Lords Sitting of 25 February 1991

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

The Territorial Army
Lord Molloy Lord Molloy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their policy on the future strength of the Territorial Army.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (The Earl of Arran): My Lords, although the reserves and the regular army cannot be considered in isolation, we must first be sure of the composition of the future regular army before we draw up final plans for the reserves. As noble Lords will know, due to Operation Granby, we are not yet in a position to take final decisions on the future size and shape of the army.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. However, does he not agree that our Territorial Army is regarded as an efficient reserve army? Is he further aware that the Territorial Army associations are showing some concern that there may be some reduction in their numbers? Will the Minister give an assurance that there will be no reduction of the Territorial Army until a review has been thoroughly carried out? Perhaps the views of the territorial associations may be considered.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, any possible reduction in the size of the Territorial Army is totally speculative at the moment. The matter is under consideration, as is the matter of the size of the regular army. Certainly this country has played a wonderful part in campaigns with the aid of our Territorial Army. I agree completely with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. As regards the future, the precise timetable for the implementation of decisions will depend upon many factors, including the outcome of the Gulf crisis, discussions with our NATO allies and developments as regards the Soviet Union.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, in considering what should be done with regard to the Territorial Army, will the Government bear very much in mind the magnificent response of those territorials, particularly on the medical side, who have been called up in the past few weeks and months? Will the Government also bear in mind therefore the great value of a strong Territorial Army to this country? Is my noble friend aware that it is with some embarrassment that I find myself in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Molloy?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I do not think it is altogether a bad thing to be in total agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, from time to time, particularly as regards the good and apposite remarks the noble Lord made about the Territorial Army. The
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Territorial Army has played a great part so far in the Gulf conflict. No doubt the Territorial Army will continue to play a magnificent part in that conflict throughout its duration.
Lord Renton: My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind that when the regular army is called, sometimes at short notice, to take part in activities overseas, it is reassuring to have a reserve army of territorials at home to replace soldiers who have had to go abroad?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I understand exactly what my noble friend is saying. I can inform him that there are approximately 600 members of the Territorial Army currently serving in the Gulf.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is great concern in the ranks of the Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve at the outcome of the discussions within the Ministry on Options for Change? Those in the TAVR fear the worst. Although the discussions are in abeyance because of the Gulf crisis, is the Minister aware that if the professionals are to be cut in the search for the peace dividend, that provides a stronger reason why there should be a strong and well trained volunteer reserve force?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, there will continue to be a strong and well maintained volunteer reserve force. The future of the reserve force, together with that of the regular army, is being discussed at the moment. I take heed of the remarks of the noble Lord.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, is the Minister aware that it is not self evident that the size of the army should be decided before the size of the Territorial Army is considered? Surely those matters should go hand in hand. Will the review recognise that the territorials account for less than 3 per cent. of the defence budget and probably represent one of the most cost effective parts of the budget?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I can inform the noble Lord that in broad terms the cost of the Territorial Army each year is in the region of some £400 million.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind that one obtains eight territorials for the price of one regular soldier? I know one cannot draw an exact equivalent between the two forces, but the territorials represent a remarkable economy of resources. If we are to cut the number of regular soldiers—I think it is very unwise to do so at the moment—then surely we need to increase the number of territorials. The two forces should not be reduced at the same time. If the regulars are to be decreased, the other force should be increased markedly. I hope that the matter can be considered straightaway. Many people wish to volunteer, both for the regular army and for the Territorial Army. It is a shame to turn such people away. The Government should grab the chance of getting good men now.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I understand the point that my noble friend has expressed. Every

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possibility concerning the future of the Territorial Army is being examined. No decisions have yet been made.
Viscount Allenby of Megiddo: My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that the TA council and the TA association do an excellent job and have done so for a very long time? Will he confirm that there are no plans in Options for Change to amalgamate the role of the TA associations with that of the regular army?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, since that lies in the future and no decisions have been made, I cannot confirm or deny any particular proposition.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, if changes are to be made will the noble Earl take into consideration the fact that too much ought not to be done until we know the future of SACEUR and the future of NATO? Will his department consider one further important point: that in almost every town hall in the country there is a drill hall?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I understand precisely what the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, says. As I indicated in my original Answer, discussions are taking place with our NATO allies all the time regarding SACEUR.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, when the Government consider the future of the Territorial Army will they bear in mind the support that the TA has given to the civil community in tragedies such as the Lockerbie air disaster and the Clapham rail crash? Does he agree that that is a very important role for the Territorial Army?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, of course. I would add the further example of the events that took place last winter in that unfortunate town on the north coast of Wales.
The Earl of Malmesbury: My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind the versatility of the Territorial Army? Complete units have changed their role in the past. I do not see the connection with the regular army that he has mentioned.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the Territorial Army is part of the concept of "one army" which is well known to your Lordships' House.
Lord Ironside: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether sufficient funds are available for modernising, rebuilding and refurbishing various TA centres and headquarters in our towns and cities, which will be needed ever more?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the rebuilding programme is always under review; it is examined closely every year.

Agriculture: EC Expenditure
2.46 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington Lord Bruce of Donington asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will ensure that a senior Treasury Minister will accompany the Minister of
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Agriculture throughout the proceedings of the meeting of the EC Council of Ministers to be held on 4th and 5th March to consider the Commission's proposals to control the costs of the common agricultural policy, and whether the Treasury will accept full responsibility for any Council agreement that might be reached.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, Ministers attending Councils in Brussels represent the Government, not individual departments. Well-established machinery exists to ensure that the Government's position is properly coordinated beforehand and direct lines are available to deal with any problems that might arise during a Council meeting.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, unfortunately the noble Baroness, through no fault of her own, has completely evaded my Question, to which she could have answered yes or no in unequivocal terms. Is she aware that machinery was established by the European Commission in 1987 to ensure that Community expenditure on agriculture was kept under control? Is she further aware that that machinery provided that at meetings where increases in expenditure were envisaged members of the finance committee would attend simultaneously with members of the agriculture committee? In addition is she aware that, in contravention of the agreement reached by the British Prime Minister, Finance and Treasury Ministers have invariably absented themselves from meetings at which expenditure was to be discussed in order that Agriculture Ministers could go home and boast how well they had done for the farmers and Treasury Ministers could evade all responsibility?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I did not reply with a simple no or yes in courtesy to the noble Lord. In answer to the second part of his question, the Minister of Agriculture has been leading the fight in the Agriculture Council against excessive expenditure and for reform of the CAP. He certainly does not absent himself; nor do his colleagues who go to Brussels.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, is it not a novel constitutional departure to suggest that any department of state should accept full responsibility in the shoes of government in a situation such as this, or indeed in any situation?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, as I said, when Ministers speak in Brussels they speak for the Government as a whole. The doctrine of collective responsibility applies in Brussels as well as in your Lordships' House.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, apart from all the constitutional niceties, can the noble Baroness say what action the Government are taking at that meeting to have something done about the £6,000 million worth of fraud a year in respect of the common agricultural policy?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, there is always full consultation between government Ministers before the councils of the European Community and

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the attending Minister is fully aware of all the policy issues, which include the prevention of fraud against the budget. I should also like to point out that there is a clear commitment on the part of this Government to fight fraud against the European budget.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, does the Minister agree that while the European farming budget is increasing by more than 10 per cent., the incomes of British farmers are being reduced and many of them are going out of business? That is done in order to support smaller and less efficient farmers on the Continent, particularly in Germany and France. Under those circumstances do the Government agree that it would be far better if farming policy were repatriated to this country?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the United Kingdom welcomes the Commission's willingness to consider radical reform of the CAP but is concerned that current ideas could lead to an increase in CAP expenditure rather than a reduction. We are also concerned about the emphasis on the smallest farmers. In the United Kingdom even small family farms are generally larger than those in other member states and would be likely to fall outside most EC definitions of small farms. Repatriation is not an avenue that the Government favour.
Lord Gallacher: My Lords, in view of the substantial increase in the forecast contribution by the United Kingdom to the Community budget for 1990–91, can the noble Baroness say whether Treasury Ministers are satisfied that they are in control of the situation? Secondly, are the Commission's current proposals for the reform of the CAP of such a nature that the United Kingdom in the end may pay more to an agricultural budget which benefits neither United Kingdom farmers nor its consumers?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the Government fully support the need for action to curb expenditure. I believe that I answered the second part of the noble Lord's question in my last answer.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, how can the Minister say that the Government are in favour of controlling agricultural expenditure when she knows perfectly well that at the meeting of the agriculture ministers to be held on 4th and 5th March some account will have to be taken of the gross excess, this year once again, over the budget limit fixed for the expenditure on agriculture? Will she call upon somebody in the ministry or elsewhere within the Government to read the evidence given to a Select Committee of your Lordships' House by the Commissioner, Mr. Christophersen (House of Lord's Paper No. 14, pages 45 and 46)? Will she then say whether or not the then Prime Minister has been successful in controlling agricultural expenditure and finances within the Community? Will she find out from her right honourable friend the Prime Minister whether he intends to exert any authority whatever over grossly excessive expenditure which falls very heavily indeed upon the United Kingdom taxpayer?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, there is no need for the noble Lord to shout at me. The United
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Kingdom's objectives for CAP reform are to make EC agriculture more market orientated and competitive, to reduce the cost of the CAP, to lead to closer integration between agriculture and the environment and to avoid discrimination between farmers in different member states.

Wales: Resources for Derelict Land Clearance
2.55 p.m.
Baroness White Baroness White asked Her Majesty's Government:
What resources are being made available in Wales under the derelict land programme in 1991–92, and how this compares with current provision.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, provision for derelict land clearance in Wales for 1991–92 will be £27 million—over 10 per cent. more than the £24.5 million budget for the current year. The programme is administered in Wales by the Welsh Development Agency.
Baroness White: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply and look forward to further information when she replies to a related Question for Written Answer. Is she aware that I was prompted to table these Questions by the Answer given to the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, on 7th February by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch? That Written Answer covers nearly two columns of Hansard and, concerns the development land programme exclusively for England. The Question was an open Question, but it was answered with no reference whatever to the problems of Wales. Can the Minister say when we may expect to receive for Wales a report comparable to that for England on which the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, based her reply?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I have seen that the noble Baroness, Lady White, has made good that error of not mentioning Wales by putting down a Question for Written Answer to that effect even today when she is asking this oral Question. In answer to her supplementary question, a derelict land survey for Wales was approved by the Secretary of State in 1988. The survey is complete and the findings should be published in the spring.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her encouraging reply to the Question. Is she aware that it was my noble friend Lord Cledwyn, when he was Secretary of State for Wales and in the aftermath of the Aberfan disaster, who took the decisive step to embark upon a reclamation policy? That was 26 years ago. Can she indicate when that programme is likely to be completed, given the present rate of progress? With regard to my noble friend's supplementary question, can the Minister persuade her ministerial colleagues or the powers that be that, when a functional department in Whitehall takes upon itself to answer a question about the impact of the domestic policy of HMG, it will not ignore its impact on Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, we shall do our best. With regard to the first part of the noble Lord's question, as a result of the survey we shall have a much clearer picture of what remains to be done. The agency hopes to remove a substantial proportion of the remaining visually intrusive dereliction in Wales as a whole by the second half of the mid-1990s. A high priority is attached to removing the scars of industrial dereliction in the valleys, which are potentially a most beautiful part of Wales.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I appreciate the Minister's initial reply to the Question of my noble friend Lady White. Can she tell the House how much derelict land in Wales is owned by British Coal? Secondly, is she aware that there is considerable disquiet in Wales because of the apparent unwillingness of British Coal to sell the land to the Welsh Development Agency and the land reclamation officers? Does she agree that it is absolutely essential for that land to be made available for the development of industry and associated housing in the public interest in Wales?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, before agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, I should prefer to take advice and write to him. I asked my informers whether opencast coal sites were eligible. Before any opencast coal operation can start, a restoration condition is attached to the required planning permission. On completion of their operations, the operators will restore the land for future use. The WDA would give and has given assistance to historic sites predating such requirements.
Whether that information is useful to the noble Lord, I am not sure. However, in order to do justice to his question, I shall write to him.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, all information given by the noble Baroness is always useful. May I assume from what she said that she will look into the allegation that the Welsh Development Agency is finding it extremely difficult to negotiate the sale of derelict land from British Coal?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, yes.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that with regard to disposal of land in general by public bodies successive governments have given guidance that the first option for the disposal of such land ought to go to the local authority or public authority acting on its behalf? Why has the position been changed? If it has not been changed, why is it not allowed to do so now?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, your Lordships will understand that I speak of the Welsh situation. I hope that I do not receive complaints from England and Scotland.
The grant is available to local authorities, private bodies and individuals alike for the reclamation of derelict, neglected or unsightly land; that is, land so damaged by past industrial or other development that it is incapable of beneficial use without treatment, or
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land which although capable of some beneficial use is at present uncared for, untidy or in a condition detrimental to the environment.
Local authorities can receive up to a 100 per cent. grant. Individuals, companies, corporations or other bodies receive a grant up to 80 per cent.

Female Circumcision: Illegality
3.5 p.m.
Lord Kennet Lord Kennet asked Her Majesty's Government:
What guidance they have issued to local authorities about the prevention of female circumcision since the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper): My Lords, we have not previously issued general advice to local authorities on the subject. However, we are about to reissue inter-departmental guidance on inter-agency working in cases of child protection. The new version is being revised to take account of the implementation of the 1989 Children Act, and will draw attention to the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that most helpful Answer. No doubt she, like many in your Lordships' House, saw the television film last Thursday night. Will the guidance take account of the fact that there is nascent disagreement among local authority officers in different parts of the country? There are those who wish to adopt some forthright programme to protect British children against mutilation; there are others local who still believe that to do so would be in some way racialist.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the BBC programme was both balanced and informative. We hope very much that it will alert many people to the fact that the practice is illegal. However, the guidance being issued will take the form of a general statement. Further thought is being given as to how it can be supported with more detailed advice where necessary. We are consulting the leading voluntary sector organisations such as Forward to ensure that the detail of the advice is adequate in this very difficult area.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, is the Minister aware that before the 1985 Act became law the General Medical Council gave advice to members of the profession in the UK that, whereas there were circumstances when the performance of the operation was indicated on strictly medical grounds, its performance for social, religious or other ritual reasons was in its view unethical? Will she therefore give advice that if there is evidence to support the fact that it is being performed by doctors in the United Kingdom, that should be reported either to the police or to the profession's regulatory body, the General Medical Council?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, yes. That must certainly be so. The practice is now illegal.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 my noble friend Lord Arran will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the Gulf. This will be followed by my noble friend the Leader of the House who, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on the Woolf Inquiry.
Avon Weir Bill [H.L.]
Read a second time, and committed to a Select Committee.

