Lords Sitting of 7 March 1990

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

Lord Fieldhouse
Admiral of the Fleet Sir John David Elliott Fieldhouse, GCB, GBE, having been created Baron Fieldhouse, of Gosport in the County of Hampshire, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Lewin and the Lord Bramall.
The Earl of Drogheda The Earl of Drogheda—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

BBC Programme: Balance of Views
2.47 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing Lord Orr-Ewing asked Her Majesty's Government:
What remedy is available to licence payers who heard BBC Radio 4's programme "Return Ticket" on Monday 22nd January, which was presented by a prominent campaigner against nuclear weapons, giving only one point of view, without a subsequent balancing programme being broadcast as required by the existing rules on impartiality.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the BBC is under a general duty to maintain balance and impartiality in programmes. Within that, editorial decisions are a matter for the corporation. Licence payers can of course write to the BBC with their comments on programmes.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, will the Minister bear in mind that the programme is the latest in a short series where imbalance has been very palpably in evidence? Is he aware that such failures to provide balanced programmes on the same subject in the same series underline the need to look at the matter in considerable depth while Parliament is debating the Broadcasting Bill in both Houses?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I should make clear that the BBC, in the annexe to its licensing agreement dated 18th January 1981, stated:
"The Board recall that it has always been their object to treat controversial subjects with due impartiality, and they intend to continue this policy both in the Corporation's news services and in the more general field of programmes dealing with matters of public policy".
Also, under Section 4 of the Broadcasting Act 1981, the IBA is required to ensure so far as possible that controversial subjects are treated with due impartiality.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, does the Minister not agree that a balance means a proper range of views
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in perspective aired over a reasonable period of time, which is part of the BBC producers' guidelines? Is that not a proper adult approach to balance, rather than a rigorous ping-pong match which can only be dull and rather patronising to the listeners?
Further, following the agreements on defence between the United States and the Soviet Union, does the Minister agree that the missiles at Greenham Common, which I believe were the subject of the noble Lord's Question, are no longer a matter of propaganda? The BBC has confirmed that if that was a live issue, the programme would not have been aired.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I go along with the noble Baroness and quote from the BBC producers' guidelines:
"Programme executives, editors and correspondents must ensure, however—and over a reasonable period of time—that they have done justice in their domain to a range of views and interests. It is not sufficient to claim that other programmes or media will ensure that balancing views will be heard".
The noble Baroness went on to say that a personal view had been given. The guidelines deal with a personal view by saying:
"When a platform is offered—to an individual or group—to espouse a controversial view, programme executives should be willing to provide a suitable opportunity for a response—in good time and in an appropriate position".
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that there are subtleties in this matter which do not easily respond to definition? For example, is he aware that on several occasions recently a leading politician was described as being "obsessed" with something when perhaps the word "preoccupation" would have been better?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I agree. I have already referred to the producers' guidelines. It is the fact that viewers and listeners might see or hear a programme which represents a particular point of view, but may not necessarily hear the counterbalancing programme. The balance should be achieved at a much earlier stage, when editors plan a series of programmes.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, does the noble Viscount agree that these were autobiographical programmes and, in accordance with the view of the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, the last one was an account of a royal tour? Does he not agree therefore that the BBC were deeply culpable not to show a tour by a republican to balance?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I am not sure that those remarks find great favour in the House.
Lord Parry: My Lords, would the noble Viscount like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the BBC general advisory council, which spans the broadest possible range of opinion in this country, exists to receive a report of objections from the public to particular programmes and that each time it meets there is a lively debate on the issue? No producer, therefore, goes uninformed as to any mistakes that he might have made.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I am grateful to hear the remarks of the noble Lord. As I have said, it is up to those who hear the programmes to write, with their comments, to the BBC if they feel so inclined.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that I took the precaution of asking the BBC whether it cared to make a statement on this particular question? I have the statement here and, for the sake of accuracy, if your Lordships agree, I should like to read it.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Belstead): My Lords, if the noble Lord will not think that I am indulging in tedious repetition, Question Time is to seek and not to give information.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I believe the noble Lord the Leader of the House will agree with me that it is desirable that we should have on the record the BBC's comment on this Question.
Noble Lords: Question.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the Leader of the House aware that it ill becomes the House not to want to hear what the criticised organisation has to say on the subject? I should therefore be grateful if the Leader of the House would be kind enough to reconsider what he said and permit me to read out the statement handed to me by the BBC this morning.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I am not certain that I understood the question. However, broadcasters are sensitive people. What is put before them they should resolve. The BBC and other broadcasters are likely to accept that they do not always get it right.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords—
Noble Lords: No.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that politicians are also sensitive people? During the period of the Labour Government many politicians on their side were deeply suspicious of the BBC. Is the noble Viscount further aware that the present unpopularity of the Government is much more due to their own actions rather than to the actions of the BBC?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, on occasions such as this I do not believe I should take sides in what is being said. It is a matter for the BBC and for those listeners or viewers who, if they feel aggrieved, should write to the BBC.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that we are very grateful to him for reporting what is in the charter and the annexe? I believe we needed to be reminded of that. Is he also aware that we have no doubt that the management is trying its best to keep in accord with the agreements, annexes and the like? However, can I make two points? My
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noble friend pleaded in his first reply that it was a personal view. "Personal view" is not an exception written into any charter.
Noble Lords: Question.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that "personal view" is not written into any part of the annexe? Even if it is accepted that this was a personal view, why was not one person from NATO given an opportunity in the short series to put a contrary point of view in accordance with the annexe?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the best response I can give at this point is to say that I will certainly draw to the attention of the chairman of the BBC the remarks made in your Lordships' House today.

Mentally Disturbed Offenders: Security
2.58 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone asked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress has been made, since the publication of the 1987 DHSS-Home Office report on mentally disturbed offenders in the prison system, towards a comprehensive secure programme for those who are detainable under the Mental Health Act and for whom the regional secure unit programme was not designed.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the Government welcomed the report of this working group and accepted all 16 recommendations that it made. Ten of the recommendations have been implemented and work on a further three is nearing completion. The remaining recommendations call for continuing attention over time.
With regard to my noble friend's second point, regional health authorities are generally satisfied that the present level of regional secure unit provision is adequate, at least in terms of the programme's original remit. But there may be a need to review the range of secure facilities of which regional secure units form part. There is evidence of some shortfall in longer term, medium secure provision.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her very full reply. Can she add to it by indicating how many district health authorities do not have secure facilities and who, in each authority, is responsible for providing and planning these facilities? Can she also say whether progress in this area is regularly monitored by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, we do not routinely collect information centrally about the location of secure facilities other than those related to regional forensic services. However, we intend to do so as part of a forthcoming comprehensive review of secure provisions. It is for each district authority to determine the levels and patterns of local services

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in the light of national and regional policies and guidelines. It is for the regional health authorities to ensure that districts are planning to provide a full range of psychiatric services including secure facilities. The department plans to discuss with the regions the development of local secure provision.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, can the department also look at the position of male nurses employed in such establishments for the mentally disturbed, both from a legal point of view and their terms of employment?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am certainly prepared to bring that aspect to the attention of my right honourable friend; but I am not absolutely certain of the point of the question.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I too welcome the statement made by the Minister. However, at a time when there is increasing evidence of inappropriate placing of people with psychiatric illness in the criminal justice system, where so few treatment facilities exist, how is it that, first, so little progress has been made by the Home Office in developing psychiatric bail hostels? Secondly, why does the number of psychiatric probation orders seem to be going down? That is obviously the Home Office side of the joint working party's recommendations. Can the Minister answer those questions?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the department and the Home Office seek to ensure that mentally disordered offenders receive the most appropriate treatment—certainly we must all agree with that—and timely placement. Our common aim is to ensure that where possible such offenders are dealt with without resort to the courts or, failing that, without resort to the penal system. We recognise that there is scope to increase the level of diversion. That can best be done by increasing local awareness of non-custodial options and encouraging closer and more effective working relationships between all the professional agencies and individuals involved. Guidance has been drafted by the Home Office. It is being discussed with the Lord Chancellor's Department and other bodies. I understand that the guidance is likely to be issued soon.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, has the Minister any information on how many mentally ill people are being held in prison simply because there is no other accommodation for them? Is it planned that when secure units are available within the health service the health service will be required to accept such people? At present, if there is no place for offenders to go, the prisons cannot refuse them, even though it is known that prison is a totally unsuitable place for them.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the noble Baroness raises an important point. We know that at any one time a relatively small number of prisoners—about 330, I understand—is likely to meet the criteria for detention under the provisions of the Mental Health Act. We know also that there is widespread concern
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about a possibly much larger group which is thought to suffer from a lesser form of mental disorder.
There is a lack of sound information on this subject, but there can be little doubt that a number of offenders could be dealt with in more satisfactory ways than imprisonment. Research commissioned by the prison service itself to assist the development of its policies will help and shed light on the scale of the problem. The point made by the noble Baroness is that flexibility should be the order of the day and that appropriate provision is important.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that a call for the adequate provision of secure units by the regional health authorities for mentally disturbed offenders was made by the House of Commons Expenditure Committee as long ago as 1978? The May Committee on the prison system endorsed that call in very strong terms in 1979. The all-party Penal Affairs Group reinforced both those recommendations in 1980. In view of the numbers of mentally disturbed offenders inappropriately held in our prisons, is it not high time that this pressing need was met?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I understand the frustration behind the noble Lord's question; that much has been done but over a long period of time. We must not detract from the achievements so far made and nor must we detract from the incredible push given by this House in making sure that a proper service is delivered. Concern has been expressed, for example, about the closing down of the larger institutions and the way in which appropriate provision has been made on the discharge of a person but without the proper follow-up aftercare.
In the general sense, all I can say is that there is much in the pipeline. There is a real sense of urgency on the part of the Government to resolve this problem, to have a much more flexible approach to provision for such people and to make sure that the provision is, in every sense, appropriate.

Community Charge Targets: Inflation Basis
3.5 p.m.
Lord Donoughue Lord Donoughue asked Her Majesty's Government:
What assumed level of inflation for 1990–91 was used when the Government fixed the community charge targets for local government authorities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Hesketh): My Lords, the illustrative community charge figures which were published on 11th January assume that, in aggregate, local authorities spend at the level of total standard spending for 1990–91; some £32.8 billion. This is the amount of expenditure which the Government think it appropriate for local authorities to incur to provide a standard level of service.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that statement. Perhaps I may repeat my Question and ask him what was the assumption of the rate of inflation? Is it not true that it was 4·6 per cent? Is the Minister aware that current City forecasts for inflation in the coming year are double that at 9 per cent? Is the Minister further aware that about three-quarters of local government expenditure is on labour costs, and that about three-quarters of that is settled by central negotiations and formulae? Does he not therefore agree that it is unfair to blame local authorities for all the difficulties arising from the poll tax?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, total standard spending in 1990–91 is 11 per cent. higher than the equivalent figure for 1989–90. The Government have thus recognised that it is reasonable for local authority expenditure to increase from year to year in response to increased costs and increased pressures.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Minister now has a third opportunity to answer the original Question. Why does he not answer in regard to the inflation rate?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, referred to a figure of 4·6 per cent. I believe the actual figure was 3·8 per cent. However, the overspend that occurred for the previous year results in a net effect of 11 per cent., which is above inflation.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, notwithstanding the criticism made by the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, a number of well-run local authorities have managed to put forward a community charge that is below the target proposed by the Government? I refer, notably, to Westminster and Wandsworth. Is not that good example one to be followed?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, as always, I am deeply indebted to my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter. With regard to inflation, it would be appropriate to suggest to the House that although the rate in January was 7·7 per cent., for local government expenditure it would be entirely reasonable to remove the mortgage interest rate component, which reduced it to 6·1 per cent.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, are not the Government entirely justified in ignoring this Question? A year ago they assured me that they would abolish inflation. If so, it would be absurd for them to take it into account! When is inflation to be abolished?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, like Christianity, great struggles can last for two millenium.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that even if the assumed rate of inflation was replaced by the actual rate of inflation, many local authorities are still well above what their expenditure should be, based on past experience? Is he further aware that many people in this country are disturbed at the consequences of that and expect such authorities to be capped without undue delay?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, as always, I am grateful for the contribution of my noble friend. I must remind the House of the facts recently produced in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister; that is, current community charges as they appear to be at the moment equate to a 35 per cent. increase in the rates.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that people like myself who live in Tory-controlled Berkshire feel oppressed in two senses: first, by a Tory Government who have brought in a most vicious and absurd individual tax, and, secondly, by a profligate Tory-controlled county council? Does the noble Lord not realise and understand that places like Maidenhead and Windsor are hardly likely to be described as red, militant areas, though they have had overflow meetings to protest at this disgraceful charge against the residents, their children and relatives? Does the Minister not understand that at the next general election the map of Berkshire will turn red from blue?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, would like to table a Question on Berkshire I should be more than happy to answer it.
Lord Ellenborough: My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister say whether the Government have now grasped the simple reality that if they must have a universal flat rate tax it must be a very low one well below the Government's own target estimate of £278 and covering purely local services? Otherwise the tax will be politically unacceptable and it will become—as it has already become—a recruiting agency for the Labour Party.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, my experience at this Dispatch Box, for as long as I have been representing the Department of the Environment, is of constantly being accused by Members on the Benches opposite of not allowing local accountability. I believe that the community charge will do that.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I ask the Minister to comment further on the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter. The noble Lord used the phrase "a well-run local authority". Does the Minister agree that a low community charge is not a sufficient definition of a well-run local authority? One must also think of the quality of the services delivered.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I always find it encouraging, when I drive into Wandsworth, to see flower baskets hanging from the public lighting system. The combination which the noble Earl requires is a combination of a low charge and a well-run authority.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, did my noble friend read in the press—
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Belstead: My Lords, we cannot have two noble Lords on their feet at the same time. As there has been a slight altercation between myself and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, I invite him to rise to his feet now.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House. I always knew that he was good-hearted. Is the Minister aware that if he lived in Wandsworth, as I do, he would take a very different view of Wandsworth Borough Council? He would know that one pays for low expenditure by having poor services. That is the situation in Wandsworth.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I can only repeat my previous answer, in that I have always found it most encouraging when I arrive in Wandsworth.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, did my noble friend read in the press a report to the effect that there had been a directive to Labour-run councils that they should increase their expenditure to the maximum amount this year?
Noble Lords: Where?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I do not have the evidence which my noble friend presents. However, I am sure that the local voters will take that matter into account when they have time to consider excessive charges.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, it required asking three times to get a simple, straightforward reply to the simple, straightforward Question from my noble friend Lord Donoughue. Does the Minister not agree that that indicates, as regards the assumptions about inflation, as in all matters relating to the calculation of the poll tax, that the Government have got the answer very badly wrong indeed?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I was very clear in my answers and they equated to a simple fact: the level of expenditure is nearly double the level of inflation.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I wish to return to the question of accountability. The noble Lord said that the main aim of the poll tax is to make local authorities accountable. Is it not a fact that three-quarters of the expenditure is controlled by central government? Does the Minister not agree that there is no accountability from local authorities on three-quarters of the total expenditure?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, according to the remarks made by the right honourable gentleman in another place who speaks on behalf of the Labour Party—maybe I am under a misapprehension, though I do not believe I am—an even greater part of expenditure on local government will be controlled by central government if that party has its way.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, if the House is in any doubt about the increase in answerability
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that has been brought about by the poll tax, is my noble friend aware that in the Angus district of Tayside the poll tax has gone up by only 2·7 per cent. and that this year is election year?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, that is encouraging news. I have to draw your Lordships' attention to these disappointing facts: in the post-electoral years for county councils, for example, in 1982 the rates rose by 15 per cent.; in 1986 by 18 per cent; and this year by 15 to 20 per cent.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Lord was unable to answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Grimond, as to when inflation will be abolished as the Government have promised to do for many years. Is the Minister aware that the poll tax itself is calculated to add over 1 per cent. to the present rate of inflation?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, all great undertakings take time. The fact is that if this Government were willing to judge their future entirely on the basis of one single influence, they would not be a government fit to run the country.
Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords—
Noble Lords: Order, order!

TGWU Election: Conduct
3.17 p.m.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford Lord Wyatt of Weeford asked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they intend to take with regard to the conduct of the recent election in the Transport and General Workers' Union and the breaches of Section 15(4) of the Employment Act 1988 laying down the duties of the independent scrutineer.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, it has been a consistent principle of the Government's approach to the reform of industrial relations and trade union law that those directly affected should have a remedy, by means of legal proceedings, to prevent or restrain unlawful acts. Accordingly, any union member or election candidate can make a complaint to the certification officer or to the court if he believes there is evidence that his trade union has failed to comply with the statutory requirements on elections.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the cost of rerunning the election will be £500,000 to be borne either by the taxpayer or, as many union members think, by the union members themselves? Is he further aware that the independent scrutineer who was appointed failed to keep charge of the distribution of the votes and allowed about 7,000 to be held at the headquarters of the Transport and General Workers' Union where they were targeted on nine marginal seats in an election which he did not even know was being conducted? Is the Minister also aware that it is laid

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down in the Act that the independent scrutineer must keep control of the votes at all times? Perhaps the Minister will also note that the Transport and General Workers' Union executive has refused to call in the police.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, on the face of it, it would certainly appear that this official did not properly discharge his duties in the conduct of this election. I certainly believe that Mr. Todd was right to call for a new election. I dare say that he regrets that as much as the noble Lord. It will be an additional expense which is to be regretted. However, I believe that is better than to allow the election to be improperly conducted.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the independent scrutineer to whom reference was made has been granted two injuctions against the newspaper that orginated the story and is currently suing for libel? In such circumstances, is it not better to leave the matter in the hands of the courts?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as I said in my original Answer, there is a proper procedure for complaints about the conduct of elections. That is the right way to proceed. I also believe that Mr. Todd was right to convene a new election.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, irrespective of the legal position and given the unsatisfactory history of balloting in the union and its earlier unwillingness to permit the Electoral Reform Society to conduct or supervise the poll, would it not be wise for the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union to refer the latest malpractice without delay to independent investigation in the interests of the union's members and of the trade union movement as a whole?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the shortcomings in the conduct of elections in trade unions were not formerly confined to the Transport and General Workers' Union. That is why we have introduced legislation in recent years to correct the position and to make the officials in trade unions much more accountable to their members. We have included procedures whereby members can complain about the conduct of elections and have any shortcomings put right. I believe that that is the right way to proceed.

Business
3.21 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, after the short debate on citizens advice bureaux and before that on pressures on National Health Service staff, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the House of Fraser.
With the leave of the House, I should like to say a word about this afternoon's short debates standing in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, and the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. As
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the mover is allowed 15 minutes and as the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, in the case of the debate in the name of the noble Baroness, all the other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 14 minutes. In the debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to impose any formal time limit but I know that noble Lords will wish to keep their speeches within limits compatible with the spirit of these short debates.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that announcement about speaking times for the two short debates today. However, some noble Lords are in a little confusion concerning the first debate. The footnote to the speakers' list shows that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, in replying to the debate, will be allowed a certain amount of time, whereas on the speakers' list itself the name of the Minister who is to reply to the debate is given as the noble Viscount, Lord Ullswater. I wonder which is correct.
Lord Denham: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne will make the Statement between the two short debates. The noble Lord the Opposition Chief Whip is absolutely right that my noble friend Lord Ullswater will reply to the first of the two short debates.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, the speakers' list does not quite say that.
Lord Denham: My Lords, there is a slight misprint. The noble Lord the Opposition Chief Whip has sharper eyes than perhaps I have.

