Lords Sitting of 23 May 1990

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers— Read by the Lord Bishop of Worcester.

Baroness Cumberlege
Mrs. Julia Frances Cumberlege, CBE, having been created Baroness Cumberlege, of Newick in the County of East Sussex, for life—Was, in her robes, introduced between the Baroness Trumpington and the Baroness Cox.
Baroness Brigstocke
Mrs. Heather Renwick Brigstocke, having been created Baroness Brigstocke, of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for life—Was, in her robes, introduced between the Lord Greenhill of Harrow and the Baroness Platt of Writtle.

Teachers: East Sussex
2.57 p.m.
Baroness Cox Baroness Cox asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether two history teachers in East Sussex are being prevented from teaching history in the area of their own local education authority; and, if so, whether there is any action which they can take to remedy this situation.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the two teachers are free to apply for whatever teaching posts in history they wish. It is then entirely a matter for their prospective employers. I understand that those concerned locally, including the local education authority, have always acknowledged the undoubted skills of these teachers and their great commitment to education.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is a great shame that despite the ostensible freedom to apply for the posts, those teachers do not feel free to do so at present because of unfortunate remarks which have been made about them in public? It is a great shame that two excellent history teachers should not be allowed to teach history. One has been relegated to retraining as a primary teacher and the other to a course on tourism. Does my noble friend agree that that is a very bad situation at a time when the country needs every excellent teacher it can get?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that the situation is unfortunate. Through my noble friend I invite the two teachers to invoke the grievance procedure within their own local education authority, which I understand they have
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not done, and if they still feel aggrieved, to present their case formally in writing to the Secretary of State.
Lord Peston: My Lords, perhaps I may say how pleased I am at the Minister's last remark. Is she able to throw any light on what this is all about? Two extremely good history teachers seem, on the face of it, to have been very badly treated. Your Lordships have debated the matter before: no one seems to be able to put a finger on precisely what is going on. It seems to be beyond any reasonable sort of behaviour to suggest that the two teachers have done anything wrong. Does the Minister's department have any knowledge of the matter? In particular, can we be told what is the alleged offence of the two teachers?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I believe that there is no offence at all. I understand that there has been a reorganisation of the schools in East Sussex and that the two teachers were not re-employed. Nevertheless, there appears to be a question mark and a difference between the allegations of the teachers and those of the education authority. It is important to repeat what I said in my first Answer; namely, that the teachers should set out their case in writing to the Secretary of State or invoke the grievance procedure within their authority.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I am sorry to come back to this point, but the noble Baroness seems to be throwing salt into the wound. There appears to be some implication that these two people have done something wrong. They have a view of history quite different to mine, but that is not an offence against anything that I can think of. Will the noble Baroness at least assure the House that if her right honourable friend the Secretary of State hears fom the two teachers, he will act rapidly and make it abundantly clear—as I believe will turn out to be the case—that these are two reputable people who are simply trying to do their jobs as teachers?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I repeat that there is no evidence to my knowledge that the teachers have done anything wrong. What is true is that they were not reappointed following reorganistion in that authority. I understand that the teachers are aggrieved about that process. As yet there is no prima facie evidence with the Secretary of State or the local authority. The account by the authority is that the procedures followed were correct; that the governors did not act incorrectly. I repeat that if the teachers continue to feel aggrieved they must present their case to the authority and in writing to the Secretary of State.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, will my noble friend indicate whether these teachers were the victims of some internal reorganisation? Were other teachers also affected by it or was it a reorganisation intended to deal with those two?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, my understanding is that there were other teachers who were not re-employed following reorganisation. My

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understanding is that they were not as aggrieved as these two teachers appear to be, and therefore that grievance must be registered and considered.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that this matter came before her department before she became a spokesman for it in this House and that far from the Secretary of State needing to be informed, the case has been before him for a long time, supported by the union to which the two teachers belong? Is she also aware that, far from the proper procedures having been followed, the director of education for East Sussex wrote to the press to say that he could understand why other schools would not wish to employ them?
Finally, is the noble Baroness aware that unless this matter is cleared up, faith on all sides of the House in the wish and willingness of the department to maintain high standards in teaching will be shattered?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I repeat that I am aware that a number of informal approaches have been made to the Secretary of State, from my noble friend Lady Cox and through the union and Members of another place. Today I am inviting the teachers to present their case formally to the local authority and in writing to the Secretary of State. That, to date, has not been done. I find that surprising.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, can I explain my interest in this matter?
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, is the Minister aware that I am a school governor? As I understand it, it is the responsibility of the governing body of a school to determine the curriculum to be taught in that school. If there are teachers who are not prepared to teach the curriculum determined by the governing body, will the Minister say whose responsibility it is to determine the employment prospects of those teachers thereafter?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, all the evidence to hand indicates that the two teachers taught the curriculum as determined by the governors of the school. I do not believe that matter to be at issue. The governors have the responsibility for seeing how the curriculum is delivered and the authority lies with them. However, the implication in the noble Lord's remarks is that the teachers were not conforming with the wishes of the governors. I am pleased to say that the teachers taught GCSE in the school according to the requirements of the governing body.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, while agreeing with my noble friend that all legitimate procedures should be enlisted, can she advise me whether, if all else fails, the local ombudsman is available? Can she advise me whether, if that did not work, judicial review would be available?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I understand that this case has been before the local ombudsman. He has determined that there is no case to answer.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is my noble friend in a position to respond to a request made by the NAS/UWT and by the TUC that there should be an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Mr. McGovern's loss of employment as a history teacher?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am not aware of that specific request. The decision on whether or not there should be an inquiry rests entirely on a formal presentation by the teachers of their case in writing to the Secretary of State.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, if this matter has been before the department for so long, why are we not told what is the issue?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I could spend a considerable amount of time at the Dispatch Box discussing what I believe to be the issue. However, this has not been before the Secretary of State in any formal capacity. It is important to invite the two teachers to set out their case in writing and present it to the Secretary of State. At that time I shall be able to come to the Dispatch Box and register the consideration of my department.
Lord Annan: My Lords, why were the teachers not advised to do that long ago?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am at a loss to answer that question.

Building Industry: Trends
3.8 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick Lord Dean of Beswick asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the present activity trend in the building industry.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Hesketh): My Lords, since 1981 there have been eight consecutive years of sustained growth in construction output in Great Britain. Output increased by 4 per cent. last year in constant price terms despite a reduction in housebuilding activity. Published forecasts predict a downturn of between 3.5 per cent. and 6 per cent. this year, with an upturn in 1991 and beyond.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that naturally I welcome the fact that over the past few years the building industry has done rather well? Is the Minister also aware that the predictions of the building industry do not accord with the latter part of his Answer? They state that only 39 per cent. of firms are working at near capacity as against 71 per cent. last year, and that significant pockets of spare capacity are now appearing in the South-East outside of London. However, is not the most disturbing fact that private industrial work is

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declining at a rapid rate because manufacturers are no longer investing due to the high interest rates? When can we expect an end to the high interest rates and once again an upturn in the building industry?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dean, paints a picture of doom and gloom but I have to say that looking out of the top floor at Marsham Street I see nothing but a forest of cranes looking down to the east of this capital of ours.
As I Said in my Answer, there has been a projected reduction which does not in any way disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Dean, because his figure relates to assumed levels of activity within firms rather than output or orders placed. We should remember that it is most important for the future of our country that we get on top of inflation rather than preserve levels of expansion in the building industry.
The Earl of Kimberley: My Lords, is the Minister aware that if he lived near Swindon, as I do, he would find it absolutely impossible to persuade a builder to do anything for months and months because they have so much work?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I am aware of my noble friend's remarks because that point has been drawn to my attention on previous occasions. It is also true to say that in the South-East there will be some reduction in activity. That is hardly surprising bearing in mind the enormous level of growth in commercial activity since 1985 which equates to an increase in real terms of about 90 per cent.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the buoyancy of the construction industry is a barometer for the nation as a whole. If the industry is doing well, so is the nation. That is a fact of life. Can the Minister give details of the present position and state how he sees the future in regard to house building in particular?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the cumulative figures which I gave earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Dean, refer of course to a combination of civil engineering and house building. House building figures have dropped and that is hardly surprising because they always respond to the level of mortgage interest rates. However, it is a fact that we must curb inflation and that is why we have high levels of interest.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, has the noble Lord taken on board the fact that the interest rate policy which he just described hits specific sectors and geographical areas? That policy does not hit across the economic spectrum—witness the appalling trade figures we have seen today. Will the Government now review their counter-inflation policy, seeking not just to influence sectors such as the building industry in specific areas but seeking to get demand back across the whole economy?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the Government are acutely aware of the fact that the real losers under inflation are the poor, the weak and those on fixed incomes. They need to be protected.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, will the noble Lord tell the House what activity in the building industry is concentrated on housing for local authorities and housing associations? In other words, I refer to housing that will help those he has just listed as being perhaps in the lower income groups in the community.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the noble Baroness may remember my earlier remarks; for example, the Housing Corporation's gross capital expenditure will rise from just over £900 million to £1-7 billion by 1992-93—an increase of nearly 100 per cent. That shows the Government's commitment in regard to providing subsidised housing.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, will my noble friend make it quite clear that the Government will not be diverted from their anti-inflation policy for the sort of considerations that have been suggested by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I can give my noble friend that assurance.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept my suggestion that the counter-inflation policy of the Government is wholly ineffective? It has no effect at the moment on the core rate of inflation. It has no effect on the trade balance. Is it not about time that the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, woke up to the fact that a different and stronger policy is necessary?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I disagree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, but, rather more important, I feel that he is now straying into an area where my noble friend the Paymaster General may be able to provide a more satisfactory reply, rather than now delaying the House on a rather difficult and technical subject which is not entirely to do with the rate of construction activity in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, I asked the Minister for details of present activity but he gave the estimate for 1991-92. I hardly think that that is present activity.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the figures I gave to the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, were to show the Government's level of commitment. For the first quarter of 1990 the total number of housing starts was 33, 900. That is a provisional figure.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, do the Government agree that two of the more significant indicators in terms of the building industry are, first, the number of dwellings that are constructed by the building industry and, secondly, the amount of manufacturing capacity built by the building industry? On those two categories, can the Government advise the House of the difference between the figures that applied in 1979 and the figures that applied in 1989?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I do not have the figures for 1979 relating to the noble Lord's question. However, I can assure the noble Lord that the construction activity to which the Question relates is the total level of construction activity, and is not for house building as a separate item. It is running at a record level, and even if there is a downturn it will still be running at a record level this year.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, perhaps I may draw the attention of our noble Leader of the House to the fact that the clock now shows 16 minutes and that we are only halfway through Questions?
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Belstead): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl. I suggest that we take a question from the noble Lord, Lord Dean, and then move on.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I shall be brief. If, as the building industry states, there is a substantial cutback in private industrial building, does that not augur badly for our future? We are now trying to regain our position as a major manufacturing country on the same basis as our contemporaries and business rivals in Europe. Surely the cutback will adversely affect any attempt to correct the balance of payments in manufacturing.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dean, now drifts of f into following the noble Lord, Lord Williams, in regard to manufacturing industry. That is another question for another day. However, it is interesting to note that the Benches opposite are not interested in the level of expenditure and growth in capital projects that will come from central government, which this year will be about 22 per cent.

Global Environment: Proposal
3.18 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they favour the establishment of a world environment fund which could assist developing countries to reduce pollution of the atmosphere.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth office (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, the World Bank has proposed the establishment, on a pilot basis, of a global environment facility. This would help developing countries tackle issues which could have significant global benefits including ozone depletion and climate change. We warmly welcome the bank's initiative in outlining a possible framework of international collaboration on these issues. At the meeting of the development committee in Washington earlier this month, we supported the proposal that the bank should carry out further work to elaborate its proposals in consultation with interested parties.
Lord Campbell of Croy: I thank my noble friend for his reply. There seem to be differences of opinion among the industrialised nations on the institutional arrangements. But is it firmly agreed that assistance is necessary if the developing countries are to be persuaded to take special measures which were not in the past required of other countries?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the proposals of the World Bank have received broad support from industrialised countries, including ourselves. Naturally, this is an early stage of the proposals and more work is needed to clarify the issues before the scale of the programme can be defined. The bank plans to hold a meeting of donor governments in June for further discussions on its proposals.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the greatest challenge to humanity over the next 50 years is how the peoples of the developing world can reach a sustainable level of life without destroying the planet? Does he agree that as the industrialised countries are responsible for 80 per cent. of the pollution of our atmosphere it is the industrialised countries who owe it to themselves and to the rest of the world to help to finance the more expensive technologies which are required if the developing countries are not to follow the bad example of those of us in the developed world?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, broadly I think I can agree with the noble Lord, which is a change. Yes, obviously that is the purpose behind this proposal from the World Bank.
Lord Renton: My Lords, in regard to the figure of 80 per cent. given by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, does my noble friend recall that yesterday he said that 20 per cent. of the carbon dioxide produced was due to deforestation? That figure does not seem to fit in very well with that given by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch. Will my noble friend also bear in mind that the more people there are in any country the more difficult it is for the country to prevent further assault on the environment? Therefore, does he not agree that it would be wise for any kind of financial assistance to be accompanied by advice on family planning?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the latter part of my noble friend's question is a matter which we shall be going into in greater detail later this afternoon. The figures that I have available show that it is estimated that developing countries currently account for about one-third of the annual greenhouse gas emissions, about 25 per cent. of fossil fuel emissions and 90 per cent. of carbon emissions resulting from deforestation.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House that the World Bank's proposals will take account of the problems posed by external debt? Can the Minister also say what the main proposal was of the Bergen conference and whether Her Majesty's Government were able to support it?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the World Bank's proposals cover four main environmental issues; namely, the depletion of the ozone layer; the control of CFCs; the control of greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity in the international river and marine environment. I do not think that debt is part of that process. The Bergen conference was useful. The United Kingdom played a constructive part which was recognised by the conference as a whole.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, will the noble Lord indicate 1o the House how his answers today square with the of t-made remarks of the Prime Minister and President Bush that countries in the developing world should essentially be left to their own devices in resolving problems and avoiding the catastrophic environmental mistakes made by the industrialised countries?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I do not have in front of me the quotation to which the noble Lord refers. Before answering that question I would wish to see exactly what was said.

Marinas: Siting
3.22 p.m.
Baroness Nicol Baroness Nicol asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their policy on the siting of marinas on British coasts.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the Government believe that it should be chiefly for those who wish to develop marinas to decide where to site them, subject always to their obtaining any necessary planning permission. They would also need either to have or to obtain the necessary statutory powers and to satisfy any other statutory requirements such as those in the Coast Protection Act 1949.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. Does he not agree that there is increasing pressure for development on the coastline of England and Wales and of ten in areas of natural beauty and of wildlife importance? In view of the fact that the last review of coastal development was carried out in 1960, and that 28 further sites have been identified by the Welsh Tourist Board as being suitable for development, do the Government not agree that there is a need for a major review of the coastal conservation policy throughout England and Wales?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the Government believe that these are matters for the local planning authorities. I am sure that they are well aware of their responsibilities. In addition, where powers to construct a marina are being sought by means of a harbour revision order, my right honourable friend may require an environmental assessment to be carried out. Where such powers are sought by means of a Private Bill as I am sure the noble Baroness knows, objectors may petition against a Bill on environmental or other grounds. I see no case for
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the Government to seek to impose a strategy for marinas on those wishing to develop them.
Lord Parry: My Lords, while not wishing in any sense to cut across the Question asked by my noble friend Baroness Nicol, perhaps I may ask this question. Is the Minister aware that 12 years ago the Welsh Tourist Board undertook a survey of the ports and harbours of Wales in order to identify those which most suitably, and with the agreement of their communities, would provide marina facilities to the advantage of the nation and its economy? Is the noble Viscount aware that a number of those developments have been carried out satisfactorily? My noble friend is quite right in pointing out the danger if matters are left to the whim of the developer. If control slips from the developing authority, we can have a situation in this country where there are too many marinas which are badly controlled. At the moment the development is successful, but we have to take care.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I agree that there can be problems over developments. However, the local planning authorities will be aware of these far in advance of the Government.
Lord Moran: My Lords, is the Welsh office yet in a position to respond to the conclusions of a seminar which was held in April 1989 by the environmental study group of the Prince of Wales Committee under my chairmanship which studied coastal and estuarial development in Wales? Is the noble Viscount aware that the committee concluded that local planning mechanisms were not adequate to reconcile social, economic and environmental questions, and that it suggested that there should be strategic, regional guidance from the Welsh office?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I shall certainly look into the matter and write to the noble Lord.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I note that Scotland is also included in this Question. Is my noble friend aware that some suitable schemes carried out in places where they will not obtrude on the environment enable sea defences to be renewed against storms and flood; sewage treatment works to be improved; and the dereliction of our coast to be repaired? Is my noble friend further aware that those measures enable private finance to be introduced to help where public funds from both central and local government are either scarce or not available at all?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, my noble friend makes a very valid point.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, does the Minister not agree that his answers indicate that the development of marinas is both indiscriminate and piecemeal? Will he confirm that the promised White Paper on environmental problems will include a policy dealing with coastal conservation? It appears from the questions asked by noble Lords that the development of marinas brings both benefits and serious problems.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the regional councils for sport and recreation which consist of representatives from local authorities and recreational interests, may include the siting of marinas in the regional strategy documents which they prepare for the Sports Council. I repeat that these issues are for the individual planning authorities involved in the handling of the specific cases locally.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that his statement that coastal conservation will be given serious consideration is very much welcomed? On the other hand, does the Minister not agree that it is necessary for the kind of marinas that may be built to be built in the best of taste and be classical in design? A good example of a marina meeting all those requisites is contained in the remarkable marina that is being constructed in the city of Swansea.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord knows more about that than I do. The choice of sites for development depends primarily on the commercial judgment of the developers. I repeat that the developments are subject to planning and other statutory safeguards.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, the House will welcome the Government's statement that planning regulations are adequate to deal with the siting and construction of marinas. Will the Government comment on the procedure of the use of Private Bills going through Parliament to facilitate the construction of marinas?
Viscount Davidson: No, my Lords.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I have the good fortune to live near a marina. Does my noble friend the Minister not agree that one of the great pleasures that affords is to be able to watch people working hard on their boats and then going to sea without having to do either of those things?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend is very fortunate.

Business
3.29 p.m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, no formal time limits have been agreed to by the House in respect of the two debates this afternoon, but it is expected that each will last about 2 ½ hours. That being the case, in the second debate, except for the noble Lord, Lord Rea, opening and my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara winding up, each noble Lord will be limited to eight minutes. I suggest that Members of the House speaking in that debate may wish to take this as a guide line. I draw the attention of all who wish to speak in this afternoon's debates to the advice in the Companion that speeches, apart from the proposer's and the winding up speech, should last no longer than 15 minutes.

Civil Liberties
3.30 p.m.
Lord Irvine of Lairg Lord Irvine of Lairg rose to call attention to the state of civil liberties under this Administration; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords:
"Thatcherism makes intellectual liberty just another commodity, to be enjoyed when there is no particular political or administrative price to be paid for it, but abandoned, with no evident grief, when the price begins to rise. That is not despotism. But it cheapens liberty and diminishes the nation".
Those are not my words, though I agree with them. They are the words of the Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford, Professor Dworkin, in an important article at the end of 1988. His conclusion was that, "liberty is ill in England".
It is a theme to which he returned in a public lecture only last Thursday. His proposition was that the very concept of liberty,
"is being challenged and corroded by the Thatcher Government".
True,
"the Government's challenge to freedom has nothing to do with … despotism. It shows"—
he claimed—
"a more mundane but still corrupting insensitivity to liberty, a failure to grasp its force and place in modern democratic ideals".
The argument is that the concept of liberty turns, first, on the sovereign idea that liberty of speech, conviction and information figure among fundamental human rights; and, secondly, on a set of working assumptions about how these rights must be protected—assumptions to be characterised as together forming the culture of liberty. So the basic argument is the high value that should be given to freedom of expression; that it should not be traded in the same way as one social good may be bartered against another; that government should ever bear the burden of proving to a high standard a real necessity to interfere with freedom of expression.
The weight of these charges could be assessed by reference to many freedoms—freedom of the press; of broadcasters; of assembly; academic freedom. But a sustained feature of this Administration has surely been their obsession with government secrecy and national security, to the prejudice of traditional freedoms. It is hard to think that in the GCHQ affair hostility to trade unions did not walk hand in hand with indifference to basic freedoms. Some industrial action at GCHQ caused the Government to announce that staff there could no longer be members of trade unions. They would be free to join only a staff association approved by the Government. Their loss of freedom of association was to be bought of f at £1,000 a head—subject to income tax! They had to accept or else; and ultimately be sacked if transfer elsewhere was impossible. The last sackings took place last year.
The Government were adamant that a no-disruption agreement with the unions could not be given a chance, although the Government could then have had their way if the agreement had been tried and failed. The Government were condemned by the ILO, but that mattered not. The courts held

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that they had failed to comply with their legal obligation to consult with the Civil Service unions before withdrawing freedom of association. But the Government succeeded because their decision was for reasons of national security and the courts held that they could not question whether that decision was truly necessary for those reasons. If they had, the Government would surely have failed.
GCHQ, however, was only one step in a series where the Government have exaggerated state security t0 the prejudice of freedom. There has been a huge increase in prosecutions under the official Secrets Act in the past decade. In 1983 Sarah Tisdall from the office of the Foreign Secretary delivered documents to the Guardian evidencing a government decision to delay a Statement to Parliament about the arrival of Cruise missiles in Greenham Common until after they had arrived. One object was to enable the Government to emphasise their position first, before the Opposition and the "peace movement" could react. The courts ordered the Guardian to return the documents. As a result, Sarah Tisdall emerged as the suspect: she confessed, and was sentenced to imprisonment. Your Lordships' House, in its judicial capacity by a very narrow majority of three to two, held that national security had required the return of the documents. However, the distinct impression was left that the "secret" tab on the documents was for reasons of parliamentary or political advantage, not genuine security interest.
Then there was the Ponting case in 1984. He had sent Mr. Tam Dalyell, MP, Ministry of Defence documents about parliamentary inquiries into the sinking of the "General Belgrano". At his trial he alleged that he had wanted to blow the whistle on how Parliament had been misled by Ministers and how Ministers had planned to mislead the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. This was an astonishing prosecution to bring under the official Secrets Act and eventually the jury said "no" to a prosecution it did not like by acquitting Mr. Ponting—astonishing because on day one it was conceded that his disclosure had caused no damage to national security, but only a breach of confidence. It was astonishing also because potential jurors were vetted by the Special Branch, although national security was not in issue. Ponting, of course, had no authority to reveal the documents to Mr. Dalyell. His defence was that he had revealed them because it was his duty in the interests of the state, under Section 2, to do so. The jury acquitted, despite a direction that "duty" meant official duty and the "interests of the state" meant the interests of the government of the day, which they do not.
Then in 1987 there was the bizarre Zircon affair. Your Lordships will recall that it concerned the withdrawal by the BBC of a film alleging that the Ministry of Defence had secretly launched a £500 million surveillance project unbeknown to Parliament, in breach of a clear undertaking that any defence projects exceeding £250 million would be disclosed to the Public Accounts Committee. Ineptitude followed—of a quite comic order. The of fending journalist arranged for the film to be shown in the other place, in order to prove that there was no risk to national security. Incredibly, the
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Government went to the courts for an injunction. Obviously the courts refused—it was for Parliament to regulate its own affairs. Then the Speaker banned the film after the Attorney-General briefed him on the security implications.
The rest is history—the failed attempt to serve an injunction on the journalist; the New Statesman publishing the contents of the film; search warrants to search the offices of the New Statesman, followed by a search of the Scottish office of the BBC. So, this punitive action over, the problem went away, with injunctions lifted, the Speaker's ban withdrawn, the film transmitted by the BBC two years later, no prosecutions brought, and no damage at all to the national interest other than that the authorities had succeeded in making themselves look ridiculous.
But this was nothing alongside Spycatcher. Undoubtedly Wright was in breach of his obligation of confidence, but he had grave allegations to make affecting the public interest; that MI5 had attempted to destabilise a democratically elected government; had been implicated in an attempt to assassinate President Nasser; had been involved in the bugging and burglary of trade unions and political parties. I pass over the fiasco in Australia, the continued banning of the book in this country, long after publication in the United States and long after the information had become public knowledge throughout the world; and then the turning of the tide in the courts with the judge, who heard the trial at the end of 1987 for permanent injunctions against the press, declaring that the absolute protection that the Government were seeking for the security service, "could not be achieved this side of the Iron Curtain".
It became progressively bizarre to go on stubbornly trying to ban in this country what was freely available everywhere else, and here too with a modicum of effort.
In the aftermath of Spycatcher the staff counsellor for the security and intelligence services was invented. Members of the service could take their grievances to him. He has access to the Secretary to the Cabinet and reports annually to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary. But the arrangement is all, in-house, within the Executive; the public can never know.
It is an offence under the official Secrets Act 1989 to reveal any information about the activities of the security service. The opinion of the trial judge in the Spycatcher case that,
"the public was the proper recipient of information that M15 was attempting to destroy public confidence in a democratically elected government",
was ignored. The counsellor has no duty to account to Parliament.
The Security Service Act 1989 puts MI5 on a statutory basis for the first time. However, its powers are so broad that it can do virtually anything. The service must not be used to further the interests of any political party, but there is no prohibition on acting contrary to the interests of a political party. The Government refused to accept an amendment borrowed from Canada which would have prevented surveillance of those engaged in lawful advocacy, protest or dissent.
It is the Home Secretary, not the courts, who may authorise warrants permitting literally any interference with property. It comes down to the fact that the Home Secretary is absolutely free to decide on the width of the legislation. True, there is to be a security service commissioner who reviews the grant of warrants by the Home Secretary. But he reviews them only after the event. He cannot order the Minister to cease what is improper. He reports annually to the Prime Minister, but any part of the report appearing to the Prime Minister to be prejudicial to the continued discharge of the functions of the service need not be laid before Parliament.
It is also true that a tribunal to investigate complaints by individuals has been set up. But it cannot adjudicate on service inquiries into a category of individuals—for example, CND or a political party—and a complaint by an individual must fail if the security service has reasonable grounds for believing him to be a member of such a category. The truth is that the tribunal's powers are very weak; and it, and the commissioner for good measure, are made immune from judicial review. Nor is there any system for the accountability of the security service to Parliament or any other form of independent scrutiny of its activities.
The system which works well in Canada—that is, a security intelligence review committee of Privy Councillors appointed by Her Majesty's representative in Canada, after consultations between the Canadian Prime Minister and the leader of each party with a minimum of 12 Members in the House of Commons—is rejected. The Canadian committee has unrestricted oversight of the discharge by the service of its duties and hears complaints. There is the advantage that its composition is not dominated by a single person, the Prime Minister.
Equally, my party's proposal for accountability to Parliament through a House of Commons Select Committee was rejected. The legislative scrutiny that applies in the United States and Australia is unacceptable to this Administration. Surely public confidence in a proper system of democratic control requires something more than the assurance of supervision by a single Minister.
Then we had the official Secrets Act of last year. The one thing that this measure is not is a liberalising measure. It provides no positive rights to information and no freedom of information. It fails to recognise the public interest to know of abuses by government of its powers. A narrow amendment was moved in your Lordships' House which would have allowed officials to reveal really serious misconduct involving crime, fraud or other gross impropriety. Even that could not be accepted. Under the common law, where breach of confidence is alleged, that is a defence. It is a defence that the public interest favours disclosure. But that defence is not available under the Act. As Mr. Edward Heath pointed out in another place, newspapers could be prosecuted for disclosing an Irangate in this country. Therefore there is no defence for a newspaper, whose source is
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a civil servant on a security or defence matter, which reveals that a Minister of the Crown has not told Parliament the truth, or has wilfully withheld it or been economical with it.
I do not accept that the categories of information protected under the Act represent a narrowing of the scope, in practice, of official secrets. An Act which was becoming substantially inoperable in practice has been replaced by one capable of being more repressive in practice. It is an offence for any member of the security service to disclose confidential information, even if it causes no harm. It is an offence for officials to leak information, however true, about unpreparedness in the military sphere, provided that the truth can be shown to be damaging. It would be an offence to reveal here information given in confidence by our Government to a foreign state where the information has been leaked by that state, and even if the information has had the widest currrency abroad, provided that the truth could be shown to be damaging. We retain a system well fashioned to keep from the public view any information embarrassing to government, whether bureaucratic error or, worse, deception—laws which do not reflect the balance a modern democratic society requires between the public interest to receive, and the state interest to withhold, information.
The Administration's claim that the statute liberalises is as ill founded as their same claim for the Interception of Communication Act 1985. A warrant for interception can be issued by the Home Secretary in the interests of national security, without any definition of what that means. So the Minister is judge. Again, the model of other countries, requiring judicial authorisation, is rejected. There are so many of these warrants that it is obvious they are authorised by officials with only formal approval by the Minister. The tribunal to hear complaints is a spurious protection. It can only consider whether a warrant is properly issued under the Act; that is, not perversely by the Minister—a burden which is impossible to discharge—but not whether the warrant has been used for unauthorised interceptions. Its decisions cannot be judicially reviewed, yet again, by the courts.
True, there is a commissioner to oversee the exercise of these powers. He is appointed by the Prime Minister. He must report on abuses to the Prime Minister, who is not obliged to publish these reports; and he must report annually on his duties to the Prime Minister, who can exclude anything from that report when published, if thought by the Prime Minister to be contrary to national security.
This year the commissioner's report runs to an economic three pages, with a one-page appendix on the number of warrants. The commissioner confirmed that all warrants had been properly issued and that the tribunal, in completing its investigation of 47 complaints, had found not a single breach of the Act. I do not question the good conscience of anyone concerned, but the system is no substitute for warrants being granted by judges and accountability to Parliament.
I shall not go on to multiply instances. I do not doubt that other noble Lords will do so in the course of this short debate. But I feel that I should not leave of f opening this debate without at least touching upon a great issue which I imagine will be addressed by other noble Lords: has the time come for our country to incorporate into our law the European Convention on Human Rights? The current position of my party is no, though it remains subject to debate. The Government's position is also no.
It was the 1951 Labour Government who were first among the members of the Council of Europe to ratify the convention. It was the Labour Government of 1966 who accepted the right of individual petition under the European convention to complain to the European Commission of Human Rights of alleged violations of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the convention.
Incorporation of the convention is no panacea for the decline in our civil liberties. The policy of my party is; that we should have a freedom of information Act and that both M15 and M16 should be made subject to parliamentary supervision. However, the further issue is whether incorporation of the convention into our law would also advance civil liberty. The main argument against is that powers would be taken away from Parliament, where they belong, and given to the judiciary, where they do not belong. Your Lordships may think that there is one basic question: if civil liberties are worth protecting, is it sensible to rely upon Parliament alone to do the job?
The case for incorporation is that the protection of Parliament is not enough. The Executive dominate. Governments are characteristically elected on a minority of the votes cast in elections in which civil liberties issues rarely receive much attention. The Prime Minister dominates the Cabinet. The payroll vote becomes ever larger. This Administration have set a precedent for the use of three-line Whips, even on Private Members' Bills. Sheer lack of parliamentary time of ten makes proper scrutiny a mirage. It is difficult to believe that any of us are wholly satisfied with the parliamentary process as it operates today. Two to three years ago, the other place was given but three days to consider more than 1,000 amendments to the Education Reform Bill and the poll tax Bill—on average, 80 seconds per amendment. The poll tax was a classic case of legislating in haste and repenting at leisure.
I do not desire to detain your Lordships for too long. I well know the argument that the powers of the judiciary should not be enlarged at the expense of Parliament; that the judges are not the best equipped to decide those issues. But is it the final position of both major parties that we do not believe that our courts can help protect our citizens' rights under the European Convention; that we rely upon our Parliament alone, whoever is in power, and foreign judges only? I beg to move for Papers.
3.51 p.m.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, I confess at once that I put my name down to speak in the debate with great hesitation and, as I hope the
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Opposition Bench will accept, with great reluctance. I was stung into the desire to do so by what seemed to me at the time—I am afraid that my suspicions have been confirmed rather than otherwise—the somewhat acidulous party political phrase that has been incorporated into the last phrase of the Motion. We can do better than that. This country deserves better than that. The country is entitled to expect the House to do better than that.
The issue of human freedom is not well accepted by the expression "civil liberties". I shall return to that general consideration in a moment. Nor is it at all well served by trying to draft American ideas into the British constitution. I hope that I shall not be suspected of insulting my mother's country. I am in truth a son of the American revolution, having had three male ancestors who fought against the British and thereby achieved the independence of Britain from the United States. I question the value of attempting to graft a pear onto a peach, and that is a point to which I shall again revert.
The first point is not to chase a series of individual hares around the course: from Ponting to Greenham Common; from Greenham Common to the Data Protection Act; from freedom of information to Spycatcher and all the rest of it. That would take us all night. The first question to ask oneself is: what is human freedom about? I put this general conception before the House: what a free parliamentary democracy is concerned to do is not to achieve freedom as such in the absolute, or law and order in the absolute, but to achieve the optimum level of freedom under law.
I shall describe what I mean by freedom under law. I mean the freedom of virtuous and responsible individuals to live according to their desires; to express their own personalities under just laws, enacted by a free Parliament and administered by an independent judiciary. That is my definition of what we are after.
By trying to turn the issue into a party political one, we do discredit to ourselves. We are talking ourselves down. In fact, we all know at the bottom of our hearts that this is one of the most agreeable countries in which to live. I only wish that it were even better. Comparing ourselves with the appalling state of the present world as we view it in the newspapers every day, this is an agreeable country in which to live. As I say, I hope that it will become even better.
I may be asked what I mean by "responsible people". I shall issue a caveat here. By responsible and virtuous people I mean people who obey not just the letter of the law but—to adopt a phrase from a recent lecture by the noble Lord, Lord Swann—obey the unenforceable code of obedience which natural morality imposes upon us. The freedom consists within that bound, subject to the provisos that I have made about a free Parliament and an independent judiciary, to allow human talent and virtue to blossom under those constraints only which a natural morality would otherwise impose.
It is a great mistake to use the phrase "civil liberty" too of ten. We are not the enemies of government when we live in a free country. By far the most