Business of the House: Motions, 5th March
Tim Lord Privy Seal (Lord Waddington): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That leave be given to the Lord Henley to advance the eight Motions set down in his name from Tuesday, 5th March to Thursday, 28th February.—(Lord Waddington.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Child Support Bill [H.L.]
3.7 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, I beg to move, that the Bill be now read a second time.
Your Lordships are aware that the Government are committed to a radical reform of the system by which child maintenance payments are assessed, collected and enforced. The White Paper Children Come First set out our proposals, and the Bill which I now bring before your Lordships is the fruit of that. It is the result of much collaborative work involving many departments of state. The Bill covers Great Britain, and it is hoped to extend its provisions to Northern Ireland by Order in Council. I particularly hope that your Lordships will allow me, in explaining the Bill's provisions, to concentrate on the main thrust of its proposals. The detail is different in some respects in England, Wales and Scotland, to take account of the distinctive nature of the legal systems in the United Kingdom law districts. There will of course be an opportunity to debate the Bill's detailed provisions when it moves into Committee.
To set the Bill in context, your Lordships will recall that the Government are embarked on a wide-ranging review of all aspects of family law and the way family business is dealt with in the courts. Its first achievement, to which your Lordships gave much time and close attention in the Session before last, is the Children Act 1989, which is to be implemented in October this year. That Act brings together into a single coherent code the law on the physical care and upbringing of children. This Bill, in achieving a similar result for the duty to maintain children, is a natural adjunct to it. Like the Children Act and the rest of the
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review of family law, it is informed by two central principles or objectives, namely, the giving of priority to the welfare of the child and the primary responsibility of parents for securing that welfare even where the parents' own relationship has broken down.
In many cases the present system of child maintenance does not achieve these objectives. It is operated through the courts under various regimes of statutory discretion as well as through the offices of the Department of Social Security. The effect is that decisions are uncertain and, arguably, inconsistent.
Only 30 per cent. of lone mothers receive regular maintenance for their children. More than 750,000 lone parents depend on income support. Many lone mothers want to go to work, but cannot.
In a great many cases, the maintenance awarded is not paid, or payments fall into arrears and take weeks to re-establish. As part of our strategy for improving the collection and enforcement of maintenance, the Maintenance Enforcement Bill, which your Lordships have been considering, will give the courts new powers to direct that, from the first, maintenance payments may be made by standing order direct to the creditor's bank account, or by attachment of earnings if the debtor is in work. As the reformed system inaugurated by the Child Support Bill will not be fully in place for several years, the Maintenance Enforcement Bill is an important means, within the present system, of quickly addressing one major problem.
Those are some of the problems which our new system is designed to address. There are three key features of the reforms, two of which are implemented by the Child Support Bill. First, child maintenance will be assessed by means of a formula which will produce consistent results. It is based on a maintenance requirement representing the amount needed for the care and maintenance of children, and on the means and circumstances of the parents. A further departure here from the existing system is that a single award will be made covering all qualifying children in a family, rather than there being separate orders for each child, as at present.
Secondly, a child support agency will be established as a next steps agency under the authority of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Security. The agency will trace absent parents, investigate the parents' means and assess, collect and enforce payments of child maintenance. Your Lordships should know that as a next steps agency the agency will have no independent existence in statute. The powers that it will need to do its work are, therefore, expressed as powers of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Security.
Thirdly, as part of this package, though not covered by the Bill, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Security will introduce measures coinciding with the introduction of the maintenance formula to make it easier for lone parents to combine work with the responsibilities of caring for their children. The first £15 of maintenance paid will be ignored for parents receiving family credit, community charge benefit and housing benefit. At the same time, we shall reduce the number of hours of work which qualify for family credit from 24 to 16

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hours per week. This will apply to all claimants from April 1992 and it will be of particular value to lone parents. These measures will make it easier for parents to gain independence by their own efforts. The choice must be theirs; but we now that many of them want to work and it is right that we should help them to realise their ambitions.
The thrust of the policy of the Child Support Bill is clear. I now propose to turn to a rather fuller account of the main features of that policy as set out in more detail in the Bill.
The opening clauses set out the basic principles; they reflect in law what the Government see as the clear moral duty of parents to maintain their children until they are old enough to look after themselves. Events may change the relationship of the parents to each other but they cannot change the responsibility which parents owe to their children. The child support agency is to be available as a service to nearly all parents and children for tracing the absent parent, investigating the parents' means and for assessing, collecting and enforcing maintenance.
Where the taxpayer is involved—and the cost of income related benefit payments to lone parents has risen from £1.4 billion in 1981–82 to £3·2 billion in 1988–89 at today's prices—we have thought it right that the parent claiming benefit should be under a obligation to make effective use of the services of the child support agency to seek maintenance from an absent parent. Therefore, where a caring parent refuses, without good reason, to fulfil that obligation it will be possible for the amount of her own personal benefit entitlement to be reduced for a specific period. Just as we do not think it right for an absent parent to walk out on his responsibilities—and we are providing that, even if he is on benefit, he will normally be expected to make a small contribution to his maintenance liability—so it is not right that a caring parent should simply choose to pass on the financial responsibility for maintaining her children to taxpayers, many of whom are raising families themselves.
We are of course aware that there will be circumstances in which it would not be reasonable or humane to force the caring parent to seek maintenance; for example, in cases of incest or rape. We are looking very carefully at the circumstances where it would be wrong to impose any sanction and we shall ensure that a range of exceptions will be available to cover such circumstances and that the powers are exercised sensitively.
Your Lordships may be particularly interested in two clauses which provide for the ways in which the new child support agency is to fit in with the existing system of child maintenance. The majority of child maintenance cases will in the end go to the child support agency. But the agency will have a very large number of potential customers—around 2 million—and it would obviously not be possible to take on such a volume of work all at once. The agency should become operational early in 1993, but we shall phase in its jurisdiction and the formula over cases, or classes of cases, over a period of years. We are still
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considering exactly what the best and fairest approach will be for these arrangements. But one principle is clear; the courts will retain their existing jurisdiction under the existing law over groups of cases until the agency is ready to take them on. Nobody will be deprived of a forum to resolve questions about child maintenance. And we shall do our best to bring cases within the jurisdiction of the agency as quickly as is consistent with providing the quality of service which its customers are entitled to expect.
I have already sought to reassure your Lordships that we are pursuing this initiative because we believe that the majority of child maintenance cases can be assessed fairly and effectively by means of a formula. There are some special cases where modifications will be needed to the precise working of the formula; for example, where a child has a home with both parents. But there are other cases where the courts will still have an important role to play and it may help your Lordships if I briefly explain the relationship between the existing statutory regime and the Bill.
We intend to deal with that relationship by providing, in effect, that periodical maintenance payments for a child may not be sought from an absent parent in the courts under the existing law if such maintenance can be sought through the agency, unless the Bill itself allows for an application to the court. This rule of exclusivity will mean, for example, that stepchildren and other children who for technical reasons are not covered by the Bill will continue to be able to seek maintenance under the law as it now stands. Further, the Bill itself will allow the courts to exercise their existing powers to top up formula awards either to meet educational expenses or in high income cases which are above the upper limit of the formula's operation. For the sake of completeness I should make it clear that the courts' existing powers to order lump sums and to make orders about property for the benefit of the child will remain generally available. The courts will of course continue to exercise all their powers in respect of financial and property arrangements between spouses, including periodical maintenance payments for the spouse.
The Bill provides for the work of the child support agency in assessing maintenance payable and in gathering the information that it needs to do this, and for the making of reassessments and the conduct of reviews and appeals. Assessments of maintenance will be made by officers of the child support agency, to be called child support officers. In making assessments they will be independent of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Security. This will ensure that decisions made about the sums of money to which a person is entitled are separate from the political process and cannot be influenced by it. A chief child support officer will be appointed to advise child support officers on the carrying out of their duties.
Assessments will in general be made on the basis of the full facts. But there will be times when for one reason or another insufficient information is available, perhaps because one of the parties is refusing to supply it. That must not stand in the way of some provision being made for the needs of the children.

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For that reason the Bill allows for interim assessments to be made. We shall set out in regulations the exact procedures to be followed. However, we envisage that in most cases it will be possible to calculate the amount of the maintenance requirement based on the numbers and ages of the children involved and use that as the basis for the interim assessment until more information is forthcoming.
All of us involved in this initiative are conscious of the need to safeguard confidential personal information. But, as I am sure your Lordships' will appreciate, the agency will need access to some types of information if it is to function effectively. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Security will set out in regulations who will be expected to furnish information and under what conditions. He will have the power to use information which he has already acquired for the purpose of administering the benefit system. He will also be able to use limited categories of information held by the Inland Revenue for tracing purposes only and to verify some information about parties' incomes by checking with local authorities.
There are some circumstances in which the child support agency will need to disclose information; again the detail will be set out in regulations. But I can confirm that disclosure will not run wider than is strictly necessary for ensuring the effectiveness of the agency's work in recovering the right amount of money at the right time, providing people with an effective right of appeal and for helping the courts in exercising their continuing powers in relation to matters of finance and property on family breakdown. Your Lordships will wish to note that we are taking power to appoint inspectors to seek information from employers about parties to maintenance assessments. These powers closely follow those which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Security already has to appoint inspectors for pursuing inquiries about national insurance contributions.
We propose a comprehensive set of provisions enabling maintenance assessments to be revised, reviewed and appealed against. First, assessments will be regularly reviewed to take account of changes in the cost of living and of course of changes in the circumstances of the parties. The Bill provides for that. It also provides for the review of a decision by a child support officer where either of the parties thinks it is wrong. This is designed to offer a quick and easy way of having the decision looked at again and to allow errors to be put right with the minimum of fuss; and of course there will also be provision for further appeals where either or both of the parties is still dissatisfied.
One of the anxieties which our reforms are seeking to address is that, even when maintenance awards are made, the payment arrangements can break down. The ideal situation, where it is possible, is for the parties to agree to pay each other direct by some mutually convenient means; and we have no wish to interfere in that. But there is a range of methods which can help make payment easier or more reliable, and the agency will be able to direct parties to make
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payments in the most appropriate way, either direct to the caring parent, or, where it seems likely to provide greater reliability, through the agency. It will also be possible to collect payments of arrears of maintenance and in certain circumstances which will be set out in regulations to charge interest on outstanding arrears.
One way of making it more likely that payment will actually be made is to ask the liable person's employer to deduct the amount due at source from his wages (plus an allowance towards the employer's administrative expenses in doing so). The agency will be empowered to make deduction from earnings orders against liable persons both for current maintenance liability and for accumulated arrears. The provision for these orders is along the lines of those in the Attachment of Earnings Act 1971.
Sadly, however, sometimes payment methods do not work and firmer action is needed. We do not, however, think it reasonable that the agency should be able to take further enforcement action purely on its own authority. Provision is therefore made for the agency to be able to apply for a liability order to a magistrates' court and, if that order is granted, to use various enforcement methods available for enforcing civil debt. In cases of wilful refusal or culpable neglect the agency may apply for a warrant to commit the liable person to prison; such committal may be deferred to give him a final chance to come to an agreement about meeting his liability.
Although, as I have already explained, the assessment of other forms of maintenance, for example spousal awards, will stay with the courts, it may well offer a better service to the public if the child support agency can take on collection and enforcement work in these areas in some circumstances. The Bill makes the necessary provisions for this, though we shall need to think carefully about when any such work by the agency might start so as to ensure that the agency is not diverted from its main task of improving arrangements for child maintenance.
I am aware that the Bill contains many technical provisions to which I do not have time to refer in any detail. One consequence of the technical nature of much of the Bill is that it contains, as no doubt your Lordships have noticed, a rather larger than usual number of regulation-making powers. The principles and intentions of the scheme are quite clear on the face of the Bill. However, the great variety of situations to which the scheme is to be applied requires that the detailed provisions are better left to be dealt with by secondary legislation. This controlled use of regulations allows a valuable flexibility within the scheme. Adjustments can be made in the light of the experience in applying the formula and related matters, and most importantly, any unfairness which is uncovered in the operation of the system can be rectified. There will of course be extensive consultation on the content of the regulations, and the most important regulations will be subject to affirmative resolution.
In concluding this speech, I should like to return for a few moments to what I believe to be one of the absolutely central features of the scheme—the maintenance formula. Any attempt to deal systematically and consistently with the complex realities of

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human circumstances will necessarily not be entirely straightforward and the provisions in Schedule 1 to the Bill repay careful study. But the key principles of the design of the formula are clear. Perhaps I should mention them. They provide a firm foundation for assessing what people can afford to pay in a coherent and equitable way. There are four basic elements.
First, there is the maintenance requirement. This is an amount, which will be calculated with reference to the income support rates, which represents the basic costs of maintaining the children who qualify for a formula award. Secondly, there is the assessable income. This is derived by deducting an exempt income from the parents' net income; that is, income after tax and national insurance. This exempt income represents the weekly amount which it is considered parents need for their own essential day-to-day expenses. It will be based on income support allowances, and will include reasonable housing costs and the costs of any children for whom they are liable. The remaining income is the assessable income; such income of both parents will be taken into account.
Thirdly, there is the deduction rate. A percentage of the assessable income of each parent will be taken into account in order to meet the maintenance requirement, where possible. We intend that, until the maintenance requirement is met, assessable income should be shared equally between the absent parent and his children who qualify under the Bill. A smaller percentage will apply in individual cases after the maintenance requirement has been met. Beyond that, there will be an upper limit to the operation of the formula and, as I indicated earlier, in high income cases above that limit the parties will be able to seek additional maintenance for the child from the courts.
Fourthly and lastly, there is the protected income. This is the income level below which no family of a person liable to maintain a child will be allowed to fall as a result of his meeting his maintenance obligations and his essential living expenses. It will protect those who are working, or who have other sources of income, from being left with an income less than a level set on the basis of income support levels.
The provisions of the Child Support Bill represent an important reform which will make the assessment of child maintenance fairer and its collection and enforcement much more certain. These provisions certainly put children first. I commend them to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.28 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the House is accustomed to expressing gratitude to the noble and learned Lord for the clear way in which he explains Bills that he places before your Lordships' House. This afternoon is no exception to what we now regard as a rule.
From these Benches there is obviously general approval for the principle that the child comes first. There is every support for seeing that the maintenance of children is made the responsibility of parents, and it is desirable to have an efficient administrative
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procedure for the collection of maintenance where that is necessary and, furthermore, consistency in the rules relating to maintenance.
Having said that, perhaps I may explain to your Lordships that it is my intention to look with some care at the legal and constitutional matters arising from this Bill on which I feel that some submissions should be made. One has only to look at the list of speakers to realise that the essential welfare element —looking after children who are physically and mentally handicapped—and other matters relating to the social welfare of children is in experienced hands which need no help from me.
I turn first to a constitutional point. This Bill amounts to a piece of skeleton legislation. The late lamented King Henry VIII may not have liked the title of the Bill but undoubtedly he would have been enamoured by the form of it. When I glanced at the list of speakers I had an idea that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, might wish to say something on this aspect. If I am wrong in predicting a portion of his speech I know that with his usual mercy he will forgive me.
I call the Bill a "legislative skeleton". I am entitled to say that in spite of the noble and learned Lord's diplomatic remarks referring, as is usual on these occasions, to the need for flexibility and the fact that the provisions are largely technical. I believe I am right in saying that under the Bill there will fall to be made 94 regulations. Of that figure, if your Lordships examine Clause 38 of the Bill, 12 only are subject to the affirmative resolution of Parliament. That is very distressing; it is constitutionally objectionable. From a parliamentary point of view—I do not wish to use overstatement—it is a little offensive. It means that at later stages in the passage of the Bill we must either attempt to introduce amendments to ensure that matters of consequence are contained in primary legislation or rely upon undertakings given by those representing the Government. Perhaps I may say with respect—or even without it—that that is most unsatisfactory.
It is always useful to look at the facts which lead to legislation and then one obtains an idea of the stage one is looking at in order to make the acting suitable. The figures do not make comforting reading from a social point of view. I obtained the figures from the Family Policy Studies Centre document, which no doubt other noble Lords have seen. They show that lone-parent families have increased from around ½ million in 1971 to more than 1 million now. More than half represent divorced or separated parents. With regard to the single, non-married mothers, they represent another quarter of that figure.
The figures show that more than 1.6 million of all dependent children—that is, one in eight—are in lone-parent families. A recent Department of Social Security survey of lone parents showed that only 39 per cent. had ever received maintenance, and 29 per cent. were receiving regular payments. Therefore one immediately finds support for the principle of the Bill; namely, that something must be done in regard to