Citizens Advice Bureaux
3.24 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs Baroness Ewart-Biggs rose to call attention to the work of the citizens advice bureaux and the problems they face; and to move for Papers.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am happy this afternoon to have the opportunity to debate the work of the citizens advice bureaux and the problems faced at the moment by these very respected centres. I am grateful to those noble Lords who have put down their names to speak in the debate.
This debate is an important one because at present we hear a great deal about the existence in Britain of a property and share-owning democracy. We are told that people have never been so well off. But we do not hear so much about those who have been left out of the new prosperity and those who have not been beneficiaries of the so-called Thatcher miracle. So believing as I do that what goes on inside the walls of these advice bureaux is an indicator of how the lives of our less fortunate fellow citizens are shaped, I hope that this debate will reveal the other side of the coin so to speak in regard to those people who in the past decade have been squeezed harder and harder by present social policies.
By way of background perhaps I may remind the House that the citizens advice bureaux service is

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made up of about 1,000 outlets and deals with as many as 7 million inquiries each year. Out of its 15,000 workers only 10 per cent. are paid specialists, which means that the other 90 per cent. are volunteers. That is a very high proportion indeed. The network now deals with an average of more than 3,800 inquiries every hour of the working week. Although in the past two or three years the number of queries has not gone up, the complexity of many of those inquiries has increased dramatically. This means that many bureaux are now overstretched, a state of affairs which can only get worse with the introduction of the poll tax and other pieces of legislation.
The funding arrangements for NACAB are somewhat equivocal in that while the DTI provides money—in 1989–90 nearly £9 million—for the information system, for training, for the development of services, for social policy work and so on, local bureaux rely on their local authorities for funds to operate. In 1989–90 total local authority funding was £23,223,000. Unfortunately this funding is inconsistent across the country. In some areas their work is strongly supported, while in others centres are provided with only precarious support, depending on the finances of the local authority concerned. The anomaly is that the quality of service the CAB can provide varies across the country and is often weakest in rural areas. When one considers the importance of these advice centres, this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs.
The problems which over recent years have been brought most frequently to the bureaux relate to social security, debt and housing and employment. The increased demand for advice in these areas has been caused by the staggering amount of new legislation affecting the less well off. I refer to the Social Security Act 1986, the Wages Act 1986, the Housing Act 1988, the introduction of the community charge, the major changes in unemployment benefit entitlement, the small claims legislation in Scotland and the changes brought about by the employment protection legislation. A wealth of new legislation has created problems of understanding for those people affected by it. Advice workers make the point that it is not so much one single issue such as serious debt or homelessness that brings about disaster for their clients but the interaction of a whole range of factors. It is not a question of one thing coming after another but more of one thing coming on top of another.
I should like to quote some statistics to illustrate the extent to which poorer people have suffered from recent government measures and how inequality has increased over recent years. First, in the last six months of 1989 mortgage arrears brought about a 17 per cent. increase in repossessions. Secondly, single people claiming income support lost out by as much as £8.84 a week as a result of last year's changes to the benefits system. Thirdly, the London School of Economics estimates that between 1979 and 1988 the bottom 20 per cent. of households experienced a 6 per cent. fall in real living standards. At the other end of the scale we note that as a result of the 1988 Budget the richest 1 per cent. of the population saw its unearned income rise by 89 per cent. These
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figures point to a shameful picture and compare most unfavourably with those relating to inequality among our more socially conscious European neighbours.
I should like to highlight one or two of the complex problems which people bring to the citizens advice bureaux. As I said, these fall within the areas of social security benefits, housing, debt and the employment situation. I hope that other speakers will consider them more deeply. With regard to social security, the citizens advice bureaux report that replacement of single payments by the Social Fund has brought about not only great hardship but also the creation of a vicious circle of debt in which very large numbers of people are being trapped. It is thought that as many as 400,000 people were repaying Social Fund loans at the end of 1989.
One begins to wonder why the Government allow so many opportunities for people to get into debt. First, there is the debt which arises out of the rise in interest rates; now it is debt through the Social Fund and soon it will be debt through student loans and the poll tax. It is a fact that there has been a massive increase in the number of clients seeking help with debt problems. That is reinforced by a series of reports which have been published on the subject of consumer debt. Yesterday in my newspaper I read that the Policy Studies Institute published a report stating that one in nine familes struggled with debt and that last year's debt was £2.9 million.
According to the citizens advice bureaux there are two very distinct reasons for indebtedness. First, there is the debt which is precipitated by a crisis in the family, for example, by a job loss or by illness. In such circumstances advice is given on how best to restructure payments. However, the second type of debtor is the individual or family with long-term dependency on benefits who over a period of time finds it harder and harder to pay for the essentials of living. Such people simply do not have enough money. However much you juggle around no money, it will end up as no money. The only hope for the CAB is to ensure that these clients are claiming everything they possibly can.
For nearly the first time ever the CABs report that young people of 16 and 17 years of age are coming to them for advice. They do so for reasons which they cannot control themselves; for example, eviction by parents, pregnancy, emotional disturbance and so on. For them it is impossible to take a YTS place and of course they find themselves completely destitute. Moreover, the advice workers find themselves in the very heartbreaking position of having no advice to give them.
A CAB on Humberside reported the case of a 17-year old who had to leave home because of violence. She was granted a council flat after a year in a hostel. She lost her YTS place after an illness but has been refused income support on grounds of severe hardship. It is very difficult to obtain income support when you have to prove grounds of severe hardship. She had to wait six months for the decision. She has no other source of income; she has rent and rates arrears and an electricity bill which she cannot pay. I suspect that there are many similar

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cases where young people through no fault of their own cannot get a YTS place and therefore are left in a very problematic position.
The lone parent is a regular citizens advice bureaux client. Very often such people would like to move on from the position of receiving benefit and take a job. However, they are very often caught in the poverty trap, finding that they would be worse off if they had a job. Therefore they are forced to remain on social security. In such circumstances the CAB can only advise such clients to stay on benefit.
Elderly people in private residential care homes find that the level of their income support has now fallen well below the amounts charged by the homes. That is another problem which has been brought to the attention of the citizens advice bureaux. These people either risk eviction or have to accept a serious reduction in the quality of services and care. That presents a horrifying picture where within one residential home there may be elderly people receiving different levels of care; for example, one may receive a cup of tea while the other may not. The position is most serious. I do not think that we can possibly blame the residential care homes for the situation. With inflation and the increase in costs, they are unable to provide the services at the level of income support.
Many inquiries are also received about employment protection. That is due to the erosion of the powers of the wages councils and the Wages Act 1986 which produced many quandaries for people. Again, such people consult the citizens advice bureaux. Finally, from that point of view, there is an indication of the level of inquiries as regards the poll tax which comes from the citizens advice bureaux in Scotland. They say that between April 1989 and January 1990 there were 46,000 inquiries about the community charge. That is a sign of the increase in the number of inquiries that these bureaux can expect when the community charge commences in this part of the country. That is a very brief snapshot of these insoluble dilemmas which are presented to the citizens advice bureaux. They reflect the high degree of confusion and anxiety to which so many of the most vulnerable people are subject.
Finally, I turn to the problems facing NACAB. The bureaux are certainly working under enormous and increasing pressure. I witnessed that fact in a bureaux which I visited on Monday in Marylebone. It is one of the oldest bureaux and was set up in 1939. I found that the office consisted of very small accomodation, which of course is given by the local authorities, a queue of about 50 people, seven paid workers and four volunteers. The workers told me that it would be most unlikely that they would be able to deal with all the people who were waiting. They said that the telephone lines were often permanently engaged during opening hours and that they themselves were under great strain due to working under such conditions.
As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the funding for NACAB has not been increased in line with costs; that is, costs to cover pay awards and inflation. In 1988 the DTI carried out a staff
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inspection of NACAB. Despite the obvious workload and the relatively low pay, the report only recommended a total increase in resources of £64,000—that on a grant of nearly £9 million was really a pitiful offer. The main burden of funding is carried by local authorities, but the restriction in their finances make it very difficult for them to expand the services as they need to be.
Another concern of NACAB is that there will be a return of more women to paid employment as the number of school leavers diminish. These are the women who form a large part of the volunteer service. NACAB is entirely dependent upon such women and is greatly worried about what will happen when the numbers decrease. The association believes that there should be a development plan for the services with central government playing a much more creative role in backing new initiatives, investing in bureaux expansion and backing the use of information technology to assist advice work.
In conclusion, there can be little doubt that seen through the lens of the citizens advice bureaux government policies have brought anxiety and great hardship to many people in this country. In turn, this has brought intolerable pressures to bear upon those workers and volunteers in the bureaux who are trying so hard to meet this urgent and real community need. I hope, having listened to the debate, that in reply the noble Viscount will have something positive to say as to how the Government plan to support the CAB service in fulfilling its aim. I should remind noble Lords that the aim of the CAB is to:
"Ensure that individuals do not suffer through ignorance of their rights and responsibilities or of the services available or through an inability to express their needs effectively;
and to:
"Exercise a responsible influence on the development of social policies and services, both locally and nationally".
I am sure that noble Lords will agree that those objectives are extremely important to the less well off in this country. There is unequivocal proof that the public respect and trust these advice workers. There is growing evidence that as we move into the 1990s there will be increasing demand for services. Together with the demographic changes, this will have a profound implication for the bureaux. Something needs to be done. I beg to move for Papers.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Wise: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, has described the highly complex nature of the vast number of inquiries with which the citizens advice bureaux deal year by year. There is a tendency to believe that problems such as these exist only in the inner cities and that that is generally where one will find housing and overcrowding as well as unemployment and possibly low wages. However all these problems are experienced also in rural areas where they are compounded by problems of isolation and possibly the scarcity of essential services. It is primarily about the rural problems that I wish to speak.
The bureaux find already that in rural areas the lack of low cost housing is increasingly of critical

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concern. The comparatively high cost of building and lack of replacement council houses for those which have been sold is most worrying. I deplore it. I am in favour of the sale of council houses but I wish that they could be replaced. More especially, there is the development of the holiday cottage industry, if I may so call it.
All these factors have combined to produce a situation in which it is almost impossible in many parts of the country for people to find anywhere to live. The difficulties are further exacerbated by the prevalence in rural areas of only average or perhaps lower levels of wages. It is common for people to be employed predominantly by smaller firms which are unable to provide anything more than average levels of wages.
A number of bureaux have, I understand, reported on the problems that agricultural workers will face with the advent of the community charge. They are concerned about the situation. Currently, agricultural workers in tied accommodation do not have to pay rent or rates. However, they will have to pay the community charge along with all other adults in their household who are not exempt. Those workers are worried about the financial problems that will arise. Probably in many cases their employers will be able to reimburse them by increasing their wages or paying the charge for them. But that will not happen in every case.
I could describe many instances of financial hardship with which the bureaux deal because of the lack of adequate and reasonably priced transport services in parts of rural Britain and the problems of people who do not have access to a car. There is particular difficulty where the services concerned do not make allowance for the problems of rural areas. I have in mind the policies of the electricity industry and the gas hoards. The increasing use of meter keys and tokens as a system for purchasing power is creating difficulties for many people who are unable to reach places where tokens can be bought or meter keys topped up.
The bureaux play an important part in bringing these problems to the attention of the relevant authorities. Often they find themselves filling the gaps left by the statutory services in rural areas.
The bureaux need to provide services to people living in rural areas which are as comprehensive and effective as any provided to the urban communities. In practice, it is often the case that the rural bureaux are the most poorly funded. The level of funding, as the noble Baroness has already pointed out, is inconsistent across the country.
In many areas the bureaux are struggling to provide an adequate level of service. Some of the costs which need to be met are the same for all bureaux. For example, I believe that there is a need for more paid manager hours. Without a doubt, where an investment in manager hours is made, there is a considerable improvement in the quality of work which the bureaux can provide. A full-time manager can devote time to recruiting new volunteers and providing them with adequate levels of support, thereby retaining staff for longer and reducing turnover. It can be difficult to recruit
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volunteers in many rural communities. It is evident that more resources need to be invested in finding ways of attracting volunteers into the service.
However, there are costs associated with running a rural CAB service which are additional to the costs in areas of higher population concentration. In order to reach all the people potentially needing help, it is necessary that the service should not remain office-based. It must be taken to where the people are. If there is only a restricted bus service available—probably an expensive one at that—individuals will not be able to visit a bureau unless it is in the immediate locality. The CAB needs to open extensions which ensure that more people have direct access to services. Free phone services can be enormously beneficial to people who live in isolated areas and also to those whose mobility is restricted by age or disability, or to those who have young children. Home visits are an essential additional service to back up any telephone-based work and also to provide help to people who are not on the telephone.
All these services cost money. Extensions involve extra rent, telephones, heating and information systems. They also require extra volunteers whose expenses have to be paid. As the noble Baroness has said, the level of funding in rural areas is proportionately lower than in urban areas. Rural district councils have much smaller budgets at their disposal and certainly less in real terms to distribute to voluntary organisations. I know that everyone is asking for a larger slice of the cake, but the quality of the service cannot be substantially improved or extended unless more resources are invested.
It is evident that there is a need for a co-ordinated strategy on the funding of advice services. If both national and local government are committed to the need for the public to have this provision and for the provision to be of an equally high quality throughout the country, it cannot be left to rural district councils, out of their limited budgets, to bear the full brunt of the disproportionately high cost of rural advice.
The Rural Development Commission has been involved in a joint funding initiative over six years for the development of new advice and information schemes in rural areas. In the first three years 20 projects have been funded, including extension CABs, the provision of advice sessions at outlying venues and free phone services. Analysis of these projects has demonstrated that there is a high level of need which can be met by extending the range of services. However, there is still scope for considerable further development. I believe that people living in rural areas have a right to expect quality advice. The CABs can and will give that, but they need funding in order to deliver it.
3.50 p.m.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: My Lords, we have heard much from the Government during the passage of the Courts and Legal Services Bill through this House about access to justice. The Government have told us that:

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"free competition will ensure that the public is provided with the most effective and efficient network of legal services at the most economical prices".
That statement has been attacked from these Benches as false because it disguises the need for a significant commitment of resources. The basic truth about any market is that it operates to provide services only for those who are able to enter it. The free market does nothing whatever for those who have no access to it, and those for whom no one competes because they cannot afford legal services.
Since 1979 10.8 million people and 5.5 million households have become ineligible for legal aid. For the vast majority it is the CABs, the advice centres and the law centres which provide their only access to justice. Yet, as the policies and legislation of central government give these bodies more and more to do locally on the ground, they remain starved of funds, with a hand-to-mouth, week-to-week existence. The free market has no application to those agencies. They receive next to no central government funding. The great bulk of their funding comes from hard pressed local authorities which do not even have any duty to fund them and which, until very recently, have not even had a specific power to do so. What is required is a policy for a geographically fair network of CABs, advice centres and law centres.
Further, what is required is that these bodies be securely funded. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs for bringing before the House for debate the work of the CABs and the problems that they face. The CABs are of course but one major part of a much larger advice sector in England and Wales. The principal weakness of that sector is that it is not fashioned into a geographically fair national network ensuring equal access to justice. Everyone who has knowledge of these bodies is aware that the story of the generalist advice centres is one of serious geographically based inequalities. The story of the specialist centres in many parts of the country is that they simply do not exist. Therefore the crucial questions concern whether the Government have a policy for a geographically fair network of CABs, law centres and advice centres. Further, do the Government have a policy for secure funding and, if so, what is that policy?
The truth is that the Government have neither. The great bulk of the funding of the CABs, the advice centres and the law centres comes from local government. I am sure that the overwhelming majority of people in this country would be shocked if they appreciated that there is so little central government funding; that provision is so haphazard across the country, and that neither local nor central government are under any duty to provide funding for any of these bodies.
Until now councils which have been in a position to offer funding support have not had a specific power to do so. They have had to fall back on a general power under Section 137 of the Local Government Act 1972. That enables them to spend a limited amount of money on matters, not otherwise authorised, but which are in the interests of their area or their inhabitants. In other words, local authorities
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had to fall back on what used to be called the "tuppenny rate".
It is fair to acknowledge that Section 38 of the Local Government and Housing Act of 1989 has made some improvement. That will give—the provision concerned is not yet in force—local authorities a specific power to assist voluntary organisations, to provide information and advice concerning the rights of individuals, to write letters on their behalf and to provide representation for them. However, it remains a fact that central government is under no duty to fund these bodies. Local government is under no duty to fund them. Local government is under no duty even to consider what is required in its area. The matter is left to local authority discretion and the funding position of these bodies after the 1989 Act comes into force, unless there is change, will remain chaotic and insecure.
In Committee on the Legal Aid Bill in this House on 14th January 1988 my noble friend Lord Mishcon, who I am pleased to see is in his place on the Front Bench, moved an important amendment that the new Legal Aid Board should:
"have regard to the need to maintain and develop a competent accessible independent national network of advice centres and law centres".
The amendment of my noble friend won support from many quarters of the House although it was opposed by the Government and defeated by the government vote. In supporting the amendment, however, the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, who sadly is not present today, drew attention to the fact that:
"the whole country is not covered by citizens advice bureaux, by legal centres or by money centres".
She therefore called for:
"a network—or at least a survey to see how a network can be set up—to meet the needs of every part of the country, including the country areas".
I think that will find an echo with the noble Lord, Lord Wise.
The answer of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was, it must be said, disappointing on that occasion. He said that he regarded as:
"quite outside the legal aid field—matters with which, for example, citizens advice bureaux are concerned".—[Official Report, 14.1.88; cols. 1390–96.]
The noble Viscount will have an opportunity at the end of the debate to tell me whether I am wrong, but as I understand it the Government's basic position is that the funding of the CABs is a matter for local government. I believe there will be no review of this matter, but I ask the noble Viscount to confirm whether that is the case. There will be no White Paper and no national effort to provide geographically fair provision or secure funding. It is all to be left to the discretion of local authorities which can do as much or as little as they feel able within their current financial constraints. Yet the need for advice grows and grows. In 1981–82 there were 4·5 million inquiries to the CABs. Last year there were 7 million inquiries. That is an increase of 55 per cent.
The increased burdens on the CABs are substantially attributable to central government

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action. Over the past decade there has been a 289 per cent. increase in social security inquiries. There have been major increases in inquiries due to the cuts in housing benefit, problems about debt replacement following the huge increases in interest rates and the poll tax, to mention but a few. Therefore the CABs in practice are squeezed between central and local government. Central government have massively increased their responsibilities but still it is essentially up to local government to decided whether it can provide more funds for advice services that have to be delivered locally.
The poll tax is a first-class case in point. Government departments see the CABs as an easy way to communicate with the public. Recent newspaper advertisements for poll tax rebates, for example, referred to getting help from the CABs. How can CABs help, how can managers deliver, without adequate resources?
It is true that the Department of the Environment is making NACAB a one-off grant to cover the information and training costs of the introduction of the poll tax. It is a mere £36,000. It is woefully inadequate. It does nothing whatever to provide more personnel in the CABs to give the advice.
The Commission for Racial Equality has recently had to restrict the amount of general advice given by its local community relations councils. Therefore, people from ethnic minority communities who would have gone to their local CRC will now have to go to their local CAB. Yet no provision whatever is made to assist the CABs to take on those extra clients. Many of them obviously need to see advisers with specialist language skills.
The current financial position, which was touched on by my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs, is that during 1989–90 local authorities in England and Wales are paying collectively £23·2 million to their local CABs, and the DTI grant to NACAB for that year is £8·958 million. However, that grant is not, and I repeat not, provided, for services on the ground. The Government say that those are the responsibility of the local authorities. The grant is for the provision of central services for the local CABs, for example, reference information, training, quality control, and support through the area office network, research, press and parliamentary work.
In practice, however, NACAB, to its great credit, succeeds in applying a portion of that DTI grant—currently that proportion is about £2 million—to three-year development grants to local CABS on a partnership basis with local authorities. The highly successful use which NACAB makes of that proportion of its grant should point the way to more effective central government funding. It works in this way. Typically NACAB agrees with a local authority a scheme for the expansion or establishment of a local CAB. In the first year NACAB pays three-quarters of the cost and the local authority one quarter. In the second year it is 50/50. In the third year NACAB pays 25 per cent. and the local authority 75 per cent. In the fourth year, if all has worked well and the local authority is satisfied, the local authority bears the whole cost and will do so thereafter.
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Surely that points the way. Not only would it be right for central government to provide more funds when it is central government which is imposing more burdens on CABs. Central funds could fruitfully be targeted in that way. Also, when central government is considering revenue support grant and addressing the standard spending assessments of the local authorities, surely a specific allowance should be made for local advice centres.
There should be a partnership of effort between central and local government, but funding obligations should be the subject of statutory obligation and not discretion.
I do not doubt that when he comes to reply to the debate the noble Viscount will have much that is appreciative to say about the work of the CABs. Like love, a quiet conscience and the laughter of little children, the CABs are great goods. So they earn nothing but applause for their good works. However, the real question is whether the noble Viscount will agree that effective access to justice is a basic right of citizenship and that it is the duty of the state to deliver it. That is the point of principle. Does he agree that that basic right can be realised only through a geographically fair national network of independent CABs and advice and law centres, attuned to local needs and securely funded?
If the Minister can only repeat, if his brief will only allow him to say, that it is all down to the discretion of the local authorities, then the geographical inequality and the funding chaos will certainly continue. Any affirmation that there is in this country equal access to justice will be a sham.
4.5 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, although this debate has been introduced by an eloquent speech by a distinguished Labour Peeress, I believe that we can honestly say that this is a subject which cuts across the parties. The citizens advice bureaux forms one of the most valuable networks that we possess in Britain and is something of which we should be proud. Its work and the enormous problems and pressures that it faces at the moment are, I am sure, of deep concern to all sides of the House.
It is notable that people of all political persuasions are involved as volunteers in the work of CABs. It is also notable—and I was particularly glad to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wise—that the need for CABs is not confined to inner city and council estate areas, like those of my own diocese in particular, but is widely spread throughout the country. The Church Urban Fund has recently been launched by the Church of England. We are still obtaining money and putting forward projects. The fund has similar aims and employs people doing very similar work to the CAB in advising citizens of their rights and how to obtain help.
It has been especially important to have an organisation such as the CABs in our country in recent years because of the growth in the numbers of the relatively poorest in our society. Poverty was once much more widespread in Britain than it is today. When I arrived in Salford I was given two books which drew a wonderful picture of what life

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was like at the turn of the century and in the early years of this century. I commend them to your Lordships. They are Robert Roberts' studies The Classic Slum about Salford and A Ragged Schooling. They show that in those days of widespread poverty there was a great deal of local support in working class communities under such tremendous financial pressures.
Things have changed today. The fact that the poorest are a minority in society means that the pressures on them are that much greater. They do not receive so much mutual help and support. In those days the pattern of wealth, affluence and poverty was like a pyramid. As we all know, there was a small number of the very affluent at the top of the pyramid, an increasing number of the affluent in the middle and very large numbers at the bottom of the pyramid. That has changed and the pattern is now a diamond. Those at the bottom are the relatively poorest, with large numbers of modestly affluent people living alongside them. The pressures on them are that much greater. Those are the people who find their way to the citizens advice bureaux and the doors of our vicarages and presbyteries in inner city areas.
My inquiries in my own area have shown that those pressures have increased in recent years. Noble Lords who have spoken, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, in opening the debate, have already indicated where the pressures are most heavy. They come from changes in social security legislation. Of 15,000 inquiries to CABs in the town of Bury in the past year, 25 per cent. concerned social security matters. Housing problems have increased tremendously, as has debt. Reference has already been made to the important Policy Studies Institute study reported in the press today which estimates that 560,000 households—5 per cent. of all households—have severe financial difficulties.
The pressures are greatest among young people and poorer families with incomes of less than £150 per week. Those are the people most at risk. Problems of social security, housing and debt and the coming problems of the poll tax increase week by week. In spite of rebate, the poll tax will bear hardest on some of the poorest people in our communities.
I should like to mention briefly the profile of the kind of inner city area from which I made inquiries about CAB work and which will be found widespread across the country. Those are areas in which there are high numbers of long-term benefit claimants who include many single parents; large numbers of elderly people who are spread throughout society but include particularly those on low pensions; a high proportion of the chronically sick; and many ethnic communities. The population of one area from which I wish to quote some individual cases is composed of 25 per cent. from the Indian sub-continent. In addition, there are male unemployment rates of 20 per cent. or even higher.
As an indication of what is happening among local CABs, perhaps I may quote from a letter that I have just received. It states:
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"We are finding it very difficult to cope with the sheer volume of clients. This morning we had 3 trained volunteers. 12 people were waiting when we opened at 10 a.m. We locked the doors at 1 p.m. and have just (2.45 p.m.) finished seeing the clients. No-one has stopped for lunch. I have been here for 6½ years. In that time enquiries have more than doubled, with the same staff resources. Problems are increasingly complex and often insoluble. We have only 30 hours paid staff time with volunteer advisers and clerical helpers. The primary problems are those of poverty. Even family, housing and health problems can often be seen to have poverty as a root cause. In my time in this area I have seen no social improvement—quite the contrary".
The correspondent then goes on to talk about debt and points out that that must be seen in the context of the inequalities of British society because many do not have sufficient money to live what would be considered in other parts to be a reasonable, not luxurious, lifestyle.
I have little time to describe individual cases, but perhaps I may briefly quote to noble Lords just three cases so that we realise that behind this afternoon's debate are real people, real families and real problems.
Mrs. C is a victim of domestic violence. Her husband also refuses to give her money. She is torn between wanting to flee from home and scruples about her children and her religion. The CAB has been able to set up a refuge and to obtain legal help for her and to look into her benefits.
Mr. D is a young man just released from prison. He could not obtain a grant from the DSS until he had accommodation. That is a double bind about which we all know. Now he has it, he is told that he must wait four weeks for processing. Even when one is young and fit, Manchester in March is a bit grim without a bed or a cooker. The CAB has been able to organise the loan of a cooker and a settee for him to sleep on from NACRO. It is felt to be vital that that young man is given support and stability to enable him to go straight.
Mr. E is a pensioner in his eighties on a basic pension. He has had a series of estimated electricity bills leading to a final accurate bill for over £200. He came to us in a frantic state. No DSS help was available. We are now looking for charitable funds and we are fending off the North-Western Electricity Board.
That is one small indication of the kind of people who come to the CABs and with whom the CABs try to cope with minimum resources. Let me emphasise that one fully appreciates that poverty has always been a feature of life in this country under whatever government and that it will still be here with the next government, whichever of the parties opposite takes over at whatever point in the future. Yet it has become worse for the poorest in recent years. One of my correspondents has simply put it this way:
"We try hard to maintain the CAB principle of political impartiality but cannot help but contrast what we see here in the inner city with our own lives and that of our friends and become increasingly depressed at the flow of legislation which makes our clients' lives worse".
Government will of course say that, far from making lives worse, the aim has been to improve lives, and they will doubtless try to give evidence for that. Part of the problem has been that it is false to imagine that one can tackle the problems of poverty