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serious encroachments on civil liberty are criminality, violence and terrorism—people who murder others for political reasons. of course there is no absolute level at which law and order and individual freedom can be said for ever to be engraved on tablets of stone at a certain static point, like the two tablets brought down from Sinai by Moses. That is not so. We live in a particular political context. Obviously we have to allow government whatever powers they may need to achieve the best that we can do in the circumstances in which we are.
The use of the phrase "civil liberty" is not English; it is American. It represents a kind of formulation to which the history of human freedom owes a great deal. Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Act of Settlement, the written element of our constitution, the declaration of independence—
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"—
by my American ancestors, and the first 10 amendments to the American constitution in the 1787 version, added immediately after the ratification of the original Philadelphia convention, have played an important part. So has the universal declaration of 1948 after the conclusion of the last war; so indeed did the European convention. They represent, as a matter of fact, only a fairly unsophisticated and perhaps primitive phase in the development of the kind of society that we wish to promote.
When we list freedoms and make a special freedom called civil liberty we seldom achieve our purpose. The first 10 amendments to the American constitution did not save the American negro from slavery for 82 years, nor from discrimination for nearly another 82 years. These are primitive ideas. The function of government, the function of legislation in parliament and the approach to civil liberties by the courts must be to articulate, within the context of a given society, the kind of natural morality as it affects real people, real men and women, in the social context in which they live.
That brings me to Professor Dworkin, of whom I wish to say nothing disrespectful, except that if he really said that liberty in this country was nil, he was talking nonsense—ridiculous nonsense at that. Professors of ten do. I make no complaint if he really said that, but it can only be described as nonsense.
We now come to the questions with which the noble Lord concluded his remarks. I gathered at last that he was stepping outside the galaxy of hares which he had been chasing during the earlier part of his speech to disagree with both major parties in their attitude to the European convention. I have a little more sympathy with him over that than my preliminary remarks might seem to imply. I should like to see, as I have said previously in this House, the European convention—subject to the sovereignty of Parliament—accorded modified incorporation into our jurisprudence. However, the reason is approximately the opposite of that the noble Lord put forward.
The Strasbourg court is carefully to be distinguished from the Luxembourg court. Different considerations apply. It sits in Strasbourg. Part of
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its jurisprudence states that no one can go there until they have exhausted local remedies. I happen to think, rightly or wrongly, that British judges are far better judges of what does or does not comply with the European convention in the British context than foreign judges. Therefore, I should be glad to see the European convention, subject to the sovereignty of Parliament, incorporated into the British system.
It should be laid down that future Acts are assumed to comply with the European convention except in so far as Parliament has made plain beyond peradventure that an exception is to remain. When the House discussed a Bill the point could be argued out in Committee. I do not believe that the criticisms which the noble Lord levelled at his own party and mine were at all well founded in that respect. It would be a good thing if people were enabled to bring complaints against the European convention to the British courts. British judges know much more plainly than most what is suitable in the British context to read into the European convention.
I go back to where I started. When we look at all these enumerations of so-called civil liberties—whether it is the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights 1988, the American Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration or the European convention—they all represent a stage when free humanity asserted its rights against a known tyranny. The European convention was designed to stop people behaving like Hitler and Stalin. The Magna Carta was designed to prevent future kings behaving like King John. Up to a point, it succeeded. The Glorious Revolution and the associated legislation was designed to prevent the eccentric perversities of James II.
We begin there; we do not end there. We do not treat these as limitations upon our freedom of legislation nor upon the articulation with which that freedom is to be expressed, in law, custom or convention. We treat them as broad statements made at a point when humanity is trying to begin again after a rather dark experience. That is what we were doing in 1948 and the European convention followed. I hope we will not need to have to do that again during my lifetime before I pay the small tribute, which I shall have to pay sooner or later, to the reduction in the world population.
4.5 p.m.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, has raised the issue of civil liberties—if I dare use the phrase—at a most appropriate moment in the wake of the legal services Bill. To follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, is always a most daunting occupation, particularly when he is in what I might call his philosophical mood. Civil liberties for me mean civil rights. If I am less philosophical in what I have to say, it is because I have spent a great deal of my life upholding the civil rights of the ordinary person.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: Including mine, if the noble Lord remembers.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, civil liberties in that sense come to mean something

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extremely practical and pragmatic. I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, intriguing since it came from a distinguished and young Member of his party. I cannot fail to call to mind the record of previous Labour administrations: the ban sought on the Crossman diaries; the expulsion of Mr. Hosenball; the prosecution under the official Secrets Act of two journalists in the ABC case when the judge publicly called on the Attorney-General to abandon the charges under Section 1 because, in his view, they were oppressive; the discovery of secret vetting under the control of the Attorney-General of the time; and the prosecution of the editor of the Sunday Telegraph for publishing an embarrassing document on the Biafran war that showed the Government's statements in Parliament to have been less than frank. I hope that the noble Lord's speech shows a sea change within his party.
Harry Street, in his book Freedom and the Law, said:
"Liberty in Britain is a state of mind rather than a set of legal rules".
As the flood of legislation has poured in and out of this House, we have seen the truth of that observation. Innumerable amendments have been tabled on this side of the House to preserve and advance civil liberties and human rights, only to be almost universally resisted by Ministers in speeches betraying incomprehension as to their purpose.
Liberty is awkward; it is inconvenient; it is of ten expensive. It is most of ten urged on behalf of the disadvantaged and the unconventional. The well heeled and the well rewarded, safe in their complacency, need have little concern under a Right-wing government for their civil rights. No doubt they are virtuous and responsible in their daily lives. For others, who do not find life so agreeable, concern is great. This Government have shown themselves too of ten to be intolerant of criticism, paternalistic, dogmatic, convinced, under a dominant Prime Minister, of their own infallibility and determined to have their way. In such circumstances it has been inevitable that civil rights and liberties of the ordinary citizen have been very of ten undermined and eroded. If I may say so to the noble and learned Lord, that is why this matter is to a degree one of party politics.
Freedom from arrest and detention, a fair trial, freedom from discrimination, the right to privacy, the right to know the facts on which Executive acts are based and freedom from censorship are all areas in which the individual has been increasingly constricted and restricted. The roll-call of Bills passing through this House where this has been so include those involving police and criminal evidence, public order, the interception of communications, local government, data protection, contempt of court, video recordings, official secrets, the security services, criminal justice and, most recently, legal services. Police powers of arrest have been extended and detention incommunicado has been lengthened. The Intelligence services, as has already been pointed out, are now recognised by the law and remain unaccountable. The concept of the lifelong obligation of confidence, whatever the wrongdoing or criminality within the service, is now enshrined in the law.
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Warrants to permit illegal acts and tapping of phones have been removed from judicial control. Many new absolute offences have been created. In the Spycatcher case which has been mentioned, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bridge—the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, will know this only too well as he was present on that occasion—made this observation,
"Freedom of speech is always the first casualty under a totalitarian regime. Such a regime cannot afford to allow the free circulation of information and ideas among its citizens. Censorship is the indispensable tool to regulate what the public may or may not know. The present attempt to insulate the public from information available elsewhere is a significant step down that very dangerous road".
The noble Lord, Lord Irvine, quoted the words of Mr. Justice Scott in another part of that case. Those observations have been made by impartial judges so of ten decried as Tory dinosaurs by some noble Lords on my left.
In the criminal courts persons may now be held for 36 hours incommunicado, and with a magistrate's warrant they may be held for 72 hours. This occurs in spite of the overwhelming evidence that a series of unacceptable miscarriages of justice have been due to the presentation of false confessions allegedly made in such circumstances.
The right to challenge jurymen has been removed. In Northern Ireland the greatest triumph of the IRA yet has been the abolition of the right to silence. The central tenet of the whole system of criminal justice in this country is the presumption of innocence. On the mainland that right and the right to a jury trial still stand between the overweening power of the Executive and the citizen. However, since the advent of the Courts and Legal Services Bill the independent, disinterested professional advocate and the independent, professional judge who are the means whereby those rights are guaranteed and made real are now themselves in jeopardy. Those very rights are in jeopardy also.
Legal aid has been removed from millions who may wish to assert their rights. Police powers in relation to meetings and marches have been enlarged and they have new powers of arrest. Persons awaiting trial on remand—they are still innocent in the eyes of the law—are held in circumstances of such squalor and such confusion that their rights have simply been extinguished.
The common law, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, has so authoritatively pointed out, is no longer the ally of a vigilant parliament. It is now the servant of a docile legislature which is unable to challenge the flood of legislation. The criminal law is apparently powerless to guarantee Mr. Rushdie's freedom under the law.
Judges have reacted by developing some judicial control of the Executive through the brilliantly devised system of judicial review. However, this can only operate on a very limited front. The citizen has reacted by recourse to the Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. He is usually represented by lawyers who act for no fee, as legal aid is not available. In spite of the fact that cases have taken six to seven years to be decided, more cases have been taken and upheld against the British Government than against

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any other government in Europe. There have been injustices involving contempt of court, data protection, prison rules, immigration, corporal punishment, mental patients' rights, children in care, phone tapping, official secrets, homosexuality and the closed shop. Over 100 significant changes to regulations and administrative practices affecting citizens' civil rights have resulted from decisions of the Strasbourg court. This long trek to a foreign jurisdiction to find the sustenance of justice must surely be a matter of shame to this Government.
There is now only one way forward. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, that it is the incorporation of the European convention into British law. Every other European country has incorporated that convention into its law. Then our judges will do what all other European judges do already, that is, interpret and apply the provisions of that convention in deciding cases which raise issues of fundamental freedoms as regards people's grievances in this country. I suggest that that is now the acid test. I can only hope that if there is a change of government in the next two years the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, will be given a post of influence.
4.18 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, for giving us the chance to debate this subject. However, I must confess that I too am somewhat perplexed as regards the precise significance of the prefix "civil". One knows that social justice is a subjective concept which bears little relationship to ordinary straightforward justice, but until the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, spoke I had imagined that there was no material difference between civil liberty and straightforward liberty. However, it seems that I may have been mistaken. I agree with the noble and learned Lord that even the use of the word "liberty" on its own is unsatisfactory. It is a word that one tends to associate with rather grandiloquent transatlantic rhetoric which stems, no doubt, from the Franco-American alliance of the late 18th century. I shall stick with the good Anglo-Saxon term "freedom".
How does one measure whether the general principles of individual freedom are being given sufficient weight and attention by the government of the day? One way might be through the monitoring of the volume of new laws, because most laws by definition are restrictive rather than permissive. Obviously those basic laws common to all civilised societies which protect the individual, his family, his possessions and indeed the state from violence or depredation are laws which enhance rather than detract from freedom. The same cannot necessarily be said of what might be described as optional laws, laws which create offences out of actions which most people probably have not traditionally regarded as criminal.
I have some figures which may surprise your Lordships. I can say with reasonable confidence that since this Administration came to power on 3rd May 1979 between 800 and 900 new offences—not laws but offences—have been created for which people
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can be fined or imprisoned. of that total, about 200 provide for the possibility of imprisonment as an alternative or in addition to a fine.
Why am I so confident in that assertion? Because in July 1983 I established from a parliamentary Written Answer that between the beginning of May 1979 and the end of 1982 a total of 286 such offences had been created, of which 66 provided for the possibiity of imprisonment. As of 3rd May this year this Administration had been in power for exactly three times as long as the period covered by my partliamentary Question. The volume of legislation has certainly not diminished in the intervening seven and one-third years—if anything, quite the contrary. Hence my reasoned guesstimate.
What, in contrast, has been decriminalised during those 11 years? Exchange control has been abolished; restuarants can now serve drinks with meals throughout most of the day; pubs in England and Wales can now open until 3 p.m. on Sundays rather than 2 p.m.; reading spectacles can be sold across the counter without the need to produce a prescription; and, as has already been mentioned, the official Secrets Act has been liberalised, even if not to the extent that many of us would wish. Those are all thoroughly worthwhile and welcome liberalising measures. However, even if I have missed out two or three, they hardly counterbalance the 850-odd restrictive measures on the other side of the scales.
Having said that, clearly not every new law is unfairly restrictive or otherwise undesirable. New inventions, new techniques and new processes create new opportunities for crime—for example, computer crime—against which new laws must be devised. The growing menace of terrorism necessitates new restrictions as the lesser of two evils. None of us likes those restrictions but we must agree that we need them for the time being. The same can be said of the menace of the drug trade. However, in the latter case it is not certain that all the means can be justified by the intended ends.
The creation of other new offences is a much more controversial matter. One thinks of the measures of a nanny state—compulsory crash helmets, seat belts, and so on. Those of us who were laughed at for predicting that those were the thin end of the wedge are unfortunately being proved only too right. Not only are there more and more plans afoot compulsorily to helmet and belt us against every conceivable hazard, but attacks on tobacco and smokers of tobacco have reached unprecedented levels.
Then there are environmental laws. The environmental laws. "Environment" has become one of those words, like "children", which causes most critical faculties to be suspended. I readily join Mr. Auberon Waugh in deploring the laws which permit people to be fined up to £2,000 for chasing a pair of bats out of their attic or for uprooting a couple of rare weeds from their garden.
There is also what might be described as panic legislation. That is legislation which might, indeed, turn out to be partly or even wholly justified on mature reflection but which is rushed through in a

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great hurry so as to still the shrieking demands of the tabloid press. One thinks of the Firearms Bill, the happily mainly abortive Football Spectators Bill, legislation on censorship of videos, kidney transplants, acid house parties and so on.
Finally, but most importantly, there is what might be called overkill legislation: the assumption of massive powers to deal with what, by any objective standards, is a minor nuisance. A notorious example of this appears in the Broadcasting Bill which your Lordships will debate soon after the Recess. The Bill includes clauses which empower the authorities forcibly to board a pirate radio ship, whatever its nationality of registration, on the high seas (not only in territorial waters) and to arrest every single person on board, and which indemnify the boarders totally against any damage or injury caused in the process. That is a measure which we shall need to look at very carefully indeed during the Committee stage of the Broadcasting Bill.
Apart from new laws there is the matter of administrative action over which the Government have either control or influence. The action of the police in stopping cars travelling from county to county during the miners' strike seemed to many people to stretch police powers to the absolute limit, and possibly beyond. However, I suppose that it could have been defended as the lesser of two evils on the grounds that it almost certainly prevented a considerable degree of criminal damage, injury and even death. One has only to think of the unfortunate taxi driver who was killed by a concrete block which was dropped on him. The action of the police in stopping cars travelling to so-called acid house parties is more questionable since the action is aimed at a nuisance rather than at violence. The frequency of strip searches of young people returning from places such as Amsterdam still gives cause for considerable disquiet, particularly as drugs are found only in a tiny proportion of such cases. There is also the Cleveland scandal, although I am not sure whether the Government can be blamed for that.
Having said all this, would the situation be any better if Labour came to power, governing either on its own or in coalition with the Liberal Democrats or the SDP? The answer is almost certainly no. That is partly because Labour is not a libertarian party by instinct any more than are the present day Liberals, and partly because all political parties when in power tend to be more authoritarian than they are when in opposition.
It was amusing to hear the vehemence with which noble Lords on the Labour Benches opposed that part of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill giving police the right of almost unfettered entry to clubs, arguing as they did that clubs, particularly working men's clubs, were essentially private places. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, will remember, that is almost precisely the opposite of the stance that Labour took when in power. In 1976 the Labour Government took precisely the opposite line, arguing that clubs, and in particular working men's clubs, were essentially public places and must therefore be subject to the restrictions and obligations of race relations legislation.
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Nor can one ignore the changed public mood, the Zeitgeist. Partly because of the declining birth rate, Britain is now a more middle-aged country than it was 11 years ago, both literally and to some extent in spirit. Caution, order and risk avoidance are the priorities now, not, I fear, individual freedom. The 1960s slogan "Do your own thing" is now wholly out of fashion, as is that very much older maxim "Live and let live", which might have been the motto of John Stuart Mill whose general precepts those of us in the Society for Individual Freedom try to uphold. Paternalism, even a very mild authoritarianism, is not now regarded with total disfavour by a substantial segment of our population, alas. Any incoming government, of whatever complexion, would, one suspects, be only too happy to take advantage of this prevailing mood among that substantial, but I hope not majority, section of the public.
In conclusion, the record of this Administration on civil liberties certainly leaves much to be desired. However, I very much doubt whether any foreseeable alternative administration would, on balance, do any better.
4.29 p.m.
Lord Alexander of Weedon: My Lords, perhaps I may also thank the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, for instituting debate on this important topic. The part of his speech to which I should like to add a little is the theme that he developed at the end which related to the question of whether or not we should incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights as part of our domestic law. Without the constraints of party discipline, I think that the noble Lord would have said unequivocally that he was in favour. Whatever the constraints of party discipline, I should like to express my own view in support of the incorporation of the convention, but I do so with a somewhat different emphasis from that of the noble Lord.
I would take a less gloomy starting point. I do not believe that overall this country has at the present time a bad record in terms of human rights or civil liberties, or however one describes them. There are many areas in which this country has led the way. The evolution of parliamentary democracy, the safeguards that apply to procedures at trial and habeas corpus are obvious examples. I do not believe that the vitality of that trend in our national character is spent.
An obvious recent illustration to which the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, drew attention was the immense development over the past 20 years of administrative law. An independent judiciary has resurrected, shaped and expanded the right of the courts to exercise some considerable fetter upon the actions of the Executive. We have seen that right across the board in cases affecting individual rights and involving rates, transport, social security, education and immigration, and in challenges to national security issues. Our administrative law has now become an important aspect of our freedom. Not for nothing, and in my view accurately, did the late Lord Diplock describe it as the greatest development in the law in his lifetime.

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The impact of those developments has gone far wider than decided cases because the law as it has evolved and the concern as to how the courts will look at decisions must be taken into account by the Government in reaching many important decisions across the board. That legal development has restrained the power of both Labour and Conservative governments. In each case, governments of both political complexions have accepted the development of that restraint, at any rate publicly, without protest or demur. The checks and balances within our democracy have evolved and have been accepted. I see that as a tribute to both the judiciary and to successive governments, not least the present Administration.
However, as with so much of our historical development, that evolution has been pragmatic. We have declined to incorporate in our own law what has now become our most important and influential constitutional document. It is now almost 30 years since we became the first country to ratify the European convention. As noble Lords well know, in many countries ratification automatically incorporates a treaty into the domestic law of that country; but that is not so in our law. However, we have regarded the European convention sufficiently highly to include it as the basis of the constitution of some 24 former colonies when they gained independence. We have taken a different view of what is needed by former colonies than we take of our own needs. That no doubt reflects the remarkable pervasiveness of Professor Dicey's view that written constitutions were necessary for less fortunate peoples.
We have also accepted the right of individual petition to the European Commission of Human Rights at Strasbourg since 1966. We therefore acknowledge the importance of the convention. We accept its impact. We accept judicial decisions upon it, but we decline to take the ultimate step of making it part of our own law.
The decisions of the court at Strasbourg have already had a notable impact. That has not least been so in cases which affect the rights of prisoners—a minority who carry very few political votes. Cases from Strasbourg have improved the freedom of prisoners to correspond without restriction. They have enhanced the access of prisoners to legal advice. The European Court will shortly consider the case of Michael Thynne and will decide whether a failure to provide for the periodic review of an indefinite sentence, to see whether a personality disorder still subsists, is a breach of the convention. That argument highlights an important issue dealt with admirably in the report of the Select Committee on Murder and Life Imprisonment: what should be the procedure for reviewing the duration of an indefinite life sentence? It is important that that procedure should develop so as to ensure an independent review, conducted under fair procedures, with reasons given for decisions adverse to the prisoner.
In the area of prisoners' rights, we must also work increasingly towards emphasising that imprisonment involves deprivation of liberty but
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not human degradation and loss of other civil rights. In that regard—I very much hope that the Woolf Report on the Strangeways disturbances will prove an important and illuminating milestone—the European convention has proved that it has a role to play, and it has an important continuing role to play.
Why do we not then incorporate the convention? It may be because of a concern that it impinges upon the sovereignty of Parliament. It undoubtedly has the effect, unless it were enacted with the modification suggested by my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham, that it would enable a court to declare legislation passed by Parliament in this country to be unlawful. However, although that sounds a startling proposition, perhaps we should reflect that we have in any event to some extent already accepted that principle. We accept that the court at Strasbourg can reach such decisions.
A few years ago I represented the present Government when they sought to defend legislation introduced under the previous government as being compatible with the convention. Both legislation which nationalised the shipbuilding and aircraft industries and legislation which provided for leasehold enfranchisement were involved. In each case, the applicants sought to challenge the legislation head on. The argument was heard by the European Court of Human Rights and in each case was determined in favour of the Government. However, if it had gone the other way, precedent suggests that the Government would have respected and implemented the decision of the court.
If we accept that legislation can be challenged under the convention before the Strasbourg court, would it not perhaps seem sensible that we should allow the issue to be considered by our own domestic courts? We can surely commit the issue to our judges. I do not believe that that would politicise the judiciary. The fact that it has been involved in essential social questions in determining issues of judicial review has not for the most part led to anything other than enhanced respect for the wish and determination of the judiciary to uphold the individual against excesses of government power.
I do not want to suggest, perhaps especially in this Session, that incorporation of the convention is urgent. I certainly do not wish to suggest that it should be added to the burden of legislation in this current Session. It has in one sense become less urgent because of the willingness of the courts to interpret and shape our law in the light of the provisions of the convention.
However, there remain concerns that the sovereignty of Parliament alone is not a sufficient protection for all our citizens. There is a danger that, as I believe my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham once described it, Parliament has increasingly become an elected dictatorship. Our society increasingly comprises minorities whose interests may not have enough widespread appeal or, to put it crudely, sufficient voting pull for them to be effectively protected in Parliament. The convention contains a framework within which our civil liberties and rights can be safeguarded.

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I am encouraged by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Irving of Lairg, to think that the party opposite may shortly reach the view that it is high time that this charter for the protection of the citizen should become part of our domestic law. I look forward with interest to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, with his well-known and highly developed concern for individual rights. I should like to see my own party reach the same conclusion so that this important constitutional safeguard could be enacted into our law with broad cross-party support. I do not see it as a convention simply necessary at the time when the world emerges from the dark night of the excesses of law.
I see the convention as a reasonable expression of what is to be a fair balance within society: the balance between individual liberty and the rule of law; the balance between freedom of expression and individual rights to privacy; the balance between individual liberties and the need of the Government to preserve public order. I would consent to all those questions being adjudicated under the convention. It is a highlight of mature democracies that they wish to patriate and shape the development of their own constitutions. I hope that the time will shortly come when we, as the most mature of democracies, long alert and still alert to civil liberties, will decide that it makes elementary and obvious sense to patriate what is already our most important and relevant contemporary constitutional document.
Lond Monson: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, and since we have a few moments in hand, perhaps I may put one question to him arising from his very interesting speech. Does he not agree that one problem of the incorporation of the European convention into our law is that the convention was drafted at a time when Europe was much more left-wing than it is today? It therefore does not sufficiently protect property rights: hence the court's decisions in the aircraft and shipbuilding nationalisation and leasehold reform cases. In that regard the European convention, I think he would agree, is somewhat defective.
Lord Alexander of Weedon: My Lords, I should like to call upon my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham to lead me on my response to this issue. My impression is that the convention contains protection for rights of property. But it also contains a margin of appreciation to the domestic government on how those rights shall be balanced. That is reflected in the decision in the aircraft and shipbuilding nationalisation case. It was illustrated by that case when the Bill was before Parliament. If I remember rightly, the present Government were then in opposition and opposed the passage of the Bill because they believed that it was inappropriate and, as a matter of domestic politics, did not sufficiently protect property rights. However, when the issues came before Strasbourg the Government recognised that a larger issue was under consideration: the right of government and parliament within a particular country to draw the balance in that area. They therefore upheld the principle under the convention.
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I believe that the flexibility that is given within the convention enables the individual courts applying it to shape the limits of the proper protection of property, and to evolve those limits as befits the tenor of thought within any period.
4.47 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, at this stage one wonders whether one is in Committee or a debate. I too should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, for introducing this topic. The headline of my contribution has to be, "Put not thy trust in princes". That is the thrust of a number of contributions: that we should incorporate the European convention or the universal declaration of human rights into our legislation and leave it to the judges to protect us from all ill.
I approach the problem from the point of view of the individual, and of democracy being essential to the preservation and protection of civil liberties. The subject of the debate is the state of civil liberties under this Administration. There are a range of areas where civil liberties have come under attack and threat. Perhaps I may touch on one or two.
The first relates to information. How are we to determine the state of our civil liberties if we do not know what is going on in our society? It is interesting to ponder that the United States is not prepared to allow large chunks of its media to be under the control of people who are not citizens of that country. Yet we are prepared to see the control of large chunks of our media, which provide information to our citizens, under the control of people who are not citizens of this country. They are people who owe no allegiance to our country or to the citizens who live in it. We are prepared to accept that they will provide the information to our citizens on which those citizens base their decisions. That is one of the most fundamental factors that we need to question when considering the perfection or otherwise of the state of civil liberty.
The second concept concerns freedom of association. I argue that freedom of association in terms of civil liberties is essential. The ability of people to come together, to associate together, to pursue a common aim, is important for the freedom and civil liberties of our citizens. This Administration must face questioning on that aspect in relation to their actions. Perhaps I may mention a few examples. Shortly after I came to this House we debated the 1985 Local Government Bill, now an Act. It effectively destroyed swathes of local government in our country. It destroyed the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils which had been in existence for only 10 years.
Democracy and the ability of people to come together and to work together is a fragile flower. It takes time to be nurtured—for people to come together to agree upon actions, and for those actions to take effect. Ten years after the inauguration of those local authority organisations this Administration destroyed them. In the process of doing so, they destroyed their political opposition in those organisations because every one of them was controlled by their political opponents—the Labour

