realism about the power and influence that we can rely on to achieve our objectives, consistency and clarity about priorities and the employment of the right means to achieve those priorities, and also a willingness to compromise when necessary. The Government are failing in all of these respects, as I have tried to demonstrate. Moreover, they are led by a Prime Minister whose behaviour is becoming more autocratic abroad as well as at home, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, has said.
Being around the longest does not give her the right to lecture and hector her peers. It is certainly counter-productive to treat the heads of foreign governments like members of her own Cabinet. They have ways of getting back at her which her own Cabinet Ministers singularly lack. It is not Mrs. Thatcher's reputation that concerns me; it is Britain's. Unless there is a change in heart in the way our relations with foreign countries are conducted, it will be seriously damaged.
4.43 p.m.
Lord Bridges: My Lords, like others who have spoken in this debate I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for introducing this Motion. Unlike many other discussions on foreign policy in your Lordships' House where we generally tend to concentrate on the substance of foreign policy, we are here invited to consider the methods by which foreign policy is conducted. I believe this to be
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an important subject in its own right, and I should like to stick rather closely to this theme in what I have to say this afternoon. I do not propose to follow some of your Lordships who have entered into questions of personality, nor the subjects treated by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, on the more general issues of foreign policy.
The reason why I think methods are so important for us to consider is primarily that the circumstances in which our foreign policy is conducted have undergone a fundamental change in the last generation. This is clear to most of us when we think of the decline of the nation state, the emergence of two superpowers, the growth of multilateral organisations, the birth of the European Community and our own membership of it, and since the passage of the Single European Act its commitment in the field of foreign policy. One has to add also our own relative decline.
All these factors have rightly brought about a considerable change in our methods. For example, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has already said, there is a much greater emphasis on multilateral diplomacy. This is necessary. There is too a much greater involvement between domestic and international business. Every member of the Cabinet finds himself involved in foreign affairs to some extent. There is also, interestingly, much more direct contact between Ministers in one country and in another. This can he an extremely helpful process. There has been naturally a change in the role of our foreign missions, but I believe that they have not declined in importance.
However, there is another significant change which seems to me to be worth drawing attention to, and that is the increased importance of public statements by governments. if you think of the situation 50 years or more ago the normal way of conducting government business was by private and relatively informal discussion between governments. Nowadays there is far more emphasis on public statements; on declarations which set out national positions for all the world to see.
Ideally their purpose is to prepare for negotiations which may follow and to indicate the broad lines of approach which may be adopted. I presume that this was the purpose of the important speech that the Prime Minister made in Bruges recently. Such statements seem to me to be desirable and indeed necessary in democratic societies. The world has accepted the objective of "open agreements openly arrived at". By this I understand that the opening and concluding phases will be available and visible for all to see, and the purpose of the public declaration is to set the negotiating process in train and on the right track.
For me the question underlying the Motion before us this evening is whether this is what our Government are in fact doing, and my approach is thus somewhat different from that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, in his most interesting and learned speech. In my view a firm statement of principle is a desirable prelude to a negotiation. In Britain this is naturally so because of our traditional preference for strong government; a preference which incidentally is

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much stronger here than in other parliamentary democracies.
Other countries have come to expect this of us. They expect our public statements to be strong, clear and consistent. In the fluid world of international politics it is to our national advantage that the rest of the world knows where we stand and understands what we are saying. Those who have attended the debates of the General Assembly of the United Nations know how quickly a too carefully expressed speech, a too refined modulation, will sink without a trace.
Nobody would accuse our own Government on this score, and there are definite advantages to the national interest that we have pursued a consistent and clear line since 1979. But this firmness, clarity and consistency are not enough of themselves. Public statements need to encourage the process of negotiation and facilitate movement towards the objective. I am not sure that this part of the technique has been as well thought out as it might have been on some occasions.
I sometimes think that it would be useful to study the techniques of the trade union leaders in this country, whose methods I think could sometimes be applied in other areas with advantage. They are the people in our society who seem to have understood the techniques of negotiation best. By this I do not mean that we should follow all the suggestions which appear in books on what is called the theory of international relations, but which it is suggested that you should advance a false objective in order to abandon it at a later stage of the negotiations, or that you should soften up your adversary with the rough edge of your tongue, or stage a walk-out. These seem to me to be rather artificial devices. But I believe that public statements should be carefully calculated; that they should set out the principles to be adopted in a negotiation and that they should leave sufficient flexibility for the conduct of those negotiations. The words we use should give the impression to the other side that a successful negotiation is posssible, if that indeed is our objective.
What I am suggesting is that we need a more calculated and less instinctive approach in our public statements on foreign policy. It is of course natural that in our country, given the strength of our parliamentary institutions and the forceful nature of our political and public debate, there is sometimes observable a freedom of expression which is not sufficiently calculated. Other countries do not behave as we do in that respect, and where fewer policies may emerge unexpectedly from the pressure of a parliamentary debate.
Indeed, I sometimes think that image reversal is at work here in that we tend to think of ourselves as a uniquely calm, deliberate and phlegmatic political society. The reality I suggest is the reverse and we are sometimes more instinctive, more emotional than our Continental neighbours in our political debates. I do not intend that in any way to be a comment on the proceedings in your Lordships' House; but it is something which I have observed generally in our own society.
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I should like to commend to your Lordships one positive example of the way in which that process of public statement of principles and detailed negotiation should work; namely, the result of the Brussels European Council in February 1988 when the Government secured a very important agreement on a wide range of Community issues. That was a long negotiation on the structure of the Community's finance and agriculture which had been pursued in effect since 1979. The objective would not have been achieved, I believe, without a firmness and determination, stated with consistency and clarity over a long period.
One may perhaps question (as the noble Lord. Lord Jenkins, has done) whether the negotiations need have been quite so long. The important point to stress—and we are dealing with very long-term issues—is that sufficient flexibility was retained in order to reach an agreement in the concluding phase. Everything must depend on the limits of that flexibility; but in that particular case the method chosen produced a final result which was very satisfactory. I find that encouraging and worth bearing in mind.
We are now in the middle of another very important Community debate regarding its future financial structure. Other noble Lords have spoken on that subject and we had a very important debate on the matter in this Chamber on Monday. I do not prejudge the issue, and as we are debating methods today I shall say only that I hope that in those particular negotiations the Government will be able to adopt the tactics which were in the end successful in the negotiations of the Community budget—and in the Hanover European Council—and maintain the necessary degree of flexibility for the crucial stage of the discussion. If that is done, I see no reason to despair of a good result. That would be very much in the interests of this country and of the Community as a whole.
Another difficult test lies ahead of us. That concerns the negotiations on disarmament and arms control. The methods which we have employed hitherto on that subject have been successful in reaching the very important agreement on the zero option for intermediate nuclear forces. The technique adopted in that case was the well-tried one of negotiation between the superpowers and close coordination between the United States and her allies in NATO. Seen simply in terms of methods, the next phase looks more difficult because of the use of the CSCE Helsinki forum, where a much wider variety of interests will be involved which will be more difficult to reconcile, and the likelihood that fundamental questions may arise for Germany —as we have seen in the reactions in the past few days in the Federal Republic to the statements by Foreign Minister Shevardnadze.
We shall have a very important role in those negotiations because we are one of the most important members of NATO, one of the two Western European nuclear powers, and—a point I would particularly emphasise—because of our ability to maintain confidence on the western side during the negotiations, as was done most successfully after the Reykjavik meeting.

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I should like to emphasise the importance of trust and confidence. Inevitably that will include the personal relations of the principal actors on the western side. It has always been that way in such negotiations. I hope that the Government will make use of the considerable opportunities which are open to them because a great deal may depend on it. You cannot expect an ally to trust you on vital security issues unless you have built his confidence in you across the board in preceding years. Confidence is indivisible.
We have heard about megaphone diplomacy, but I am not sure that that is a very helpful catchword. A megaphone after all is a useful instrument to have handy if one is trying to speak to someone who is very deaf, although your Lordships will have noticed that even the deaf object to being shouted at. My own bugbear is rather different, what I should term monotone diplomacy—the unchanging style, the unvarying cadence or argument.
The best way of entering Jericho is to persuade the inhabitants to open the gates. The most effective statesmen on the world scene are those who have been able to vary their arguments and their approach to the needs and national interests of the leader to whom they are speaking. That may be more easily said than done, but I am sure that the truth of that maxim is well known to the Minister of State and his right honourable and learned friend.
I cannot recall a moment in contemporary history when the international scene was changing more rapidly than it has over the past year. To a large extent that is the result of the appearance on the scene of a new Soviet leader. The outcome of his efforts is still difficult to predict. We have already seen some important results: the Soviet agreement to withdraw from Afghanistan; the prospect of Cuban withdrawal from Angola; the zero option agreement on INF; and the European Community agreement at Hanover, which I have already discussed.
Her Majesty's Government made a significant contribution on all those subjects. For that reason, I find it hard to agree with some noble Lords who have suggested that the Government's methods have been wholly at fault. My own view is that even sterner tests lie ahead. I hope that some of the reflections which have been contributed to the debate this afternoon may help the Government to register further success.
4.58 p.m.
The Earl of Bessborough: My Lords, I am very glad to have the opportunity of taking part in this debate. which was so ably initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, who, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, said, is a most distinguished historian and statesman.
It was a most interesting and indeed agreeable experience to be associated with the noble Lord when he was the first British president of the European Commission in the 1970s and I was the first British vice-president of the European Parliament. I need hardly say that we were both European-minded. Some people may have said that we were going native—a criticism which has been levelled at my noble friend Lord Cockfield, to whom we must all have listened with great interest on Monday. In
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parenthesis, I must say that I cannot quite understand what that phrase "going native" really means. After all, we are all natives of Europe, and I do not see why the phrase should be in any way pejorative. It is true that my mother was French but I admit to being a native of the United Kingdom. Yet some of my closest relatives are French, Greek, Italian or American.
Although not all your Lordships are perhaps so internationally and intimately involved, many noble Lords must have Saxon, Roman, Danish, Norman or other Continental Euro-blood coursing through their veins. Therefore I cannot see how any of your Lordships could be opposed to a more united Europe or to our consulting our allies and other EC member states on major international and perhaps some domestic issues.
In my view the European Community should be the rock base for our conduct of relations with other countries, within the context, of course. of the British Commonwealth and our special relationship with the United States of America. At all events, I hope noble Lords will agree that being accused of going native because one has spent a few years of one's life in Brussels and elsewhere on the Continent of Europe should not make one suspect as a British national. Perhaps I may sum up in a few words. I believe that the Government's method of conducting foreign affairs should be such that in the Western world those of European stock should he united on both sides of the Atlantic as they are, more or less, in North America.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, called attention specifically to HMG's method of conducting relations with foreign countries. I have worked closely with the foreign service ever since I was a League of Nations official before the Second World War as well as during the second part of the war in West and North Africa. After the war I served in our embassy in Paris and later as chairman of the first Atlantic Committee in the 1950s. Later still, I was a Minister concerned with science and technology on a more or less global basis and I was also naturally concerned with foreign affairs as a Member of the European Parliament.
I therefore know something about the increasing complexity of conducting our relations with other countries and what the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, well described as multinational diplomacy. The complexity results not only from our membership of the United Nations but also because we are members of NATO, the European Community and other international organisations. As members of the global village, we work together more and more closely. I came to see that very clearly only yesterday when participating in a USIA World Net television and radio programme at the American Embassy with, incidentally, the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and others in Washington and Europe. One hardly needs to cross the Atlantic any more. We can converse by television and radio very naturally and easily, as indeed we did yesterday.
In different ways therefore I continue to be involved with foreign relations. In all the association that I have had with the foreign service I have come greatly to appreciate and respect its work. I was very

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fortunate indeed to be for a while a member of that service.
I feel that in this debate it must be our membership of the European Community that most concerns noble Lords at this time, especially in view of the debate on Monday that was so ably initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, and in which I regret I was unable to take part. However, I agree very much with the remarks made then by my noble friend Lord Reay.
I have recently expressed my own views on the European Community in the European Atlantic Journal, in a review of various new books on Europe which are concerned mainly with 1992. As I said there, I do not believe that we shall ever have a United States of Europe on the same pattern as the United States of America. Each member state of the EC will retain its own language and cultural characteristics. Nonetheless, I hope that by 1992 we shall have a Western Europe without trading frontiers—though clearly joint measures will have to be taken by member states in the prevention of terrorism and drug trafficking.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, and my noble friend Lord Cockfield, I hope that we shall soon join the exchange rate mechanism of the European monetary system, even if all member states cannot yet agree to the establishment of a European central bank and complete monetary union. I would have said that on Monday. Noble Lords must forgive me for saying it now but it seems to me to be a point that I ought to emphasise.
I was encourged by the recent remarks of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister that the European currency unit, the ecu, could be more widely used, as it is already in the issue of Treasury bonds. Above all, I agree with my noble friend Lord Cockfield that we should take the lead in achieving a more integrated Western Europe, economically, monetarily, and politically, and not hop on the bus rather late in the day as we did in 1972–73.
Certainly political consultation greatly improved when my noble friend Lord Carrington was our Foreign Secretary, as I believe it has under our present Foreign Secretary, my right honourable and learned friend Sir Geoffrey Howe, and our Minister of State concerned with Europe, my right honourable friend Mrs. Chalker. Her two speeches last week to the European Atlantic Group were in my opinion absolutely first class and in fact were not basically—I underline the word "basically"—so very far removed from the views of my noble friend Lord Cockfield. We cannot all yet agree on a common currency; but do not let us get left behind as we did in the 1960s.
At this point I should also like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Young. In particular, I agree wholeheartedly with all she said about my right honourable friend the Prime Minister.
At all events, in agreement with Paul Johnson in his article in the Daily Mail early in the new year, I hope that by the end of the century Europe will have been transformed and that the single market will be going ahead full blast, making the European Community by far the world's largest economic unit.
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I agree too that although Western Europe may have a gross national product twice the size of that in the USA, it will not become a federal superstate like America.
It will be interesting to see whether China emerges as a superpower in the next century. Having followed events there for some 12 years, and specifically on two fairly recent, separate high technology missions, I am not certain what will happen there, with Japan being so very close both geographically and now industrially. Whether the People's Republic will start to give greater autonomy to its many regions, as may happen in the USSR—with not only the Baltic States but also perhaps Armenia, Georgia and other republics becoming independent—I do not think any of us can clearly predict.
As regards the USSR, I believe that President Gorbachev—I hope that the Soviet Embassy will note my remarks—would certainly win the approval of most countries in the world if he declared his intention to grant independence to several of the Soviet republics, just as we British gave independence to member states of the British Commonwealth and France took the same course.
In the conduct of our relations with foreign countries, we must bear all those possibilities in mind. I think that the methods of our foreign service, and indeed of No. 10, in the conduct of our relations with other countries have been wise, sensible and correct. As has already been said, most Prime Ministers must be—indeed, nearly always have been—closely involved in foreign affairs.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for having given us the opportunity to discuss these matters. I certainly look forward to the comments of my noble friend Lord Glenarthur on what many of your Lordships have said or may yet say.
5.10 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I wish to concentrate on one example of the Government's method of conducting relations with foreign countries. That is the Prime Minister's speech in Bruges, to which reference has already been made. Perhaps I may reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that I have a full copy of the speech as issued by the Conservative Political Centre. I have not relied simply on newspaper reports. I happened to be in Europe with a group of British business people when the speech was delivered, and there was general alarm and consternation. Re-reading the speech reinforces the reasons why that would have been so. When one reads it one realises that the Prime Minister was to a large extent in many parts of the speech tilting at windmills. For example, she said:
"It would be folly to try to tit them"—
the European nations —
"into some sort of identikit European personality".
Who is trying to do so? Nobody. Within Europe, many people yearn for, and believe that we should have, a form of European unity. I believe that it is the majority feeling in this country. I am sure that it is the majority feeling on the Government Benches. Most sensible people realise that the Community is a unique organisation. It is formed by independent

733
sovereign states. There is no precedent for it. It will obviously evolve into its own form of unity. It cannot slavishly copy any federal constitution because the formation of the United States, Australia or Canada, and other examples, took place in totally different circumstances. I think that every sensible person in Europe realises that.
What dismayed people about the Bruges speech was that it was a slap in the face for those who believe in real progress towards European unity. It is pointless to lecture, as did the Prime Minister, that Europe,
"never will prosper as a narrow-minded, inward-looking club".
In context, that implied that the other countries of Europe constituted a narrow-minded, inward-looking club and that we were not prepared to join it. One has the impression on reading the speech—which I have now read many times—that Britain wants what it can get out of Europe but is still extremely reluctant to make a real contribution and to become a full participant and to pull its weight to achieve European unity.
I quote from page 3 of the Prime Minister's speech to show the conflicting views that come over from it:
"The European Community is the practical means by which Europe can ensure the future prosperity and security of its people in a world in which there are many other powerful nations and groups of nations".
That is a sentiment with which I entirely agree. However, let us consider the next paragraph.
"We Europeans cannot afford to waste our energies on internal disputes or arcane institutional debates. They are no substitute for effective action".
What does that paragraph mean? Does it not mean that Europe has to agree entirely with us before we make any progress? That is what it amounts to. The contradictions in the speech follow. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, referred to the five principles that the Prime Minister laid down then. I quote from the first principle:
"I am the first to say that on many great issues the countries of Europe should try to speak with a single voice. I want to see us work more closely on the things we can do better together than alone. Europe is stronger when we do so, whether it he in trade, in defence, or in our relations with the rest of the world".
The next paragraph states:
"But working more closely together does not require power to be centralised in Brussels or decisions to be taken by an appointed bureaucracy".
How are we to achieve what the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, has properly described as the framework under which countries can develop towards national unity unless that work is done in Brussels and unless the framework is set up there? It seems to me that, if the Prime Minister is right, we should have seen great progress in Europe, speaking with one voice on trade and defence, in relation to the rest of the world. Where is that progress?
If we isolate the words "better together than alone", they mean this. West Germany is the best example of a country in Europe which is so powerful economically that she could do many things as well as, or better, on her own than in Europe, but she does not do so. France could do the same. I have no doubt that we could do the same. There are other countries in Europe which are in a less favoured position and which can do things better together with European
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partners than alone. If the Prime Minister's words mean that, if Britain can do things better alone, then she will, whatever disadvantage that course has for other countries in the Common Market, I do not think much of that proposition.
The Prime Minister stated:
"Working more closely together does not require power to he centralised in Brussels or decisions to be taken by an appointed bureaucracy".
Our Civil Service is an appointed bureaucracy but it has been and is essential for the effective running of our country. If in the Prime Minister's view the bureaucracy in Brussels is insufficiently accountable, the answer surely lies in institutional change, to which she is incredibly opposed.
What Brussels must do is to set up the necessary framework to enable the Community to work through its individual members towards common ends and to create the right means whereby— in the Prime Minister's words—
"the countries of Europe should try to speak with a single voice".
One had the uneasy feeling—and I still have it—that she never intends that Europe should speak with a single voice unless the single voice happens to be hers. The Government should surely spell out in clear and unequivocal terms how they see their obligations to Europe developing.
In his very impressive contribution to the debate on Monday, and in his evidence to the committee whose report was under debate, the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, quoted from the Single European Act, which states:
"the Heads of State … approved the objective or the progressive realization of Economic and Monetary Union".
There is no doubt that our Government agreed that objective. As the noble Lord pointed out in the debate on 23rd January 1989:
"The commitment that has been undertaken in the present case is a commitment to monetary union; not simply a commitment to monetary co-operation".—[Official Report, 23/1/89; col. 467.)
Government spokesmen and others have constantly talked about that.
The Bruges speech was a very carefully considered document. It is headed Britain and Europe. The invitation had been issued a long time ago. What was the Prime Minister trying to achieve? It seems to me that she was deliberately trying to hold up the forward development of the Community in the direction of unity. This is a tremendously disappointing attitude.
The Foreign Secretary—with whom I have had a friendship for a great part of my life—is a man for whom I have the greatest respect. He could not possibly have delivered the Bruges speech. It was a case of the Prime Minister stepping in over and above the Foreign Secretary to lay down a position which I think is intended to dishearten our partners and to hold back progress in what is a misconceived effort to protect the interest of our country. I believe that the time has come for the Government to set out clearly what the Prime Minister intended to achieve by that speech, because it caused a great deal of dismay in Europe and within our own country.
5.20 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I know the enormous regard in which the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, is held in the chambers over which he presides and it is easy to see why after his speech this afternoon. I rise to support the Motion moved with so much historical wisdom and elegance by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, and very effectively followed by my own Leader and by my noble friend Lady Blackstone. I hope that I am in order in saying that we on these Benches are glad to have someone among us to counter the youthful charms of the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur. In the age of Thatcherism I do not believe that her sex is of any disadvantage.
On the last occasion I spoke, I referred to the megaphone diplomacy of the Prime Minister in her dealings with the Ryan case. I shall return to that in a moment, but I shall not speak about it at any great length. I do not want to strike too tragic a note. I remember the late Randolph Churchill saying in my hearing to the late Evelyn Waugh that he was thinking of joining the Catholic Church. Evelyn Waugh replied that the Church had no reason to be unduly worried because it had survived many tribulations. No doubt that is how the intemperate strictures of Mrs. Thatcher are viewed in Ireland.
Before I say anything that could be regarded by the Minister as remotely unpleasant, I shall say something that I am sure he will be happy to hear. I regard the Anglo-Irish Agreement, in which on the British side the Prime Minister took the lead, as the best thing that has happened in my overlong experience of Anglo-Irish relations, with the possible exception of the Sunningdale Agreement which was cruelly sabotaged. I hope and believe that this agreement will not only endure but will lead to still more fruitful arrangements.
Still seeking to be pleasant, I can say other nice things. When I opened the debate on unemployment in Northern Ireland in the summer I referred to the confidence in which Mr. Tom King, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is held among the Catholics of Northern Ireland and, to the best of my belief, in the Irish Republic. Sir Geoffrey Howe—who has been referred to more than once today—is recognised as a good friend of Ireland.
Sir Patrick Mayhew aroused enormous annoyance and indignation when he declined to prosecute certain police officers in what came to be known as the Stalker case. I have seen him at an Irish gathering on very good terms with his hosts. So I do not think that we can put any blame on him. Mr. Douglas Hurd was, from the Irish point of view, a rather unknown quantity until recently but for the moment he has become very popular by sending the Guildford Four back to the Appeal Court once again. We can only hope that justice will prevail, which brings me to the Prime Minister.
On 29th November she used this language:
"the … failure to secure Ryan's arrest is a matter of very grave concern to the Government."—[Official Report, Commons, 29/11/88; col. 575.]
At col. 574 she said:
"It is no use Governments adopting great declarations and commitments about fighting terrorism if they then lack the resolve to put them into practice".
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That was hardly a tactful way of dealing with the people with whom one wants to develop good relations. She was so pleased with that way of putting it, that a minute or two later at col. 575 she was announcing:
"although the Government of the Republic of Ireland make fine-sounding speeches and statements, they do not always seem to be backed up by the appropriate deeds".
Again that is not always the best way to establish good relations, which I suppose if one asked her she would say was her purpose.
The trouble about Mrs. Thatcher, if I may say so with proper respect, is that she cannot get it into her head that the Republic of Ireland, the 26 counties, is an independent country whose status in the world is precisely the same as that of Britain. It is true that Eire is much less powerful than Britain, but Britain is much less powerful than the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Mrs. Thatcher, to do her justice, would never allow herself to be bullied by the United States or the Soviet Union in the way she has tried to bully that small, proud country, Ireland.
When the Irish Attorney-General published his considered reasons for not agreeing to the extradition of Mr. Ryan, it will be recalled that he laid stress on the impossibility of Ryan securing a fair trial in Britain. He said it would be impossible—I personally believe that he was right, but that is a matter of opinion—in view of the publicity already given to the case in the British tabloid press and in the House of Commons. I will quote one paragraph from a long statement made by the Irish Attorney-General. He referred to the general assumption in the media and among Conservatives in the House of Commons that Patrick Ryan was guilty not only of the offences comprised in the warrant, hut of other offences in respect of which no charges have been brought:
"It is clearly apparent that a wide range of reports contained or were based on information which could only have been originated from some official source".
When one looks closely at that I do not think it will be believed that he was mistaken there.
We are all aware that the media in this country are independent and so are Members of Parliament, including the Conservative Members who insisted on referring to Patrick Ryan as a guilty terrorist. But this Government possess, for good or ill, a propaganda machine, already touched on this afternoon, of highly-developed skill and far-reaching influence. The name of Mr. Bernard Ingham I suppose is more famous than that of any public relations officer ever employed by any government in the past. No one can deny that the intemperate line adopted by Mrs. Thatcher in the House of Commons was taken up gleefully by her supporters in Parliament and the press.
I am not suggesting that relations have been damaged on the Ministerial or official level, although I am not in the confidence of the present Irish Government. The Irish Prime Minister seems to have taken Mrs. Thatcher's measure and to have known how to deal with her in a dignified way. It is understood that she was going to tick him off in no uncertain fashion. He prudently let it be known that the meeting must await his convenience. His attitude was referred to as "cheeky" in some of the