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simply by targeting help to those who need it most. It sounds fine on paper; it does not work very well in practice on the ground.
That is so for a number of reasons. People do not like being stigmatised as poor and having to claim against means tests for everything. Perhaps I may take the example of school meals. That is fine in a school to which I may go in an inner city area where almost everyone claims free school meals. It does not work so well in areas where some kids feel discriminated against because it becomes known that their parents are having to claim in that way. The loan principle also has its limits. A revolving loan sounds fine on paper, but when one tries to work it out in practice, particularly in view of the pressure of debts, it does not work out nearly so well.
Why do not the poor manage their affairs better? That question is often asked, perhaps not quite as crudely as that. Why, for example, is so much spent on smoking, drinking and betting by people from poor communities? It is important for us all to appreciate that those habits become built into a lifestyle. In a way, they become symptoms of the poverty syndrome. It grieves me to see women in poor communities smoking inordinately when we all know what that may lead to in later life. Yet it is part of the pattern and culture and is difficult to break. Lifestyle and the abuse of lifestyle cannot simply be blamed on individuals, although I fully accept the duty of the Churches, among others, to struggle to point people towards a better lifestyle and a better use of money and towards taking care of their health. All those things are important and we must continue to commend them to people in those areas.
However, as CABs know all too well, the trouble is that many of those who lead unhealthy lifestyles and misuse and mismanage money are caught up in a cycle of poverty. I believe that a distinguished Member of this House once coined the phrase, "the cycle of deprivation". One can certainly see that evidenced on the ground.
I return to the question which has been touched on by noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Irvine; namely, the question of funding. Every pound of central government money will be well used in the work of CABs and it is essential that they should receive an increasing grant from central government. On the question of local authorities, I found myself yet again rather angry at the exchange during Question Time. I am sick of hearing accusations flung across the Floor of the House from one side to the other about profligate, extravagant local authorities. What matters is what the expenditure goes for. It is true that one can always find instances of mismanagement in local authorities. One can always find instances of silly spending on things that do not matter, but, as we all know, the vast majority of the money goes to tackle such matters as education, social security and the funding of CABs.
I hope that something will come out of the debate and that the Minister will be able to give us encouragement that local authorities will hear positive words from the Government about support
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for CABs. I noted in the report of the CABs that they now receive increasing support from commerce and industry. It is good that commerce and industry should realise that they are worth supporting. However, let us remember that everybody, including the Churches, these days are asking commerce and industry for support for worthy causes. I believe that fundamentally work of that kind ought to be nationally supported by government and by local authorities. I hope very much that we shall hear some encouraging words when the Minister comes to sum up.
4.20 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords. first I should like to express my appreciation to the noble Baroness for raising this topic for debate. It is an important matter and indeed a vital one for the community as a whole. I shall speak more or less about the areas in which I have spent most of my life and which I have represented; namely, the inner cities. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wise, about the need to consider the rural areas. In those areas a citizens' advice bureau might be the only lifeline for people on their own and in need of services. The need for the service to be provided in such areas could very well be a high priority.
I start on the basis that without question the citizens' advice bureaux will need increased central government funding. They will have an expanding role. The legislation now coming forward is complex even for some noble Lords. So what chance will ordinary people have immediately of assessing it when it affects them? I do not know. We know that the financial strictures now placed on local government will not enable it to respond to the same degree and with the same generosity that it has done in the past. Unfortunately, when local government is in the business of having to make cuts and wants to maintain its housing, education and social service programmes, it is that type of service that is affected. Therefore, without question, there is an overwhelming case for government funding. The right reverend Prelate referred to the response of commerce and business, but even so they will only respond to a degree. The main burden will have to be carried by central government.
The areas which will most need the service are the poorer parts of the country. I do not say that other areas will not need it, but the poorer areas will need it most. I say that as one who comes from, and who has represented, such an area. Those Members of your Lordships' House who have been Members in another place will know how very different areas can be found within one constituency. I have a colleague who is Member for a constituency in the north-east of Manchester. The social make-up of the people who live there represents almost a split down the middle of the constituency. One part is almost a deprived area; the other part is pretty affluent. The people who live in the affluent area are capable of dealing with problems, as the Member's mail bag shows. The mail does not come from the other area—the large council estates which are run down and so on. The people there are not so affluent, not

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so well trained to pick up a pen, write their complaint and send it to the right authority. They are the people who need this service.
The other day I was in the other place when the Prime Minister referred to a very important question which has been raised before and which is now starting to show itself again. It is the question of how landlords are starting to behave to tenants in the private sector. It is a subject that has also been raised in your Lordships' House. The Prime Minister said that she hoped the landlords would behave properly and that they would not charge tenants for the rates but would deduct them in view of the poll tax. She said that a guideline leaflet would be issued.
However, I have to say that many people will need to have someone to whom they can go in order to be told just what to do. I do not like to use the word but there is more than a whiff of Rachmanism coming back into London in the private tenant sector. People are being exploited. People now require advice and aid to an increasing degree because of the complexity of such things as the poll tax legislation. They want to know whether they are entitled to relief and how to apply for it. I do not want to discuss the poll tax. I think that enough has been said about it and this debate is on another topic. However, the fact is that when I go to the other end of the building and see the mail bags which some Members of Parliament now collect I realise how astronomically large they are—to the point at which Members with even the most efficient secretaries find it almost impossible to cope. Nearly all their mail now relates to personal services which people require. Members of Parliament of all parties do a tremendous job in trying to respond, but they are becoming overwhelmed. If it gets to the stage where they cannot help, to whom will their constituents turn?
I held a surgery in Manchester when I was a councillor there, as did most other councillors. There would be a reasonable attendance. I should not like to hold one now. I do not think that I could cope with the questions that people would ask me. Nor would I be qualified to deal with them.
Citizens advice bureaux have a history of being able to cope with most forms of advice. They are able to direct people towards the best sources for dealing with their grievances. They are able to help them with their problems. To an increasing extent the CABs are now dealing with housing problems. Such problems form the third largest category of inquiry to citizens advice bureaux. In 1989 the service dealt with over 800,000 housing inquiries. That is a tremendous number by anybody's standard.
Most of the housing problems dealt with by the citizens advice bureaux fall into one or two categories: problems of availability and problems of affordability. I should like to cite just one or two individual cases which I believe typify the problems with which the CABs are trying to deal.
A citizens advice bureau in Essex reported a client faced with homelessness who had no security of tenure because he was the former licensee of a pub. I suppose that one could say that it was a form of tied employment. He was told by the local authority
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to ignore the notice to quit and await a court order for repossession before it could consider his claim. If he left before then, he would be considered to have made himself intentionally homeless. In that case he would be outside the responsibility of the council who would not be required to deal with him.
In another case, a citizens advice bureau in central London reported a family with two disabled children under five who had spent nearly five years in bed and breakfast accommodation awaiting an offer of permanent accommodation from the council. Yet another case, reported by a citizens advice bureau in Manchester—the right reverend Prelate spoke about this earlier—concerned a 19 year-old man who was homeless following the divorce and remarriage of both his parents. The local authority waiting list offered no help. There are, I believe, about 30,000 people or thereabouts in Manchester on the waiting list. All are very pressing cases.
Many private landlords do not want the unemployed. Those who would have accepted the man I have mentioned had no vacancies. He is therefore in a Catch 22 situation. However, at least he can go to the citizens advice bureau. He can talk to the people there and discuss his problem to see if there is any way forward.
It is reported also that housing associations find themselves under increasing pressure as any growth in that sector has nowhere near matched the decline in local authority letting. As a result, many waiting lists are at a complete standstill. A citizens advice bureau in Lancashire reported the case of a single parent with a 10 month-old baby who had taken a shorthold tenancy for six months. At the end of the term the landlord issued a notice to quit. The local housing department classed the single parent as intentionally homeless under the 1985 Housing Act and refused to accept responsibility for her.
The Act to which I referred has also led to many protected tenants being harassed to leave by their landlords who wish to let under the more favourable terms of the more recent legislation. A north London CAB reported several protected tenants who were asked by their landlords to sign assured shorthold agreements. When one client refused to sign, the landlord returned with his "heavies" who threatened him at knifepoint until he signed the document. The client was so frightened that he was reluctant to inform the police or the tenancy relations officer. That case might sound far-fetched, but I have it on good authority that it is not something that has gone out of fashion. That type of case is becoming more prevalent than any of your Lordships would wish to see.
It is easy—my noble friend Lord Stallard who has been a Member of Parliament in north London will agree—to tell someone that they should go to law and bring in the police. Most people will not do so. They are too frightened. They are therefore wide open to being dealt with in that way by some private landlords. I am not saying that all behave like that. But some of the more undesirable landlords are reacting in a manner that some of us predicted they would.
The Minister, who is from the Department of Employment, talked about the number of people

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who had lost their homes because they could no longer pay the interest on their mortgages. He seemed to think, as did the Prime Minister, that because they represented under 1 per cent. of home owners the problem was not so bad. When we take the figures, the previous six months were not too bad. However, we are now seeing the effects of the prolonged increase in mortgage repayments. The figure is massive. It is ballooning upwards. This is one area in which the CABs are seeing a substantial increase in the number of people coming to them for help.
People might say that the building societies are sympathetic. One can talk to them about making changes in one's loan repayments so that they are repaid over a longer period. But people tend not to want to do that. They would rather turn to someone who can offer them independent advice. The debate has given a clear indication of what most of your Lordships think about the CABs and their role. Since their inception, their role has increased dramatically. It will continue to increase dramatically because the problems of people at the bottom end of the social scale with which they have to deal are becoming more and more complex in every respect as time moves on.
I once again reiterate my appeal to the Minister to listen with sympathy to the pleas which are being made from various parts of the House, and if the case for increased financial assistance is proved, to respond sympathetically so that the CABs can carry on with their worthwhile and essential role.
4.34 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, this is the 51st year that the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux has been in existence. It is timely—I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs—to have a short debate. It is, as it were, a run around the houses to see how the bureaux are getting on. I am sorry that the tenor of our discussion so far seems to have concentrated more on current social conditions than on the work of the CABs. The few remarks that I want to make will be about the CABs and not about the other conditions which obtain, which of course give rise to the work of the bureaux.
Before I do so, I should like to pay tribute to Sir Kenneth Clucas, who was chairman for five years until October 1989 and who, with his lieutenant, the director, Mrs. Elizabeth Filkin, supervised a move from Drury Lane to Pentonville Road. When I was in the DTI I had the pleasure of opening those premises. I believe that I know a little about the work of the bureaux and the pressures that Sir Kenneth Clucas and his colleagues put upon me, as I had some responsibility at that time for the DTI budget for the bureaux.
The warm praise that I give to those two people should not in any way diminish the admiration I feel for the work of the current chairman, Mr. Stuart Errington, lately chairman of Mercantile Credit Group plc, and the new director, Mr. Martin White, who I am sure will follow their predecessors with as much if not more energy.
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I wish to repeat, because they are worth repeating, the two essential aims of the bureaux:
"To ensure that individuals do not suffer from ignorance of their rights and responsibilities or of the services available or through an inability to express their needs effectively; secondly, to exercise a responsible influence on the development of social policies and services, both locally and nationally".
It is that second aim which is of tremendous importance, because the bureaux have a rather more gentle way of persuasion. In the years that I have known it, the national association has not had a compaigning style. It would be wrong were it to change its style and to be pushed into changing it by the pressures that are put upon it. The very strength of the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux is its independence, especially its political independence. I shall return to that point when I mention funding.
We have been given a number of figures this afternoon. I am surprised to learn that the bureaux deal basically with about 900 subject areas. Three of them have always remained top of the list, and that has been the case for innumerable years. They are social security, consumer debt and housing. They have always existed. It is wrong for some noble Lords to say that those three years are new and result from some of the legislation that has gone through Parliament in the past 10 years. The problems may be more numerous but they are not new. If one thinks about it, it is natural that they should always exist. We then have employment, the administration of justice, to which the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, referred, and the family.
Whatever one may think about present social conditions and the amount of legislation going through Parliament, there is no doubt that life is increasingly more complex. It is becoming more complex for a different kind of people. It does not affect simply the less well-off in our society; it affects the young who are starting out in a different world, a world which is far more competitive and perhaps even more hostile than when I was 16, 17 or 18 years of age. There are also many elderly people who, naturally, become confused about their rights and entitlements. The people who work in the bureaux are sympathetic towards clients who go to them with inquiries. There are a thousand bureaux, manned by 15,000 workers, of whom 90 per cent. are volunteers.
I must touch on the subject of funding, because it is crucial to the whole operation. I was glad that the right reverend Prelate reminded the House that, through the Church Urban Fund, the Churches are able to give advice and assistance in the same areas as the CABs. I was also glad that my noble friend Lord Wise mentioned the Rural Development Commission, which gives support particularly in rural areas. Therefore, support and advice comes from several directions and it is wrong to believe that the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux is the only organisation which exists to help people in giving advice.
No one has yet said that the citizens advice bureaux has the spending of over £50 million. Of that £20 million comes from the unremunerated value of its volunteer force; £23 million from local authorities; £9 million from the Department of

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Trade and Industry. An additional £1 million has been given by the Department of the Environment over three years. A further £1 million over three years has been given by the private sector, notably the banking fraternity—that is, Barclay's, National Westminster, Citibank, and the Finance Houses Association. That sum has been given to deal specifically with the money advice centres. Therefore, a great deal of money goes into the bureaux.
It would be wrong for the Government to find the bulk of the money which the bureaux require because it is a fact that the man who pays the piper calls the tune. The citizens advice bureaux are mercifully free from political influence. However, that would not be so if central government took on the funding responsibility because it could then dictate how the bureaux were to be run and in which areas they should conduct their business.
It is most important that local authorities recognise the separate and different needs in their areas and give support where necessary. I heed the warning note given by the right reverend Prelate but I shall not bandy across the Chamber accusations about who spends what and where. But, my goodness, during the past few years we have seen horrific examples of local authorities' spending on a variety of so-called institutions—clubs, rest centres and advice centres—for so-called deprived people. If they can do that without a statutory need they can aid the citizens' advice bureaux to a greater extent. That is all I wish to say on the matter, and perhaps it is enough. The Government should continue to provide the £9 million or £10 million for the central and support service and then let the bureaux get on and manage their business in concert with other authorities and agencies.
The noble Lord, Lord Dean, spoke about housing. It is interesting to note that an additional £1 million was found over the past three years for a joint programme with SHAC and Shelter in order to make a further inroad into the problem of housing and the homeless.
The bureaux are strong; they are strong in heart. They will always be short of money, as will any advice centre. The problem will not be relieved by spending more central government money. It is essential that we support the bureaux where we can. The public needs the service; it needs a voluntary and not a statutory service, which would be most frightening.
The noble Lord, Lord Dean, also spoke about the town halls, which are, generally speaking, frightening places. Although a bureau office may be small and in a shabby part of town it has a more friendly welcome than the marble steps of most town halls.
The service is useful and necessary. I believe that the bureaux will continue to provide good service and I wish them all the good fortune that they deserve during the next 50 years.
4.46 p.m.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to discuss the
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work of the citizens advice bureaux and the problems that they face. I do not apologise for raising some of the problems with which they deal. On the contrary, we should be grateful to the bureaux for focusing our attention on some of the aspects of the legislation which we discuss and pass in this House.
I recently expressed my immediate interest when we discussed the social fund and the recent court ruling. I share the interest of the citizens advice bureaux in that judgment. It is my first example of their work. From their experience they were able to comment on the effects and implications of the judgment on their clients. The court decision was welcomed not only by the CAB but by all volunteer organisations who advise people about such difficulties.
The ruling supported the CAB which had already stated that budget limits and discretionary powers of social fund officers meant that the basic requirements of those most in need were not being met. That is a legitimate comment. The High Court stated that the guidance given by the social fund officers in the official manual on the administration of the social fund was unlawful in so far as it indicated in mandatory terms that officers had no powers to make payments for special needs if that would result in their budget being exceeded. Awards in the guidance were found to be effective.
NACAB maintained that as pressure on the social fund increased over time, the major inadequacies of the system to meet even the most basic needs of the claimants would become more apparent. Again, that is a perfectly reasonable comment.
Noble Lords will recall that the social fund was one of the central elements of the Social Security Act 1986 which took effect in 1988. Now a person receiving income support—in other words, someone on an extremely low income—must rely on a discretionary scheme when they have an unexpected expenditure for which it is impossible to budget. For example, the replacement of a broken cooker. Some claimants may be awarded grants but many more receive loans which they must repay out of their benefit at a high rate of interest.
Citizens advice bureaux have been to the forefront in trying to advise and guide people with all those new problems. They report considerable hardship among their clients. Many have been refused social fund payments, and of those who receive an amount, it is invariably less than is needed.
Perhaps I may quote a couple of examples. First a citizens advice bureau in West Yorkshire reported a case of a 25 year-old discharged from hospital following a brain haemorrhage and short term memory loss. He needed to buy 10 tokens to reactivate his electricity supply which is the system used in his area and he needed a £10 grant for food at the weekend when he was discharged. His grant was refused. Although in a priority group, the items were considered not to be of a high priority—possibly because the money had run out.
There is a further example from a citizens advice bureau in North London which reported a case of a refugee applicant who spoke no English, with a disabled child. The applicant was refused a

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community care grant for a pushchair because the applicant did not present a case of how the health and safety of the family would be affected.
That takes me back to something which your Lordships may recall that the then Government Minister said in debates on the Social Security Act 1988. She mentioned the fact that we should never have to rely on the persuasiveness of clients and their representatives to be able to justify a claim. Had that operated, then the client whose case I have just cited would have been given a grant. However, because the client was unable to speak adequate English and was unable to discuss the health and safety of the family—in other words, was not sufficiently persuasive—no grant was given.
Moving from grants to loans, repaying a loan can and often does cause considerable hardship. In a survey of citizens advice bureaux clients who had received loans from the social fund and were in the process of repaying them, 64 per cent. were repaying £5 or more per week. That is a lot of money for people on income support. At the time of the survey, the rate for a single person over 25 was £33·40. When those amounts are considered as a percentage of the client's weekly income, nearly half are repaying deductions of 15 per cent. or more of their weekly budget. That is a hefty sum from a weekly budget of £33.
The consequences of a 15 per cent. deduction are considerable for those receiving that minimal support. It leaves a person with very little money for essential items like food, water rates, fuel, the community charge and a whole number of essentials. Those costs are fixed unlike the social fund which is not based on a percentage of income.
By pointing out those anomalies and difficulties which their clients experience, the CABs are doing us a service. I do not not accept the view that we should not be discussing the effect of current issues. It is current issues with which we and our people are involved. It is current issues with which the CABs are very much involved. I cannot repeat often enough how grateful I am and have been for many years at the service provided by the CABs and the kind of guidance which they have been able to give me from time to time regarding legislation.
Again, I give a couple of examples of hardship due to high repayment rates on social fund loans. A citizens advice bureau in West Yorkshire reports that a single parent was left with £17 for herself and her child to live on after paying £18 in direct deductions for gas arrears and £6 for social fund repayments. You do not have to be a mathematician to work out the position that that poor client was in.
Another CAB in Berkshire reports a family which received a loan for a cooker and other essential household items. The family received half the amount requested but had to repay the loan at £10.78 per week, which was 15 per cent. of the family's weekly benefit. The family could not afford that as well as meeting payments for rates, water and fuel for their home which is difficult to heat. Therefore, they had to go without.
A CAB in Northern Ireland reported a case of a single parent with six children. She applied for a grant for a cooker but was given a loan. The DSS
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insisted on repayments of £20 per week arguing that she could afford that because she had no other debts although, as I said, she was a single parent with six children. Whether or not she has any other debts, £20 per week is still a lot of money. She had to meet all her other commitments to pay for fuel, food, rates, and clothing for six children. That is another example of the hardship caused.
NACAB, to its credit, has always been concerned that the social fund was restricted in its ability to respond to need by having a finite budget which cannot be overspent. The reason for most of my examples and the refusals is that the social fund officer believes that he is overspending or that there is a danger that he will do so. That view was expressed quite clearly by NACAB in response to the Green Paper Reform of Social Security in 1985. To me, that is another very important illustration of the valuable work of NACAB whose experience on those issues forms a major contribution to our discussions.
Also, in her opening remarks the noble Baroness mentioned the position in Scotland. I should like to enlarge on that because it is not a part of the world which people often mention when they discuss those problems. The Scottish CABs have their own independent association and a network of advice bureaux which stretch from Thurso in the North to Castle Douglas in the South, and there are CABs in all major cities and many other urban areas. There are also the problems outlined in the excellent contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Wise, about the difficulties of CABs in rural and urban areas in some parts of Scotland.
Money problems form the largest single category in Scottish advice bureaux problems. Forty three per cent. of all queries in 1988–89 were concerned with financial difficulties. Problems of multiple debt increased from 13,000 in 1983 to 55,000 in 1988. As has already been mentioned, the community charge has placed a heavy burden on citizens advice bureaux services in Scotland. The service believes that that was introduced too quickly and the administrative chaos which resulted brought many thousands of people to the citizens advice bureaux.
A recent report from the Scottish Consumer Council recommended that central government and regional, highlands and district councils should get together with voluntary organisations to ensure the best possible service for the public. To all of us, that means adequate funding and a co-ordinated strategy on the part of all those responsible for such funding as soon as possible. I ask the Minister who is to reply to this debate whether any progress has been made in response to that report from the Scottish Consumer Council.
On the general question of funding which was touched on by one or two noble Lords, I should like to have gone much more deeply into the implications of the 1989 DTI report on the CABs because that left many questions outstanding to my mind and to the minds of others involved in the CABs and other organisations. It was felt that the report, if adopted and implemented, would transform NACAB into a kind of local government bureaucracy. Some critics went so far as to suggest that the Government