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Party. However, far more importantly, every one of those organisations—the GLC, the Greater Manchester Council, Merseyside County Council and South Yorkshire County Council—under the control and administration of the Labour Party was an organ of democracy. They were implementing the policies that had been agreed by the people in their localities on what should be done in those local administrations. It was a great attack on the civil liberties of people living in those areas.
The vast majority of the population of this country was affected by those actions. This Administration effectively destroyed the civil liberties of the majority of the population of this country by destroying those organs of local government which epitomised the freedom of association of those people.
Another aspect of which this Administration is guilty is the denial of individual freedom. I am not talking about the freedom of rich people to become richer. Indeed, almost the only issue that this Administration have promoted is the ability of rich people to become richer. I am talking about the ability of ordinary people in this country to go about their business and to do what they want to do as individuals free from the threat of intimidation, arrest and harassment by the state. That ability has been curtailed by this Administration.
I was interested to hear the contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. He described freedom as being freedom under the law. That phrase has a nice ring to it until one begins to ask: whose law and what law? Is it the law of the rich and powerful—
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, I do not believe that the noble Lord is doing me justice. I defined what I said as just laws enacted by a freely-elected Parliament. I hope that the noble Lord will not do me the injustice of pretending that I meant something else.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, I am grateful for the noble and learned Lord's contribution. However, I bring to him the realisation that we are the other Chamber in a so-called democratic Parliament. It is a Chamber which has no concept of or part in democracy, apart from the way we vote when reaching decisions.
Lord Somers: My Lords, the noble Lord spoke of the rights of people to pursue their own business. In the town in which I live countless small businesses have disappeared not due to the policy of the Government but due entirely to the actions of local government.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his contribution. I am not sure how it pertains to our debate, which is to call attention to the state of civil liberties under this Administration. I am attempting to point out that virtually all the actions of this Administration seek to ensure the ability of rich people to secure their liberties at the expense of the vast majority of people in this country in securing their civil liberties as individuals and collectively.
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Another example of the curtailment of civil liberties is the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The Home Secretary who introduced the Act in 1974 described it as draconian. At that time it was subject to annual parliamentary review because it was so draconian. This Administration have written it into the statute book as part and parcel of our legislative baggage with no opportunity for Parliament to review it on a yearly basis. That epitomises the state of civil liberties and the way that they have sunk under this Administration.
There are innumerable examples, one of which we had as recently as last year. The Local Government and Housing Act 1989 curtailed civil liberties yet again. Until then anyone working in local government could stand for election as a representative of the people. For 100 years or more there was never any question of people in local government being ineligible to stand as elected representatives of the people. Yet that Act introduced by this Administration—and I hope that noble Lords will listen carefully—effectively curtails not just the civil liberties of the individuals restricted from standing for election but those of everyone in this country because it denies people the ability to elect those whom they want to represent them. That is the important issue. While the Government seek to project the image of curtailing the civil liberties of minorities here and there they are in reality curtailing the civil liberties of everyone in this country.
4.56 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, not only for having brought forward this interesting subject for debate but also for giving the House such an extraordinarily able presentation of the reasons why some noble Lords on the Benches opposite are removed from the feelings of the mass of the electorate. I could not believe that he was serious when he began by quoting Professor Dworkin. I do not suppose that the name of Professor Dworkin is familiar on the streets of Bootle where the electorate's temperature is being taken at the moment.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: They talk about nothing else in Edmonton!
Lord Beloff: My Lords, if I may coin a phrase, he is the epitome of what New Yorkers style "radical chic". His belief that this country is suffering under some extraordinary, tyrannical government is so remote from reality that I was surprised that the noble Lord began his speech in that way.
However, it illustrates one of our existing problems which is related to the European convention. It is our tendency, naturally enough, to look at the disadvantages of our society, whether social or juridical, and to assume that things are better elsewhere. For instance, the problems about the rights of the accused in legal cases and so forth were rightly presented to us by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson. However, as soon as a British subject is arrested in Spain, France or Greece, we suddenly

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find that many of the issues that we regard as being outrageous and as covered by most international conventions occur as a matter of course because those countries have a different way of looking at them. As was pointed out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, we, like other countries, have issues of differing importance which must be weighed against each other.
The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, drew up the now familiar and bedraggled cast of Miss Tisdall, Mr. Ponting and other characters who flitted across the stage not always to their own advantage. Again, such characters are of no great interest to most people because on the whole they believe that people should keep the confidences entrusted to them. On the whole security of the country is regarded as having a great deal of importance.
If asked about civil liberties most people would believe them to be something much more primitive than freedom of speech or association. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, has not shown me the usual courtesy of waiting for a reply, but I must point out to him that nobody is prevented from standing for election if he is an officer of local government. The Act prevents the holding of a post which is intended to be a full-time post of employment in one local government authority while being a member of another. That is different, and again I do not believe that there is the sense of outrage which the noble Lord professes to feel.
However, there are anxieties in this country about civil liberties and the main anxiety is simple. It is about the right to life and limb and not to be harassed. I particularly refer, as have other noble Lords, to minorities who may not have the opportunity to present their case fully in Parliament or elsewhere. Harassment largely comes from other private citizens. In other words, what we lack in this country to some extent is a system of protection.
Only today the Metropolitan Police has announced that it needs to take further and stringent measures to prevent the harassment of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and other citizens in this country. However, that cannot be done if it is told that the rights of anyone else may not be restricted, because the right to abuse other people or other groups and the right to harass them are matters which in their turn have to be checked. One could very well argue that we are in a period in which we must accept restrictions on civil liberties, as defined by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, in order to preserve liberties of life and limb and the feeling of day-to-day security, which most people would put first.
That is equally true—this has been mentioned by other noble Lords—as regards the struggle against terrorism. You cannot deal with terrorism as a phenomenon which does not and may not demand exceptional measures. Most people in this country would regard the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the procedures deriving from it as perhaps regrettable, but as compared with the deaths of innocent servicemen and civilians they would regard those curtailments of the liberties or privileges of certain individuals as of lesser importance.
I think that the point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine—and I apologise if it was another noble
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Lord—about Mr. Salman Rushdie, who is much in the news. Clearly it is desirable—and this is generally felt—that Mr. Rushdie's right to publish his rather inferior fiction should be preserved, as should the right of his publishers to publish. Indeed, it is a blot on our society that a citizen who has done no more than exercise normal rights or civil liberties, as defined by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, should be living in fear of his life and unable to lead the normal life of an ordinary person.
However, what should we have done if we believe that protection must go to the ultimate extent? There should have been a prosecution of those in this country who had publicly demanded his removal by assassination. When this subject was raised we were told by noble Lords on the Front Bench that the evidence was not available for a prosecution. Considering that one of those threats was made at a meeting attended by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester—one would have thought a very good witness—it is surprising that that view was taken. It may well be that the Government considered that it was better to do nothing and to permit a rather unusual open appeal to assassinate a British citizen because other considerations arose on race relations which made action more dangerous than inaction. I do not know. This is not a debate on that subject.
However, I reiterate the importance—here I merely follow my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham—of looking at the matter initially from the point of view of the ordinary citizen, particularly the ordinary citizen who by reason of belonging to a minority or for other reasons may be underprotected. We must consider what protection can be given which causes a minimum departure from our traditional legal system. That is not something which can easily be solved by the kind of people like Professor Dworkin who read the New Statesman or write letters to the Guardian because that is not representative of the ordinary citizens of this country but is a particular form of elite—one might say the scribblers' elite.
Many noble Lords have said that democracy should inspire us. Democracy certainly starts by respect for the individual. Here it is very difficult to understand—and again difficult to reply to Banquo's ghost—what was meant by the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, in respect of freedom of association, because that is normally thought to be voluntary. The metropolitan counties may or may not have been good but they were not voluntary associations. They were organs of government created by one parliament and, rightly or wrongly, removed by another. In other words, we must not become muddled into considering aspects of the machinery of government when we are trying to solve extremely difficult problems and problems which I have no doubt this Government have not solved perfectly. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, pointed out, other governments in the past have not done so, nor, as the noble Lord, Lord Monson, rightly pointed out, will governments in the future.
We must not select foreign examples. Indeed, the United States has a panoply of protections which no

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doubt give Professor Dworkin and other American lawyers a great deal to go on. No one, looking at the condition of some American metropolitan areas, would say that Americans are less in fear or enjoy greater rights than the citizens of our own country. If you were asked whether you would prefer to live in Tower Hamlets or the Bronx, I suspect that the answer would be quite unequivocal.
Let us consider what we have in this country. Let us try to amend it. However, do not let us begin by fantasies about a government determined to be tyrannical.
5.10 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, free from all constraint I immediately plead with the House for the right of freedom of reply for Professor Dworkin. That is a freedom which unfortunately he does not enjoy in spite of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff.
It is appropriate in regard to both time and place that the debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Irvine of Lairg should take place in the House of Parliament, the protector of the freedom of the subject, whether one calls it civil rights, freedom under the law, or whatever. How appropriate it is in regard to time, because those freedoms must be protected by being examined periodically and not too infrequently. As has been said on many occasions, our freedoms are counted on the basis of the vigilance that we keep in order to protect them.
There was a complaint made by the philosopher, statesman and lawyer who bears the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, whose voice, whether or not accompanied by a chuckle, we in this House always love to hear. His complaint was that the Motion initiated by my noble friend had a political touch. The title is: "Debate to call attention to the state of civil liberties under this Administration". The Administration has been in being for a long time. I suppose one could have said that it was to call attention to the state of civil liberties during the past decade. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Irvine of Lairg would have been content with that. I am certainly content to look at things over the past decade, trying to forget which government may have been in power.
If brickbats of a gentle nature can be thrown by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, at a past Labour Administration, and if lessons need to be learnt by a Labour Government as well as a Tory Government, let us combine, learn the lessons and be sensible about it without trying to score political points on either side.
If that be right, perhaps we can look at the situation over the past 10 years and not be too sanguine in so doing because we are discussing a solemn subject. It may be right to say that it is nicer to live in Tower Hamlets than the Bronx. It is perhaps possible to say that there are parts of the Bronx which are better than parts of Tower Hamlets and parts of Tower Hamlets which are better than parts of the Bronx. However, we will not get very far in that regard.
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I listened attentively while the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, spoke of his American ancestors. He said that he hoped that he was not being too rude to the Americans when comparing our state of civil liberties with theirs. I immediately searched in my papers for a transcript of a lecture delivered by a very fine American lawyer. Floyd Abrams, who gave the Granada Guildhall lecture in November 1984. The House may be amused, in view of our comparisons with what exists in the United States, by what the Americans think of us. I should say in advance that the lecture was chaired by the late Lord Elwyn-Jones, whom so many of us miss. He put Mr. Abrams right.
In the lecture Floyd Abrams said:
"A good deal of what I do in my country as a lawyer relates to your country: let me phrase it as candidly as I can. What I do is to seek with all my power to dissuade our legislatures and courts and citizens from looking to your country as a model for us to emulate as we continue to define and redefine precisely what the unadorned words of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution—'Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press'—mean.
And so, I urge upon our courts that we are different from you, that, as Mr. Justice Hugo Black observed for the United States Supreme Court in 1941: 'No purpose in ratifying the Bill of Rights was clearer than that of securing for the people of the United States much greater freedom of religion, expression, assembly and petition than the people of Great Britain ever enjoyed'.".
I close the quotation, and so far the score is: United Kingdom and United States, one-all. I do not think that it does much good to talk in terms of contrasts and comparisons. However, it was right to point out, as was pointed out in the debate, that when we consider human rights and the European Convention on Human Rights—which we ratified in 1951 and which came into force in 1953—in fact we were found to have breached that convention more times than any other European state.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to intervene. Has it not occurred to him that the reason for that is very simple? We have not incorporated the jurisprudence of the European convention into our own law because it is a fundamental principle that one cannot go to the European court until one has exhausted the local remedy. The reason we have been arraigned before the European court is that one can go from this country straight to the European court without going up the staircase of local remedy. That is exactly why my noble friend Lord Alexander and I said what we did in our respective speeches.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I appreciate that comment but it does not answer the point. One must assume that if the European convention had been incorporated into our law our courts would have found, in exactly the same way as the European court—unless one is offensive to their judges—that there had been more breaches than were reported to the European court. I agree that other countries may have local courts to deal with those breaches, but there are a great number of breaches of human rights which have been found to be so by the European court. If that be so none of us must sit back and be content, especially in the face of another statistic mentioned in this debate. On over 80 occasions either our legislation or regulations have had to be

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altered because they were found to be in breach of the European convention.
All that I am endeavouring to say is that we must not feel so superior in the way we protect human rights that we think there is no need to conduct debates to enable us to look at ourselves over the past 10 years and see if things cannot be better over the next 10 years, whichever government happen to be in power. My prayer, quite obviously, is in one direction and your Lordships will know what that is.
What is the state of the way in which we legislate regarding information? Again, that was a point touched on in the debate. All our legislation appears to be for the protection of information and not the giving of information. That is why very of ten in this House there has been a plea, certainly from these Benches and sometimes taken up by the Benches next to ours, for legislation which tells the subject what he is entitled to know and look at among government papers.
What can be wrong with legislation of that kind? All that we have been debating over the past 10 years is some sort of amendment to Section 2, the infamous Section 2; so that what we have been able to do, still, is to protect information, very largely, and to ensure that some part of the imparting of information which was deemed to be confidential is not necessarily a part of our criminal law. But what about the rights of people to knew what is happening?
I turn from that to our security services. I pay tribute from these Benches on behalf of the party to those who in the security services take many brave actions in order to protect the security of our nation; but what about some of the scandals that have occurred as a result of the fact that there is no proper democratic supervision of that service? We have spoken about the Home Secretary and all said what a busy man he is with all his multifarious departments and wondered how he can possibly supervise the security services and their activities in a proper way; is it right, in any case, for one Minister to be responsible?
Only so that your Lordships get the feel, not necessarily of cases over the past 10 years that have been very properly referred to—Ponting and the rest—I mention a very interesting publication called Application Refused. I found it in the Commons Library. This book was sponsored by the Civil Liberties Trust. The foreword to that book interested me. It was written by someone who, as she says, is complexly non-political. She writes:
"In Britain, since I have never been a political militant, I dismissed the stories of tapped telephones and mysterious burglaries that circulated amongst the far left as evidence of the ubiquity of the British secret service as either paranoia or self-aggrandisement.
"And then it happened to me. What happened to me has happened to up to one million people, but most of them don't know it. I only found out about it through a combination of coincidence and the diligence of another journalist. He had investigated vetting by MI5 of job applicants to the BBC, a practice which had begun perhaps with justifiable reasons but which had grown into a political screening system that would not have shamed a totalitarian regime. My own application to the BBC had seen vetoed by MI5 on the grounds that I was briefly the secretary of an organisation called Scotland China Association, a
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body that counted amongst its luminaries several distinguished academic sinologists and a sizeable handful of former missionaries, including the Dean of the Faculty of Divinity of Edinburgh University. A less subversive body it would be hard to imagine and yet, ten years later, the British government stated in its defence to the Commission of the European Court of Human Rights that it still considered the veto to have been justified.
"Like many other people, I had been judged by persons unknown, on evidence that I was never allowed to see, in a process of which I was meant to remain ignorant, a process which by the most basic standard of justice is an outrage".
That is the sort of invasion of civil rights that is much more pertinent, if I may be allowed to say so, and much more dramatic than those which have been established in courts of law and have caught the front pages of newspapers, however worthy it may have been to quote those cases—and it is proper that they were—this afternoon.
That example gives the picture of the ordinary subject, not the servant of the state, who finds the whole machinery absolutely oppressive in regard to obtaining employment and the instrument which interfered with it not supervised by any democratic machinery.
Therefore, if my party says (here I am speaking politically) that we should have a right of information Act, that we ought to have—with great respect to all the fine work done by MI5—some sort of democratic supervision of that organisation, am I not asking for an improvement which we all want to see, regardless of party?
I conclude on one other note. I cannot help, as a lawyer, speaking in terms of what may be happening to our law and our criminal law. The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, dealt with this matter—as usual very effectively. We keep hearing suggestions in this House and in the other place from certain quarters about doing away with the jury system in certain classes of cases and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, reminded us, suggestions about doing away with the right of silence. After all, it is said, why should not people be made to say why they are innocent, and should there not be an inference of guilt from the fact that they remain silent?
I cannot help but repeat to this House the words of one of the most renowned of our judges, Lord Devlin. I hope his words in regard to civil liberties will always be remembered. He said:
"I hope the day will never come when the right to silence is denied. We afford to everyone suspected and accused of crime at any stage the right to say 'Ask me any question and I shall answer none. Prove your case'".
So often, I say again, this right to silence is queried and the abolition of jury trial in certain classes of cases spoken of as being a possibility, and even recommended in the report of one of our worthy and learned judges. I believe that would be the start of no juries in any case.
Those are invasions of rights and liberties and they lead me to my final remarks. I make them only because the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, with his usual courtesy, suggested that I might say something from this Front Bench on the subject. I can never ignore a request from the noble Lord—provided it is a reasonable one. I refer to where one stands on the incorporation of a European convention into our

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law. I say from this Bench that most interesting and persuasive remarks have been made in this debate about that subject. I and my noble friend Lord Irvine will ensure that what has been said in this debate will be communicated to those in my party who are in charge of policy. What was said will be carefully considered and it is most likely that it will have great influence. It has been a pleasure to sum up this debate which was so well moved by my noble friend.
5.30 p.m.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, for raising what has proved to be an interesting and stimulating topic in debate and for the thoughtful approach he brought to such a wide and complicated subject. There can be few matters as important and deserving of debate in your Lordships' House as this. I am grateful to other noble Lords who contributed and I hope to touch on most of the points raised in the time allowed.
It seems that the debate has turned on three main areas. First, we have the argument that basic freedoms have been diminished during this Government's term of office. Secondly, there is the question of the proper balance to be struck between the liberties of the individual on the one hand and the rights of others and the general public on the other. Thirdly, there is the issue of how civil liberties are protected under our present constitutional arrangements. These three areas are of course interlinked, but, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to look at each main area in turn.
Needless to say, I cannot accept the erosion of freedom hypothesis put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine. I believe that his argument presents an altogether misguided picture of the true situation. Under this Government there has been a very real and worthwhile extension and enhancement of civil liberties. I hope I shall be able to persuade your Lordships that the Government's record bears close scrutiny and emerges with credit. As a Government we have set great store by the extension of economic freedoms because we believe that civic rights are much better extended under a prosperous economy. Our actions aimed at deregulation and the freeing of economic life have produced enormous benefits, increased productivity, lower taxes and more disposable income in real terms.
I believe strongly that reducing taxation gives the individual the freedom to spend his hard-earned money in the way he wants rather than the state saying where the money will go. Our guiding principle, therefore, is not materialism but a realisation that freedoms can only but be enhanced by increasing economic prosperity. Economic freedom is important. We have taken, for example, action against the closed shop; we have given trade union members the right to be balloted before any industrial action; and we took resolute action against secondary picketing. We on these benches view with utter dismay the fact that the Labour Party wants to relegalise secondary picketing.
There was precious little freedom under the last Labour Adminstration at factory gate strike meetings, and I am sure your Lordships will recall
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all too many an ugly scene involving intimidation by mass pickets. As your Lordships know, we are currently taking action in another place to end the practice of wildcat strikes, among other things. Where we think it right to give further protection to the public and indeed the ordinary employee, we will not hesitate to act.
We have taken action to give council tenants the right to buy—a measure which has since received grudging Labour Party support. Action which extends economic freedom has helped many ordinary citizens to do what would never otherwise have been possible. I shall give other examples. The Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act are very important examples of the extension of individual liberty. We have put the Data Protection Act in place. We have given access to educational records and certain medical reports.
The Opposition are much concerned about police powers. But it was this Government who set out a new framework in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act which gave added safeguards for the citizen and for dealing with complaints against the police. We have given a statutory right to compensation for victims of violent crime, which is a measure that commands all your Lordships' support.
The noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, made much reference to the official Secrets Act, quoting the cases of Tisdall, Ponting and others in some detail. The previous Labour Administration were taken to task by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, in his characteristic and well-argued contribution. As regards official secrets, the reform we introduced was radical and now only six types of official information are protected. In general, it is for the prosecution to prove that specific form of harm defined in the Act arose or was likely to arise from disclosure. It will also be for the prosecution to prove that the accused knew or had good reason to believe that harm would occur, except in the case of those treated under the Act as Crown servants. Under the 1989 Act the number of people prescribed as Crown servants has been greatly reduced, from an estimated 500,000 to an estimated 27,000.
We have made provision about the interception of communications, with the appointment of a commissioner, and for complaints to go to an independent tribunal. The security service has been put on a statutory footing, again with provision for the appointment of a commissioner and for complaints to go before an independent tribunal.
I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that it is proposed that Labour would pass a security service Act bringing MI5 and MI6 under the general supervision of a Standing Committee of the House of Commons which would oversee their activities. That would bring the security services under political control, allowing politicians to influence operational decisions, despite the fact that no Western democracy exercises parliamentary scrutiny over the operational decisions of its security services.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I know that the noble Viscount, with his usual courtesy, will allow me to intervene. It has been made absolutely clear that the current operational work of MI5 would not be within

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the ambit of any such committee. It would be the general supervision of MI5 in regard to policy matters but certainly not in regard to its day-to-day activities.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, it will be interesting to see whose words are proved right.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, is the Minister saying that the current state of affairs is that the Prime Minister cannot ask the security services to provide her with information about a particular subject of concern to her?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I am developing a theme and I believe that I should go on with it.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, complained about the Courts and Legal Services Bill. The administration of civil justice is being reformed and will improve access to justice for the public by speeding up, simplifying and reducing the cost of proceedings, which are important benefits.
I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that the Government are committed to openness in their processes. We now make as much information available as possible while preserving the principle of confidentiality that is essential for the effective working of government. Under this Administration there has been a considerable increase in public consultation, very much more briefing for the media and the publication of research and evaluation papers; and the Select Committee system has produced important benefits.
Many more examples could be given. I think, however, that I have made my point. Our record is one of very positive achievement in extending and enhancing civil liberties. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said that freedoms are counted by the vigilance we use to protect them. I agree with him and I believe that this Administration have been vigilant and protective.
I now turn to my second theme, the question of balance. The Government are fully committed to ensuring that the people of this country know their rights end that they are not infringed. That does not of course mean that those liberties can always be unqualified. That is because all governments have a duty to make a judgment of the rights of the individual as well as of society at large and of the conflict of rights between various groups in society. This is not always an easy task, but it is one which this Government have not sought to avoid.
I do not mind that IRA terrorists can travel less easily to and from Great Britain as a result of powers taken to prevent terrorism. Those powers are essential for the defence of ordinary law-abiding people, as, I am sorry to say, are other powers that the noble Lord, Lord Monskswell, and perhaps the Labour Party would like to see revoked.
Nor do I mind the curtailment of the liberty of a young man to carry a knife in his pocket; nor the fact that, should he appear in court, the burden of proving why he was carrying the knife now rests with him and not the prosecution. We are conscientious and meticulous in looking at issues of individual
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freedom. I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that where we decide to increase or diminish freedom we do not do so lightly or without clear evidence of need. Where the protection of the public has needed limited and well-defined reinforcement, we have provided it and will continue to do so.
My noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham brought his characteristically incisive intelligence to bear during the debate. He was right to remind us that the greatest threat to freedom stems from criminality, violence and terrorism. It is fundamental to our way of life that the citizen should be able to live his life free from harm and fear. My noble and learned friend called it the optimum level of freedom under law. I agree with my noble friend Lord Beloff that if that means curbing in some way the liberties of the evil-minded or irresponsible few, then that is what has to be done, and I make no apology.
I turn now to my third theme, how civil liberties are protected under our present constitutional arrangements. We heard the suggestion from the noble Lords, Lord Irvine of Lairg, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington and Lord Mishcon, that civil rights would be better protected if civil liberties were enshrined in a Bill of Rights. Civil rights are already protected in our legal systems and by statute and are in far more precise terms than, for example, in the European convention, which most proponents of a Bill of Rights would like to incorporate in our domestic law.
Incorporating the European convention would mean that the courts rather than Parliament would determine society's needs. That is no reflection on the impartiality of the judiciary. Rather, it is a reaffirmation that it is for Parliament in the exercise of its sovereignty to decide. We do not doubt that ability of the judges, but we believe that requiring them to undertake such tasks would propel them into the political arena. One has only to look to the United States to see that the two most important criteria for appointment to the Supreme Court are the candidate's social views and his or her political opinions. There is no evidence that the general public favours either a written constitution or a new Bill of Rights. The Government therefore believe that until consensus as to such a need emerges, the present adequate safeguards should remain.
My noble friend Lord Alexander of Weedon said in a fine speech that checks and balances have evolved. Rights are protected in this country by public opinion, by parliamentary responsibility and accountability and of course by judicial review, and the Government see no need for the radical changes suggested. My noble friend Lord Beloff summed it up by saying that we have the tendency to look at disadvantages and assume that things are better elsewhere.
In the short time left I should like briefly to refer to the Labour Party's proposals in this area. It seems that Labour intends that your Lordships' House shall be abolished and replaced by an elected second Chamber which would be able to delay repeal of legislation affecting fundamental rights for the whole life of a Parliament. That way, it says, the electorate will decide at the next election on those questions

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of liberty proposed for abolition. What, I wonder, does it propose to abolish?
That is a prescription for muddle and confusion. On what basis will the second Chamber be elected; and what reason is there to think that its political composition would be much different from the other place? Would the second Chamber have the independence and political will to set itself against the other place? There are too many grave constitutional dangers in what Labour proposes.
The Government believe that the real intention of the Labour Party has nothing to do with civil liberties whatsoever. We believe that its real intent is to remove all constraints on the power of the other place. It would indeed be what my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham has called an elective dictatorship.
We have sounded the alarm bells, and I hope that the nation will heed them. To the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, I would end by saying:
"Liberty is well in England".
Lord Irvine of Lairg: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. It has been light in the number of contributors but heavy in the weight of the contributions it has attracted. I assure noble Lords that I accept that our comparative international standing in upholding liberty is high. The best guardian of liberty, however, is, as my noble friend Lord Mishcon said, vigilance. That, I am sure, is what Professor Dworkin was essentially saying in words that I commended and commend to your Lordships' House, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, said when addressing your Lordships so characteristically on behalf of the man on the Clapham omnibus.
Liberty is not lost overnight, but liberties can be lost piecemeal when other more ephemeral interests are allowed to override liberty. Then, after a period of years, we wake up too late to an appreciation that liberty has seriously diminished. My purpose in moving this Motion was to call attention to the risk of our ceasing to be, due to the events of the last decade, at the very frontiers of liberty where we ought to remain. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Population Growth
5.48 p.m.
Lord Rea Lord Rea rose to call attention to the relationship of poverty, illiteracy and environmental degradation to rapid world population growth; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, before moving my Motion, perhaps I may ask the Leader of the House to clarify one point. While I think it is the intention of all noble Lords who will speak to keep to the spirit of a short two-and-a-half hour debate, am I right in thinking that there is no formal limit to the time allotted to the debate?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I have taken advice. I thought there was a formal time limit but the noble Lord is right. There is not, because the Motion was not moved.
Lord Rea: My Lords, nevertheless, I hope that we shall keep to the spirit of the normal two-and-a-half-hour short debate.
I have centred this Motion on the world population problem because it is such a widely accepted concern. But I hope to show that it is a problem which demands a much wider view of the human situation, particularly of the relationship between the developed affluent North and the under-developed poorer South, than would be obtained by a narrowly focused discussion on family planning as such, vital though that is. It is a huge subject upon which I would have to speak for an hour or more in order to cover the whole field—and then there would still be many gaps. As it is, I hope in about 15 minutes to set the stage—and truly for this topic all the world is a stage—for the 14 distinguished speakers who will follow me. I know that they will make the evening much more interesting and inform the House much more fully than would be the case if I were to attempt the task alone.
Many noble Lords will know the size and shape of the problem. At present the world's population is estimated at 5.28 billion. By the time my 15 minutes has elapsed, it will have increased by another 2, 700. It took the human race about 250,000 years since it first evolved from its ape-like ancestors to reach I billion. That occurred in the early years of the 19th century. It took a further 110 years or so to reach 2 billion. That occurred in about 1925. Since that time the next billion took only 35 years to evolve, the following one 15 years and the next one took 13 years. It will not be until the human race reaches the total of 7 billion in about the year 2010 that the rate of increase is likely to start to slow down, but even that prediction is now in doubt according to the most recent report of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
The final size of the human population is estimated by the United Nations to stabilise at something between 11 billion at a medium projection and 14 billion at a higher projection by the end of the next century. Whether we reach the lower or the higher of those estimates very much depends upon what happens in the next decade, because of the built-in increase which will inevitably occur as young people born now mature and have their own families.
The industrialised North has virtually ceased to increase in numbers and in the next century the vast majority of people on the earth will be born in the South. In the face of all that busy reproduction, I am tempted to stand back at this point and reflect that as all this activity is due to sex, the obvious answer is perhaps self-control and abstinence. To quote from a source which I shall not name:
"The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous and the consequences disastrous".
I doubt whether that view will be shared by many of your Lordships present in the Chamber tonight.

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I have committed the impermissible: I have mislaid one of the pages of my speech. Therefore, the next section of my speech will be slightly disjointed. When a species increases in vast numbers, as the human race has done, it can be held to be a mark of its success in adapting to the environment. In man's case, not only have we adapted to the environment; we have also been able to adapt the environment itself to our own ends. So far as concerns tonight's discussion, there is no measure which we have achieved more effectively than that of controlling mortality.
In the last century we gradually became more aware of our environment and increased our industrial growth. The increase in our population was slow because we had not yet begun to understand fully the causes of death. Therefore, the increasing prosperity was able to match, or go ahead of, the increase in the size of the population, although we had our own population explosion. However, these days, we are able to export to the developing South the techniques we have developed to control mortality so that mortality rates there have begun to fall much more quickly than birth rates.
In the third world the birth rate has been affected by a colossally high mortality rate due to a whole range of tropical diseases, such as malaria, as well as intermittent shortages of food supplies and a full range of other diseases from which we suffer, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrhoea. As I said, we have been able to export quite simple methods of mortality control to the South. This has happened almost inadvertently; for example, as regards transporation, the building of roads has a major effect in limiting mortality. It is much easier now for a family to bring their sick children to a village some distance away from their home than it was when they had to trek on foot for many miles through the bush.
The result of this development has been that out of six or seven children per mother, four of five are now surviving rather than the two or three that usually survived before modern means of controlling mortality were introduced from the North. Even so, that still leaves a very high mortality rate of up to 25 per cent. in many countries in the developing world, compared with our rate of 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. Therefore, there is still a colossal wastage of child life in many developing countries due to entirely avoidable causes. According to the WHO, 14 mil ion children die each year.
The possibility, even though it is less than it was previously, that their children may die is a potent reason why many third world mothers continue to desire to have large families. They wish to ensure that some of their children survive. In subsistence economies children are perceived as an economic asset. In contrast, in more developed countries with a better educated population, having fewer children frees women to pursue a fuller and more economically productive life.
At present, many third world countries are at that "transitional" or turning point. It is especially there that women are eager to avail themselves of modern means of contraception. Sadly, those means are nowhere near as readily available as they should be.
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The current economic plight of many developing countries makes it more difficult to supply them even if there is a government that is willing to do so. Indeed, that is the case with the majority of governments in the third world today.
I should now like to concentrate on the three factors mentioned in the title of the Motion. I shall deal first with poverty. If countries are plotted on a graph, with GNP per head on one axis and the fertility rate on the other, one can see that there is as clear relationship between income and fertility, although it is not consistent. Some points are well outside the main trend. On the useful axiom that the exception proves the rule, it is worth looking at the outliers. There are, first, those that are poor but have low fertility. Three countries stand out—China, Cuba and Sri Lanka. Cuba has the lowest fertility rate in the third world, equal to some European countries; China, with its 1 billion plus population, follows closely behind. Both those countries have in common a strong government commitment to promote health care, and have achieved low infant mortality rates. China in particular has a powerful population policy, although there is recent evidence that the one-child-per-couple policy is less successful than earlier campaigns because it has gone beyond what the population can accept. It may even have been counter-productive. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McNair, will be able to give an account of life in Sri Lanka, which may lie behind its lower fertility rate.
The other outliers on the graph are the Arab oil producing countries whose GNP per capita equals, and in some cases exceeds, that of the richest countries. However, women continue to bear five to seven children, and the population increase is about 3 per cent., whereas in China and Sri Lanka it is about 1-3 per cent. and in Cuba, only 0-9 per cent. Two factors are probably at work in those countries. There is an unequal distribution of wealth, and women, despite the fact that many are now going to school, are still trapped in a male-dominated society which, by and large, insists that a woman's place is in the home as a child raiser. The role of education, especially of women, is crucial.
I chose the word "illiteracy" because this is International Literacy Year. In fact, it is secondary education which is correlated most clearly with decreased fertility. That is not hard to understand. The ability to read, as taught in primary schools, is a help in understanding simple written instructions, but it does not widen the scope of outlook beyond the traditional community as much as do further years of schooling. They widen horizons and enable children to key into the world store of knowledge by using the printed word as a source of exploration.
Secondary education can open women's eyes to possibilities other than raising children or looking after the family plot. It is from that wider outlook that the desire to limit family size takes root. UNFPA figures show that women with seven years' education have on average 2.2 fewer children than those with no education. In nearly all developing countries, women's education lags behind that of men, and male education is not so highly correlated with family size.