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government-controlled press here, but I am afraid that that is not how it will be seen in Ireland where it is felt that he stood up to someone who was trying to bully the small country that he represented.
I imagine that the Irish Ministers regard Mrs. Thatcher's bark as worse than her bite. I do not think that they are therefore very upset by her outbursts, but that is not true of the general public, which is like the general public anywhere else when denounced by the Prime Minister of a country supposedly friendly. The Irish people as a whole bitterly resent being treated as recalcitrant members of a third-rate girls' school. That is how the Irish people undoubtedly feel and English people would feel exactly the same if the Irish Prime Minister began addressing them in that kind of language.
However that is not my last word this afternoon. As I have said these things pass. Mrs. Thatcher has said that she will go on and on and on. I wish her a long and happy life whether or not in active politics, but the time will come when she is gathered to a heavenly Downing Street and there will still be a proud country called Ireland. One must not be too overwhelmed with sorrow at these happenings.
I hope Mrs. Thatcher will go down in history as the person on the British side who built up the Anglo-Irish Agreement. That will be her epitaph and it is a fine epitaph. Her strictures will by that time be forgotten.
In order to finish on an optimistic note I should like to say what I believe to he true; namely, that during my life there has never been a time when the future of Anglo-Irish relations has been as bright as it is now.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, it is 35 years since I wrote a book on the subject which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, has invited us to consider—the general conduct of foreign relations by democratic governments and the relationship of the conduct of such policies to the opinion and political processes of those countries. I do not believe that this is an occasion to suggest the outlines of yet another work on the general subject. In part I have been convinced by the noble Lord and by other noble Lords that it is difficult to separate the general question of how the conduct of foreign relations is organised and carried on from specific issues which illustrate the strength or the weakness, as one might see it, of that particular system. I have informed the Minister therefore that I shall concentrate on a subject which was touched upon today during Question Time but which has not so far figured in our debate. It is the proposed mediation or intervention of the Government of the United Kingdom in the making of peace in the Arab/Israeli dispute.
I do so because I regard the achievement of peace in that area as perhaps the most important immediate issue confronting the world. Noble Lords will understand why I hold that belief. I also believe that a false step in the process towards such a peace might set back one's hopes.
I am convinced that that peace will not come about through an international conference. How can one
738
have an international conference including the five permanent members of the Security Council when two of those countries have no diplomatic relations with Israel? I believe that it will come about as a result of Israeli withdrawal of its initiative from the vast bulk of the occupied territories. It will not be as a result of negotiations, and still less of external pressure, but because public opinion in Israel is beginning to realise what many of its leading figures have said for many years; for instance, Mr. Abba Eban. It is that it is not healthy, or even possible, for Israel to continue in occupation of large territories which are almost entirely inhabited by persons of alien religion, outlook and aspirations. It will come to that conclusion, and is doing so, partly under the impact of the experiences of the young conscript soldiers who discover that there is a great difference between being in an army of occupation and the purpose for which they were called to the colours: the defence of their country and its frontiers.
If that is likely to happen, and I believe it to be the only way in which it is likely to come about, we must then ask what are the external changes in the environment which are likely to encourage this movement in Israel to the point at which either its present or a successor government will accept the logic of the situation.
I do not attach to one of them the importance that is attached by some people: no doubt they have their reasons. I do not attach great importance to the change in the language of Mr. Yasser Arafat. To be willing to accept two bites at the cherry rather than one is no doubt a move. However, in the light of some of the points made during Question Time, it is not sufficient or important enough to bring the confidence which would be required.
As the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, reminded us, we do not know how long Mr. Gorbachev is likely to remain in power or be successful. But if he and Soviet policy continue along present lines—and it has included the development of some kind of diplomatic links with Israel —and if it were to be brought to its logical conclusion and the Soviet Union came to regard the establishment of peace in that area as a national interest (which clearly it has not for many decades), that would be important.
An importance is attached—and clearly that must he so—to those countries which can directly speak to the two parties. The United States has, and is bound to have a considerable degree of influence if only because Israel in the last resort is wholly dependent upon American good will both economically and militarily. However, for political reasons which one does not need to rehearse, it is unlikely that in the immediate future the United States will be very active in the area.
It is therefore understandable that the United Kingdom Government—which among the countries of the Twelve has the closest links with the area and the longest experience of it—may well be seen as a mediator. In undertaking that task the United Kingdom faces considerable difficulties. History is remembered on all sides and there is a legacy of misunderstanding and times of hostility between the United Kingdom and the Arab National Movement, and even more strikingly between the United

739
Kingdom and Israel. I regard that relationship to be the core because we are talking about persuading the Israelis to give up land for peace.
It is common ground that those relationships were ameliorated by the Prime Minister's visit to Israel a couple of years ago. My noble friend Lady Young did not mention it as being among her achievements, but undoubtedly it was one of them. Therefore in Israel she commands serious attention to what she has to say and would be a possible interlocutor at some point.
I now touch on the main theme of our debate. Unfortunately it appears that the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Waldegrave and Mr. Kaufman—the three British statesmen who have most recently busied themselves in the area—have been given inadequate advice, if one is to judge by their statements. It may well have seemed appropriate for whoever advised my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary on his speech in Kuwait to say something to indicate Britain's interest in furthering the peace process. However, if one is trying to persuade Israeli domestic opinion—and everything turns on that—it is unwise to do so in Kuwait, which is best known in Israel as the main supplier of finance to the PLO. Whatever one thinks of the PLO's change of heart today, no one seriously denies that in the past money has been spent on terrorist activities.
Similarly, I do not quarrel with anyone who refers to the somewhat murky past—and I am perfectly prepared to accept that word—of the present Israeli Prime Minister or indeed of his Likud predecessor. They do not excite universal admiration in Israel or in the Jewish Diaspora. However, it seems to me that it was enormously unwise of Mr. Waldegrave to make reference to that if at the time he was hoping to persuade the Israelis that they had good friends in this country and in Western Europe and could therefore take the risk of withdrawing their forces to an area or lines of demarcation which would be less favourable to them in terms of immediate military balance.
I believe that that was unwise and for the same reason, if I may say so to noble Lords opposite, it was also unwise of Mr. Kaufman to give the impression that the important thing was to talk to Yasser Arafat. The Arab position is known. It is understandable. If one were an Arab, one might well take that position. However, the Israeli position is the one which has to give if there is to be peace. Therefore I believe that it was also wrong to give the impression that because we have these good relations at the moment with the Arab movement it is sufficient to concentrate on that in our diplomacy.
If, for instance—and I put this forward simply as an example; I am not in the confidence of any of the parties involved—it had been indicated that if Israel withdrew from at any rate most of the occupied territories Britain would reconsider its lack of partiality in arms supplies in that part of the world, and if Israel could then be told that it could rely on Britain balancing the arms which it has given or sold to countries which are, at any rate on paper, at war
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with Israel, that might have made a very considerable favourable impact on Israeli opinion.
It seems to me that though one may in general say that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its ambassadors abroad have done sterling work for this country, the Middle East has always been an area in which there has been an official line which the Israelis—and if one looks at the documents it is not surprising—regard as basically inimical, and the task of British statesmanship in the Middle East today must be to remove that impression.
5.44 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for initiating this debate and for giving us the benefit of his experience in the Foreign Office and in Europe. Like my noble friend Lady Young, I was also rather mystified as to what this debate was about, but I now see that largely it seems to be about attacking or defending my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. I have many European and American friends who would give almost anything to have her as their Prime Minister. Her actions and achievements speak for themselves so splendidly that there is no need for anyone to defend them.
Perhaps I may quote from Caxton's preface to Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, which says that it may be seen as,
"noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentleness and chivalries".
He goes on:
"Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renown".
I might be quoting from President Bush's inaugural speech instead of from a 15th century romance, but it is so. There is a new spirit abroad of gentleness and kindness, as evinced by President Bush's speech and by President Gorbachev's promotion of perestroika and glasnost.
There is still a massive imbalance on the defence side in Europe against NATO and there is a long way to go. However, the idea of Soviet disarmament is a very good start. There is even talk of dismantling the Berlin Wall, which must be good, but there too there is danger that if West Germany became closer to East Germany its commitment towards NATO might be less. Even so, all over the Soviet Union little candlelights of freedom and friendship are beginning to twinkle out.
I believe that that has come about largely as a result of Britain's fair but firm and friendly foreign policy over the past decade. We have stood out against aggression and yet we have always taken the hand of friendship even if it is still wearing a pistol holster.
It seems significant to me that President Bush, who was a director of the CIA, and President Gorbachev, who was a member of the extreme Politburo, are now both promoting kindness, gentleness and openness. Those are qualities which we in Britain act for and believe in. Perhaps, having seen the barren rocks at the end of the world, they have come to realise the importance of spring flowers and green pastures.
5.48 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, most of this debate focused, understandably, on the conduct of British policy in relation to Europe until the noble Lord. Lord Beloff, introduced a very relevant alternative topic; namely, that of British policy in the Middle East. I should like to follow him in making one or two comments on that and in particular on that part of the Palestine problem which relates to the question we are discussing: the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.
Many years ago I remarked to a member of Mrs. Thatcher's Cabinet, who shall remain nameless, that the Foreign Secretary, then the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, was doing very well on Palestine. He replied, "Well, of course, he is big enough to resist the Finchley factor". By that I assume he meant, first, that in forming her views on Palestine the Prime Minister was unduly influenced by constituents who were supporters of Israel. and, secondly, that having formed those views she expected them to be accepted and implemented by the Foreign Secretary.
That that should happen is undoubtedly the hope of the Israelis and of their supporters. I was very struck not only by the speech we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, but by his typically cogent feature article in The Times on Monday. After criticising the Foreign Secretary and Mr. Waldegrave rather more sharply than he did today, and after criticising very sharply indeed what he called the permanent pro-Arab bias of the Foreign Office, the noble Lord concluded as follows:
"If Britain is to mediate, it may well he that Mrs. Thatcher will have to do the job herself: no one will accuse her of being the mouthpiece of officials, least of all for the officials of the FCO".
That is true enough. No one will accuse Mrs. Thatcher of being the mouthpiece of Sir Geoffrey Howe. Truly she is a conviction politician.
Unfortunately, there is no place in the world less suitable to the exercise of conviction politics than Palestine, especially when those convictions are based on a one-sided view of the conflict. For many years there has been a tendency for the Arab-Israeli conflict to be seen differently by politicians and by diplomats. That is true not only of Britain but of European countries. It is very true of the United States, where the State Department is often attacked by the politicians and by Israeli supporters as being pro-Arab. Yet events are showing conclusively that the judgment of Israel and her supporters on the future of Palestine has been badly flawed and that the warnings of the diplomats and Foreign Office officials have been fully justified.
That, after all, is what one would expect. By their nature politicians work and have close contacts both with the Arabs and pro-Arabs and with the Israelis and pro-Israelis. As we all know, that is far more true of diplomats than it is of Western politicians. Nor are diplomats as vulnerable to the political pressure of the Israeli lobby. They are not nearly as vulnerable as are many politicians. That is particularly true, again, in the United States, where Congress, unlike the State Department, has lost much of its freedom of judgment where Israel is concerned.
Thus, while it may be true—and it is true, as the noble Lord insists and as many other people have
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stated —that there is a difference of view between, on the one hand, the Prime Minister and, on the other hand, the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Waldegrave and Foreign Office officials, it by no means follows that the Prime Minister's view is better informed or that it should be imposed upon the Foreign Secretary.
I give an example. A few weeks ago, alone among all the member governments of the United Nations, Britain abstained on a General Assembly resolution opposing the refusal by the United States of a visa to Mr. Arafat to go to New York and address the General Assembly. The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, explained that the British Government supported the visit of Mr. Arafat to New York and opposed the refusal of a visa to Mr. Arafat, but abstained because the Government did not like the wording of the resolution. That abstention was an abrupt departure from the policy of the Foreign Secretary; the policy of concerting Britain's position on the Palestine problem with the position of the European Community and the policy of encouraging Mr. Arafat to fill out the details of the new and more moderate policy outlined in Algiers. The reason for the abstention was not of course the wording of the resolution but the personal intervention of the Prime Minister.
Shortly before that Mr. David Mellor, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, spoke out boldly against Israel's conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. He was fully supported by the Foreign Secretary. However, shortly afterwards the Prime Minister decided that his talents were badly needed at the Ministry of Health.
We discussed megaphone diplomacy and the personal intervention of the Prime Minister in relation to many parts of the world: to Ireland, Belgium, the Bruges speech (which was so admirably analysed by my noble friend Lord Hooson) and in relation to poor Mr. Delors. However, on the Middle East the position is different. There has certainly not been any handbag diplomacy where the Israeli Government are concerned.
With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, it was encouraging to hear him refer to the need for and likelihood of a major withdrawal of the Israelis from the occupied territories. It was also encouraging to hear him say that the next move must come from the Israelis, which is a crucial judgment. However, I am bound to say that the part that Britain can play in achieving that is not to offer to send arms to the Israelis, who have more than enough arms, more than they can afford and more than they need from the United States. Britain's part must be to seek by every means possible to increase the security guarantees for Israel in the event of withdrawal, including with the European Community——
Lord Beloff: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will permit me to intervene. I did not intend to suggest that Britain should offer Israel arms at the moment. I said that after Israel's withdrawal to frontiers which might appear less defensible Britain should make it clear that she would then be impartial in arms deliveries between Israel and her neighbours. That is an entirely different point.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I apologise if I have misunderstood the noble Lord. I understand his position. I still feel that a more constructive and practical approach by the British would be to say to the Israelis, "We are working with our Community colleagues and inside the United Nations to ensure that after the withdrawal there will be security guarantees on the ground in the form of an international peace-keeping force, with teeth, to which Britain could and should contribute". In addition, there should be a treaty which would neutralise and demilitarise the area to give, so to speak, an Austrian-type status of neutrality to the new state of Palestine. Those are more constructive ways of dealing with the situation than offering to deliver arms, but of course it is a difference which is not so very wide.
As my noble friend so admirably explained with great historical insight, the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary is an extremely difficult one. The relationship between Attlee and Bevin, of which I had some personal knowledge, seemed to be admirable and produced a well-managed and effective British foreign policy; whereas the relationship between Chamberlain and Eden was bad and British policy at that time was badly managed and disastrous.
It is my view—I believe it is a strongly and widely held view in this country—that at this time, on this terrible Palestine question, Sir Geoffrey Howe, Mr. Waldegrave and the British Foreign Office are doing well. They have the support of all parties, including the Labour Party—
Baroness Phillips: No.
Lord Mayhew:—and the excellent and well-informed support of Mr. Gerald Kaufman. Therefore they deserve the support of the Prime Minister too.
5.58 p.m.
Lord Reay: My Lords, as other noble Lords have pointed out, this has been a difficult debate to prepare for since at least some of us were unaware of what charges the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, intended to bring against the Government.
One of the charges which the noble Lord seemed to be making, or declared he was making, was that the proper balance of power between the Foreign Office and Downing Street had in some way been upset. It would be extremely naive and unhistorical to argue that the conduct of foreign affairs should be left by the Prime Minister exclusively to the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, was far too knowledgeable to do that.
There are innumerable examples in history of Prime Ministers taking over the conduct of foreign policy, sometimes successfully and sometimes less so, without those examples having been thought to raise a constitutional issue of any kind. Indeed, unless the Foreign Secretary was provoked into resignation (even the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, did not suggest that that is about to happen) such occurrences get more attention from subsequent biographers than from the general public at the time. I am sure the
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general public treat it as being within the natural and expected order of things when Prime Ministers decide to take over the conduct of foreign affairs.
The noble Lord referred to Lloyd George. In Kenneth Rose's biography of Curzon, Superior Person, Curzon is quoted as describing A. J. Balfour, who was then Foreign Secretary—this was at the time of the Paris Peace Conference—as being in a state of "supine subservience" to Lloyd George. Curzon went on:
"He steadily day by day pulled the extinguisher more firmly down on the head of his Department, until it almost ceased to have a separate existence".
But no better a fate attended Curzon when he became Foreign Secretary to Lloyd George. In the words of Kenneth Rose:
"Humiliation and disappointment alone awaited him. Lloyd George, he soon discovered, was determined to be his own Foreign Secretary".
As Curzon himself put it:
"He (Lloyd George) set up his own personal secretariat to operate behind the back of the Foreign Office, conducting intrigues, sending messages, holding interviews, of which we were never informed until it was too late, or only heard by accident or gathered from the intercepted telegrams of foreign governments".
Kenneth Rose concludes:
"Insulted in Cabinet, ignored in private and ridiculed behind his back, Curzon nevertheless refused to resign; if he could not have the substance of power, he would at least enjoy its shadow".
Even the noble Lord—much though he would no doubt have enjoyed doing so if he thought it was plausible—did not attempt to draw a picture of comparable subjugation of the Foreign Office to Downing Street today.
As it has been mentioned, Neville Chamberlain is another example of a Prime Minister who imposed his own policy on his Foreign Secretary, bringing about Eden's resignation in the process. And what about the Prime Minister under whom the noble Lord enjoyed his own ministerial career but to whom he did not refer; namely, the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, as he now is? Who was it who conducted all those headline-catching negotiations with Ian Smith, unsuccessful though they were, both before and after UDI?
As the noble Lord also said, there have been Prime Ministers who have left foreign affairs entirely to the Foreign Secretary. Baldwin (about whom the noble Lord has written a biography) is a case in point. The result is not necessarily better, as the noble Lord will recall. Samuel Hoare, left by Baldwin to his own devices, stopped off in Paris on his way to a skating holiday in Switzerland and signed with his French opposite number the infamous Hoare-Laval Pact which aimed to dispose of Abyssinia. In fact it disposed of himself as Foreign Secretary and very nearly of Baldwin as Prime Minister.
So it is plain that whatever the noble Lord is complaining about falls well within the limits of the power arrangements which have been tolerated and which have been usual in the past. It seems to me that we would do better to pay more attention to the results to which the noble Lord paid lip service, but little more than that, and which no arrangements can guarantee, than to the manner in which those results are achieved.

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The foreign policy achievements of this Government have been outstanding. Whatever the noble Lord says, the European Community has made unparalleled advances in the past few years. There has been nothing comparable since we first joined. Britain's budget grievance has finally been remedied under the Fontainebleau arrangement that was confirmed in Brussels last February. It succeeded where the so-called renegotiation of 1974 failed. Though the noble Lord sought to rehash those negotiations, I do not think that he succeeded in establishing how the result could have been better either for us or for the Community.
At last substantial progress has been made in the reform of the CAP and a stop put to the escalation of support prices and the accumulation of surpluses. Great and rapid strides have been taken towards the completion of the internal market and the Single Act. That is an extraordinarily bold and constructive constitutional advance. It was passed in order to break down the paralysis in the Community's decision-taking procedures and to make attainable the single market objective.
In all of these achievements this Government played a leading, if not the leading, role. I believe that it is impossible to imagine such things having been achieved except with a Prime Minister whom the British people instinctively believe they can trust to safeguard the national interest. The Community apart, the United Kingdom's relationship with the United States (so vital for the security of the whole of the Western world) could not be in better condition. No one can accuse the Government of failing to cultivate the transatlantic relationship, and this has not been gainsaid. Neither can it be said of relationships with the Soviet Union.
Thanks to the recovery in Britain's economy and finances, which only the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, was unable or unwilling to see, and the Government's clear-sighted perceptions of where this country's interests lie, we have maintained a sound and credible defence posture. There have been other foreign policy successes. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, acknowledged the importance of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It is a most significant milestone in the short history of the United Kingdom's relationship with the Republic of Ireland. It is an agreement that is of immense importance to both our countries to maintain and develop.
There has been the remarkable agreement with China over Hong Kong. No doubt an example of the megaphone diplomacy that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, deplores was the Prime Minister's Bruges speech, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, devoted his speech. As I saw it, that speech gave a ringing reaffirmation of Britain's commitment to Europe. The words were:
"Our destiny is in Europe as part of the Community".
At the same time it drew attention to several undesirable tendencies that should not be allowed to determine the character of the Community in the future. To be specific, these were protectionism, over-centralism and socialism. I entirely agree. These remarks may have offended the noble Lord and others, and that is to be regretted.
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I come back to the point that the noble Lord made but did not develop. Would one prefer a foreign policy that produces results or one—whether it is conducted in a style of which the noble Lord would approve of more or not—that produces nothing of substantial value? I do not wish to follow the noble Earl, Lord Longford, who is so knowledgeable and rightly concerned about Anglo-Irish relations, as regards the Ryan case. I do not see any useful international purpose being served by raking over the embers of that row today. Heated feelings should be allowed to cool. We continue to need the cooperation of all countries in the fight to defeat terrorism.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, called for more regard to be paid to the authority of the Foreign Secretary. We are fortunate to have the outstanding, popular and immensely experienced Foreign Secretary that we have. I am also quite convinced that our foreign service yields first place to none in the intelligence, talents, skill and dedication of its members. Graceful tributes have been paid by other noble Lords to both of them. But to expect any Prime Minister to leave the Foreign Office and the conduct of foreign affairs quite alone is entirely unrealistic and undesirable. Where is the borderline today? What are Community summits except regular occasions for the conduct of foreign relations by heads of government? A lack of interest in foreign affairs in a Prime Minister today would not simply be surprising; it would be a disqualification from office.
The noble Lord's case is misconceived, and I hope that the next time we come to debate foreign affairs the focus will be back where it normally is—on the policies themselves rather than on the purported inadequacies of the means or the style of their implementation.
6.10 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, much of the debate has been centred on Britain's position in Europe. One of my reasons for opposing Britain's entry into Europe was my fear that we would become a part of a small, white, privileged area of the world and forget the rest. In his opening speech for the Government, the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, used these words:
"We must be certain of our objectives".
I agree. Does he agree that one of the objectives of British foreign policy is justice and equity for all peoples of the world? If he does, has he read The State of the World's Children 1989, published by UNICEF this month? I should like to quote a relevant passage to put into context the wider areas of British foreign policy which I want to introduce into the debate. It says:
"For almost 900 million people, approximately one-sixth of mankind, the march of human progress has now become a retreat. In many nations, development is being thrown into reverse and after decades of steady economic advance large areas of the world are sliding backwards into poverty. Throughout most of Africa and much of Latin America average incomes have fallen by 10 per cent. to 25 per cent. in the 1980s".
That is the state of the world today. We are entitled to ask what our Government are doing about it.
Later in the report it is shown that last year 43 billion dollars was transferred from the third world to