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looking after the maintenance of children and one must try to ensure that one finds an efficient way of providing for their maintenance.
The first aspect of the Bill which one considers is the setting up of the agency. I should like to share with the House a deep anxiety that I feel when I see that a fundamental view taken by this House—supported also by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—has been slightly eroded. I refer to the view that we all held that the most desirable way of dealing with family problems concerning the husband, wife and children was to ensure that they were dealt with in one court. That was the reason why many of us pleaded for a family court; that is the reason when the noble and learned Lord dealt with the enactment of the Children Bill in 1989, we supported him to the full when he spoke of the problems of children and families being dealt with in one court.
Maintenance is a fundamental part of the matters with which one must deal in regard to children and families. Therefore I doubt whether the setting up of an agency is preferable to the fulfilment of the dream of a family court with similar powers. I wished to state those doubts before we move on to approve the principle of the legislation.
I move on, almost naturally, to consider the question of the family home. I believe—and I am sure other noble Lords agree—that one of the tragedies of lone parentage, whatever be the cause of the loneliness, is the grave insecurity of the children. The one support in regard to that insecurity is the keeping of the home to which they are accustomed. Cause that home, the small child's bedroom and the parentage to be altered, and there is such an accumulation of insecurity that the psychological effects may be dramatic.
At the moment the family home is usually the only asset that a family in the middle and lower income groups possesses—possibly the upper end of the lower income group, but nevertheless, in spite of the difficulties occasioned by mortgages and high interest rates in these latter days, it is more and more the pride of the family to have a family home. What happens now—in fulfilment of an aim of our recent divorce legislation, of which the noble and learned Lord is a great supporter—is that it is the rule and the desirability in many cases to achieve a clean break. That means that the husband or father, as a rule, does not have round his neck a millstone of unceasing maintenance for the years ahead. It means providing the ability to create new lives; to write new chapters when the old ones are unhappy. The way that the courts achieve the clean break is often by suggesting —and certainly agreeing to any consent order—that the father transfers the family home over to the mother. Often the mother will thereupon get income support, the idea being that spouse maintenance ceases when the father or husband does that, and the child maintenance order is a pretty low one.
There is an alternative to those provisions and it is called a Mesher Order. The court says "We shall make an order. The home will remain where it is now and when the youngest child attains the age of 16, the
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family home will then be sold and the proceeds of sale will be divided between the spouses and sometimes with some benefit to the children under some settlement". What we are looking at here is a result of the division between the court and the agency and the absence of one court dealing with the matter. Faced with a maintenance order under the statutory provisions that we are now looking at, the court will be unable to make an order transferring the house to the wife for the benefit of the children and their security.
The husband will say, "Goodness gracious me, I face a continuing liability". There is no question now of the ability to carry out the provisions of the divorce legislation which has pertained until now, and which cut off the liability and allowed such a settlement to be made. That is something which is so essential concerning the security of children and the family that I make no apology for having spent some time on it.
The noble and learned Lord referred to Clause 5 which deals with the giving of information. That clause is very loosely worded. One may think that the noble and learned Lord would not wish to excuse himself for any vagueness of language on the grounds of being flexible or because it is too technical. Subsection (7) states:
"The obligation to provide information which is imposed by subsection (6) shall not apply in such circumstances as may be prescribed; and may, in such circumstances as may be prescribed, be waived by the Secretary of State".
Why should we not know what the circumstances are? If they are to be put into regulations why should they not be put into primary legislation? What is the reason for the vagueness? I am thinking—as undoubtedly the noble and learned Lord did and as I expect other noble Lords are—of the matter we debated concerning the White Paper; namely, the mother who, because of fear, supreme embarrassment or whatever it may be, does not wish to reveal the name of the father and his address. In many cases it may be due to fear. If the excuse for that is to be a meritorious one which is accepted by the Government, I call on the noble and learned Lord to say so and to see that this provision is in primary legislation at the correct stage of the Bill and that it does not rely on a regulation. I remind noble Lords that when dealing with either an affirmative resolution or praying against a regulation, we have no ability to alter at all. We can only accept or refuse. That is one of the matters that we must look at.
I wish to ask a question concerning Clause 6. The noble and learned Lord explained to us that there were variations between England and Wales, and Scotland because of the difference in Scottish law. In Clause 6 there is a provision that in Scotland the right of a child to make its own application is to continue. I ask a question, and it may be that my ignorance may be shown up when I receive the answer. For the benefit of the whole House I ask: has that provision worked well in Scotland? Is it used very often in Scotland? If that right of a child is to apply in Scotland, should it not be available in England and Wales as well?
Clause 18 deals with appeals. It merely states that an appeal shall be to a court. Nobody knows whether

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it will be to a tribunal specially set up for the purpose or already existent—because that can be a court—or whether it will be a court of law as we understand it. I ask for clarification on that point. There is no need for vagueness on the ground of technicality and there is no need for flexibility. One wants to know the answer. It is very important for husbands, wives, fathers and those representing children to be able to get proper advice and representation. If it is a tribunal we all know the answer: no legal aid.
In the closing time that is available to me I wish to refer to the somewhat draconian aspects of parts of the Bill. I ask noble Lords to look at Clause 13 to which the noble and learned Lord gave some attention. He spoke about the ability to appoint inspectors and said that that provision was also in social welfare legislation. The noble and learned Lord was quite right because that provision is in social welfare legislation which deals with fraud, national insurance contributions and matters of that kind.
We are dealing with the maintenance of children. Your Lordships will see in Clause 13 what rights have been given against citizens of this country. The Secretary of State may appoint inspectors for the purpose of acquiring information. I ask noble Lords to look at subsection (2) which states,
"for the purposes of this Act, an inspector appointed under this section"—
we are dealing with the maintenance of children by parents—
"shall have power to enter at all reasonable times any premises which may be inspected under this section; and to make such examination and enquiry there as he considers appropriate".
I ask noble Lords to look at draconian subsection (3) which states:
"The premises which may be inspected under this section are any which the inspector concerned has reasonable grounds for supposing to be premises at or from which—
" (a) any person is employed".
Can noble Lords imagine the effect on employment and the embarrassment among fellow employees when an inspector calls at premises where somebody is employed in order to gather any information which he thinks relevant in regard to somebody who presumably has not paid maintenance for his child? There is not even a provision that the inspector will need the specific authority of a Minister to do so. It is at his own discretion. That cannot be. There are other provisions to which I had intended to call attention. I shall mention only one other before I sit down. I shall have to deal with the others at later stages of the Bill unless my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies happens to cover them in his winding-up speech.
It is a question on Clause 32, one of the provisions to which the noble and learned Lord drew attention in his opening remarks. It concerns the power to commit to prison where arrears have not been paid and where it is the view of those who apply for that committal that they have wilfully not been paid. I have read the clause and there is one thing that I could not gather from it. If the man serves his term of imprisonment, are the arrears wiped out; or will he still have to pay the arrears on his release? At this stage I am not coming down on either side as to the merits of the
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matter. But I ask the question because the old power to commit for debt has gone and one wants to know therefore what is the new legal situation created by the clause.
Your Lordships have as always been most patient and it is about time that I sat down. I repeat that the general aims of this Bill are most acceptable to those whom I represent at this Dispatch Box, but there are many questions to be asked and many defects to be rectified in the remaining stages.

The Gulf War
3.52 p.m.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement which is now being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence. The Statement is as follows:
"The final phase for the liberation of Kuwait and the achievement of the UN resolutions was launched in the early hours of Sunday 24th February. After more than six months of international endeavour to achieve a peaceful resolution of the crisis, the continuing refusal of Iraq to comply with the UN resolutions and the rejection of the final deadline from the coalition left us no alternative but to proceed with the final ground campaign. The need for this was further confirmed by the fact that at the very time that Tariq Aziz was still purporting to negotiate in Moscow, Saddam Hussein was giving orders for the wholesale destruction of Kuwait and its oil fields and further outrages against its citizens.
"These land operations involve forces of no fewer than 11 countries: the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, France, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and of course Kuwait. They have now been under way for 38½ hours. So far progress has been rapid and relatively little opposition has been encountered.
"Excellent planning and preparation, and above all their determination, have enabled the coalition forces rapidly to penetrate the extensive obstacle belt that the Iraqis had constructed both along the Saudi/Kuwait border and along a substantial part of the Saudi/Iraq border. To the east of this front coalition forces have now penetrated well into Kuwait and have taken a significant number of prisoners. Many of the Iraqi units encountered surrendered almost immediately. To the west, US, UK, Saudi and French forces have mounted an operation into Iraq against Iraq forces supporting the occupation of Kuwait. Some elements are encircling Iraqi units; others are breaking through defensive positions and beginning to engage Iraqi units direct. The First British Armoured Division is fully involved in this thrust and is now moving steadily forward.
"The Saudis have announced that the number of prisoners of war taken by the coalition has now risen to 20,000. Casualties on the coalition side

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have been very light. As the House may be aware, two British soldiers lost their lives in the days immediately before the start of the ground offensive, and their families have been told of their deaths. On my latest information there have been no British casualties in the main advance.
"In support of these land advances allied air forces, including British aircraft, have continued their attacks both on strategic targets in Iraq and on the Iraq ground forces in Kuwait and Iraq. These attacks are continuing in spite of poor weather conditions and without serious interference from the smoke of burning oil wells.
"Maritime and amphibious forces in the northern Gulf are playing their part in the coalition attack. In particular, the Royal Navy is playing a crucial role in mine clearance operations. During these operations last night the Iraqis fired a Silkworm missile which was destroyed by a Sea Dart fired from "HMS Gloucester".
"It is vital that we give all the suport we can to the coalition forces in their challenging task. One of the key advantages is the lack of intelligence that the Iraqis have about our exact positions and plans. We must preserve this advantage. That is why we have been so concerned to restrict any information about the military operations that could be of help to the enemy at a critical time. I understand the great interest of the whole country in the progress of our forces, and particularly among the families of all those involved, and we shall do all we can to give accurate information, provided that it can be done safely without putting lives at risk. In the meantime, we look for full understanding and co-operation of all those reporting and commenting on the battle.
"This further phase of the campaign has started well and every credit is due to General Schwarzkopf and all the coalition forces. However, they know that the Iraqi forces in the front line are their least capable and likely to be of the lowest morale
"The news so far has been good: there may be days ahead when it is more difficult. But whatever the ups and downs, British forces know that they have the support of all the House and the nation. Our prayers and our best wishes go with them as they complete the task."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.56 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, the House is grateful to the noble Earl for repeating the Statement made by the Secretary of State in another place. Perhaps I may first of all assure him and agree with him that, whatever the ups and downs, the British forces know that they have the support of the House and the nation. This certainly goes for the Benches from which I speak.
So far as concerns the Statement, there is not very much I have to ask the noble Earl. I respect the thoughts he gave us about the necessity for confidentiality while wishing to keep us as fully informed as possible. I have one or two questions
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which I hope will not be too embarrassing under these circumstances. The actions of the Iraqis in Kuwait have been deplored by the noble Earl and are deplored by us. It is appalling when people go in and slaughter innocent citizens, sabotage oil wells and set alight whole cities without, as far as one can see, any motive whatsoever. Can the noble Earl tell us whether, in the words of the Statement, it is a fact that at the very time Tariq Aziz was still purporting to negotiate in Moscow Saddam Hussein was giving orders for the wholesale destruction of Kuwait? To some of us it has been presented as possibly being local commanders who took the initiative into their own hands. The Statement seems to go further than that and says it is confirmed by the fact that it was Saddam Hussein who gave orders for the wholesale destruction of Kuwait. I should be grateful if the noble Earl could confirm that my interpretation is right.
Secondly, we join him in congratulating General Schwarzkopf and his staff on the excellent planning and execution of the operation to date. To penetrate the obstacle belt that the Iraqis had put up on the Saudi/Kuwait border and along a substantial part of the Saudi/Iraq border in such a short period of time has been a remarkable military achievement. Equally, a remarkable political achievement, if I may use the word "political" in this sense, is that General Schwarzkopf has managed to involve forces of no fewer than 11 countries. This shows rightly that this is a coalition operation and not simply an American operation. We are grateful for that.
Can the noble Earl also tell us a little more about the Iraqi units which were encountered and which surrendered almost immediately? Are we to suppose that they were placed there because they were the weakest elements in the Iraqi forces, in the knowledge that they would be bombed to bits by the allies, and that Saddam Hussein did not want to expose his stronger forces on the front line? In the Government's view, is that the kind of tactic that Saddam Hussein has been adopting?
We are also very glad that casualties have been kept to an absolute minimum on the allied side. We are especially glad to know that there were no British casualties in the main advance. As the noble Earl pointed out, allied air forces have continued their attacks. However, can he tell us whether there has been any indication that the Iraqi air force is in operation, or do we now have total air supremacy? From everything we have seen on television and everything we have heard, it seems that the coalition has total air supremacy. I should be most grateful if the noble Earl could confirm that fact or, alternatively, perhaps he can give us what information he has on the matter.
The noble Earl said that it is vital that we give all the support we can to the coalition forces in their challenging task. We shall certainly do so. Of course, there is the delicate balance to which he referred as regards the reporting of events. We have discussed that aspect of the matter previously in your Lordships' House. I am sure that we on this side of the House wish to echo the noble Earl's plea that those people in

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the media who are reporting these events should adopt a responsible attitude towards the forces and that they should not put any of them in jeopardy by anything that they may say or show.
These are early days as yet, as General Schwarzkopf pointed out in his briefing yesterday. We endorse what has happened so far and we congratulate the coalition forces and General Schwarzkopf on what has taken place so far. We are, however, resolute that there may be worse to come and that we should not get into the state of euphoria which we experienced on the first day of the air war when some people thought that it was all over after 24 hours. There may indeed be harder tasks to follow and we must be prepared to meet them. All we can do now is to reiterate, in the words of the noble Earl, that our prayers and our best wishes go with our forces as they complete their task.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, we on these Benches would also like to thank the noble Earl for repeating that important and encouraging Statement. Our view is that the success of the coalition is really remarkable. It is extraordinary, in particular, how the problems of command and co-ordination in such a diverse coalition have been solved so well. It is indeed extraordinary that Syrian, French and American forces should be fighting side by side in the same complex battle plan. It is an unbelievable event. It is also extraordinary that a weapons system of such enormous complexity and sophistication should apparently be working so reliably and smoothly, especially as regards the anti-missile missiles from the brand new Patriot to the old Navy Sea Dart, which I was delighted to hear the noble Earl say had yesterday intercepted and destroyed a Silkworm missile which was destined for an American battleship.
We look forward to hearing the noble Earl's answers to the many questions which have already been put to him. I shall not repeat them. I do not think that this is a very good time to be asking questions on operational subjects. But, nevertheless, there is one question I should like him to answer. Surely it is the dearest wish of all of us that in one way or another Saddam Hussein should be eliminated. However, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have made it quite clear, on more than one occasion recently, that they do not consider that to be an aim of the coalition. Can the noble Earl say whether that position still holds and whether that is still the Government's view?
We noted the warning at the end of the noble Earl's Statement. We shall certainly bear it in mind. However, it is impossible not to regard the overall military situation with extreme relief and satisfaction.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, obviously I am most grateful for the general warmth and agreement which has been expressed from all sides of your Lordships' House and for the welcome that the Statement received. Perhaps I may deal first with the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel. They are not especially embarrassing questions and I shall
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do my best to answer them. However, I am not so sure that the answers are totally known. That is why I shall be somewhat hesitant in my replies.
The noble Lord's first question concerned timing. He asked whether Saddam Hussein was in fact giving orders for the Kuwaiti oil fields to be set on fire at the time when Tariq Aziz was negotiating. I can only repeat the information contained in the Statement: at the very time that Tariq Aziz was still purporting to negotiate in Moscow, Saddam Hussein was indeed giving orders for the wholesale destruction of Kuwait and its oil fields and for further outrages to take place against its citizens. Those actions were, therefore, simultaneous.
The noble Lord went on to praise the strength of the coalition forces now operating in these dangerous manoeuvres. He referred to the fact that 11 countries have now joined together and that they are doing their very best to oust the Iraqi forces from the area and to restore the government of Kuwait to its rightful owners.
It would be speculating too much for me to say a great deal about whether Saddam Hussein wished his weaker forces to be in the front line and his stronger forces behind. Frankly, we do not know what his deployment plans were, let alone what they may be at present. However, it may be sensible to suggest that that was indeed his purpose. As regards any indication of action on the part of the Iraqi air force, we have no information on any further action by those forces. Therefore, under the present conditions, we hold air supremacy.
I turn now to deal with the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. He rightly talked about the great and determined strength of the coalition forces. Your Lordships will find it both remarkable and pleasing that this should have happened. We are certain that this will continue to happen throughout the length of the campaign. The noble Lord also raised the question about the elimination of Saddam Hussein. That is not the case. As we all know, the case has been clearly set out in the Security Council's Resolutions Nos. 678, 660 and indeed in others. The aim is to get Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and to restore the legitimate government. But, as has been said by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, we would not shed a tear if Saddam Hussein were to go. Indeed, the prospects for peace and security in the region would certainly be enhanced. However, that is not a coalition aim and not an aim of this Government.
4.9 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that while we are entitled to receive a general picture of what is taking place, it may not be especially wise to try to anticipate any future movements of the coalition? Further, can he tell us whether Her Majesty's Message has been conveyed to the British troops? Would it not be possible for the department from time to time to send, on behalf of Parliament,