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appeared to be seeking an organisation based on CABs which could, with government support, supplant the need for many other voluntary organisations.
In some quarters there is a fear that it may possibly be the Government's intention to create a cheap, centralised and controlled network of information givers. I am not necessarily saying that I agree with that, but I know that those fears exist. I believe that we must have that in the back of our minds when we talk about a national government controlled and funded system. In that report the Government spoke about focusing issues, much like they talk about targeting social security and other benefits.
What the Government mean by "focusing issues" might not be what other people mean by "focusing issues". However, if the organisation was dependent for its funds solely on that source, then it may need to be influenced on where to focus. I therefore agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, when he said that we have to recognise and accept the need for a system of independent advice bureaux: an independent advice service able to exercise its own rights and focus on issues which it considers, from experience, to be essential. To work adequately, such a system would have to be properly resourced and funded from government and local authorities.
5 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was absolutely right to emphasise that the citizens advice bureaux have now existed for just over 50 years, having been set up in 1939 at the onset of war to advise citizens of this country of the problems that were likely to occur during that difficult wartime period. However, the need for the bureaux continued after the war right up to the present. We are therefore particularly indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for enabling us to look at the work of these bureaux and to identify some of the problems associated with them.
During the course of the debate four points emerged, I believe. First, there is not the slightest doubt that every noble Lord who has spoken has emphasised the social importance of these bureaux, their independence and their voluntary nature. A number of noble Lords—in particular the right reverend Prelate, the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, and the noble Lord, Lord Stallard—gave telling examples of the kinds of human problem the bureaux deal with every day of the week.
Secondly, I believe that attention has been drawn to the geographical unevenness of the service available from the bureaux. That problem was underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg. Attention was also drawn to the problems that occur particularly in rural areas—a matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Wise, referred.
Thirdly, the question of the need for linkage with other advisory services was raised, because CABs are not the only advisory services. There are money advice services and legal advice services, and there is a need for linkage and coherence. Many noble Lords referred to that point, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Finally, all noble Lords referred,
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in one form or another, to the question of funding, which links in with the need to expand the service.
I should like to spend the time that I have available on the question of indebtedness. I want to do so for two reasons. First, as the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, mentioned in connection with Scotland, the question of indebtedness spreads through a large number of queries put to the CABs and other advisory services. As the right reverend Prelate pointed out, there have been reports in the newspapers of the important study by the Policies Studies Institute entitled Credit and Debt in Britain, which indicated that around 2 million households are in various forms of debt; that over 500,000 are in serious debt and 170,000 in very serious debt. Obviously it is a most important issue.
My second reason for raising indebtedness is that I was involved in a consideration of that issue over recent months. I was invited to act as chairman of a working party set up on the recommendation of the Director General of Fair Trading by the Finance Houses Association to consider how the contribution from the private sector—the finance establishments—to the provision of money advice could be extended and put on a more regular basis. I should therefore like to inform your Lordships of some of the conclusions of that report, which was issued in January.
First, we had to identify the size of the problem. The size of the problem we identified was very similar to that which came out in the PSI report; namely, we felt that there were some 200,000 families in serious debt problems; probably 500,000 in fairly serious debt problems and perhaps many more in some form of debt problems. The finding is therefore roughly similar.
Next, we had to consider how money advice is provided. We found that people's general tendency was to go to a citizens advice bureau. That was their first port of call. In addition, there is a very important service provided by local authorities, particularly by the trading standards organisation, with which I have some involvement. Therefore there is a combination of places to which people can go locally.
What tends to happen is that when people go to a CAB they receive what might be called a "first-aid" service. CABs are largely voluntary organisations and cover a wide range of activities. There is general guidance given to those who work in CABs as to how they should respond, but many problems of debt are becoming very complex. There are multiple debt problems. They raise legal issues; they raise questions of understanding how the law stands; they may raise issues of attending court and how the position of the debtor can best be represented. It has been estimated that in some of the more difficult debt cases up to 18 hours of work has to be spent by skilled people.
What became very clear is that if advice on indebtedness is to be effective, there must, in addition to the front-line service, be more professionally skilled back-up. This comes from the bodies, some of which already exist, known as money advice support units.

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We then came to the way in which we felt that the private sector could best help. Clearly we could not turn to the private sector for the very large sums of money needed to put the whole system right. However, we could identify that specific part of the system—providing money advice support—where a concentration of the skills that the private sector could provide, plus the resources that it might be prepared to put in, could have an impact. Therefore we costed out what was necessary to improve the money advice support services which could act in a specialist role standing behind the initial advice given at local authority or CAB level. We worked out that around £10 million would be required to establish the support services reasonably well throughout the country; an extra £10 million. How was that to be found?
First, it could not all be spent at once. We thought that a three-year period would probably be required in order to set up these establishments, recruit and train the people, second them from the financial institutions, and so on. The cost would amount to around £3 million a year.
Secondly, we considered what we thought the private sector could reasonably be asked to contribute. The working party included representatives of both the lending institutions and consumer organisations. After a great deal of discussion we came to the conclusion that a reasonable basis for their contribution could be rather more than double what they are already giving. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned that around £1 million was the present figure. We said "Let us put forward an objective of £2 million for three years". That should provide £6 million out of the £10 million. As to the remaining £4 million, we left that open. We did not feel that we could go to the private institutions for any more. If we went for too much they would probably respond totally negatively. Therefore, by other means—from local authorities or central government—and if our calculations were agreed with, that is the extra amount that would need to be found. I am glad to say that the response has been positive. At a recent press launch of the report. British Gas, for example, immediately contributed £50,000. Other financial institutions are already coming forward with donations of a similar nature. We have further proposed that a money advice trust should be established to do two things: first, to stimulate the provision of, collect and effectively disburse the private sector money, particularly for the money advice support units; secondly, and more importantly—this touches on a point raised by many noble Lords—to study the long-term implications of providing a comprehensive money advice service throughout the country, to integrate the work done by the CABs, the local authorities, the lending institutions themselves and the support units.
We know that that will take longer. We originally set out, as a working party, to cover both the short and the long term but wisely decided that we should endeavour to support the existing arrangements, however uneven they may be, and identify some part of the existing arrangements where additional funding could be helpful. We decided on the support
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services. However, we all felt that more work needs to be done to achieve coherence in the whole area of money advice, to ascertain where the gaps are, to see whether the matter should be handled by the CABs and to determine to what extent the local authorities, the trading standards officers, the banks and other institutions should come in.
I hope that it will not be long before the report is prepared and it could then become an important part of this whole subject of providing citizens with adequate advice. I hope your Lordships will feel that this is an important contribution to the matter. Although the £6 million contributed by the private sector will not cover all the needs, at least it points the way. It has identified where such sums can be usefully expended and it has created an organisation which will look at the overall implications of an important part of this question of advice to the citizen.
5.12 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, the House is grateful to my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs for introducing this debate and bringing the work of the CABs to our attention.
I was glad to note that the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Ezra, referred to the origins of the CABs. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, paid a deserved tribute to Sir Kenneth Clucas, whom I knew in a previous incarnation, if I may put it that way, and who did magnificent work as chairman of the national association.
The CABs were founded, as the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, pointed out, at the beginning of the war. They were hurried through at the beginning of the war in order to meet the number of inquiries expected by what was then the National Council for Social Services (it became the National Council for Voluntary Organisations) due to the social disturbances in wartime. I take issue wit h the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who said that the inquiries have not changed. In fact, during the war typical inquiries were about the rationing of clothes and other materials, sending letters and parcels to people abroad, compensation claims for bomb damage, and so on. Those were the inquiries which the CABs had to deal with.
After the war the CABs found themselves in some considerable difficulty. It was felt by a number of people, both in government and outside, that this was not a suitable way of dealing with the resettlement programme brought about by demobilisation of the armed forces. Fortunately, the CABs survived and they have grown to a point where they now have about 1,200 offices in England and Wales and employ no fewer than 15,000 people, of whom 90 per cent. are voluntary workers. It is an astonishing fact that such an organisation can keep going in this modern world and rendering such great services.
At this point we must pay tribute to those who give their services for nothing to the CABs, who work extremely hard and, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, frequently without lunch. They are on the telephone the whole day and work late hours to help their fellow citizens who are in need.

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The CABs survived an attack, so to speak, in 1983 when the government of the day withheld half the DTI grant to the national association pending a review of the services. The Lovelock Report, which was the result of that review, described the CABs as an invaluable national asset. The grant was restored and, indeed, somewhat increased as a result. The CABs came through that test with flying colours.
However, fine words butter no parsnips, as we say, and we have to look at the problems faced today by the CABs. I am glad that my noble friends Lady Ewart-Biggs and Lord Stallard both mentioned Scotland. Scotland, with an independent association and offices and having had experience of the poll tax for a year, is an example of what will happen in England and Wales. We will do well to note the experience of Scotland.
My noble friend Lord Stallard was right to point out that the bulk of inquiries to the CABs in Scotland concern financial difficulties, but one-quarter of all inquiries in 1988–89 concerned the poll tax. At first, those centred on what rebates might be available under the poll tax but they now refer almost exclusively to the inability of people to meet their debts arising from the poll tax and asking how they are to manage.
We accept that in Scotland there have been particular difficulties in the collection of the poll tax. Noble Lords may be interested to know that recently I learnt that more than 10,000 people in the Strathclyde region had registered for poll tax purposes under the name of Donald Duck. That makes collection of the tax rather difficult. How can you collect the amounts due from 10,000 Donald Ducks? That will happen—not necessarily with Donald Ducks—in England and Wales. There will be problems for the CABs which they are in fact already having to handle.
There are two points in that connection. First, in Scotland the Scottish Office gave grant-aid to the CABs specifically for the purpose of handling poll tax inquiries. The Scottish association says that it is grateful for the grant-aid provided by the Scottish Office to assist in dealing with community charge inquiries but adds that there is no doubt—this is the second point—that the charge has placed great strain on the CABs and their voluntary officers.
Many of the people working in the CABs do so in conditions of great stress. It is not easy sitting at a desk day after day on the telephone and dealing personally with the problems that ordinary people and poor people are presenting, time after time. They queue up to explain their problems. That is work of great stress. While we can rightly talk about funding we must remember the human side of the problem relating to the people who work in CABs.
Therefore, the major problem faced by the CABs in England and Wales is the same as that faced by the CABs in Scotland—the onset of the poll tax. That is not to say that the other problems will go away. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester rightly pointed to the Church Urban Fund. I was glad to hear about that and other ways
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in which the Church can help. Nevertheless, the bulk of social security problems will land at the door of the CABs, whatever we do.
My noble friend Lord Dean of Beswick spoke very movingly about housing problems and the problems of the homeless. Where do those people go for advice? They go the CABs. The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, referred to the mountain of debt that many poor people, and not so poor people, are carrying at the moment and to what he has been doing in various capacities to assist them. I was very glad to learn about a money advice trust which I had also heard about from the Finance Houses Association. I was particularly glad that, in his capacity as chairman, the noble Lord and the organisation had decided that the right route at the moment is to work with existing organisations. It is the CABs which require real help in this area. As the noble Lord rightly pointed out, the problems of consumer debt, if I may use that generic expression, are often much more complex than is realised. It is not simply a question of being overmortgaged or overborrowed on your credit card; it is part of a complex of problems to which we have to pay attention.
There is also the problem of lone parents to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester referred. There is the question of residential care and of elderly people in such care who are flung out because they cannot afford to pay. My noble friend Lord Irvine of Lairg referred to the problem of legal aid. We shall be debating that subject when my noble friend Lord Mishcon moves a Motion in a week or so. In addition, there is the flow of legislation and the imposition of burdens on people. The right reverend Prelate also referred to this matter. Sometimes governments do not seem to realise that when they pour out legislation and orders they expect everybody to be literate, to read parliamentary language and to understand what their duties are. That is almost impossible for some people to cope with. All governments are to blame in this matter and I am not particularly criticising the present government or any other.
I now turn to the matter referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wise, and others; namely, the geographic disparity in the CAB network. Quite rightly, the noble Lord, Lord Wise, spoke about rural areas. As I come from the rural area of mid-Wales I am extremely sensitive about the inability of people to find a citizens advice bureau within 10 or 20 miles. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for them to make proper use of the service available.
Where does that leave us? I say quite frankly that I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, on one matter. I do not believe that it will be right to have a debate on the CAB without taking into account the present social conditions that the policies of this Government have brought to us. I say that absolutely frankly because I believe that is one of the major problems of the CABs. They now have to deal with what is known as an underclass which consists of between 20 and 25 per cent. of the population, according to figures which are available. That part of the population has to have proper access to proper information and advice about a whole variety of subjects which the noble Lord and I can

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deal with quite easily. That is a problem that we have to accept.
I wish to draw the attention of the noble Viscount to a suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Irvine of Lairg that there should be a geographically fair network and also secure funding. Those are the two principles on which we should be working. I accept almost everything that every noble Lord has said to the effect that the service must remain independent of government. It must continue to be part-funded by the DTI and local authorities and the donation of time and effort given by the voluntary workers, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, pointed out. It would be a terrible mistake if we were to create some bureaucratic monster which was wholly at the beck and call of government.
We must make sure that everybody of whatever race, class or creed has proper access at the right time to a citizens advice bureau. In the end that is a service for which the Government have to be responsible even though we like that service to be independent. We look for evidence from the noble Viscount, when he comes to wind up, that the Government have grasped the nature of the problems that the CABs face. As my noble friend Lord Irvine said, it is not enough simply to say what a marvellous body of men and women they are and how glad we are that they exist.
This is a time when the social fabric of this country is starting to deteriorate badly. It is very important that we make sure that everybody knows what their rights are, what they can do and who can help them. It needs a positive initiative by government. The CABs are crying out for an initiative from the DTI to help them make sure that they will be in place throughout the next decade; that they properly understand their role and that they are properly and securely funded. It is right that a fair network is established throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. Initiative is needed and I hope very much that we shall hear about that from the noble Viscount today.
5.25 p.m.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for raising this important subject today. We have had a most informative and wide-ranging debate on the noble Baroness's Motion, during which a number of noble Lords have shown themselves to be both knowledgeable and appreciative of the work of citizens advice bureaux. A number of interesting points have been made and some questions have been raised, and I should now like to respond on behalf of Her Majesty's Government.
Seven years ago an independent review of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux was undertaken by a small team under the chairmanship of Sir Douglas Lovelock. The team's report became known as the Lovelock Report and noble Lords may find it interesting if I were to read out the first few lines of that report. It begins as follows:
"The Citizens Advice Bureaux Service is an invaluable national asset. The provision of a service of information, advice and
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guidance meets a real and growing need. The dedication and competence of the Service have earned widespread respect.
"Because the Service's standards are high and because it relies predominantly on a volunteer workforce, it represents extraordinarily good value for money."
The introduction to the report goes on:
"The workload of the Service has grown continually over the last 20 years. We expect this growth to continue. The problems raised with the Service have also increased in range and complexity in recent years."
How familiar those words seem. They are just the sort of things that the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, and other noble Lords have been saying today. The Government accepted the findings of the Lovelock Report when it was published in 1984 and we still regard its main conclusions as valid today.
Not only do the Government recognise and appreciate the value of the advice and help provided by citizens advice bureaux, but we support the service in a very real way.
I think that it may be worth reminding noble Lords of the extent of this support. The Department of Trade and Industry finances, through grant-in-aid, virtually the entire costs of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux and its sister organisation, Citizens Advice Scotland. As noble Lords will know, these two organisations provide the central support services for all the local bureaux throughout the country, including training, information and the maintenance of standards.
Contrary to the impression which some noble Lords—and more specifically, the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg—may have given during the debate today, this Government have a very good record on the funding of NACAB. The DTI grant to NACAB this year is nearly £9 million, compared with £1.7 million in 1979–80. That means that this Government's contribution to the CAB service in England and Wales has more than doubled in real terms since 1979. In Scotland it has more than trebled in real terms in the same period. I hope that the noble Lords will agree that those are impressive figures.
Noble Lords will know that local bureaux are funded locally: in practice by local authorities. This has been the case since 1945, when local authorities were first given the power to fund local information centres. The Lovelock Report came to the conclusion that this division of responsibility between central and local funding was right. Perhaps I may quote again from the report. It says:
"It [the system] enables the bureaux to maintain a degree of autonomy and ensures that they can be seen as separate from the Government bureaucracy and responsive to local needs. This autonomy enables bureaux to develop services, including specialist services such as tribunal representation, debt counselling and money advice, in response to local need. At the same time it allows central government to support the service through NACAB. The system is, in other words, well calculated to sustain with public money a service which is reliant on local volunteer labour. In our view this is an overriding advantage and outweighs the disadvantages".
Those words are as apt today as they were in 1984, and of course they apply equally to the situation in Scotland.
The Lovelock review considered the other options for funding local bureaux, including direct funding by central government and a statutory duty on local

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authorities. The report rejected these options and the Government continue to reject them for the same reasons as Lovelock did. That is the answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg.
Obviously the service has come a long way since it was set up in 1939. The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, explained the concerns of many people in those days. The service has had to keep pace with social trends and with changes in legislation and has had to meet the demands of an increasingly sophisticated society. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester vividly brought to our attention the lasting problems of poverty and how a sophisticated society seems to increase the pressure on some families. The noble Lord, Lord Williams, referred to them as an under-class.
The advice and help that bureaux provide today is of a professional standard, even though it is free at the point of delivery. But the essential feature of NACAB, and what makes it the envy of the world, is that it is a professional service which is delivered mainly by volunteers. The voluntary effort which the CAB service harnesses is its most precious asset and it enables a service to be provided which has a value much greater than that of the money which goes into it. The volunteers of the CAB service are a fine example of the active citizenship which we should be encouraging wherever we can. They show the sympathy to which my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth paid tribute, as well as the value of the work given by volunteers, quite rightly emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel.
Noble Lords will be aware that in one sphere at least the CAB service has already achieved some considerable success in attracting private sector funding. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester mentioned this point. I refer to the area of money advice and the funding that the finance industry is providing for it. More than £2 million has been contributed or has been pledged by the finance industry and there is the prospect of other significant contributions to local and national projects.
Last month saw the publication of the report of the working party on money advice funding. This working party, which was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, was set up by the finance industry in response to an appeal by the Director General of Fair Trading that it should provide more funding for money advice. The working party's main conclusion was that money advice needs more funds and that a minimum contribution by the finance industry of £2 million per year for the next three years is realistic and achievable. I am glad that the noble Lord said those words today.
The working party suggested that such funds would be used mainly to support functions which, for one reason or another, tend not to attract local authority or government funding. There are, for example, already several money advice support units, financed by the private sector, which provide support services for citizens advice bureaux and other money advice agencies in certain parts of the country. I believe that the working party had in mind the idea of extending this network as one possible
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use for additional private sector money. I am sure that such an initiative would be very much welcomed by the bureaux and their clients alike. The Government welcome the thrust of the report and hope that the finance industry will respond favourably to it.
I should like to deal with one or two of the points raised during the course of the debate. Many noble Lords referred to debt problems and in particular to rent arrears, a subject mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick. Such problems obviously take up a good deal of bureaux resources because they can be very time-consuming to sort out. The money provided by the finance industry should be a great help in this respect. The Government have made significant contributions to NACAB and CAS whose members provide the bulk of money advice. There is also a comprehensive framework of legislation to protect the consumers of credit, although nothing can protect people from falling into difficulties when their circumstances change. I refer to the problems of redundancy, marital breakdown or the death of a spouse. All we can hope to do in such cases is to try to pick up the pieces afterwards. That is where the CAB service does such a marvellous job.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, referred to the NACAB report, One parent families: benefits and work. This matter, as with many other matters this afternoon, would probably be more appropriate to a debate on social security provisions than to one on citizens advice bureaux. I understand, however, that NACAB concluded that there are no simple solutions in this complex area. The Government share that view and recognise that this problem needs action on a number of fronts. For example, the Government have already announced their intention to improve the system relating to maintenance payments. The Government are also actively considering how to encourage the provision of child care facilities by employers.
The noble Baroness, and in passing the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, referred to the problem of the gap when the maximum income support paid for people in residential care and nursing homes is less than the fees charged by the home. I understand that in setting the current limits and those proposed for April the available evidence indicated that the majority of people in homes should be able to meet their fees in full from their income and benefits. But I must stress that it has never been, nor could it be, the policy of any government to meet all fees, however high. Nevertheless, the help that this Government provide through income support has enabled thousands of people to make their own choices about the type of residential care they want.
My noble friend Lord Wise brought to our attention the fact that problems are not confined to the inner cities and he went on to describe some of the difficulties faced by families in rural areas. My noble friend also brought to our attention the fact that NACAB and the Rural Development Commission have a joint funding scheme for CAB projects. This began in July 1986. The scheme provides pump priming finance for projects which provide advice and information in unusual or