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the rich world. In other words our affluence, our festivities at Christmas, were being financed by the malnutrition and the death from starvation of children throughout the third world. Last year alone more than half a million extra children died from malnutrition. Millions of children are undernourished. Large numbers of children throughout the world are having to leave education because their parents cannot afford to keep them there. I ask again: what are our Government doing about their position in the global village?
The answer is stark. In 1979 the Government of this country were providing 0.53 per cent. of GNP in overseas aid. Last year the figure was 0.28 per cent., a drop of almost one-half. When those of us who are concerned about the British contribution to world justice and equity have asked the Government repeatedly over the years why our overseas aid is falling we have been told regularly—I hope the noble Lord will listen to this point because I wish to ask him a direct question—that our overseas aid is falling because the British economy is declining. We are now told by the Government that over the past two years the British economy has attained a new and previously unreached prosperity.
If the Minister believes that the British economy is prosperous today, why has not the percentage of overseas aid from this country to the third world increased as our prosperity has increased? Surely that would be the logical conclusion of the answer which the Government have regularly given us; namely "we cannot afford to provide the kind of overseas aid which was being provided by the Labour Government in 1979". If he genuinely believes that Britain is now a prosperous country, why is not that prosperity reflected in the provision of greater aid to those who are dying from under-nourishment and lack of food?
I want to ask another question. I asked the Minister this question in a previous speech but he did not answer it. He did not have time to answer it and I have not received an answer by letter. Is it the case that the British Government are refusing to provide project aid to Zambia until the Zambians agree to the IMF terms, which when they were imposed 12 months ago led to food riots within two weeks? As the noble Lord knows, the Zambians have started to put their own house in order. After their elections in October they devalued the kwacha by 25 per cent. They are reducing subsidies. They have to do it gradually or people starve. That is the grim reality faced by the Zambian Government.
I ask again whether it is a fact that the British Government are refusing project aid until the IMF agreement is signed. Is it also the case that when Mrs. Chalker visited southern Africa she avoided going to Zambia, although she had been invited to go there, because she was embarrassed to tell the Zambians that Britain would not offer greater aid? Is it also the case that when the Prime Minister goes to southern Africa she also avoids Zambia? This policy of linking British aid to the policies of the IMF is surely disastrous. Even members of the IMF are now realising that many of their prescriptions for the restoration of economic stability have had a socially disastrous effect.
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My next point concerns the Commonwealth. The point arose in our debates many years ago about British entry into the Common Market. Would entry be at the expense of the Commonwealth? A great many pious words have been spoken about the Commonwealth this afternoon, not enough perhaps but the subject has been referred to in passing. What are the Government doing about our membership of the Commonwealth?
The first thing they did—this was the personal responsibility of the Prime Minister at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in the Bahamas four years ago—was to stand out like a sore thumb as the one country that refused to apply to South Africa the sanctions that the rest of the Commonwealth wanted to apply. Despite the report of the Eminent Persons Group, of which the noble Lord, Lord Barber, was a member, which was appointed by this Government and which said in stark terms:
"Either sanctions, or continuing violence",
the Government, led by the Prime Minister, have been the ones standing against the rest of the Commonwealth and lowering the position of Britain within it.
Moreover, can the noble Lord explain what the Government's attitude towards the Commonwealth is in view of the fact that this year alone they are raising the rent of the offices used by the secretariat of the Commonwealth? In one case the rent of one office is being increased from £12,000 to £232,000 a year. The whole rent bill of the Commonwealth secretariat is increasing this year from something over £600,000 to £1 million. Is that the way in which the Government are supporting the Commonwealth?
Further, what is the attitude of the Government to the Commonwealth Institute? How is it that this year they are cutting by 12 per cent. their contribution to that very fine institute which gives so much pleasure, education, insight and imagination to so many children in this country? There are bus-loads of school children outside the institute every day, and yet the Government are reducing their contribution to that valuable educational work by 12 per cent. is that the attitude of the Government to the Commonwealth and to their membership of it?
Finally, I turn to the attitude of the Government towards the Government of South Africa. It is only four years ago since the Prime Minister was entertaining at Chequers the man who was detained during the last world war as a Nazi sympathiser, President Botha. How is it that the Government consider that someone who was quite openly supporting the Nazi cause during the last world war is a respectable statesman but that those who are fighting, and have been fighting now for nearly 100 years, to get simple justice and equality in the state of South Africa are terrorists? How do the Government square that circle?
Are the Government on the side of what has been described in the American election as "state terrorism" led by president Botha; or do they support those who have tried for many years, by peaceful means and by passive resistance, to achieve constitutional change in order to acquire human

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rights and who turned to violence—that is, selective violence—only when all constitutional means were blocked? Where do the Government stand so far as concerns their attitude to South Africa? The Government have shown themselves to be the odd man out in the international community, behind even Congress in the United States, in their pressure on the South African Government to grant human rights to the vast majority of its citizens.
I hope that when the noble Lord winds up the debate he will answer those specific questions and that he will answer them in the context of the position of Britain in the global village, not just in prosperous Western Europe.
Lord Bauer: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down perhaps I may ask him whether he recognises that the aid which we are giving does not go to the starving children and the other destitute people living in the third world. It goes to their rulers. That is a big difference. Quite often the rulers themselves are responsible for the appalling conditions which prevail in those countries. Sudan and Ethiopia are only two examples among many.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I always welcome interventions from, if I may so call him, my noble friend Lord Bauer. Less than two years ago he and I debated this very subject on television. I think that we won; indeed, I think that I won. As regards the direct answer to his question, if he will read the very notable book of Rene Dumont, published 25 years ago and entitled False Start in Africa, he will see that I have criticised the elite in Africa and in other third world countries just as strongly as he has. Moreover, I still do.
Nevertheless, I believe that during that period we have learnt a great many things and that the Africans and other third world peoples have also learnt many things. Further, a great deal of what I fully admit was the corrupt use of a part—only a part—of our overseas aid has now been virtually stamped out. I appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, to tell us whether it is not the case that the Overseas Development Administration is now carefully monitoring the aid which is sent from this country to ensure that it goes into productive purposes for the use of increasing the standard of living of the people and not to the small elites which the noble Lord quite rightly said have in some cases in the past taken an overwhelming share.
6.27 p.m.
Lord Thomas of Swynnerton: My Lords, I, like other noble Lords, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for introducing this debate on a subject which has been full of historical allusions and lessons from the very beginning. On this side of the House I think that we have all been touched by the recognition by many noble Lords on the other side of the impact of the economic achievements of this Government internationally. Even the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, recognised that Britain's standing is different from what it was 10 years ago. Furthermore, Lord Greenhill's statement of that was especially convincing and encouraging. Again, the
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recognition by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, that the Anglo-Irish Agreement was the most encouraging change in Anglo-lrish relations in his lifetime also gave us a lot of heart on this side of the House.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, my message was not intended to be entirely complimentary. I thought that the noble Lord understood that.
Lord Thomas of Swynnerton: Nevertheless, my Lords, I think that they were the words used by the noble Earl.
It is true that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, criticised the style of the Prime Minister, although we all listened with some attention to the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Bridges—a recent distinguished ambassador—felt that an explosive style, even a trade union approach, sometimes had its benefit. The noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, also thought that the Prime Minister's method of negotiation of the revision of the Europen Budget had in fact yielded benefits. Of course style is an important question, but I suppose that there are many people who would have preferred President Giscard D'Estaing to have had a less cold style, and some people who would have preferred Lord Curzon not to have spoken with a Derbyshire accent.
The historical analysis of prime ministerial/foreign secretarial relations made by the noble Lord, Lord Reay, makes it unnecessary for me to go again into what has happened in the past, although surely it is fair to point out that a prime minister who in the late 20th century adopted the position of Mr. Baldwin would be properly condemned. It is also surely fair to point out that all the Prime Minister's colleagues, as heads of government in the European Community and in the case of France, head of state as well, have far larger foreign policy advisory apparatuses than No. 10 Downing Street. However, at the end of the debate I do not especially wish to defend the Government's policies, which have been amply defended; I wish humbly to suggest ways in which they may be even further improved.
In the course of the debate it has been generally recognised that the foreign service has admirable achievements to its credit. However, the noble Lord, Lord Franks, in his report on the Falklands crisis suggested implicitly that admirable though the foreign service has been for the past few generations in describing and analysing what has been happening in the world, it has sometimes been less impressive in presenting suggestions for long-term policy, especially if the policies involved affect domestic, colonial or imperial affairs. That is an important matter. After all, there are many issues where foreign policy in present circumstances is not confined merely to relations between nation states. For that reason, when I intervened in the debate on the Address two years ago, I said that I believed that it would be desirable for the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary to be required by Parliament to present an account annually, before the passing of the Foreign Office Vote, as to what foreign policy was on a large range of issues.

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I was criticised by the Minister who suggested that that proposal was undesirable since a policy statement of that nature would be bland and boring or indiscreet and dangerous. The Foreign Secretary also pointed out that he regularly makes speeches about what he is trying to do, and that probably serves the aims which I suggest are desirable. It is true that he makes such speeches and they are admirable. However, they are necessarily short and addressed to particular audiences.
We now accept foreign experience as a guide to our actions much more often than we did in the past. Foreign experience suggests that it is possible for the Secretary of State in the United States, when being accepted by Congress, to describe what he is trying to do. The statement, for example, made by Secretary of State Haig sticks in my mind as an admirable statement of what American foreign policy might be in the 1980s although he did not follow the terms of his own instructions. That is a matter the Government might like to consider.
That is especially the case in relation to three issues which are of much greater importance than any others at present. First, there is the question of the Commonwealth, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, alluded. As it happens, I do not share all his views about the Commonwealth, but I believe that he is right to say that some thought should be given to what its future should be. Is it an organisation of peculiar importance to us? Was the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, right to suggest that President Reagan's intervention in Grenada was especially condemned because it was a Commonwealth country or did it matter less than if it had been, for example, a country that was directly attached to the European Community?
If we believe that the Commonwealth is a good idea, are we interested in trying to extend it? Do we hope that Pakistan, under Prime Minister Bhutto, will rejoin? What are the long-term possibilities of Ireland joining the Commonwealth? Is that issue something that should be discussed?
The second question to which foreign policy should give attention is whether issues have arisen which in some way alter how such matters are considered within the Government. For example, surely the most striking change in the past few years has been the revival of religion in the world as an active political issue. Are we certain that the geographical departments within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are properly geared to deal with the changes in the political position of not merely Islam and the Roman Catholic Church? The third question relates to Europe, to which a great deal of discussion has been devoted today. That is the most important matter. It is especially important because our relations with the European Community are definitely not the relations which we were used to having with independent sovereign states. The fact that we refer to the European nations as our partners is an indication of that point.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which deals with foreign and Commonwealth countries, should speculate that if it is to continue to deal with
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Europe it should perhaps change its name and become the Foreign, European and Commonwealth Office.
The noble Lord, Lord Bridges, pointed out that Ministers are constantly meeting one another within the European Community. That goes also for civil servants and other organisations. European law, as the House knows well, applies to this country as if it had been passed by the British Parliament. That makes relations between continental countries and ourselves different from anything else of which we have had experience.
In relation to the future of Europe, the Government sensibly have said that they favour a step-by-step approach. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, said that on Monday. My noble friend Lady Young said it today. The Secretary of State has often said it. The noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, spoke of practical steps. That of course is a good Anglo-Saxon position. Get the shape, size and colour of the tomato right and the greenhouse will in some way build itself. I have an instinctive preference for that approach since, as we know only too well, during the 20th century Europe has had many heady and disastrous visions of the future.
All the same, the image of a step-by-step approach presupposes that there is some kind of staircase. Staircases have different gradients. Some staircases go down easily to a Roman bath and others go sharply upwards like the pyramids in Chichen-Itza causing vertiginous anxiety en route. All staircases, presumably, have a view of the top or the bottom. It is plain that there are many Europeans, headed by Mr. Delors, who have one plain view. The Government do not agree with that view about the future of Europe and most of us concur in that disagreement. But is the Government's view quite clear as to what the future of Europe should be? Is the Opposition's or indeed the nation's view clear? I do not think so. All of us favour economic union which even if there is no common currency goes further than any such relationship which we have entered into previously. All of us who have any historical knowledge must know that economic unions of this nature in the past involving the United States, Germany or Italy, have always led far faster than has seemed likely to some form of political union.
Clearly an economic union in the 20th century must have political implications, so some kind of political structure is necessary. At least an umpire is needed to tell the club members how to behave. How strong will that umpire be? Where are his sanctions going to come from? As I see it, Britain stands for a Europe of diversity. The Prime Minister and Lord Cockfield, I suspect, arc in agreement in this respect. A centralised government in Europe is not in our interest and I suspect that most Europeans agree. However, to ensure an effective Europe of diversity surely needs more work and more thought than seems as yet to have gone into the matter. Maybe there have been many excellent long papers within government explaining exactly what our long-term aims are, in the same style, say, as the famous papers written after 1945 defining our relationship with the Soviet Union and the United States under the auspices of Mr. Ernest Bevin. If such papers exist,

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that is all right, at least Ministers will know exactly where they stand. But if such papers do not exist, if such thought has not yet been given, there is a very strong case for some special inquiry into what we hope will have been achieved in Europe by the end of the century and in the 21st century.
When there was a crisis of similar uncertainty about the future of a part of what was then the empire; namely, Canada in 1837, the Government appointed the then Lord Durham to write his famous report which formed the concept of the 20th century empire by suggesting that we could keep the empire by allowing the colonies to govern themselves. I suggest there is a very strong case in the late 1980s for asking a modern equivalent of Lord Durham to write a similar document which would ensure that the characteristics we regard as desirable in the Europe of the early 21st century are safeguarded.
6.43 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I listened to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, with great interest, and I shall return to them in a moment. A number of your Lordships have expressed in the course of their speeches some mystification as to the precise meaning of the Motion of my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead which is before the House. However, that does not seem to have prevented many of them saying a great many things, and in consequence the debate has ranged extremely widely over a large number of topics. I must say that the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, has my deepest sympathy in having to wind up. I notice that he shakes his head in complete confidence, but how he could foresee all the points which were going to be raised and answer all the questions which have been shot at him will interest me very much when I listen to him.
The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, raised a number of interesting issues, in particular suggesting that we require a modern version of Lord Durham. I think it would be extremely difficult to find or recreate him in the age in which we live. However, I hope the noble Lord is right.
I was interested in his comments on Europe and the ingenious hut, I thought, unconvincing—I do not believe that he even convinced himself—defence of what he called the step-by-step approach. If we are to have a step-by-step approach—and that is one means of locomotion—we must know what our objective is. We have not heard from the present Government precisely or generally what their objective is in the context of Europe. What is our destination? Where are we going? How fast and with what objectives? Of course, the noble Lord is totally right in saying that it is not enough simply to have economic union, desirable though that is. Directly there is economic union one has to have a political superstructure or infrastructure; call it what you like. That may perhaps define the distinction between two schools of thought: those who think we can get by with a political infrastructure (hut then it will be accused of being a bureaucracy); and those who say that it must be a political superstructure; in which case it must mean giving more powers to the European Parliament. On those critical matters we have had no guidance from the Government.
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As for the Europe of diversity, I do not think anyone who considers the past or the present of Europe can possibly envisage a Europe which is not diverse. One of the Prime Minister's eccentricities in respect of Europe is to believe that we may be swamped by European culture, as though we were not part of it ourselves. But what is even more eccentric is the idea that the French would ever agree to a political organisation which was somehow or other going to drown the French culture.
A far greater danger which faces this country's cultural development is not Continental culture swamping us but satellite television beaming in—as the first programmes of Mr. Murdoch's Sky television indicate—nothing but American soaps, American quiz shows and American films from his own company, 20th Century Fox. If we are frightened of this country losing its cultural identity, that is the source of which we should he afraid.
When I consider some of' the problems facing the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, when he winds up, I think he will have to do rather better in his defence of the Prime Minister's record than he did in his opening remarks. Some shrewd comments have been made in the course of the debate and it is no good just saying "Everyone loves her". We know perfectly well that there are large numbers of people at home and abroad who far from love her. It is no good pretending that you are The Times or The Sunday Times and can simply issue statements which you expect your readers to accept without any qualification.
I find it difficult to believe that Mr Delors is fascinated by her charisma or that Mr. Kohl altogether agrees with her or, as the noble Earl, Lord Longford, said, that Mr. Haughey is altogether pleased with her. Taking them in no particular order, we cannot altogether forget the unwarranted intervention in the Canadian election. We cannot simply pretend that the Bruges speech, as The Times, The Sunday Times and, I regret to say, the Economist pretended, was a great European statement. Anyone who has set foot on the Continent of Europe or has spoken to anybody on the Continent and who is interested in the European Community knows that this was a cold shower. It produced shock. It was regarded as a hostile statement. It requires almost unbelievable insularity for people in this country to pretend that that was interpreted by anyone who had the European idea at his heart as a speech that was anything other than hostile. To suppose that this was not the case is to delude ourselves.
Nor can we pretend that the Ingham affair and the invitation to Moscow to Her Majesty the Queen were trifling. They were not trifling. When I wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, in connection with a speech he made or a Question he answered in this House—I cannot remember which—to ask him what it signified, he replied that there was nothing more he could say about it because it was purely speculative. What was speculative was the invitation; what was not speculative was the statement issued at a briefing meeting by Mr. Ingham
So these things cannot just be brushed aside as matters of total indifference; nor can the Ryan affair; nor can the Carrington quotation referred to by the

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noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn; nor, I must admit to my noble friend Lord Greenhill in his defence of megaphone diplomacy, do I find the Fulton speech a very good example. Mr. Churchill was not at that time a member of the Government. He was not exercising diplomacy. He was expressing his opinions in a speech and that is a different matter in very different circumstances.
As I have said, in the course of this debate people have touched on a very wide range of subjects and it seems to me that the reason, as has been said, is that it is difficult to separate the method of conducting foreign policy from the policy that is being conducted. What I would like to look at briefly is how we in this country and how NATO as a whole are responding to the changes following the arrival of Mr. Gorbachev on the world scene.
It is perhaps somewhat surprising that so little attention has so far been paid today to this important event. Owing to the arrival of Mr. Gorbachev, we have moved from diplomatic trench warfare into open diplomacy, from techniques developed over the past 40 years in response to the cold war, of tiny advances and tiny retreats, to a diplomacy of manoeuvre. Again and again the Western alliance has found itself false-footed. Again and again it has found in Mr. Gorbachev a kind of Rommel in this sort of diplomacy of manoeuvre. The fact is that NATO has failed to develop any comprehensive posture with which to meet this diplomatic offensive. Of course I recognise that a co-ordinated response from the 15 democracies which comprise NATO, and France in addition, in the face of the USSR, which remains a highly centralised and authoritarian polity, is very difficult to achieve. But to recognise the difficulty, it seems to me, is not to diminish the importance of trying to construct a comprehensive, positive and coherent response which will have the assent of the members of NATO together with the support of the populations which elect the governments to NATO.
It seems to me transparently true that Mr. Gorbachev has had an enormous impact on public opinion in Western countries. It is not only in Germany that anti-Americanism has been growing in the past year or so, dangerously in some ways. If one may take another example, in Spain, according to a recent poll, the USA is regarded as being more likely to be the cause of a war than the USSR. Elsewhere, where opinions are not so strong, I have a feeling that there was disappointment in the response of NATO to the succession of unilateral initiatives made by Mr. Gorbachev and his colleagues, which by any reckoning appear to be unprecedented, surprising and pleasing.
NATO's response appears to have been consistently negative. The withdrawal of 500,000 troops produced the response that it was a political gesture. Some political gestures are very important, and it seems to me that was one of them. When Mr. Shevardnadze, at the end of the Vienna meetings recently, made his speech, The Times reported:
"The West sees his offer as a ploy to exploit their differences".
British sources, in another report, said that Moscow had not yet specified which six divisions would be
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removed. The point most people noticed was that six divisions would be removed. They did not actually want to know their names. One Western diplomat moaned:
"The Russians pull one surprise after another and now they have done it again".
All that is not from the subversive BBC, from the dangerous Guardian or from Thames Television's "Death on the Rock". It was from the Downing Street press: from The Times.
I think that represents the kind of reaction people feel we are getting from NATO in this momentous change which has occurred over the past three years. It is a momentous change, and NATO appears to be peeping over its trenches with its little periscope, sniping away with its Enfield rifle, in a war of diplomatic manoeuvre which swirls around it, catching it by surprise on every occasion. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, said, three years ago no one foresaw the faintest prospect of the revolution in which Mr. Gorbachev is engaged. He has opened up possibilities that none of us dared to envisage; and it strikes me that it is one of the most exciting and encouraging prospects that has occurred since the Fulton speech rang down the Iron Curtain.
In those circumstances, at first the Prime Minister seemed to see and to seize this opportunity with great courage and perspicacity when she found that Mr. Gorbachev was someone with whom you could do business. Since then it appears that, whether from ideological prejudice or her determination to keep in step with the USA, she has become more cautious. I shall perhaps be told that her determination not to disagree publicly with the United States is a wise and prudent policy whereby she strengthens the special relationship, and that this policy has given her unequalled influence.
I think we must examine with some scepticism the idea of the special relationship. I would hope that she would engage in constructive dialogue with people other than the United States and South Africa. The special relationship, as Mr. Macmillan discovered at Suez, is in my view a British delusion. That is confirmed by the priorities announced by President Bush. He accords first priority to the United States-Japanese relationship, and within Europe, if there is a special relationship, it must be with Germany. If you want confirmation of that, look at the ambassadorial appointments.
However, that is not to say that we must let down our guard. It is not to say we must not act with caution. Mr. Gorbachev may fail. He is faced with huge economic problems at home, and there is no good economic news from Russia. That is bad news for us, but it means that the necessity for arms cuts, the necessity to transfer resources from defence to consumer industries, is all the more important. At the same time, the United States faces a dreadful economic problem which equally will demand on its part arm cuts, and Europe will be asked to look after itself in security terms to a greater extent than ever before. If that is so, Europe must play a larger part in forming a security and foreign policy of its own. If it is to do that, it means that we must develop a political superstructure rather than a political infrastructure.

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I therefore conclude by reminding your Lordships of some words spoken by Sir Michael Howard, formerly Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, in a lecture that he gave in September this year at a conference. He said that governments are inevitably cautious, and went on:
"Their spokesmen will make weighty statements to the effect that it is too early to judge and we must wait and see, as if that was the end of the matter. But of course it is not. Statesmen should not confine themselves to reacting to circumstances. They should have some vision of the way they wish to see the world develop, and some capacity to move it in that direction".
7.2 p.m.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: My Lords, we have had an extremely interesting debate. Whether it went on the lines that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, intended when he set out the words that described it I do not know, but I cannot honestly believe that he thought that this House would spend the whole afternoon debating the methods of foreign policy and not the content of it. It was inevitable that the debate would go as it has with considerable excusions into the substance of foreign policy.
On the question of method I should like to say first that it is striking that there have been no serious criticisms of the quality of the diplomatic service itself, and indeed many friendly tributes paid to it. This I hope—though with no particular confidence —will he noticed by some organs of the press who regard attacks on the Foreign Office and those who work there as a regular dish to be served up every now and again when they are short of something else. The truth is that this country is very well served by its diplomatic service. One could go on in considerable detail suggesting changes here and changes there, but I do not know that that is what we want to do now.
The other question that came up early in the field of method was the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office. The two are bound to be closely related because the Foreign Office is concerned with questions of power, from which a Prime Minister can never dissociate himself. It is inevitable that the two Ministers will either work closely together or tread on each other's feet, and we must hope that it works out for the best.
It is interesting to notice—and it may perhaps encourage among professional diplomats a certain amount of smugness—that if we look at three major errors of British foreign policy in this century (I refer to the series of acts labelled appeasement which led us to Munich and then into a war that we ended at a terrible disadvantage; secondly, the Suez adventure; and thirdly the resumption of sales of arms to South Africa in 1970) all were urged on the Foreign Office by the Prime Minister of the day and were against the weight of official opinion in the Foreign Office.
I say that this entitles professional diplomats to perhaps a certain amount of smugness when they are criticised for anything that may have gone wrong. The moral of it seems to be that it is not desirable for Prime Ministers to tread into the foreign affairs field without first informing themselves carefully and realising that it is quite possible that the Foreign Secretary, who has been specialising in it, and the
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professional diplomats who have been specialising in it for years may know a little more about it than the Prime Minister. That degree of caution is necessary if Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries are to get on well together.
I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, was correct in his analysis of the Father Ryan episode, which was a striking example of an ill-judged, infelicitous action by a Prime Minister with unfortunate effects on the conduct of affairs by the Government as a whole. In the course of the debate several other infelicitous acts have been quoted, but we do not want the debate to become exclusively one about the merits or demerits of the Prime Minister.
On the question of style of diplomacy, I understood the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, to speak in favour of what he called calculated statements. The question was not so much whether they were delivered through a megaphone or quietly or whether or not they were explosive but whether they had been thought about in advance and were well judged for the situation. Here it is clear that the Prime Minister's speech at Bruges on European matters was not in that sense calculated, or if it was it was most disastrously calculated.
What in fact did she do? She urged her hearers against the perils of in effect a federation of Europe—which nobody was asking for. The impression she created was that she did not want any steps taken in the direction of greater unity. It is possible, by selecting the appropriate sentences from her speech, to represent her either as a friend or as an enemy of closer unity between the states of the European Community. But the plain fact is that most of her hearers got the impression that she was opposed to any greater measure of unity between the European countries. That, I am sure, is the very last impression that we want to create at the present time.
It is an absolute condition of the conduct of British diplomacy today that we have to recognise that we work in groups; that we are not a country that can, by its own motion, alter the whole course of world affairs. We can only be effective as a member of the various groups to which we belong. They are NATO, the European Community, the Commonwealth and the United Nations.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, pointed out to us the importance of having some concerted policy in NATO; that the actions taken by the Russian Government, which I think have been a welcome surprise to us in many directions, require an appropriate response from NATO. Admittedly, as was suggested, it is rather harder for 15 democracies to reach a common policy than for the Government of the Soviet Union to make a decision, but it is surely something that we have to do.
At present we have a series of sorties made by the Russian Government proposing this or that measure of disarmament, to which no convincing replies are made. We cannot let that situation continue indefinitely. I fear that the Prime Minister's attitude towards Europe has produced the result that we are not regarded as a country that is likely to be cooperative in trying to work out together a common policy with NATO. I hope that that is not so. I hope that we can reach agreement on how to do