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our congratulations and admiration to the coalition forces, and in particular to the British servicemen, for what they are achieving?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, it is obviously in the interests of all our troops that the coalition's aims with regard to future military manoeuvres should not be made known. On the noble Lord's second point about Her Majesty the Queen's message to the troops, I am sure that our troops are aware of it and appreciate it.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, perhaps I may take the Minister back to his answer to the first question put by my noble friend Lord Williams about how we know that it was Saddam Hussein who ordered the firing of the oil wells and the recent killings in Kuwait. Will he give a careful answer because much more may be heard of this matter? On the one hand, if someone's army starts doing something the natural inference is that it has been told to do so by its commander in chief. On the other hand, we are aware that the coalition forces have been seeking over the weeks, with some success, to disrupt Iraqi communications. I shall repeat the question. Was it a natural inference? They must have been ordered to do it, must they not? Or was it the result of certain knowledge obtained through intercepted communications or other means? The importance of the point lies in the fact that the justifications advanced by President Bush for not waiting until today—the time asked for by Mr. Gorbachev for the Soviet initiative—and for insisting on attacking on Saturday have more to do with Iraq's recent savage actions in Kuwait rather than any difference between the American and the Soviet proposals, as pointed out by President Bush.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the noble Lord will realise that Saddam Hussein is commander in chief of his own forces. The atrocities and the firing of the oil wells took place while Tariq Aziz was in Moscow. Saddam Hussein is responsible for the actions of his men.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, is it wise and sensible to allow Moslems to demonstrate in our streets against us presumably protected by some 100 police who have other more necessary duties?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that this is a free country. If the Moslems feel that they want to demonstrate, they must be allowed to do so although they must be carefully controlled by the police.
Lout Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, it is gratifying to hear that casualties have been so light, but there is no cause for rejoicing. In war there rarely is. The main battle has not yet been joined. Forces that are still solid and united in the cause of international law have made an impressive impact in the initial assault to relieve Kuwait. Should not therefore Saddam Hussein now be aware of the ultimate outcome and that a surrender would save many lives, mostly those of his own countrymen? Further, the Iraqi republican guard, possibly with chemical weapons, may fight fiercely on their own soil but will inevitably be defeated with such a massive deployment of
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professional forces and equipment ranged against them. How best can that message be put across to Saddam Hussein?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, we have been endeavouring for the past six months, by every possible means, to put that message across. Saddam Hussein has done nothing but prevaricate. He has been obtuse, difficult, totally irrational and unreasonable to the detriment of the whole of his country.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are informed that the people of Iraq are given totally false and misleading reports about the course of the war and almost everything else. What steps are being taken to counteract that—for example, by dropping pamphlets or through other means?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the coalition forces are dropping pamphlets telling the Iraqis the truth and urging them to surrender.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the BBC Arabic service broadcasting eight hours a day is the biggest overseas service of the BBC?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I am sorry, I did not hear the question. Will the noble Lord be good enough to repeat it?
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, it was not really a question. I asked whether the Minister was aware that the BBC's Arabic service, which broadcasts for eight hours a day, represents the biggest portion of the BBC's overseas broadcasts? Presumably that service is conveying the message to the Iraqi people in every possible programme.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I was not aware of that fact, but I am now.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, perhaps I may ask two questions arising from what has happened since the House met last week. First, did the third and final Soviet peace plan differ from American requirements only as between seven days and 21 days for the withdrawal to be completed? Was that plan ever put before the Security Council? Secondly, who gave the order to start the ground offensive? Was it the Security Council or the President of the United States?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, it was the President of the United States in agreement with the coalition forces and the heads of government represented by the coalition forces. As regards the Soviet peace initiative, I have said on other occasions that we are faced with the problem of deciding who to believe—the Iraqi foreign minister, or Saddam Hussein making belligerent statements in Baghdad.
Lord Zuckerman: My Lords, is it not the case that, as in the Second World War, the commander in chief on the spot will be given a general directive of probably not more than a few lines and a certain latitude as to when to launch the assault? If that is the case—I shall be corrected if I am wrong—I imagine that General Schwarzkopf will not have been standing by waiting for a call from the White House telling him when to proceed?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, I am sure that the general commanding in the arena is given his objective and the timescale within which to achieve it.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, my question was: does the Minister agree that there is a difference between the Security Council's action in this case and its action 40 years ago in the Korean case when the power to order the war involving United Nations blue berets was given to the commander in chief under the aegis of the Security Council?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, it is now too late for Iraqi half promises and half acceptances. The world now needs a clear and unambiguous statement from Saddam Hussein that he fully accepts the United Nations resolutions and is now withdrawing his forces from Kuwait completely and unconditionally.
Lord Annan: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, was correct to say that it is impossible to fight a war—something we are doing at the moment —unless the commander in chief has discretion to initiate action to achieve the tactical objectives.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, that must surely be the prerogative of the general commanding in the area.

Child Support Bill [H.L.]
4.19 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
Lord McGregor of Durris: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for the clarity of his exposition of this complicated Bill. From these Benches I state our agreement with his emphasis, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, upon the priority which must be accorded to children and the interests of their mothers in the fair, efficient and speedy assessment and collection of maintenance.
The Bill provides for radical changes in the methods of supporting children of one-parent families which were presaged in the White Paper Children come First. In particular, a child support agency will be set up within the Department of Social Security with a staff of 4,700, more than 2,000 of whom will be additional to the present establishment. Those officials will administer the assessment, collection and enforcement of maintenance for children at an estimated added cost of £35 million a year, with further capital costs of some £30 million. However, their labours are expected to reduce social security expenditure by £400 million within an unstated period.
The White Paper came 22 years after the first official inquiry into maintenance by the Graham Hall Committee on Statutory Maintenance Limits. After recommending abolition of the statutory limits which operated in magistrates' courts the committee concluded, and I quote:
"We have been convinced by the evidence assembled for our limited study that further and far-reaching evolution of the maintenance system will be found necessary within the next decade or so."
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The result was the appointment in 1969 of the Finer Committee on One-Parent Families, with a very wide remit. Its report, published five years later and running to two-thirds of a million words, cannot be summarised succinctly but for my present purpose it is sufficient to say that the committee demonstrated how social security constitutes a third system of family law alongside the two operating in the courts and intertwined with them.
Throughout this century the law has proclaimed an obligation upon husbands and fathers to maintain their wives and children, and the courts have made millions of maintenance orders which were legal fictions, because it has never been possible to enforce them in practice. As a consequence social policy has always had to provide the subsistence which the law promised, and that is so for the reason which was stated crisply by the National Assistance Board in its annual report for 1953:
"A woman cannot be left to starve because her marriage is broken; still less can her children be left to starve."
Nothing has changed since the Finer Committee reported, save that the number of casualties of broken homes has increased dramatically. There is no need to cite the numbers because they have already been cited by the noble and learned Lord and by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. Today, as when Finer reported, what court maintenance orders contribute is marginal. What social security provides is fundamental. Accordingly, the child support agency is put forward by the Government as a solution to what the Finer Committee defined as a central issue of its terms of reference. I think it is instructive to compare the two solutions.
The Finer Committee recommended a family court, to achieve three main aims. First, to eliminate overlapping family jurisdictions. Secondly, in the interests of realism and reason alike, to require that the courts and the social security authorities be brought not into any sort of merger but into an intimate working relationship. Thirdly, the committee recommended that the family jurisdiction should be equipped with its own welfare service, specifically adapted and responsive to its own needs.
Throughout the committee's analysis there runs an awareness of involvement in moral, social, economic and legal issues of fundamental importance. Indeed, an approving and perceptive review of the report in the Financial Times observed that it should be interpreted in part as an essay on the status and social situation of women in British society, which indeed it was.
The then Secretary of State for Social Services and the Lord Chancellor immediately turned down the proposals without consideration, as being too costly; and cost has since remained the official incantation which disposes of the subject. So a family court remains an aspiration. Nevertheless, the only published computation of the cost of such a court made by Judge Graham Hall and Mr. Douglas Martin suggested that a unified court would be cheaper than the present fragmented arrangements.

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The White Paper sets out the case for a child support agency as one part of what the Government describe, and what the noble and learned Lord explained, as a balanced programme to review and reform the family justice system in England and Wales. The principle which justifies the establishment of an entirely new procedure is that the failure to pay maintenance regularly places—and here I quote the White Paper—
"the responsibility for maintaining the children on other taxpayers, many of whom are raising families on their own."
This is a reasonable approach if the father's default is contumacious and I know of no informed body or person who thinks otherwise. Certainly on these Benches we hold it to be the duty of the authorities to extract maintenance from fathers who refuse or neglect to pay although they are able to do so. They are rogues, and they merit no sympathy.
However, this is not the difficulty in the real world, where some fathers are contumacious and many others cannot pay fully because they are maintaining two families on one wage. A democracy cannot restrict the right of spouses to separate, to co-habit or to marry again after divorce; and the electorate would be unlikely to welcome an attempt to introduce indissoluble marriage or to enforce different sexual rules for different income groups. For decades past, the poor have been emulating the behaviour of their financial betters and there may arise an irreconcilable conflict of values between the duty to maintain a family to the extent of available resources and the right to exercise choice by changing marital or sexual partners.
Neither administrative nor legal manipulation can extract quarts from pint pots, and because in these circumstances there is simply not enough money to go round, the courts and the social security authorities have come to pragmatic arrangements. As income support rates are pitched at subsistence level, courts will rarely make a substantive order against a spouse on income support. Moreover, as Professor Cretney summarises the present position;
"if both parties have incomes at or near subsistence level, the court, while not allowing the less impoverished spouse to throw on to the state the cost of supporting his dependents, will allow him or his family to keep not only a subsistence level of income … but also some additional financial incentive to continue in work."
This is the central issue. The community of taxpayers already contributes in large measure towards the cost of family breakdown, and I see no method consistent with the basic tenets of a free and caring society to discharge it from that responsibility. Moreover, I am not aware of any pressing public demand for such action. The latest, the seventh, report on British social attitudes concludes that public opinion clearly favours more public spending to maintain the ability of the social security system to provide adequate and timely benefits to those who really need them.
I know as fact that there is a great general anxiety, shared on these Benches, about the effects upon children of the poverty of their lone parents. Accordingly, the proposed child support agency must
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be judged not only as a machinery for reducing government expenditure on income support by more efficient enforcement of child maintenance, coupled with the small inducement for mothers to go out to work, but in terms of the effect it will have upon public attitudes towards the family and family law generally.
The many criticisms of the Bill and the agency which have come from voluntary organisations working in the field express a unanimity of dismay that so ill-considered a project has reached the point of legislation. The agency will take over from the courts the determination by a non-discretionary—hence consistent—formula of the maintenance of children in some 2 million families, but the maintenance of their mothers will continue to be settled by the courts.
I have been unable to discover the rationale for that seemingly grotesque separation, although some sense might be made of it if the Government intend to turn a very much wider part of the present family jurisdiction of the courts into an administrative procedure. I hope that I am mistaken. I believe that family matters should be supervised by judicial institutions doing justice according to law. At the end of the day, members of broken families should not be thought of as clients of administrative agencies or as patients for whom adjudication is a form of treatment. We have to promote the evolving synthesis between law and welfare.
As it is, the technical and legal consequences of setting up the agency do not seem to have been examined. I wonder whether the Law Commission was consulted when the scheme was drafted. Bodies as different as the Law Society, the Legal Action Group and the Association of County Court and District Registrars complain of the Government's failure to deal with the consequential interrelationships of administrative and judicial procedures and policies, for example, in respect of agreeing maintenance and settling the ownership of the matrimonial home according to the principle of the clean break to which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, referred.
There would have been decided advantages for mothers if the new agency had been established as part of the family court on the Finer model. Indeed, it bears some resemblance to that committee's proposals for the enforcement of maintenance; but, wrenched out of the family context, the agency will destroy such coherence as the system now possesses and will undermine, for example, the intention of the Children Act 1989 to eliminate different categories of children and to ensure that all proceedings relating to one family will be heard in the same court.
The emphasis of the White Paper upon natural parents conflicts with the concept of the rights of the child who has been treated as a member of the family. There will be inequality of treatment between families because the Government state, without discussion, that the order of priority which should commonly prevail is that natural children ought to take precedence over stepchildren. This formula favours first families. It is astonishing that the most taxing

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problem of distributive justice and of the relationships between families is dealt with in the White Paper by the mere assertion of priority for natural children.
I have said enough to indicate the anxieties that these Benches entertain about the Bill to which we are giving a Second Reading. From these Benches we shall try to deal with as many of the difficulties as we can in Committee. But in our view the only satisfactory and compassionate solution lies in the establishment of a proper family court. The very high costs of establishing this new agency would have made a useful contribution to such a court.