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innovative ways in rural areas. The Rural Development Commission and NACAB each provide £50,000 a year. Since 1989–90 each has provided an extra £25,000 for specific areas of need. My noble friend mentioned the free phone pilot scheme.
The noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, raised the matter of the possible effect of the change to the community charge on the funding of citizens advice bureaux. I have not heard that that has been a problem in Scotland and therefore I do not see why it should be so in England or in Wales. The CAB service has expressed some concern that local authorities may have less money available for organisations such as the CABs under the new arrangements. However, there seems to be no foundation in that theory. It will remain a discretionary matter for each local authority to decide which organisation to fund and to what extent.
The noble Lord, Lord Stallard, referred to the Social Fund. The fund is helping many people on low incomes—over 1.7 million loans amounting to £240 million and nearly 337,000 grants costing £89 million since the start of the scheme. That does not suggest to me that people in need are reluctant to seek help from the fund or that those most in need are being refused help.
As we have been reminded by my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth, last year saw the Golden Jubilee of the CAB service. In those 50 years CABs have become part of the fabric of Britain. It seems almost impossible to contemplate life without them and the army of volunteers upon which they so rightly depend. I suppose that they are one of the last remaining examples of the wartime spirit of mutual help and self-sacrifice. At the same time, they have changed with the times and are as relevant today as they were when they were first established. They are uniquely British and envied throughout the world.
The CAB service is recognised and supported by central government, local authorities and increasingly the private sector. Of course the service could use more money. Indeed, I find it difficult to think of any organisation which could not. But, as I outlined, the CAB service has had a very fair deal in terms of support from this Government. I hope that that fact is recognised. I believe that there are real prospects of increased support from the private sector and I know that I speak for your Lordships' House when I say that I wish the CAB service well for the next 50 years. For my part I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for giving us the opportunity to discuss these matters today and for allowing me to put forward the Government's point of view.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, will he agree that, as seven years have passed since the Lovelock Report to which he referred, there is a case for a review of its recommendations with regard to local authority funding and should this not in some sense be statutory? I think he will agree that one point which has emerged from the debate is that inconsistencies
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in local authority funding face CABs in different parts of the country with very considerable problems.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I am content to undertake to bring that point, which was not only reinforced by the right reverend Prelate but also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, to the attention of my right honourable friend.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I should like briefly to thank all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. There is no doubting the fact that there was one aspect upon which we all agreed; namely, the effectiveness and devotion of the managers, the paid workers and the volunteers of the CABs. I very much hope that they will read the Hansard report of the debate and that they will at least take heart from what has been said.
I was glad to hear the Minister's final remark that he will look again at the point raised by my noble friend Lord Irvine of Lairg about funding. The matter was also brought to his attention by the right reverend Prelate. If he reads the speech made by my noble friend, he will recognise that he was not criticising the DTI grant to NACAB because that supports services. However, he queried the fact that the Government make no possible commitment to the local CABs for the services which they provide on the ground. As many noble Lords have said today, it is the complexity of present legislation and the interaction between so many of its features which brings problems to the clients of the CABs and therefore to the CABs on the ground. That is why we feel that perhaps the funding of CABs should be further considered so as to produce a fair and even distribution of their services throughout the country. That was one of the most important points to emerge from the debate. It was also mentioned by the right reverend Prelate.
I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, for taking advantage of the debate to tell us about the money advice trust and about the coherence of advice about indebtedness which was planned in the working party. I believe that some very important work was done in this connection. I very much hope that it will contribute towards achieving a better service in the future for this growing problem of indebtedness which is faced by so many of our fellow citizens. Surely it must have the most terrible consequences upon families. We hope that the situation will be improved.
I shall not comment upon any of the other points which were raised in the debate but I should like once again to thank all speakers who have taken part in the debate. I am also most grateful to the Minister for replying in such a courteous way. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

House of Fraser
5.45 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission I should like to repeat a Statement on the House of Fraser being made by my right honourable

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friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"I have today published the report of the inspectors appointed under Section 432(2) of the Companies Act 1985 to investigate the affairs of House of Fraser Holdings plc.
"I should explain to the House that in this matter I have three main responsibilities as Secretary of State:
"First, to decide whether to publish the report. This I have now done, as soon as possible after I was informed by the prosecution authorities that they had withdrawn their objection to publication.
"Secondly, I had to consider whether to apply to the court to disqualify any director under Section 8 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986. I have concluded that it would not be in the public interest to do so. Anyone who reads the report can decide for themselves what they think of the conduct of those involved.
"Thirdly, I also have responsibility for decisions on whether to refer mergers to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. That responsibility was fully discharged by my predecessor. He had six months from July 1988 in which to consider the finding of the inspectors' report and to decide whether to refer the matter. He concluded in December 1988 that a reference to the MMC would not be appropriate. The House of Lords held that that was a proper decision. I cannot reopen the decision taken at that time. We have since taken steps in the Companies Act 1989 to make it a specific criminal offence for anyone knowingly or recklessly to mislead the competition authorities.
"No other matters require action from me. I have passed the report to all those authorities concerned with enforcement and regulation so that they may consider whether to take action under their various powers."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
5.50 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement made by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in another place. The Statement is fairly extraordinary but it raises any number of questions of which I shall only be able to put a few.
I should first like to know whether the Minister has read the conclusions of the report. The first conclusion reads:
"The Fayeds dishonestly misrepresented their origins, their wealth, their business interests and their resources to the Secretary of State, the OFT, the press, the HOF Board and HOF shareholders, and their own advisers".
Can we seriously think that if they had not so dishonestly misrepresented all this they would have been able to take over the House of Fraser? The answer to that question must be no. In which case, is it not the role of government to correct that situation? Further, why have the Government done nothing about it? Secondly, why did the competition
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authorities buy all the rubbish which was put out by the Fayeds. After all, according to the report, the DTI, the advisers, the Director General and everyone else bought the story put out by the Fayeds. Why was such a hurried timetable adopted by Mr. Norman Tebbit, who was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at the time and who decided not to refer the matter? Why did the advisers buy the story? What have Kleinwort Benson and Herbert Smith to say? Have the Government any view on that? What was the Serious Fraud Office doing all this time?
We were told on 3rd April in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, that the report could not be published because,
"the prosecution authorities have told me that their inquiries might have to stop if there were publication now". [Official Report, 3/4/89; col. 898.]
It appears now that there was no case for prosecution. If that is the case, will the noble Lord agree that the unsatisfactory side of this affair is the inability of the Serious Fraud Office to obtain the evidence it was seeking? Is he aware that Mr. John Wood, the director of the Serious Fraud Office, has stated that the team's greatest problem was its inability to get witnesses from abroad to this country? Why then was the SFO team which was carrying out the inquiries reduced from five to two?
I turn to the Statement. What is the "public interest" that the Secretary of State has in mind when he concludes that it would not be in the public interest to apply to the court to disqualify any director under the Company Directors Disqualification Act? To which authorities concerned with enforcement and regulation has he passed the report? What action does he expect those authorities to take?
In order not to be one-sided—because we take no sides on this issue—I wish to ask a further question. Serious allegations have been made in the report about the conduct of private citizens. At the time of the Companies Bill, we discussed the whole question of investigations. I ask the noble Lord what redress these individuals have, about whom these remarks have been made—whether or not they are true I know not—to protect their reputation if this report is published? I believe that it is published under parliamentary privilege. If these individuals have no possibility of redress, is that not a gap in our law which should be corrected?
I could ask thousands more questions but, first, I have to read the report. I have no doubt that we shall come back to it. In the meantime I can only say that I am sad that the Government have treated this major issue which raises major points of interest and company law in a rather cavalier spirit.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I too wish to say that I was extremely surprised at the brevity of the Statement. We have now received this report which was put in train on 9th April 1987. It has been with the Government since 1988; it has 752 pages and we are told practically nothing about what the Government wish to do about it.
In addition to the important questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, I wish to know

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whether the reference to the changes in the Companies Act 1989, with which we have recently been concerned in this House, fully deals with the points raised on pages 10 and 11 of the report. The inspectors specify there the weaknesses in the previous Companies Act to deal with the matters under review. They specify quite a large number of points. Obviously nobody has had time to read the report, let alone go to the legislation. I wish to ask the noble Lord whether all these points are fully covered by the short sentence in the Statement.
I turn to chapter 25 on page 503, which is an indication of the size of this monumental document. We see there a chapter of great interest headed, "Lessons from the Case". It sets out a number of important lessons which affect the financial authorities, the regulatory bodies, relations with the media and so on. That is referred to in the last sentence of the Statement which we have just heard:
"I have passed the report to all those authorities concerned with enforcement and regulation so that they may consider whether to take action …".
That seems to be rather a cavalier way of dealing with these important issues. Do the Government care whether or not they take action? Important points are raised here. Is the Governor of the Bank of England to be asked to get these various bodies together? Will the regulatory bodies be asked to do anything about it, or will it be left entirely to them to decide whether or not they wish to take any not ice?
In conclusion, I am extremely disturbed that a case as unusual as this—which is how it is described in the report—and dealt with as extensively as this, raising so many consequential isues, should have been covered in such a short Statement which raises many large questions still to be answered. I very much hope, with the noble Lord, Lord Williams, that we shall have the opportunity of returning to this with more time at our disposal.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Williams and Lord Ezra, asked me a number of questions. I shall reply to as many of them as I can.
First, on disqualification, under Section 8 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, the Secretary of State may apply to the court for a disqualification order if he considers:
"that it is expedient in the public interest"
for a disqualification order to be made. My right honourable friend has considered the matter most carefully and has concluded that it would not be in the public interest to seek such an order in this case. Those who read the report can make their own assessment of the conduct of those involved. The provisions of the Act are not intended as a punishment but as a protection for the public.
I should add that the mischiefs identified by the inspectors arose from the way in which the Fayeds acquired House of Fraser Holdings plc, not from the running of the company. Creditors and others can of course inspect the accounts and study the report.
I was asked to which other authorities the report had been passed. It was passed some time ago to the Serious Fraud Office and at about the same time to
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the Director of Public Prosecutions and also to the Bank of England, the Takeover Panel, the Inland Revenue, the Office of Fair Trading, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, the Metropolitan Police and most recently to the Law Society, the SIB and the TSA. I have also been asked about the changes that we have implemented since the contents of this report became known to the Government. That was some time ago. Part III of the Companies Act 1989 introduces a number of changes to the investigative system, including some that are recommended by the inspectors.
I was asked about the protection that would be available to those criticised in the report, if that is the way in which they wish to proceed. As the noble Lord will be aware, both sides in the report—if I may describe them thus—were given, in accordance with an undertaking given by my noble friend the then Secretary of State, sight of the report three days in advance of its publication. That enabled them to take legal action to prevent publication if they thought fit. None of them thought fit to do so.
6 p.m.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, I must say that the Statement seems too relaxed, bearing in mind the nature of the report in front of us. Fortunately that can be rectified. This is a first reaction and I have no doubt that after comments have been made in both Houses actions can be taken and extra thought given to the matter.
I would not be altogether happy if my friend relies only on the extra safeguards that he says are likely to be put in the Companies Act. There must be something a little more definite than that. My noble friend may not have the authority to do so this afternoon but perhaps as early as possible the Government ought to indicate that they have other steps in mind that they intend to take.
The key paragraph is contained in chapter 2 on page 23. It states:
"We see no reason to find any fault with the conduct of the Director General of Fair Trading and his staff in connection with the inquiries they made into the Fayeds' offer for HOF in 1984–85. It is, we hope, rare for deception of regulatory authorities to be practised on such a grand scale. They relied on what the Fayeds and their advisers"—
I emphasise the word "advisers"—
"were telling them which they tested to the extent which their resources permitted".
I particularly draw the attention of my noble friend to chapter 25 of the report which raises issues which need to be considered by the Office of Fair Trading if it is to feel safe in relying on assurances by advisers on future occasions.
On my first reading of part of the report—that is as much as I have been able to do so far—it seems to me to state that government departments are given a reasonably clear bill of health; that the Office of Fair Trading has been given a completely clear bill of health, but that the advisers upon whom they relied, Kleinwort Benson and its solicitor, Mr. Herbert Smith, were presumed to have made the necessary investigations in depth in order to give a fair description of the company. I hope that at this early stage my noble friend can indicate that steps

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will be taken to ensure that in future it will be possible to strengthen the responsibilities of advisers, be they banks, solicitors or any other body.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, my noble friend makes an interesting point. However, I believe the responsibility for the conduct of professional advisers such as merchant banks and solicitors does not necessarily rest with the Government. It is the Law Society which governs the conduct of solicitors and it is the Bank of England which governs the conduct of banks. The Bank of England received a copy of the report some time ago and the Law Society received a copy today. It is for those bodies to decide what action they need to take in the light of the report's findings. My noble friend is also quite right to point out that the propositions that the Fayed brothers made about their wealth to the authorities were supported fully by their professional advisers.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I have one or two quesions to ask. Would the report have been published but for the extreme pressure which was brought on the Government by Mr. Rowland and Lonrho? The impression is abroad that the Government would have liked to shove this report under the carpet. I hope the Minister can give me an assurance that that is not the case. Further, does not the Minister also agree that it was deplorable that a spokesman for the Al Fayeds should seek today in the media to cast doubt upon the findings of the report and therefore upon the integrity of the inspectors who conducted the investigation and issued the report?
Should it not now be understood—I know these are harsh words—and should the Government not make it understood—that anyone who shops at or does business with Harrods or any other House of Fraser establishment is dealing with proven liars and cheats? Under those circumstances would not the public interest be properly protected if the Secretary of State decided, as he may so decide, that the Al Fayeds were not fit and proper persons to remain directors of the House of Fraser? Why does the Secretary of State not do something along those lines? Will the Minister also inform the House about the position of Harrods' bank, as banking needs to be under the control of people of the utmost honesty and probity? Should not the Bank of England withdraw its authorisation from Harrods' bank under those circumstances?
I also wish to ask the Minister about Kleinwort Benson, whose name has been mentioned in the report and in the questions that have been asked so far. It seems that, to say the least, that company was lax in its inquiries about the Al Fayeds. Will the Government give an assurance that that firm will not in future be employed by them to give them advice on privatisation, or anything else for that matter?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as regards publication of the report, the noble Lord may recall that my noble friend the former Secretary of State said in this House that he was most anxious to publish the
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report and was only prevented from doing so because the prosecuting authorities were still pursuing their inquiries. That was certainly the position of my right honourable friend the present Secretary of State. He published the report the moment it was possible to do so in the view of the prosecuting authorities. They withdrew their objection to publication during the course of last week and the report was published as soon as possible thereafter.
As regards the disqualification of the directors, I cannot usefully add to what I said in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, earlier, that diqualification is designed as a protection for existing shareholders in particular and not as a punishment. Therefore my right honourable friend reached the conclusion that he did.
As regards Harrods' bank, that is an important matter but it is strictly a matter for the Bank of England and not for the Government. Similarly the position of Kleinwort Benson, the merchant bankers involved in the case, is not a matter for the Government but for the regulatory authorities in that case, which again is principally the Bank of England.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, the Minister said that disqualification is designed for the protection of shareholders. But surely he must see that the shareholders of Harrods and of the House of Fraser are in grave danger from the kind of persons we have been discussing.
Lord Trefgarne: Yes, my Lords, but they are principally the Al Fayed brothers themselves.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, before I say anything, I wish to emphasise what my noble friend Lord Williams said; namely, that no one, if that is the appropriate phrase, wishes to take sides in this rather sordid matter. Having said that, I should tell the House how mystified I am by these proceedings, the Statement and the report itself. My noble friend Lord Williams quoted paragraph 2.1.1 of the report. That paragraph, which comes under the heading "General Conclusions", states:
"The Fayeds dishonestly misrepresented their origins, their wealth, their business interests and their resources to the Secretary of State, the OFT, the Press, the HOF Board and HOF shareholders, and their own advisers".
Paragraph 2.1.2 states:
"During the course of our investigations we received evidence from the Fayeds, under solemn affirmation and in written memoranda, which was false and which the Fayeds knew to be false. In addition, the Fayeds produced a set of documents they knew to be false. This false evidence related mainly, but not exclusively, to their background, their past business activities and the way in which they came to be in control of enormous funds in the autumn of 1984 and the spring of 1985".
The Statement says that the public will be able to draw their own conclusions from the description of the conduct of these parties, as shown in the report. I am mystified for the following reason. If there is not absolutely conclusive evidence of the dreadful findings and accusations stated in paragraphs 2.1.1 and 2.1.2, it is a dreadful thing that inspectors should put them in the report in this way and in this damning fashion. That would be quite unforgivable

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if there was not conclusive evidence. As the Statement says, the public will draw their own conclusions from the conduct revealed in this report.
If, on the other hand, there is conclusive evidence, as there must be before responsible inspectors make this kind of conclusion without any qualification, where in the name of heaven is our criminal law? The report says that under solemn affirmation evidence was given which was false and which the Fayeds knew to be false. Where is our law of perjury? The report goes on to say that documents were presented which the Fayeds knew to be false and which we assume led to their taking over one of our national institutions. Is there no criminal law to deal with that?
If there is, I ask the Minister what is the state of our criminal law. If there is not conclusive evidence, how unfair that these remarks, comments and conclusions should be made in the report in such a definite way.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Lord rightly quoted from the summary of the report which appears in the opening pages. As he himself recognises, the report is 700 or so pages long and goes into great detail on some of the matters which the noble Lord mentioned.
Regarding the criminal law, as I have said, certain changes have been made in the Companies Act which the noble Lord, Lord Williams, and I discussed last year. They come into effect on 1st April. I agree that the report presents some very grave matters indeed. However, the question of prosecution is not a matter for Ministers, it is a matter for the prosecuting authorities.
Lord Denham: My Lords, before any noble Lord continues perhaps I may point out that we now have a firm limit of 20 minutes after my noble friend's first reply. Will noble Lords please keep their comments and questions as brief as is called for in the rules of order of this House?
Lord Marsh: Would the Minister be prepared to suggest to his noble friend the Leader of the House that it would be reasonable for this House to have an opportunity to debate this unique situation at greater length?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, that is not a matter for me but for the usual channels. I dare say that it will be discussed in those channels in due course.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I am concerned about the role of the Government in the issue. It has taken a long time for the report to be published, despite constant pressure. It is a very lame excuse that it has apparently taken 18 months for the prosecuting authorities to release the Department of Trade and Industry to publish it. As my noble friend Lord Mishcon has asked from the Front Bench—and the Minister has not answered him—what is happening to our prosecuting services if the matter takes so long?
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I should like to return to the mystery story that my noble friend Lord Williams told us at the outset. How is it that all those people and organisations were taken in by the story of the Al Fayeds? Why were the Government and the DTI taken in? I should like to quote my noble friend, Lord Bruce of Donington, who, on 28th November last (at col. 401 of Hansard, gave what may be an explanation of the mystery story. He accused the Government of:
"running to the Sultan of Brunei in January and February 1985, as a result of which 5 billion dollars passed across the exchanges in support of the pound, followed in some mysterious circumstances by unusual permission to acquire Harrods being given to the person holding power of attorney for the Sultan of Brunei".
That accusation has not been answered. It was not answered in that debate and it has not been answered since. My noble friend Lord Bruce pointed out that he was seeking an answer and if that answer was not forthcoming we should return to the matter. This is an opportunity for the noble Lord to answer that accusation.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am quite ready to say that that accusation is quite without foundation.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, I should like to comment, as a full-time working director in the City and a former director of Kleinwort Benson, although not at the time when these events occurred. Does the Minister not accept that the Statement is totally inadequate and will be seen in the City as very depressing? In the City there is considerable confusion about what is now proper behaviour and what is not proper behaviour. The Government must give a firm lead and not leave it to others to draw their own conclusions. We want the Government to state their conclusions very firmly to the City in order to give a lead.
Perhaps I may make a second, more general, point about the circumstances in which this matter arose. These people were able to perpetrate the deception because of the circumstances which now exist in the City in which advisers take on clients they have not met before and, in particular, the present rules for takeovers enable a takeover to operate very rapidly, especially in the case of a cash takeover. That is what happened in this case. I do not wish to defend the advisers, but they certainly had very little time to discover a great deal about the individuals concerned. Should there not be a further review of the takeover rules and code with a view to tightening up the rules?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if changes are to be made to the takeover rules that is a matter for the Takeover Panel, which has received a copy of the report and can make whatever changes it considers appropriate.
Concerning the noble Lord's first point, I believe that professional advisers, whether they be merchant bankers or solicitors, have a duty to ascertain that the undertakings that their clients give are properly substantiated. If they are not in a position to make the necessary verification they should find means to ensure that they do so.
Lord Morris: My Lords, it is quite clear from the report and from the Statement flowing from the report that
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, on a point of order, is there no one who can protect the business of the day? This is not the business of the day. If we are to have a debate let us have a debate, but a Statement should not dislodge the business of the day.
Lord Denham: My Lords, the rule is 20 minutes. If my noble friend is very brief my noble friend the Minister will be able to reply. If he is less than brief the Minister will not be able to reply.
Lord Morris: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that the report and the Statement flowing from the report make it absolutely plain that deceit was practised deliberately with the firm purpose of acquiring a controlling interest in a major British company? I fail to understand why it is not in the public interest that the holders of the shares should be compelled to divest themselves of the interest in those shares, just as the prosecuting authority ordered in another case.
Lord Denham: My Lords, if my noble friend will sit down now my noble friend the Minister will be able to give a very brief reply.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I dealt with the question of the possible disqualification of the directors concerned in an earlier reply to the noble Lord, Lord Williams, and others and I have nothing to add.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords,—
Noble Lords: Next business!
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord the Government Chief Whip if he is interpreting the recommendations of the Procedure Committee as a firm rule rather than as a recommendation? Will he therefore in future always close down debate on a Statement at the end of 20 minutes after the reply has been made to the Front Benches?
Lord Denham: Yes, my Lords. That is the agreement of the Procedure Committee and the leaders and Whips.