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business—to use the Prime Minister's phrase—with Mr. Gorbachev. However, we do not appear to be going in that direction at present.
There has also been mention of the importance of a common currency. I wonder whether it is realised that before the First World War, although Europe did not have a common currency, practically every country was on the gold standard. That is to say that each nation regarded it as its business so to conduct its economic affairs as to give a certain value to its currency. Consequently there was a stationary comparative value with all other currencies. We talk as if that was almost an impossibility instead of something to which the whole of Europe used to be accustomed.
I think that we ought therefore to show a greater willingness to accept the principle of a common currency for Europe. I believe that that is bound to happen, if not in the lifetime of some of us certainly in the lifetime of our children. We have to be prepared to accept that and to recognise that a far more united Europe than the one we have known is going to come into being. I think that it is a disservice to British foreign policy for the Prime Minister to have given the impression, whether intentionally or not, that that was not a direction in which Britain wished to move.
To take another example of working together in harmony with other countries, it is proposed that there should be an international conference to solve the vexed question of the Middle East. I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, said in arguing against the proposition. Quite frankly I do not know whether that is what should be done, but I think that we both have to accept that that may be attempted and that Britain in one form or another will have to play some part in trying to create a peaceful solution to the problems of the Middle East and the disputes between Israel and her neighbours.
What worried me about Mr. Waldegrave's remarks was that they were in tone and in nature a rebuke to Israel, whereas in Israel's situation surely what should have been addressed to her was not a rebuke but an encouragement and a reassurance. What is it that we are asking Israel to do? We are asking her to take the enormous risk of giving up the possession of certain territories which, even if uneasily, give her some kind of security and put herself in a position in which she may be in deadly peril. Unlike her Arab neighbours, Israel can afford to lose only one round in the conflict between Israel on the one hand and the Arab countries on the other. Arab countries can be defeated and can return to the harassing of Israel. A defeat for Israel will mean extinction. Israel is aware of that.
If Israel is to be persuaded to take risks she must be offered encouragement and reassurance. One of the problems for which we have to find a solution is this: whatever method is used, international conference, United Nations or whatever, at the end of the day there must be some guarantee of the agreed solution. If there is no such guarantee one cannot expect Israel to put her name to it. Here again I am afraid it was all wrong for that style of remark to proceed from a Foreign Office Minister. That kind of
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remark can damage the work of a well-intentioned Foreign Secretary and a diligent and highly talented diplomatic service.
We have heard a great deal, and understandably, from noble Lords opposite about the economic strength of this country. It was just as well that we had a warning speech from my noble friend Lady Blackstone reminding us that there is not quite the rosy and assured picture that has been set out by noble Lords opposite and that we should be making a mistake if we conducted our foreign policy on that assumption.
In the ancient world if a country wanted the best possible advice about what it should do next it sent a delegation to the oracle at Delphi. It was not very useful because the oracle gave an answer for which there were two or three different interpretations and it was up to you to judge which interpretation to adopt. However, above the shrine where one went to consult the oracle there were two very valuable mottos. One of them said, "Know thyself', and the other said, "Nothing too much".
Britain has to know itself. It has to know that it is no longer a power that can act except in groups, and in groups with which it cheerfully and willingly cooperates and which it wants to see strengthened. When we congratulate ourselves on such economic progress as we have made in recent years we should also remind ourselves, "Nothing too much". We should not build too much on that and not be too sure that everything is going to be rosy in the future.
There is one very dark shadow on the horizon. It was referred to in particular by my noble friend Lord Hatch and by my noble friend Lady Blackstone. The Prime Minister has never in her various speeches given foreign policy a jolt in the direction of further regard for the needs of the third world or further efforts to get the South African Government to change their policy. That is putting us in the position where we are being increasingly regarded as of all countries in Europe the one most favourably disposed towards the present Government in South Africa.
That is a position of great danger because I think that it is quite clear to all of us that the present Government of South Africa will not last. It is walking down the road at the end of which is doom. No one can see any way of diverting her from it except by a complete change of heart, of which there seems to be no sign whatever. It is extremely important in the final crisis that Britain is not regarded as the one friend who advised and encouraged South Africa along that road when everyone else was trying to discourage her.
That is the kind of issue which our foreign policy ought to be spelling out. If Prime Ministers, or anyone else, want to give foreign policy a nudge in any particular direction, that above all is the direction they should choose.
It is my feeling therefore that we can congratulate ourselves on having an admirable diplomatic service. We can hope that we are in a stronger position to contribute to the wealth and security of the world than we were a decade ago, although we ought not to read too much into that. There are available to us

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groups with which we can work—NATO, the Commonwealth and Europe—and in which we can make ourselves effective. But we put ourselves at terrible risk by choosing to be on what will inevitably he and is increasingly as the years go by the wrong side in that very great world issue. It is that we must avoid.
7.18 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we have had a good debate with many notable contributions to which I have listened carefully. To the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, I say that I agree and that I have indeed been set something of a challenge. With a certain amount of material before me I shall try not to detain him too long.
I should like to begin by thanking my noble friend Lady Young and the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill of Harrow, in particular. My noble friend's interesting recollections of her time at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are valuable. I share her impressions. I have not been in that office more than 18 months but after those 18 months I hope that no one will accuse me of either being brainwashed or having gone native, to use two of the phrases that have been referred to today. The speech of my noble friend Lady Young illustrated some of the themes that I addressed at the outset. The experience of the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, on the professional side of the Foreign Office is well known to everyone. I am grateful to both my noble friend and the noble Lord and for all other tributes that have been paid to the staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for which I know they will be grateful.
It is sometimes alleged—indeed the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill of Harrow, hinted at this—that Ministers are too dependent upon the advice of officials, whether it be in the Foreign Office or at No. 10. Although in my opening speech I emphasised that Ministers and not officials take the decisions, there are those who suggest that Ministers need greater access to alternative views and to a greater political input. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, that it is not as if my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs are at present wholly dependent upon the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for foreign policy advice. Of course they receive information and suggestions from a wide range of sources, and that includes political advice. Indeed there is a strong political dimension in British foreign policy. It could hardly be otherwise when those in charge command years of experience of leadership in a government who have achieved radical political and economic change.
However it is the responsibility of governments successfully to combine political instinct with pragmatism. I said that we should avoid too rigid an approach to foreign policy. The world in which we are seeking to make our influence felt will not fit comfortably into a preconceived set of political prejudices. Where we wish it did, we often lack the means to compel it to conform.
As my noble friend Lord Reay hinted, we have to face up to the realities of foreign policy-making in a complex and often recalcitrant world. A narrow,
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ideological approach is no basis for a credible, effective foreign policy, as even the Soviet Union now acknowledges.
We have heard criticism of the speech made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in Bruges and more generally of her dealings with European colleagues. I too acknowledge and respect the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, to the European ideal and his experience in these matters. Both qualities shone through not only in his speech today but in his thoughtful contribution to our debate on the Loyal Address on 23rd November. I must say to him that criticisms of the kind that he and others have put forward today overlook the facts. I agree with my noble friend Lady Young that too many people have read the headlines about the Bruges speech and too few have read the speech itself—even though the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, has read it. Some have even read it selectively. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, has read the speech in detail and I hope that he and the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, will acknowlege that it made many thoughtful and constructive points on European co-operation. My noble friend Lady Young spelled out what they were and the support that they received in this country.
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister emphasised in Bruges that Britain's destiny is in Europe as an active and committed member of the Community. She has played a leading and positive role in European Community questions and negotiations with our partners. Since last summer, in addition to the European Council in Rhodes, she has visited five Community countries for discussions with colleagues and held bilateral talks in this country or elsewhere with a further four Community Heads of Government. That constant round of communication and consultation all too often escapes the notice of the press.
Obviously in a Community of 12 nations there will be differences of approach and of emphasis on some issues. That is natural and, as I have suggested, it is more healthy to acknowledge than to deny them. Our cultural diversity and differing national traditions are our strength, not our weakness. Many of our partners share that feeling.
I am struck with the fact that the pragmatic British approach to Europe has increasingly become a hallmark of Community activity, and I am glad that my noble friend Lord Bessborough shares that view. As a result, over the past year we have reached agreement on the future financing of the Community and made an excellent start on reform of the common agricultural policy. There is still a lot to be done but the will is there and, as we have long proposed, the focus of Community activity is now completion of the single market. The single market programme is a practical and evolutionary approach to fulfilling our treaty commitments and goals.
Another recent event that was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, and discussed by my noble friend Lord Beloff was the meeting of my honourable friend the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs with the chairman of the PLO. I shall not attempt to follow the example of my noble friend Lord Beloff by giving quite so much

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detail, nor indeed that of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, who also went into detail on that topic. But that was a good example of the flexibility of approach which allows us to respond appropriately to changing circumstances. The private groundwork for the meeting was extensive and established the conditions that allowed it to take place. The PLO had accepted Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, recognised Israel's right to a secure existence and renounced terrorism. I believe that this was a clear vindication of our firm policy over the years and merited that forthcoming response.
My noble friend Lord Beloff implied, and the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, endorsed the view, that my honourable friend was too publicly critical of Israel. That charge does not stick. As a staunch friend of Israel for over 40 years who sees the damage that her policies and practices in the occupied territories are causing to her international reputation, we are bound to express concern. We believe that the PLO's new, moderate position deserves to be tested in face-to-face negotiations. Israel has nothing to lose by negotiation and everything to gain from a peaceful settlement which offers her the security that she has craved for so long. When we speak out in this way it is not megaphone diplomacy; it is a friend's concern for Israel's future.
My noble friend Lord Beloff told tales of pro-Arab bias in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and no doubt can claim that these always make good anecdotes. Maybe that is true. It is equally true that many in the Arab world regard us as pro-Israeli. In this and other contentious areas perhaps the best test of whether we are achieving balance in our policy is when we draw equally strident criticism from those on both extremes. Judging from the many times that questions have been asked in this House on this particularly difficult and intractable issue, on which there is now progress being made, I endorse that view.
Our common sense and patient approach to foreign policy has scored notable successes in the multilateral organisations to which we belong and to which others have referred this afternoon. Through these organisations we have worked effectively to magnify our influence and move towards what would have been beyond our reach had we acted alone.
As my noble friend Lady Young said, in NATO the three key principles for arms control agreed by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister with President Reagan at Camp David in 1986 were subsequently endorsed and developed by the whole alliance and the firmness and unity that we had consistently advocated within the alliance have brought us the first of those priorities; namely, an INF agreement.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, suggested that our attitude to the new style of Soviet foreign policy was not imaginative enough. Exciting the prospects may be, but I think that there is a critical difference between showing imagination and indulging in fantasies. Of course we welcome the more constructive Soviet approach on human rights, arms control and regional issues. Our response is imaginative. But let us not forget that we are dealing
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in realities. As my noble friend Lady Strange said, it is too early for us to conclude that the changes in Soviet internal and external policies are permanent. For example, subversive KGB activity abroad—there is nothing too gentle about that—seems hardly to have been affected by the new mood. While cuts in the Soviet armed forces and Soviet military expenditure are of course welcome, they are cuts in the fat, not in the lean meat. The Soviet Union retains a substantial advantage in almost every category of weapons facing NATO in Europe. Where NATO's defences are concerned, we cannot afford simply to trust in Soviet good intentions, much as we should like to. We must put those intentions to the test. That may not be a headline-winning approach. But it is a steady, tested and reliable route to greater security.
NATO is a vehicle which we are using effectively to safeguard peace and stability in Europe. Our policy seeks also to bring that same peace and stability to other regions of the world, more troubled than our own. We have long been convinced that the United Nations can make an important contribution. That is why this country has played a leading part in reactivating a sense of common responsibility and purpose in the five permanent members of the Security Council. As my noble friend Lady Young has pointed out, the first fruit of that co-operation was the acceptance by Iran and Iraq of Security Council Resolution 598 as the basis for a ceasefire—a resolution for which the United Kingdom was largely responsible. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, will appreciate from his own experience how ably our permanent representative Sir Crispin Tickell has executed his tasks.
All these successes are the results of a foreign policy consistently pursued. The principles underlying our approach to these diverse issues have been the same, our objectives uniform. If we had failed or faltered in the conduct of our foreign relations, would we have achieved so much? I very much doubt it.
Perhaps I may turn to some of the specific points that were raised on different aspects in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, made the charge of government by indignation. I am sorry that the noble Lord bases his comment on the lobby system on the sole and doubtful authority of the media on this issue. He will not expect me to be drawn into commenting on important and sensitive policy questions on the basis of what may by some be viewed as a certain amount of mischief-making. However, the important matter is that it is the Government who pronounce on the policy—which we do regularly from this Dispatch Box—and the noble Lord ought not always to take too much account of what he reads elsewhere in the papers.
In an important speech, the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, raised the comments that the Prime Minister made about the free trade agreement between the United States and Canada when she was in Washington in mid-November 1988. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister was addressing an issue of international interest and concern. It is widely known that she was a keen supporter of free world trade. She has never hidden this view and it is not a new one. I would therefore argue that it was

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only natural for her to comment on this subject in the way that she did. My right honourable friend's remarks did not amount to the interference with which those who do not subscribe to her views charge her.
I am hesitant to go further into the matter of the Patrick Ryan case, to which reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and the noble Earl, Lord Longford. However, there is no doubt in my mind that the Prime Minister was right to speak as she did. She reflected the views not only of the Government but of the vast majority of the people of this country when she spoke of her dismay at the Irish decision to refuse our request for extradition. No one denies that there is a proud Ireland—to use the phrase of the noble Earl, Lord Longford—but the reason given by the Irish for their decision—that Ryan would not receive a fair trial—was in our view totally unacceptable and unjustified. The noble Earl would do well to remember, as I am sure he does, that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has personal experience of a bomb in Brighton that was set by the IRA. We would all do well to remember that.
One speech with which I found myself in almost total disagreement was that of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. I am sorry that she is not in her place so that I can respond to elements of it. She made a number of different charges: that we were in no position to dictate; and that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister was not a statesman. One of the more extraordinary charges that she made was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, in his winding up remarks. That was her comment about the economy. The fact that the GDP in this country is at its highest-ever level can hardly be described as bad news. That we are now into our eighth successive year of sustained growth averaging over 3 per cent. cannot be described as bad news. The fact that the United Kingdom economy has grown faster than those of all other major EC countries during the 1980s contrasts pretty starkly with the previous two decades when the United Kingdom was bottom of the league.
When the noble Baroness reads Hansard she may do well to remember the famous dispatch from Sir Nicholas Henderson when he was in Paris in 1979. It subsequently reached the public eye. This dispatch surveyed Britain's position throughout the period since the war compared with that of France and Germany. The opening section was entitled ominously, "The account of our decline". Sir Nicholas went through the economic figures one by one, comparing British performance with that of France and Germany. By every yardstick—gross GDP per capita, productivity, exports, average earnings, car ownership, and industrial output—Britain had once had leadership over France and Germany and had now lost it. Only in strikes had we apparently extended our lead.
It is harsh to believe that an ambassador in 1979 should be forced to say that at least in France in many public statements Britain was mentioned as a model not to follow if economic disaster was to be avoided, and to continue by saying that it made life extremely
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difficult for an ambassador to conduct his normal responsibilities in the present uncertain state of our economy and of our European policy.
The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, raised a number of important topics which go well beyond the focus of the debate, though that has ranged fairly widely. I shall study his remarks in detail even though I have probably answered many of those questions before. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister will not be visiting Zambia. But this is not a question of a snub or anything like that. The visit involves a very tight schedule and my right honourable friend wishes to see two Commonwealth countries that she has never visited, unlike Zambia, which she has already visited. The noble Lord ought to be aware that my right honourable friend Mrs. Chalker was in Zambia for two days last week.
I think that the noble Lord is confused over the matters of aid. He is confusing programme aid with project aid. The latter—project aid—is ongoing. We shall resume programme aid when an IMF-approved economic reform programme is in place.
The noble Lord raised points about the Commonwealth. The importance that we attach to the Commonwealth has been spelt out by Ministers at this Dispatch Box many times. He referred to the rent for the Commonwealth secretariat building. The secretariat occupies Marlborough House rent free. It has commercial leases on the other office accommodation necessary for the staff that cannot be accommodated in Marlborough House. The rents from these properties are subject to normal commercial terms, including five-yearly rent increases. I fear that the noble Lord has the wrong information on that.
Grant-in-aid to the Commonwealth Institute is one of a number of items met from the FCO vote and is assessed annually on the basis of all competing claims. It now stands at £2.5 million as opposed to £2.665 million in the previous financial year. That is still a very respectable and considerable sum and reflects the continuing importance we attach to the institute's educational work.
As for aid volume and the third world, I acknowledge the importance which the noble Lord attaches to helping where we can in the third world. I have seen in the last 18 months a very great deal of the third world, admittedly not Africa but other parts of the world. The Government have accepted the UN target of 0.7 per cent. of GDP, but like previous administrations and many other donors we have not set a timetable for reaching it. Progress towards the target must depend on economic circumstances and the extent of other calls on the resources. The noble Lord has heard me say that before, but for those who challenge that view there is the point that it would be easier to reach the GNP target if the GNP were lower. The other aspect which is important to bear in mind is that since 1979 we have reached the 1 per cent. UN target for aid and private flows in every year but two.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Lord has not answered my question. The Government pleaded the poverty of the British economy as a cause of the decline in the percentage of GDP given in aid.

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Now they have been boasting for years that the economy has recovered. Why is it that the percentage of GDP given in overseas aid has not also recovered to the figure that it was in 1979?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, if the noble Lord likes to look at the figures he will find that compared with the original overseas aid budget this year of £1337 billion, the figure for the coming years represents an increase over the period in cash terms of 18 per cent. or 5 per cent. after allowing for expected inflation. The important thing is to look to the future not always to the past which appears to be a feature of the noble Lord's comments.
My noble friend Lord Thomas of Swynnerton made some important points about the Commonwealth, religion and its role in politics and Europe. I shall take note and carefully study the remarks that he has made. I do not propose to go into the question of South Africa again this afternoon. It is a matter which has been dealt wth very fully in debates on that subject. I believe that the noble Lords, Lord Hatch and Lord Stewart of Fulham, are fully aware of our views upon it.
Returning to the theme of' the Motion that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, put down, we have an effective foreign policy and an active diplomacy. All the elements are pulling in the same direction. No one should doubt our intentions or our capacity to work constructively in the field of foreign affairs. We are fortunate in my right honourable friends who determine our policy and in the officials who carry it out. Far from being divisive or damaging, our method of conducting this country's relations with foreign countries has identified areas of common ground, and has built solid structures upon them.
Ours is a policy that works. It is a simple statement of fact that in the world today, the United Kingdom is held in well-earned respect far greater than we have enjoyed for many years.
These are exciting times in which to be engaged in foreign policy. We shall not shirk the challenges ahead. We can take confidence from past achievements, and we are ready to continue giving a lead.
7.44 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, for his comprehensive reply as I thank the other 17 noble Lords, apart from myself, who have contributed to the debate. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Greenhill, and Lord Bridges, for the expertise and experience that they brought. I am also grateful for the gracious remarks which were made by the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Young.
The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, replying directly to me, talked about the Bruges speech. I did not mention the Bruges speech on this occasion in my remarks. Nonetheless it has figured in the debate to a considerable extent. The noble Lord must realise that the impact that a speech makes must be the
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responsibility of the person who has made it. The impact which that speech made is undoubtedly very much as described by the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham. There are parts of' it which are good and there are parts which are less good. I am reminded of a comment made on a book many years ago when somebody said "This book does not make much sense". "On the contrary," it was said, "If you only read every other sentence it makes perfect sense". That is true of the Bruges speech. It depends whether you start with the odd sentence or the even sentence as to what impression you gain at the end of it.
I particularly enjoyed the speeches of' the noble Lords, Lord Reay, and Lord Thomas of Swynnerton. The noble Lord, Lord Reay engaged me directly in an argument which was slightly nostalgically reminiscent of another place. I thought that some of the points that he made in his argument were sound and some were interesting. Perhaps those that were interesting were less sound and the other way round. Nonetheless he made me think again on one or two points. I thank him for paying me the compliment of engaging me so directly with a series of interesting arguments. He certainly convinced us that prime ministerial interference in foreign policy to a high degree is not something which is entirely new. He was less convincing on whether it had been beneficial from the examples which he and others cited.
I much enjoyed the attempt of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, to wrestle with his own preference for qualitative leaps and his loyal defence of a step-by-step approach. I cannot think of anyone more likely to be attracted by a qualitative leap than he is with his swooping intellect and his liking for the metaphysic of history. He has indeed made some qualitative political leaps himself over the period since I have had the pleasure of counting him as a friend. However, as I understood it, he reconciled it all with a striking simile about tomatoes marching up the broad bare staircase of their duty in the greenhouse, which left me a little confused as to how he had brought this altogether in this single metaphysic. However, I greatly enjoyed his speech and those of other noble Lords.
I hope that the debate has been worth while. The noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, wondered whether the debate had taken the direction that I expected. I assure him that broadly it did. It was a mixture of form and substance. I thank all noble Lords who have participated and beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Junior Hospital Doctors (Regulation of Hours) Bill [H.L.]
7.47 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I should like to say how delighted I am that so many distinguished noble Lords have agreed to take part in the debate. I am particularly pleased that my opening batsman will be the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, with his maiden speech. As we all know, he has just retired from his

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position as Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge University, after a long and distinguished medical career.
I have to declare an interest in the Bill as I have been a junior hospital doctor. Admittedly it was 30 odd years ago, but my memory is very vivid. One of my sons is also a junior hospital doctor, now in his third year, so I have both historical and current family experience to draw on.
When I first told the noble Lord, Lord Hesketh, that I was thinking of bringing in the Bill he said, "Ah, a well-known form of slave labour"! In one sense I would not go that far. At least junior doctors are paid for their work, though in a rather peculiar way as I shall describe. But in another sense they may be worse off than slaves. The Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, who are surely a form of slave, forbids a working week of more than 48 hours. Junior hospital doctors are contracted on average for an 86-hour week and many do far more than that.
There has been a tremendous amount of public interest in our topic in the past six weeks since the First Reading of the Bill. That was greatly helped by the Minister, Mr. David Mellor—for which I thank him most sincerely,—when he said that accounts of long hours worked and their effects had a whiff of the fisherman's tale about them.
That had the effect of galvanising medical opinion. For example, a group of 15 doctors from St. Stephen's Hospital wrote to the Independent on 2nd January this year. They stated:
"Mr. Mellor insults us when he claims our statements of overworking are fishermen's tales. Doctors among us have fallen asleep at the operating table. Doctors among us have missed a crucial diagnosis late on a Sunday night. For him to accuse junior doctors of fabricating their stories is to try to protect the public from the reality of over-tired doctors treating their loved ones and perhaps making life-threatening mistakes. For too long junior doctors have kept quiet so as not to upset their bosses or damage their promotion prospects. We owe it to our patients and to ourselves to demand better working conditions so that we can provide better medical care".
Similar letters appeared in other newspapers up and down the country.
The Bill has the support both of the BMA Hospital Junior Staffs committee, which represents all junior doctors, and of the Medical Practitioners' Union. They believe that 72 hours per week of contracted availability for work by 1992 is a realistic aim not requiring a large increase in medical manpower.
I shall attempt to give a brief outline of the present situation and the reasons for seeking legislation. First, who are the junior doctors? There are approximately 26,500 in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Approximately 3,600 are pre-registration house officers doing their first year of professional work after qualifying. There are 11,500 senior house officers, who may work for several years in hospital before going into general practice or becoming registrars. There are approximately 7,500 registrars. That is the first step on the ladder to becoming a consultant. They may stay in the grade for two to four years, or even longer, before becoming senior registrars, of whom there are 3,800. Nearly all should become consultants—and I choose the word "should" advisedly—after a further four years. The average age of consultants on appointment is now 38,
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by which time they will have served 10 to 14 years as a junior hospital doctor.
Technically speaking, all junior hospital doctors are in training but some are not at all junior. As a group, they consist of some of the most able and highly trained people in the country. They handle most of the emergency and routine medical care in the hospitals. They are the doctors whom patients are most likely to meet when they first attend hospital and who will look after them from day to day when they are admitted to a ward. They are a group of professionals who like their work and carry it out extremely well.
Much is said about the importance of developing primary care in the community as being the key to improving health services. I agree with that statement because I am a general practitioner. However, good primary care is impossible without an effective hospital service. That must be, and it is, consultant-led. However, at present the bulk of the work is carried out by junior hospital doctors. The weekly contracted hours of work for those doctors as a whole were 86 in 1985, compared with 89 in 1981. Those figures are given in two Office of Manpower Economics surveys.
The hours consist of a 40-hour basic working week, plus 46 hours on call. The hours worked on average were 57; that is a decrease of one hour since 1981. That varied from 69 hours for pre-registration house officers in their first job—and they are the real workhorses—to 53 hours for registrars. There is a great deal of variation between specialities.
There is evidence to show that, although the total number of hours actually worked may have marginally decreased, interruptions in sleep while on call have increased in recent years because of the greatly increased throughput in hospitals and the greater use of technically sophisticated equipment for diagnosis and treatment. My son tells me that a major reason for interruption in the sleep of junior hospital doctors is the need for attention to intravenous drips and the drugs that they contain. It is a job which nurses could easily carry out. They could do it better if that were allowed and if their morale were better.
I hope that noble Lord will bear with me while I explain the implications of a one in three and one in four rota. They are stated early and long-term government aims. "One in three" means a basic 40-hour week—that is, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week, paid at a standard rate—plus one-third of the remaining 128 hours in the week on call, which is paid at only 38 per cent. of the standard rate. It is a total of just under 83 hours.
That is not an incentive for local authorities to reduce the hours of work for junior doctors, because it costs far less to employ one doctor for 80 hours than two doctors for 40 hours. The 83-hour week of a one in three rota usually works out at 86 hours or more because, inevitably, the basic 40-hour week is unsufficient to complete day-time tasks.
A one in four rota implies a 72-hour week, as requested in the Bill. It could be achieved on a one in three basis if certain changes in working practices were made. If time permits, I hope to describe them in a little more detail. If locums are not employed and