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I added the factor of environmental degradation to the Motion because it rightly disturbs many people. Its relationship to population pressure is not, however, as simple as it might appear. In many countries, as rural populations grow the size of each family plot of land diminishes and overgrazing occurs. There is increasing cultivation of marginal lands. That can result in soil erosion and even eventual desertification. I have seen that in countries as far apart as Kenya and Guatemala. It is not just population pressure that is to blame. An important aspect is the use of the most fertile land by large landowners and the state for the export crops which are necessary to pay for imports and to service debt.
Many of your Lordships may have eaten the delicious mange tout peas imported from Guatemala, and may think that that is doing Guatemala a good turn. We may be helping its debt problem, but those peas are grown on land which could be feeding Guatemalan peasants who, having been displaced from the best lands, are farming land pitched at about 45 degrees half-way up the side of a volcano. Their fields look pretty scrappy.
I shall leave it to other noble Lords to go further into the ecological aspects of the problem. We are in part to blame. The export of agricultural produce and timber from the south to the north accounts for a large part of the rain forest destruction, erosion and cultivation of marginal lands. If we are to preach environmental conservation, we should start by putting our own house in order, as was discussed at Question Time today.
As the south develops, and the standard of life of its people improves, it is hypocritical to suggest that they must be more frugal and environmentally conscious than we are.
Thanks to the IPPF, I was recently privileged to be invited as an observer to the second Western Hemisphere Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development, held in Quito, Ecuador, in March this year. Practically every American and Caribbean country sent delegates. There is now a realisation that family limitation is not an imperialist plot. Development is slow if too high a proportion of resources has to go on education and child care. A notable absentee from that conference was the United States of America, which has pulled out of population activities because of its own domestic problems with the pro-life anti-abortion lobby—surely a short-sighted and mistaken move.
I must draw my speech to a close because I am overrunning my time. I understand that the IMF and the World Bank are having second thoughts about the effects their requirements for economic reform have had on social programmes (health and education) of countries that receive loans.
One of the major reasons why progress in Africa in health and education has been so slow, and has even become worse in the past decade, is that there are virtually no social programmes left because the countries are so impoverished. Despite that, the UNFPA feels that an injection of a further £2 billion into population activities worldwide would enable
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nearly all women who wish to be able to limit their families to do so with the help of modern methods. That would probably result in a reduction of about one-third in the number of births.
In conclusion, I should like to ask the Minister whether he will act on the advice of Sir Charles Morrison, chairman of the All-Party Group on Population and Development, contained in his letter to The Times yesterday: that the Government should increase considerably their contribution to population activities in their overseas aid budget. At present it stands at £17 million—about 1 per cent. only of the total. At the same time, will the Minister ensure that those aspects of our aid budget going to health and education projects are increased for the reasons that I have outlined and take a more prominent and generous role in international discussions, aimed at phasing out as soon as possible the external debt of the poorest countries? To do those things would be acting in our interests. Population expansion will be slowed more quickly; environmental pressures will be lessened; and poorer countries will be in a better position to enter the world market and pay for our exports, rather than becoming poorer and seeing all their earnings swallowed up in the dismal, losing battle against increasing debt. I beg to move for Papers.
6.10 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for introducing this tremendous subject to us this afternoon. His background of medical knowledge and overseas experience has given him insights from which we benefit. The subject is so vast and important that it must make much of the political debate in which we are currently engaged rather trivial in comparison.
There are constant calls to developing countries to limit their population by family planning. Earlier this afternoon the point was made in the discussion following the Question by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. However, we need to appreciate the constraints on family planning programmes in developing countries. We are caught in a vicious circle in our world because no such programmes can possibly succeed without rising living standards. That includes both education, to which the noble Lord, Lord Rea, referred, and security.
Perhaps I may illustrate this by a little anecdote from the years that I spent in Kenya. That country still has the most dubious distinction of having the fastest growing population in the world. The Kenya family planning association put out a poster which it thought would be effective. It was divided into two halves. On one half was a hut and outside were a man and woman sitting on nicely made chairs with a table; two well dressed, well cared for children played outside. The other half of the picture was given over to a dilapidated hut with a man and woman, poorly dressed, obviously undernourished, sitting on packing cases, with something like 10 children who looked poor and tattered playing in the dust. The association had to withdraw the poster because it gathered that people said, "Look at that

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poor man, he only has two children". I think your Lordships would agree that this makes the point that it is no use pushing family planning programmes in situations where children are seen as an essential means of security. Many people in Britain today do not appreciate that.
Things have changed in Kenya, as elsewhere. There is a much more widespread appreciation of the importance of the limitation of families. As affluence in a certain section of the population begins to increase, so these factors begin to operate. That makes people want to keep to smaller families and have children when they are wanted. However, millions and millions of others are trapped in hopeless poverty and near starvation. Children are regarded by them as a sign of security and wealth.
We might note one other constraint on family planning programmes. That is in situations of tribal or racial tension. It is considered that the attempt to limit families in one's own tribe may cause one to lose out to those who will exercise power on the other side. So conditions of social justice and equilibrium where there are racial tensions are also important in the spreading of effective family planning programmes.
Religious objections have also been a powerful constraint, and still are in many parts of the world, on artificial methods of birth control. The Church of England agonised over this in years gone by, but for many years it has been the view of the Church of England, reinforced by successive Lambeth conferences, for example, that artificial methods of birth control can be used responsibly. They are part of God's gift for use within marriage.
I regard it as deeply sad that our Roman Catholic friends, who are so influential in many of the parts of the world about which we are speaking, have not yet come to that point of view. However, as we well know, many Roman Catholic lay men and lay women ignore the leadership given on the issue, whether from the Vatican or elsewhere.
We must face the enormous challenge of world poverty. It is no use simply isolating birth control programmes as the answer to rising population. Until standards begin to rise in these countries and there is greater security, and people are not so dependent on feeling that they must have large families in order to face old age, family planning programmes will not be effective. Far too of ten in this country people simply make excuses for world poverty by saying, "There you are, you can see how many children they produce. It's all their own fault". We do not appreciate that because of our wasteful lifestyle we ourselves put far more pressure on the resources of the world. In a way if this pressure is followed in other parts of the world and people emulate our lifestyle, on present predictions that lifestyle is quite unsustainable.
It is sad that in the run up to the next election, which we are told by our newspapers is now beginning, the whole aspect of the challenges facing our world is not likely to feature prominently. Instead, there is bargaining between the various political parties as to who can be seen to offer the lowest taxation. However, higher taxation might well
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be required to implement social programmes in our own country and to provide the kind of support which we should give to nations overseas. I am quite aware that there are economic implications in taxation; there must be limits to it. However, I still find it deeply saddening that we have this constant bargaining going on and each party is afraid to be labelled the party of high taxation.
The truth is that there is always a temptation to concentrate simply on the short-term self-interest. This operates as much in a democratic society—or perhaps even more so—as anywhere else. With periodic elections, the temptations for politicians of all parties to concentrate on the short term is overwhelming. We might well need, for example, to hear voices calling for lower growth instead of the constant appeals to people to have it even better when they have never had it so good. We are consuming far too much in our country already. People, even in an electorate like ours, can see the challenge on occasion. There was one classic instance back in 1984 when it was widely rumoured that there would be major cuts in the government overseas aid programmes. Whether or not there was truth in the rumours I do not know, but there was a sharp revolt. It is worth noting that the revolt was joined by many of those who would be described as middle ground Conservative voters who were horrified and outraged that this should be suggested at a time when there was publicity over the famine in Ethiopia and the Sahel. So an educated, informed public opinion on these matters can exist and needs to be encouraged. The sadness, again, is that all too of ten it depends on these disasters which appear on our television screens from time to time. There is insufficient widespread public appreciation that disasters are only the tip of a catastrophic iceberg, if I may use that metaphor.
The charities have a major part to play—Christian Aid, CAFOD, Oxfam, the Save the Children Fund—with their overseas experience in educating our electorate. It is dangerous and misguided for some people to put Oxfam under investigation for being too political in a non-party sense. That is what they are. I am reminded of the comments of Archbishop Desmond Tutu about the religious inspiration behind many charities. He said, "When people tell me that there are no politics in the Bible, I wonder which Bible they are reading".
These matters are deeply entwined with political programmes of various kinds. It is vital for the health, the well-being and future of our own country and our descendants that these problems of world poverty and the enormous growth in population should be tackled effectively. Fortunately, many creative writers and artists are thinking about these matters today. The television programme "The March", which some of your Lordships may have seen the other day, tried to depict in a stark form the rising masses of Africa revolting under their poverty. That picture was brought in front of the public.
The programme was based on a very simple slogan on the part of the Africans shown marching to Europe. The slogan was: "We are poor because they are rich". We all know that that is an over-

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simplification yet it also contains a profound truth. One can understand that truth when one looks at the debt problem which has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, in opening the debate. In a sense the repayment of debt has been rightly described as the most powerful engine yet devised, except perhaps for slavery, for transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
We need encouragement at this moment in our history when we are faced with so many tremendous challenges and changes on the world scene. We need to combat a certain feeling of hopelessness. In the 19th century that feeling must have been strong in the days when Charles Dickens was writing his novels. Yet, somehow, there was a major breakthrough and conditions of greater equality and a greater sharing of resources arose in our own country. However, the danger is that we may be slipping back to conditions of greater inequality once more. It has of ten been remarked that it was only when the health of those in middle class areas was threatened by cholera from working class districts that there were major advances in public health. That, surely, is what is beginning to happen on the world scene today. As regards environmental problems, people in the affluent countries such as our own are at last beginning to realise that their own health, safety and future are threatened.
One of the major problems that must be faced is the debt problem. I am sure that later in the debate other noble Lords will address themselves to that problem in a more expert manner than I am capable of. The Brady plan was put forward by Nicholas Brady, US Treasury Secretary, to:
"rekindle the hope of the people and leaders of debtor nations that their sacrifices would lead to greater prosperity in the present and the prospect of a future unclouded by debt".
That plan has been sharply criticised in Latin American countries and also by the Organisation of African Unity for having far too little sense of urgency as regards the catastrophic situation facing so many countries at the present time. I look forward to hearing the Minister give us some encouragement that the Government are taking these problems of world debt, fairer trade terms and overseas aid immensely seriously.
As we look to the future shape of societies under change, such as those in Eastern Europe, it is no good to expect that free market economies will bring the solutions we need to these great problems. Certainly the free market should have a role to play but we need a much deeper philosophy than that in order to cope with what confronts our world.
6.22 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, first of all I must apologise as I shall not unfortunately be able to stay until the end of the debate. However, I shall read all the contributions tomorrow in Hansard and take careful note of them. When I mentioned to someone last night that I was going to take part in both the debates this afternoon, on civil liberties and on population control respectively, the response was that I could not speak in both as one debate was a
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contradiction of the other. It was presumed that I was going to speak in favour of telling people that they had to control their procreation activities.
That is something we must be careful about. I speak as someone who enjoys sex. We should be careful that we do not tell other people how many children they should have and when and where they should indulge in sex. That would be an enormous and monstrous presumption on our part. However, we can appreciate the fact that if this planet of ours is made to support an ever-increasing number of people it will eventually run out of resources. There is a need to ask how we are going to balance the world's population with the resources that the world can generate.
One of the things that I think about is why we have children. There are probably two main reasons apart from the enjoyment of the act of procreation that I have already mentioned. One reason for having children is instinctive. One has an instinctive desire to perpetuate one's genes, personality and persona into the future. The other reason is rather more material. We want to ensure that our standard of living in the future is maintained. On the one hand we have children to carry ourselves forward and on the other hand we have them to support us in our old age. If we think about that latter point we can appreciate that in some circumstances it necessitates having a large number of children. If there is a high risk that one's children will die because of pestilence, war or famine, one needs to have a large number of children to ensure that some of them survive.
If there is no pension provision through a mechanism such as social security for people in their old age, they need to ensure that they have as many offspring as they can produce to support them. It stands to reason that if the life expectancy of children is high and there is some degree of material protection for old age, there will be a reduced need for people to have a large number of children. On a worldwide basis the way forward is to ensure that the life expectancy of individual people is enhanced and that there is material provision for people's old age. But how do we do that on a worldwide basis? It is interesting that in the advanced Western economies of the world life expectancy is fairly high—people live to 60, 70 or 80 years of age—and material support is available for people of pensionable age. Virtually every Western country has a mechanism for pension provision which reduces the need to be dependent on one's offspring.
The message is clear. What we need to do as a world is to ensure that the conditions which currently pertain in the more affluent countries of the world pertain world wide. It is not a question of the rich and affluent countries of the world telling the poorer countries that their people should not have large families. Rather it is a question of the rich and powerful nations of the world saying that they will ensure that there is pension provision for everyone on God's planet and that there is a reasonable life expectancy for everyone born on God's planet. That is a very large task. It is a completely different task to the one that is proposed by those who suggest that some people on this planet should tell other people on this planet when and where they will indulge in

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sexual activity and how many children they will or will not have. I would argue that it is far more important for us to work towards world pension provision and an increase in life expectancy for everyone on the planet rather than to tell other people when they shall indulge in sexual activity and how many children they shall or shall not have.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Walston: My Lords, I too must start with an apology. I was under the impression that this debate was to be limited to two-and-a-half hours and made arrangements on that assumption. If, as seems possible the debate continues for rather longer I may not be able to stay to hear the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, speak.
I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for introducing this very important subject and for giving us such a wealth of information and wisdom based largely on personal experience.
As usual, I find myself in complete agreement—although last time it was only partial agreement—with the right reverened Prelate. The problem of overpopulation is primarily a problem of poverty. As the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, also pointed out—although I did not agree with everything that he said—one of the primary reasons for large families in poor areas, especially in the third world, is that they are an insurance for old age. So long as poverty continues and old age is uncertain families will be large.
To a certain extent we are in a cleft stick, because the spread of medical knowledge, even in the most remote corners of the world, means that many diseases have not been conquered. Even in poor and isolated communities people live longer and as years go by will live even longer. Populations will grow for that reason. At the same time, because the problems of poverty and security have not been dealt with to the satisfaction of those who today suffer so much from insecurity, in many countries there will continue to be large families.
I suggest that the way to deal with that problem is through a combination of education and literacy, which goes hand in hand with education, and the improvement of the standards of living of those in the poorest parts of all the continents. That means a redistribution of wealth, and I shall come to that point later. Above all, it means that in rural areas there must be good teaching, good educational facilities, good practical agricultural education and good education in the schools themselves.
What happens today? Envisage a remote village, let us say in Africa but it could be anywhere in the third world. There is a bright young student at a not very good village school. The headmaster of that school will say to the parents of that girl or boy that they have a bright child, and if they can save up enough money to send the child to the nearest town he or she will have a better education and a better chance of getting on in life. With luck the child will be able to become a schoolteacher, a doctor or even a lawyer—although I would deprecate wasting good education in the third world on turning out more lawyers and I would rather turn out more agriculturalists and doctors. When the child has had
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a good education and become a doctor or schoolteacher, what choice is there? He or she can go back to the village and live in simplicity, walking a mile to fill a bucket with water and going to bed early at night because there is only an oil lamp which is not sufficient to read by. There is no stimulating company because it is only a small village and the people living there are mainly illiterate. Or will he or she stay in the city where there is electricity, running water and stimulating company?
The great majority of those children who have the capability of benefit from a better education will not go back to the countryside but will stay in the cities. In other words, there is an automatic creaming of f of the most intelligent and the brightest away from the rural areas into urban areas. God knows, poverty exists in urban areas. In some ways it is more visible and in some ways it is worse. However, so long as that situation persists we shall continue to see the proliferation of illiteracy, poverty and large families.
The problem can only be overcome by a serious effort at the redistribution of wealth. That is where we have failed. In the so-called civilised world we have an amazing record—of harnessing the atom, putting men on the moon and exploring space, crossing the Atlantic in three-and-a-half hours and other magnificent achievements of that kind. However, we have not solved the problem of how to redistribute the wealth which we are capable of producing and which we produce here.
A short while ago I was sent some figures which made a great impression on me. They came from an organisation in Geneva. Imagine that the world, instead of consisting of billions of people, consisted of a village of 1,000 people. On the basis of the way in which wealth is distributed today, of those 1,000 people 60 would have half the total income of the village; 500—half the population—would be hungry; 600 would live in appalling conditions in terms of shelter; and 700 would be illiterate. We know perfectly well that if we lived in a community of only 1,000 and happened to be one of those 60 enjoying half the income, we should not be happy living in the fleshpots while such conditions existed among our neighbours.
It is only because the tens of billions of people in poverty live 1,000 or 10,000 miles away that we can close our eyes and turn our backs. That is where our effort must be made. It is not only this country that is at fault; I am not thinking only of us or the rich world. Other countries do the same. We know that there is maldistribution of wealth even in the poorest countries of the third world.
I have some more figures from India—a poor country, but an extremely civilised one in many respects. It now has the world's third largest pool of scientific manpower. It comes just after the superpowers. It produces scientists, engineers and doctors at a rate that by far outstrips its economy's capacity to absorb them. That is an amazing achievement for India. Not only has it achieved agricultural self-sufficiency, but at present it has a glut of many of its products.
However, in spite of that, homelessness and starvation persist. Some 288 million Indians, or 36

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per cent. of the population, live below the Government's poverty income line. Its population is growing at the rate of 2 per cent. a year. Again, it is a problem of distribution of capacity to produce wealth and wealth itself. In addition to concentrating on the points that I and the right reverend Prelate have mentioned and that other noble Lords will mention—the alleviation of poverty in the rural and poorest areas, education, more food and so on—we should give more thought to how we in our democratic society can persuade people of the situation as if it applied to our village of 1,000 inhabitants. We must persuade people that we have just as much responsibility for the tens of billions as we would have for neighbours living at our own front door.
6.41 p.m.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, the timing of the debate is opportune as the United Nations Population Fund's annual report, entitled The State of World Population, was published last week. In some respects, that report could be regarded as being an encouraging report; in other respects, it could be regarded as being most depressing.
The report is encouraging because, between the mid-1960s and the present time, global fertility rates for women have fallen from almost 5 to 3.4. In the developing countries the decline has been even deeper—from over 6 to 3.9. Life expectancy has increased, as my noble friend Lord Rea indicated, from 51 years to 59 years for men and from 53 years to 61 years for women. Infant mortality in the first year has fallen from 103 per 1,000 to 71.
The acceptability of family planning has increased worldwide and so too has political support, both in the recognition by governments that their birth rate is too high and in the increasing number of governments who are directly involved in the provision of family planning facilities. In that respect, the political impetus comes not from the governments of the first world but from the governments of the third world.
All that is on the plus side and is encouraging, but—and it is a big but—there is also a negative side. Those improvements have been in percentages and proportions of total numbers in world population. The discouraging aspect is in the actual numbers that we are discussing—numbers that are increasing in totality. Again, as my noble friend Lord Rea said, world population is growing rapidly. It is growing more rapidly than at any time in our previous history. A section of the report, appropriately entitled Running to stand still, points out that global population growth of 2 per cent. has slowed social progress.
So much additional investment has been required to increase the quantity of health, education and other services to meet the increasing needs of a growing population that the quality of the services has suffered as a consequence. I quote from the report because it is an apt quotation:
"Racing to provide services for fast-growing populations is like running up the down escalator: you have to run very fast indeed to maintain upward motion".
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As has been indicated, there are many factors involved in those increasing numbers. One of the most important is the age profile. While in the northern hemisphere we have an ageing profile with population growth below replacement level, in the southern hemisphere it is a young profile where both the birthrate and the fertility rate of women is very high. To bring the birthrate down, we must control the fertility rate.
A factor of overriding importance in that respect is women's literacy. For the next few minutes available to me, I want to concentrate on the problems of literacy, particularly women's literacy. When we talk of the 28 per cent. of the world's population that is illiterate, we are talking about women because two-thirds of that 28 per cent. are women.
In addition, in talking about literacy we are concerned not just with the ability of women to read and write but with the wider effects of literacy on the well-being of the whole community. Adult literacy programmes recognise that and build in to the programme such matters as knowlege of legal rights and access to practical information such as preventive health care and family planning. Such programmes are not always welcomed by men who see them as a threat to their own position of power. As a result, women are of ten deterred from participating in those programmes.
Education offers a new status to women beyond that of childbearing alone. It is recognised in many developing countries that the status of women depends on the number of children that they produce, but education helps to take them beyond that. Studies have shown that women with seven years of education tend to marry on average almost four years later than those women who have no education. That is important both in respect to their own health and to the health of the children who might be born to them.
The use of contraceptives by educated women is on average two and a half times higher, and in Africa four times higher, than that by non-educated women. Here I would say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester that those women would have seen the point behind the poster to which he referred.
Four to six years of education for women lowers the fertility rate by between 5 per cent. in Asian and African countries and 15 per cent. in Latin American countries. Child mortality is lower. In Kenya, women with no education lose 104 children under five years per 1,000 while women who have completed primary education lose 72, and women who have secondary education lose 64. Those numbers are still high by our standards but the relevance of education is obvious.
Mothers with more education tend to enter the labour force more than other women. That brings not only improved status and financial independence but more resources to spend on the family diet. There also tends to be more communication between husband and wife. That also has an influence on fertility rates as well as an improvement in the quality of life.
Better feeding practices, verbal communication with the child—which again helps the child—the

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use of medical facilities in clinics for immunisation, and pre-natal and post-natal care are all consequences of better education for women. Those benefits accrue not only to the women themselves but to the families and to the community.
The World Bank has said that female education is one of the strongest factors in reducing fertility. I suggest that it is also one of the strongest factors in creating a healthier and more stable world population. Consequently I hope that provision for women's literacy and of better family planning services to meet the unmet demands of women—because there is an unmet demand by women in the third world—will feature more in world population and development programmes.
I should like to think that the United Kingdom could give a lead in that respect. In the first place I should like us to increase our contribution to the underdeveloped world to at least the UN target of 0-7 per cent. of GNP. I should also like to see an increase on the 1 per cent. contribution that goes to family planning services. I should like at least 2 per cent. of funds to be earmarked for that purpose. I should also like to see an earmarking of funds especially for women's literacy programmes. I believe that that would be a very appropriate gesture in this current International Literacy Year.
6.54 p.m.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords, in speaking today I have a certain sense of dé jà vu because with great pleasure I find myself again following the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood. She has talked about population. On 22nd March when we debated the report of your Lordships' Select Committee on Overseas Aid I followed the noble Baroness when speaking on the same subject. I am glad to say that I agree with almost everything that she said. She spoke with great authority of the areas that she emphasised.
In the report of your Lordships' Select Committee on Overseas Aid emphasis was put on the underlying fact that population pressures overshadow every aspect of life in the third world. Restriction of population can be encouraged either by direct means such as the family planning that the noble Baroness discussed or indirectly by education. The noble Baroness and other noble Lords have already referred to that.
In the debate on the report the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, hit the nail on the head when she commented—as have also the right reverend Prelate and others tonight—that there will not be promotion of family planning on a large scale as long as poverty is of such a degree that people can look only to their children for help in old age and emergency. Poverty is the central obstruction.
However, I differ from the right reverned Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Walston, about the main means by which poverty is to be countered. I do not see that solution coming about by redistribution. By all means let us aim at greatly increasing the contribution of this and other developed countries to the third world. Let us hasten to achieve the percentage figure to which the noble Baroness referred. We are limping a long way behind.
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Nevertheless, from my experience of working in parts of the third world, in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, I simply do not believe that it is practical politics to view the solution to the gap between the rich world and the poor world in redistribution. We may be sorry about that but as a matter of practical politics I do not believe that it will happen.
There is a gap in so far as noble Lords on the Government Benches are not speaking tonight, apart from the noble Lord who will answer for the Government. Perhaps I am fulfilling their role. However, I believe that many noble Lords on the Benches opposite would share the view that redistribution is unlikely and in my view will not happen.
But does that mean that we have to despair? I certainly do not despair. On the contrary I believe that there is a way forward. It is possible to crack the problem. The key is education. If we consider the present state of education in the third world, how can we expect that the breakthrough can come quickly enough? Many noble Lords have visited schools, as I have done, at all levels in Africa, India and the Caribbean. There is a limit to the extent to which their resources can be channelled. There is a great limit on such resources. In any of the countries of central, western and eastern Africa I do not believe that there is the slightest possibility of resources on a sufficient scale being available for improving the number and quality of schools, colleges and so forth. That is not the means by which we can face and conquer the problems of the crisis.
As was eloquently shown by the noble Lord, Lord Rea—and I am grateful to him for introducing the debate—the new report of the United Nations on population trends confronts the planet with a crisis. The only means by which the crisis can be tackled with a hope of success is by a strategic plan for a new kind of education.
It is all very well for me to talk about the desirability of a new kind of education, especially with eminent educators sitting beside me. However, to my knowledge the research necessary to work out the means of accelerated education of a new kind is being carried out. The prospect is that there is soon likely to be an application of the results on the continent of Africa. I am most hopeful about its possibilities. I shall not bore your Lordships by describing the principles of the accelerated educational method but, briefly, it looks towards a constellation of educational units. There will be a central unit to train the trainers and teachers and a ring of subtended units. They are capable of offering within a matter of weeks a form of education that can provide peasants and illiterate urban people with enough know-how and the means of obtaining know-how to tackle their particular problems of agricultural production together with advice from extension services and so forth.
With members of your Lordships' Select Committee I visited Nigeria in the autumn. As the noble Lord, Lord Walston, will remember, we then saw a form of new cultivation which had been worked out at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan. It is capable of being applied over a large area of Africa and can produce the

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equivalent of the Asian green revolution. One of our puzzles has been that a green revolution has been achieved in Asia but not in Africa. However, the means now exists; the research work has been done. But how can the results of that work be brought to the ordinary farmer? That will involve an enormous increase in agricultural extension services and in bringing to the peasant the capacity to respond to advice.
I believe that the breakthrough in accelerated educational techniques is the means by which this kind of change can take place, thereby producing teachers and transmitting the capacity to respond on the part of peasants. That applies not only in the agricultural sphere but also in the sphere of illiterates in the terrible growing conurbations cropping up all over the third world.
We can be cautiously optimistic about overcoming the population explosion if a concerted effort is made by the governments of third world countries while working with the governments of the developing world, the United Nations and specialised agencies, industrial companies, which have a great contribution to make, and research institutions. The blueprint for accelerated education now exists as the key to increased economic progress, to much greater wealth creation and then to the fulfilment of the objective of widely applied family planning.
Noble Lords may recall that estate agents have defined three criteria for choosing property to invest in first, location, secondly, location and, thirdly, location. In the field we are discussing, the solution lies in applying three criteria; first, education, secondly, education and, thirdly, education.
7.8 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, a little over 20 years ago I was asked from time to time to advise an African president on what was happening in his country. At the end of my visits I put forward a list of my observations but left the most sensitive to the end. Then I asked whether he had any idea of the population increase in his country. He told me that he had not and I told him that it was 2-9 per cent. He asked, "How does that bear on what we are trying to do?" I explained to him that at that time, before 1970, 45 per cent. of his population was aged 15 or under and that within 10 years it would be over 50 per cent. Taking into account the old people it meant that less than half his population had to maintain all the services, particularly the social services, for more than half the population. I must add that he turned to me and said, "How do I convince my people to reduce the size of their families? I have nine children myself. I have not yet found an answer to that question.
That country made valiant and very largely successful attempts to introduce entirely free primary education; it greatly increased secondary education and added tertiary education through a university system, none of which it had when it was left to become independent by the British. Today every sector of that educational system has broken down. Free education has gone, illiteracy is
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growing, secondary education has declined and is expensive and the universities are just as of ten closed as they are open. What is more, in the field of health, drugs are not available, hospitals have started to charge for beds, overcrowding is endemic and diseases are spreading very rapidly. That was a country which started not just with high hopes but which had very high endeavours and which achieved a great deal.
I need say little more than to support everything which the right reverend Prelate said. He said what I would have said and he said it better. I merely wish to hammer home one or two of the lessons which he put before your Lordships. The first is that, although we of course support every form of family planning endeavour in the Third World, none will work unless there is a change in the balance between poverty and riches.
I pick up a point made by the right reverend Prelate. He will remember that in that film "The March", which was shown to us in this House a week ago, there was a phrase which is worth remembering. It was that the world today is divided by economic apartheid. That division is the division which has been illustrated so many times. It is a division which can be so easily seen on all the tables. One only needs to look at the World Bank's annual reports. On the one hand, in this country, which is by no means one of the richest in the world today, the average per capita GNP is something over 10,000 dollars. There are 30 countries—the poorest 30 countries in this world—where that average has to be put against an average of 275 dollars. That is an average falling down to just over 100 dollars.
That is related to another statistic relevant to this debate. Whereas in this country the number of children dying during the first five years of life is 1.1 per cent. (11 per 1000), in the 30 countries to which I have referred that average is over 20 per cent. (over 200 per thousand). Again that is an average. For example, in Ethiopia it is over 30 per cent. (over 300 per 1000). As the right reverend Prelate and other speakers have said, as long as there is high infant mortality, no form of birth control programme will succeed.
The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, has just been speaking about education. However, education is breaking down and the number of illiterates in the world is increasing. At the same time, health services are breaking down and diseases are spreading throughout the world. Malnutrition is increasing. That has now reached over one in 10 of the total world population. There are over 500 million people who are living, according to United Nations' standards, below the point of malnutrition. As the noble Lord, Lord Rea, said in his introductory speech, something like 14 million or 15 million children are dying each year.
This afternoon we have heard much which was well intentioned but always with the word "if. I am more concerned about our responsibility and what we should be doing in those circumstances. We should not be doing what is becoming so common in the world economy, the global economy, in which we live. For example, because the tobacco companies are finding a reduction in their profits in this country