Manchester Prison: The Woolf Report
4.45 p.m.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement about the report of Lord Justice Woolf's inquiry into the disturbances last April at Strangeways Prison, Manchester, and other prisons which is now being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary.
"I am grateful to Lord Justice Woolf and to Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, Judge Tumim, who joined in Part II of the inquiry, for such a wide-ranging and constructive report, which includes 12 recommendations and 204 proposals.
"The events of last April were unprecedented and unacceptable. Control of one of our largest prisons was lost for 25 days. Significant violence erupted at eight more prisons, and at others control was maintained with great difficulty. The country was shocked by the defiance and destruction which we saw nightly on our TV screens. I condemn utterly the behaviour of the small minority of the prisoners who joined in this orgy of destruction. As the House will be well aware, 183 persons have been convicted or are now awaiting trial on charges including murder and riot.
"The report concludes that some decisions might have been taken differently. Nevertheless, Lord Justice Woolf stresses, and I wish to stress to the House today, that the disturbances were handled with great skill and courage by the prison staff at all levels.
"Though Lord Justice Woolf makes some critical comments about the prison service, he also emphasises that the public have every reason to be extremely grateful to the members of the service who over a number of years have shown immense dedication, courage and professionalism. I want to endorse that judgment.
"Immediately after the end of the riot, my predecessor put in hand urgent action. Incidents of this sort must be dealt with firmly and quickly. We have therefore set up a new incident control centre, overhauled contingency plans and clarified the lines of responsibility for dealing with riots.
"More staff have been trained in the new and improved techniques of control and restraint which
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are necessary to handle dangerous incidents. The stock of riot control equipment has been increased. We have completed a review of the physical security of prisons, in particular access to roofs, and substantial improvements have been made.
"The country will not tolerate the kind of disgraceful behaviour witnessed last April. We must make clear our utter condemnation of it by introducing a new deterrent. We shall therefore, as we have already made clear, bring before the House proposals to create a new offence of prison mutiny, which will carry a maximum penalty of 10 extra years in prison. But Lord Justice Woolf emphasises that we need to balance security and control with justice and humanity, and I wholly endorse that view. Guilty criminals have to be punished by the loss of their liberty. Dangerous criminals have to be detained to protect the public. It is not the purpose of the prison system to provide holiday camps for prisoners. But it is not the purpose of the prison system to provide physical conditions which degrade and humiliate prisoners and strip away their self-respect. Prisons should be places which are austere but decent, providing a busy and positive regime which prepares criminals for their ultimate release.
"Many reforms are already in hand started by a major programme inaugurated by my noble friend Lord Whitelaw in 1979. Since 1979 eight new prisons have been built and 13 more are under construction.
"Over the next two years 12 new prisons will be opened. The prison population is now some 4,000 below what it was in September 1989. This means that we are in sight of the end of overcrowding. I believe that we can now take these reforms a major step further.
"I consider that the practice of prisoners having to slop out is degrading and intolerable. It makes it very difficult to run a sensible prison regime and should be brought to an end. The present target is to do this in 1997. Lord Justice Woolf recommends that it should not be later than February 1996. In my view we can and should do even better. I am now launching a programme to provide all prisoners with access to sanitation day and night by the end of 1994. This programme will cost an extra £36 million over the next four years. Half of this I will find from existing provision, but I am glad to say that an additional £18 million will be provided. I also consider that it is wrong for juveniles awaiting trial to be held in prison and I intend to bring that practice to an end.
"The report also makes many helpful recommendations about the regimes which we provide for prisoners. We must not forget that while imprisonment punishes the criminal and protects the public, its other purposes are rehabilitation and preparation for a return to the community. Since 1988 there has been a substantial increase in the hours spent on education, from 5·5 million to 7·7 million. I want to see more prisoners taking up educational courses and training in skills, so that

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they will have a better chance of leading a life free from crime when they are released. Prisoners must be kept constructively occupied in workshops and other activity, and Lord Justice Woolf makes important recommendations in this area.
"Lord Justice Woolf also emphasises how important it is for prisoners to retain their family ties. In my view it is vital that prisoners maintain that link so that they can assume their family responsibilities on release. It is also the thrust of Government thinking that everything should be done to avoid the break-up of families which itself can contribute to delinquency and crime. I therefore propose to increase the level of visits to prisoners and extend the arrangements for financially-assisted visits for visitors who are on low incomes. I have also decided to increase the opportunities for home leave in open prisons from three times a year to six times a year. I am placing details in the Library of the House.
"Lord Justice Woolf points out the value of cardphones, which allow prisoners to retain contact with their families. I am therefore announcing, subject to some limitation for security reasons, that cardphones paid for by prisoners will be provided in all those prisons which do not already have them.
"Despite the availability of cardphones, letters remain very important to most prisoners. Like Lord Justice Woolf, I believe that the present levels of censorship are unnecessary. I have therefore decided to abolish routine censorship in all establishments except dispersal prisons. Governors will retain for security reasons the right to censor.
"These measures represent a major series of reforms. But they cover only some of Lord Justice Woolf's recommendations. He makes many other proposals including the place of the prison service in the wider criminal justice system and the higher management of the service. I shall want to give those proposals the most careful consideration. I propose to issue a White Paper later this year which takes account of them and which will chart the direction of the prison service for the rest of the century and beyond.
"These changes will transform the living and working conditions of both prisoners and prison officers. But they depend crucially upon the managers and staff of the prison service. I have already visited many prisons and I have been very impressed with the dedication and the concern of the governors and the staff whom I have met.
"In the past industrial relations in the prison service have from time to time been troubled. The future wellbeing of the service requires a new spirit of co-operation on all the issues which we face. With this in mind I saw the trade unions representing all prison service staff earlier today. I very much hope they will respond in the spirit of Lord Justice Woolf's proposals.
"The events of last April marked a watershed in the history of our prison service. We cannot, and will not, tolerate the savagery and vandalism in our
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prisons which we saw then. We have already taken urgent action to remedy deficiencies. Lord Justice Woolf's report recognises that while prisoners do have to be held in secure conditions, a decent regime enhances security by making incidents such as those of last April less likely. The Woolf Report recommends constructive changes to our prison system which build on the substantial modernisation of the past decade. I have announced today further reforms and more will follow. I commend the report to the House."
My Lords, that concludes the text of the Statement.
4.47 p.m.
Lord Richard: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement that has been made in another place. We are also grateful to Lord Justice Woolf and to Judge Tumim for their report which is clearly thorough, far-reaching and comprehensive. I say that although I have not seen the report. I hope I may make a slight plea at this stage that we should look at our procedures in this House; frankly, they are ludicrous. When I asked at the Printed Paper Office whether I could see the report as I wished to reply to the Statement on behalf of the Opposition, I was told that the Printed Paper Office had the report but that I could not see it until after the Statement had been made. However one looks at it, that is absurd. I hope that something can be done about it.
It is right that we should echo the tributes paid by Lord Justice Woolf to the dedication, courage and professionalism of the members of the prison service. Such plaudits were not unexpected among those of us who have any connection, in a professional capacity or otherwise, with the members of the prison service. However, we are also right to wonder why it is that it takes a report of such a fundamental nature on a riot of such length and ferocity to produce even the limited response that we have heard from the Government today.
Strangeways was a riot waiting to happen. The signs were there to be read. Surely, the inquiries into the riots that occurred in 1986, 1988 and 1989 should have indicated to the Government that the poor quality of prison regimes would lead to explosive situations—and explode they did. Seeing who has repeated the Statement in this House today, namely, the noble Lord the Leader of the House who was the Home Secretary at that time, I cannot resist reminding the House that Labour Party recommendations urged the Government a year ago—long before the Strangeways riot—that there should be a national system of accredited standard; that there should be better prospects for prisoners to maintain links with their families; that there should be a revision of disciplinary procedures; and that there should be access to education, recreation and employment as of right.
I also remind the House that the then Home Secretary, who now sits on the Benches opposite, dismissed those proposals and treated them with derision. There is great joy in heaven over every sinner

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who repents, and I should have liked to have seen some small signs of repentance this afternoon from the noble Lord the Leader of the House when he made the Statement on behalf of the Government, who seem to have adopted a great deal of what my party urged upon them a year or so ago.
I particularly commend some of Lord Justice Woolf's recommendations, particularly those designed to give prisoners a greater degree of dignity and better access to rehabilitative treatment. Of course we support the end of slopping out by 1994. It is a degrading practice and should have ended a long time ago. It is interesting to note, however, that the Government can now find £36 million in order to speed up that process in the light of Lord Justice Woolf's recommendations when that money was apparently not available when the Government were urged to do so some time ago.
I particularly like the proposal that prisoners should be able to serve their sentences nearer to their homes. We all agree that continuity of family contact must be beneficial not only to the individual prisoner but also in terms of the security of the prison.
I feel strongly about two other provisions in Lord Justice Woolf's report: that we should consider new methods of dealing with sex offenders and those sentenced to life imprisonment. The existing terms of Rule 43 and the way that they are administered in our prisons is not the most glowing tribute to the way in which we deal with the problem of criminal offenders in this country. I also urge the Government to accept —and accept quickly—the recommendation which I understand is contained in the report that persons suffering from mental disorders should not be held in ordinary prisons but should be held in special hostels.
Those of us who practise in the courts cannot but fail to be struck by the fact that in recent years more and more of the people one represents seem to suffer from some kind of mental disorder. That may not be a new feature of the courts. However, all too often now care in the community appears to mean that somebody who gets into trouble with the authorities and breaks the law ends up in the prison system where he receives minimal care and rehabilitation. I believe that the House would approve if people suffering from mental disorder could be dealt with outside the normal prison context.
Reading the Statement of the Home Secretary in another place and repeated here today, the proposal for nationally determined standards is now accepted by the Government.
Whatever else the recommendations mean and their acceptance by the Government implies, they mean more resources. They mean better trained prison officers; they mean more and not less supervision. To produce what the Statement describes as "austere but decent" standards for all will be an expensive task. Therefore I have three specific questions for the Government.
First, the noble Lord the Leader of the House will not be surprised if I ask whether the money will be
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made available to carry out the recommendations of the Woolf Report which the Government accept. Secondly, when do the Government hope to produce their White Paper? I trust that it will be sooner rather than later. Also, when do they propose to take action on those parts of the Woolf Report which they accept? Can the Criminal Justice Bill, which is about to leave the other place and come to this House, be used for action on some of the Woolf Report recommendations which the Government accept?
Thirdly, the Statement says that there have been consultations this morning with all the trade unions representing people employed in the prison service. The Government ask for a new spirit of co-operation in the light of the Woolf Report. I understand that on the part of the Prison Officers' Association at least that co-operation was forthcoming. I should like the noble Lord the Leader of the House to confirm that. Will the Government also confirm that they recognise that co-operation is a two-way process and that the legitimate grievances of the Prison Officers' Association and those employed in the prison service will have to be taken into account and resolved at the same time as the Government appeal to them for a greater degree of co-operation?
It is sad that the recommendations are made in the light of the riot that took place. However, I believe that we have a unique opportunity—certainly one that will not occur very often—to put right those deficiencies in the prison service which the Woolf Report and all of us recognise exist.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I should like to join the noble Lord, Lord Richard, in thanking the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement. It is particularly appropriate that he should do so because he was Home Secretary at the time when the disturbances took place. Not only did they take place during the period of office of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, but major disturbances also took place during the period of office of Mr. Hurd. They also occurred in the period of office of the Labour Government.
I, too, should like to express my thanks to Lord Justice Woolf, Judge Tumim and the assessors who did an extremely good job in an extraordinarily short period of time. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Richard, that the situation regarding the publication of the report and its issue to Members of this House and of another place is absurd. Governments of different parties have found it convenient to make Statements in both Houses without Members having a full copy of the report available to them. That is a pity and I hope that the matter will be looked into. It is done entirely for the convenience of Ministers. Copies of the report were made available under the usual lobby rules to the journalists who will comment on the report.
I recognise that many of the matters dealt with by Lord Justice Woolf are not dealt with in the Statement, for entirely understandable reasons. One concerns the proposal regarding local community gaols. That is a particularly interesting idea on which we shall be interested in due course to learn the

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Government's reaction. A second point is the question of a new prison rule aimed at the elimination of overcrowding.
I very much welcome a great deal of what the Home Secretary said in his Statement. The Statement points to major improvements in the prison system of this country. We should give unqualified praise for many of the policies which have been announced today.
The Home Secretary said in the Statement that it is not the purpose of the prison system to tolerate conditions which degrade and humiliate prisoners and damage their self-respect. Yet, as we all know, we have accepted such conditions for many decades. That being so, we are delighted that the slopping out process is to end by the end of 1994 and that the Government have gone further than the recommendation of Lord Justice Woolf. It is a truly disgusting system and we welcome the fact that additional resources will be made available to deal with the problem.
We support the Home Secretary's decision to expand the number of educational courses, to develop skills training and to improve the quantity of workshop activities. We also support emphatically the expansion of family visits and the use of cardphones so that prisoners can more easily maintain contact with their families.
Finally, we warmly welcome the decision to reduce drastically the level of censorship that takes place in prisons, except of course in dispersal prisons and in particular cases at the discretion of governors. A great deal of censorship has been wholly unnecessary. In fact it has been one of the least attractive restrictive practices applied in the prison system. It has absorbed countless hours of staff time which could have been far better used to improve the quality of regimes in many of our prison department establishments.
In conclusion, I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware—as I am sure that he is, given his recent ministerial experience—that it is now vital that there should be an improvement in industrial relations in the prison system. In his Statement the Home Secretary referred to industrial relations in the service having been troubled. If I may say so, that was a classic English understatement. As we all know, industrial relations in the prison service are worse than in any other part of British industry, either public or private.
Is he clear that the major changes announced today will not succeed if the relentless confrontation between some branches of the POA and management continues? We all recognise that additional manpower will be required as a result of the implementation of some of these recommendations. However, he must be aware I hat everyone in the prison service now has the responsibility to ensure that those major reforms succeed' and that they are not accompanied by massive and unrealistic demands for additional manpower, which can be afforded by neither this Government nor any other government that is likely to take power in this country.
I am sure that the noble Lord the Leader of the House will appreciate that the House will be eager to
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have an early debate on this matter. I hope very much that he will accept from these Benches our hope that he will provide time for such a debate.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, thanked Lord Justice Woolf and Judge Tumim for the work that they have done. I am sure that we all proffer our thanks. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, said that he had not seen the report, but despite that he seemed to have a very good grasp of it. I think that my words might be misinterpreted if I were to say that he was fortunate in not having had to read it. However, my meaning would be that it is a very weighty document indeed and Members of the House will wish to study it with care.
I must say that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, was ungenerous when he said that there had been a limited response to the report. I read out a number of decisions made by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and I heard many times "Hear, hear" from the Labour Benches as I read them out. It is rather absurd to say that there was a limited response when I was able to announce that my right honourable friend said that in 1994 there would be an end to slopping-out, that there would be changes in censorship, an end to juvenile remands in prisons, an increase in family visits, an increase in facilities for Phonecards and so on.
The noble Lord, Lord Richard, said that there was bound to be an explosion and asked why more had not been done. Again, that is an extraordinary comment from the Benches opposite. It was my noble friend Lord Whitelaw who persuaded the Government to embark on the first major prison building programme of this century in 1979. It is largely due to his marvellous work that we are in a position now to adopt many of the proposals made by Lord Justice Woolf in this report. Had we carried on as we were in 1979, without a penny being spent on new prisons, we should indeed be in an impossible position today. The noble Lord might have been more generous and pointed to the fact that we have made considerable progress since 1979 with the completion of eight prisons, 12 more prisons about to be completed in the next two years and 13 prisons altogether in a year or two after that.
The noble Lord, Lord Richard, was glad that at last the Government had accepted the recommendation of the report that there should be access to education as of right. I do not wish the noble Lord to be under any misapprehension at all that in this report there are certain proposals to the effect that there should be some kind of contract or compact between the prison governor and the prisons. That has not been accepted thus far by my right honourable friend. One has only to think for a moment to understand some of the difficulties that might be involved, with continual allegations that in some way or other the contract had not been fulfilled.
However, I think we can all agree that what is necessary is that facilities for education should steadily be expanded in the prison service. That is precisely what has been happening during these past few years. It is very interesting to note—it was one of