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prospective cover is given for colleagues who are unwell or on holiday, the hours worked in a so-called one in three rota are much greater. They are up to 104 hours a week or more, which is equivalent to a one in two rota.
A one in three rota requires a doctor to be on call on two week nights for two weeks out of three, and for one week night with two week-end nights for the other week of the three. That is without days off after nights on call. In the busy specialties—and they are the majority—nights on call can be most arduous, especially if the firm is "on take" for new admissions that night. Then the doctor gets little or no sleep and even that is likely to be broken by bleeps and telephone calls. The benefit of such broken sleep has been shown to be little better than a night without any sleep.
The serious effect of sleep deprivation on decision-making and manipulative skills has been shown by numerous studies. Noble Lords, particularly those who served in another place, will be fully aware of the problem. While sleep-deprived subjects may be able to carry out major activities which are emotive or stimulating—for example, coping with a cardiac arrest or a major accident, behaving like troops in action—they become very inefficient at dealing with routine procedures or interpreting data. That duty is becoming increasingly important as technology advances. It is worrying to note that such skills begin to fall off at any time after the internal clock indicates that sleep is due after being awake for 15 hours or so. That would be at 1 or 2 a.m. in the morning if you got up at 7 or 8 a.m.
An increasing number of doctors in the United Kingdom are prepared to come forward and admit that they have made clinical mistakes as a result of fatigue. The results of a recent study carried out in Bristol were handed to me before the debate. They show that only 14 per cent. of those who answered the survey stated that they had made no mistakes. Twenty-two per cent. said that they had made four or more mistakes. Therefore, 85 per cent. were aware of one or more mistakes as a result of lack of sleep.
In the Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths (known as CEPOD for short), in three regions in the UK in 1985–86 it was judged that 618 deaths had avoidable elements over a one-year period. Fatigue was blamed as a possible cause in 28 cases. Extrapolated to all 15 regions, that represents 140 surgical deaths alone in one year and it is probable that fatigue in other specialties contributed to an equal or even greater number of deaths. The main problem associated with other avoidable deaths was the inexperience of the surgeon or anaesthetist; the corollary being that consultants or senior registrars should be more directly concerned with patient care.
It has been said that long hours on duty are necessary for educational purposes so that junior doctors can accumulate sufficient experience of a wide variety of clinical conditions and also because continuity of care by one doctor is highly desirable. Against that it must be asked: how valuable educationally is clinical experience if the learner's intellectual faculties are dulled by lack of sleep? Is
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patient care not better if tired personal doctors are relieved periodically by more alert colleagues?
A resolution of the Council of the BMA in December last year stated:
"Council believes that an average of 72 hours per week should be the maximum necessary for post-graduate training, and sees no reason for service needs to exceed this, save in exceptional cases".
The Social Services Select Committee which reported in 1981 on medical education and medical manpower needs states:
"In present circumstances where many young doctors are expected to be on call for excessively long hours, not only arc they not in a position to provide a satisfactory service to the patient, but they are also not in the best position to learn and benefit from the training that is available.".
We may ask how the Government have responded to that report in subsequent years. As a result of the report and other pressures, in November 1982 the DHSS announced a programme for health authorities to eliminate rotas more onerous than one in three. That was followed by three further circulars, the most recent in June 1988, in which district working parties inquiring into junior doctors' hours of work were recreated and asked to report later this year and have recently been asked for a progress report.
The most recent information shows that 12 per cent. of junior hospital doctors were still contracted to work for 99 hours or more per week. Clearly, the one in three rota aim stated in 1982 has not been achieved, let alone the 1981 Social Services Select Committee's aims of 80 hours. Even a one in three rota can be extremely onerous, as I have explained. Junior doctors want and deserve, I feel, something better for their patients' sake as well as their own mental health. However, a 72-hour week could be achieved with very little increase in manpower on a one in three basis if, for example, a day off was given after every night or weekend on call. There are a number of other ways in which hours on call could be reduced without greatly increasing staffing requirements. Schemes need to be adapted to suit local circumstances.
A good example is the model for Bath and District worked out by Dr. Ruth Gilbert and colleagues which achieves an average of 72 hours per week for 122 junior hospital doctors who are now averaging 86 hours a week by a combination of methods; namely, cross cover, flexible working, teamwork between teams in the same or similar specialties and the elimination of one tier in internal referral systems. Other ways of looking at cutting hours would be to look as split sites where two hospitals in the same district are offering acute services. One hospital could concentrate of some of those services and another on others without the necessity of closing the hospital altogether.
Further reductions beyond 72 hours would have greater manpower implications, but that does not mean employing 3,000 extra junior doctors as suggested by Mr. Mellor, further upsetting the balance between the numbers of junior training posts and career positions. However, it requires a considerable expansion of consultant numbers. The 1986 DHSS plan Achieving a Balance recommended a 2 per cent. increase per annum of consultants. In

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fact that has not been achieved, particularly in surgery, which is one specialty where junior doctors are most hard pressed. A 4 per cent. per annum increase, an eventual doubling of consultants, is required. In my view further permanent staffing in hospitals to buttress the consultants could be achieved by expanding the hospital practitioner grade for general practitioners who have developed skills in a particular specialty and who possibly have higher qualifications. They could come in for three sessions a week to do the work now being done by junior hospital doctors on the day which they should be having off having been on duty at night.
It has been said that a block to achieving reductions in junior doctors' hours of work should be laid at the door of those consultants who do not wish their numbers to be expanded and who are opposed to an increase in the hospital practitioner grade. However, the BMA Council now supports a 72-hour week. Many consultants who I have spoken to are aware of the problems of junior hospital doctors and are fully in favour of decreasing their working hours, increasing teamwork and becoming themselves more involved in patient care. Many are already doing that with increased job satisfaction and better patient care.
In your Lordships' House seven years ago in February 1982 a similar Bill to this was moved by my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell arising from the then recently-published Social Services Select Committee report. The Bill was withdrawn at Second Reading because at that point the BMA Hospital Junior Staff Committee was not in favour of legislation. The Government said, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Elton:
"we recognise the problem, we want to solve it and we intend to play our proper role in it … we shall certainly be at the centre of the operation, and with Lord Wells-Pestell's riding whip to it, we shall not be able to spend a long time about it".
My noble friend said:
"The best way of protecting patients is to see that junior hospital doctors do not work extraordinarily long hours. If they do and the department cannot deal with it, the BMA cannot deal with it and the doctors themselves cannot deal with it, then I believe it is a matter for legislation, and I would have no hesitation in coming back again if this was necessary".—[Official Report, 16/2/82; col. 539.]
On his behalf, I have done precisely that.
Finally, I should like to say a few words about the Bill itself. It is extremely short—hardly a page long. Clause 1 sets out the requirement of 72 hours' availability for work in any one week averaged over a one-month period. That allows for considerable flexibility from week to week. If required to work extra time because of the absence of a colleague, doctors should be given time off in lieu the following week. Clause 2 enables further reductions to be made without fresh legislation and its presence in the Bill will enable Parliament to press for further reductions in hours down to 60 if they are not made by the department. Clause 3 concerns variations in the case of emergencies and speaks for itself. Clause 4 is not intended as a let-out clause for health authorities but it enables them to make a special case to be allowed to contract for longer hours in perhaps a small remote hospital, with few staff, which is not very busy or for a registrar in a less hard-pressed specialty to be on call from home. Clause 5 allows Parliament to
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assess the progress of the legislation. Clause 6 allows regulation by negative instrument of Clauses 2 to 4. Clauses 7 and 8 contain definitions and the title.
I should like to conclude by further quoting the words of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, seven years ago. He said:
"We do know that if a Government department is not enthusiastic about something there is nothing like a Government department for dragging its feet, and it does it extraordinarily well … I shall watch for dragging feet.—[Official Report, 16/2/82; col. 539.]
I believe that the Government may well develop a form of locomotor ataxia, otherwise known as creeping paralysis, so slow has progress been. That is why the Bill is both necessary and overdue. It is for the safety of the public and to prevent disillusion and a collapse in morale among a group of extremely hard-working professionals on whom our lives may literally depend. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Rea.)
8.12 p.m.
Lord Butterfield: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for his lucid explanation of the background to the Bill and particularly for introducing the Bill just at this time. It provides me with an opportunity to make this maiden speech on topics with which I am familiar, so making the occasion marginally less daunting than going in to bat for the first time at Lord's cricket ground.
I must be brief and uncontroversial. The former is a good discipline for someone like myself who recognises that he is usually too talkative; and in my work on health promotion, in recent years I have been helped in avoiding public controversy by the wise counsel of the noble Baroness, Lady Birk. I hope that I can achieve the same lack of controversy here today.
I am of that generation of doctors which has been proud to work in the National Health Service. The NHS has grown and now has a workforce of over 1 million people. We are today concerned with about 2 per cent. of that workforce—the junior hospital doctors. It is a very important 2 per cent. Those junior doctors are the future medical leaders that the service needs and I very much hope that the present difficulties about duty times and payments can be resolved without these important young people becoming embittered with the NHS administrators because that could poison relations in the NHS far into the future.
I understand—the noble Lord, Lord Rea, referred to this—that the last time your Lordships had a similar Bill before the House was in 1982. It was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, who remarked towards the end of his introductory speech that the matter we are considering—junior doctors' working hours and on-call hours—needs careful investigation into what really happens to junior doctors. I hope I am not being too controversial when I say that in my view the same is true today.
In 1982, as I read Hansard, nine of the speakers felt that the subject was not right for legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, referred to that. The noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, who is so

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experienced in matters related to the management of the health services, reflected the views of the distinguished doctors and surgeons present at the time when he said:
"What is required is an urgent investigation into flexible rostering."—[Official Report, 160/82: col. 518.]
He was, and remains, right.
Life for our young doctors has not eased much since 1982. There have been some slight reductions in duty hours but at the bedside it is they who have to deal with new threats to health, like AIDS. It is they who use new medicines which often need extra monitoring. Since 1982, 320 new medicines have been licenced by the Department of Health. That is a lot of new information for them to master. Moreover, our young doctors are undertaking research on ever-widening topics to keep our NHS in the forefront. We must, as the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals urges, ensure that this work is not inhibited. It may be if people are too tired.
There is a further aspect. An ever-increasing number of elderly people are over the age of 75; about 600,000 more since 1982. Because they are so variable in their responses to standard medicines and so much more prone to develop side effects, they need extra vigilance. Despite all those factors, the NHS increased its throughput of patients from an average throughput of 16 patients per bed in 1982 to 20 patients in 1985, which is the most recent statistic that I have been able to trace. I suggest that most industrialists might be thinking of a staff bonus for a 25 per cent. increase in throughput in a four-year period.
I have no doubt that our junior doctors have been affected by the recent review of the salaries of their colleagues on the wards—the nurses. They must have been. They are probably wondering whether their lot will be improved by the NHS review which is about to be reported or whether even more will be expected of them.
One cannot speak with detailed knowledge about administrative changes in the working hours of junior doctors in all parts of the country. I know that it is recognised as an important and sensitive topic which is receiving attention. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, will be pleased to learn that folk at the Department of Health say that his activities are stimulating people to respond; I hope more quickly than the ataxic gait which he suggested.
At Cambridge, where I come from, and elsewhere, we have had detailed discussions involving both the hospital and the university because, your Lordships will remember, for the first year of their career after graduation our pre-registration doctors remain under the control of their medical school. I must try to make a little joke. These young people only come under the proposed Bill's authority when they finally register as medical practitioners. I very much hope that the pressures on the health service will not percolate downwards and create a class of fags, if I may so call them; that is, the students ending their period of university-supervised education and training but not yet registered.
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At this time we are fortunate in Cambridge. Almost all our junior doctors, pre-registration doctors included, work one night in three and one weekend in three. However, we are concerned about the weekends. Where I come from the weekend for young doctors lasts from Friday evening to Monday morning and conscientious young people can get very short of' sleep. Our psychologists tell us that when people reach a deficit of seven hours sleep against their usual sleep pattern they make errors in tests and clinical judgments. Or course, that has been confirmed by the study referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rea.
Your Lordships do not want from me any further discussion about the clinical history. The question is: what treatment can we find? It will not be easy. Almost all the studies that I have looked at involve finding more doctors. We cannot wave a wand and quickly produce more British doctors from the medical schools in this country. It will take at least five to seven years. Should we consider trying to recruit overseas doctors? Perhaps they will come here, in time. I know that the Royal Colleges are trying to produce good training programmes for them.
I have reached the conclusion that we probably have no alternative but to follow the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, and encourage the senior doctors in the NHS, together with the NHS administrators at hospital level, regularly to review, as the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, urged, exactly what is going on with their services at night and during the weekends and to take, individually, the best steps that they can to combat the difficulties that they find. Many senior doctors are doing that, but all of them might make sure that their hard-working young colleagues have access to some food at night and somewhere to put their feet up whenever they can.
Whatever happens to the Bill before us, the educational ethos of senior doctors caring for and helping their junior colleagues as well as their patients cannot be wrong. In that regard there is much more that must be achieved.
8.20 p.m.
Lord Trafford: My Lords, it is my pleasant duty and a great pleasure on behalf of your Lordships' House, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, on his maiden speech. He brings to our debate in this field a very wide and long experience and an enormous expertise from a distinguished career. I suppose that for most people to be a professor in one institution is enough; to be a professor in three and a vice-chancellor of two universities and also a regius professor would seem to be almost excessive. We are delighted that he has contributed to our debate tonight. I hope, as I am sure do the rest of your Lordships, that the noble Lord will contribute again.
Perhaps I may add a personal reason for congratulating him particularly in a debate concerning junior doctors. Nearly 30 years ago when I was a junior doctor, one of the leaders of one of the firms for which I worked was none other than the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield. I therefore learnt early from a very

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high and distinguished source all the problems of slaves and masters in the medical hierarchy. More seriously, I recall those days both as pleasurable and as rewarding. We hope that we shall hear a good deal more from the noble Lord in future debates.
I now turn to the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Rea. I too am very grateful to him for introducing it because it allows us to discuss a most important subject. I agree entirely with his aim of curbing the excessive hours worked by junior doctors in the National Health Service. I am personally totally committed to the National Health Service, which I regard as one of the great institutions of this country. I also congratulate the noble Lord on introducing such a short Bill. We are used to such large and complicated ones that it is a pleasure to read one that is almost but not quite on the famous one side of the paper.
However, I qualify that by saying that I believe it is too short and too simple. For example, it is too short because it has left out senior registrars. They are a very important and most senior part of the junior doctor hierarchy. I believe that this Bill applies as much to them as to any others. The Bill is too simple because this is a much more complex problem than we have so far allowed. Not all junior doctors are the same and not all of them work excessive hours.
It is essentially in the acute services that excessive hours are worked. It is done mainly by those who operate either in what is called the preregistration field or those who then choose to operate in the acute services. They work the excessive hours. For example, there would be no problem of many night or weekend calls if one referred to specialties like pathology, haematology, dermatology, rheumatology, and so forth. There may be some occasionally, but not very often. This is totally different from working where there is intensive care work: in acute medicine or surgery, obstetrics, and so on. So not all junior doctors are the same.
Not all junior doctors have the same aims. The preregistration year is compulsory but thereafter their objectives in taking any particular post may vary considerably. They may wish to get on to a training scheme for general practice; they may wish to continue in the specialty of hospital medicine of one kind or another. Some junior doctors may be aiming for a specific specialty which may or may not require excessive hours. Therefore, we are speaking about a largely different population within this group of junior doctors.
Their work practices are also totally different. I believe we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Rea (or it may have been from the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield) that the population is growing older and there is greater demand for the elderly. Whoever said it, it is quite accurate. The work in a geriatric department or for the care of the elderly is generally speaking quite different. Many people choosing a career in this field are, as I say, on their way to something different. They may work for only a very limited period in this field where excessive hours may be worked. It is a matter for consideration but it is not in any way an exclusion of the fact that even then they should not he working excessive hours.
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I firmly believe that it is not necessary to introduce legislation for this purpose when the problem can be solved in present circumstances almost with existing resources if there is a will so to do. It is the will and not the means that is lacking. We have to remember that there are a number of different considerations that we have to balance. We have heard about the significance and importance of the continuity of care with patients. Patients can be very confused by seeing four, five or six different doctors. We have to bear this in mind. I am very glad that in introducing his Bill the noble Lord, Lord Rea, mentioned this point and the question of patients. It is often forgotten when talking about the working practices of doctors.
Another factor is that there are certain experience requirements that must be obtained. I shall tell you a silly story. The other night on leaving this House I returned to the hospital to find a registrar working at a very late hour. He was not supposed to be on duty. When I asked why he was doing this and why he was there, he said to me, "On the present rotas that you are operating I am supposed to have experience of transplant surgery. I have missed four out of the last six simply because they have not occurred when I was on rota". We need to take this kind of factor into consideration. This man was perfectly voluntarily but quite unnecessarily staying on. In these circumstances this proposed legislation is too simple because it does not take into account the complexity of the situation, the innumerable considerations.
The Bill does not mention service requirements. I have deliberately left that subject out of my initial comments simply because the moment one uses the term "service requirements" one always feels that whoever is using it is falling into the trap of bureaucracy or else is referring to money. I am not referring to either, but to that predominant function of all doctors of all types, which is the delivery of health care to the patient at the time he needs it. I believe that this legislation is only attacking part of a much larger problem and only a part of that larger problem.
To change by law the working practices or the hours worked of one particular group, albeit a very important one, affects the working practices of all others who work within that context or in relation to it. Incidentally, that includes nurses. To my mind there is no reason why nurses should not be far more widely used in terms of what they are allowed to do. They are perfectly capable. In the unit in which I have the privilege to operate our nurses do far more of this kind of work. None of our doctors in that unit would be raised from his sleep to deal with the question of an intravenous drip. I suspect that the nurses do it rather better. They are very practised at doing it in this unit. They give about 1,500 intravenous injections a week. By that I mean putting people on kidney machines and taking them off. So the nurses are perfectly capable of doing a great many of these things. Very often it is a restrictive practice that does not allow them to do it. It is only part of a problem of part of a wider context affecting a good many other people that this Bill proposes to tackle. That is what worries me about it as part of legislation.
I have said that there are ways of dealing with this problem. If there is a will there are the means. There

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is also the consideration that it is the essence of a profession that it should regulate its own practices and standards. This, I think, the profession should do. Unfortunately I have to concede that over the years all this has failed to happen. Perhaps I may say one or two words about why it has failed to happen and what we should do. I shall do so under four headings.
First, there are the problems of the juniors themselves. We heard about the Monday to Friday weekend at Cambridge, to which the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, referred. In my hospital we would not allow that for the simple reason that if a man or a woman worked on Saturday and Sunday he or she would not work on Friday on take and would not work on Monday on take. If one runs weekends from Friday to Monday, one is asking for trouble for reasons of sleep, exhaustion and so on. That is wrong. It needs a certain amount of fiddling with rotas and great attention to detail to make sure that the same consultants, registrars, SHOs, junior doctors and so on are on at the same time and that if by chance they are on on Friday they are not on on a Saturday or a Sunday and vice versa. It needs the consultant who leads the team to remember when he sees them on Monday that if they have been on take on Saturday and Sunday it is time that they were off.
That is the leadership the consultant should give. He should not just swan in and swan out. He should pay great attention, as the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, pointed out, to the needs not only of his junior doctors but of his nurses, his ancillaries, his clerks and his domestics, for nowadays medicine is teamwork. Medicine is not the individual, high and mighty, one and only consultant who knows all the answers. Such consultants should be locked up in a psychiatric institution if they believe that. It is teamwork. Part of leadership of a team requires attention to the details not only of the consultant's immediate junior doctors, his colleagues, but of the other staff as well.
Juniors have problems. They want a social life. They have problems requiring longer weekends. If one turned round and said "shift system" to them and suggested 12-hour shifts, they would be the first to object to losing a full Saturday and Sunday. This point must be taken into consideration. Equally, there is the problem that large numbers of juniors are not involved in this way. Shift systems can be operated in certain places. In most casualty departments shift systems are already operating. We have heard how general practitioners, as clinical assistants, as hospital practitioners or in many of the different ways in which they can help, could help, but again that would affect the working practices of general practitioners. Do we have so many of them that we can spare them to take the places of junior doctors? Do we have so many trained consultants that they could take the places of junior doctors? These questions need to be addressed before we tackle part of part of part of a larger problem.
I say sincerely and with no criticism of junior doctors that nobody teaches them how to work. They are taught what to do and how to treat patients but
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not to organise that treatment and how to use their time and skills efficiently. The result is that a massive amount of time is wasted by their wandering, phoning, getting the wrong things and so on. This is why we need to look into the working practices of junior doctors and the related specialities, whether consultants or even in some respects nurses. We need to look into what they do. We must ask whether they need to do it and whether they or somebody else should be doing it. I shall not cover the question of what is a reasonable working week in this respect because I believe that there should be flexibility, proper leadership, proper organisation and rota and consultation with the junior doctors, to whom I shall come in a moment.
The second major problem is with the health authorities. With due respect to most members of health authorities—I do not refer to the professional members—they do not have knowledge, the experience or the understanding of this complicated question. Those who listened just now to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, talking about the complications of the hours and the one in three, one in four and one in five rotas will understand that it is not easy. I hope I have illustrated some of the problems. Health authorities are reluctant to interfere in a purely professional matter. Many of them regard this as a problem for doctors (in the widest use of that term) and not as a matter for health authority diktat. By and large that is another reason why, if they do not drag their feet, at least they do not take too much direct action.
The Department of Health has come in for a good deal of stick and during the rest of the debate will undoubtedly come in for a good deal more stick. In actual fact I would not hold the Department of Health very responsible in this respect. It has shown an interest. It has issued guidelines and has required the setting up of district working parties and so on. Perhaps it has not put as much shove behind it as it could have done. But for many reasons similar to those which I have just mentioned with regard to district health authorities, there is a reluctance for it to become involved in what it sees as primarily a professional matter. I am afraid to say, mea culpa.
The real roadblock lies with the profession and with the consultants themselves. They take a view of the service needs and of the practice and delivery of health care in their districts and then they try to fit things in according to that. Unfortunately, the junior doctors are not always considered when these plans are made. For example, when another consultant or two consultants are appointed to a unit with two junior doctors, the juniors may not be asked about the appointment. It would be unusual if they were. Yet the very arrival of these people would probably mean two more rounds each week, different practices and foibles for them to learn and perhaps two more outpatient sessions. The last person to be asked when the job description of the new consultant is laid down is the junior doctor. This may be the last straw which breaks the proverbial camel's back. There is a lack of consultation.
Another example, which may be regarded as an ego trip, is that many consultants insist on all their junior staff attending upon them for much if not all