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through propaganda and education, they are making their pr of its by exporting strong tar cigarettes to the third world. That is increasing the burden on and the diseases in those countries. We see armament firms persuading third world countries to buy arms which they cannot afford and which cannot bring them anything but disaster. That is not the way in which we in the developed world should be tackling the problems which have been identified this afternoon.
I make a third accusation against the way in which we in Britain are contributing to that problem. It is directly in the lap of Her Majesty's Government. We have heard many times from that Front Bench how generous we are in our aid to the third world. What has never been answered is why, over the past 10 years, the proportion of our gross national product given in overseas aid has declined from 0-53 per cent. to what is now something like 0-33 per cent.
Why his it declined? We were told earlier that it had to decline because of the depression, because of the increase in unemployment and because of the state of our economy. We have been told for years now that there has been an economic miracle. I know that the noble Lord, who has answered me on this matter several times, will say that that percentage is of a higher gross national product. However, should it not be? Should not the percentage be higher? As our gross national product increases, should we not achieve a higher proportion? Can the noble Lord find it within himself to say that that is generosity when the proportion of the wealth in this country contributed to the third world has declined steadily and rapidly over the past 10 years?
However, that is a minor point because the disaster to which all speakers have referred this evening—and it was just referred to as a crisis—needs a great deal more than any amount of overseas aid which we give from this country. It needs nothing less than the Marshall Plan that rehabilitated Europe after the Second World War.
The British Government cannot produce a Marshall Plan. They can take an initiative, and there are other governments, particularly in Scandinavia, Germany and Holland, which can take that initiative through the United Nations and other international organisations. Nothing less than something on the scale of the Marshall Plan can save this situation from disaster.
Finally, it was said—I refer to it only in passing because I have referred to it many times before—that not only is there a threat to the world population and world society; but there is a threat to the place of humanity on our planet. If we are hoping to see the third world people increase their standard of living to the point at which they can maintain life, then I ask can they do it? Can we show them how to do it without them then following the disastrous path that we followed? If they follow that path, and if the 80 per cent. that we now contribute to pollution is followed by third world endeavours in order to increase; heir standard of living, then this planet is doomed for human life.
We have an opportunity. There are methods which exist in this country. For example, there are methods of decommissioning refrigerators. That requires
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legislation and the backing of the Government. There are British methods which are available to the third world. The third world can be prevented from bringing disaster to our planet only if we are prepared to put our resources behind the transformation of life that can be produced in their world without entailing environmental disaster for the whole planet.
7.22 p.m.
Lord McNair: My Lords, much of what I had planned to say has already been said far better and with greater authority by previous speakers. I hope your Lordships will forgive any repetition. I should also like to say how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for giving us an opportunity to debate this vital matter.
It is common sense that better health care leads to longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality. It also used to be thought obvious that following from that families would automatically somehow become smaller. We failed to take into account that ideas of family size are deeply rooted in our culture and that to change those ideas requires two other important ingredients; first, education; and, secondly, a growing sense of economic security.
We cannot now assume that the sense of economic security can always be provided. We must find a way of slowing the rate of population growth, especially in areas where the economic prospects are grim. The weight of population is already putting a strain on resources and a brake on development. We must manage to slow the increase in the number of people without promising an immediate economic pay- of f.
Female education, as has been said by many speakers, has proved to be a vital factor, the key which unlocks the problem. Although the figures vary from one country to another there is a clear correlation between the level of female education and family size. There is another considerable direct benefit to a woman who limits her family to two or three children rather than five, 10 or even more; her health and therefore her life expectancy are greatly increased, which in turn makes it more likely that she will be able to provide effective and continuing care to those children she has.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, for her detailed description of the effects of education on the attitudes of women and I hope that what I say will add a little to that. From my experience there are admirable qualities of family life in many third world countries. However, too of ten it is the men who extol the merits of their system. The voices of women in those societies are seldom heard. An important side effect of improving the level of education of women is that it would enable women in those societies to re-examine their roles as women.
Too of ten we find extreme examples of the double standards for men and women. It is not so long ago that our society placed women on a pedestal, overtly protected, covertly exploited—a condition sometimes referred to with approval as Victorian values. Raising the self-confidence and self-awareness of women in developing countries is

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a delicate business, but it is vital to success both in stemming the tide of humanity which threatens to engulf the world and in improving the quality of life for those already born.
I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I expect I will upset some people by saying this, but in my personal opinion the ancient teachings of the Catholic Church on contraception are (not to put too fine a point on it) extremely unhelpful. They are sensibly ignored by many of those engaged in this desperate struggle.
I should like to mention Sri Lanka, of which I have some slight personal experience. It is a tropical island about half the size of our own with two main ethnic groups. The main and indeed the state religion is Buddhism. I suspect that that may be a significant reason why Sri Lanka's population increase started to slow much earlier than that of many comparable nations.
R. H. Tawney in his book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism explained the relationship between religious belief and economic development. Although his conclusions are widely if not universally accepted, I do not know of any similar study applied to religion in countries which have yet to achieve a substantial degree of economic development.
Sri Lanka has an excellent national health service. Admittedly it does not have the high-tech equipment of our own, but there are no waiting lists and the standards of medicine and nursing care are excellent. The education system too, though the facilities might strike noble Lords as rather basic, are universal and free up to secondary level. There is a deep and powerful desire among the majority of the population to obtain an education. I visited a school in the interior; in other words, a village school far from the nearest town. It catered for children from nought to 16. If the figures of the headmistress are accurate, as well as teaching all the children to plant and cultivate rice it managed to obtain better O-level results than I guess would be obtained by a comparable school in this country.
I should like to commend to your Lordships' House the outstanding contribution to developments in Africa, Asia and Latin America made by both Oxfam Trading and Traidcraft. I have more information regarding the latter, but both organisations are similar. Traidcraft is not a charity; it is a pic, a business. It is a trading organisation like any other except for its clearly defined purchasing policy. It buys only from organisations operating for the benefit of their workpeople and/or the local community. It pays a fair price for what it buys. It makes advance payments to suppliers where appropriate and also provides them with help in the development of their businesses.
There is nothing that Traidcraft is doing which could not, in principle, be done by any other business trading with the developing world. It has set up Traidcraft Exchange, which is a charitable trust associated with the company and has a growing consultancy business providing service to small-scale enterprises in developing countries. In the year 1989-90 its sales comprised: craft products from the
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developing world, 30 per cent.; food products from the developing world, 28 per cent.; clothing items, 5 per cent.; and the rest was recycled products from this country.
The products are sold through mail order catalogues, shops and over 1, 700 voluntary representatives. The organisation provides employment on fair terms for 4,000 people in the third world and so far it has generated £9 million of earnings which have gone direct to some of the poorest people on the planet.
In addition to the monetary benefit are the effects on the suppliers' self esteem. Laxmi Rani Malik, a lady who works in a small sewing and tailoring co-operative near Calcutta, makes silk scarves. She is quoted as saying,
"Before I came here I didn't only have financial worries but mental worries too. Now with the money I'm getting I can manage".
She is now supporting herself and her two young sons. Truly, Traidcraft is a model for development that should be enabled to expand and be duplicated all over the world. By that I mean replicated widely but on a human scale. The scale is terribly important. There is an important concept here. Schumacher, in his book Small is Beautiful, wrote of 2 million villages. That is what we need to bear in mind. What works best in the absence of an organisation like Traidcraft is having poor people selling to poor people, not poor people selling to rich people by whom they are too easily exploited.
The stages of economic development all over the world have been, first, craft workers making simple products in their own homes or small workshops which are then centralised into larger workshops for the convenience of the merchants who buy their products, and eventually into large factories—the dark satanic mills of William Blake. The next step is for those who can afford it to move out and repopulate the deserted villages, enjoying the kind of life the original inhabitants could easily have had if only matters had been arranged somewhat differently, while their descendants struggle as landless labourers in a seething, dirty, third world city.
Using the Traidcraft model of development, this process can be short-circuited and people can control their working environments, living intrinsically healthier and independent lives in better surroundings, contributing to their village, town, country and the world. I can assure your Lordships that working at a craft for which you receive fair remuneration and in pleasant surroundings is a very satisfying way of life. We of ten ask for too much. Most of the world's population would be more than happy with enough.
There is a role for top down internationally aided government projects. The Mahevili River scheme in Sri Lanka is an excellent example, providing hydro-electricity and irrigating large areas of formerly arid land. Successive British governments are to be congratulated on its conception and execution.
The American contribution to development in Nicaragua has been less happy. At a conservative

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estimate 30,000 people have been killed in the past 12 or 13 years and millions of dollars, largely obtained through the drugs and arms trades, have been spent on financing armed insurrection. It has been estimated that it will take 20 years of exports just to repair the damage that the civil war has caused.
However, bad as conditions were in that country, and despite fighting a war at the same time, the educational campaign increased the level of literacy from 50 per cent. to 87-5 per cent. and won an international prize in 1981. Sadly, partly as a result of the economic effects of the war and partly as a result of direct attacks which damaged schools and killed teachers, it has now fallen back to between 75 per cent. and 80 per cent. That is still a marked improvement. I leave to your Lordships' imagination what could have been achieved had all this money and effort gone in the direction of positive development.
In Latin America there is a highly regarded educationist, Paulo Freire. His approach to literacy is to start from people's own experience, to create an educational process out of that, and then to build self-help programmes and direct action to improve their living conditions and their immediate environment. With the continuing third world debt crisis, and also from a human point of view, I believe that "bottom up" or "bootstrap" development of this kind has the best chance of bringing about the necessary changes.
Finally, I refer to rural electrification. There are many benefits to a third world village from having an electricity supply. It is a great help to any educational activity. Families in the third world of ten work very long hours and extending the working day makes studying at home after work a possibility. As has been mentioned, paraffin lamps—the most widely used means of lighting in the third world—are unsatisfactory because the most that can be obtained is the equivalent of about 8 watts candlepower, and that is not enough to study by. Another effect is that the younger people in the village are less likely to leave for what they believe are the bright lights of the town or city.
When I was discussing this debate beforehand with my noble friend Lady Seear she said to me that the numbers are so vast that they must be emphasised. It is true; the numbers are unimaginable. But there is a Chinese saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Perhaps we can regard the example and success of Laxmi Rani Malik as a first step.
7.35 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, it is about time that more leaders of affairs in politics, religion, industry and education came into this debate. Some of us have been working in it for many years and although there has been widespread interest in our work throughout the world, governments themselves have not entered the debate as they should.
I am extremely pleased that His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh made such a splendid address to the United Nations' Fund for Population Activities in New York on 30th March. It was
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masterly in its presentation and delivery. I am only echoing what he said on this matter of bringing more people at top level in to counsel on the crisis that undoubtedly faces the world today.
The address given by the Duke of Edinburgh was one which neither Mrs. Thatcher nor Mr. Kinnock would have been disposed to make. They would have been afraid of the political implications of what they were saying. Most certainly the Pope would not have made that speech because he would have been afraid of the implications in the field of sexual morality, contraception and abortion, and all the other aspects that he abhors about the natural activities of mankind. Nor would the President of the United States deliver that address, for he is carrying on the capricious policy of his predecessor of selective aid, from an American standpoint, to the more deserving nations of the world.
There are undoubtedly prejudices and undercurrents of diffidence, inhibition and dogma. When are the religious leaders of the world going to face the facts about humanity and its future? When will the political leaders stop being afraid of evangelical forces at home and ignore their prejudices against certain matters when deciding what aid they shall give to other countries. President Reagan, without any warning, cut of f large amounts of aid that the United States was giving to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities for the purposes of spreading opportunity, facilities and education related to family planning.
Why is it countries are so afraid of discussing birth control? If man does not have the common sense to control the instincts of his species, then he will pay the penalty which nature always imposes on those who disregard its conditions. Now we have President Bush. Last November Congress voted a 15 million dollar grant to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities for the year 1990; but President Bush not only vetoed that, he vetoed the 14 billion dollars of foreign appropriation. Why? It was because the United Nations Fund for Population Activities gives aid to China, and China is believed to indulge in coercive abortion. The American people will not stand for that. Happily, other countries have come to the rescue of this work in order to avoid the serious collapse of activities in the field. Those activities would have been dismantled without much notice had not Sweden and the United Kingdom come to the rescue in the financial crisis.
We are members of three institutions of the world: the United Nations, the EC and the Commonwealth. I ask the Minister: what are we doing to influence those with whom we associate in those institutions in order to make them aware of the problem and make them willing to contribute to its solution? Let us get rid of the eternal squabble about sanctions in South Africa whenever the Commonwealth representatives meet. They should talk about some of the practical questions affecting the countries themselves to which they belong.
It is very difficult indeed not to despair of mankind. He is probably the biggest fool ever of all the species because he has the brains but he does not use them; he has the will but he cannot use it. The time comes when, as I have said, nature takes revenge

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on thoughtlessness and neglect. That is likely to be the future fate of large parts of the world. I wish that we could find something better than the constant references to the third world. What is the first world? What is the second world? Why the third world? What is this disparagement and this contempt for poverty? Let us find a different reference that will convey to those whom we are addressing what we really wish to say. The title third world puts people of f almost before they begin to consider a situation.
The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, has had so much experience in this matter and with affairs at large. When he has hope, then it is not for the rest of us to lose it. We need a combination of political, industrial and financial power when considering this crisis. The first consideration for industry is its location. We want investment in countries which are lacking it. We want educated people to be there. There should be a new kind of world assistance.
In centuries gone by we were noted for our genius for colonisation, administration and industrial development in all parts of the world. Why cannot we mobilise that genius again? Let us expand our voluntary services overseas. There are plenty of young people about who are looking for satisfying and worthwhile jobs among people whom they want to help. We should finance them. Investment can be made in these countries not only for agriculture but for some forms of manufacturing so that these countries can supply some of their own goods.
A new economic discipline is needed. A survey should be conducted of national resources available throughout the world. We should get rid of the idea of sovereignty and the attitude that if you have a separate sovereign state it is yours to do what you like with and it is nobody else's business. You can cut down all your trees and get into a state of desert poverty. You can dissipate your resources. All these resources now belong to the planet as a whole and we have to regard them as being in the care of us all.
The new economic discipline must avoid the reckless use of finite resources for the purpose of raising the standard of living. We have to have more regard for the use of resources which are sustainable or replaceable. That is better than using up our basic assets as some countries are doing today.
The problem is becoming a matter of world concern. I am glad that this debate has been so well supported. Reference has been made to top people coming into this field of concern. Top people are already in it. There is the all-Party British Parliamentary Group for Population and Development. I was its first chairman. The present more active and skilled chairman is Sir Charles Morrison, the Member of Parliament for Devizes.
We are constantly in touch with all parts of the world. We are keeping this Parliament in touch with the movement in every possible respect. We have a close association with the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. We want support in your Lordships' House and in Parliament as well. It does not matter what are our problems because they are small compared with those of other nations. It does
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not matter what are our privations because they are minute compared with those of other nations.
I recently saw a film which had a considerable emotional impact. It dealt with abortion clinics in Calcutta. There was an attempt made by the Marie Stopes overseas trust to arrange for abortions to take place in conditions which give reasonable hope for survival. The film showed the squalor and the depth of degradation that the women experienced. It was revolting. But those women have already had six, seven or eight children and they do not know what else to do. There are no birth control facilities for them. They are uneducated. They are sick of children and sick of bearing them. They are also poverty-stricken. They get into the hands of charlatans or of charities to relieve them of the burden of further additions to the family.
Why are these conditions allowed to continue? Nine-tenths of the grievances of the British people are minor grievances compared with those that exist in other countries. How can we be complacent and speak about the philosophy of aid which says that we must get richer ourselves in order to have more money to dispose of in charitable grants to the third world? We must get rid of that attitude.
7.49 p.m.
Lord Vernon: My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, who was in his usual vigorous form. I agree with every word that he said.
I have a special interest in this subject. For the past five years I have been chairman of an organisation called Population Concern of which some of your Lordships may be aware. It does something in a small way to try to help family planning clinics overseas. I have travelled in various countries, especially in India, and so I have seen a little of what is going on.
In 1972, about 18 years ago, I introduced a Motion in your Lordships' House drawing attention to the need for a population policy in the United Kingdom. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that if we are to ask the poorer countries to reduce their level of population and their growth of population, we in the West, whose populations grew so dramatically in the last century and just after and who are responsible for so much of the present environmental damage and pollution, must play our part and set an example in population reduction.
Reading through the speeches in that debate I was much struck by some words of the late Lord Gardiner. Explaining why, notwithstanding his many other duties, he had assumed the presidency of what at that time was the Birth Control Campaign, he said:
"I did so because I think quite simply that this is probably the most important single subject in the world".—[official Report, 26/4/72; col. 431.]
If it was the most important single subject in the world back in 1972, how much more is it today when, as we have heard, world population is accelerating at such an alarming rate and between now and the end of the century will increase by one-fifth?
The destruction of the rain forests, the over-fishing of the oceans, the pollution of the atmosphere, global

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warming and so on have all been talked about in both the press and on television. One would have thought that this information, with its horrifying implications for the environment, would make our Government and other governments sit up and take notice. After all we had detailed reports from the Brundtland Commission, from the Brandt Commission, from the World Bank and from many other responsible bodies telling us exactly what is happening; and still the Western world does nothing or almost nothing about it.
It was suggested by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, and others that if the abysmally low living standards in the third world can only be improved by the introduction of massive Western aid, family size will drop automatically. That is true in theory. We know that it happened in this country in the last century. We know that with increasing literacy, better health and better education, people stopped having so many children, so why should it not happen in the third world? That is the argument, but there is a flaw in it. The flaw is principally the time factor and the rate and scale at which population growth is taking place. It is much faster than anything experienced by the Western nations in the last century, when in any case we were able to export our surplus population to the United States of America and to the colonies, an option not open to any of these countries today.
If this problem is to be solved in a civilised and humanitarian way and not left to nature—nature, as we all know, can be very cruel—much more drastic action is required. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, referred to the Chinese. The Chinese, with one-fifth of the world's population, have discovered that family size must be brought down before living standards can go up, and not vice versa. They are achieving this by methods which some people may regard as unacceptable and ruthless but which I believe are fully justified in the circumstances. It has been suggested that the Chinese experience has not been as successful as they thought it would be. However, the doubling time of the Chinese population today is 49 years when previously it was going to be somewhere between 20 and 30 years. That is an enormous improvement. It has given them a breathing space with which to increase their living standards and so bring that process into effect.
It lies with individual countries and individual governments to decide exactly how they will tackle this situation. But we must give them all possible help. We must also try to persuade the countries of the EC and other countries to give more help also. There was a time when countries were highly suspicious of the advocacy of family planning by the West; but not now, as their governments battle with the economic effects of seeing their populations double in anything between 17 and 25 years. They welcome with open arms any help from us.
The World Health Organisation has estimated that there are today 300 million married couples who would stop having more children if they had the means of doing so. That is so at the present moment without them having this higher standard of living. In addition, there are many more millions who
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would reduce the size of their families if they were made aware of the greater life expectancy of both mothers and children and also of the opportunities for them to lead fuller and more rewarding lives once they had arranged to space their families.
In the present era, family planning is not just a matter of handing out contraceptives. There is a huge educational job to be done. My noble friend Lord Thurlow dealt with the educational aspect. This is just a part of what he was talking about. This can be done in conjunction with the local family planning associations. It is not just the women who must be educated; the men must also be educated because the views of many men, as we all know, are unhelpful to say the least.
Therefore, I urge the Government, as other noble Lords have done, to increase substantially the proportion of the aid given to family planning. In that respect I go further than the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood. Several years ago I was told that out of the whole overseas budget only 2 per cent. goes to family planning. I suggest that that should be doubled to 4 per cent. I hope that when the noble Lord replies to the debate he will be able to say something specific on that aspect of the matter.
Finally, I suggest that all overseas aid to countries with fast growing populations whose governments do not operate effective family planning policies should be reassessed. Without such family planning policies, our money is being poured straight down the drain.
8.1 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, if the Government had any doubt about the relationship of poverty, illiteracy and environmental degradation to rapid world population growth, I hope that it has been dispelled by the excellent speech we heard today from my noble friend Lord Rea. It is the kind of detailed, well-researched speech to which we shall refer time and again. I also congratulate him on initiating the debate, not only for the intrinsic value of what has so far been, and I am sure will be when finalised, an excellent debate but also because I hope ! that it will be one of a number of debates that will continue in your Lordships' House on what many of us think is a major issue facing mankind.
In mentioning that fact, perhaps I may say how deeply saddened I am that we have not heard a single contribution from the Government Back-Benches. Indeed, at present there is not even one Conservative Back-Bencher in attendance. I hope—and I am sure that I am right—that that is not an indication of a lack of interest in such an important matter.
There is overwhelming evidence of the relationship to which I refer provided not only by reports from the United Nations but also from the activity carried out by the various agencies and voluntary organisations working in this field. The question is what to do about the problem. There are many aspects which are particularly worrying. The most important, as I see it, is perhaps the fact that the fall in birth rate in most of the developing world in the 1960s and 1970s slowed down in the 1980s. The latest United Nations report says that between 1990 and 2000 the population will grow by 1,000

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million, which will be a greater increase than in any previous decade.
There have been welcome improvements in certain areas, some of which have been mentioned by noble Lords this afternoon. However, it is clear that the overall position is becoming worse. Last week's report from the population fund, which has been referred to several times, and the recently published United Nations report World Population at the Turn of the Century— which has not been mentioned so far in the debate but which is a most valuable document—confirm that view. As they provide the most up-to-date information on the position, I hope that the Minister's reply will in part at least be directed to the contents of those two reports.
The debate is justified by the contents of the two reports. The so-called bottom billion, who live in poverty, threaten land degradation and destruction of the rain forests, and the so-called top billion, who have the biggest share of resources, create the most waste, damage the ozone layer, create acidification and are largely responsible for global warming.
I was concerned at the Answer which I received to a Question as recently as 9th May from the Minister who is present tonight. I asked what action the Government were taking in association with other countries to deal with the problem of the population explosion. I was perturbed to learn that we are contributing only £17 million to the various organisations involved with the problem and that in 1988 the figure was as little as £6.5 million. Some of my noble friends, and indeed the previous speaker, referred to the percentage of GDP. While I shall not repeat what was said, it seems to me that that is the kind of standard at which we should be looking.
Money is not, by itself, the solution. I shall touch upon other measures later. But financial contributions by governments are a major factor. I say to the Government that if they feel that £17 million is the best that they can do, they are not as concerned as they pretend to be about the problem. After all, there is a self-interest factor. For example, the benefits which accrue to this country by increased trade, by the use of special skills in underdeveloped countries, by vastly improved political relationships—this is perhaps the most important aspect—and by other matters are a form of investment. But I hope that our assistance is based on the morality of helping human beings who are in many instances in dire circumstances. I am sure that the Government make their contributions at least partly on that basis.
We are constantly reminded by the Prime Minister and others that we have had an economic miracle in this country. Indeed, I think that my noble friend Lord Hatch referred to that fact. If the most we can afford from such a miracle is £17 million, the millions of people in India, Africa and South America who have a continuing struggle for existence must indeed be cynical about our professed concern for them.
However, I repeat that money is not a solution in itself. I find that one of the most depressing factors
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is the slow progress in introducing family planning. It is a matter for education. Strenuous efforts are made to improve education in many countries but we have to recognise that they are not as successful as they should be. I must say how saddened I was to hear the right reverend Prelate and my noble friend Lord Monkswell (who have both left the Chamber for reasons about which we are all aware) play down the importance of family planning. But I realise that they were putting it into the context of education.
As someone who has been engaged in education for the whole of my life, perhaps I may say that I readily agree that education, which has been mentioned by every speaker so far, is of prime importance. However, that is not to say that the importance of family planning should be played down. I greatly appreciate the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, justifying, if it needs to be justified, the essential role which family planning must play. Efforts made in education and family planning must go hand in hand; they are not separate matters and they ought to be dealt with together.
In a statement issued only last week Dr. Nafis Sadik, the director of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, made specific reference to the disappointing results being achieved in family planning. The dedicated people who devote their lives to education in family planning in third world countries need and deserve all the help we can give them with what is a basic weapon in dealing with the population problem.
I have not had the wide and deep experience of third world countries of other noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. My experience is a result of short visits on parliamentary delegations. That is different from the kind of experience we have heard about from other speakers.
I recognise—I am aware that the Government do too—that family planning has its own problems, not least the view taken of it by some religions. It was deeply disturbing to some of us to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, last week when my Question was being answered that the Reagan Government cancelled all United States funding to the IPPF as a result of pressure from the so-called "life lobby". I was pleased to hear my noble friend Lord Houghton repeat that remark, and indeed go further and talk about what President Bush is doing in that respect. I am not sure whether the Government feel themselves competent to make representations on that issue, but many Members of your Lordships' House are deeply concerned about the attitude being shown by our friends in America.
It would be helpful if the Minister—not now but perhaps later—could give us some idea of how many British personnel are engaged in family planning education in the underdeveloped countries. I say that because it seems to me, as I said a moment ago, that the people doing the work at the coal face, if I may so describe it, are of the utmost importance.
The United Nations report recommends that spending on family planning be doubled by the end of the century and that a greater proportion of the aid budget be spent on such programmes. I hope that the Government will accept that recommendation as

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a matter of urgency; but I understand that there is, in some countries at least, the problem that such funds are not always used to improve family planning facilities. That is a point which needs to be watched carefully, and I am sure that the Government are doing so.
I am not sure how the Government receive reports from family planning workers in the field. They are the people who have to face the difficulties, and it is essential to know what the problems are so that solutions can be attempted.
It is heartening to learn from Family Health International that surveys carried out in many developing countries show that 50 per cent. to 80 per cent. of married women want to limit or space future births. My noble friend Lady Lockwood made a similar point which she put more eloquently than I have. A different story came from those countries only a few years ago, but even so there is a great variation. In Mexico in 1974 only 12 per cent. of women were using modern methods, but due to improved access to contraception the figure doubled by 1976 and doubled again in 1982. That is heartening news.
By contrast, in Africa where the problem is at its worst, only 23 per cent. of women who do not want more children use contraceptives. There is clearly a tremendous amount of work to be done there, and we cannot but be saddened by the rate of progress.
It is easy to be critical of population increase and its consequences, but I do not underestimate, despite my criticisms of the Government, the many and great problems involved. I repeat what I have said in the House previously: there is no greater problem facing mankind today. It brings about poverty and illiteracy on a massive scale and now more than ever it is realised that the effect on the environment may literally be calamitous. The difficulty is that it is not a problem which affects the daily lives of most people in the developed countries. I believe nevertheless that there is a slowly growing consciousness of just how serious overpopulation is to our planet.
When reading various reports and accounts of what is happening, one comes across nuggets, if I may so describe them, of success which are not just heartening but which are encouraging and a spur to further effort. Only yesterday I read of the first family planning success in southern India, which has been one of the hardest areas to cope with in relation to population control. Progress can come only from the concerted effort of all countries. I hope that our country and our Government will not be found wanting in that endeavour.
8.15 p.m.
Viscount Craigavon: My Lords, with the noble Lord, Lord Rea, I was able to attend the launch in London last week of the UNFPA report on The State of World Population 1990 which was introduced by Dr. Nafis Sadik. The noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, gave a good account of some hopeful details contained in that report. I have been encouraged by the extensive coverage of that excellent report in all the serious newspapers last week and this week, especially in the context of the
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present "One World Week", during which, although population is mentioned, it is still not being discussed as a vital, integral part of "green" problems. The media may have been encouraged to feature "population" because there appeared to be bad news.
Although that UNFPA report contains some bad news—mainly that future population projections are increasing slightly—there are also some positive sides to it, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, said and, as was pointed out in the leading letter in The Times yesterday from Sir Charles Morrison (chairman of the All-Party Group on Population and Development) which has been mentioned. I should perhaps say that I am vice-chairman of that group. He pointed out that the report also said that effective family planning programmes had played and continued to play a successful part in many countries in helping to achieve significant reductions in total fertility rates. He also quoted the estimate in the report that by the end of the century there will be a 60 per cent. increase in demand for family planning in the developing world. He suggested that our contribution towards that demand should be met by an increase from 1 per cent. to 2 per cent. in the funds devoted to family planning within the ODA budget. That is not a request for new money, but for a transfer of emphasis to that area.
Talk about population problems has recently increased. How quickly that talk is translated into results remains to be seen. Frustrating as it may be, even just talking about those problems seems to have had an effect over the years on the gradual change in the climate of opinion on that subject.
I thought that the Brundtland Report, although excellent in many respects, was disappointing in not making a clearer statement on population problems. I hope that last week's Bergen debate on population, which is being shown on BBC 1 tomorrow, will reflect how the debate has moved on since the Brundtland Report. That programme is part of the BBC's contribution to "One World Week", although it is disappointing that that recording has been assigned an 11 o'clock slot tomorrow morning. As part of that same project, according to The Times, Prince Charles will say on BBC 1 this evening:
"All main religions have had to think again about family planning",
which he identifies as another significant saviour of the planet.
The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, mentioned Prince Phillip's masterly speech. Most noble Lords are aware that Prince Phillip has been speaking out on the subject of population for some time in a characteristically forthright manner. Unfortunately his remarkable speech in New York in March to the United Nations Population Fund received little coverage in this country. It was a lengthy and closely argued speech which I obtained from the Library. It would not be meaningful to pick out and quote just a few dramatic sentences, but it is one of the clearest and most graphic accounts of the problems that confront us, put in the most direct and challenging form. An abbreviated account of the speech appeared in Monday's Evening Standard.