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the tragedies of Strangeways with which I was brought face to face in April —the progress that had been made by Mr. Brendan O'Friel during the year before the outbreak of the riot. One could go round prison after prison in this country and see the progress that was being made.
Again, the noble Lord was very grudging in his praise of my right honourable friend for announcing an end to slopping-out and said that it should have been done long ago. It certainly was not done when his government were in office and little progress was made in that direction. I certainly agree with what he had to say about the far too large a number of people with mental disorders who find themselves in prison. He knows the great efforts that have been made to persuade the courts over the years that whenever possible they should not send such persons to prison.
The noble Lord, Lord Richard, asked me three questions. He asked whether money would be made available for the recommendations that have been accepted, and the answer is yes. He asked when the White Paper will be produced. I think I recollect correctly that my right honourable friend said that it would be in the summer of this year. He also asked me about co-operation by the prison service and said in effect that there had always been co-operation by the prison service, or that is what he had been told. It is ridiculous to deny that there have been difficulties in the past and we must all work together to try to remove those difficulties. Now we are faced with all the new challenges identified by Lord Justice Woolf in his report.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Richard, about the availability of reports of this nature when a Statement is to be made. Obviously it is something that has concerned Parliament over a very long period of time. I cannot make any rash promises but it is certainly something which I shall study and talk about to my colleagues. I am glad that he congratulated my right honourable friend on the steps taken to expand visits and to enable better contact to be maintained between a prisoner and his family. I myself believe that that is fundamental.
The noble Lord also welcomed the change in the censorship rules. I am grateful for what he had to say about industrial relations in the prison service.
5.9 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I congratulate the Government on moving forward to 1994 the end date for slopping-out. Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord the Leader of the House if he would give attention to the methods to be employed. The methods that have been used quite widely in the past have meant putting in in-cell sanitation. That is certainly better than a chamber pot but only marginally so.
I think that everyone who has considered this matter would agree that this has to be done by electronically controlled doors from cells to lavatories. I am only anxious that the wrong things should not be done.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I think I am right in saying that Lord Justice Woolf suggests that one or the other system ought to be made available. I suppose that to some extent it depends on the physical characteristics of the individual establishment. Electronic locking and unlocking systems are quite difficult to install.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the constructive reaction by both Lord Justice Woolf and Her Majesty's Inspector of Prisons to the disgraceful scenes at Strangeways is much to be welcomed? Does he also appreciate that I greatly commend the response of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary?
Is my noble friend further aware and, and perhaps I may also ask kindly, is the noble Lord, Lord Richard, also aware, that to achieve improvements in our prisons against the background of the widespread indifference by the general public and the difficulty of obtaining money for them has defied all Home Secretaries over the years? All have done a great deal. However, it makes one extremely modest when one considers in the final event how little one has achieved. But it must be said time and again that that has much to do with the great indifference to the conditions of the staff and prisoners in our prisons—the staff greatly deserve better conditions—by the general public, Parliament and a large number of Members of Parliament. In the past I have often wondered, as I do today, how many Members of another place have ever been inside a prison. How many have ever seen the conditions? How many realise how enormous the expenditure must be to fulfil only some of the recommendations in the report?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his remarks. I wish that it had not happened in this way, but there is no doubt that the events of Strangeways have woken many people up to the problems in our prisons. Such an event concentrates people's minds on a problem which they may previously have avoided considering.
My noble friend does not do himself justice. In a sense he was the exception. He was able to win resources at a difficult time in order to embark on an extensive prison building programme. Together with changing practices of sentencing by the courts, it has reduced the prison population by 4,000 since 1989. It has helped to make possible the changes which are now demanded by Lord Justice Woolf.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, we very much welcome the reference to improvements in education and training. I hope that we shall be able to pursue them at much greater length in a debate. To what extent are the Government taking training on board? It is becoming a matter of great urgency. Training inside prisons is not of the slightest use unless it is possible for the prisoner when released to obtain work in the skill for which he has been trained. That has big implications for sentencing policy.
As I am sure the noble Lord knows, since 1975 the Germans have made training one of their major priorities with regard to sentencing in order that it can

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lead to employment. If it does not do so, there may be frustration and the discrediting of training. It is a matter of the greatest urgency. I declare an interest. I speak as chairman of Apex. The amount of money which has come through the TECs and is now available for training ex-prisoners is being seriously reduced. Training of ex-prisoners in order to obtain employment will be cut back drastically unless something is done about the amount of money available, and done now.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I had better not embark now on the training of ex-prisoners. I shall speak on the contents of the report. I agree with the noble Baroness that one can hardly over emphasise the importance of training within prisons. It is not just a question of trying to prepare people for life once they have left prison but of keeping them gainfully employed while they are in prison so that they do not get into mischief; it is giving the prison service a more productive life. One can imagine nothing more destructive than having to work in a situation in which one is a mere turnkey, but if one is involved in trying to prepare people for life after prison then one is in a very important job indeed.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, perhaps I may—
Lord Elton: My Lords, is it not a Member from this side? It is not.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, did a very good job in his time. In another moment he will no doubt do so again. However, I cannot share the attitude of cosy self-congratulation which seems to be spreading on the Benches opposite. Anyone who has worked in prisons for a long time knows that conditions for prisoners are worse now than they were 20 years ago. Let us be clear on that fact. Anyone who has read the long series of scathing reports published by Judge Tumim is aware that the situation in our prisons is a national scandal.
I have not had the opportunity to read the report. I am ready to take an optimistic view. However, since sentencing was excluded, the worst feature does not come into the discussion. It is like an excellent performance of "Hamlet" without the Prince. As long as judges send too many people to prison, the conditions will be very bad.
The other aspect concerns the regimes. I am under the impression that regimes were excluded in the report. If I am wrong, since I have not read the report, the noble Lord will correct me. I believe that Judge Tumim is undertaking a fuller inquiry into the regimes. Until they are altered and prisoners do not spend abominably long hours in their cells—it is longer than it used to be—matters will not improve.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, is the noble Earl concentrating too much on the local prisons? No one doubts that we have a major problem in our local prisons. However, new, modern prisons such as Belmarsh in Woolwich and some in Lancashire are of a far higher standard than those available 20 years ago.
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The noble Earl is right. One aspect of the problem concerns sentencing practice. We have addressed other aspects in the Criminal Justice Bill. So far as concerns the regimes, Lord Justice Woolf made it absolutely plain at the beginning of the report that I told him that he could set his own agenda. He was aware that if he wished to consider the importance of regimes he could do so.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I do not wish to comment on the report until I have read it. However, congratulations are in order to my noble friend upon having commissioned it, and to my noble friend Lord Whitelaw on having initiated a programme of expansion and refurbishment without which matters would be devastatingly worse.
My purpose for intervening is to remind noble Lords that the size of the problem depends to a large extent on the number of people sent to prison. It is not only sentencing policy which determines that. It is determined by the way in which we bring up, educate and guide our young people. Will my noble friend and his right honourable friend bear that factor very much in mind when considering the report? Will they pay close attention to the imperative (as I see it) of rendering our treatment of the young cost-effective by supporting those schemes within the voluntary sector designed to deflect young people in danger of offending from an offending career and those who have offended from custody? Programmes of rehabilitation within the community are more effective than any regime which can be produced in a custodial sentence.
I declare an interest as chairman of the Intermediate Treatment Fund. It was instituted to make such provision specifically for younger persons and juvenile offenders, and relates principally to the Department of Health. The department and the Home Secretary can rightly consider that organisation as a means of reducing the problem.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, my noble friend will agree that it is worth while to consider all the influences which may turn a child towards or away from crime. One has to consider parental responsibility. We address that in the Criminal Justice Bill. One has to consider the opportunities for young people to find useful things to do. One has to consider whether discipline in schools is properly organised. All those factors have an influence on the number of people who eventually become mixed up in the criminal justice system. My noble friend is entirely right.
Lord Richard: My Lords, the possibility of a debate was raised during the byplay this afternoon. Can the noble Lord the Leader of the House comment upon that? If his reply is that it is a matter for the usual channels, will he undertake to give them a kick, if that is not too mixed a metaphor?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, it is a matter for the usual channels but I should not be at all disappointed if there were a debate. In so far as I have any influence with the usual channels I shall exercise it.

Child Support Bill [H.L.]
5.20 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester: My Lords, perhaps I may first apologise to the House, and to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, for the fact that I may have to leave before the end of the debate. I have a long-standing commitment in Gloucester.
I wish to remind the House briefly of the Churches' long-standing interest in the fate of children no longer in the care of one or both of their natural parents. What is now the Children's Society, for example, was founded well over 100 years ago by an anglican layman, Edward Rudolf. Many noble Lords will remember that its original title was the Central Home for Waifs and Strays. Barnardo's was founded even earlier than that. In those days it was said that there were 25,000 homeless children in London, living on their wits and with no legal protection whatever.
Before the arrival of the welfare state during this century, it was predominantly church-based organisa-tions which cared for those whom we then called the unmarried mother and her children. Threaded through that history has been a determination to protect and to provide proper opportunities in life for children who, for whatever reason, must be brought up by only one parent or without either natural parents.
Surely it is basic to Christian belief and teaching that the Divine order of creation envisages responsible, caring parenthood for every child and by both father and mother. But when that ideal pattern is broken and a lone-parent family results it is only right that the other parent—who in nine cases out of 10 is the father—should at least be recalled to his financial responsibilities if he can afford it and, if necessary, through legislation. I am confident, therefore, that there will be widespread support from the Churches for the principles which underlie the Bill; that is, parental responsibility and the primacy of children and their needs.
It must also be right in principle to provide incentives for lone parents to find work and so reduce dependence on income support from the state. It is a sombre thought that there are now more than 1 million lone-parent families; that is approximately 15 per cent. of all families with children. Perhaps an even more sobering reflection in terms of the future of our children in Britain is the fact that more than 75 per cent. of those 1 million lone parents need income support to make ends meet.

The figures already referred to, which were provided by the Family Policy Studies Centre, indicate that during the 1980s of those lone parents claiming income support the proportion who received maintenance payments from the absent parent fell from 50 per cent. to 23 per cent. The same research suggests that by far the biggest cause for the increase in the number of lone-parent families, with all the attendant handicaps for children, is the catastrophic-ally rising rate of divorce.
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Those of us in the Churches and elsewhere who do our best to support the stability and permanence of the marriage bond are bound to see in the problem of child support the inevitable judgment that falls upon a society which cannot, it appears, prevent tens of thousands of its citizens, nearly all of them men, from simply walking away from the responsibilities that they have accepted in becoming fathers, in many instances within the married state.
Of course we should pay great heed to the constitutional implications of the Bill, argued so prophetically by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and to the virtues of family courts, argued by the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, and no doubt by others. Nevertheless, I believe that the creation of a single, powerful and well-publicised child support agency could be a significant symbol of the nation's will to grapple with the problem of the children who are at risk and suffering as a result of family breakdown.
That is to be warmly welcomed, first, as a sign that society as a whole should accept moral responsibility for all its children and, secondly, because it recognises that the present system for assessing and enforcing child maintenance is in bad need of reform. Within that framework of broad welcome there are bound to be reservations and criticisms from those with particular concerns and interests in the welfare of children and of their parents. No doubt they will have to be dealt with in detail during the later stages of the Bill.
I wish to raise a particular matter which has already attracted comment in the press and in the speeches that we have heard this afternoon. I refer to the proposal to reduce the income support of a lone parent who is not willing to disclose to an investigating officer from the agency the name of the other parent of the child. I believe that, if successful, that expedient would coerce a number of men into some financial responsibility for their children. Furthermore, it would marginally increase the payments coming into the Exchequer from absent fathers. However, one wonders whether such financial benefits would be significant. The White Paper states that only in a small minority of cases is the caring parent reluctant to identify the other parent. Therefore, against that small financial gain to the Treasury we must set the most probable effect of reducing the income support of a lone parent; that will be further deprivation for the child or children.
The Churches can offer plenty of evidence showing how difficult it is for any family nowadays to manage on income support. It is unrealistic to suppose that a mother's income at that level could be reduced by up to 20 per cent., as the White Paper suggests, without the child also suffering.
We appear to have another example of a piece of well intentioned legislation shooting itself in the foot. If we really believe that children come first would it not be better to offer even a small maintenance disregard for lone parents on income support? In other words, would it not be better to substitute the carrot for the stick when dealing with mothers

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reluctant to name the fathers of their children, particularly as the stick may well land on the children as much as on their mothers?
That may appear to be a small issue against the background of the main provisions of the Bill. Nevertheless, it serves to indicate how even small blemishes might expose the Government to perhaps unjust suggestions that they have allowed the so-called interest of the taxpayer to distort or obscure the altogether noble and proclaimed aim of putting children first.
The problem of the rising social security costs of lone parents no doubt needs to be addressed. However, the Bill suitably amended will, one hopes, be seen not in that context but as part of a concerted programme of social reform which supports marriage and family life and reduces divorce and family breakdown as well as offering realistic and practical encouragement to the victims of family breakdown.
5.30 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I support the principles behind the Bill; namely, that priority must be given to the well being of children. It is in accord with the Children Act 1989 that the well being of the child is paramount.
It is agreed that an awesome responsibility lies with parents for the care and maintenance of their children, whether within the family or by parents who are separated or divorced. Surely it is right that wherever possible and practicable the parent who has left the matrimonial home—usually the father—should con-tribute to his child's maintenance and in most cases should maintain a parental relationship.
I support the concept of a formula—but only as a guideline—which could establish consistency of assessment throughout the country. According to the Bill, it is recognised that the caring parent would be relieved of pursuing her husband for child maintenance as that would be carried out by the agency.
Those principles are surely right. However, it is difficult to accept that the structure, procedure and methods laid down in the Bill to implement those principles are wise, practicable or, indeed, acceptable. Furthermore, the setting up of an agency within the social security system with a non-negotiable formula will be costly and there is no proof that it will be cost-effective.
The system will be divisive: on the one hand, the agency will deal only with child maintenance; on the other hand, the courts will deal with custody, access, education and housing. Therefore, parents will need to deal with both the agency and the courts. The principle of one door on which to knock, which was established in the Social Services Act 1980, will be abandoned. The diversification will be confusing to parents. Should we not consider those parents who have the care of children?
The very nature of the social security service, as with the Poor Law, makes it unpopular, albeit essential to the needy. However, it is not always acceptable to those outside the social security system. As one who has had to take people to social security offices, I cannot understand how we can help parents
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if they must get into the social security system when, in the ordinary way, they are not part of it. I admire enormously those who work in the social security system. It is not their fault that visiting a social security office is unacceptable. That is the way it is. It was like that with the Poor Law and it is like that with social security.
The formula will be worked out on a computer and that will surely be inflexible and not negotiable. It must be acknowledged that personal relationships interact with financial arrangements. I do not believe that a computer can take into account personal relationships. As I understand it, child maintenance orders go to the agency which must implement the formula through the computer. Can the computer cover all eventualities? As I said, I understand that whatever comes from the computer will not be negotiable.
I cite a few cases. For example, a husband with considerable financial means voluntarily agrees to pay child maintenance way above the figure of the formula. Later there is a disagreement between his former wife and himself and it is usually about access or education. Neither of those matters is the responsibility of the agency but is the responsibility of the courts. He can go to the agency knowing that he will pay less maintenance. Thus, the child will lose out.
Secondly, let us take the case of a wife who negotiates with her husband to forgo receipt of maintenance but to keep the matrimonial home. That was a matter touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. If there is a dispute between them—and I repeat that it is usually about access—will the husband then negotiate through the formula? If so, the mother may lose the matrimonial home.
On appeals, as I understand the Bill, if an appeal is made against the figure put forward by the computer, the appeal goes to a higher member of staff within the social security office. If the appeal is an internal social security matter, then an aggrieved parent has no outside channel of appeal. Therefore, there is no access to a legally-aided hearing in the courts. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will explain how such a system is commensurate with natural justice because in a court, the complainant can be heard.
As regards the relationship between the agency and the courts, as stated earlier the agency deals only with child maintenance orders and the courts with custody, education and housing. If the agency fails to get a man to pay maintenance, I assume that the case must go to court. If he continues to refuse to pay then I believe that the final sanction is prison. In that case, there will be no maintenance for the child or for anyone, but the country will have to pay for the man in prison.
Could not the principles of the Bill be dealt with differently? Could not the Bill transfer the responsibilities of the agency to the courts? I believe that a figure of 4,000 staff was mentioned. Could not those staff be appointed to the courts? If they were so appointed, they would work with the probation service and the courts. The parents would have only one place to go to. Surely those extra staff and the