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of the time. This is unnecessary but it is a restrictive practice for some consultants. Occasionally it is necessary, but by and large it is not. It is the working practices not only of the junior doctors but of the consultants that play the large part in the problem. The consultants need to look also at their own working practices as well as the working practices of junior doctors. Taken together one could get a good picture of what needs to happen and what does happen in hospitals.
I began by saying that I thought that the problem could be solved without legislation and was more appropriately solved without legislation. I think that with due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, who introduced the Bill. Nonetheless I am obliged to him for doing so for he has raised an important question. It has given prominence to the question, has pushed people into thinking about it and will no doubt make people take further action. It is for the profession to organise the system, but it should be done with the Department of Health driving it along with specific time-scale targets. It is a question of will. The sanctions are there to ensure that all parts of the profession co-operate and act to reduce these excessive hours. If it is wished to be done it can he done.
8.38 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, having heard the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, speak on many occasions before, I was greatly looking forward to his maiden speech. I was not disappointed. Our House will be enriched by his presence and I very much look forward to hearing him speak on many occasions in the future. Incidentally, in addition to enjoying the noble Lord's maiden speech, I also agreed with a great deal of it, which is not quite the same thing.
I should also like to say that I agreed substantially with the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Trafford. I am afraid that I find increasingly often that I am in agreement with him. I hope that nothing political will be read into that statement, but I agreed very much with what he said. I especially agreed with his general implication that the only people who can solve the problem are the consultants and the junior hospital doctors themselves. It is not the kind of matter which can be dealt with by hospital managers, nor can it be dealt with by importing the shop floor philosophy of industry into professional work. However, the problem must be dealt with by someone.
Had I had any doubts whatever about the reality, or indeed the seriousness of the problem, they would all have been dispelled by the letters which I have received from many junior hospital doctors. Indeed, I know that many noble Lords have received many such letters. I shall quote from but one of them. It was sent to me by Dr. Lamorna Osborne, a doctor who qualified in this country, trained as an anaesthetist then worked abroad and finally returned here. In her letter she says:
"I was on duty as the anaesthetist at St. Thomas's on a weekend early three years ago… I had enjoyed my work until my return to London when I discovered that I would be required to work continuously for three or four days at a time … On that weekend I remember a fit, 69 year-old man being admitted with a ruptured aortic aneurysm at 2 a.m. on the Monday morning".
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Dr. Osborne had told me earlier in a letter that she had in fact been on duty since the Friday morning, and this case arose at two o'clock on the Monday morning. The letter continues:
"As I pressed the plunger of the Thiopentone syringe, I thought, 'if I just squeeze this two more inches I can go to my bed'. It is a moment that I shall never forget, weighing up the fact that this operation had 50% mortality anyway, so nobody would query a death and the fact that I was so tired".
She then says:
"I suppose the patient in question could have been my grandfather, or even yourself. In any event, I carried on; the patient did survive. I vowed there and then never to allow myself to be placed in that situation again. I almost gave up medicine. I decided instead that I would try,… to get the message of the juniors across. If this was happening to me, it was happening to many other people, who were too tired and too afraid, because of the reference problem, to voice their view".
Those were her views. However, I think that the problem of references, to which she referred, and the fear of juniors voicing their opinions, has now largely gone because consultants now tell us that they agree on this matter. So, if they agree, then they can do something about it. Indeed, they can do much more than they have already done and I think that they should get on with the job.
Like many other noble Lords I entered this debate today with a feeling of déjà vu. I spoke, as did so many who are speaking today, in that earlier debate which took place on 16th February 1982 on the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. The Bill was very similar to this one and that rather raises the question as to why the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, did not deal with this urgent problem during the years when he was a Minister in the department and, indeed, when the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, was Secretary of State. However, to be fair to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals—who will be speaking later—I think that he genuinely thought that he had dealt with it, or that he had set in train various steps which would in fact deal with the matter.
As I said, I spoke in that earlier debate and I have no wish to repeat the speech which I made on that occasion save to say, as I said then, that we appear to be proceeding with the inevitability of gradualness. On that occasion I quite wrongly attributed those words to Winston Churchill. Perhaps I may therefore now make amends by acknowledging that they were in fact the words of Sidney Webb. But to realise how gradual is our progress, one only has to look at the end of that earlier debate on the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell.
I disagree marginally with the noble Lord, Lord Rea, in that the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, did not withdraw the Bill solely because the BMA, and perhaps the junior doctors were opposed to legislation at that time, although they have changed their minds now. He withdrew the Bill in part because of assurances which were then given by the Minister who replied; namely, the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I think it would be helpful if I were to look at those words now because the noble Lord, Lord WellsPestell, listened carefully to the Minister's reply and was wondering whether to withdraw, but instead he intervened at the end of the Minister's reply and said this:
"I would like to feel that this is going forward, not haphazardly, not when various groups decide to meet, but under the leadership and guidance of the department, so that within a comparatively short space of time there will he something emerging".

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He then said:
"I do not know whether the noble Lord would like to intervene".
and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, did intervene saying this:
"My Lords, with some temerity, I would say that I have experience of predicting the length of time things take in Government and have been wrong. I would not like to come to the House and say that this problem will be solved in a particular span of time. I have said that we recognise the problem, we want to solve it and we intend to play our proper role in it".—[Official Report, 16.2.82; col. 539.]
That of course was a long time ago. I think it is right that I should say that we are indeed proceeding extremely gradually.
The problem cannot be solved just by the Bill. In view of the complexity of the whole question—the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, illustrated this point, as indeed did the noble Lord, Lord Rea—I should like to see a Select Committee set up to investigate the whole subject fully so that we have all the facts. I am not quite sure that we have all the facts at present. We do not quite know in which hospitals the problem is the greatest. I suspect that when we get those full facts we may find that the hospitals in which the doctors work the most outrageous hours are very often teaching hospitals which are well staffed, whereas some of the hospitals which are badly staffed somehow seem to manage rather better.
I recollect my experience when I qualified during the war at a time when staffs had largely disappeared and everyone was very much understaffed. In those days we managed. It is true that we cut some corners, some of which perhaps should not have been cut; but I think we managed without working absolutely outrageous hours. We managed in many ways by doing the kind of things at that time which the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, has already suggested. For example, nurses did things which it was necessary for them to do because there was not a doctor available to do them. Those are the kind of adjustments which will have to be made and I believe that the problems will not be solved by the Bill. I would welcome a Select Committee to look at the matter as a whole, but the department itself will somehow have to take active steps to assist the consultants and the junior hospital doctors to take on the issue in the kind of way suggested and thereby solve it.
I believe that the problem can be solved now that the parties say that they agree. The consultants say that they agree and the BMA as a whole says it agrees, so why on earth do they not get down to it and really solve it here and now? Further, why does the department not assist them so to do? I repeat that the matter is an extremely complex one, but I shall mention only one other point and it is one which I mentioned in my speech in that debate all those years ago. I think that it illustrates in a way the complexity of the problem. The point has already been hinted at and it is this. In looking at the hours of junior hospital doctors, one has to remember the whole question of continuity of care within a hospital for a patient. It is very often with the junior hospital doctor that the patients establish a relationship. They get used to the junior hospital doctor and they like to see the same one. On that occasion at col. 515 I said:
"When one talks to patients, as I have, they tend to say that they would rather have a very tired doctor whom they know very well, to
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whom they can talk and who they know understands their position, than another doctor who is totally fresh and rested, but who they have never seen befor at all during their hospital period".
That is an important point. We must go on to consider the importance of continuity of care on a daily and continuing basis for patients in hospital. I am speaking of care not only by the nurses, but also by the junior hospital doctors whose relationship with the patient is so much closer than is the relationship of perhaps even the consultant who has the overall clinical responsibility for the case.
I, too, am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for bringing the matter forward. It is most important that we should have had this debate. However, it is also most important that the debate should be followed by action, and not inaction. Everyone is now aware of the problem and everyone is calling for it to be solved. I believe that it could be solved. I believe, with the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, that if the consultants think that it should be solved, then they should get down to the job with the junior hospital doctors and solve it. I hope that the noble Lord's Bill and this Second Reading debate will help towards that end.
I hope that the Bill is carried, that it proceeds on its passage and that we may go further into the matter. However, I also hope that during that period other things will happen and that the department will see to it that something is done and that some of the hopes expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, all those years ago—and some of the promises made by the noble Lord, Lord Elton—will be kept, but carried out perhaps a little more speedily than appears to have been the case so far.
8.50 p.m.
Lord Richardson: My Lords, I too have had the privilege of knowing the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, for 30 years. I was mildly interested when he spoke about going in to bat. My interest was considerably increased when he mentioned Cambridge more than once, because he used to go in to bat for an Oxford cricket XI. We all hope that we shall hear a great deal from him in the future. Knowing him, I know that he will be eloquent.
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for bringing up this subject, but at the same time I feel a considerable degree of sadness that it has to come up at all. It was a living problem over 30 years ago, so much so that the then recently formed Association for the Study of Medical Education did a special study of the educational effects of the time that junior and younger doctors spent at work and of their over-long hours. It was a sufficiently serious problem for the very much respected and highly regarded Minister for Health, Mr., now Sir, Kenneth Robinson, to set up a working party to examine the whole of the work of doctors in hospitals.
That working party divided into two. The Minister took a great personal interest in it and chaired as many meetings as he could. The two parts dealt with consultants' work and the junior doctors' work. The junior doctors' committee reported after the consultants because the Department of Health, together with the Joint Consultants Committee, had commissioned a study of the junior hospital doctors'

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work. It was a detailed study. If I remember rightly, the work of 83 doctors was examined. 'Over 7.000 hours' work were watched and records made at half-minute intervals. Nine hospitals of different kinds were under scrutiny. They found that the doctors worked about the same time as they do now. At that time it was felt that that was not excessive. They wanted to have the experience, and there is nothing much to be said about that.
However, the committee was greatly disturbed by the fact that time on call was added to the total of 86 hours worked. The solution then was what has been suggested tonight and may well come from speaker after speaker. The noble Lord, Lord Trafford, went into the matter in detail. The solution was that there should be proper organisation of the doctors' work by doctors (consultants primarily) and by the junior doctors themselves, who of course are under a disadvantage. They are inexperienced. They are anxious. It weighs heavier on their spirits and their bodies to have great responsibilities. However, at that time there was evidence that they could save themselves a great deal of trouble by using their common sense as well as their increasing medical knowledge. That was all that time ago. We are now discussing again what we discussed in 1982.
There are various considerations about the limitation of hours. They were touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, who pointed out the educational implications that are different at the different stages of a so-called junior doctor's career towards consultancy. There must be careful consideration if there is to be such a thing as a statutory limitation of hours. A senior registrar, shortly to be a consultant, would be greatly offended if his time of work were to be legislated for.
Another factor is the inflation in the number of doctors. That matter needs looking at carefully because over the years there has been tremendous anxiety in the medical profession about the question of numbers, not only because it could lead to medical unemployment under-employment—that is not a myth; it is something of substance—but because it could lead to the alarming situation where the boys and girls who are practising in their junior capacity have the whole of their future distorted by the terrible problem of the staffing structure. If one has more juniors, one will to some extent vitiate the already not terribly successful attempts described by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, to produce a staffing structure balance by increasing the ratio of consultants to junior staff. That has been a running sore since the beginning of the health service. It is the future of the juniors that we are talking about, because, if there are too many juniors chasing too few senior jobs, that will surely be very much to their disadvantage.
What about the question of a profession having its hours of work controlled by the law of the land? I cannot help feeling strongly that that is profoundly against the basic professional ethos. Medicine is one of the three original professions of mediaeval days. To it were added the armed forces, but of course in the past 20 years—longer perhaps—the number of so-called professionals has increased enormously. Many have had their circumstances controlled by legislation.
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It would be a sad thing for what I choose to call the true professions if their professionalism were in any way invaded. It is the hallmark of a profession that it controls its education, its discipline and its responsibilities. There is another aspect to this matter. It concerns the attitude of the young entering the medical profession and their enjoyment of it. It is an exciting period to be a junior doctor in hospital. One is beginning to feel one's strength as a doctor. It is a tragedy if that time is blighted and turned into a nightmare by an excessive amount of work, but it is a very great tragedy if by having one's hours of work controlled one loses the sense of adventure, the sense of obligation to the patient, the sense that the patient is the person who matters. One loses the realisation that in the profession the patients or the clients must come before one's own interests. If we lose that feeling we shall lose a great deal of the satisfaction that comes from learning about looking after patients and feeling our responsibilities towards them.
Patients know when a doctor is dedicated. Any doctor at this moment in your Lordships' House will feel grateful, remembering patients who have put up with his inadequacies, as I do, because that doctor and all of us who are doctors were really trying and were in a sense dedicated. That is the way to happiness in medicine and the way to make patients feel that they are getting what they deserve.
I cannot join the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, in hoping that the Bill will pass. However, I hope with the greatest possible intensity that it will lead to real action, administrative action, all the way up, with proper and rigid monitoring of results. It is disgraceful that such a problem as this should have been spread over 30 years and no solution evolved, although the solution lies in proper administration.
9.2 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I think am the first layman to speak in this debate. That is perhaps a rather daunting prospect since all five previous speakers have been luminaries of the medical profession. Of course this Bill concerns us all as members of the general public.
The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, which is before us performs a very useful service in drawing attention to a profoundly unsatisfactory situation which has hardly changed or has changed very little since the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, moved a similar Motion on 1st February 1982. That has already been referred to and he later withdrew it in circumstances which were explained by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. I shall not use the same quotation as was used by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, and others, but on that occasion the noble Lord, Lord Elton, speaking for the Government, accepted,
"that the hours of work of some junior hospital stalls arc excessive. Indeed, the average junior doctor is contracted for nearly 90 hours a week. Although contracted hours include both time spent on-call and hours actually worked, we consider this figure is too high. We are anxious that it should be reduced and have started to consider steps to do so".—[Official Report, 1/2/82; col. 532.]
Later on at col. 536 he said that there was general recognition that there was a real problem to which a solution must be found. At that time there was considerable evidence of government interest in the whole matter.

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Whatever steps have been taken have not got very far because today, seven years later, the average still stands at 86 hours according to BMA figures and as the noble Lord, Lord Rea, has also told us. It might therefore be thought that I should give an unconditional welcome to the Bill. However, I am afraid that, while I appreciate the motives by which the noble Lord, Lord Rea, is animated, I have a number of reservations. In the first place we have a shrewd suspicion that the Government will not give the Bill any help. It goes against Mr. Mellor's declared objective of reaching a maximum one in three rota or 84 hours a week of time on duty. So we know or are pretty sure that it will not reach the statute book. That is not to condemn it out of hand. Many good Bills do not reach the statute book. But we know it is a non-starter in terms of achieving its main objective.
Next I am unhappy with its blanket approach to the problem. There are undoubtedly some staggering abuses of junior doctors' staying power. A number of instances have been given this evening and I recently heard one of a junior house officer contracted for a one in two rota working from 8 a.m. on a Friday morning until 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night and then from 8 a.m. on Wednesday until 7 p.m. on Thursday; and finally from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. on Friday evening, a total of 142 hours in that week. That is quite unacceptable.
However I venture to suggest that there is another side to the coin. All doctors going into general practice must do a minimum of one year as a junior house officer, as we have heard, and two as a senior house officer. That may be prolonged if no suitable practice opening occurs, but in most cases they are out of the hospital system in three or four years. During this period they not only need, but some actively desire, to get as much experience in as many specialties as they possibly can. In pursuit of this end, intensive on-the-job training at that age is probably sustainable over a relatively short period. I think the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, touched on this.
The Bill as drafted might well inhibit that kind of zeal for knowledge and experience and in this respect I think frankly that it is a little too prescriptive. The real problem surely, at any rate in a layman's eyes, is that the term "junior doctors" somewhat absurdly covers the whole hospital careers structure up to and including senior registrar, who may be someone with 14 or 15 years' experience, waiting for a consultant post to be vacated. What can be sustainable for a few years in the mid to late 20s takes on quite another colour when prolonged into middle life.
What alarms me here is that although the average weekly hours on duty of all hospital doctors are the same as in 1981, those of senior registrars within that aggregate have risen from 78 to 87 hours. These are people quite literally at the cutting edge who make many of the big decisions. When that is coupled with a not very attractive pay scale and with family commitments, it might seem that these are the people with whom we should be concerned no less than those further down the scale. Yet the Bill appears to exclude them, unless they are intended to be subsumed under the generic word "registrar".
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In these circumstances one might think the Bill would have done better to go for greater flexibility—say, a maximum of 84 hours for all grades and a lower maximum for the higher responsibilities carried out by more senior junior doctors, who in a saner world would no longer be so described. They are the equivalent of experienced middle managers in industry. I have to note that the noble Lord, Lord Richardson, thought there should be no restraints at that level, which goes to show the many dimensions involved in a doctor's working life.
As the noble Lord, Lord Porritt—I am delighted to see that he is speaking this evening—said during a debate on 16th February 1982 (col. 528 of Hansard):
"There are so many sidelines connected wth this problem that it merits very long and detailed consideration".
That is obviously true. You cannot consider registrars and senior registrars without considering consultants, and this brings a number of additional factors into play. In the first place, the Government's undertaking to expand consultant posts by 2 per cent. per annum is not being met; so I understand. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, mentioned that. Nor do the plans in the joint statement of Ministers, consultants and health authorities of July 1986, entitled Achieving a Balance, appear to have made much progress.
There is then the interesting suggestion made by the Medical Practitioners' Union that there ought to he more cross-cover between consultant "firms". This, over time, would inevitably lead to the replacement of these so-called firms by a system of speciality teams. Something along these lines would presumably be needed if the present level of cover were to he provided on reduced hours without a very substantial increase in the number of doctors and thus of the hospitals' salary bills. Yet if such a reform were implemented it would have profound consequences for the whole consultant system.
I could go on. I have hardly touched on the critical question of pay; but I will not do so because the whole purpose of the remarks I have made so far is to show that the question is much more complex—here I am entirely in agreement with what the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, said—than appears from the Bill as drafted. I suggest that we lack much of the objective information, as opposed to impassioned advocacy, that we need if we are to make sensible improvements to this Bill in Committee. Of course we can have an interesting Committee stage, to which eminent members of the medical profession will undoubtedly contribute from the great store of their knowledge and experience. The Government will no doubt thank us politely for our labours and say that our valuable opinions will be taken into account, but I doubt whether it will go very much further than that.
Alternatively, I suggest—the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, has already partly floated this—that we could produce something much more authoritative and make a real contribution to an eventual solution if we were to send the Bill to a Select Committee, where evidence could be taken and weighed, the facts properly established and different interests heard, including those of the junior doctors and those I like to call the middle doctors, the consultants, the Royal Colleges, the hospital managers, the BMA and the

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department itself. We would then have an extremely thorough report produced with the agreement of all parties and none, which is the only proper way to proceed on an issue of this kind which is not basically of a party political nature.
When a Private Member's Bill is sent to a Select Committee, that committee can do various important things. First, it calls for evidence, as I have already outlined; it can then redraft the Bill and produce something more acceptable in terms of feasibility. It can even make a useful report with positive proposals but recommend that the Bill itself should not proceed, thus saving time on the Floor of the House. Whatever course it chooses, its report is a document of considerable value which the Government find difficult to dismiss even if the Bill itself fails—which, as I have already pointed out, in this case it is almost bound to do. I think it is no secret that some of us wanted such a Motion to be moved this evening so that in the event of the Bill receiving a Second Reading, as I hope it does, it would go to a Select Committee before being brought back to the Floor of the House at Committee stage.
Other noble Lords, while accepting the attraction of this approach, wondered whether this was the right way to proceed before listening to the Government's response and in particular with the Prime Minister's National Health Service review due to be published, we understand, on 3Ist January. Personally, I doubt whether a broad brush White Paper is likely to tackle these intricate details. We shall see. Caution prevails; but I must say that if the Government have nothing much to tell us this evening, apart from invoking the regional working parties Mr. Mellor has set up, and if the White Paper is silent on the matter, as I think it probably will be, I still believe there would be a strong case for tabling a Motion for the Bill to go to a Select Committee during the course of next week.
I should add that there is no procedural barrier to doing this, provided it is done prior to an order of commitment to a Committee of the Whole House. The Select Committee route has been taken on eight occasions since 1975. In that year the noble Lord, Lord Denham, no less, speaking then from the Opposition Front Bench, moved that the Hare Coursing Bill be sent to a Select Committee. That was a government-mandated Bill. We would not of course be prolonging consideration of government legislation in such a way.
The most recent instance was the Infant Life (Preservation) Bill, interrupted by the last general election, and on that account sent twice to a Select Committee in that year. If the argument is invoked that such a move places an unwarranted strain on the resources of the House, the answer must be that that is to place the cart before the horse. Our prior duty is to ensure that matters like this of legitimate public interest receive proper scrutiny. We are, incidentally, probably the cheapest and most cost-effective second chamber in the Western world, and the resource implications in this instance would not be very great.
I hope I have not steered the debate off course. Naturally I look forward to the other contributions and await with interest the Government's reply. But I hope that other noble Lords in the course of their speeches will agree with me that we should not
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dismiss the option of a Select Committee just because a Motion to that effect has not been moved tonight. In the meantime, my Lords, I support the Second Reading of the Bill.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Rea for introducing this Bill, and it has my support. I must apologise to him for not being here for the early part of his speech. Unfortunately I am doing a locum for a colleague of mine at the moment and I was doing his evening surgery.
Last Friday I read an article in the Independent indicating the desire of the authorities further to tighten the controls in the number of hours worked by airline pilots. In the same paper there was an article indicating that the health Minister was suggesting to health authorities that they should get junior doctors to cover for colleagues while on leave or unwell rather than employ locums. Your Lordships will realise that this will further increase the number of hours that junior doctors will have to work.
An airline pilot can work for a maximum of 50 hours a week, with no more than seven consecutive days on duty without a rest of at least one day and two nights. The long-distance lorry driver can drive for a maximum of 56 hours a week, with 45 minutes' rest every 44 hours and a weekly rest period of 45 consecutive hours. Junior doctors face much greater demands. They often have to work an 80-hour weekend when they are on duty from 9 a.m. on Friday to 5 p.m. on Monday.
I well remember when I was a house physician at the San Fernando Hospital in Trinidad forcing the medical superintendent to do casualty duty from Sunday afternoon to Monday morning, because I was on duty from 8 a.m. on Friday and the weekend was busy, so I had very little sleep. He looked at me and decided that I was much too exhausted to carry on, and told me to go to bed and he carried on doing the job himself. But there are no medical superintendents in British hospitals any more, so I do not know who would do for any house physician in this country what Dr. Rostart did for me.
Concern about the long hours worked by some junior doctors has been a regular issue coming to the BMA juniors' committee for debate over many years. Following a conference organised by the Chief Medical Officer in 1981, lengthy negotiations have taken place and have managed only a minimal reduction in hours worked. The junior doctors believe that something more needs to be done now to force the health authorities to act, and agree with them.
The present contract was introduced in the mid-1970s, with junior doctors feeling that if they had to work such long hours they should at least be paid for them, because up till then they were not paid at all. Even now their "overtime" is paid at only 30 per cent. to 38 per cent. of their base rate. In other words, for every hour's "overtime" a house officer earns £1.75. In late 1981—nearly eight years ago£the BMA opened negotiations with the Department of Health to ban one in one rotas, which means working or

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being on call for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and to get a maximum one in three rota, which is still an 84-hour week. That means that, in addition to the 40-hour basic week, one night in every three and every third weekend is also worked.
Those measures have produced very little success. The average hours worked by junior doctors fell by only three hours between 1980 and 1986. In 1987 about 12 per cent. of junior doctors were still contracted to work over 101 hours a week. I suspect that there are still junior doctors—admittedly only a few—working the one in one rota (24 hours a day) despite it having been banned by the Department of Health. I suspect that if one did some careful research one would find that that was so.
I know that many of the older generation of doctors are not convinced that for junior doctors life should be easier than it was for them. However, as a result of advances in technology more and more junior doctors are having to use complex equipment which was not available in my days as a junior doctor. There is also a vast increase in day cases, which puts particular pressure on junior doctors who have to check the patients in and see them onto the wards. Patients survive now with diseases which were previously untreatable. There is no comparison between being a junior doctor 30 years ago—or 40 years ago in my case—and now.
I read an article written for the BMA News Review by Sir Christopher Booth, who is a former head of the Clinical Research Centre at the Northwick Park Hospital and was my successor as President of the British Medical Association. Sir Christopher was sent by the editor of the magazine to spend a night on duty with two junior doctors in a hospital in the North of England. Initially he was not convinced by the junior doctors' argument that their work is now much more complicated. After following the junior doctors around for a whole night, as well as being shattered by the next morning, his views had changed dramatically. He now concludes that the situation faced by junior doctors is "monstrous". That is his term.
Sir Christopher tells of how the whole practice of medicine is more complex and more stressful than in his day. For example, 30 or 40 years ago a heart attack victim would have been left in bed to rest and recover or die. Nowadays patients are linked to ECG machines which need to be monitored constantly. Doctors have to be alert enough to respond immediately to any abnormality in the hearbeat rhythms. Within a couple of minutes the doctor has to make the decision as to whether or which drug needs to be administered, and if so in what dosage. He needs to monitor the patient's reaction and continue to act if necessary. A tired junior doctor cannot do that properly. It is necessary to face that fact.
I am convinced that the experiences of the junior doctors which we read in the press are not exaggerated. The time has come for the Government to act to reduce the hours worked by junior doctors. I would regard this legislation as just one important step. I hope that your Lordships will give this Bill a Second Reading. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord
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Kilmarnock, that it should be sent to a Select Committee. I hope that the approach of the House will be that we should give the Bill a Second Reading and send it to a Select Committee.
9.24 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, I should like to say how good it is to hear that he is interested in health promotion. I hope that he will promote it in your Lordships' House.
On one occasion when travelling back from abroad the aeroplane broke down and I went for almost two nights without sleep. I am fortunate in that I do not need a great deal of sleep. My noble kinsman the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, needs far more sleep than I, as he will tell any of your Lordships. On our return we had an engagement to fulfil near Cambridge. I was driving and this was the third day with little sleep. Suddenly my noble kinsman shouted at me and I opened my eyes to find that we were heading straight for a bluebell wood.
There is a point when without sleep one's system cannot operate. I have learnt my lesson about the danger of driving when lacking sleep. I am convinced that doctors, who have the responsibility of patients' lives and deaths in their hands should work within safe limits of sleep. In the cause of the safety of patients and the wellbeing of junior doctors I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for bringing this timely Bill to your Lordships' House.
I should like to ask the Minister a few questions. I have always felt that an expert is a person who continues to learn. The field of medicine has now become very specialised with many different drugs and high technology equipment which need great skill and understanding. I asked several consultants how they feel about the situation of junior doctors and several of them said. "We had to do long hours; we lived through it".
But hospitals were different then. The throughput of patients was much slower, the technology and skill needed to keep tiny babies alive was not there; the knowledge and skill to transplant organs did not exist. Moreover, the expectations of patients were not so great; the elderly did not live so long and the pace of life outside the hospital was also slower.
The medical situation has changed because society has changed. All doctors, however senior, have to keep up with new developments. When a doctor is given the status of a junior doctor, does it not mean that he is an apprentice to the consultant? Is too much responsibility being placed on junior doctors? Do they have enough time to study? Are they being drained of energy because those who are on call for too many hours work constantly both night and day so that they end up exhausted? They must become edgy and difficult to live with and the patients worry when they have to depend on young, tired doctors.
Are we taking too much out of the junior doctors and not enough out of the senior doctors or do we not employ enough doctors? We employ fewer than do several European countries or America. Some senior doctors work very hard indeed. I know several of them. But can that be said of all senior doctors?