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Alarm bells have been sounded, but the question is: who will allow themselves to hear them? It may be surprising to some that the Prime Minister briefly sounded alarm bells about population in her speech last November to the United Nations in a debate on the subject of the global environmment. She said:
"More than anything, our environment is threatened by the sheer numbers of people and the plants and animals which go with them. When I was born the world's population was some 2 billion people. My grandson will grow up in a world of more than 6 billion people. Put in its bluntest form: the main threat to our environment is more and more people, and their activities".
Those are strong and clear words on the central importance of population to the environment. I am not given to quoting the Prime Minister of ten. I also used that quotation in the speech that I made on 22nd March. I have done so for the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Dormand, pointed out, that we have no Conservative Back-Bench speakers on the Motion and there are in this Chamber no Conservative representatives on the Back Benches. That is a pity because this should be an all-party subject, as it has been, in my opinion, for a long time.
To be fair, everyone I have quoted, including the UNFPA, seems to recognise that for the environment a change of attitude is needed as much in the developed as in the developing world. With all the support that I have quoted from the top and given that the Minister, Mrs. Chalker, has an excellent and sympathetic record in the field, could we not expect that within the existing budget of the ODA substantially more should be directed towards population activities? I am sure that what I called the alarm bells are heard only too clearly in the Ministry, but the temptation must be to regard them as a distant sound and a distant problem. It is a long-term problem, but an act of will and vision is needed to respond to those long-term problems. If they are ignored now, they will become compounded, as the UN report clearly shows. We should ask the Government on our behalf to think and act in the long term in this field and to give an urgent lead to other Western governments.
8.22 p.m.
Lord Oram: My Lords, the Motion we are debating this evening and most of the speeches draw attention to one of the many vicious circles that face developing countries. The Motion starts with poverty, moves on to illiteracy and the environment and then to rapid population growth. My noble friend Lord Rea might well have traced the circle the other way round, starting with population growth and leading to poverty. It does not matter which way round we go, poverty is both a cause and a consequence of rapid population growth. Wherever we look in the developing countries, we find that one problem leads to another and we go round again full circle to where we started. The outstanding circular problem is debt. A country is poor; it borrows to feed its people; it is then charged interest which it cannot afford and so it borrows again. That is the nature of the development problem we face.
Where do we start with the problem? I suggest that we have no choice but to tackle all aspects
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simultaneously. That is why those of my noble friends who have called attention to the need for a larger aid programme are perfectly correct. All these problems are inter-related. If a country is poor, it cannot teach its people to read and write. If they are illiterate, they cannot easily be taught the need for or the methods of family planning.
The United Nations suggested one way in which we might break into this vicious circle. It has designated 1990 as International Literacy Year in the hope that public opinion worldwide can be mobilised to tackle the problem through elementary education. That can be the focal point, I suggest, for activity not by educationists alone but by health workers, economists, agriculturists, by the Churches (I see that the right reverend Prelate has just arrived in his place) and not least by governments.
It is not easy, when speaking of the problems of the developing world, to avoid the use of statistics. I only do so in order to emphasise the point that was so well made by my noble friend Lady Lockwood. If we take population and literacy statistics together, they reveal that a decreasing proportion of the world's population is illiterate. That is good news in a sense; but unfortunately population growth is such that the number of people who cannot read or write is increasing, despite the advances being made in respect of literacy taken in isolation. In other words, we are swimming against the tide. The only way to make progress against the tide is to redouble our efforts. That is what the world must do now if disaster is to be avoided.
Therefore I suggest it is to be hoped that in this International Literacy Year all international organisations—governmental and non-governmental alike and not just UNESCO—will redouble their efforts. I am glad that one international organisation with which I have had close association in the past—namely the International Co-operative Alliance—is taking a positive attitude to the task and to the International Literacy Year. It is urging all its national affiliates worldwide to incorporate literacy programmes into their activities. It is taking steps to monitor the response of the affiliated organisations.
I pick on this not only because of my personal association, but because it is important, since the co-operative movement has a network of co-operative societies with many millions of members, some in the developing countries. The important point is that they are organised right down to the village level. It is surely there that the messages of both literacy and family planning need to be delivered. We are concerned with that double message this evening. I wish to make a brief comment on the Government's attitude to that double problem.
I have little difficulty in commending the Government's record in relation to such organisations as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for Population Activity. The United Kingdom has consistently been a leading donor to those organisations. However, my noble friends Lord Houghton of Sowerby and Lord Dormand have pointed to the fact that President Reagan succumbed

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to the pressures of the pro-life lobby in the United States and cut of f the United States' subscriptions to those organisations. It was commendable that this country refused to follow suit and continued to support those two international organisations.
However, this evening we are debating both population and literacy. I wish I could say the same things about the Government's record in respect of literacy as I have about family planning. On literacy the Government meekly followed the United States when that country withdrew from UNESCO. Only a few weeks ago we refused to rejoin UNESCO despite a massive expression of opinion that this country should be in it.
I recognise the validity of many of the criticisms that have been levelled at UNESCO, but I recognise also the efforts that are being made by the present director general, Sr. Major, who is trying to overcome UNESCO's problems. This country ought still to be a member of that body helping him with those efforts. That is especially true in relation to the subject of this evening's debate for UNESCO has a proud record in the fight against illiteracy. This country could make a contribution to that fight. We should still be in that body if we are serious, as the Minister will no doubt claim, about conquering illiteracy and the related problem of population growth.
8.32 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for giving us the opportunity this evening to discuss the problems of work population growth, illiteracy and poverty. I had not intended to speak in this debate as I thought that my noble friend Lady Robson was going to speak from her long and deep knowledge of world population problems. My noble friend kindly gave me notes to help me in my speech tonight. I hope she will not be of fended if I refer only briefly to the content of those notes. I suppose it is a guage of what happens to one after six years in your Lordships' House—it is six years to the day that I made my maiden speech on the closely related subject of aid to the third world—that I come back to where I began and speak with some enthusiasm about this topic but also with sadness that so little has happened during those six years to encourage us. I refer particularly to those countries in East and Central Africa of which I have some experience.
I was in Africa through the 1970s for long periods of time. I lived in four countries. I believe the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, mentioned one of those countries although he did not refer to it by name when he made his interesting and, as usual, perceptive speech. I saw at first hand hunger, disease, famine, and also corruption which has not been mentioned this evening That is why my speech is devoted to the problem of poverty. I take it as read that there is a connection between poverty, illiteracy and world population growth. However, as other noble Lords have said, we need to target our attention most particularly at the area of poverty.
Having said that I saw all those bad aspects of third world countries, I have to say also that I saw incredible good humour, resilience and good aspects
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of family life under conditions of extreme hardship. I also saw—this is very important—the extraordinary forgiving nature of Africans. That is a characteristic of Africans which we need to bear in mind when we consider the future of South Africa. When one considers how President Kenyatta was treated in prison, it is remarkable that when he came out and led the nation with a strong and by and large, good hand, he did not refer to the indignities that he had suffered in captivity.
I remember seeing shanty towns. The right reverend Prelate will know what I am talking about here. I remember one evening when I was outside Nairobi seeing an enormously red glow spreading against the wonderful African sky. I heard a most incredible noise of crackling, banging, shouting and screaming. A shanty town had caught fire. All the plastic and paper which formed the dwellings of the poor inhabitants had caught fire. That was very understandable as most of the material used for the houses was highly combustible. I shall never forget the screams of the dispossessed. However, another shanty town sprang up shortly afterwards and the same story goes on.
I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, will refer to the role of women in third world countries. I have seen women looking after the staple crops, carrying water, collecting wood and raising their families with precious little appreciation within their culture. I was in Africa as part of an aid project. I now look back on that as a most unsatisfactory period in terms of aid to the third world, and in particular Africa. In a small way I helped to direct aid to projects in Africa. Some of the projects were good but I regret to say that most of them were not very good and some of them were downright scandalous. I am not talking particularly about aid from Britain but aid that came from many of the industrialised countries. That aid was devoted to useless projects where money had to be borrowed in the first place because there was no foreign exchange. The donor nations took part in a race to lend money to those countries so that they could buy things for which they had no real need.
Noble Lords who have travelled in Africa will have noticed that one of the strange aspects of that continent is that one nearly always finds grand airports full of marble and chrome. Yet when one leaves such countries a police officer or a customs officer begs one's fountain pen as a present. That is the kind of madness and nonsense which exists in Africa. Large projects are undertaken to build sophisticated airports, and highly sophisticated projects are carried out for making petrol out of molasses. There are high technology telephone exchanges, locomotives and railway equipment which are more sophisticated than that which is found in the donor countries. How did these projects come about? I come back to the point about corruption. Those projects required influence. Those who were in positions of power such as politicians and civil servants—they were known as the "fat cats"—received, in recognition of their services, large sums of money which were salted away in Swiss banks. Many of those who have survived that period are now exiles and live in big flats and houses, often

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in European countries, enjoying the fruits of their activities. I know some of those people myself. The effect on those countries of this continuing charade has been political instability.
There is no doubt that aid to Africa is now better targeted. It is high time that that occurred. However, not all countries were guilty of the sin of venality and ill-directed aid. The Scandinavian countries were notably effective in the kind of aid that they gave to countries in East Africa. They provided aid for simple projects to provide, for example, water and basic medicine rather than the high technology projects to which I have referred.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, that the right reverend Prelate made an admirable speech. I too should have liked to make such a comprehensive and perceptive speech. As the right reverend Prelate said, this country and many other countries in the developed world take a very short-term view, not only on the subject which we are now debating but regarding activities affecting those countries themselves. Large corporations in this country take such a short-term view that they can only think about what will happen to their share price on Monday morning; there is no thought of future planning and future investment. Young men who earn high salaries sit watching news screens, anxiously wondering what the stock market is doing, and passing the information on to their superiors. The Government take an equally short-term view. That is understandable because they have to consider their own future election prospects.
The right reverend Prelate also referred to the extraordinary consumerism in the West, which has a knock-on effect on the developing world. I am also guilty of the extraordinary gluttony which affects us all. We over-eat and then try to take of f weight. Some people are so narcissistic that they buy bicycles which do not go anywhere. They go jogging. One sees them running round our parks, sweating profusely, in the concentrated care of their own over-indulged bodies.
In Africa, where they do not have the wherewithal and the surplus to allow them to do that, people suffer from disease, illiteracy and overpopulation. It is sad, because in this country we have the ability to cope with those problems. There are enough resources, enough food and enough technology to be able to cope with the problem and to redistribute wealth in order to help solve it.
There is one further point which concerns me and which I do not believe any noble Lord has mentioned. What happens if we do not cope, apart from the fact that many will die or become diseased? I suggest that Moslem fundamentalism and other such extremist movements have a role to play. They of fer something to people who have nothing. When the Moslems moved into India the most ready converts to Islam were largely the Untouchables, those who had nothing. A great part of the Moslem population of India are descendants of those Untouchables who had nothing but to whom Islam gave some hope.
My noble friend Lord McNair, who made an excellent speech, referred to Sri Lanka and the
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success in providing medical care and basic provisions on that island. In the state of Kerala, in South West India, which I visited last year—it is a communist state, but that need not alarm noble Lords opposite (not that there are many)—exactly the same situation prevails. There has been a lowering of the birth rate. It has stabilised because education is offered and contraception is provided for women. The basic necessities of life are also provided.
I do not want to hold up the spectre of Moslem fundamentalism or communism as the inevitable effect of our neglect of the problem. However, I believe that the point is worth considering. Unless we find some way of coping with the problems, as many noble Lords have said, it could be too late. We could have disaster, on a gigantic scale, on our hands.
8.44 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, a short time ago I noticed a tragic but unfortunately true statement in a recent World Health Organisation report. The report said:
"Childbirth is a universally celebrated event, an occasion for dancing, fireworks, flowers or gifts. Yet, for many thousands of women each day, childbirth is experienced not as the joyful event it should be, but as a private hell that may end in death".
The reasons for that have little to do with personal circumstances but everything to do with the social and economic circumstances surrounding the birth. That is a factor which is central to our debate this evening and one on which I should like to focus—the position of women.
My noble friend mentioned some very disturbing statistics showing the trend in population growth. Many noble Lords have mentioned the UN Population Fund report and also the conference held this month in Norway entitled, Action for a Common Future. It has been pointed out that almost all of the population growth in the 1990s will be in the developing countries, with Africa doubling its population in 23 years' time. That point reflects the anxiety which has been shown by so many noble Lords this evening.
My noble friend Lord Rea, in his excellent introduction to this very important debate, said that priority must be given to relieving economic pressures in those countries and also to accelerating the educational process, in particular for women, to help them plan and control the size of their families. That is entirely true. There is little doubt that knowledge, wealth and access are key factors in infant and child mortality rates, maternal mortality and family size. Forty thousand children die every day of the year, most of them unnecessarily and avoidably. The average maternal mortality rate in the developing world is 15 times higher than that in industrialised countries. It is interesting to note that the United States had a maternal mortality rate of over 600 per 100,000 live births in 1915. That is similar to the rate today in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason is that in sub-Saharan Africa social conditions have not improved. There is no improved medical care and no application of existing medical knowledge and technology.

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The relationship between knowledge and the prevention of infant and child death, and between child survival and decreases in population growth rates, has been well documented by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation. Major health hazards for both children and mothers are pregnancies which are too early, too late, too many or too frequent. In the early 1960s only a few countries had family planning programmes. Now over 120 governments support such programmes, either directly or indirectly. Unfortunately their spending on such programmes is less than 1 per cent. of their budgets. In over 50 countries, in which 20 per cent. of the world's women exist, contraceptive prevalence rates are below 10 per cent. Yet, as both my noble friend Lady Lockwood and the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, have pointed out, there are 300 million couples in developing countries who do not want any more children who are not taking any effective action to limit family size, for the very good reason that they do not know how to.
It is for that reason that I do not agree with my noble friend Lord Monkswell. He has left, but he said that he would read Hansard tomorrow morning. I do not agree with him that it is patronising to produce ways of helping women in developing countries to control their lives if the only way of doing so is to control the size of their families.
There is clear evidence from developing countries that if family planning services exist women will use them. Speaking as a woman, I am not surprised that they do. However, it is realised more and more that men have not been targeted enough in those family planning programmes. It is so of ten the man who influences the woman. It has been discovered that he is of ten aware of those programmes but does not tell his wife about them and she is therefore left entirely ignorant. To give an idea of the extra costs of bringing family planning to all women who want it, it is estimated that it would cost 2 billion dollars a year until the year 2000. That is slightly less than the annual US expenditure on tobacco and advertising. I find that a sobering thought.
UNICEF strongly believes that, as infant deaths decline and parents are assured of their children's survival, it will be easier to make people adopt family planning methods. UNICEF believes that family planning methods should be decided by the individuals and countries themselves, as is right.
I intended to give some details about the education of women, but my noble friend Lady Lockwood has already done that. She pointed to the worrying fact that a high proportion of the world's illiterates are women and that the more schooling women have, the more likely they are to have fewer children at more widely spaced intervals.
On a visit to Kenya in January, I noticed that women accepted the argument that spacing was to do with their health rather than with some ridiculous idea from the rich countries to compel them to have fewer children. They understood that it was in their interests and the interests of the whole family, including their existing children, if they looked after their health by spacing the births in their families.
I also saw a good example of the importance of literacy to women. I went to a poor area where there
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was a centre for immunisation and family planning. I asked how many of the women who came there could read and was told that nine out of 10 could probably read. That was certainly not representative of the proportion of women who could read in that poor area. It meant that it was only the women who could read who availed themelves of the family planning, immunisation and other advice facilities. That is an important point.
It has been stated time and time again this evening that there is a direct link between poverty, illiteracy and family size. Specific goals within a fixed time should therefore be set in those countries, but, as has been said this evening, given the external debt repayments of interest and principal which amount to three times the total of all new aid being received each year in those countries, it is inconceivable that those countries, especially those in Africa and Latin America, will have the resources to build the necessary economic foundation to meet those important human goals of the 1990s.
It has been an inevitable consequence that basic public services, particularly health and education, have suffered cuts, so the vicious circle of poor education, poverty, large families, poor health and nutrition and poor schooling continues. A major action programme to deal with the developing countries' debt would enable a significant switch of resources to the social sectors. As my noble friend Lord Hatch and other speakers have said, that is vital.
Perhaps I may conclude by asking one question of the Minister and making one suggestion. UNESCO is the lead organisation for International Literacy Year, to which my noble friend Lord Oram referred. As the United Kingdom is regrettably not a member of UNESCO, can the Minister tell us whether we are channelling any support towards that international year in some other way, as we are presumably not channelling it through UNESCO?
I am sure that the Minister knows that in September of this year there will be a summit for children in New York. Does he agree that it might be a wonderful opportunity for world leaders to work out a population policy? The noble Lord, Lord Vernon, said that a population policy was vital not only to developing countries but to us too. I should have thought that we could follow the example of the banks, which have written of f some of the developing countries' debts for development. The money has gone into development projects such as afforestation. The banks might also think of writing of f some of the developing countries' debts if the money went into social development so that family planning could be integrated into the primary health care programmes of those countries. That is important not only to the women of those countries but to all of us. That point might be worth considering.
8.55 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, this has been a most interesting debate on a most serious issue. Its implications cannot be minimised.
It is clear that rapid population growth, if not directly contributing to many of the developmental

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problems besetting the poorest countries of the world today, is certainly making the finding of sustainable solutions more difficult. It increases pressures on health and education services, on social infrastructure, on labour markets and on physical and natural resources generally.
However, as the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Manchester said, that is not the only mechanism at work. The relationship which is the subject of this debate is more like a vicious circle in which population growth is accompanied by poverty. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, emphasised that unless the poor are more secure they will not wish to limit their family sizes. Other noble Lords have stressed that we should understand that poor families will see the benefits of having many children as outweighing the costs.
Many noble Lords have indicated that when infant and child mortality rates remain high—and they are still unacceptably so in many societies—there is an obvious disincentive for parents to think of having fewer children. In many communities, the prevailing cultural and social pressures of ten result in the poorest women, particularly the illiterate, being least able to take advantage of family planning information and services. Large families in turn make for less healthy, less well educated and less productive children, and so the work of the vicious circle goes on.
These problems require a comprehensive and consistent strategy. The broad objectives of the Government's overseas aid programme are to promote sustainable economic and social development and to alleviate poverty in developing countries. Long-term alleviation of poverty is our central goal. That must be achieved through appropriate domestic policies. It is gratifying to see that more and more developing countries acknowledge the need for policy reforms and the benefits of promoting private sector incentives and initiative. A main plank of our bilateral aid programme is to provide financial assistance in support of these macroeconomic policy changes alongside other agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF.
Such policies can, however, be difficult to implement. Political and social opposition can be strong. Many previous attempts have been frustrated; and the results can be uncertain and disappointing. It is therefore all the more necessary to complement these measures by action which is aimed specifically at tackling the problems directly.
The Government give high priority to population-related activities within the overseas aid programme. In 1989, we spent more than £17 million in that sector. Our policy is quite clear. The noble Lord, Lord Dormand, quoted the figure for population-related activities in all our aid programmes which I gave in my Answer of 9th May. I regret to say that the figure of £6-5 million should have related to 1981, not to 1988. There was a misprint and I am writing separately to the noble Lord to put that right.
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We support the need to reduce global population growth and we aim to encourage and assist developing country governments to gain an understanding of population issues and to help them deal with their problems. We do not support programmes in which there is an element of coercion: our watchword is planning, not control. The aim is to enable individuals in developing countries to choose voluntarily the number and spacing of their children.
Most of our assistance is channelled through multilateral population programmes, such as the United Nations Population Fund, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and WHO's Human Reproduction Programme. We are contributing some £15-5 million in 1990.
This balance reflects the preferences of many developing countries, which prefer to receive assistance through multilateral agencies. But we also use the other channels available within the aid programme. Major bilateral projects have been mounted in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kenya. These are wide-ranging in content and include census work, the provision of family planning information and services, health care services, and training programmes. There has been a steady flow of trainees from developing countries coming to study in this country; and we hope that this will increase. Non-governmental organisations have a vital role to play in this field. Under the Joint Funding Scheme, the ODA is prepared to meet up to the full cost of population projects run by British voluntary agencies, rather than 50 per cent. as in other sectors. ODA contributions on populations activities under the scheme have increased from £87,000 in 1978 to £641,000 last year. The United Kingdom is renowned for its expertise in population research and training. My right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development has recently launched a major new programme of support to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Research and training in population will be a key component.
It is important to remember that progress is being made in slowing population growth. Many developing country governments have established policies and invested funds in population programmes. Smaller family size is now the norm in some countries. Thailand and others in South-East Asia are the most obvious examples. The speed with which this has been achieved is without precedent in its rapidity. We now have the first positive signs of change in some African countries—in Kenya, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
I am delighted to report to the right reverend Prelate that during the past five years the proportion of couples in Kenya practising family planning has increased from 17 per cent. to 27 per cent. The average family size has fallen from 7-4 to 6-4. That is a result of intensified efforts by the Government of Kenya with substantial support from our own Government. These are early signs. There remains much hard work to be done but we can be optimistic that worthwhile results have been and will continue to be achieved.

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I turn now to illiteracy. The benefits of education are many and varied, but I wish to stress here those which impinge most significantly on the issues under debate.
I should also like to make explicit what has been implicit in all that I have said so far; namely, the role and position of women, of which the noble Baronesses, Lady Lockwood and Lady Ewart-Biggs, made much in their speeches. These are centrally important for future population trends.
Experience has shown that as development progresses family size falls. To this extent the broad development objectives of the aid programme are consistent with that of reducing population growth. However, this is not the only force at work. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, has pointed out, studies have shown that birthrate decline is more closely associated with adult literacy and life expectancy than with income per head. In particular, women's educational attainment is the social factor that has proved most consistently and strongly related to family size. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, that women are especially vulnerable to the adverse implications of illiteracy, particularly those who are poor and living in rural areas. Factors at work here are the sexual division of labour and male control of women's sexuality. Girls who are deprived of schooling are more likely to enter into early marriages and social pressures can militate against the attendance of literacy classes by adult women. Education is a means of breaking this vicious circle. It opens up the options available to women and makes for later—and more discriminating—marriages. Children whose mothers have received some education are likely to be healthier, while reduced infant mortality in turn makes for the demand for smaller numbers of children. This effect is reinforced by the influence of education on the acceptability of family planning methods, access to them and the efficacy of their use.
The overseas aid programme's assistance to education covers a broad spectrum of activities, all of which do not necessarily bear directly on the issues underlying this debate. Increasingly, however, we are seeking to open up opportunities for women and girls to improve their skills and productivity as well as their general education level. In a number of cases, education forms a component of a wider social development programme. A current example is the literacy training and basic education provided under the Indore Slum Improvement Project in India. Improving women's access to education is a key factor. We are already helping, but we recognise that more needs to be done.
We have recently provided £1-5 million in support of the expansion of functional literacy in Ghana. The project, which is within the orbit of the social programme that addresses the effect of structural adjustment in Ghana, is designed directly to meet the functional needs of women and girls out of school. Appropriate population education materials will be integrated into the programme. Many literacy projects are supported under our Joint Funding
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Scheme for NGO, as these organisations are most closely in touch with the needs of people on the ground.
I turn to the environment. I come now to the question of environmental degradation and its relationship with population growth. It is a truism to say that people affect the enviroment in which they live. And it is equally self-evident that, for any given type of technology, level of consumption and mode of social organisation, the more people there are the greater the impact will be. It is, however, much less obvious—until recently—that people also affect environments in which they do not live. The fact that deforestation in mountain or upland regions brings the risk of flooding to low-lying areas, for instance, has long been recognised; but the potential risk of deforestation to life on this planet through its impact on global warming is a much more recently acknowledged danger. We have also only relatively recently acknowledged and begun to take action in connection with the international air-borne or water-borne transmission of pollutants, industrial or otherwise.
It follows from this that the faster population growth, the more difficult will be the task of arresting environmental degradation. This is why tackling population growth is an important aspect of the Government's overseas aid policy. But the threat to the environment also requires a direct response. This should be based on good science, good economics and, to the greatest possible extent, on the use of market mechanisms. One aspect of this is to emphasise the economic value of the environment and the costs associated with its degradation; costs which those who inflict the damage do not usually bear. This approach is reflected in the Government's policies on the environment. More than I can say here is set out in this booklet entitled The Environment and the British Aid Programme which my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development is launching today. Our aims are particularly well exemplified in our support to tropical forestry. The intention is to help developing countries maximise the economic and social benefits that they enjoy from their forests in a sustainable way. Our aim is to limit deforestation by tackling its causes; to promote reforestation and agroforestry; and to strengthen government departments charged with the task of forest conservation and management. The programme also finances training and research projects designed to increase the productivity of forests.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, told us that commercial logging for exports is a main cause of deforestation. Certainly that can be the case in some areas but not in general. An excellent article in this week's New Scientist by Paul Harrison tells us that some three-quarters of the deforestation which took place between 1971 and 1986 can be explained by population growth.
In 1988 we were supporting some 80 forestry projects at a cost of £45 million. Now we have ongoing or in preparation some 156 projects costing £150 million. In November last year, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced that we would aim to commit a further £100 million