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setting up of an agency will be very costly. Even if only half of those staff were appointed to the courts, I believe that more money would be brought in.
Under the Children Act 1989 a first step was taken towards a family court. Could not cases of divorce, including maintenance, be dealt with by the family court? That was a point made by the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord McGregor. Could not account be taken of the Law Commission's report Grounds for Divorce? If that report takes the form of legislation—and we hope that it will in the next Session—it will provide for a period of one year in which parents can decide between themselves what is to be the position as regards access and maintenance. I believe that if such legislation were to be enacted, there would not be so many problems.
Her Majesty's Government are right to promote a Bill to minimise the non-payment of child maintenance. But for both emotional and financial reasons I believe profoundly that it should not be executed by way of an agency, which is an administrative procedure using a non-negotiable formula. Such matters should be dealt with not by the executive but by the courts.
I am given to understand that a great deal of the Bill is based on what is happening in Australia. However, I was advised that a judge who has just returned from Australia feels that the legislation is not working there. I received that information second-hand and have not been able to contact that judge. However, I hope that the noble and learned Lord will agree that the work should come entirely under the jurisdiction of the courts.
Finally, perhaps we should consider the people concerned; that is, the parents. As I said earlier in my speech, the parents will not like the legislation; they will prefer the matter to be dealt with by the courts.
5.40 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, on the cover of the glossy magazine that we obtained from the printed paper office it says, Children Come First. They do not come first in your Lordships' House; they come third on the day of this Second Reading of the Bill. I thought we had dealt with the intrusion of Statements and debates on Statements in the middle of the business of the day. If we have not done so, then we should have done so. The House of Commons does not behave in this way, allowing Statements made in the House of Lords to be pushed on it right in the middle of a debate. It bides its time and so could we. This is a short debate. It could have been completed before we had the long Statement on the Woolf Report on prisons and the inevitable tail provided by other noble Lords on such an important and complex matter.
This Bill is not a Child Support Bill; it is a taxing Bill. I am surprised that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not certified it as a money Bill and included it as a schedule in the Finance Bill. It imposes a form of taxation upon an identifiable section of the community who will be mostly men; there are to be
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inspectors who will assess what they shall pay; determine the method and the order in which they shall pay it, and have the power to enforce it.
In short, this tax is PAYT—pay as you are told. It is levied by a separate arm of bureaucracy which is to be especially created for the task. The Bill reflects the outburst of the former Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, whose concern for children came second to not allowing absentee fathers to get away with nonpayment of maintenance. It is a middle-class approach to the conventional obligations of men towards their children. And it goes much wider than that, even in the context of conventional thought.
My noble friend Lord Mishcon asked many penetrating questions. This is merely the skeleton of the taxing machine which the Bill will erect. There is much that we shall want to know about it; there will be much that we shall not be able to find out about it until the regulations appear. We shall then not be able to change them. We shall have to swallow them or reject them as a whole. That is the position we are in.
One of the matters to consider is from where we shall obtain the army of bureaucrats—the child support inspectors. They will have a task which is probably foreign to most of them. If they come from the Department of Health and Social Security they will know nothing about taxation or about enforcing payments. They cannot even collect their own contributions. That is done by the Inland Revenue. If it is to be efficiently done, I cannot more strongly recommend other than that the inspectors should be drawn from the Inland Revenue who know what the situation entails and are experienced in that kind of activity.
However, we must presumably take the Bill as it stands and see what we can do with it. We must acknowledge that the Bill will cause far more tears, anger, resentment and violence than its authors imagined. It is an intrusion by a new arm of bureaucracy into the most delicate, emotional and difficult aspects of human relationships. It concerns men, women and their children. In the field of child support we all know that we are dealing almost completely with cases of marital breakdowns, disorders and enmities; in many cases love has turned to hate; women do not want to hear any more about their ex-husbands or men friends. Yet in our diligence to collect money and ensure that men do not get away with non-payment of maintenance, we shall penalise women who refuse to pursue their husbands for support if at the same time they seek social security to support their children. They will be fined for taking that step; that is quite wrong. I do not know with what skill, understanding or justice the public detective service—mostly conducted at public expense—will pursue husbands and seek to establish the fulfilment of their obligations to their womenfolk.
The Bill is more concerned with support to the Treasury than support to children. Most of the people in real need on account of the breakdown of the marriage and failure of husbands to pay contributions are in receipt of social security benefits, and they will profit little or not at all from money which may be dragged out of the absent fathers. I do not know

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whether noble Lords in this House will react as men often do; but I can assure the House that when men are confronted by the kind of situation that may arise when they are accosted and tracked down by the child support officer, they will react in a disagreeable way.
Not all men are responsible for the breakdown in their marriage. Not all women are incapable of looking after their children financially. It may be that under these rules the formula set out in one of the White Papers will be followed: that the joint resources will be brought to bear on the amount which eventually has to be obtained from the absentee father.
One can understand the point of view expressed in a sensitive letter to The Times newspaper this morning by representatives of a group of child charity organisations: that this is the most difficult and delicate field of all. Some regard and respect must be given to people's attitudes towards the partners and the help that is sought to be given in circumstances where they would much rather not have it.
Since when have parents been wholly responsible for the support and upbringing of their children? We do not ask them to pay for their education or health care. They receive housing benefit and protected housing conditions. The parents receive child benefit payments which are tax free. There are numerous supports which are given in the wide range of social benefits for children. What then is so sacrosanct about making the man pay? He has probably set up another family. That is acknowledged in the approach to the resources that a man may have to devote to his old family. It is intolerable that we should pursue in this way the old-fashioned idea that fathers and breadwinners are responsible for the upbringing of their children. We have a new concept of their position in society.
We are now saying that our children are so precious to the future that we must take care of them as never before We must educate them fully; there must be more higher education; they must be given training and jobs must be found for them. We must compete in every way with our European and world competitors whose provision for children is much better than our own. We shall not squeeze and freeze the child benefit payment for several years. We should double it now in order to get more support for our children. We do not hear anything of that kind from the Government. Where are these men who are hiding away? Some of them are underneath the arches. I am astonished that on the subject of homelessness no one has referred to the major report that I had conducted in 1965. The report considered the extent of homelessness and the causes of it. The subject has not been studied so fully since. A great many people have decided to walk out, leave everything behind and take to the road. They are afraid of going back. They are afraid of life as they knew it and do not want to go back. There are plenty like that.
Among young people one gets the rejection of home conditions; but that is by the way. When I see what the child support officer is free to do, we shall need to know a great deal more about the procedures that he will follow. One of the matters that I looked at
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most carefully was the relationship between the child support officer and the Inland Revenue. There is a great deal of loose talk heard about the poll tax and other matters to the effect that if one wants to know about a person's ability to pay, the Inland Revenue could tell you if it opened its books.
I have looked at Schedule 2 on page 35 which states in paragraph 1(2):
"In such a case, no obligation as to secrecy imposed by statute or otherwise on a person employed in relation to the Inland Revenue shall prevent any information obtained or held in connection with the assessment or collection of income tax from being disclosed".
I ask for a very firm assurance that that does not mean that the confidentiality of a taxpayer's private affairs is to be broken to let the child support officer have a free run in order to find out about a person's resources and likely ability to pay. I have been assured that this provision relates only to tracing people, and that it is not intended to breach the confidentiality of the Inland Revenue.
I shall not delay the House on the imperative need for keeping the confidentiality of the Inland Revenue. I assure noble Lords that if the books of the Inland Revenue are to be opened to other departments to any extent and to child support officers, police officers and any one else of that kind, then the efficiency of our tax system will be seriously impaired. We cannot give to child support officers information that the Inland Revenue does not give under the Royal prerogative in cases involving criminal offences. Information is not given in that regard except in the rare cases where the Inland Revenue puts its prerogative in the hands of the court to decide.
These are important matters. Perhaps the Inland Revenue should be there to help the child support officers to trace someone; and information must be supplied by employers and others who hold information. My noble friend Lord Mishcon, who penetrated this Bill with great skill and feeling, referred to the powers that these officers will have. The approach suggested is not right. It should be combined with measures that have a wider import altogether.
Widowhood is a respectable condition, and the social security system rightly shows concern for the bereavement and possible plight. It provides for disablement, sickness and constant attendance. It does many things for many people. That is all part of the structure of our social security system which is intended to put the citizen in a reasonable relationship with his fellow men and women. The separated or divorced wife has never been regarded as a respectable woman. In many cases it is believed that if she is in that condition, it is her own fault. We should now regard divorce, separation and the exposure of children on that account as a hazard of considerable relevance to life as it is at the present time.
It would be a good idea for the social insurance scheme to include this problem as one of life's hazards for men and women and for the benefit of children. There should be no blame attached. People should be allowed to make fresh starts to their lives. Children cannot come first all the time while mothers and

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fathers have to reconstruct their own lives and try to get something from them. My approach may be unconventional, but what I suggest will come about one day. We are saying that children should come first so we should put them first. We shall have to discard a good deal of conventional thinking about parental obligations. We shall certainly have to get rid of the idea that men should not be allowed to get away with their obligations. There is not much that men are allowed to get away with these days. I see no reason why they should be held rigidly in almost any circumstances to a conventional approach to the obligation to support their children.
This foretells that the Committee stage will be very penetrating. The Government should be ready with some indication of what the procedures and guidelines are to be in the exercise of the responsibilities of child support officers. This is a risky venture into a new field of human relationships which, under the system proposed, offers the danger that in the end we shall do a great deal more harm to children than is caused by the present system.
My final word is this. Many men, if required to contribute to the support of children, will demand access. Many separated wives do not want them to have that. They will often forgo payments from the husband in order that he shall not disturb the household long after he has left; long after he has obligations elsewhere. I have had no personal experience of this. I have no children, and I have not been put in this situation in any sense at all. But 10 years of broadcasting on social problems—many of them human, domestic and personal—and 25 years in the House of Commons brings one very close indeed to this problem. The fundamentals of it are the same today as they were 25 and 30 years ago. All we are doing now is to chase people who are defaulters. We turn defaulters into delinquents, and that is what this Bill is intending to do.
6.1 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, your Lordships will recollect the arresting opening of the dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. It opens in a laboratory with a row of test tubes in which human ova are being fertilised and increased. I do not think even those who in the last Session were favourable to in vitro fertilisation would wish that to be a universal system. On the contrary, what we have and what is almost universally applauded is the nuclear family to bring up the young who are the future of our society. Perhaps the cover to which the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, referred presents an idealistic picture. Nevertheless it shows what is generally accepted—the felicities and ecstasies that can exist in a nuclear family where there are young children.
It is true that at the bottom right-hand corner of the cover there is the child of a broken home. It is with him and his sister that your Lordships are concerned today. Nevertheless I venture to reject entirely what was seemingly suggested by the noble Lord who preceded me, that parents have no place to play in the
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upbringing of a child in the context of the welfare state. On the contrary, society has three jobs to do in this connection. The first is to see that the father plays his part in the maintenance of the child. The noble Lord, with his free-ranging mind, alone in your Lordships' debate, asks why should that be so. The answer is that it should be so because society affords to the father privileges in relation to the upbringing of his child. It does that through a long tradition, believing firmly on the basis of tradition and long experience that that is of benefit to the child. It has not been so in every society. In Sparta, the child was brought up largely in the public domain. I cannot believe that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, would really wish to see that in our society. Therefore, the first job of society is to see that the father provides for his child. That is the first salient motive of the Bill.
The second job is to see that the child does not suffer from any inadequacy of the father in what is required of him. The noble Lord quite rightly refers to all the benefits that the social services afford. That is a continuing obligation on society because it is on the children of society that the continuance of society depends.
The third job for society is to see to it that there is less breakdown of marriage. The right reverend Prelate, who I am sorry to see has left the Chamber, mentioned that one of our objectives was to see that there was less divorce. The figures given in the White Paper are indeed striking. In 1971, which was when the Divorce Reform Act 1969 came into force, there were fewer than 600,000 one-parent families. In 1986 there were well over a million of them, and the figure is rising. That is the third function of society, and one we should not forget even when we are concentrating on the first, and to some extent, on the second.
At the moment, as the White Paper points out, these matters are dealt with at a great number of courts, most importantly in the magistrates' courts, and the White Paper rightly points to the wide discrepancy of decisions. That is so partly because they are fallible human beings who have to make the decisions and it is partly because of the very wide discrepancy of circumstances. What the Bill does is to replace for the fallible human variation of view, a bureaucratic—that was the word rightly used by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton—formula, a bed of Procrustes. That can quite as well be capricious. Is it the toes that are cut off, or the hair if one is lucky enough to have it, or the top of one's head? We must not think that we are going to get away from variation of the circumstances by applying this formula.
I would draw attention to the extraordinary nature of the formula. It is on page 30, in Schedule 1. I ask your Lordships: how many maintenance debtors or creditors, how many citizens' advice bureaux, can possibly make head or tail of what it means? It is just as incomprehensible as the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs must have been to an illiterate peasant in the Nile delta. It would not matter so much if the background of the Bill were less bureaucratic. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, referred to that. My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack rather disarmingly said that there was an unusual number of

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provisions for regulations to be made by the Secretary of State. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, put it rather more harshly. He suggested that this is no more than a skeleton Bill and as such he implied that it was unconstitutional. Certainly it is gravely derogatory of parliamentary control. So what we have is a bureaucratic formula which is to be administered, as has been pointed out, by a considerable bureaucracy: 4,700 people of whom 2,200 are to be newly recruited and added to our existing bureaucracy. Is that what we want?
However, one hardly stops at that point because the child support agency is divorced from the courts which have to deal with wife maintenance. It is common experience that one cannot possibly consider maintenance for the children of the marriage separately from that for the wife. However, it is more than that; it is a step away, as has been pointed out by many noble Lords today, from the concept of the family court.
My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack introduced a Commons amendment to the Courts and Legal Services Bill which provided for specialised county courts of matrimonial jurisdiction. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, greeted it warmly as a step towards the family court. I ventured to support him in that view. However, my noble and learned friend put it more delicately but did not in fact dissent from that view. He said that it was a step towards a system of uniform family jurisdiction which may achieve what had been described in other terms—the "other terms" being the family court.
I know that the Government have now got the matter belatedly under consideration. However I am bound to point out that a system of family courts, a hierarchy of family courts, was spelt out in detail and proposed to the Morton Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce in the mid-1950s. Thereafter it gathered support, notably from a very experienced matrimonial judge, Judge Jean Graham Hall. After that time, it received support from the Family Law Committee of the Law Society and then from the council of the Law Society. That support was voiced in your Lordships' House by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, with his usual cogency. Since that time it has received further support from a Member of this House with incomparable experience and zeal; namely, the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. It was subsequently endorsed by the Finer Report on One-parent Families, as the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, has already pointed out. We very much regret the premature death of Mr. Justice Finer, but it is splendid that his lieutenant on that committee is present in the Chamber in the form of the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, to draw attention to what was spelt out in the report in favour of the family court.
I have another question for my noble and learned friend. By the time—I hope not too distant—that the Government have made up their mind preferably in favour of family courts, will it be too late to marry the child support agency into a system of family courts? It has been envisaged that the family court should have two branches: one for adjudication and the other for
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welfare. Welfare would include conciliation, but it would also include matters which will be the concern of the child support agency if it is accepted.
I have a further question for my noble and learned friend, although it is probably something which I should have found out for myself. However, I was unable to do so. What will be the effect of the formula on the normal nuclear family which has broken up, where the husband will have less earning power and below average earnings because, as the White Paper pointed out, these marriages break up earlier? That situation was envisaged at the time of the 1969 Act. In the debate which took place recently, I mentioned that my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham had prophesied that the effect of the 1969 Act would be more divorce and more breakup of marriages. That was also seen by the proponents of the matter, although it was not announced until afterwards.
After that Bill had passed into law, the very able parliamentary officer of the Divorce Reform Group, which was the pressure group behind the Bill, said that society must make up its mind and get used to the idea that marriages will now normally break up in the early 20s of the spouses. That is spelt out by the White Paper which your Lordships are considering. Taking people of that age and their earnings into consideration, can my noble and learned friend say what the formula puts forward in the case of a typical family which the White Paper suggests has one child under the age of five years, with the other, presumably, being about seven? At present, I am completely in the dark as to whether the formula will produce anything more favourable for the caring mother living on her own with her children.
We have all applauded, with the exception of the noble Lord sitting to my right, the object of making the father of a broken home continue to support his child. That is very much in the main tradition, if I may say so, of the parties on the Opposition Benches. Not for the first time, the noble Lord is out on his own. We support that aim. However, I am bound to say that we regard the Bill with the utmost chariness and wariness. We shall certainly have to examine its more bureaucratic aspects with the greatest care in Committee.
6.18 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, when the White Paper was published on 29th October the Government invited comments upon it and said that they would be taken into account. However, it is certain that those comments have not been published. Moreover, just a few weeks after publication of the White Paper, we now have a very complex Bill before us. I am surprised that the Government did not pay more heed to what was said and publish the comments received from various organisations with the expertise. In such a matter it would have been just as well to have had a pre-legislative committee or hearing on the Bill. Even at this late stage, especially bearing in mind that the Bill has received little wholehearted support in the debate so far, it may be as well for the