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Would it be possible for some of them to share with some of their juniors some of the load of routine work? I feel that such a move would be unpopular.
However, the situation could be made more flexible in many ways. Senior doctors need time to do research and keep pace with progress. We are lucky to have some splendid and excellent consultants but can that be said of all of them? I have heard of consultants who have not turned up on ward rounds and not informed the sister in charge when they did not attend clinic. What kind of example is that to a junior doctor?
We must not fall into mercenary ways wherein monetary interest rules all, as is so well described in the book The Citadel. It is a wise practice to have two nurses checking when they dispense drugs to patients. Many people throughout the country are now worried, having read the recent Sunday Times article on overtired junior doctors and their prescribing of the wrong quantity of a drug which unfortunately killed the patient. Doctors are covered by insurance but the life of the patient cannot be brought back. It would help to abate fears if when a junior doctor prescribes a drug the system is that a senior nurse checks the quantity. There is always a senior nurse on duty in any hospital for acute cases. I would appreciate the view of the Minister on this point.
The question of junior doctors' hours is not a new issue. In November 1982 Ministers announced a programme of action for health authorities to work towards the elimination of regular rota commitments requiring junior staff to be on duty on average more than one night and one weekend in three—a one in three rota—where resources and the needs of patients permitted. Measures taken included the setting up of district working parties to review rota commitments and the establishment of a ban on regular rota commitments more onerous than one in two. Despite this, there still remains in the Yorkshire region, which is the authority on which I serve, a considerable number of rotas that involve junior staff being on call more than one night and one weekend in three. One of the main reasons for this is that the Department of Health exercises strict manpower controls on the number of junior doctors and there is an embargo on the appointment of additional senior house officers and registrars. This clearly makes the reduction of existing rotas difficult so long as existing working arrangements continue.
Not all junior medical staff are anxious for their on-call commitment to be reduced because they regard the exposure to medical emergencies that being on call gives them as a valuable part of their training and because a reduction in their on-call commitment will mean a decrease in salary. Because of this, would it be possible to give junior doctors a choice of working more hours than those stated in the Bill if they so wished? I have often heard it said that the amount of work which being on call entails depends very much on the specialty. Junior staff working a one in three rota in hard pressed specialties such as general surgery and paediatrics may have a more onerous on-call burden than those working a one in two rota in less hard pressed specialties such as ENT, ophthalmology and dermatology. If there were more cross cover within clinical units, this might help
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to spread the load. However, many consultants are reluctant about this and if the junior doctor is serving an apprenticeship in a specialty one can understand the argument. But the wider cover might also be good experience for the doctor. That illustrates the difficulties of overcoming these problems.
We have heard in the region that the Government wish to reduce the number of junior doctors. This would be pulling in the opposite direction when trying to reduce junior doctors' hours. I do not see that it is possible to reduce the number of junior doctors unless senior doctors undertake considerably more work than they now undertake. I shall have to get up at 6 a.m. tomorrow to catch a train to go to my regional health authority meeting. We have 17 health districts. I hope when the Minister replies that he will give some encouraging messages that I can take up North with me. In some of our districts it is difficult to fill some posts with good quality doctors.
We have on paper at region and at districts further planned rota reductions for our districts and those which have already been achieved. What is written on paper is not always what happens in practice because there are absences due to illness and other reasons. With doctors, as with nurses, one needs some extra cover if the targets are to be achieved. There must be a safety net.
It seems that this matter of junior doctors' hours has come to a head. I hope that your Lordships will give the Bill a Second Reading. If improvements are to be made we can make them in the further stages of the Bill or perhaps, as has been said by other noble Lords, the Bill will go to a Select Committee. But something positive must happen. I do not believe that overtired and overstressed junior doctors who have a great deal of responsibility can give of their best to their patients or their employers or find for themselves the much-needed job satisfaction. We need an efficient but caring health service. The junior doctors are a very important part of it.
There is nothing as important as the good health of our nation and for this we need enthusiastic, well-trained, committed doctors.
9.37 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, this is a very timely debate. I should like to add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for moving this Second Reading, unfortunately at a very late hour. The debate coincides with the forthcoming National Health Review. Whether or not anything relevant to the problem which is the subject of this debate will be contained in the review we shall have to wait to see.
One of the fascinations about this Second Reading is that there are almost as many, if not more, distinguished members of the medical profession taking part than there are lay people. In many ways that is a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for his consistency in this matter. Inevitably those who are outside the profession must be very careful not to tread on professional corns. I do not propose to go into a kind of ping-pong match between consultants and junior doctors.
I have had very few spells in hospital, but just over two and half years ago I parted company with my

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gall-bladder in my local district hospital in Epsom where I am president of the Friends. I was operated on by a consultant of outstanding ability as was his registrar. They made an excellent team. Undoubtedly there are times when consultants could put in more time, but on the whole I believe the teamwork between consultants and junior doctor is admirable. I do not believe that that is the root of the problem.
Just over a week ago I talked to some of the junior doctors in our local district hospital over lunch. What I should really have liked to have done—and I hope that I shall sometime—is to have experienced a round with them. I should have liked to have experienced the hours that they work on any one shift and seen what happened. Conditions vary from hospital to hospital and one might think that the London teaching hospitals do not have the same problems as, for example, the West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance which, according to a recent television programme, has major problems.
There are London teaching hospitals where major problems exist. There was an admirable article in last weeks's Sunday Times colour supplement. It is sad to note that the doctors who took part incurred the displeasure of the regional health authority. Under the Hypocratic Oath doctors have certain constraints upon them. However, having read the article carefully I thought that their observations were sound and restrained. Often those who go into hospital for treatment are the best judges of the extent to which a junior hospital doctor's abilities are tried. There are occasions when they are tried considerably.
The Bill obviously excludes a national emergency and major accident. For example, the recent crash on the M I motorway, when at least three major hospitals were alerted, would be excluded from the Bill and one would expect that. I hope that the country will not take for granted the fact that such junior doctors who took part in the rescue work and treatment will work for 90 or 100 hours each shift on such an occasion. Accidents of that kind involve a great deal of work.
It has been suggested that nurses could take over some of the duties which junior doctors carry out. I speak as a layman among the medical talent taking part in the debate so I use my words carefully. In theory that is a good idea but I look at the suggestion from another angle. Let us suppose that something goes wrong and, hypothetically, a nurse gives the wrong injection. In the case of a doctor one presumes that the British Medical Association or an allied organisation will deal with the matter. If the mistake should happen in the case of a nurse or a nursing sister, would the same apply to the Royal College of Nursing?
An important matter which could be resolved as a result of the Second Reading debate is that there should be more consultation between the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing in order to devise some kind of working practice. My noble friend Lord Trafford has said that in his professional experience there is a tendency to see simple solutions in the Bill. Of course, it is a fact that not in every single hospital do junior doctors work these very long shifts. However, I believe that it
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is equally the case—and it is certainly so if some of the journals including the British Medical Association journals are to be believed, as undoubtedly they are—that there are all too many hospitals where that takes place.
Of course, with modern technology doctors, be they housemen, registrars or senior registrars, have to take on very much more responsibility. They need training. I believe that it is equally important to point out that the National Health Service caters for some 50 million people today. Twenty or 30 years ago when a junior doctor may well have been told by his senior consultant to get on with it because he had had to do the same work, there may have been some justification because there were fewer patients to treat, albeit with less technology then. Nowadays both nurses and doctors have to cope with many more technological complications. They obviously have to treat more and different kinds of patients. A gall-bladder operation 20 years ago may have necessitated a patient being in hospital for a month. In many cases today he is in hospital for just over a week. Whoever performs the operation— whether it be a senior registrar or consultant—has the added responsibility of modern technology and ensuring that the operation is carried out as expeditiously as possible due to the availability of beds.
What is the solution? A Select Committee has obvious attractions because one can have those with considerable knowledge of the health service and other matters to take part and give evidence. My reservation is the time which that takes. I believe that this is a very urgent matter, whether or not this is the right Bill. I believe that very much more urgent consultation must take place between the various medical organisations including, possibly, the Royal College of Nursing because co-operation between nurses and junior doctors is all-important. However, that is for those far more expert than I to solve.
Meanwhile, I end by saying that the noble Lord, Lord Rea, whatever happens to this Bill, has given the House the opportunity to think very carefully about a very major subject.
9.48 p.m.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, in the first instance it is a great pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, on his maiden speech, which I enjoyed enormously. That is not unexpected. Having known him for some 40 years, I am sure that it is exactly the sort of speech which the House will enjoy from him on many occasions to come.
It has been said that one should sit through a debate and make up one's mind listening to it. Almost every conceivable aspect of this topic has been dealt with except for one question which arose in my mind when I read some of the recommendations of the Social Services Select Committee. One recommendation was:
"We believe that the reduction of the doctor's contract week initially to a maximum of 80 hours should be one of the top priorities".
In 1982 the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said:
"The number of junior doctors on call could be reduced",
and so on. I listened with great interest to the brief account given by the noble Lord, Lord Richardson,

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of the problems that arose in the training of doctors in the 1970s when I was privileged to be associated with him. There were problems regarding the career structure and consultants posts within the health service with which we struggled for many months at the time.
In listening to the debate, and reading of all this, the thought occurred to me that the Government must have had some good reason for what has or has not happened. Therefore, one looks forward to the Minister's reply with particular anxiety. We want to know whether there have been difficulties of one kind or another. The department is well known to me and therefore I feel I must make that point.
As has been said, this is not simply a matter of reducing the working hours of junior doctors. The whole concept of the delivery of medical care and its administration is involved. As the noble Lord, Lord Richardson, said, the situation is complicated by trying to combine three roles: experience, responsibility for patients and training for the professional posts, with time being allowed for teaching and research.
One aspect that urgently needs to be examined, and perhaps the Government have examined it, is the nature of being on call. As has been said, it is so different in the casualty department from, say, the department of dermatology. Suggestions were made in 1982. What happened to them? At that time the junior hospital doctors said:
"The Hospital Junior Staff Committee is opposed to any legislation seeking to reduce the hours of work of junior doctors at the present time".
We still have the same problem of organisation and management and the sharing between specialties of' similar skills, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Trafford.
In 1982 the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said that the Government were concerned that the average doctors were contracted for nearly 90 hours and that the Government were anxious to reduce that. In his perceptive speech the noble Lord said that the average doctor could be on call or on stand-by for 50 hours per week and that this of course was inconvenient but it was not necessarily very tiring; so we are back to organisation and sharing as suggested by Dr. Ruth Gilbert, deputy chairman of the Junior Staff Committee of the BMA. She states, rightly, that the current arrangements are inefficient of doctors' time.
In 1972 I chaired a committee of the department concerned with the role of medical managers. This report was largely ignored and the government of the day instead introduced consensus management. I wonder how much consensus management is responsible for the present situation. Now we have general managers. Are general managers beginning to make any real contribution to solving the problem we have been discussing?
As has been said, the medical managers of clinical units are by tradition senior consultants. How many of them have ever attended a management course, or do they believe that any doctor can be a good manager? On making some inquiries, as others have done, I find that it is not exceptional to have a first-class team of consultants, registrars and house
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officers with the consultant prepared to do his share of on-call cover, particularly if he is worried about the welfare of his juniors. We have not heard much about these people but perhaps we should because they are the backbone of the National Health Service.
Management is not enough. There has been a substantial increase in technology and there are demands on staff. The Government have exerted constant pressure for improved turnover—that has been referred to and the details given—with maximum use of beds. Nowadays patients do not need to be kept in bed so much. Undoubtedly the consequence is that more staff are required to meet a more intensive regime. It would be wasteful of resources to do this until the whole question of the management and organisation has been sorted out.
9.55 p.m.
Lord Blease: My Lords, I find it somewhat daunting to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, and other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate who are so widely experienced and knowledgeable in the matters we are considering. The complexity of the subject and the solutions have been mentioned by all noble Lords who have spoken. I will not resist the temptation to expand this debate into the wider critical issues as regards the present and future state of the National Health Service. In my opinion the issues that we are debating today are closely related to the basic reasons for this Bill.
I support the general principles of the Bill that are designed to regulate and improve by statute the working hours of junior hospital doctors. Mention has been made of the long-standing professional approaches to the medical ethos. I greatly respect this personal commitment when it is freely given by doctors at all levels. There are vast areas of professional medical conduct that are already subject to statutory regulation. I do not see that the question of hours of work should be omitted. I believe that the adoption of the principle of statutorily regulated hours of work for junior hospital doctors is basic to the achievement of the declared objectives of the national hospital service. These objectives are to ensure the highest possible quality of patient treatment and medical care.
In my opinion the principle of statutorily regulated hours is consistent also with the recognised needs of working conditions which suitably protect the health, safety and quality of life of all junior hospital doctors. I listened with great interest to the very thoughtful speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Trafford. He expressed the opinion that the will is needed to bring about the necessary change. He dealt also with the question of the number of hours of work, which vary from a few hours to much longer periods.
In my opinion, if one junior hospital doctor has to work the hours that have been expressed here, it is worthwhile to go down the line to correct it. No doctor should be put under the stress and strain of the kind that has been suggested. I believe that the figures relate to many who are in this category. I repeat to some extent what has already been said. How can our hospital doctors be expected to provide the highest standards of medical and surgical treatment when all too often their duties involve such long periods

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without sleep? In such conditions of fatigue doctors on first call have to make decisions vital to the wellbeing, the life and death of patients under their care.
Much has been said in this debate about patient care. It is a matter which is of supreme importance. But what about the quality of life of junior hospital doctors? How can we expect them to be intelligently aware and involved in the cultural, economic and political life of the community when their social life is so drastically restricted by long hours in dealing with human ailments in life in hospital wards? I know that some noble Lords have already told us they came up through the ranks of junior doctors to consultant level. They are acutely aware of the problem and are deeply involved in the social life of our community.
Two matters arise from the text of the Bill which at Second Reading should be clarified. The first relates to the constitutional scope of the Bill, which I believe should embrace the whole of the United Kingdom. The second relates to the practical measures required to implement the statutory regulation of working hours.
As I understand it, the Bill proposes to amend the National Health Service Act 1977. That Act makes provision for the health service for England and Wales only but gives certain powers to the Secretary of State to extend the provisions to Scotland and Northern Ireland. I have been lobbied about the Bill by junior hospital doctors and others directly concerned in Northern Ireland. From the information given to me it is evident that junior hospital doctors in Northern Ireland are subjected to hardships regarding contracted hours of work similar to those in England and Wales. I am given to understand that the position in Scotland is the same.
It is important that I should make reference to the standing of the hospital service in Northern Ireland in case it is thought that I am making derogatory remarks about the general personnel in that service. The people of Northern Ireland arc justifiably proud of the high standards of their health and personal social services. Over the years the services have been quick to adopt new and better methods of treatment and care for victims of disease, illness, accident or social disability. The capacity of the services to cope with new developments and changes demanded of our society is a tribute to the skill and dedication of staff at all levels in our hospital services. Whatever changes may be made for England and Wales, the
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same measures should be applied to junior hospital doctors in Northern Ireland. I wish also to stress the point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Trafford. There is a will at all levels of the medical profession to adopt change.
I should like to turn now to the practical measures required to implement the proposed statutory regulation of working hours. We are dealing with a wide variation of hours and working practices in the different hospitals across the areas, the regions and the districts. It is a complex subject and one which I would not attempt to debate simplistically. In promoting any change we must consider the implications for existing manpower ratios in regard to hospital medical arrangements, the working practices under the consultants "firm" system, the hospital service management relationships and the procedures already being practised at various levels.
In addition, factors such as the maintenance and improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of the various medical specialties within the national hospital service must be considered. Any change must not bring about a deterioration or a further deterioration in the national hospital service.
We note that in the past eight years numerous attempts have failed to bring about any effective change in the reduction of hours for junior hospital doctors. It is evident that legislation is urgently required to limit the hours worked by junior hospital doctors. If this is so, a code of work practice is also required. While the elements of such a code of work practice could not be effectively framed in a parliamentary debate of this nature, it is important that such a measure should be enshrined in any proposed changes or legislation. It may he that a Select Committee would be the most useful means of bringing forward recommendations that could bring together the measures to implement such changes.
In conclusion, I must say that this Bill, which was so ably promoted by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, has generated considerable public interest and indeed concern. The outcome of this evening's debate is keenly awaited, not only by the junior hospital doctors. Therefore I hope that the Government will be earnest and generous in their consideration of the time factor and other factors which made it necessary to bring the Bill into creation. I also hope that we shall have some action that will bring about agreed change. Having said that, I support the Second Reading of the Bill.
10.6 p.m.
Lord Porritt: My Lords, for what seemed to me two very good reasons, I had not originally intended to take part in the debate. First, long before the date of the Second Reading was announced, I had accepted an invitation to a very interesting medico-pharmaceutical occasion which I imagine is now pretty well over. Secondly, and much more to the point, my medical status is now at best that of a Rip van Winkle and at worst that of a Methuselah. Further, whatever I may say will probably be considered miles out of date.
However, as noble Lords can see, I have decided to change my mind on both counts, despite the fact that it is certainly well over 60 years since I could reasonably be called a junior hospital doctor. I have changed my mind following the old cliché that if one cannot change one's mind then one probably does not have a mind to change. So I have changed my mind as regards speaking and also, more importantly, I have changed my mind on the subject under discussion. Therefore my speech is by way of being a pseudo-confession.
I am glad that I changed my mind in regard to speaking because it gives me an opportunity warmly to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, whom I have also known for some time. His was a tour de force in making a non-controversial speech on a controversial subject. But that is typical of him; he can manage the most difficult situations with consummate ease, and believe me, your Lordships have not even begun to experience his repertoire yet— although I hope you will.
However, perhaps I may resume with the main subject. When I first came into contact with the issue of overworked junior doctors I realised that it had very definite importance because questions were being asked all the time and, similarly, receiving no answers all the time. My first reaction, from what I have already said, was simply that of a very grown-up junior hospital doctor of the 'twenties'—you can imagine what that was. However, I wanted to say what I felt at first.
In those faraway days we worked as we were required to work. We worked without remuneration for our board and lodging and we worked for as long as it took. It was a privilege to be involved in emergency work at the hospital— in fact in any work at all—which gave us personal experience and the opportunity of learning from our elders and betters.
Words such as "contract" and "overtime" still make me shudder. Paid holidays, rotas and remuneration did not exist in our vocabulary. We vied with one another to do long stints of work. If at the end of it we were tired, that was a state of which we were rather jealous as regards each other. That makes me think of the extremely good speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Richardson. It moved me because it took me back to those days which showed that there was another side of being a junior hospital doctor.
Those were days where there was a sort of ethos to it; where there was a joy to it; where there was fun to it; and where there was great companionship. Those
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things do not add up with what we are talking about tonight but they very definitely exist.
In the intervening years, the whole face of medicine has changed dramatically. The present face is just a little stern, materialistic, and businesslike compared with the face of pre-war days, which was kindly, personal, and perhaps almost happy-go-lucky. It was a very different atmosphere.
On more than one occasion, even in your Lordships' House, I have recently been guilty of saying that in the past 30 to 40 years we have developed an entirely new type of doctor, a very good doctor; a well-trained doctor; an efficient doctor; a hard-working doctor; and a doctor conversant with the advances in modern Medicine. But, in view of the circumstances in which he has to work today, his motivation is different from that of his predecessors. His motivation is, to a considerable extent, more material, more technical and more financial. That has nothing to do with his personality; it has to do with his environment. In all fairness one should say that there has also developed a new type of patient with whom the doctor has to deal—a patient who is well aware of his rights and, sadly, not quite so well aware of his responsibilities. It is a case of the chicken and the egg.
Your Lordships well know the causes of that change in medicine in Britain. The first is the advent of the National Health Service, with its complex statutory regulations; its bureaucracy: its financial limitations; and its restrictions. The second, and far more important cause, is the gigantic strides that have been made in technical and scientific knowledge. In other words—I want to make this point because I do not believe that it has been made tonight— the whole question of overworked junior hospital doctors might well be interpreted as yet another manifestation of the exceptional progress that has been achieved in modern medicine. It is another success story. It may be a backward way of looking at it, but it is one way of looking at it. It brings in a little optimism, and we have not had much of that tonight.
It is for those reasons that I have changed my mind. I have talked to a number of the younger doctors over the years. Please, we should not classify senior registrars with junior hospital doctors. At a pinch, one can include registrars, but I would not do so. We are not talking about them. We are talking about genuine juniors, not people with 14 years of training. I have talked to a number of them; I have talked to a number of their more senior colleagues who are still in active practice, and I have also talked to some of the rather more broad-minded of my contemporaries who still exist.
I am now willing to believe that such is the intensity and complexity of today's therapeutic measures, and incidentally the concomitant responsibility that goes with them, that the junior officer today has more stress and more fatigue than we had. Probably mathematically he works more hours, but there was nothing like the organisational arrangements in our day that exist now. If that is so, if he has more stress and fatigue, it is quite right that we should look at