NHS: Pressures on Staff
6.20 p.m.
Lord Molloy Lord Molloy rose to call attention to the pressures on the staff of the National Health Service; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have for almost two decades been closely associated with the Confederation of Health Service Employees. In consequence, I have become pretty well known by
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and have known very well the other great national health organisations representing practically all staff. The list is quite formidable. I have been approached by the College of Speech Therapists, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Confederation of Health Service Employees, the Royal College of Nursing, the Health Visitors Association, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Midwives, all of whose members are experiencing grave pressure together with tension and anxiety which in some cases is bringing about a collapse among staff.
All the leaders of those great organisations within our National Health Service have echoed and agree with the words of the General Secretary of the Confederation of Health Service Employees, Mr. Hector McKenzie, when he said that, after 40 years of successful operation, it would be complacent and foolish to believe that the National Health Service would not benefit from some form of reform. Improvements must always be sought for the efficiency and effectiveness of health care and the effectiveness of the service itself. That approach has been accepted by all the organisations that I have mentioned, so it is not just a silly, stupid, anti-government attitude. If they were not concerned about the stress experienced by their members and the tension under which their members work, they would not be worth their salt.
The Confederation of Health Service Employees covers nurses, midwives, ambulance personnel, all ancillary staff, mental health nursing staff and other ward personnel. Sir Roy Griffiths' report on community care recommends that there should be a Minister for community care, but the White Paper Caring for People does not say that. Perhaps the noble Baroness who is to reply to the debate will tell us why there is no Minister for community care and why—this is a serious point—the plight of young district nurses in relation to post-operation responsibilities is now becoming exceeding difficult.
The Confederation of Health Service Employees welcomes that part of the White Paper which establishes clear responsibility for all people requiring care and support, but it is impossible to fulfil that obligation without sufficient funds. The Confederation simply says therefore "Give us the tools. We have the inspiration and we shall do the job".
The Royal College of Nursing and the Confederation of Health Service Employees believe that poor medical equipment is still extant, that there is inadequate overtime compensation for nurses and—I find this point very moving—that there is a lack of support for nurses in their other capacity as mothers. I hope that that point will be considered.
The Royal College of Nursing set up a working group to consider the issues concerning our nurses in the National Health Service. It found that certain key areas lead to increased pressures on nursing staff. The Royal College is also perturbed at the fact that patient throughput has drastically increased. In consequence, according to the Royal College of

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Nursing, deaths and discharges have increased from 5,400,000 in 1979 to 6·5 million in 1988–89. Many patients are therefore in hospital for a shorter time and are sometimes pushed out almost as ill as they came in in order to fit in with the Government's scheme of abolishing care and compassion and of saving money. That great Christian ideal of the National Health Sevice is now under attack from the Administration. The RSM says that that places great demands and increases pressures on nurses. The more difficult things and more poignant things they have to do increases the pressure. The RSM also says that, as patients leave hospital more quickly due to a desire to increase throughput, in consequence stress on community care becomes very heavy.
It is very distressing to have to read something which we can perhaps never understand. A young nurse or doctor may have been looking after a patient in hospital after an operation. That is where the work of the nurse is fundamental; but, because of that policy, the patient may be turned out and may then die. The Royal College of Nursing and the Confederation of Health Service Employees tell me that that is a most shameful effect in this day and age and in this country. When the person who operated on the patient and the person who nursed and comforted him realise that he is dead, it has an effect on the young person whom we call a British nurse.
The Royal College also believes that recruitment and training under that system is in jepoardy, yet every 1 per cent. reduction in the wastage of qualified nursing staff would save the National Health Service over £100 million a year. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, will note that point. Many qualified nurses leave the job. They do not want to be nurses any more. They are saddened by and fed up with their sufferings. If we can stop 1 per cent. resigning, that will save £100 million a year. I beg that the voices of the Confederation of Health Service Employees and of the Royal College of Nursing should be heeded.
I now turn to the difficult question of the opting out of hospitals in accordance with the Government's two-part strategy to commercialise the National Health Service. The internal market competition plus the existence of independent suppliers will create havoc. All the great organisations believe that the proposal is undemocratic. It reduces patient choice and quality of care. Our National Health Service will no longer be a national service. How many people in each hospital will decide whether to go outside the NHS? The general public have a right to know who will make the decision when a hospital decides to go outside the NHS. The great organisations as well as ordinary people claim that they have a right to know who will make those decisions.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, does the noble Lord realise that there is no question of a self-governing hospital acting outside the NHS? It will not move outside the NHS. Just because the noble Lord said it three times does not mean to say
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that it is true. It is not true. Those hospitals will stay within the National Health Service.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I note what the noble Lord said. I now have to decide between what he has just said and what the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said. And there is the recent episode in Guy's Hospital. Perhaps it may help if I read out a statement made by Professor Harry Keen of Guy's Hospital, which was widely reported.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: No, my Lords.
Lord Molloy: What is wrong with being Professor Harry Keen?
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, Professor Keen has been a life-long member of the Labour Party and has communist connections and he is therefore very much opposed to these changes.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I have been in Parliament for a quarter of a century and that is the most distasteful and disgusting statement that I have ever heard. If anyone in my party were to say, "He has been a member of the Tory Party" it would be a shameful thing to say. I do not know whether the noble Lord has been elected to any office in this parliament but I have never heard any noble Lord say to me that something said is invalid because he is a Member of the Labour Party or the SDP or a Liberal—a member of any party. I have not heard that said before in a very long time.
Let me go on to make my point. It was reported that there was secret junketing at luxury hotels in London. To speed NHS hospitals—and let me say it slowly—to opt out of local authority control (I do not expect an answer from the Minister immediately although I expect the matter to be investigated) at a cost of £20,000 per meeting without knowledge of hospital staff or doctors involved. The Government refused to publish any agenda, minutes or costs involved.
I want to know who did the organising for that junketing. This has infuriated distinguished members of the medical profession, like Professor Harry Keen, who is also chairman of the NHS Support Federation and a consultant at Guy's Hospital. Is it an offence to be chairman of the NHS Support Federation? Is it an offence to be a member of the Labour Party and be a consultant at Guy's Hospital? Thank God! This is not yet a communist country. I am bound to say that all this is somewhat redolent of government inspired hints of some form of corruption or at least sharp practice.
I ask the Government to investigate exactly how such things happened? Are they in point of fact truthful and accurate, as I have stated them? There is enough evidence, I submit, that they are worthy of investigation. In opting out, I believe that there will be an agonising choice. Who will be responsible for the staff? Who will be responsible for the cash? Who will be answerable if there is a shortage of both when that opting out takes place?

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If, after opting out, there is no profit, will the hospital be closed down? Will there be competition to win business? Will those hospitals specialise in rich patients and compete for business? There will be a danger of cutting the umbilical cord between professional staff at all levels, management and the Government. Will Whitley Council agreements be abandoned? Despite the great professional service to staff and patients, it would be a sad day if the organsiations could not work together under the principles of the Whitley Council. Can universal and equal care always be available when needed? That is another fundamental principle.
I also believe that there is a danger in the two-tier system. Those hospitals which cannot opt out will become cheap and nasty. Will desperation, pain, illness, fear of illness and worry be allowed to work their way through our National Health Service and into the homes of many ordinary people? I believe that there is a very serious risk of jettisoning the superb organisation that we have for consultation between members of staff and officials in the National Health Service and indeed members of the Government.
Many people say to me that what they find remarkable, if not distasteful, is that so much of this conversation does not go on under the auspices of Mr. Kenneth Clarke in the Department of Health. It all goes on in 10 Downing Street. We want to know why.
The BMA claims to have evidence of enormous opposition to the government reforms of the National Health Service. I do not for one moment believe that every single member of the British Medical Association is a member of a political party, let alone a member of the Conservative or Tory Party. I know them too well. They are too much involved in their great medical association which is world renowned. It conducted a poll in which 71 per cent. of those asked showed disapproval of the Government's attitude to the National Health Service and to their White Papers. The chairman of the British Medical Council, Dr. John Marks—who may be a bad person in some people's eyes but I do not believe that he is—said that the Government should recognise that those untried ideas were very unpopular. That is a moderate statement. He simply wants to know whether the Government will recognise or test how these things are making people unhappy.
Like COHSE and the BMA the Royal College of Psychiatrists say that Working for Patients is an admirable and superb document, but that its interpretation is causing stress and strain. There are doubts about the practicability. It was devised in Downing Street and not at the Department of Health. There is a dangerous deregulation of NHS hospitals. The Royal College of Psychiatrists say that training and research is ignored. Last July it met Mr. Clarke who said that very little could be done but that brochures would be issued. As the Royal College says: man cannot live by brochures alone. It is of the opinion that psychiatric patients need extra care and to enjoy extra protection from the Mental Health Act Commission and the Health Advisory Service.
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For the mentally ill the national development board together with the present existing arrangements under the Mental Health Act must work together and be assisted financially. Local authorities do not provide "out of hour" services. That contravenes the code of practice of the Mental Health Act. There is also a need for sheltered housing.
Another organisation with which I have had a great deal of contact is the Health Visitors' Association. It consists of very remarkable people who are devoted—just as are our surgeons, doctors and midwives—to serving our National Health Service. They are concerned at the reductions in staff levels, which result in the threat of health visitors' services being closed. In January this year Greenwich Health Authority suspended all routine health visiting services. The health authorities are not recruiting staff; rather, they are trimming back health visiting services. That is causing great strain and stress among the members of the Health Visitors' Association. Their heavy workloads are increasing, as is what they term burn-out, which results in high staff turnover. They also believe that there is a danger of this act, which is being encouraged by government and some local authorities, being a breach of professional conduct. They want these matters to be looked at. I do not think that that is a great deal to ask the Minister. I hope that he will look into these questions.
The Government want doctors and nurses to be able to cost every single service which they provide right down to the last bedpan. The doctors and nurses say that that is what the Government really want, and that it is a hopeless task to undertake. They want hospitals to be run by a board of directors. They want to get rid of national agreements on pay and conditions of staff. I believe that that would be an absurdity. All the organisations believe it also.
The Government want to create an internal market in which hospitals sell their services to health authorities. People working in the National Health Service believe that that is the last thing that is wanted. Members of all the professions who devote their lives and skills to the NHS realise, as do their patients, that silent pain evokes no response. For that reason they are speaking up now and asking for attention.
Those great organisations make no massive demands. They say merely that they are apprehensive, and they speak with great experience and speak fairly. However, they and I are afraid that we could be witnessing the evaporation of our civilised sense of compassion. That sense of compassion was the envy of the world when Aneurin Bevan created the National Health Service. I hope that it will always be the envy of the world and that other countries will follow. When the British undertake something of such calibre—as in the creation of the NHS—not only does it uplift the spirits of the British people but it becomes an example to all mankind.
6.40 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, when commenting on the problems which continually beset the National Health Service, members of my

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profession are all too often accused of purveying unjustifiable doom and gloom. That is so especially when discussing the recurring financial problems and the seemingly insurmountable difficulties associated with the unremitting pressures upon the staff of the service—the topic which is the theme of our debate.
Whether any of those problems will be alleviated by the provisions of the National Health Service and Community Care Bill is a matter of opinion but the Bill is soon to be debated in your Lordships' House. It would not be proper to consider its detailed proposals today. However, while it contains many provisions which I would warmly welcome, there are others about which I have substantial reservations.
I am one of the many in this country who gladly acknowledge the outstanding achievements of the NHS, especially in the field of emergency care. It is a system of health care delivery operating alongside an expanding private health care system with which it can, if both are properly managed, develop a healthy partnership of mutual benefit. The NHS system is one which I personally prefer to that which exists in many other countries which I have visited and worked in, including especially the United States of America. I visit that country regularly and there is no doubt that, while many aspects of its health care system are superb, many are at present in total disarray. I also fully acknowledge that Her Majesty's Government are now devoting more financial resources to the NHS than did any of their predecessors and that more patients are being treated.
Why is it then that health authorities throughout the country are facing substantial financial deficits in the current financial year which they see no prospect of recouping, even within the increased financial allocation recently announced for the coming year? In consequence authorities such as those in Newcastle upon Tyne and our near neighbour at St. Thomas's Hospital—to quote but two of the many examples—have been compelled to announce substantial bed closures with an inevitable consequential decline in patient care and in the clinical teaching facilities available to the doctors and nurses of tomorrow. And why is it that there are still junior hospital doctors throughout the country who are contracted to work unacceptably long hours, some still involving one-in-two rotas?
The first question is easily answered. Many noble Lords will believe that I am simply repeating, parrot-like, views which have been constantly expressed over many years by members of my profession to governments of all political persuasions. But the evidence is irrefutable: despite its rapidly escalating costs the service has for many years been, I fear, chronically under-funded. It gives wonderful value for money but when we spend only 6 per cent. of our gross national product on health—the figure is quite unacceptable—compared, for example, with about 9 per cent. in France and Germany and 12 per cent. in the United States, it is not surprising that the service is unable to meet the increasing demands and public expectations imposed upon it.
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Report after report from the Royal colleges and faculties, which have examined the need for patient services and increased staffing in a wide range of specialities in medicine, have identified serious shortages of consultant posts and of the facilities which burgeoning developments in medical science require and which our patients may justly feel that they deserve. Of course, no developed country, however wealthy it may be and whatever its economic success, can ever hope to provide a fully comprehensive health service offering openly all that medicine and medical science can provide completely free of charge and funded entirely from direct taxation.
But when in this country one enumerates just a few of the remarkable developments in patient care which modern medical science has wrought in a few years—including, for example, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; kidney, lung, liver and heart transplantation; joint replacement; the crushing of gallstones and kidney stones without surgery; the increasingly effective chemotherapy of many forms of cancer; and the use of DNA recombinant technology in the diagnosis and prevention of inherited disease, all of which are complex, time-consuming and very expensive—it is not surprising that, faced with those competing demands, many health authorities, recognising as they must the need to define priorities when allocating resources, are bewildered, even bemused, by the necessity of having to make painful choices between so many worthy alternatives.
One must also add to that every-growing list the needs of a rapidly growing cohort of elderly people, imposing increasing demands upon the service in our hospitals and in the community; the obvious need to improve the facilities necessary in order to offer screening programmes for cancer prevention and for the care and rehabilitation of handicapped and disabled people; and the very reasonable expectations of the public, some of which are being increasingly reinforced by the threat of legal action if the facilities requested are withheld. They all impose increasing demands upon the service and its staff which cannot at present be met.
I should like to quote only a few examples and first mention my speciality. In the UK there are 178 consultant neurologists practically all of whom carry a totally unacceptable workload of clinical care and responsibility. That is one-twentieth the number of consultant neurologists per unit of the population available in the United States. Even Finland, with a population of 4·5 million, has 400 neurologists. A similar pattern exists in neuro-surgery and in innumerable other specialities in the UK.
In many parts of the country the number of, for instance, cytologists, cyto-geneticists and medical laboratory scientific officers available to examine cervical smears or to help in the pre-natal diagnosis of Down's syndrome, to mention only two examples, are inadequate to cope with the workload.
Of course the list is endless and I accept that the solution is not at all easy to find, especially when staff in all grades, and recently medical secretaries, are being lost to the service in increasing numbers

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as a result of the infinitely greater financial rewards they can command in the private sector.
In the face of such a situation it was somewhat less than helpful to read a few days ago that, if he was quoted correctly, the Secretary of State suggested that this year over-spending by health authorities has been due to mismanagement. In fact, financial allocations have failed to supplement fully nationally agreed salary increases for all grades of staff or to take full account of inflationary price increases. Repeatedly, health authorities have been told to find the shortfall from so-called efficiency savings, just as they have so often been told to find the much-needed funding for additional consultant posts, all too few in number, from within their existing resources. And, of course, the unremitting pressures upon junior medical staff in our hospitals simply cannot be relieved by any trick of administrative sleight of hand when the clinical work is there to be done and ongoing responsibility for patient care must be shouldered.
Of course, the problem could be met if the number of junior medical staff could be increased to share the load or if, above all, consultant numbers could be increased so substantially that a greater share of the on-call and emergency duty could be assumed by consultants rather than their juniors. We must all acknowledge that the ability to work long hours when necessary and to offer continuity of clinical care to sick people is an essential part of the training and experience of young doctors. However, such prolonged periods of unremitting responsibility must not occur too frequently and must be compensated by adequate periods of rest and relaxation if powers of concentration and working efficiency in the face of all the arduous demands of modern medicine are to be maintained.
The problem cannot be solved by increasing the numbers of registrars and senior registrars. For as long as overall consultant numbers in the service are unfortunately constrained in the face of increasing demand through financial stringency and lack of facilities, registrars must be reasonably assured of being able to succeed eventually to a consultant vacancy.
Recent surveys and my own personal experience have clearly demonstrated that NHS consultants are for the most part working much longer hours than the hours for which they are contracted. If their numbers were very substantially increased and the facilities were available for them to carry out the work which they have been trained to do, I know that they would willingly do what they could to reduce the hours being worked by their juniors. An increase in the number of registrars being trained to fill the increased consultant vacancies then available would follow with further sharing of the clinical load.
Therefore, whatever the outcome of our forthcoming debates on the NHS Bill, I am afraid that in the end it comes down to a question of money. We need many more consultants as well as staff in non-medical grades in our NHS. Health authorities need to be able to plan ahead with an assurance from central government that nationally agreed salary increases will be fully supplemented,
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as will the inflationary price increases for food and supplies.
In my view it is essential that some of the increased financial allocations, for which I recognise fully that the Secretary of State has had to fight very hard should be made available to fund much needed new developments instead of being used simply to plug the yawning gaps which some previous chronic underfunding has created. A new baseline or starting point is, I believe, necessary.
I know full well how bitterly the Treasury is opposed to any form of earmarking of income from taxes, but how I wish that we could have an index-linked income-related health tax to establish a much firmer financial infrastructure for our service. I believe that, if fully informed, the British public, who are deeply concerned about the NHS, might well accept that. Can we not find a means of revitalising the technique of funding, both in the short term and long term, our much-loved National Health Service in order to relieve the pressures which for many years the staff have shouldered cheerfully and willingly? I fear that the signs of growing frustration leading all too often to the resignation or early retirement of invaluable members of staff are all too readily evident at present.
6.53 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, two subjects have been debated in your Lordships' House on frequent occasions over the past decade or so. One is the National Health Service and the other is transport. I do not believe that your Lordships' House need make any apologies for that because they are both vital subjects.
The wording of this Motion poses a number of difficulties because I venture to suggest that ever since 1948 when the National Health Service came into being there have been pressures on it. Admittedly today we are treating some 50 million people under our National Health Service, and when tourists come here that number is frequently increased. Therefore, I believe that when we consider this Motion we must put those figures into perspective.
We have here two problems: diagnosis and cure. It is not difficult to diagnose pressures on staff in the National Health Service. It is not difficult to diagnose pressures in many walks of life nowadays. Cure is much harder. There are pleas for more money to be injected into the National Health Service. I do not quarrel with that but I believe it is fair to point out that more money is now being injected into the National Health Service than at any other time and more patients are being treated. The real problem is where that money is going. That is one of the problems which we shall debate when the legislation on the White Paper is before your Lordships' House in the next few months. I do not propose this evening to embark upon a discussion on the White Paper. I believe that that is for much closer discussion and scrutiny which your Lordships' House will have a duty on all sides to give to that White Paper.
In the 31 years which I have spent in your Lordships' House I shudder to think how many

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Royal Commissions, Blue Papers and Yellow Papers there have been on the health service, chaired by very distinguished and well-meaning people. The real tragedy is that, under all governments, not a great deal always emanates from that. I believe it is fair to say that in 1990 all parties are committed to the National Health Services. I do not believe that there can be any argument about that. Like most noble Lords, I have family concerned with the National Health Service. My youngest daughter is a staff nurse and I had an uncle who was secretary of Kingston Hospital when the National Health Service came into being. I am the president of the friends of our local hospital in Surrey. In fact, I should have been at a meeting there this afternoon but I felt that this debate was more important.
I was interested in the observations which the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, made about Finland because that is a country of which I have some parliamentary knowledge, and I am involved in non-financial business there. I have visited no fewer than five hospitals in Finland: two in Helsinki, one in Tampere, one in Rovaniemi, and one in Kemijärvi. I was with a parliamentary delegation to Kemijärvi. We asked about certain pressures there. There were some 35,000 people on the waiting lists. There was a 12-month waiting list for a hernia because there is a big paper mill nearby. There are the usual problems of a place which is 300 or 400 miles from the capital city as regards referrals. Requests are made for referrals to Rovaniemi but in fact cases are referred to Helsinki.
I have been to Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. I always make it my duty, if I can, to visit a hospital in those countries to see what happens and to try to talk over some of the problems and pressures they have. I believe it is true to say that there is not a country in the world where there are not pressures on the health service. There are staff shortages, nursing shortages and, not so much in the cities but in the rural areas, shortages of doctors because everybody likes to gravitate to the capital city.
I do not believe that that problem is necessarily confined to this country. However, turning to this country, I recently visited one of the leading London teaching hospitals in the company of the head of the anaesthesia department of that hospital. We found some disturbing factors there. The dialysis unit is threatened with partial closure because it cannot obtain trained staff. There is a shortage of technicians—I think that is the correct word—for the operating theatres and operating lists have had to be cut. Those are some of the problems experienced by a London teaching hospital. In the district hospitals the situation is more serious. Again, the diagnosis is easy; the solution is much more difficult.
I should like to put to my noble friend the Minister a question of which I have given notice; it specifically concerns teaching hospitals. The cost of housing in London and the South East is very high—that remark may be a masterpiece of simplicity. However, housing costs are a positive disincentive to finding staff, particularly those who are married with young children. Perhaps the Government could look
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seriously into this problem, because I believe that waiting lists could be cut if staff could be found. It is not an easy matter. There are professions other than the health service which have similar problems.
Health is vital. I believe it is absolutely essential that something is done to prevent the shortage of trained technicians in, for example, kidney dialysis units. I speak with some experience because three years ago I had my gall bladder removed, under the health service, in my local district hospital. I was in hospital for nine days. At the same time my brother had a kidney transplant in Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He was in hospital for seven days. Those in this House who are doctors will know full well how long we would have been in hospital 10 years ago. We therefore have to see in proportion the considerable advance in techniques in medical treatment, the many more people being treated and the pressures which are put on the doctors, technicians and nurses as a result of the need to master new equipment. That is where the pressures lie, and they will lie there under any government.
It is very unfortunate that the health service has become embroiled in the cockpit of party politics. I have always felt that. It is inevitable, but it is sad because one party can vie with another as to the number of hospitals it will build and how many nurses it will recruit, but the old lady waiting for her hip replacement operation will not thank a Labour Government, a Conservative Government or any other government if politicians squabble. We are all to blame.
It is all too easy to diagnose pressures and analyse why they exist. One only needs to walk round a hospital to recognise them, let alone work in it or be a patient. Last year there was a television series concerning two hospitals in Portsmouth which showed the enormous strains under which the junior doctors worked. I hope that the review of junior doctors' working hours is carried out rapidly. Again, it is not an easy problem to solve. It is easy to diagnose, but not so easy to cure. However, it is a matter of urgency.
Perhaps I may say in conclusion that the cures are not easy, but unless something is done with regard to waiting lists and recruiting suitable staff for these hospitals the problems will escalate.
7.5 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, I rise to speak as one of the National Health Service hospital patients who has not yet died, despite the harrowing conditions so graphically described by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. I say to the noble Lord at once that I experienced those conditions and will return to them in a moment.
It is the first time in my experience in a debate such as this that I have found more speakers below the line on the speakers' list than above it. There are reasons for that. In this Chamber we have debated the National Health Service so often recently that noble Lords are reluctant—and rightly so in my opinion—to rise and repeat the same points over again. I share that reluctance and shall try not to err in that direction.