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to tropical forestry activities over the subsequent three years. Part of the new money will be needed for projects now in preparation but there will still be room for many new activities.
Our support to the forestry sector is, as noble Lords will note from the figures that I have just given, substantial. It forms the largest element in the range of work that ODA is supporting to conserve biological diversity. On 17th May my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development announced the ODA's plans to strengthen its activities which have biodiversity as a major aim. The ODA's environmental objectives also include energy conservation. On 3rd May my right honourable friend announced that one of the ODA's largest grants this year would be of £50 million in new aid towards energy efficiency projects in India.
As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, action to halt environmental degradation needs, above all, global co-operation. The United Kingdom participates in the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has signed the Montreal Protocol for the protection of the ozone layer. It is recognised, however, that the developing countries will need specific help in adapting to and limiting the adverse effects of climate change and phasing out the use of ozone depleters. The ODA is willing to give such assistance. It is funding developing country participation in the IPCC and in the Montreal Protocol process. In addition, more than £200,000 has been committed for a study now being undertaken of the options open to India to phase out ozone-depleters such as CFCs.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, spoke of our contribution to population activities and referred to the letter from Sir Charles Morrison in yesterday's edition of The Times. As I have said, our contribution to these activities is now some £17 million per year. It is a priority area and we are ready and seeking to do more. We have recently reviewed our assistance to health and population in more than 10 priority countries with a view to increasing and rationalising our assistance and yielding sustained improvements in population health care and family planning. We hope that the lessons from these reviews will enable us to intensify that aid, particularly in the vital area of population.
Several noble Lords asked whether we can do more to relieve the developing countries of their debt. The extent of our activities to date may not be fully appreciated. We have already cancelled all the aid debts of the poorest countries, which are worth £1 billion. We took the initiative which resulted in the rescheduling of the Paris Club debts under the Toronto Agreement. We are the largest single contributor to the interest subsidy scheme under the IMF's enhanced structural adjustment facility. We also support the Brady Plan to provide official support for commercial bank debt reductions for countries pursuing economic reform through the IMF and the World Bank.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, and the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked about the relationship
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of the aid programme to GNP. The Government have made clear their commitment to maintain a substantial and growing aid programme. At just over £1-6 billion this year the aid programme is 8 per cent. more than last year. By 1992-93 it is planned to increase it to £1-75 billion.
In view of the huge development tasks ahead, of which some have been highlighted in this debate, the Government recognise that additional efforts will be needed to increase the aggregate level of resources being transferred from developed to developing countries. However, resources are one thing; the use to which they are put is another. The Government attach as much importance to the quality of our aid as to the quantity. We are recognised internationally as playing a valuable role in enhancing the effectiveness of aid.
The Government have always made it clear that they accept in principle the target set by the United Nations of 0-7 per cent. of GNP for official development assistance. In 1988 our ODA GNP ratio was 0-32 per cent. That was up on the previous year, when it was 0-28 per cent. We also recognise that a target is only one of a number of possible aid performance measures. The important point is that our aid programme is growing and in real terms we are making strenuous efforts to improve the effectiveness of our aid for the recipients and the efficiency with which it is administered.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, the noble Lord, Lord Vernon, and the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, asked us whether we could spend more of the aid programme in the population field. As I said, we seek to do more on population, but the uses to which our aid is put is rightly determined by the requests that we receive from our partners in developing countries. I am not sure that it would be right for us to earmark unilaterally a fixed proportion of the aid programme to a particular activity or section.
I am pleased to agree with the noble Lord, Lord McNair, on the excellent work of the Intermediate Technology Development Group and Traidcraft. Both seek to tap the productive potential of poorer people. The ODA is supporting both those organisations and believes that the relationships has been extremely fruitful.
The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, the noble Lord, Lord Dormand, and the noble Lord, Lord Oram, asked whether the Government would use their influence with the United States to encourage a resumption of US funding in the UN Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. As has been said, population programmes raise difficult and sensitive issues, including that of abortion. The Government draw a clear distinction between advocating abortion and recognising the importance of family planning. We very much hope that the US Administration will be able to move towards our position. They are aware of our views and we shall continue our dialogue. In doing so, we must acknowledge that the United States has not withdrawn from funding population programmes worldwide and remains the largest bilateral donor for family planning programmes.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will give way. If he is hoping to use his influence with the United States and is anxious about the abortion issue, is he aware that every year there are about 500,000 deaths among women from abortions and that 90 per cent. of those deaths are in the third world? Is that not an argument for increasing the supply and provision of population control measures in order to prevent back-street abortions, which are now a feature of most third world countries?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I cannot confirm or deny the figure which the noble Lord gives. As I said, we support those organisations and we shall seek to persuade the Americans that they should do the same.
The noble Lord, Lord Oram, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, suggested that we could have been more effective in our work to help to eradicate iliteracy if we had stayed within UNESCO. We disagree. We left that organisation because it was ineffective. It sponsored some of the useless projects to which the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, referred. We diverted our contributions to UNESCO to other educational programmes which do work. A further gain was that UNESCO appreciated that it must mend its ways. In our view the total effect of our withdrawal has been positive.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. How will support be channeled in International Literacy Year if we do not do that through UNESCO?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I cannot answer that. I know that we have channelled the support that we would have given to UNESCO up till now through our own ways. I shall certainly look at the specific point raised by the noble Baroness and write to her with my reply.
To conclude, the wider debate on environmental issues has given currency to a very potent concept; that of the present generation holding the planet in trust for future generations. To ignore the problems to population growth is to hasten environmental degradation, and without proper regard for the conservation of our national environment the long-term attack on global poverty will not succeed.
Lord Rea: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down and before I formally close the debate, perhaps he could clarify one of the figures that he gave. He mentioned that the ODA funds going to population activities for 1990 amount to £15-5 million. Will that figure be increased as 1990 progresses, or is it a final sum? He also gave figures for the increase in the total ODA aid budget. Was he speaking in cash terms or real terms when referring to estimates for the coming two years?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord's point, our provision of £17 million on population growth is for the current year. The figure of £15-5 million to which I referred was the provision to the specific multilateral agencies. In answer to the second point, the figures I gave were cash terms compared one with the other.
Lord Rea: My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate. Although I was impressed with the expertise shown by the speech of the noble Lord as given to him in his brief by the ODA officials, it is a sad reply. It does not show that that expertise will be harnessed as fully as we should like. This country has the skills and the tradition to play a major role in assisting the plight of the South (the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, has gone) rather than the third world.
The debate has confirmed the extent and severity of the crisis facing the world's population. Almost every speaker put forward a valuable suggestion as to how the problem should be tackled. I am most impressed and grateful for that. Overall the need for far more effectively directed economic, educational and technical assistance and investment has been made out, including assistance for health and population related activities.
My noble friend Lord Hatch in a most effective speech called for a new Marshall Plan, this time from the North to the South rather than from the West to the West. If a programme of major proportions such as that is not mounted, and very soon, I am afraid that we in the North as well as those in the South will bitterly regret it.
I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Sentencing Levels
9.24 p.m.
The Earl of Longford The Earl of Longford rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied that the general level of sentencing in Great Britain is appropriate.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I was told last night that this debate would start at seven o'clock. Those who are so eloquent in restricting the birth of children are not so restrictive of their own speeches, so it has come on two hours and 20 minutes later than we expected. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learnt from that.
I should like to thank in advance all those who have had to wait so unexpectedly long to take part in the debate. I hope that my very expert old friends who will be speaking will forgive me if I single out two speakers from the others for mention at this point. We must all be particularly glad—I am sure, for example, that the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, will be—that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, is to take part. In the past I have paid tribute in writing to the intellect and integrity of the judiciary, but now I add a further tribute to the courage, or audacity, of the noble and learned Lord for coming forward at a time when the judges are under fire for the first time in a lifetime. In all honesty, we look forward to his defence of the judiciary.
I am also glad that the noble Lord, Lord Fitt, has decided to contribute. I salute him on a number of grounds but particularly now for his heroic defence for 15 years of the Maguire family which it now seems likely will culminate in triumph.
However, at this late hour I must continue. I submit that the House will agree that it is high time that we had a debate on sentencing. As my argument proceeds a number of issues will be raised but there is one question that I must first put to the noble Viscount, who has been given notice of it. I hope that I phrased it in the way that I do now. At any rate, my question is this. Are the Government prepared to agree that a new approach to sentencing is required? That is the issue I raise today. I hope for the best from the noble Viscount.
Sentencing now occupies the centre of the stage in any discussion. That has been increasingly so in the many debates in this House. I am in the course of preparing a book Punishment and the Punished, and in doing so I have interviewed a great many persons who are well qualified in this field, from ex-Home office Ministers to representatives of penal organisations and ex-prisoners. All these discussions in the end come down to the conclusion that we must somehow or other secure a reduction in the prison population. That can only be achieved by an improvement in sentencing policy.
A highly qualified committee of the lawyers' society, Justice, in its report last year reached this conclusion:
"If judicial discretion in sentencing is not to be totally unfettered, it must be exercised within the context of a coherent rationale arising from some underlying philosophy".
It went on to say that the May Committee failed to find such an underlying philosophy and Parliament has shown a marked reluctance to find one. Therefore, tonight we are engaged, one might say, on an early stage of the search for an underlying rationale on sentencing.
That was the situation before the riots began in Strangeways and spread to other prisons. For example, before Strangeways I had interviewed a score of people, as I mentioned earlier, who are well qualified in this field. Therefore, my general conclusions were reached before the riots. We have all read a great deal about the riots. We must not forget that two people died as a result of them, so whenever we add up the pr of it and loss we must remember that people died and others were badly injured.
At any rate, before Strangeways we were saying in many debates in this House—some noble Lords speaking tonight have said this many times—that we are sending too many people to prison. Obviously Strangeways drives home that lesson. We read in the papers that 1, 600 people were in Strangeways—a prison built for 1,000 in the last century. One would assume that in this century it would contain rather less than 1,000 if it is to be a civilised prison. Certainly, I am not going to say that the riots were justified. People were killed and undoubtedly brutality occurred. The lesson was driven home that Strangeways was grossly overcrowded.
In this highly controversial area it is difficult to speak of general agreement. I will not commit the Minister to agree at this stage, though he may when he winds up, but I believe that almost everyone here will agree that at the moment we send more people
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to prison than any other European country. We send them there because the judges and the magistrates so decide.
When I said that on an earlier occasion one noble Lord, who is an eminent man, said that we send people to prison because they commit all these crimes. That was a plausible intervention though it did not amount to much. It was stated authoritatively by the Government not so very long ago that we in this country are not more criminal than people in other countries. In their wisdom the judges and magistrates in this country send more people to prison than do their counterparts in other countries. The conclusion seemed to follow at an early stage of the discussion that the judiciary must be persuaded to pass less severe sentences or sentences in which confinement to prison is less favoured than alternative treatment outside prison.
I have not time to quote it, but there was in the Sunday Correspondent an interesting article which some noble Lords may have seen. There was one point raised in the article to which I shall refer. It stated that the Government hoped that in future people will not be sent to prison unless there is no possible alternative. According to the writer of the article, who had interviewed a number of judges, the problem was that the judges thought that policy was operating already. Therefore, at the moment it is a little difficult to convince the judges that a change or an improvement in attitude is required on their part.
As I have said, sentencing holds centre stage today. That was not always so because when I first raised the subject of prisons in a debate nearly 34 years ago it was not in my mind or those of other speakers, as I recall. Over the years that followed, sentencing did not feature very strongly. However, by 1981 sentencing was in the minds of those discussing such questions. At that time the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, was the Home Secretary, and he made public efforts to persuade the judges to pass less severe sentences. He seemed to be dedicated to that policy. Unfortunately, he got the bird, to use a crude expression, at the Conservative Party Conference in that year. He was more or less forced to drop such ideas.
His successor, Sir Leon Brittan, drew his own conclusions and moved painfully in the opposite direction. In penal reform circles since 1981 there has been a demand for lighter sentences. Now we all seem to be agreed that that is what is required. How is that to be achieved without undermining what is usually called the independence of the judiciary? I can remember being rebuked for appearing to infringe the very outskirts of that independence which hitherto had been regarded as sacred in much of the discussion.
I make it plain at once that I am not for one moment suggesting that we should interfere with particular judgments. They must be left to the judiciary. It would be monstrous and would suggest an almost totalitarian regime if the Government were allowed to interfere with particular decisions. I speak with all the emphasis available to me in support of my main contention. Other noble Lords will consider the issue today and later and decide

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how far they agree. My main contention is that the general level of sentencing in our country is as much the responsibility of the elected government of the day as the general standards of health or education.
The government of the day simply cannot, with honour or decency, divest themselves of that responsibility. In practice this means that judges must act within a framework which meets with the approval of the elected government. I profoundly hope that as far as possible a national consensus is secured in support of a national sentencing policy. Judges may have a difficult task but they are eminent and brilliant men and will be able to cope with it. However, they must on no account feel that they are being asked to implement a partisan initiative—the policy of one party. I have in my mind a clear approach.
Various fairly obvious proposals on which I can only touch today should be considered to give effect to this approach. I agree with those who suggest that maximum penalties over a wide range of offences should be lowered. That is indisputable. However, the benefits accruing from such a development will be limited in the short run. What we must all find encouraging is the reduction in the number of children and young persons sent to prison in the past few years under the impact of laws passed in 1982 and 1938. The effect of those laws has made it harder for the judiciary to send children and young persons to prison without giving powerful reasons for doing so.
In the White Paper the Government seem to have in mind similar proposals for dealing with adults. I hope and believe that much progress can be made along that line. What I have said up to now is not sufficient to satisfy penal reformers. I cannot do better than quote from the comments of the Prison Reform Trust, which has done such splendid work in the past few years, on the White Paper Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public. It begins with a well-deserved compliment:
"In the view of the Prison Reform Trust, the 1990 Criminal Justice White Paper is an important step towards a more rational penal system and one that is less reliant upon custody".
The trust approves of the White Paper to that extent and I go along with it. But it rapidly proceeds to qualify its phrase, again in my opinion advisedly. The trust states:
"The White Paper is a gamble. By continuing to invest a wide discretion in the courts, the government has ceded much of its responsibility for planning the criminal justice system to the senior judiciary. There can be no guarantee that this gamble will come of f".
The Prison Reform Trust leaves us in little doubt that it believes that the Government's gamble will fail and that they will end up increasing the number of people in prison.
Perhaps I may pause for a moment and ask what people would consider to be a reasonable reduction in the total number of prisoners over the next few years. It has been suggested that a reduction of 14,000 in eight years might be reasonable. The Government go to the opposite extreme. The Home office has issued a projection of an increase of 14,000, not a reduction of 14,000, over the next eight years. That official Home office forecast has
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been issued since the publication of the White Paper. I gave the Minister notice of this question. Does he repudiate that Home office forecast, and will he substitute for it a more encouraging forecast?
Thus far I have gone along with the comments of the Prison Reform Trust. However, that does not mean that I regard it as being infallible. For example, I am much more doubtful about the first sentence of the final paragraph of its summary. It reads:
"We also regret that, in its general tenor, the White Paper emphasises punishment to the virtual exclusion of any other objective of the criminal justice system.
As Members of the House will know from earlier debates, I am far from objecting to the idea of punishment in the community. There is much to be said for it. However, tremendous efforts must be made to ensure that if the policy is ever carried out, it must be carried out with the full co-operation of the probation service. I shall not pursue that aspect today; but noble Lords may remember that I opened a debate on the subject of the probation service in January.
In conclusion, I should like to lend my very strong support to the idea of sentencing councils (which are favoured by the Prison Reform Trust) which lay down guidelines to be followed by the courts in normal cases. There are various forms of sentencing councils and various ways in which this idea can be put into effect. It may be that other speakers will develop those ideas. I shall confine myself now to offering my very strong support for the idea.
A former Home office official of much sagacity offered the opinion to me when I was interviewing him that no politicians would ever stand up to public opinion in the sense that they would never want to appear to be adopting a s of t policy. He said that if we wanted a more enlightened sentencing policy, we would have to enforce it through a more efficient research department attached to the appeal courts. I do not take that low view of politicians.
The time has come when the public want to see a more enlightened sentencing policy. I think that the public—although we all detest crime, especially when we read about some beastly outbreak—has begun to feel, as I do, that our prison system at the present time is a disgrace to a Christian country, and that people want some change to be brought about in this connection.
9.41 p.m.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, cunningly cast a fly across my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor when he sent him a copy of the first draft of his speech, wisely anticipating that it would be sent on by my noble and learned friend to the senior Law Lord. So courteous, and indeed elegant a gauntlet could hardly be ignored. It appears to be a tradition in the Law Lords' Corridor, and one of which I am not wholly in favour, that when they decide to conscript a volunteer, they do so basically on an alphabetical process, rather than one of merit.
Perhaps I may start by reminding your Lordships of the wise observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, in the debate on 30th

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November 1988 when he said it should be remembered that the judiciary are responsible neither for crime nor for the conditions in prison.
This is the first time that I have experienced the considerable honour of speaking immediately before the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, who is an old sparring partner of mine. In the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, to cry moderation, I have a distinct feeling of unease. Therefore, I think that I should, in anticipation of what he may say, remind your Lordships that in the same debate to which I referred he posed what was intended to be a highly critical question; namely, why had the average sentence imposed in the Crown Courts increased, as he then added, despite the guidelines issued by the Lord Chief Justice? I endeavoured to explain that they had increased because of the Lord Chief Justice's guidelines, and let me again explain why. With statistics that I had obtained I demonstrated to the House that, whereas sentences for offences of theft, handling stolen property, fraud and non-domestic burglary had gone down, there had been a significant increase in serious offences, for which the public required, and were entitled to receive, protection: offences of violence against the person, robbery and sexual and drug offences. I quoted the right honourable gentleman the Home Secretary speaking in the same month in another place when he said that sentences for serious crimes were then increasingly severe and properly reflected the revulsion that we all feel in regard to such crimes.
Your Lordships will find in Chapter 3 of the White Paper entitled Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public, issued in February of this year and referred to by the noble Earl, a table which conveniently sets out the number of offenders sentenced to immediate custody in 1978, 1983 and 1988. I shall merely invite your Lordships' attention to the contrast in the five years between 1983 and 1988, the last year for which we have statistics. Paragraph 3.4 of the White Paper reads:
"Compared with the five years before, the number of prisoners sentenced for rape, other sexual offences and drug offences has doubled. Those convicted of robbery had increased by 57 per cent. and of violence against the person by 31 per cent. On the other hand, those convicted of burglary, theft and related offences had fallen from 52 per cent. of the sentenced prisoners in 1983 to 35 per cent. in 1988".
Since 1983 the number of offenders under 17 sentenced to custody has been halved and there has been no discernible increase in the number of offences committed by juveniles. In the last year there has been a significant drop in the number of young adults aged 17 to 20 sentenced to custody. That is a clear indication that the sentencing policy is following the appropriate course: the sentences for those involved in offences relating to property have gone down and the sentences of those convicted of the serious offences have, as the Government and the public wish, gone up.
Again I refer to the White Paper and in particular to paragraph 3.12, which states:
"Parliament guides the courts on the relative gravity of offences when it sets the maximum penalties for them. It has recently increased the maximum penalties for some violent and sexual crimes, including cruelty to children and attempted rape. More
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offenders are given custodial sentences for violent and sexual crimes than in the past and the average sentence lengths for those offences in the Crown Court for men over 21 have increased".
I am bound to admit that I belong to the school that thinks that the courts should have particular regard to the fate of the victims rather than the pre-natal experiences of the offenders. I was therefore happy to see in the same paragaph of the White Paper a confirmation that the Court of Appeal has indicated that sentences should be longer if the victims of violent crimes are very young or very old and thus especially vulnerable. Paragraph 3.13 states:
"The Government proposes to take this approach further by giving the Crown Court power to give custodial sentences longer than would be justified by the seriousness of the offence to persistent violent and sexual offenders, if this is necessary to protect the public from serious harm. There are a small number of offenders who become progressively more dangerous and who are a real risk to public safety. Some will be mentally disordered and can be detained under mental health legislation. For those convicted of the most serious crimes, a sentence of life imprisonment may be justified".
The White Paper also records in paragraph 3.6 that the Court of Appeal has made it clear that a custodial sentence should be given only when it is necessary and that, if it is necessary, the sentences should be as short as is consistent with the need for punishment, particularly for property offences. This is and has been the attitude of the Court of Appeal responsible for laying down guidelines for the past 10 years. The White Paper might as well have referred to the well-known case in 1980 of R v. Bibi in which the Lord Chief Justice said, 10 years ago:
"This case opens up wide horizons because it is no secret that our prisons at the moment are dangerously overcrowded. So much so that sentencing courts must be particularly careful to examine each case to ensure that if an immediate custodial sentence is necessary, the sentence is as short as possible consistent only with the duty to protect the interests of the public and to punish and deter the criminal".
The Judicial Studies Board, a special board headed by a judge of the Court of Appeal, currently Lord Justice Glidewell, has for some time issued and currently issues to judges the following instructions headed "The Current Approach to Sentencing", which is a kind of route card. It reads as follows:
"In every case, the following steps must be taken in the order in which they appear below. Can a non-custodial sentence be passed? If so, such a sentence must be imposed. If a non-custodial sentence is out of the question, is it possible to make a Community Service Order as an alternative to a short custodial sentence? If it is not possible to make a Community Service Order, is it possible to suspend the whole of the prison sentence which must inevitably follow? If so, you must suspend the whole of the sentence you impose, but remember that you must determine the length of the sentence on the merits of the case. It is wrong to increase the length of the sentence simply because you are suspending it. If it is not possible to suspend the whole sentence is it possible to pass a very short immediate sentence without any suspension? If a short sentence is insufficient to meet the needs of the case, is it possible to suspend part of a longer sentence which must necessarily follow? If it is possible, then a partially suspended sentence should be imposed and you must decide what proportion of the whole must be served. If a partially suspended sentence is inappropriate what is the least possible total sentence which can be imposed bearing in mind the circumstances of the case and the record of the of fender".
Those are the instructions. We all know—all the judges know—that prison is of ten counter-productive. It is an expensive method of

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warehousing people. On occasions it has to be used because it is the only way of protecting society.
Perhaps I may now deal with comparisons which are made with other countries. Much is made of comparisons between the prison statistics in this country and those in Europe. However, I have yet to meet a criminologist who believes that without a study in depth of the conditions in those countries any significant inferences can be drawn from such a comparison.
It is interesting to record that only very recently, on 7th May this year in The Times, the legal affairs correspondent, Miss Frances Gibb, published an article headed "Big range found in sentencing policies:". The article states:
"Startling disparities in sentences imposed by courts of different countries for crimes including rape and armed robbery are shown in the preliminary findings of a new international survey of sentencing practice".
The crimes of rape and robbery were considered in the survey. The same set of circumstances was presented to judges and expert lawyers in a number of countries who specialised in crime. The facts that were assumed were that the rapist was a man aged 27 who attacked a girl of 16. The results of that survey showed that in England the sentence would be seven to 10 years. In Ireland it would be 18 months One can imagine the call for the resignation of any English judge who sentenced such an of fender to 18 months. In Denmark the sentence would be two to three years. The same demand for the resignation of the judge concerned would follow if that sentence were meted out in England. The Netherlands has a slightly higher sentence of three to five years for such a crime.
The assumed facts in regard to the robbery were that the robber was 19 years old, unemployed, and had taken part in an £800,000 armed raid. In England the sentence would have been 10 to 15 years. The same sentence would have been meted out in Scotland. In Norway the sentence would have been five years and in Ireland four to six years. In the Netherlands it would be the same length of time. I refer to two crimes for which the sentences given in England would have been the only acceptable sentences in England. The sentences given in other countries which I have described would have been strongly criticised. Judges have in the past been criticised for not reflecting public opinion in their sentences. Rape is such a case. Your Lordships may remember that another case in point is that of causing death by reckless driving. There has been strong criticism in that regard.
The White Paper records that in 1988 there were 100 people in prison in England and Wales for every 100,000 people in the population. In France the figure is 81 and in West Germany, despite a considerably different approach recently, the figure is 85. There is not a great difference there. Canada has a higher figure than ours, at 109. The United States of America has a figure that is three and a half times our figure, at 350.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, raised two points, one of which I agreed with and one of which I did
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not agree with. I shall consider the latter point first. The noble Earl said that he lent his strong support to the idea of sentencing councils laying down guidelines to be followed by courts in normal cases. In a debate in November 1988 the noble Lord, Lord Irvine, said that he wished to make one thing absolutely plain; namely, that judicial independence must never be compromised. He proposed a sentencing commission consisting of judges and magistrates at all levels and all others who are experts in the field such as prison governors, probation officers and representatives of interested bodies. He observed that Canada has done this with great success.
However, the statistics to which I have just made reference hardly bear out that point. I interpose that in the United States the Executive has laid down a points system which requires more the intervention of a computer than a judge to fix sentences. Yet the numbers in prison in the United States are three and a half times our numbers.
The noble Lord suggested that that commission would fashion guidelines and principles for the courts, which would, however, retain their discretion to apply them. One wonders how. The noble Lord observed:
"We should ask ourselves why the courts sentence as they do".
Once more, I hope that I can provide a short and satisfactory answer to that question.
Over the years the Court of Appeal has laid down sentencing guidelines encompassing imprisonment in general—I have already quoted one case—and offences in particular; namely, causing death by reckless driving, riot, violence at football matches, robbery, kidnapping, rape, unlawful sexual intercourse, buggery, gross indecency, living on the earnings of prostitutes, theft in breach of trust, benefits frauds, offences involving drugs and offences involving obscene publications. Very recently, in exercising the new powers under Section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to increase inadequate sentences, guidelines were recently provided in the very difficult subject of incest.
Those guidelines are all published. They are contained in the Judicial Studies Board Handbook. I have never heard any public criticism by criminologists, by police officers or by welfare authorities of those guidelines. Until there is any criticism, I still do not understand why they are not adequate.
The point on which I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Longford, as does the Lord Chief Justice, is the suggestion that there should be a research unit assisting the Court of Appeal. It is frequently not appreciated how much judges welcome and depend upon other people's views. For the past fortnight I have sat in the Appellate Committee. The case which we have been hearing is no different from any other case, save that we sat seven rather than five. We had the advantage of authorities from New Zealand, from Canada, from Australia and the United States and learned articles from Professors at home and abroad. By all means let the judges have further and

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better assistance, but do not interfere with their discretion.
Finally, perhaps I may suggest that the answer to the question posed by this debate is as follows. A
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new approach to sentencing is being provided by the Government's proposals contained in their White Paper by the provision of new powers to enable more offenders to be punished in the community, and it can be confidently expected that proper use will be made of those new facilities by the judiciary.
10.2 p.m.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, the Question that the noble Earl raised so eloquently this evening can be summarised in the language of the recently published Government White Paper: are convicted persons getting their just deserts? Clearly, the answer to the question must be "No, that is why we have produced the White Paper".
The speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, to which we have just had the pleasure of listening, has been a breakthrough in our many debates on penal affairs in this House. I am enormously grateful to him for having participated in the debate. He has illustrated in those 15 or so miniates the basis on which the present senior judiciary approach the sentencing problem. In his apologia for that approach he has illustrated the gulf which, alas, exists between the senior judiciary in relation to sentencing and Western European judicial views on the question of how to deal with those who of fend against the law. He has portrayed the basic problem which we now face in sentencing in this country. He says that sentences reflect the revulsion which we all feel in relation to sexual and violent offences. Sentences, he is glad to say, have gone up in recent years in relation to those offences. He compared those sentences with sentences in other European countries for similar forms of offence of rape and indicated that in other countries the sentences passed are at least half of those currently passed in this country. He did so not in order to question whether there may be some good reason for that, but simply in order to say that, if those sentences were passed in this country, there would be a demand for the resignation of the judge concerned. They would simply not be acceptable. They are not in line with what the public demands.
With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, surely the days of that attitude are now over, as is illustrated in the Government White Paper. What has that attitude achieved? It has achieved Strangeways, simply more and longer sentences, more and longer time in prison and more crime. It is a bankrupt policy.
However one looks at them, the statistics prove that this country continues to be the most punitive country in Europe. of all men convicted of indictable offences, 20 per cent. go to prison for longer periods than was the case 10 years ago. Yet, in spite of what the noble and learned Lord said, fewer than one quarter of those persons have committed violent or sexual crimes. Half those people are reconvicted within two years. Among the teenagers who are sent into custody, 64 per cent. are reconvicted within two years. As I have already said and as the noble Earl said, in the case of Strangeways, the courts sent 1, 600 prisoners to an establishment built to house 970. If those figures are not an indictment of our criminal courts, what are they?
The Minister will be surprised to hear that the remainder of my speech will consist almost entirely of praise for the Home office, particularly praise for Mr. John Patten who has succeeded more than any other Minister in putting sentencing on the map.
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The White Paper is a breakthrough. It marks an exciting moment in the long struggle for penal reform, and, taken alongside the Woolf inquiry with its remarkably gifted chairman and assessors, 1990 may well be a watershed in the way in which we deal with those convicted of crime. I am far more optimistic than is the noble Earl or the Prison Reform Trust.
I should like to quote some of the more remarkable passages in the White Paper. For example, it states:
"There is still much uncertainty and little guidance about the principles which should govern sentencing".
Proposals are made,
"for a new and more coherent statutory framework".
On custody the White Paper states:
"There is a growing awareness that prison is usually not the best way of dealing with less serious property crimes".
It also states:
"No one regards imprisonment as an effective means of reform … Custody can have a devastating effect on prisoners and their families … Imprisonment makes it more difficult to compensate victims and allows for the evasion of all responsibility".
Pre-eminently it states:
"Legislation on the use of custody for young offenders shows it is possible for Parliament to give guidance without placing intolerable restrictions on the court's discretion".
The White Paper then suggests that courts should be required to consider a report from the probation service before sentencing, a report which the White Paper says is to include detailed information as to how the of fender can be punished in the community. If a custodial sentence is nonetheless to be passed, the court must fulfil certain criteria and in every case give their reasons for such a sentence. Furthermore, sentencers should be trained by the Judicial Studies Board to give effect to these new policies.
Here at long last is a government recognising that Parliament has a clear role in laying down sentencing policy for the courts and furthermore requiring sentencers to be trained to give effect to it. I feel that many of us in this House, and pre-eminently the noble Earl, have not after all laboured in vain. We find here the very matter which the noble Earl was saying only a short time ago was so essential in a sentencing policy.
There is more to praise in the White Paper. I refer to the abolition of the partly suspended and extended sentences; the recognition that repeated financial or community penalties are in order without leading inevitably to custody where the offences themselves may merit such penalties; the duty of the courts to consider the cost of different penalties; the recognition that a probation order is in fact a sentence; the duty of the probation service to provide feedback to the courts on the effect of their sentences; the raising of the jurisdiction of the newly named youth court to cover those up to the age of 18; the means-related fines and the lowering of certain maximum sentences. Those are all admirable and I suggest worthy of full support.
My main reservations on the proposals in the White Paper are for the curfew electronic monitoring

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and the power to give longer sentences for sexual or violent offences. The Carlisle proposals for the rationalisation of parole depend, as the report urges,
"on a determined attempt by the Government to secure a reduction in the length of all sentences".
Surely the relative gravity of these offences can be marked by a reduction in other sentences. I recognise that political concessions must be made to the inevitable Tory hard-liners. However, I urge the Minister to remember the appalling results of Sir Leon Brittan's attempts to do just that.
As a sentencer I was next door to the bailiwick of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, who in those days was but a modest recorder. If there is anything I learned as a sentencer in relation to young adults, it was the crucial role of patience. Adolescence is a disturbing and difficult time—a thousand times more so when you come from a disadvantaged or broken family. Adolescents grow out of their criminality. Such offenders cannot shoulder the kind of restrictions and responsibilities which may be appropriate no doubt to public school delinquents. If too many requirements are imposed, the higher is the risk that many such offenders will be returned to court and imprisoned for a breach of their conditions. If the new proposed combined orders are used to replace existing community penalties instead of replacing custody, that indeed may well happen.
I wish to make two pleas to the Minister who is representing the Government this evening. Can the new legislation concentrate specifically on the problems of young adults? They are the key to the whole problem because young adults and juveniles commit the vast majority of crime in this country. The remarkable success in reducing juvenile crime and the numbers sent into custody has been due mainly to three factors. They are: special funding; inter-agency co-operation; and bringing in the voluntary bodies.
The White Paper recognises the value of inter-agency co-operation; but it does not spell out what that means. It is the bringing together on a continuing basis of the key individuals from all the criminal justice organisations in each particular area including the judiciary, the magistracy, the police and the local authority. Nor does it emphasise the importance of continuing public explanation and education at every stage because the local community must be carried along. Will the Minister seriously consider calling for the appointment in each criminal court complex—because the problem exists mainly in urban areas or inner cities—of one judge to preside over a young person's court assisted by experienced justices from the juvenile court? Into that court would go all cases involving young adults. The judge could chair the inter-agency committee, and the role would be enormously appealing to some members of the judiciary. It would have no resource implication whatever. It would be a start in involving the judiciary in these general social problems.
My second plea to the Minister is to think yet again about the question of a sentencing council. I agree entirely with what was said by the noble Earl
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in the opening debate. I do not believe that the Judicial Studies Board can fulfil the role of giving necessary guidance to sentencers. It is too close to the legal hierarchy. It reflects, inevitably, the thinking of senior judges; and, surely, that advice should come from an entirely independent body with a broad input of expertise. Perhaps it could evolve from the Judicial Studies Board but would do so only with the encouragement of the Government.
Finally, I ask the Government to address the disturbing factor of the over-representation of black people in prison. If you are black, it remains eight times as likely that you will be sent to prison. Surely provision should be made in the legislation for ethnic monitoring of the whole criminal system.
I end where I began by paying a sincere tribute to the Government for their radical proposals for reducing the use of imprisonment. The main thrust of those proposals should surely receive the enthusiastic support of all those who have fought so hard and so long for radical measures of penal reform.
10.20 p.m.
Lord Fitt: My Lords, it is always with reluctance that an untrained layman intervenes in a debate about the judiciary or the judges. I have noticed that in both Houses. However, I intend to take advantage of the debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Longford this evening. This is the first opportunity that I have had since last Monday, when I sat in on the Sir John May inquiry, to address the House on the Annie Maguire case, which I have mentioned before in this House and in another place.
There is always reluctance to question the independence of the judiciary because it is supposed to comprise people with legal training and knowledge of the legal system who cannot make mistakes. However, I believe that it will be conceded that mistakes can be made by judges, juries and the Home Secretary.
In 1974 explosions took place in Guildford in which five soldiers were killed. Arising from those explosions, four young men were sentenced to prison. I listened particularly to the words of my noble friend when he said that sentences must reflect the revulsion of the community in any given case. There is no doubt about the revulsion of all decent people in England and Ireland at that time. Two of those men were sentenced respectively to 30 years and 35 years in prison. That expressed the revulsion of the community.
Arising from that, allegedly on the word of one of those convicted, the police surrounded the house of Annie Maguire and her family. Seven in all were arrested and taken to Paddington Green police station. Allegedly, nitroglycerine explosive material was found on their hands. They were all sentenced to very long terms of imprisonment. Annie Maguire and her husband received 14 years, her brother 12 years, a friend of the family 10 years, and her young son six years; another received four years.