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some limitation of his hours of work. The extent of that limitation is very much open to discussion. In his excellent and succinct explanation of this little Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Rea, mentioned 72 hours. So does the BMA, I think, but this is by no means a set figure. There are many others that could be discussed.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, I had very much hoped that this would not require legislation. It does not seem to me a matter for laying down the law, as we are trying to do tonight. One should remember that these young doctors are essentially on call, I suppose, to the ubiquitous bleep that they take round with them. That may mean very strenuous periods at work; it may also mean periods without excessive work but with loss of sleep. It may also mean periods of relative inactivity, periods of no work. We should remember that.
Furthermore, changes in the type of hospital and the type of work done in that hospital will make an enormous difference to the hours and frequency of work, so that has to be discussed. It is a much more complicated problem than one thinks.
The whole problem seems to be an ideal occasion for getting together the departmental sides and the professional side and trying to agree on an arrangement that suits both sides. I know that this has been mooted for the last eight years and nothing has happened. But if we have shown by tonight's discussion that it is now a really urgent problem, it might be possible to achieve something without the rigmarole of legislation.
There were two further points which I wanted to make but they have been made so I wish just to underline them. One is that the younger doctor in post is not only there for his service but to be trained. I underline "trained". If we are going to keep up the reputation of the British doctor all over the world, this is the stage at which he must receive that training. He must gain more confidence and, we hope, more knowledge and he must certainly gain more experience.
The last point I want to make is quite a simple one. It has been said in different ways by many noble Lords in this discussion. If we are to talk about the hours of work of a junior hospital doctor, we should talk about the hours of work of every doctor in the hospital. The senior levels, the consultants, are automatically bound up in any discussions that we have on junior doctors and we must remember that. For these reasons I have given my support to the Bill in principle, but I feel that it opens up an enormous problem of which we have dealt with only a very small part. I support the Bill but not very enthusiastically I am afraid.
10.20 p.m.
Lord Brain: My Lords, it is late and I shall be as brief as I can because I do not want to give an overdose of the medicine we have already received. The noble Lords, Lord Trafford and Lord Pitt of Hampstead, have made many of the points I have in my notes and I shall not repeat them. I would just emphasise the question of experience through my
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daughters who are both junior hospital doctors; the need to get the complete co-operation of the team when fixing rotas; and also the need to get the cooperation of the staffing department of the hospital, because it is no use trying to organise a rota if the staffing department says, "You cannot have a locum on this occasion: it is not allowed." It may make all the difference to a really effective rota.
I also support the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt. I shall make two further points. One is that everybody thinks of the hospital doctor problem as being a problem related to the wards. However, a tremendous amount of the hospital problem relates to clinics, which occur in addition to the ward work; and it is staffing those clinics that very often makes the rotas and allowing time off a difficult matter and much more complicated than might appear to the average person.
The other point is that I support the Bill in principle but a lot of work will need to be done either in Committee or Select Committee. It talks about "required hours of work" but, as has been said, the medical profession does not know about required hours of work: it wants to give service. I shall here pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, that care of the elderly or geriatrics might be thought to be a simple profession. I remember an occasion when one of my daughters was due to leave the hospital for the weekend at 5.30 and she rang at 9 o'clock saying, "I've just left the hospital: I had a difficult case."
It is not easy to rule for difficult cases. I support the Bill. I think it is easier to support it by being brief, and so I shall finish.
10.22 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, speaking towards the end of the list, I shall be brief, albeit anecdotal. For me the wells of memory go back nigh on 20 years to when I became chairman of the Doctors' and Dentists' Pay Review Body. I listened to many witnesses and my noble friend Lord Richardson was one of them. A lot of what I listened to was not directly relevant to my remit. Nevertheless, I naturally formulated my thoughts on what I listened to and I fed them forward via the Office of Manpower Economics in the hope that they would reach the lords and masters of the National Health Service in due course.
Junior doctors were tired, stale and overworked then, as now. Nothing appears to have changed. Morale was at a low ebb then, as now. Oh dear! This is where I came in nearly 20 years ago. There were too few junior doctors because they had every incentive to leave hospital service as soon as they possibly could and go into general practice. The remedy was to declare a minimum number of years' hospital service before they would qualify to enter general practice in the National Health Service.
I thought one might be able to compensate for the temporary reduction in recruitment to general practice by encouraging general practitioners to postpone their retirement for a few years. The effect of course would have been to raise the standard of

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general practitioners by appropriate registrarships in hospitals. A registrarship should be held in every specialism that on a statistical basis they were bound to encounter in general practice: for example, paediatrics, geriatrics, psychiatrics, cardiac conditions, rheumatic conditions and so on. They are bound to encounter all these, and the better trained they are the better. But the recruitment of registrars was a shambles, with the lack of any form of planning beyond the current post held by a registrar for six months' tenure.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, in private conversation, assures me that a lot of that has in fact taken place, though not necessarily by the means that I advocated. My last suspicion was that firms worked in too watertight compartments, with a floating population of house officers and registrars, so that the firm on a long-term basis consisted of one consultant plus one senior registrar training to be a consultant. I was strongly influenced by the views of the noble Lord, Lord Trafford. We need the will to organise properly. Nothing gets done in this world without some tough, strong, driving individual will behind it.
How then do we achieve it? By legislation? Certainly I shall vote for the Second Reading of the Bill, but I must not allow the noble Lord, Lord Rea, to suppose that a Private Member's Bill launched here as late as this can get on to the statute book without government support in the other place. Unless the government spokesman this evening supports the Bill here and now, it is unlikely to get on to the statute book.
It might be a good vehicle for initiating reference to a Select Committee, but this might not be the occasion on which to move that because the Select Committee bottleneck is caused by a a lack of clerks and rooms. If not legislation, then what else? By what other means are men governed? By stick and carrot: no more merit awards for hospitals where the consultants and the junior doctors do not get together to solve this problem—the job that the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, seeks to assign to them. Stick and carrot; stick and carrot.
If other ranks are demoralised, blame their officers whose first duty it is to raise the morale of the regiment. What incentives are there to join the medical profession at all if the other ranks express public dissatisfaction with their working conditions? That appears to be the view of the noble Lord, Lord Trafford. It is also mine.
10.27 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Southwark: My Lords, I must first apologise for inserting myself into this debate unexpectedly at this late hour, and I am sorry to do it. Unfortunately my name was not sent forward through the usual channels due to some oversight and I was unaware of the fact until I arrived in the House this afternoon. One consequence of course is that I find myself in an unusual position on the list for a Bishop. It has been a salutary and I must say stimulating experience to listen to the considerable array of wisdom that has been deployed here this
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evening on this important subject. I have also had the experience for once of watching my speech quietly disintegrate. But I want to say just a few things briefly, and I shall try to be as quick as I can.
My primary intention was, and still is, to focus on the question of training rather than or safety, which has already been well covered, since the majority of junior doctors are still in some kind of clinical training as well as providing a service. That is a point already made strongly by some of your Lordships. They are the people on whom the future of the health service depends.
It may be helpful to underline this from some of the evidence that I have been gathering in my diocese, which contains four of the best-known London teaching hospitals, and to come at it from the angle of another profession. When you require someone to work exceedingly long hours not only do you impose a physical strain on them which may easily impair their judgment; you also reduce their capacity to learn at other points in the week when they are at the receiving end of specific teaching or involved in other forms of learning.
Someone was giving a talk to a group of young doctors recently on how to break bad news. One fell asleep during the talk, most were obviously on the brink of doing so and one of them said at the end, "Thank you for what should have been a very helpful talk on an important subject. Not everything that doctors do is simply clinical medicine, and I wish we could have taken it in properly bul we are all exhausted".
There appears to be very little provision so far as I can gather for the kind of in-service training that enables people to stand back from the demands of sick people and emergencies for at least a couple of days at a time: that is to say, to concentrate on the task of taking in rather than giving out and to reflect on what they have been doing and the experience they have been gaining. As clergy numbers drop and pressures actually increase, more and more we find the need to do just that.
I noticed that a number of speakers tonight almost appeared to equate training with the amount of time you spend on the wards or in the clinics, rather like a pilot clocking up hours of flying time. I recognise that that is a very important dimension of medical training but I do not think that it can be as simple or as restricted as that.
What has struck me tonight is the frank recognition on the part of many distinguished speakers, led by the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, that the reason why the training dimension has remained unsatisfactory is that some of those directly responsible have not yet taken into account the extent of the changes which have taken place over the past 25 or 35 years, nor faced the organisational changes that are needed.
I have been told again and again in the past few weeks that the "We had to do it, so can you" syndrome is still around, and the noble Baroness confirmed that. That cannot be right on safety grounds, given modern drugs and technology. Everyone is agreed on that. It cannot be right either on training grounds.

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A hospital chaplain talked with four new junior doctors a few weeks ago and found them all frightened by the responsibilities thrust on them and feeling that they were not supported by senior colleagues. I find that worrying. Instead of a training relationship which encourages people to share their difficulties and their doubts in order to become more effective at a deeper level, there is the fear of saying anything which might be interpreted as an inability to cope. I suspect that that is one reason why the present unhappiness and low morale has not surfaced earlier.
It is not a sin, nor is it always a sign of weakness, to say that one cannot cope with life and death decisions without sleep or that one's learning curve is likely to drop out of sight in such circumstances. There is an image of efficiency nowadays which holds up the excessive workaholic for our admiration and expects the rest of us to conform. We have it in the Church too, with God pictured as relentlessly demanding more and more of us. But it is not a good or true image and it can have tragic consequences.
The Bill is about the hours which junior doctors will he allowed to work in future. I have listened with great interest to the difficulties expressed by those who know much more about it than I do, and I have no opinion to offer on that subject. The only comment I should want to make tonight is that I get a little worried when professionals say that this is a matter which is not a fit subject for legislation; "leave it to us". The whole subject was raised seven or eight years ago. According to the statistics the matter is in the same difficult state.
Behind the Bill there is the equally important question of how people work together in a profession and how well newcomers are supported and cared for by their more experienced seniors. Those are, as many have said, questions for the medical profession itself, not for government. I hope that there may be real co-operation, honesty and a willingness in some cases to change attitudes in addressing this very urgent problem together.
10.33 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for having filled the gap. What he had to say was most relevant and provided a useful way of bringing this debate to an end.
First, I want to say how grateful the House is to my noble friend Lord Rea for bringing the issue before us today. He chose a very good time to do so, a time when the issue has been much debated in the press and when there is deep feeling among junior hospital doctors.
I know that, having just completed a successful stay in hospital. This was an issue which was being much debated by those, both patients and doctors, who were at my side. I want to say a word or two about that later because I believe that I owe a great debt of gratitude to the consultants, doctors and nurses and all the others who work in the health service for the fact that I am here and able to make a speech, albeit a poor speech. So I am grateful to my noble friend.
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Secondly, on behalf of us all, I want to give a very warm welcome to our new arrival, the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield. I have had the privilege of knowing him for a considerable time and admire his talents. I was delighted when he was invited to come to this House.
His first speech was a very warm reminder to us of his many talents. "Many talents" have been the feature of today's debate. An extraordinary combination of medical talents has come before us and given us advice. The vast majority of those who have spoken are or have been doctors. I think in particular of the noble Lords, Lord Porritt, Lord Richardson, Lord Hunter, Lord Trafford and Lord Butterfield, who are among the most distinguished men of our time—or their time, whichever it may be. They have shown tremendous distinction. That is not to underplay the significance of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, and my noble friends sitting behind me, both of whom are from the medical profession.
In a sense we are in an interesting situation. The majority of speakers quite clearly favour legislation; only two or three speakers hoped that matters could be settled in some other way. As I have said, the doctors, who are in the majority today, are divided. Some favour the concept of self-regulation which was first advocated in today's debate by the noble Lord, Lord Trafford. There is much weight in what he had to say. There is no need to legislate if there is a will.
I believe that there has been a will for some time, but change has not come about. I do not know whether we should criticise any one section and say that the blame lies on the consultants or the politicians or the administrators. I do not think that it is easy to say who is to blame. But what we know and what the junior hospital doctors know is that change has not happened. We can go back over many years of activity in which initiatives have been taken, but it has not happened.
However, there has been a very important change of attitude. It was an issue in 1978 when I was Secretary of State for Social Services, but the junior doctors were against legislation. We say "junior", but as your Lordships have been reminded, many of them are men and women of great distinction and have years of very considerable experience which is of great value to the health service. I think that sometimes we write them off by using the word "junior". There is tremendous sympathy for them and for the case that they are making today. However, in my time they were absolutely against legislation. The BMA was against legislation and so too was the Hospital Junior Staffs Committee of the BMA. There was hardly any argument put forward by the medical profession.
I was involved in the negotiations about how to put a new price tag on units of medical time, to put a limit on the number of UMTs that could be paid for by the health authority and to set a target for the maximum number of hours that could be worked. It was my impression—and this was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley—that there was a great will and enthusiasm. I thought that we had produced a pattern and that change would come about in 1978, but the next attempt was made in 1981—and the pattern has been repeated every two years between

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then and now. Each time an attempt has been made to get something done to make sure that doctors do not work the intolerable hours that they are now expected to work.
So we have to ask ourselves how we can deal with this intolerable position in which the doctors find themselves. It is not just an intolerable position for the doctors concerned; it is an intolerable position for society. As we were reminded by the noble Lord. Lord Pitt, we take powers to regulate the hours of many workers. The noble Lord referred in particular to airline pilots. I must say that junior hospital doctors would welcome the kind of pay that is received by airline pilots. Junior hospital doctors work several times as many hours as airline pilots for a fraction of the pay achieved by them. As a result, the attitude of the doctors has been transformed. Of those who have spoken in today's debate, there are those who have changed their attitude, including the noble Lord, Lord Porritt, who said that he had altered his approach.
How do we resolve the problem? I do not think that anyone can say that legislation alone will do so. It is true that eventually it has to be resolved by agreement, by administrative pattern, and by determination between juniors, consultants, the health authorities and the department. After all, the department has been seeking a solution, with such energy as it could put into it over a period of successive governments; so there should be no doubt about its intention.
First, we can give this Bill a Second Reading and, I hope, send it to another place. I am not arguing that the idea of a Select Committee ought not to be considered. Are the Government and Members on all sides of the House prepared to accept the concept of a Select Committee which might be able to report in, let us say, nine months? It could take evidence from all those involved and come up with a solution which legislation could not provide. Legislation simply provides a requirement for a solution to be found. But that is important since other methods have not so far succeeded.
I agree with the view that was taken by the Select Committee in 1981. I was a member of the Social Services Select Committee in another place which recommended in 1981 that,
"The reduction of the doctor's contracted week, initially to a maximum of 80 hours, should be one of Government's top priorities and the existing agreement to achieve this for junior doctors should be enforced. To this end, the Health Departments should study different patterns of shift work and work-sharing between different firms in a district".
I assume that the initiatives that have been taken by the department seek to bring about the same aims that were set out by the Select Committee at that time.
The BMA's hospital junior staffs committee believes that this pattern would be greatly strengthened by legislation. I take that view myself. There is no doubt that legislation would help the situation. The medical practitioners' union also agrees that it is essential a solution be found.
I say that it is essential because there are some very disturbing factors. I have recently come out of hospital. The registrar who was responsible for my
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health, under the consultant Mr. James, Dr. Andrew Liddle, has prepared a very significant document that I asked him to prepare on the matter as it affected him. I shall not go through the details but he has given me two examples of circumstances in which, after tremendously long hours of work and pressure, he was in a situation where he could have caused loss of life. It was only because of the intervention of someone else that it was possible to see the patient safely through.
There is a great danger that inevitably results from the conditions of work under which doctors labour at the present time. We must remember that junior doctors in the United Kingdom work more than 40 per cent. longer hours than their counterparts in every other EC country except the Republic of Ireland. While United Kingdom juniors average 86 hours a week, in EC countries the average is 60 hours or less. If the problem can be resolved in other countries, it can and must be resolved in Britain. I believe that it is not only bad for the doctors' morale—some of them are leaving and taking their skills to other countries—but it is disturbing for the patients.
In conclusion, the passing of a law will not solve the problem. It must be solved by those in the professions, with the leadership of the department. However, the passing of a law will create a requirement for a solution. I hope that is what will happen. I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Rea for having initiated this debate and for giving us the opportunity of passing legislation.
10.45 p.m.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, first, let me humbly say how much I appreciated the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield—more than that, how illuminating I found it. Also I agree with what he said about there being no magic wand. This evening has demonstrated that he is entirely correct in that supposition.
It might be of help to your Lordships if, before outlining the Government's views on the Bill—for that is all that the Government can do—I explained the basis of junior hospital doctors' contracts and gave some background to what has happened about their hours of work over the last few years.
Junior hospital doctors contract for a basic working week of 40 hours. This is usually from Monday to Friday. In order to provide 24-hour cover most juniors additionally have a contractual duty to be on-call for a further number of hours on a rota basis. Average weekly contracted hours for all grades is approximately 83. However, and this is an important point which is not always fully understood, not all this time is spent working. Some will be spent on-call in hospital or at home. Average hours spent actually working are 57, and this varies accordingly to specialty, ranging from 46·4 hours in mental illness and psychiatry to 66·9 hours in general surgery.
The Government have long been concerned at the hours some juniors have to work. No easy answers exist. Government initiatives between 1982 and 1985 were largely instrumental in a reduction in the number of doctors on rotas more onerous than one

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night and one weekend in three being cut by some 30 per cent.—from 5,000 to 3,500 doctors. Juniors' hours of duty were on average 91.3 in 1976, 87.7 in 1982 and 83 in 1987. Independent surveys show that average hours of work in 1981 were 58·3 but, as I said earlier, by 1985 they were 57. Progress has, therefore, been made but there is still a long way to go.
A departmental survey in 1987 showed that there were a significant number of people working a one in two rota. The problem was considered by a working party consisting of representatives of the health departments, the National Health Service, the Royal colleges, consultants and juniors. Their recommendations led to health authorities being asked, last June, to re-convene district working parties including managers to advise on the elimination, wherever possible, of regular commitments for juniors to be on duty on average more than one in three. Particular reference was made to those first on call in the hard-pressed posts. Authorities are due to report to the department on the final results of this initiative in October. However, because of recent public concern about the long hours worked by some junior doctors and because of the timing of this debate, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health earlier this month called for urgent interim reports from health authorities.
Your Lordships may know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State together with my honourable friend the Minister for Health met representatives of the British Medical Association on 9th January about the problem of juniors' hours. All present at that meeting agreed that it was a complex and long-standing issue to which a solution must be found, although no simple solution is available. It was further agreed that all parties concerned at national, regional and local level must throw their weight behind the initiative launched last June to make it a success. My honourable friend the Minister for Health is to chair shortly a further meeting with the representatives of the BMA to discuss the picture which emerges from the interim reports to which I have already referred and to consider what further action may he required.
Your Lordships will wish to know that by the end of last week interim reports had been received from every regional health authority. The content of these reports will need to be carefully analysed and discussed within the department and with the NHS as well as at the meeting that is to be held with the BMA. Although the progress has been different from region to region, I am pleased to say that all have confirmed that the programme will be completed by the end of September. The reports show that some districts have been able to reduce rota commitments already and plans for further reductions are envisaged. The evidence exists of the willingness of regions to look at the whole problem and to make suggestions for improving the situation. These suggestions will be given close attention. But the reports also confirm what Ministers and representatives of the BMA agreed. This is a problem with no easy answers, but the willingness to tackle it is something that we must build on.
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I turn now to the Government's views on the Bill that is before us tonight. Noble Lords will be aware, from what I have said so far, of the Government's concern at the excessive hours worked by some junior hospital doctors. The objective of the Bill is to make the hours they should work or be available for work no more than 72 in any one working week, averaged over a one-month period. The Government are committed to a further reduction in junior doctors' hours wherever possible and believe that an average week of duty of 72 hours is a target which we should work towards. But there are a number of reasons why the Government have grave reservations on the effect that statutory limitation on hours proposed in this Bill would produce.
First, the Government's initiative announced last June, with, as I have said, the agreement of all interested parties, has a programme of action which is partly completed and which envisages reports to the department in October this year.
Secondly, the pattern of work of junior hospital doctors cannot—and should not—be determined centrally. Rota commitments can only sensibly be worked out locally. They are influenced by a number of factors: speciality, training needs. the organisation of hospital services locally, the needs of individual consultants and. most important of all, the need to ensure satisfactory medical cover for patients throughout the year.
Thirdly, to implement the Bill with conventional staffing patterns would require a very substantial increase in the number of junior doctors, especially in the senior house officer grade. It is far from clear that we could recruit these extra doctors, at least in the short-term, given that there are already difficulties in filling the existing number of senior house officer posts.
Fourthly, any increase in the number of junior doctors would run entirely counter to our current efforts to reform the hospital staffing structure. The main thrust of Achieving a Balance, published in 1987, in agreement with professional and health authority interests, is to increase the number of consultants while limiting the number of junior doctor posts to the number required to fill future career vacancies. The effect of increasing the number of juniors would be to increase the length of time which juniors spend in training—which is already widely recognised to be excessive—and could mean that some juniors never attain the career post for which their skill and expertise would fit them.
The regrettable fact is that no one has yet come forward with a generally applicable scheme which would enable hours to be reduced but would safeguard career prospects. Various suggestions have been put forward, but they would either require a big increase in junior numbers, or would involve novel patterns of medical care such as shift-working. I am aware that specific innovations of this kind have been proposed and in some cases even implemented successfully, but I do not sense that the profession at large is ready to adopt these on a wide scale. In this connection I was encouraged to see the recent comments of the president of the Royal College of Surgeons; that the solution is not more junior doctors

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but more consultants. I should like to see the medical profession work through the implications of this remark and bring forward specific proposals for ways in which consultants could help to take over some of junior doctors' existing workload. For the time being, however, I believe it would be irresponsible for the Government to make firm plans for a maximim of 72 hours, however desirable that may be in itself, without a clear and agreed view in the medical profession on how that could be achieved.
To conclude, I repeat that the Government are firmly committed to seeing a further reduction in hours. We wish to see the current initiative work and, as I have said, my honourable friend the Minister for Health will next month be examining progress on this with BMA representatives and discussing with them any alternative action that may be necessary.
I must emphasise that the department is committed to assist with the professions as and when asked. However, as I explained to your Lordships earlier, we are not convinced that statutory limitations and the timetable proposed in the Bill is the practical way to achieve the reductions which we all want.
Finally, a number of noble Lords mentioned a Select Committee. That is not for me but is a matter for the usual channels.
10.55 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I should very much like to thank all noble Lords who have spoken and who have stayed so very late. I have found the contributions from all sides to be of great interest and I should particularly like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, for his very supportive, though of course completely non-controversial, maiden speech.
I welcome the comments and criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Trafford, and appreciate many points which he made. I hope that he will be able to put some of his ideas into the form of amendments if we reach a Committee stage. That also applies to many other noble Lords who have put forward suggestions for improving the Bill.
As always, I was very interested in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Porritt, and delighted that he realises that circumstances have changed in the past half century. He spoke of the hard, materialistic doctor of today, but talking to junior doctors I am repeatedly told that the first thing which suffers with exhaustion is the patient. Caring doctors become automatons like the correspondent of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley.
I very much welcome the contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark who eloquently touched on the more human dimensions of medical care and showed how they elude exhausted doctors.
Referring to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hesketh, I am delighted that the Government are working towards a 72-hour limit on contracted working hours for junior doctors. I am also delighted that the department wishes to assist the profession in reaching that end. Of course he pointed out that there has been a reduction in contracted hours over the past decade. However, I am not convinced that that represents the whole truth. For example, what about
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the possibility of work outside contracted hours? I have evidence that there is more work being done than is demonstrated by the statistics. I also believe that the decision to cut back on the use of agencies to provide locums will inevitably increase the hours worked by some junior doctors and that may not be included in the statistics which the noble Lord has to hand.
I do not believe that there is enough in his remarks to convince me that there will shortly be a significant improvement in the situation. He certainly mentioned that there should be more consultants, but I did not hear any commitment that that was a good idea. However, he put the responsibility for that onto the consultants themselves. I shall read his remarks. but that seemed to me to be what he said. I did not hear any commitment from him to double the increase in consultant numbers, which many authorities to which I have spoken feel is necessary as a permanent solution to the situation.
Referral to a Select Committee was suggested by several noble Lords. I believe that the House as a whole is quite interested in that idea. At this stage I will merely say that I shall take this away and give it very serious thought. If the Bill is given a Second Reading, I shall inquire into the possibility through the usual channels.
I believe that this has been a very successful debate and the time has now come to put the Question to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

City of London (Spitalfields Market) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and referred to the Examiners.
House adjourned at eleven o'clock.