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That dilemma should not be regarded as implying any criticism of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, has been indefatigable in raising the problems of National Health Service staff, particularly nursing staff, but we are now asked to look at the problems of all staff. They all have problems and all work under intense pressure. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, implied, in the early years the National Health Service only kept going because of the dedication and devotion to duty of its staff, who were under intense pressures in those days. However, times have changed. I suspect that dedication to duty alone is no longer an adequate motivation for the maintenance of the service as we would wish to see it.
I do not intend to say anything about the National Health Service and Community Care Bill, save that uncertainty about its provisions has been and is being demoralising to all staff, particularly as many of them do not have much say in how the provisions of the Bill are to be implemented. For example, the decision as to whether a hospital is to opt for self-governing status rests almost wholly with senior consultants. They are probably the people who know best, but the outcome of a decision to opt out or stay in is, in my opinion, likely to be very much better if all staff play some part in the decision process.
As many noble Lords know, I recently spent some time in one of our major teaching hospitals, the Manchester Royal Infirmary, where I was trained and in which I had a carcinoma removed—successfully, I hope—and treatment for a neuralgic condition, which condition has left me with a minor speech defect, in respect of which I crave noble Lords' indulgence.
The Manchester Royal Infirmary has no choice but to opt for self-governing status. That is my opinion. I may be wrong; I have been wrong before. I was wrong when I said to your Lordships three years ago that the best way to improve morale in the National Health Service was once again to appoint a single Minister of Cabinet rank to be responsible for the health service and nothing else. We now have one, but morale has not gone up; it has gone down. I have been wrong before and I may be wrong this time.
The Manchester Royal Infirmary—a hospital with a wonderful history—has produced some outstanding people; Sir Geoffrey Jefferson, Sir Harry Platt, the late Lord Platt, and many people who have made a major contribution to medicine. However, the hospital at the moment looks like a battlefield. The old and dilapidated hospital is being demolished while the new one is erected within it. Because of staff shortages and other difficulties all sorts of odd devices are employed to get by. For example, they have things called "week-day wards". I was in one. It is a ward where everybody is sent home on Friday, if they are fit to be sent home, and then brought back on Monday. If they are not fit to go home they are put in another ward for the weekend—a ward where no one knows anything about them at all. I
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was left on my own in splended isolation with no one within 100 yards of me.
I was not receiving preferential treatment. I do not believe that I ever do receive it. Indeed, it might be useful if I told your Lordships of my wife's experience many years ago when she attended a National Health Service hospital for a minor operation. She was in a National Health Service bed. I was a Member in another place at the time. A battleaxe of a hospital sister told my wife, "Mrs. Winstanley, it is no good expecting special privileges because your husband is an MP". Quite rightly my wife said, "I would not dream of asking for them". About two hours later the same battleaxe of a sister came to my wife and said. "Oh, Mrs. Winstanley, I did not know that your husband was a doctor. We are putting you in a side ward". Surely that says something about the pecking order in the National Health Service!
My experiences in hospital have left me with the impression that all staff are under intense pressure and that morale might be better if so-called junior staff had a little more say in what is happening now and what will happen under the Bill when it becomes an Act. We have that extraordinary example of a ward being emptied at the weekend, with patients being put into another ward. The nurses loathed it. I am not suggesting that it could be avoided. That hospital, as I said, is in a terrible situation. I believe that it could be restored to a different situation but—and this is my personal opinion—it will need to opt for self-governing status. That is an argument for another occasion.
I return specifically to staff. We have spent much time in your Lordships' House debating the Bill presented by the noble Lord, Lord Rea—the Junior Hospital Doctors (Regulation of Hours) Bill. A fat lot of good that did us, or indeed the junior doctors. Frankly, the situation is unchanged though I understand that there is hope on the horizon. I am told that a conference is to be held for all interested parties sometime before Easter. I believe that that conference has been announced by Mrs. Bottomley. I hope that when the noble Baroness replies she will be able to say a little more about the conference and whether we may hope for any solution.
I recall the late Lord Trafford saying not long ago in this House that there was no reason for junior hospital doctors to work these absurd hours and if they did the fault lay with the consultants. Lord Trafford was wrong. The consultants could help but the noble Lord, Lord Walton, is absolutely right that there are not enough consultants. Unless we have more, that problem of ever-lengthening junior hospital doctors' hours will remain with us virtually for all time.
When the noble Baroness gives the House some news on that aspect perhaps she can also say something about the present situation in regard to the recruitment of hospital social workers. These are very important people indeed. I remember raising the matter in this House with one of the predecessors of the noble Baroness, when hospital social workers were not being recruited because of a dispute between the Department of Health and the various

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local authority associations regarding an agreement about sharing of costs. Where are we now in that regard? Unless we recruit and retain sufficient hospital social workers there is no doubt at all in my mind that the burdens on the citizens advice bureaux, which we debated earlier today, will be doubled. I hope the noble Baroness will be able to say something about that.
I now turn to a group of workers that is too frequently overlooked; but not overlooked by the noble Lord, Lord Walton, I am delighted to say. I refer to hospital clerical staff and medical secretaries. Many are so overworked and underpaid that they leave. When staff are pushed almost to breaking point—perhaps it would be more apt to say leaving point—surely the time has come to take action.
The problems within the National Health Service in regard to secretarial services are little publicised but are of great concern. The market for secretaries must be as close to a perfect market as any, but with the NHS offering salaries between 30 per cent. and 50 per cent. below the commercial equivalent it is hardly surprising that the service finds it hard to recruit and retain competent staff for long. Newly trained secretaries may stay for six months or so, until they have enough experience to command much higher salaries elsewhere. Large amounts of money are wasted on continuous advertising for staff.
More regularly, posts are simply not filled. Some organisations in the NHS scrape by by using up to 80 per cent. of temporary secretaries. An NHS salary intended to pay for 36 hours of secretarial work each week is, however, sufficient only to pay a temporary secretary for 20 hours. The result is either massive overspend on budgets, and therefore cuts in clinical services, or a secretarial staff that is far too small to carry out the demands made on it. That is coupled with much more highly paid staff, such as consultants, having to hand write letters and carry out other duties which should be done by the secretaries they do not have. If general practitioners cannot get letters from consultants about patients whom they have referred to the consultants, then general practice will be in great difficulties. That situation must be remedied.
Having mentioned general practice, perhaps I should say a few more words about it before I sit down. My wife is presently suffering from shingles. Your Lordships will gather that my family is a heavy burden on the National Health Service at the moment. Hard luck; I have done enough for the service in the past. I am not revealing any improper clinical details or breaching professional confidentialities because my wife is not my patient. The general practitioner whom I called in—a very able chap who was a trainee with me a long time ago when he first started—examined my wife and confirmed my diagnosis. He prescribed some extremely expensive tablets. When I looked at the cost of them I thought that if I had shingles I would rather have the money than the tablets.
I asked him how he justified prescribing such tablets. He did so by saying that, as I knew—I had not forgotten—one of the dangers of shingles is the
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development of what is called post-herpetic neuralgia. It is a condition which can continue for years afterwards. It is hoped that treatment early enough with these anti-viral preparations will substantially reduce the incidence of post-herpetic neuralgia. If so, it will save the National Health Service a great deal of money, but the prescriptions are expensive.
It is intolerable that in the future general practitioners will have to wrestle with ambiguities of that nature; working out how to balance the benefits between one course of action and another. Again, that is an area in general practice where there is a great deal of uncertainty. The general practitioner who treated my wife said to me, "Tell your pals in the House of Lords that there are three kinds of general practitioner: those who have just come in and wish they had not; those who have been in for years and are now getting out; and all those in the middle who have no idea what to do".
There is a decline in morale among general practitioners, partly because of uncertainty about the way the new deal is to be carried out. It is a pity there has to be so much uncertainty. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, well knows that before the new Bill there were provisions to deal adequately with extravagant prescribing. They existed. They were never used properly and never enforced. We do not need this new mechanism of budgets.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, they cost a lot, too.
Lord Winstanley: And they cost a lot, my Lords, as the noble Lord said. That is another aspect that must be considered.
I conclude by saying that all people who work in the National Health Service are under intense pressure. They always will be. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, is absolutely right—at the end of the day it comes down to money. Not enough is being spent. Every week we are told that more money is being spent and I believe that, but it is immediately apparent from looking at some of the old hospitals that not enough money is being spent. The Government cannot get away from that. Do not ask me where they will get the money, but they must get it somewhere.
7.19 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I first thank my noble friend Lord Molloy for introducing the debate. He is a great campaigner for the National Health Service and he should receive the credit that he deserves.
I also want to refer to other speeches. I should like to say a few words about the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, who said he has been in this House for 31 years. His service to the NHS has been over a longer period than that. It is quite remarkable that whenever your Lordships are debating health the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, is with us. I pay my tribute to him as I do to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. It is courageous of him to be back after the treatment that he has had. We are glad to see him well again. He is much better than he thinks he is. He owes a great deal to the National Health Service and he is a dedicated supporter of it.

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I wish to say a few words about the noble Lord, Lord Walton, because he is a new boy among us. I believe it was a very wise decision to bring him to your Lordships' House. He is a very distinguished neurologist who is known throughout the world. From the moment that he took his place here he showed that his concern is to put his experience at the disposal of your Lordships on every occasion when he can and when we need it—and long may it be so.
I partly said that because I wish I could say the same for the noble Lord, Lord McColl. When he made his maiden speech, I had the opportunity of congratulating and welcoming him and saying that I thought he would add enormously to our debates if he were here and able to enlighten them with his experience. In the past two debates he has intervened without making a speech. It may be that he regrets doing that, but I believe that the House regrets it even more. I told the noble Lord that I was going to make these remarks in his absence. I plead with him to put his experience, knowledge and wit at the disposal of your Lordships by a considered presentation. It cannot be a considered presentation if one lambasts a colleague by referring to his supposed political origins. That is not a quality which we expect in your Lordships' House.
As has been said, this debate is not about the Bill, though a good deal of reference has been made to it. I wish to follow up one or two of those references before coming to the main subject. It will not be long before you Lordships will be occupied with debates on this extremely important Bill. Whether or not an action was effective before the courts, I find it very unfortunate that before the Bill has been debated in your Lordships' House even for one day, preparations are being made to impose it on the National Health Service, on the professions that work in it and on the public who benefit from the service. That is before the Bill has had parliamentary consideration.
My noble friend referred to what he called secret junketings in NHS hotels. I shall not go into the details of that. However, I find it very distasteful that people who are not part of the National Health Service gather together in conferences, sometimes in hospitals or hotels—certainly at large expense—planning what is going to happen when proposals which have not yet reached your Lordships' House are carried through. That is wrong and it is showing a gross disrespect to Parliament and our system of debates.
It is true that the Bill is before the other place and that it will get here, but as each day goes by more decisions are being taking by groups of people who do not want their names known. They are known as non-executive helpers and people who have been chosen to run opted-out hospitals when the Bill is fully implemented. These measures have not yet been approved and they are opposed by many people in the country. We saw the opinion polls published only two days ago. A Gallup poll based on scientific evidence showed that the public are even more opposed to the Government proposals than when its views were last sought. That opposition is affecting
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morale in the health service and it is part of the condition under which people are now working.
It is leading to dissent and not just to uncertainty as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. Dissent is being shown by colleagues who oppose each other, and there has been an example of this in a brief and unfortunate intervention earlier in this debate. Morale is very low and that is partly because of all the uncertainty and the feeling that views are not being considered but pushed aside while decisions are taken in offices and elsewhere. It is not a question of sandwiches in smoke-filled rooms, but decisions taking place in pretty plush hotels.
My noble friend Lord Walton referred to some of the conditions. He referred to junior hospital doctors and to the tremendous pressure under which they work. I am glad that he did so. He also referred to the shortage of consultants. Speaking from my own experience, I agree with him. Consultants are working under very difficult conditions, and they are often working very much longer hours than they are paid to do. We owe an enormous debt of appreciation to all those in the National Health Service. I refer to the doctors and the nurses who provide about one-half of all those who work within the service. In addition, I refer to the professions allied to medicine such as the occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, radiographers and chiropodists besides all the others who play such a vital role in the National Health Service.
I have been looking at the evidence put forward to the review body in support of the pay claim for nursing staff, midwives, health visitors and other professions allied to medicine. It is clear that there was worry about the staff turnover. Paragraph 23 of the evidence shows that the turnover rates in 1987–88 ranged from 10·6 per cent. in radiography, to 19·5 per cent. in physiotherapy. Those figures relate to each year. I know of the tremendous pressure to which occupational therapists are subjected. They are now operating at roughly 20 per cent. below their establishment figure because not enough training provisions have been approved by the Government. The independent report prepared by a commission of inquiry headed by Louis Blom-Cooper said that in its view there needed to be an 80 per cent. expansion in occupational therapy in order that it may fulfil its roles in hospitals, with the local authorities and in the community. All of the bodies in the supplementary professions are working under very hard conditions.
My noble friend referred to poor conditions in health service premises. That is part of the evidence submitted by the Royal College of Nursing. Most health service premises are old and rundown buildings. Approximately 81 per cent. of NHS buildings in England were built before 1918. Poor maintenance of NHS property has become endemic throughout the United Kingdom.
A report prepared by the National Audit Office and published in March 1988 states that it is evident that the backlog of maintenance remains a serious problem. It is estimated that £2 billion will be required to clear the backlog of maintenance just in

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England. The report criticises the DHSS for having very little centrally-held information as to the present state of NHS property. The evidence refers to poor medical equipment and that much of it in NHS hospitals is dangerously outdated. There is also reference to the lack of childcare facilities with too few creches in NHS offices or childcare facilities for older children after school or during school holidays.
When we say that we want the nurses with their experience to return to the hospitals, the problem is that the conditions under which they would return are grossly inadequate. The nurses with their experience and skills will not return to the NHS unless conditions for them are very much better.
The professions supplementary to medicine are concerned about the importance of pay in connection with recruitment and retention. The staff side said that action must be taken to ensure that the professions remain competitive in the labour market and that this action must include further substantial pay increases. We are seeing skilled people trained by the health service going to other better paid jobs. We saw during the five month ambulance dispute enormous sympathy in the country for ambulance workers. The Government constantly said that they had to keep their pay down to the 6·5 per cent. awarded to other health service workers.
Another of our Sunday newspapers published a report last weekend which showed that Britain's top chairmen and chief executives had awarded themselves salary increases of nearly 28 per cent. over the past year—almost four times the rate of inflation. The report said that a survey of 250 leading companies carried out for the Sunday Times by P-E International management consultants showed that in the year to the end of January the highest paid executive in each of the 250 companies averaged £221,000 a year or 27·8 per cent. above the previous year's level. The report gave one or two examples, including Members of your Lordships' House, whom I shall not mention in their absence.
The staff side said in its evidence to Sir James Cleminson that it had never claimed that better pay was the only factor in recruitment and retention. It recognised the importance of non-pay related benefits, particularly if the substantial number of qualified staff not working in the NHS were to be attracted back. The staff side gave several examples: the opportunity for part-time work, the possibility of part-time staff retaining their grade skill levels; the opportunity for retraining. It concluded that the most immediate need was a substantial uplift in salary levels. If the Government are to pursue a policy which requires of those who work in the National Health Service great restraint on their demands for a higher share and a share at least as high as inflation, we must expect them to give a lead to the country in the private sector as well. Poor working conditions are relevant to the problems faced by health service workers.
The Minister should take seriously the views expressed by health service workers up and down the country. I return to my first point. The problem concerns not just their working conditions. It is not
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simply money, although at the end of the financial year wards and beds may have to close because of under-funding. What is important to them is that their views should be listened to. Nothing is more important in the National Health Service than that those who work in a dedicated way for it know that their work is appreciated not only in terms of the pay they receive but by their views being listened to. I have never known a time since the National Health Service was created when the views of those who work for the service were more obviously rejected—not just not accepted but rejected.
The Government are heading for grave problems if they carry on thinking that they can run a National Health Service on the basis of policies which are not accepted by the vast majority of those working in the service. Each time I have the opportunity, I say to the Government, "For heaven's sake, think again". Otherwise they will create not only worse problems for the health service but, as they seem to be doing, worse problems for themselves. Last weekend I was in central Staffordshire campaigning for the mid-Staffordshire by-election. Although on the doorstep all kinds of other issues such as the poll tax were raised, the health service was still the number one issue in people's minds from a long-term point of view. If the Government take any action to undermine the principles of the National Health Service, they will live to regret it-I do not know whether they will live to regret it, but they certainly will regret it.
7.35 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper): My Lords, I am glad of the opportunity to debate this topic because, despite some of the allegations, we believe that we have a record second to none. This is proved by the fact that we now have more doctors than ever before, more nurses than ever before, and, most importantly, a higher proportion of people involved in direct patient care. I say straight away—and in saying this I take seriously the views of health service workers—that I acknowledge that there are pressures on staff. Indeed, there are bound to be in any large organisation. The National Health Service after all employs nearly 1 million staff and has gross expenditure this year of more than £26 billion. It is therefore no exception to this rule. However, we should not necessarily assume that all pressures are a bad thing. They can offer a stimulus to the achievement of greater efficiency and effectiveness. I believe the cash limit to be a discipline of this kind.
The Government's role is to create the overall climate in which adverse pressures can be avoided wherever possible. That is what we have been doing. This year's spending on the National Health Service is more than 38 per cent. higher in real terms than in 1988–98. Next year this figure will rise to 46 per cent. and we shall be spending more than £29 billion, some 12.75 per cent. of all planned government expenditure. Spending in 1990–91 will therefore be some £3 billion higher than this year, more than 6 per cent. higher in real terms.

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While on the subject of health service funding, I feel sure that we shall almost inevitably always be in a position in which we could do more to keep pace with improved technology and techniques and the need for modern facilities and equipment. I hope that our health service progresses in such a way that we are always running after and, it is to be hoped, catching up. But the additional funds the Government have provided are intended to be sufficient to allow services to be increased by more than would be needed simply to keep pace with the growing numbers of elderly people, a point specifically referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Walton. The question whether this is enough assumes that the demand for health care is a fixed figure that can be measured. That clearly is nonsense. I see that the noble Lord shakes his head as well. What is important, however, is that the extra funds provided show the priority the Government have given to health service spending within public spending generally.
In connection with allegations of service cuts due to underfunding, health authorities have higher allocations in cash terms than in 1988–89. Some managers have perhaps not been effective under the current system in controlling costs and planning increases in patient care. This demonstrates the need for the reforms proposed in the White Paper Working for Patients. The reforms will enable managers to match more closely increases in resources with improvements in services.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, before the noble Baroness leaves the point, has she any comment to make on the morality of proceeding to implement proposals that have not even been debated in your Lordships' House?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord is referring to the National Health Service trusts. I should tell him that I shall be dealing with them shortly.
I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, for acknowledging the need for change in his opening remarks. Obviously organisational change always brings with it a certain element of pressure. However, if the changes represent much-needed improvements I believe that the price is worth paying.
The National Health Service and Community Care Bill is currently being considered in another place and no doubt your Lordships will shortly have an opportunity to debate it, assuming that it completes its passage there. The Bill provides for the basis of the new arrangements which are intended to be in place by April 1991.
In implementing our proposals we are aiming for a steady, purposeful, evolutionary period of change during which we all shall, it is to be hoped, learn the practical lessons of experience. To make sure that the improvements are made in the most effective manner we are funding and promoting a great deal of development work within the National Health Service to identify the best ways of putting our plans into operation.
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I should point out that the funding and promoting of some of the development work which is taking place is something which has been urged upon us by representatives of the medical profession who wish to have some projects in order to plan the proposals carefully. I can assure your Lordships that the implementation costs will not be at the expense of patient care. This year we have made available £80 million for arrangements which could lead to implementation and next year the additional expenditure will be of the order of £300 million. However, in saying that, I should like to emphasise that the need to have an evolutionary system with practical experience is the criterion in making these arrangements.
The current structures have served us well in the past but, as many people recognise, they are becoming increasingly out of date. Change is essential if the NHS is to be prepared to face the ever more insistent demands of medical progress and demography. I am confident that health service staff will wish to grasp the new opportunities the Government's plans will present—opportunities to have a much greater say in the management of services and the decision-making process. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that staff should be able to exert more influence. I believe that as a result of our proposals they will be able to exert more influence than ever before in the way in which National Health Service resources are used at local level.
Our plans will end the nonsense by which those clinical teams which should provide the most sought after services are unable to secure the necessary resources to operate to full effect. Why should a popular surgeon have to stop operating in the last few months of the financial year because he has been too sucessful and therefore used up his budget? Success, not failure, will be rewarded in the future. Such changes can only inspire all staff to aim to provide the very highest quality of service for patients and thus enhance their job satisfaction. The Government and National Health Service staff have one overwhelming objective—that is, to give the very best standard of service to all patients, a service which upholds the very finest traditions of the NHS and, above all, puts patients first.
While on the subject of the proposals, and in order to remove some of the uncertainty complained of, I should like to make it absolutely clear, especially to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, that we have no intention of privatising the National Health Service. National Health Service trusts will be an integral part of the service and of the local health authority's provision. I find it most strange that the court proceedings concerning Professor Harry Keen were mentioned. They made it absolutely clear that the Government were in no way abusing their constitutional rights in making the kind of preparations to which I have already referred.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for allowing me to intervene at this point. I do not understand how she can say that what is proposed is not designed to privatise. I say that

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because paragraph 14 of Schedule 2 to the community care Bill reads:
"According to the nature of its functions, an NHS trust may make accommodation or services or both available for patients who give undertakings … to pay, in respect of the accommodation or services (or both) such charges as the trust may determine".
In other words, they can sell all of it. Surely that is what privatisation is.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the reason we are not in any way privatising by introducing the concept of National Health Service trusts is that those units of the health service which apply for that status will do so on the basis that they continue to receive their funding from government. The flexibility which will allow them to have a certain number of private beds in no way suggests that it will be the end of the National Health Service provision for those units. The Government have already made much-needed changes in the structure of the National Health Service workforce. Perhaps I should point out at this stage that we shall shortly have plenty of opportunity to debate the Government's National Health Service proposals.
I return to the subject of this debate. Between 1979 and 1988, as I have already said, the numbers of direct care staff increased by 15·7 per cent. while support staff were reduced by 14·4 per cent. We believe that that is an important trend. I am also very conscious of the need to improve the education and training of staff. In that respect I agree very much with my noble friend Lord Auckland and with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. A number of initiatives have already been undertaken in this connection; for example, the health care assistant initiative which was announced in January.
HCAs will work in support of professional staff and for the first time they will receive nationally recognised vocational qualifications. We envisage that they will undertake some of the more routine tasks currently being carried out by the professionals. This will have the advantage of releasing professional staff to devote more time to the particular activities for which they have been specifically trained, while at the same time improving the job content and consequently the job satisfaction of those working in support roles. We also have the Project 2000 plans to meet nursing care needs in both institutional and community settings and help to reduce the high wastage of nurses both during and after training.
In relation to nurses I should tell the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, that the pay of nurses and midwives has increased by 43 per cent. in real terms since 1979. The total number of nursing and midwifery staff increased by 13·2 per cent. between 1979 and 1988 and since August 1988 we have been running a recruitment campaign to attract suitably qualified and motivated individuals to the career opportunities offered by nursing.
As regards junior doctors' hours, I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Walton, that the Government remain committed to their long-term objective of an average of 72 hours per week. My honourable friend the Minister of State, as the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, reminded us, is pursuing the subject
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with all the parties concerned. I can assure the noble Lord that we are hopeful of a successful outcome in the matter. I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Walton, that consultant expansion has been over 2 per cent. in 1986–88 alone. I refer to the scheme to fund 100 new consultant posts at £50,000 per post. The first two tranches of these appointments have already been made and we believe that this will help in the fight to cut waiting lists.
An organisation of the sheer size of the National Health Service will inevitably experience some recruitment and retention difficulties. I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, say that pay is not the only factor in this respect. Nevertheless the Government believe that they can help to reduce these difficulties concerning pay by breaking away from rigid central bargaining in favour of greater local pay determination. We want local managers to be able to use pay as a recruitment and retention tool. The White Paper envisages that National Health Service trusts will have freedom to depart from national pay arrangements, but they will not be forced to do so. We are aiming to build sufficient flexibility into the mainstream National Health Service system to enable it to operate alongside National Health Service trusts. Indeed some trusts may decide simply to follow the national agreements, provided that they have been made sufficiently flexible.
A number of agreements with flexibility provisions have already been introduced. There are relatively new arrangements giving local discretion to supplement the pay of administrative and clerical staff by up to 30 per cent. in Thames regions and 20 per cent. elsewhere. We shall be monitoring the effect of this change. In 1989 some 7,000 nurses and midwives outside London received supplements under a pilot scheme for flexible pay. That scheme is to be continued for 1990 and extended to nurses and midwives in London. Other staff such as senior managers can be paid additional amounts where there are recruitment and retention difficulties. We aim to extend the concept of pay flexibility to other staff groups during 1990–91 so that local managers have much greater scope to manage their affairs effectively.
I believe that local management needs to be increasingly imaginative in the way it responds to the varying requirements of existing and potential employees. There is a decreasing number of young people coming on to the labour market and the demand for skilled employees will become acute as the National Health Service finds itself in direct competition both with other UK employers and with major employers in the rest of the European Community. Our plans must take account of the fact that almost 80 per cent. of the National Health Service workforce is female.
I would say that the National Health Service management executive encourages health authorities to adopt and implement equal opportunity policies covering not only women and people from ethnic minorities but other disadvantaged groups including disabled people. The Government have for a number of years been encouraging more open employment practices in order to secure, retain and encourage