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I became involved in that case because one of those who was sentenced was Giuseppe Conlon. I visited him in prison. As I have said in the past 24 or 48 hours, anyone who spoke to that man for a second would have realised his total innocence.
After a number of years in prison and after he had received many visits from me, I had a call to go to the prison. I was told that he was dying. Before he died he pleaded with me. He took of f his oxygen inhaler and said, "Gerry, I realise that I am going to die but I plead with you to continue to prove my innocence even after my death".
I took that as a total commitment and it stayed with me until last Monday. That is why I am speaking here this evening. I began a campaign to prove the innocence of Giuseppe Conlon and in so doing I knew that I should prove the innocence of his six co-defendants. I met a whole succession of Home Secretaries, the first being the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, then Merlyn Rees, and then the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. They all told me, "Look, we have gone through the judicial system. Our judicial system cannot be faulted or questioned. The British judicial system is the best in the world. No one can query its verdicts".
I continued to query the verdicts and the convictions in those cases. Over a period of years I began to enlist support. When I first began the campaign I was Gerry Fitt, the West Belfast MP. Some people perhaps thought that I was engaged in a constituency duty and trying to act on behalf of one of my constituents. Anyone who knew my record in politics in Northern Ireland would know that not for a single second would I go out of my way to help anyone where I had the slightest suspicion that they were involved in terrorist activities. At that time, over many years and up to the present time I have been the victim of terrorist abuse.
I began the campaign. For the first few months it was lonely, and then I enlisted the support of Sir John Biggs-Davison, the Conservative MP. Again, his attitude towards terrorism could not be questioned. I then enlisted the support of a Labour MP, Chris Price. I also enlisted the support of Cardinal Hume; then Sir John Wheeler, the MP for the constituency in which Annie Maguire lived. I approached the noble and learned Lords, Lord Scarman and Lord Devlin; then former Home Secretaries Merlyn Rees and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins.
I persevered and succeeded in obtaining 204 signatures across a broad spectrum of the House of Commons, even from the extreme Right wing. What would have happened had I not done that? I had to enlist that support; I had to put a great deal of energy into enlising those eminent persons, with the integrity of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Scarman and Lord Devlin, two former Home Secretaries, and 204 MPs. It was only because I was able to enlist that support and through delegation after delegation to a succession of Home Secretaries that the Home office eventually said, "Yes, we will look at this case again".
I was pleading particularly on behalf of Annie Maguire; but the Guildford four case was so closely
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interlinked that the Home office decided to look at both cases. It found that the Guildford four case was totally unsafe and the four prisoners were released after serving 15 years in prison; 15 years were taken away from their lives.
In response to the release of those prisoners the Government decided to set up a tribunal which is now sitting under the chairmanship of Sir John May. It was given the job of looking into the circumstances surrounding the convictions of the Guildford four and Annie Maguire and her family. I attended the tribunal on Monday morning and listened to Mr. Clarke, counsel to the tribunal. He read out a document which contained many aspects of the case, the main one being that new forensic evidence had come to the fore which made the convictions of Annie Maguire and her family totally unsafe. That is the recommendation to be acted upon by Sir John May.
The family are now all released from prison. They have all served their sentences. If they had been guilty they could have run away and hidden, but they were determined at my instigation and of their own volition to fight tenaciously to prove their innocence. That innocence has now almost certainly been agreed to by the judicial system.
However, we must have some other mechanism between the Court of Appeal and someone serving 15 years. After the Court of Appeal has given its decision, "No, we agree with the sentence in court", there should be some other mechanism, without having to wait 15 years, to allow the Government to intervene where there is obvious public disquiet, as there was in the case of Annie Maguire.
It was only the public disquiet and the fact that so many eminent people had gone out of their way and put their reputations at stake that forced or permitted the Home Secretary to set up the inquiry which eventually found the Guildford four and Annie Maguire innocent. I believe that such a system without amendment, where injustices can continue, is very wrong indeed. Some means must be found for review where there is obvious public disquiet. I know that judges will say that it would only be necessary to mount a public campaign and foster public disquiet. I do not believe that that will happen.
There is a case in Northern Ireland at the moment where four members of the Ulster Defence Regiment—they are not of my religion or political persuasion—have been sentenced allegedly for the murder of a Catholic. From what I hear there is, again, the possibility of a miscarriage of justice. As I said, those men would not agree with me on religion or politics but I believe there could be a possibility of a miscarriage of justice.
I believe that the two cases to which I have referred give some form of justification for the anti-British element that there has always been and always will be in Ireland. They will go around with the trumpets of triumph that we saw after Guildford saying that it proves the British judicial system is anti-Irish and that an Irishman cannot get justice before a British court. I have never believed that. I accept that there are imperfections in the British judicial system, but something must be done to inquire into the validity

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of or justification for sentences where 10 or 15 years have been taken out of the lives of people who were totally innocent.
The Irish judicial system too leaves a lot to be desired. I say that as an Irishman. I have been absolutely appalled and disgusted at some of the decisions handed down by the Irish Supreme Court over recent months. The British people are entitled to feel aggrieved at some of those decisions. The Irish Supreme Court, consisting of the most eminent legal luminaries in the land, decided to release two convicted IRA men who escaped from Northern Ireland and are now living in Dublin. The court refused to extradite them on the ground that they had committed a political offence.
The Winchester Three were released on a technicality. Many people in Ireland and many in this country wonder what the Winchester Three were doing on the land of Mr. Tom King with balaclava helmets, binoculars, £4, 500 and a book with the names and addresses of eminent figures in public life. I do not believe that they are entirely innocent; yet there was a great hullabaloo in Ireland that they were innocent and were victims of British injustice.
Only last week in the House of Commons the Prime Minister was asked whether she would be confident that if the murderer of the young soldier, Sergeant Chapman, last week were to reach Ireland he would be extradited back to this country by the courts. She said that she could not be confident. I would not be confident either. I see that some of the journalists in Ireland are saying that the Prime Minister should not have said that because it is not good for Anglo-Irish relations. If one has to keep one's mouth shut and say nothing in regard to those decisions of the Irish courts then Anglo-Irish relations stand for nothing.
There is, however, a necessity for the British judicial system to show to Ireland and the world that there is not an anti-Irish bias. The view in Ireland is that where there is a terrorist atrocity the police will run out and grab the first Irishmen they can get and take them before the courts, and that they will be sentenced to 25 or 30 years' imprisonment. I do not believe that to be true. It is not in the interests of the police or the British judicial system to send innocent persons to prison. If such people are sent to prison some people will say that it was a difficult situation and that the police were under pressure; that those people were arrested and sentenced because it eased the tension then existing as a result of the commission of the crime. That might be a short-term gain, but 15 years later there will be someone like me proving that a wrong decision had been taken in those circumstances.
The Irish Extradition Act 1987 will have to be amended to close every possible loophole in order to ensure that if a person is suspected of having committed a terrorist offence, he can either be extradited to Northern Ireland or to Britain. I do not think that there can be any room left for the Supreme Court in Dublin to hand down decisions which say that, because Ireland is partitioned, the young men are misguided Irish patriots who are only fighting for their country. If the war against terrorism
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is ever to be won, it must be won with the co-operation of this Government and the Irish Government.
Anyone backing away from that responsibility has the awful burden of knowing that he is lending credence to the continuation of this campaign. There will be further debates on this subject. I say deliberately to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, and to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, that judges are not the sole authorities in the situations that I have just illustrated. They will say that the jury have listened to the evidence before them and to the directions given. The judges will say that they have carried out their responsibilities. If that is the case and the judges have no further responsibility at either the main court or the appeal court, then the Home office must accept responsibility.
It is not right that a person's freedom should be decided according to whether or not eminent people outside the judiciary, like Robert Kee and the noble Lord, Lord Annan, are involved. What would have happened if we had decided not to lend our weight to the campaign to prove the Maguires innocent? It was a long campaign to prove the innocence of Annie Maguire and her family. I hope that never again a case such as that occurs in this country. The Home office should take note of all the circumstances and of all the years that have elapsed in which the family was wrecked and devastated, to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, by the years spent in prison knowing that they were totally innocent.
Some other mechanism must be found to consider a case which causes so much disquiet. The Home office, either in conjunction with the appeal court or on its own, and thereby overriding the appeal court, must reach a decision. I know that the judiciary will not want to be overriden by politicians because they will say that they change from government to government. Some means will have to be found to make certain that the injustices connected with the Annie Maguire case in particular will never again be allowed to happen in this country.
10.39 p.m.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, I am proud to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fitt, whom I much admire. I shall not be so eloquent in following him, except to say that I rejoice with him in the outcome of the Maguire case. I congratulate him on his magnificent persistence which has resulted in that verdict, or very near verdict.
I have always thought that one of the virtues of this House, and an incidental one, is that it can be admired as a museum. Every now and again one has a museum piece. When Lord Brockway and Lord Shinwell were speaking, I used to think that, apart from their many other qualities, they were living museum pieces in that they had learnt their oratory in the political life of the late 19th century. What an addition to our life they were. I had the same kind of feeling when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, spoke to us earlier this evening. I could not help feeling that here was another museum piece. In that respect he reminded me of Lord Brockway and Lord Shinwell.

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In his jokey way he referred to warehousing people. He professed to prefer the interests of the victim to—and again he said it in his jokey way—the antenatal history of the of fender.
Lord Ackner: Prenatal, my Lords.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: That is very similar, my Lords, but a pertinent and, I am sure, judicial intervention. When he preferred, in his jokey way, the interest of the victim to the prenatal history of the of fender, he reminded me of the High Court judge who, in the days of corporal punishment, used to say that what the violent of fender really needed or wanted was a few strokes of pussy. That was the same kind of judicial humour. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for showing himself to us in that way as a museum piece.
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for introducing this important topic at this time. I say "at this time" because there is still an opportunity to influence the Government before the introduction of their Criminal Justice Bill which we all expect next Session, although I have heard ominous rumours that recent events may lead to the postponement of that Bill. I very much hope that the rumours are ill-founded. Many of the reforms adumbrated in the Government's mostly excellent White Paper, and indeed in their Green Papers, brook no delay, as they used to say about the reform of the House of Lords.
I refer not least to the proposal to extend to adults the requirement that sentencers should always explain their reasons for handing down a custodial sentence and rejecting a non-custodial option. They should do that in all cases except those involving the most serious offences. That is an absolutely acceptable fetter on the liberty of sentencers to do what they like within the law. It does not undermine the so-called independence of the judiciary, any more than does a maximum sentence laid down in statute. That gives a statutory guideline as would the requirement that judges and magistrates should have to explain why they have rejected a non-custodial option.
One might say that the abolition of the death penalty or of flogging had fettered the independence of the judiciary. Judges have had to put up with that hardship. Most of them are now quite happy that they no longer have those options. Equally, Parliament should have no hesitation in passing many, if not most, of the Government's recommendations in their White Paper Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public.
At this point, I should like to associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, said about Mr. John Patten, the Government and the Home office, regarding their remarkable series of state papers which we hope to see enshrined in legislation. I have some reservations about them, naturally enough; as indeed did the noble Lord.
One of the aspects I found unacceptable was that although the Government wish to lower maximum penalties, they do not propose to lower the maximum penalty for burglary of people's homes which they said in the White Paper "can be a very serious
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matter". However, the maximum sentence for committing burglary in people's homes is 14 years' imprisonment. Do we really need to have a maximum penalty of 14 years for burgling people's homes?
I ask: what burglarious offence of a home can justify a prison sentence of 14 years, unless it is aggravated burglary in which the of fender has committed violence? In my view, if that is the case, the extra sentence should be for the aggravation and not for the burglary; in other words, the aggravation should be dissociated from the burglary. To my mind, it is extremely excessive to keep on the statute book a sentence of 14 years for the offence of burgling people's homes. I very much hope that the Government will think again about that aspect of the matter.
Pending legislation, there are many measures which can be done (some of which are being done) which would lead to the involvement of fewer people in the criminal justice system, and hence to fewer people being sentenced to terms of imprisonment. This is relevant to the debate because assiduity in keeping people out of the criminal justice system can and does vary widely across the country, according to the policy of the police, the prosecution authorities and the judiciary. Therefore, there is no "general level"—to quote the words mentioned in the noble Earl's Question. The level fluctuates widely from area to area and illustrates the need for guidelines to be issued and abided by.
Let us take, for example, the policy of cautioning. The best practice may be debatable. Cautioning practice is left in the hands of chief constables, and therefore there is wide disparity between areas. A forward looking chief constable in an area such as Avon has extended its already good practice in cautioning children, instead of committing them to the courts, to the cautioning of adults, in conjunction with the probation service. This process has led to a saving in court time, in police time, and in probation service time. It also frees otherwise busy staff, enabling them to turn to much more rewarding tasks than committing offenders to court; for example, diversion from crime and encouraging and initiating measures of crime prevention. of course, new cautioning policy must be agreed between the police and the courts, especially as regards the citation of cautions in courts. But that aspect can be sorted out with a sympathetic bench of magistrates.
As regards the non-custodial sentences, there are wide disparities in their use between areas in the country, as there are wide disparities in the use of cautioning. That cannot be satisfactory. Here, again, I refer to the words contained in the noble Earl's Question. There can scarcely be said to be a "general level" of non-custodial sentencing because of these wide fluctuations in the country.
It cannot be fair to an of fender that someone in an area contiguous to his own should be treated differently from the way that he has been treated. Incidentally, there is wide agreement among those who know that there is no need for further types of custodial sentences. Many of the proposals contained in the Government's papers are redundant. What is needed is a greater use of the ample opportunities for

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passing non-custodial sentences which are already available to sentencers but which for one reason or another they are not too keen to adopt.
One means of encouraging sentencers to use non-custodial sentences that would inspire public confidence in the sentencers would be an appropriate system of day centres and residential hostels. I ask the Government to consider the possibility, which I know is considered heretical in some circles, of suspended sentences for young people. They do not exist at the moment. Apparently such sentences have been used with great success in the Federal Republic of Germany. I ask the Government to consider whether we could use suspended sentences for the more serious cases where they are considered appropriate.
As a matter of urgency the Government should think about requiring sentencers to consider the most appropriate sentence to ensure that offenders do not re- of fend. I remember at school, as I expect others do, that there were wretched boys who were punished and for whom the punishment did no more than encourage to commit further offences, which thus attracted further punishment. The same boys were punished time and time again while others seemed to escape. The punishment did no good, harsh and brutal though it was. There should have been a more understanding approach to ante-natal considerations. Harsh treatment and frequent beatings had no effect. The boy merely seemed to attract more.
There is a strong case for sentencers to consider treatment to be at least as important as punishment. Prison is counterproductive in the same way as harsh penalties were found to be counterproductive.
I should like to end by referring to an interesting conference that I attended this time last year. It was held by the Centre for Policy Studies (Mrs. Thatcher's think-tank) and it was called "Custody reconsidered". It focused on the excellent and then recently published pamphlet by Professor Andrew Ashworth, who recommended that there should be a sentencing council to include judicial and lay representatives to do the task which the Lord Chief Justice had started and which the Judicial Studies Board is, among other things, following up. I shall not discuss the sentencing council because it has been amply covered in the debate, except to say that I agree largely with Professor Ashworth.
I have always had the utmost respect for the judiciary in its findings of fact. I have had less respect for its sentencing competence. I have always felt that its sentencing function would be strengthened if it had lay assessors, but that is another matter. Among those present at the conference was Sir Frederick Lawton, who cannot be described by anyone as a wet. He recalled that his father, who was a prison governor, was of the opinion all that long time ago—well before the Second World War and perhaps before the first—that 75 percent, of those in his custody should not be there. What an indictment of the criminal justice system!
Many people believe that the same is true today—that 75 per cent. of those in prison custody
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should not be there. There are, for instance, 20,000 young offenders for whom non-custodial options ought to have been found; and non-custodial options should be found for their successors. Fine defaulters should not be there. There are also many mentally afflicted people who, if it is possible for them to be treated in the community, should not be there. But if not, they should be in custody under medical supervision, but not in the prison system, where they are now most unsuitably incarcerated. It is also thought—and this must be heresy to the noble and learned Lord—that many sex offenders might be successfully treated in less hostile surroundings. If they respond to treatment they may, with due caution, be integrated into the community without danger.
That amounts to a formidable number of people who should not be in penal custody. I remember that at the conference Mr. John Patten said that he was 75 per cent. NACRO in his thinking and 25 per cent. Judge Jeffreys. Perhaps we all have a little bit of Judge Jeffreys in us when we hear about the horrific crimes on which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, concentrated. However, I strongly recommend to the noble and learned Lord that he should reverse his priorities. Instead of being 75 per cent. Judge Jeffreys, he might consider being 75 per cent. NACRO in his thinking.
The younger judiciary think in the way that Mr. John Patten thinks. I hope that as they take over from the older judiciary, as Lord Justice Glidewell has taken over on the Judicial Studies Board, we can all hope for different things in the future from the judiciary.
10.57 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, since I came to your Lordships' House there has not been a single aspect of penal affairs which my noble friend Lord Longford has not presented to the House. The subject he has put before us this evening is as important as all the previous ones and I very much look forward to the reply that the noble Viscount will give my noble friend on the two crucial questions. The first was whether the Government are prepared to agree that a new approach to sentencing is required. The other was whether he can confirm the forecast of an increase of 14,000 in the prison population, which would be worrying.
It is important to remember at the beginning of a debate such as this that our position at the top of Western Europe's prison league table is due to punitive sentencing and not higher crime rates. That has been confirmed, as the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, said, by the Home Secretary. Therefore the present statistics should worry us. We have more people in prison than anywhere else in Western Europe, although we are told that four-fifths are there for non-violent crimes. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, spoke about that.
We have prisons which are hideously overcrowded. That has now led to a series of prison riots in excess of anything that has been seen on the Continent of Europe. Police station cells are now filling up with surplus prisoners. Prison officers are under stress and care and rehabilitation of prisoners

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have assumed a low priority. We have also seen some high reconviction rates. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, that that is the other side of the coin to his remarks that sentencing policy is following a proper course. We should consider the two sides of the matter.
On the credit side, I was happy to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, speak with so much enthusiasm about the Government's White Paper Punishment Custody and the Community. I think everyone who has spoken agrees with the proposal for legislation allowing prison sentences only when they are necessary to protect the public from serious harm or when the offence is so serious that only a custodial sentence is justified. That would mean that the courts would have to give reasons justifying a prison sentence on one of those two grounds. The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, was again right when he said this could be the most radical step ever taken to reduce the use of prison sentences. We are happy to welcome the White Paper and to place as much hope in its beneficial effects as the noble Lord has expressed this evening.
I wish briefly to cover three aspects of the subject before us. I wish to give the views of a consortium of voluntary organisations called the Penal Affairs Consortium, say a few words about the system in the Netherlands and mention a point that was not made by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, and others on a sentencing council. The Penal Affairs Consortium is a very important body. It is made up of 16 different voluntary agencies working in the penal field. It comprises agencies as different as the Prison officers Association, the Prison Governors Association, the Howard League, the Prison Reform Trust, Mew Bridge and others. Those 16 bodies meet regularly and draw up reports which they have agreed. Those who know as much about voluntary organisations as I feel I know will appreciate how hard it is for them to reach agreement on particular subjects. Those reports would be of great assistance to parliamentarians and all others involved in policy making and penal affairs.
In June of last year the consortium published its report Criteria for Imprisonment. A case was made for statutory guidelines on the use of imprisonment for adult offenders. Those 16 organisations, speaking with one voice, gave their support to the proposal which has now been put in the White Paper. They believe that if such a proposal were put into effect it would be as beneficial for adults as it has been for young people in restricting the inappropriate use of imprisonment. As I have said, great weight was given to the proposal.
I do not know how of ten our policy makers look at what is happening across the English Channel, but when one visits prisons in The Hague or elsewhere in the Netherlands, and talks to those who are involved in penal affairs, one sees an enormous difference between what is done and thought there and here. The number of prisoners in the Netherlands, which is third bottom of the Western European prison league table, is one-third of the number in England. It is important to recognise that that is not because the Dutch are less criminal. Until 1955 the Dutch prison population exceeded that of England. That
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low rate is due to other reasons. Public attitudes are very different from those here. The public prefer a remedial system to a punitive one.
Moreover, Dutch legislation does not allow more than one prisoner per cell. Home leave can be used flexibly so that only the most serious cases are admitted to prison. Mentally ill offenders are not held in prison but in institutions called TBSs. That means that overcrowding is an impossibility. It also means that prison staff work with difficult inmates with a genuine hope of therapy and rehabilitation.
Those are prisons in which there is no violence and no inmates are protected—there are no Rule 42 inmates. They are decent places for prison officers to work in. They are places in which a Strangeways ! situation could not arise. It is a very great achievement for a country which has a population which is just as criminal as ours to develop such a civilised prison system.
Furthermore, Dutch judges appear to have lesser expectations of imprisonment and greater expectations of rehabilitative ideals. In Britain we have a large range of alternatives to custody but, as we have seen, that has not stemmed the rise in the prison population. It is generally thought that that is because they are used as alternatives to other alternatives rather than to custody. In the Netherlands a more restricted range of alternatives used more flexibly seems to have worked better than our wider range of choices.
There is active debate within the Netherlands as to whether the criminal justice system is over or under-integrated. It is undoubtedly far more coherently integrated than that of England. The English criminal justice system lacks not only a framework for formulating criminal justice policy but also the means of implementing one were it to be constructed. The judiciary in Britain regard criminal justice policy as a contradiction in terms. Policy is viewed as inimical to their independence. That judges should be independent is a cardinal principal of criminal justice in both the Netherlands and Britain, but the British interpretation of independence allows great inequities to flow from the major variations in sentencing between courts, of which the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, spoke this evening. It is fair to say that the Dutch penal system is a model from which we could learn a great deal.
I should only like to add to what has been said about a sentencing council the fact that the 1989 NACRO report, The Real Alternative, proposed a different version of a sentencing council to that proposed by Dr. Andrew Ashworth to which the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, referred. NACRO's version of the proposal differed in making it clear that the sentencing council would be a judicial body, part of the Court of Appeal and consist solely of judges, and that the other people involved—the magistrates, the governors, and so on—would act solely as advisers. I believe that that was a slightly less worrying proposition to the judiciary.
I firmly believe that the subject of this debate is of enormous and critical importance. I hope that the Minister will have listened very carefully to the very

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constructive ideas which have been put before him this evening. There has been a consensus of opinion that something needs to be done to change our penal system, which at present can only be described as hideously costly, inhumane to both staff and prisoners, and also entirely irrelevant to the problem of controlling crime.
11.10 p.m.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for giving us the opportunity to debate sentencing practice this evening. I must tell the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, that I have listened to the discussion with great interest.
The noble Earl asked about sentencing levels in Great Britain. I am sure that he will understand if I confine my remarks to England and Wales. He asked whether a new approach to sentencing is needed. He referred to the proposals for a new statutory framework for sentencing which was set out in the White Paper, Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public. I am sure that many noble Lords are by now familiar with the White Paper proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, described the White Paper as an exciting moment in penal reform, and I agree with him.
The House gave the proposals a warm welcome upon publication on 6th February. We have been very gratified by the interest which the White Paper has stimulated. We have received over 170 responses, the overwhelming majority of which welcomed its objective to achieve a more consistent approach to sentencing. We shall consider the responses carefully. It is our intention to bring forward legislation based on the proposals as soon as parliamentary time permits.
I am glad that the proposals have the support of the noble Earl and the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, among others. I agree with the noble Earl that the Government should not interfere with particular judicial decisions. The independence of the judiciary is rightly regarded as a cornerstone of our liberties, but sentencing principles and sentencing practice are matters of legitimate concern to government.
The White Paper proposals are indeed very significant, but they do not represent a radically new approach. They build on developments which have taken place over the past 10 years. The Court of Appeal has encouraged a more consistent approach to sentencing in its recent guideline judgments on rape, drug trafficking and incest. The structured approach to sentencing decisions which the Court of Appeal has used has been a helpful development which has influenced our thinking.
Sentencing trends have been changing. Custody is now used more for violence and sexual offenders and less for burglary and theft. Sentencing trends have changed in the way described by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner. The Court of Appeal has made it clear that a custodial sentence should be given only when it is necessary and that it should be
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no longer than necessary. We want to take that approach further by avoiding the use of custody for less serious, particularly property, offenders, while ensuring that the courts have adequate powers to deal with serious violent or sexual offenders.
In seeking to promote a more consistent approach to sentencing, the White Paper does not reflect an underlying lack of confidence in the way the courts sentence offenders. Much play is made of comparative statistics on sentencing practices in different courts to show that one court is more severe or lenient than its neighbour. However, I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, that different courts will see different mixes of offences. A Home office research study carried out in 1988 on Crown Court sentencing showed that there was already considerable consistency of approach in sentencing by Crown Court judges. It is on this that we wish to build.
Nor do we confuse a consistent approach with uniformity of outcome, which is neither desirable nor attainable. We set much store by the use of judicial discretion in individual cases. Judges have shown great skill in the way in which they sentence exceptional cases. The courts will need to retain a wide discretion if they are to continue to deal justly with the great variety of crimes that come before them. For that reason we reject a rigid statutory framework or a system of mandatory or minimum sentences.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, and the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, expressed their strong support for a sentencing council. The Government see no need for such a body. Composed of judges, magistrates, representatives of criminal justice services, Home office officials and academics, it would blur responsibility in particular if its guidance took the form of secondary legislation. Our proposals make the responsibilities clearer. The Government propose legislation, Parliament passes legislation and the courts interpret and implement it.
I am glad to hear from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, that both he and the Lord Chief Justice would support the idea of a research unit for the Court of Appeal. We believe that the Judicial Studies Board will play an important role in disseminating the guidance provided by the statutory framework proposed as developed in the Court of Appeal judgments.
Our intention is to provide a basic legislative framework on which the Court of Appeal can build in the future. We have seen how this works with the development of Court of Appeal guidance on the criteria for the use of custody for young offenders. The noble Earl welcomed the reductions brought about by the Criminal Justice Acts 1982 and 1988. Since 1983, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, reminded us, the number of juvenile offenders given custodial sentences has halved, with no increase in crime by juveniles. The proposed legislation would bring a similar approach to all offenders.
The new framework which we propose will clarify the objectives of sentencing. This is essential if there is to be a consistent approach. Courts will be required

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to focus first and foremost on the seriousness of the offence before them when they sentence. The White Paper rightly emphasises punishment as the primary objective of sentencing. That is the only way to ensure that offenders are dealt with according to the gravity of their crimes. But other objectives are not excluded. There may be some offenders from whom the public needs to be protected. For others, we believe that the prospects for their reform are better if they are punished in the community.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, has held up the Dutch as a model for us to follow. The court's sentence will be the outcome of a series of questions, as outlined in some detail by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, and I think to a great extent welcomed by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, starting with financial penalties.
We attach great importance to the award of compensation to the victim. A fine has great advantages in enabling the of fender to repay his debt to society without society having to spend even more upon him. If properly assessed, a fine can punish an of fender without damaging his opportunities for employment or his responsibilities towards his family. We intend to maximise the effectiveness of fines by improving their enforcement and assessment. The proposed unit fines scheme will have great advantage in enabling the fine to be linked more closely to an of fender's means.
Custody and community penalties would be linked in a system of graduated restrictions on an of fender's liberty. The degree of the restrictions on liberty will depend on the gravity of the offence. If the court considers financial penalties to be inadequate, it will have to consider how much restraint on liberty is needed to punish the particular crime. The court will have a wider and more flexible range of community penalties from which to choose. It will be able to combine a probation order with other disposals such as a fine or a community service order. The supervision which underpins community penalties will be strengthened to increase public and judicial confidence in them.
Custody is a serious deprivation of liberty. We believe that courts should think hard before imposing it on an of fender. In the case of all but the most serious offences, the court would need to be satisfied that custody was justified by the seriousness of the offence or needed in order to protect the public from serious harm—
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, will the Minister comment on the Home office forecast published after the White Paper that within the next eight years the number of people in prison will increase by 14,000? I gave the Minister notice of that important question.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, yes, I shall deal with that question if the noble Earl will be patient. The court would have to consider the options for punishing the of fender in the community which would be set out in a report from the probation service. It would have to say why it thought custody was justified. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, welcomed that fact most particularly.
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The noble Earl, Lord Longford, referred to the recent incidents in Strangeways and elsewhere. I can only express sadness that so many lives could be so recklessly endangered and so much damage could be done in so short a time. It is deeply regrettable that there was loss of life and that both staff and prisoners suffered injuries and distress.
The noble Earl asked whether the Home office projections of prison population, which point to an increase of 12,000 to 61, 200 in 1987-88, are out of date as a result of the White Paper proposals. The long-term projections show what the population might be on the basis of trends during recent years unless our diversionary policies are further developed in line with the policies in the White Paper. Chapter 9 recognises the difficulties of accurately predicting the resource implications of the proposals and puts forward some illustrative examples. It would clearly be foolish to change the population projections on the basis of proposals which have not yet been approved by Parliament.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, asked whether there could be a judge in each criminal court complex who could be given special responsibility for juveniles. That is a responsibility of the Lord Chancellor's Department but it is an interesting idea. I shall pass it on to my noble and learned friend.
The noble Lord also asked about ethnic minorities. A more consistent approach to sentencing within the new statutory framework should ensure that all defendants, including those from the ethnic minorities, are fairly treated. The White Paper makes it clear that there should be no discrimination on grounds of race or sex.
The noble Lord, Lord Fitt, raised the case of the Maguires. I must say that Sir John May's inquiry into the cases of the Guildford Four and the Maguires is considering the circumstances surrounding the Maguires' convictions. My right honourable friend will respond to the inquiry's report when he has received it. I have noted what the noble Lord said about that and other cases. However, I am sure that he and other noble Lords will understand that I can comment no further until the report has been received.
The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, asked why we need to retain the penalty of 14 years for domestic burglary. We believe that it is right to retain 14 years as the maximum penalty for domestic burglary to mark the clear distinction which most people make between this and other burglaries. Some burglaries of homes, especially those where houses are ransacked and soiled, are regarded as being more akin to assaults and therefore that maximum penalty is considered fitting.
The noble Lord also asked me about suspended sentences for young offenders. We believe that young offenders should be kept out of custody whenever possible. That is best achieved by their being punished within the community where careful supervision can help them to tackle their of fending behaviour and live more law-abiding lives.
I hope that I have dealt with most of the points raised in this interesting debate and that the House will see from what I have said this evening that in

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bringing forward the proposals in the White Paper, we are not acting out of concern for the way in which our courts deal with offenders or advocating a sudden change of direction. Rather, we have built on trends over the past 10 years to produce a coherent statutory framework to assist the courts in their sentencing task.

Planning (Consequential Provisions) Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to.
Planning (Hazardous Substances) Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to.
Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with amendments and with a privilege amendment; it was ordered that the amendments be printed.

Town and Country Planning Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with amendments and with a privilege amendment; it was ordered that the amendments be printed.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past eleven o'clock.