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scarce, skilled staff back to work. These practices include the availability of flexible working arrangements such as part-time working, job sharing, flexi-time and the establishment of locally determined retainer or career break schemes. I draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, to that.
On specific points, my noble friend Lord Auckland, raised a problem concerning technicians. A new pay and grading structure for technicians was agreed in September 1989 and health authorities are currently assigning staff to those new grades. These new arrangements can be applied flexibly to meet the needs of management and staff. As regards housing, a scheme is available through Nationwide Anglia which helps National Health Service staff to obtain a mortgage and get on to the housing ladder.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, raised the problem of medical secretaries, They, like other administrative and clerical staff, can be paid supplements in the way I have already mentioned. The noble Lord also raised the question of GPs' prescribing budgets and morale among GPs. There is no question of GPs being unable to prescribe medicines which they consider to be clinically necessary. It is however unsatisfactory that prescribing patterns of GPs vary so widely across the country. The Government believe that doctors whose patterns of prescribing are unsatisfactory should be brought up to the practice of the best. This will be accomplished by peer review.
I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, asked why there was no Minister for community care. I point out to him that no change is planned in this respect because in the Department of Health we already have a Minister with responsibility for community care—the Minister of State.
In my view there are bound to be pressures when a large organisation such as the National Health Service is changing. The Government are doing their utmost to ensure that changes are smooth and orderly. We have made greatly increased funding available, while giving local managers greater freedom in pay and conditions of service matters and are giving every encouragement to managers to adopt flexible employment practices which are consistent with equal opportunities principles. We shall continue to take steps to make it possible for National Health Service staff to deliver an even better quality of service to patients.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, has she anything at all to say in response to my question about the appointment of hospital social workers and the dispute about that between the Department of Health and the local authority associations? Has that now been resolved?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I am sorry to tell the noble Lord that I am not aware of the problem. Therefore if the noble Lord is agreeable, I shall write to him.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, perhaps I may briefly say that I have received a note from the noble Lord,
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Lord McColl, asking us to excuse his interruption, in terminology which conforms to the highest standards of the House.
I thank the noble Baroness for her full reply to the debate, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ennals and all those who have participated in the debate. I make the plea that there should be greater consultation with all the staff of the National Health Service. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Abortion (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
7.57 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
The Bill had received an unimpeded progress through your Lordships' House so far. This is a unique occasion because 23 years ago this autumn your Lordships' House passed the principal Abortion Act 1967. That Act has never been amended. No amending Bill has come from the House of Commons during those 23 years and we generated only one of our own, to which we refused a Second Reading. Never, in all that time, has any Bill on abortion reached this advanced stage in your Lordships' House. So this is something of an occasion.
The history of abortion is a very troubled one. We must bear in mind that the Abortion Act 1967 was the first amendment to the Offences against the Person Act 1861. This Bill has received far less criticism in your Lordships' House than it has received outside. It has had a pretty rough time in the hands of critics outside the House. I beg leave to place a few matters on the record for the benefit of all concerned in order to remove some of the misapprehension and misunderstandings about the Bill.
The Bill was never intended to be a stalking horse or a diversion. It was a piece of business of its own, based on serious business carried out by a Select Committee of this House. The House appeared to think by common consent that it was better that abortion should be kept away from the Embryology Bill and that, if it were to make progress, it could do so under a separate Bill. That is really what has happened. However, that means that we have forgone the opportunity which we believed we had, and still have, of putting abortion proposals in the Embryology Bill on Report. However, by common consent the House has decided, rightly in my view, to do it this way.
It is as yet uncertain where this Bill is going. It is certainly not going to the House of Commons as part of the Embryology Bill. However, I hope that it will stand on the threshold of the House of Commons when the Chamber tries to find its own solution to the recent years of frustration that have arisen in consideration of the subject of abortion.
There are only two principal matters in this Bill and one of them is to remove from the ambit of the abortion law the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929. When the principal Act was passed in 1967 it was

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almost an afterthought that there existed an Act passed in 1929 which dealt with child destruction. It seemed to be suitable that the provisions of that Act should remain in force and be part of the general conspectus of the change in the abortion law. That turned out to be a serious mistake because it meant that a doctor carrying out a perfectly lawful abortion under the Abortion Act could be exposed to prosecution under the Infant Life (Preservation) Act. That fear has been something of a bugbear to the medical profession for years past.
When this Bill came before your Lordships' House two noble Lords, the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, and the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, both expressed the view that by taking the Infant Life (Preservation) Act out of the ambit of the abortion law we were opening the way to a wider flow of late abortions because there was no checkpoint at 28 weeks. They believed that we had swept away the barrier that stood in the way of late abortions and that we were giving free progress to more late abortions. That was a serious misunderstanding. We all deplore the absence from our debates on this matter of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, on account of illness. The noble and learned Lord felt that it was important to put on the record, for the benefit of critical noble Lords, the real position. However, we had such a short Committee stage and a formal Report stage that opportunities have not occurred before of putting on the record the true position as regards the effect of Clause 5 of the Bill which concerns the disengagement from abortion of the provisions of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act.
I have for the sake of better accuracy obtained a copy of the legal opinion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman. I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I stick to my brief for a minute or two. On the question of late abortions, save in three exceptional circumstances, my Bill reduces the maximum time limit from 28 weeks to 24 weeks. In the case of Group 2 abortions—that is where there is a risk to the pregnant woman's health—which accounted for 163,000 out of 183,000 abortions in England and Wales in 1988, the maximum gestational age comes down from 28 weeks to 24 weeks. That is referred to in Clause 1(2A)(a).
In the case of Group 3 abortions, that is where there is a risk to siblings, which accounted for 18,000 abortions in 1988, the maximum gestational age is reduced to 24 weeks. That is referred to in Clause 1(1A)(b).
There are only three exceptional cases in which, if my Bill becomes law, a pregnant woman faces no restrictions as regards gestational limit. The three cases are, first, where an abortion is necessary to save the pregnant woman's life. That is the case under the existing law. The second is where the termination is essential to prevent serious damage, and not mere risk, to the pregnant woman's health. That is the exception referred to in Clause 1(2A)(a) of the Bill. The third case is where serious abnormality of the fetus is involved. In those three exceptional cases the Bill proposes no time limit on abortion. We think that a time limit would be an injustice to the women concerned. In short an
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abortion that is necessary to save the life of the mother has no gestational limit under any Act of Parliament. There is no gestational limit in that case under the Infant Life (Preservation) Act, the Offences against the Person Act or the Abortion Act. There is no gestational time limit in this Bill where abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother. Abortion is for the benefit of women. The interest of the life of the mother comes first.
As regards serious fetal abnormality, that is brought into the no-limit case in the case of a child being so seriously abnormal, if it went to full term, as to be severely handicapped. As regards criminal liability, the Infant Life (Preservation) Act is disapplied by my Bill only in the case of doctors who terminate a pregnancy in strict accordance with the law. If a doctor carried out an abortion after week 24, save in one of the three exceptional circumstances mentioned above, he would unquestionably be liable to prosecution and a custodial sentence under the terms of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and/or the Infant Life (Preservation) Act. That is the considered opinion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, on the effect of this Bill. Therefore there should be no anxieties about the Bill widening the avenue of later abortions. We are imposing at 24 weeks much stricter discipline for lawful abortions.
There remains the question of the 24-week period of gestation which is the lynch-pin of the new proposals. Is that period low enough? The answer to that is, yes it is. To make it lower would incur serious problems of injustice, distress and, I think, social and personal harm.
It is suggested in some quarters that the 24 weeks should be 18 weeks. If it were 18 weeks there is not the slightest doubt that some thousands of cases which would qualify for abortion now and under this Bill would not qualify under that much more stringent condition. That would harm many marginal cases of acute distress.
The opinion of gynaecologists has been tested in this matter. Some 75 per cent. of gynaecologists are against a limit of less than 24 weeks. Only 3 per cent. were in favour of a lower limit. All representative opinion—professional, social and, I understand, the Government themselves—is of the view that the end of the 24th week is the right point at which to fix the transfer from the milder to the more severe discipline for qualification for an abortion.
What difference will that make? Those who have criticised the Bill say that it will make so little difference that it is hardly worth while. They say that the numbers who will have abortions under this Bill are likely to be very small because they are already small. There were only 29 abortions after the 24th week in the whole of 1988. The figure for 1989 is likely to be smaller still.
A combination of administration and co-ordination of medical policy and the control of the Government over the licensing conditions of the private clinics have all combined to anticipate the Bill to a very large extent. The Bill is not intended to worsen the conditions for abortion and does not set out to reduce the number. It is an attempt to put abortion into a sounder statutory framework so that

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people know better where they stand and the conditions for obtaining an abortion are well understood in the law itself.
The Royal College of Physicians has stressed the harm that would be done if the gestational limit were reduced from 24 weeks to a lower limit where the pre-natal diagnoses are difficult to complete before the 22nd or 23rd week. The college makes it clear in a report published last September that it is unlikely that it will ever be possible to complete all the pre-natal diagnoses which are necessary in many cases of prospective abortion before the end of the 20th week or thereabouts. Therefore we cannot look for any substantial reduction in the gestational limit if we are to talk sensibly about the future of abortion.
Noble Lords should bear in mind that 90 per cent. of all abortions take place before the 19th week. There is no intention to challenge the principles of the 1967 Act or to slash the figures for the sake of giving the impression that the number of abortions can be dramatically reduced.
The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, in Committee only the other day said how horrible it was that Britain was the abortion capital of Europe. There are no grounds for saying that. It used to be said by critics years ago that this was the abortion capital of the world. The number of foreign women coming to this country for abortions a few years ago exceeded 55,000. The number is now down to 15,500. A third of those come from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and the other two-thirds from France and Spain. That is the limit of the number of women coming to this country for abortions at present.
We should also bear in mind that while we have been experimenting with the Abortion Act 1967 and priding ourselves that we were offering a model to other countries, other countries have been undertaking abortion reforms themselves. A new publication has just been issued which any critic of our abortion laws should read. It was published in February 1990 under the auspices of the Department of Health and compiled by Dr. Jennifer Gunning. It deals with embryology research and abortion in a large number of other countries and includes figures up to 1984.
The astonishing fact revealed by the report is that in Italy—where it was necessary to fight the Vatican, governments were divided on the matter, Ministers resigned, and referenda and elections were held—eventually after a long struggle a fairly liberal law was introduced. With what result? Italy now has the highest ratio of abortions in Europe. In terms of the number of abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age, Italy has a ratio of 19 per 1,000; Denmark, 18·4; Norway, 15·9; Sweden, 17·7; the United States—before the Supreme Court made rather a mess of abortion law in that country—27 per 1,000. The total number of abortions in Italy was 227,000 in 1988. In the number of abortions, we fall below Australia, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United States. Below us are the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands.
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Therefore it is a cruel libel to say that we are the abortion capital of Europe. I hope that those points can be placed on the record and fully appreciated elsewhere.
What of the future? If we were to follow what is happening in Europe, then in this country we should provide abortion on demand up to 12 weeks without question except on consultation with a medical practitioner. That is the pattern in Europe today. We find it in Austria, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway and Sweden. All have the right of abortion on demand up to 12 weeks. On that basis it is possible to apply much greater pressure in the case of later abortions. If we are to have a change in our system I believe that it will have to go that way. The right-to-choose movement, which is a strong and growing movement in Britain, would try to move in that direction. I hope that in another place, where they will be considering this matter, they will realise that anything other than harmony with the rest of Europe is likely to find little support among our European partners.
That is the end of my story and I am grateful to noble Lords for staying to listen to it. In moving the Third Reading I can only hope that there is something in the Bill and the various matters to which I referred in connection with it that will find acceptance in another place and perhaps eventually be the choice of the other place for the solution for the time being of the controversy over abortion in our country. I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a third time.—(Lord Houghton of Sowerby.)
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, since I took quite a part in the Bill in Committee, perhaps noble Lords will allow me to make a few points. First, reverting to my speech on the Queen's Speech, I emphasised that Britain was the largest contributor to late abortions. If one takes late abortions and not total abortions, the remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, would be justified. I said then, and I reiterate now, that I believe that the Continental system is basically more honest—abortion on demand up to an early period in pregnancy and then stringent control for abortion thereafter under exceptional conditions only.
I do not myself condone abortion, but, as a legislator, I must help to regulate it. In helping to regulate it and in improving our law, I do not in the least lend myself to the belief that abortion is an acceptable practice for social reasons.
Finally, I was misquoted in Hansard by noting that "any honourable Member in another place may", etc. The word "not" crept in as a misprint after "may". I noticed it too late to have it corrected at the printers, but I am assured that the bound copy will contain the correction. However, if not, for the record, I should like to confess myself at fault in that matter.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, I should like to say a few brief words if only as a comment on the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury,

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about late abortions in this country. I entirely agree with him that late abortions are extremely undesirable. No one wishes to have them at all. One of the reasons for the numbers of late abortions in this country, low as they are, is that we perform the late abortions that are supposed to be clinically necessary for those who cannot find them in other parts of Europe and come here instead. That may be the reason and is not an unrespectable reason at all.
At the same time I should like to tell the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, that I valued his attempt in Committee to provide a compromise for the future—something which might make the Houghton-Brightman package more acceptable to both Houses of Parliament. However, I fully understood why the Government declined to undertake the onerous task which the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, proposed to place on successive Home Secretaries. I much admired his effort, as I believe did other noble Lords.
I should like to say a few words about the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, and commend his amazing clarity of mind and courage in bringing forward this issue so importantly as he has done both for this House and for another place.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, secondly, I should like to say a few words about the Brightman Committee and associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, said about the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, and say how sorry we are that he is seriously ill. He would otherwise be here and be playing an important part in today's proceedings.
The Brightman Report will be seen by posterity as a great parliamentary paper—indeed, in the great class of social papers which we now associate with the name of the Earl of Shaftesbury in the last century. It was an amazingly painstaking effort in scrupulously considering all the relevant legislation and expert medical and social evidence. The committee then produced immaculate recommendations.
I should also like to say—it is appropriate to do sr on the Third Reading of the Bill—how much I admire the efforts of the Leader of the House and of the Chief Whip who responded, as one would have expected, to the widespread wishes of the House, expressed from all quarters of the House, that the subject of the Bill and the subject of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill should be kept entirely separate. I do not dare to enter into the mysteries concerning the arts of leadership and subtle whipping by which that end was achieved, but it has been achieved to the great benefit of the consideration of both subjects in this House. The business managers of the House deserve the highest congratulations for having achieved that. One can only hope that another place will be able to follow the example of this House, but one must not begin to speculate on what may take place there.
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I should like to cast my mind back to the proceedings in 1967. The Bill that was then passed—the important Abortion Bill—happens to be known as the Steel Bill because it was sponsored by a Private Member of that name in another place. However, the Steel Bill had been considered in two previous Sessions in the House of Lords, so when it eventually came to this House, the House was considering abortion for the thrid time. The Steel Bill effectively took up the Abortion Bill as it left this House in the preceding Session, so Sir David Steel, as he now is, had the benefit of having a Bill which has been hammered out in at least two Sessions in this House. It was therefore ready-made for him to introduce when he was successful in the ballot. In that respect the House took the lead and was the legislative pioneer in the abortion proceedings in Parliament.
I maintain that it is right that, in 1990, this House should also be the pioneer in revising that legislation. We owe it to the meticulous consideration and careful recommendations of the Brightman Committee and to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, for having translated the Brightman Committee's recommendations into legislative form—neither more nor less, I believe I am right in saying. The Bill therefore has the powerful backing of that great state paper which will be known to posterity as the Brightman Committee Report.
I can only say that I very much hope that the House of Commons will follow in 1990 the example set by this House, as it did in 1967. We gave a clear lead then; we give a clear lead now. The Houghton Bill is the equivalent of the Silkin Bill which was taken up by Sir David Steel in the Session which ended in 1967. It is up to another place, one way or another—we cannot dictate its proceedings—to do what it did in 1967, and we shall welcome it if it produces as good a result in our terms in 1990 as it produced in 1967. With that, I wish the best of good fortune to the Bill in another place.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I too should like to say a few words to congratulate my noble friend on his achievement in piloting the Bill through the House. He is not only a doughty fighter for his convictions, he is a tactician par excellence. He has lost none of his shrewdness—sometimes perhaps even his guile—which was the hallmark of his political career in another place, and is so here. I hope that it is not Houghton's last Bill, although I am not calling for another Houghton Bill on the same subject because I want this one to stand. I suspect that he has a long way to go yet, and as long as he sticks to his guns he will certainly have my support.
His Bill to amend the Infant Life Preservation Bill is designed to lower the gestational limit of viability from 28 weeks to 24 weeks. If carried into the law of the land, it will, as he said, be the first legislative change in this field since 1967. Many others have attempted it, but they have all failed.
It would be absurd if those in another place who want to lower the time from 28 weeks do not support this Bill, and if they want to go lower than 24 weeks

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to use this Bill as an instrument on which to secure further concessions. I would certainly not accept any further concessions, but this is the Bill on which the issue should be debated.
As has been said, my noble friend has made proposals in this Bill which are entirely in accordance with the recommendations of the committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman. Like other noble Lords, I want to say how sad I am that the noble and learned Lord is not here and to know that he is seriously ill.
In this House we have reason to be grateful to my noble friend because his Bill was the basis on which it was decided to keep separate the arguments about abortion and the arguments about embryological research. It seemed to me greatly to improve the quality of the debate in your Lordships' House which we have heard over several weeks and days. It has been of a very high standard and we owe it to my noble friend because his Bill was the basis of agreement. I hope that his lead will be followed in another place.
If opponents of abortion here have accepted the wisdom of separation, why should not the opponents of abortion in another place as well? Let me repeat my thanks to my noble friend and endorse his plea to another place to give this Bill a Second Reading and thus maintain the separation of these issues. I support a Third Reading for this Bill and hope that when it goes to another place it will receive due consideration.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I rise very briefly to wish this Bill a fair wind, and to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, on the distinction with which he has played the part of William Webb Ellis. I should also like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, on the distinction with which she has combined discharging her personal conscience and her official duties. It cannot have been an easy task. It has been an outstanding example of the ability to distinguish between the person and the office.
This Bill seems to me to be a fit successor to bring the 1967 Bill of my right honourable friend Sir David Steel up to date with the progress of medical research. It has stirred a great deal of passion, as I am sure we all know from our postbags. It raises the question of the functions of the law in a divided society. In a divided society the law cannot possibly prohibit everything that somebody thinks is wrong or it will prohibit everything under the sun.
The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, saying, "I do not condone abortion but as a legislator I must help to regulate it", was taking a good liberal position because, where there is a sharp division of opinion such as this, the law cannot please everybody. It must also take account of the principle, "Never give an order which is not going to be obeyed". If the law sets out to prohibit some things which a great many people think are perfectly right, the law will get into trouble and in the end will be led into disrepute. The real advantage of the liberal position is that it does not force anybody to do it who thinks it is wrong and it allows to do it those who think it is right.
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So the law, perfectly correctly, is able to remain neutral as it should do. That is the best way to allow everybody in the country to follow their conscience. I hope that another place will look on this Bill with favour. I agree with all that has been said about the distinction of the debate on it. I wish the Bill well.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, perhaps I may repeat what I said during Second Reading. The Government's role in proceedings on the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, is to provide an impartial assessment of the practical effects of the Bill and to provide advice and whatever information may help the House to reach a decision. As I also said at Second Reading, like their predecessors this Government are neutral on the ethical issues of abortion.
During the Committee stage my noble friend Lord Henley reminded noble Lords that proposals for changes in the law on abortion have traditionally been matters for private Members to introduce for decision on a free vote. It must be right that in such a very sensitive area individual Members of both Houses, including Ministers who have their own personal views on the matter, should be able to exercise their own independent judgments, reaching decisions and voting as their conscience dictates. This is an issue on which the Government's position must be one of neutrality.
I believe that in his remarks the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, may have given the impression that the Government nevertheless have a view on the subject. I should like to explain the position.
When it became clear in 1985 that the consensus view of the relevant professional bodies about the point at which a fetus could be said to be viable had changed in the light of medical and scientific developments to 24 weeks' gestation, the Department of Health—or DHSS as it then was—made it a condition of approval for the few private sector clinics licensed to carry out abortions over 20 weeks that no abortions were carried out over 24 weeks' gestation. In addition, it took steps to ensure that the latest professional view on this matter was drawn to the attention of clinicians working in both the private sector and in the National Health Service. We have seen a very significant reduction in recent years in the number of very late abortions over 24 weeks. Only 22 were carried out in England and Wales in 1988, the last year for which figures are available and none after the 27th week.
It was in the light of that expert view, which the same professional bodies reaffirmed in 1987, that the Government gave their support to the proposition that the gestational age at which a fetus is presumed to be viable should be reduced from 28 weeks to 24 weeks under the Infant Life Preservation Act. That remains the Government's position. Such a change would be in line with current medical advice and clinical practice.
There can be no advantage in my repeating the background to this issue and the legal arguments which I advanced at Second Reading. I believe that it remains only for me to thank the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for his kind personal remarks and to thank

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the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, for his remarks about my noble friends the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip.
The strong feelings and views which have been so well expressed in your Lordships' House during consideration of this Bill will add much to future discussion on this important issue of conscience. Your Lordships' views and conclusions have made a valuable and positive contribution to that future debate.
On Question, Bill read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes before nine o'clock.