815
Government to reconsider their attitude, to withdraw the Bill and to set up a pre-legislative hearing before they get themselves into a great deal of trouble.
I too congratulate the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on the manner in which he presented and explained the Bill. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Mishcon on his admirable speech and his reservations about the Bill which I share. The Bill is not about putting children first but about saving the Exchequer an estimated £400 million per annum in social security expenditure. I am not opposed to attempts to reduce expenditure on lone parents, but the Bill, with its draconian powers and anti-father bias, is not the best way to achieve a reduction in the cost of lone-family support. The need is to reverse present attitudes toward marriage and the family and to make every attempt to encourage stable and lasting relationships, especially where children are involved.
The Government and the Bill fail to recognise that children need emotional as well as financial care and that emotional support is best provided within a stable family and preferably within a two-parent home. The Bill does nothing to bring about that position. Instead, it seeks to make scapegoats of fathers and ensures that they will be pursued with vigour and forced to pay for the maintenance of their children. There are no provisions in the Bill to ensure that they have access to their children and an opportunity to form relation-ships with them. Make no mistake about it —fathers are just as entitled as mothers to that right.
Having said that, I welcome the idea of laying down a formula for the level of such support, although even that will need some modification if it is to succeed. Whether that formula needs a separate agency to administer it is open to question. My noble friend Lord Mishcon and other noble Lords have questioned the need for a huge agency to administer the system. I support my noble friend and other noble Lords in their desire and call for family courts to be considered and set up.
I now return to the subject of access. I understand that, in theory at least, access and financial provision should not be linked. However, in practice in many cases they are inextricably linked in the minds of fathers. We have little information about how many maintenance defaults are due to access problems. Many men are willing to pay proper maintenance for their children but often find that they are wilfully obstructed from seeing their children or forming any relationship with them even when access has been granted by the courts. The Bill does nothing to address that problem, and it is a serious omission that should be redressed. I understand that in the United States, where there has been long-established legislation for the efficient collection of maintenance payments from non-custodial parents, new laws to ensure access had to be introduced before the enforced collection of maintenance became generally acceptable and efficient. We should study the experience of the United States.
The Bill is highly complex and as a result many details of the enforcement system are, as my noble friend Lord Mishcon said, to be brought in by
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regulation or advice which will have the force of law. Consequently, if the legislation is passed unamended there will be no opportunity for the House and another place to discuss the details of the scheme, and there will be no scope to improve the affirmative and negative orders which will be placed before Parliament if the Bill receives Royal Assent. I understand that 100 references to orders are contained in the Bill. Therefore, if the Bill is passed unamended we shall be handing over to the Government powers to introduce a most illiberal and oppressive regime against a section of the population which is so often unjustly maligned by society.
That brings me to the Bill's provisions relating to child support officers and inspectors which are contained in Clauses 11 to 13. Although they have been referred to by my noble friend Lord Mishcon, it is worth referring to them again. In relation to child support officers Clause 11 states:
"(1) The Secretary of State shall appoint persons (to be known as child support officers) for the purpose of exercising functions—

(a) conferred on them by this Act, or by any other enactment; or

(b) assigned to them by the Secretary of State".

If we pass the Bill unamended, the Secretary of State will have absolute power to give, without Parliament's approval, draconian powers to those child support officers.
Clause 13 relates to inspectors. My noble friend has already mentioned the fact that an inspector will have the power,

"(a) to enter at all reasonable times any premises which may be inspected under this section; and

(b) to make such examination and enquiry there as he considers appropriate".

Further, subsection (5) provides:
"If required to do so by an inspector exercising powers conferred on him by this section, any person who is or has been—

(a) an occupier of the premises in question;

(b) an employer or an employee working at or from those premises;

(c) carrying on at or from those premises an agency or other business of a kind mentioned in subsection (3) (b);

(d) an employee or agent of any person mentioned in paragraph (a) to (c),

shall furnish to the inspector all such information and documents as the inspector may reasonably require for the purposes mentioned in subsection (2)".
Wide and sweeping powers are to be given to inspectors to pursue not criminals, thieves or muggers, but parents. The Government have overdone that part. This country is becoming less and less of a democracy and more like the centralised bureaucratcies of Eastern Europe which are now being discarded by so many countries.
We then have to consider the collection of maintenance payments. Under the Bill it is not just wages and salaries that can be attached, and money, assets and property, including unessential furnishings, that can be seized; but, if none of those things is available, it will be possible to commit a defaulter to prison. As far as I am aware, that will be the only civil debt for which a prison sentence is available. It is remarkable that we should introduce such a provision into the Bill.
I understood that we were trying to keep people out of prison. Yet in the Bill there is a provision to commit

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to prison people merely because they have incurred, not a tax debt, but a civil debt. It is quite disgraceful that parents in financial default should be treated in a worse manner in many cases than thieves, muggers and what-have-you. What is more, bearing in mind that women are increasingly becoming quite independent, going out to work and indeed leaving their children in the care of their husbands, what is society going to say if a woman refuses to pay her assessed maintenance? What will society say if we commit a woman to prison? Will society be happy about that? Under this Bill it will be possible, as I have said, and surely we are not suggesting that we should increase our prison population by sending to prison fathers or mothers who default on their maintenance payments. Surely there are many other punishments available, including community service orders, which would certainly be far better not only for the families concerned but for society as well.
As I said earlier, I believe that this is a bad Bill. It contains draconian measures which are against the normal practice of our democratic society. I do not believe that they are acceptable; nor do I believe that they will deal with the very serious problem over maintenance payments that exists. I hope the Government will listen to what is being said and to the voices that have been raised against this Bill, because it will be an administrative nightmare. I hope that they will remember the advice they received about the poll tax, which we said would be an administrative nightmare and something that could not be properly administered. Bearing these things in mind, I hope that even at this stage the Government will take the Bill away and look at it again. If they do not, then I hope that your Lordships will amend it during later stages beyond all recognition.
6.32 p.m.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, while I do not go all the way with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, or indeed with the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, I have a good deal of sympathy for some of the things they have said. Speaking as a mere father, I feel that "harassment" is one of the unwritten words in this Bill and those who use invisible ink will see it quite clearly on every page.
However, I am glad to be able to say that I support the intentions of the Bill although I believe it should be amended in very drastic ways. Also, greatly daring, I am going to express the opinion that I like the way the Bill is drafted, despite what has been said by the noble and learned Lord in front of me and by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. Incidentally, the use of formulae was cordially recommended by the Renton Committee and I do not dissent from the formulae in Schedule 1 at all. However, I sympathise with the constitutional and other points made by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and also by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, though, as I say, I like the drafting of the Bill.
It is indeed the intention of the Bill that children should come first but occasionally I feel that, with the best will in the world and perhaps inadvertently, the Bill puts the child last. In pursuit of the Bill's purposes
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you have a number of licensed "hounds" who may harass the parent for the purpose of serving a maintenance assessment, and indeed they can harass the parent for the enforcement of payments of child maintenance. I think that in a way there is a feeling that the defaulter must not be allowed to get away with it—that this is of paramount concern and that it is unfair to those who stick with their wives and children and look after them if those who run away from them are allowed to get away with it. This system, which is instilled into this corps of "harassers" may well be against the child's interests. He may not wish to have his father pursued in this way and indeed he may not wish that his mother should be harassed into revealing the whereabouts of her absent husband, when she may have very good cause for withholding the information.
I understand that the mother may lose up to 20 per cent. of her personal allowance if she withholds this information. That is not to the benefit of the child, I would say; yet that is one of the provisions of the Bill. It looks as if there are something like 30 per cent. of lone parents who fail to comply with requests to help trace the fathers of their children. I may have got the percentage wrong but certainly it is not anywhere near a majority, and it is those people who are going to be harassed, as I say.
Therefore I would merely ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor whether in the pursuit of fugitive fathers and in the securing of maintenance enforcement—which, incidentally, I support—there is any provision for these "hounds" to be less than relentless. Can there be incorporated into the provisions of the Bill some provision for relaxation where it appears to be in the paramount interest of the child that the uttermost pursuit of the law conferred by this Bill should not actually take place?
When the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor spoke, he referred to cases of incest or rape, where matters would not be pursued so rigorously. There must be other cases as well. For instance, what about a father who is mentally ill, whose spirit is already broken or who is perhaps suffering from severe depression? It is not right to pursue people who are in that sort of condition, especially as, as the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, said, they might well be underneath the arches, sleeping in the open and unable to put themselves on their feet, let alone look after their wives and children. Therefore I should rather like to know what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor might say about relaxing the powers or giving this new corps of harassing servants of the Crown some kind of discretion in the cases I have mentioned. If that could be done, it might possibly save some amendments to the Bill during the Committee stage. I would certainly hope so.
I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in what he said about family courts. I wish to goodness they were with us now, because they would be able to offer, I imagine, some kind of conciliation service. That is what we really need, but the family courts still seem quite far away. After all, if there were family courts they could be the authority

819
for assessment, collection and enforcement of payments for child maintenance. Surely it would be wise now to incorporate into this Bill some kind of conciliation service. Such a service could take much of the pain out of the process involved in obtaining child support from an absent parent and it could ease the tensions following a marital breakdown.
I do not myself see that the child support agency, which, as I say, is rather cast in the role of hound of the parents, could possibly take on the guise of conciliator, which would not fall naturally to it. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor envisages that it could fill that as well as its present role. If not, who could do it? I should have thought that the House would agree that a conciliation service was essential in this context.
Another general point which has been made concerns how the recent changes in the income maintenance system impinge upon the Bill. I do not know how single parents in work may be affected as regards their access to the social fund. A number of points of that kind should be pursued in Committee, particularly the need to increase basic levels of income support, to reform the social fund and to maintain the value of child benefit.
The breakdown of the family and all that it entails for the child is bad enough for children in relatively prosperous homes. The troubles are compounded for the poor, and every consideration should be given to children who suffer doubly from poverty and from family breakdown.
In one of the interruptions to our debate we heard the Statement on the report of Lord Justice Woolf on the prison system. Here I find myself very much in accord with the views of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. It is infinitely depressing that on the very same day we are considering a Bill which contains a provision for sending parents to prison for maintenance default. That is disgusting. Could we not take a risk, have some imagination and get rid of Clause 32 altogether? This coincidence of the Statement on the Woolf Report and our consideration of this Bill gives us good cause to do so. Thus we should strike a minor blow in the battle to keep out of prison so that they may be otherwise dealt with those who come up against the provisions of the legislation.
In addition we should think about the child brought up not only in an emotionally fractured family but in dire poverty because that young person is likely to enter the world of juvenile crime and thereafter, if we do not rescue him from it, to lead a life of crime. It is well understood that the combination of a fractured family and poverty, among other things, leads to a life of crime. Those of us who are fortunate enough not to have been brought up in a fractured family or in poverty really should exercise our imagination and consider whether, if we had been brought up in those surroundings, we should not be early candidates for the criminal justice system.
Given the really fragile position in which young people in broken and very poor homes find
820

themselves, the impact of this Bill should be modified. The reforms which I am suggesting are those which alleviate the hounding of both parents which could be detrimental not only to those parents but also to the children.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Meston: My Lords, if your Lordships had not realised before this debate that the Bill gives rise to mixed feelings it must surely be appreciated now. This is a Bill born of the view that not enough fathers are paying towards the support of their children and that those who do pay are not paying enough. I was going to say that one can but agree with those views, even if it means pleading guilty to the charge by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, of middle-class morality.
I assume that the answer to the question posed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, is that in the normal typical case of two parents with two children the father will henceforth be expected to pay rather more than he might, now on average, if he came before the courts.
If it were simply a question of enforcement, the recent Maintenance Enforcement Bill will add to the existing armoury of the courts, although even then further measures could have been introduced to deal with the really recalcitrant non-payer. For example, I should have thought that greater use could have been made of the tax collection system to extract maintenance. If it were simply a question of raising the general quantum of maintenance, it might be possible simply to specify a statutory minimum contribution, perhaps to be uprated with child benefits, although we all know that child benefits are not uprated often enough. It might also be possible to tie child maintenance more closely to another yardstick such as the foster care allowances. Those foster care allowances bring home the true costs of caring for children, and they cater for special cases such as handicapped children.
I see on the cover of the White Paper, to which reference has already been made by several noble Lords, a picture of a handicapped child, but I do not see in the body of the White Paper or in the Bill itself special provision being made for handicapped children. The Bill and the White Paper reflect the reality that the social security system has tended to discourage attempts to claim against fathers unless there is some prospect of success. The mother and the child are usually no better off whether or not the father contributes unless the payments are enough to take the recipients out of the income support bracket and are sufficiently above it to escape the poverty trap. By "the poverty trap" one is referring to the extra benefits which can be lost if one loses income support, such as free school meals and free prescriptions.
Furthermore, the courts have hitherto been discouraged from backdating child maintenance orders to cover periods when the recipients were on state benefits. That would involve the mother having to repay the benefit out of money received, perhaps many months later.

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I do not regard this Bill as a reflection on the job done hitherto by the courts. Under statutory criteria the courts balance the needs and resources of all concerned with greater flexibility than the Bill would allow the new agency. It is very rare for a father completely to indemnify a mother against all the costs of maintaining the child or children. More often, the court is faced with three potential sources of contribution—the mother, the father and the state—and tries to strike a balance. In particular it has to decide the proper contribution by the mother and the father.
This Bill replaces that flexibility with rigidity, or at least it greatly reduces the flexibility which the courts have had hitherto when looking at and reallocating the family finances as a whole, both as to income and capital. The Bill does so by taking the matter out of the hands of the courts. That is provided for in Clause 7(1), the English of which is ghastly. It does so also with a series of formulae designed to produce an inescapable minimum contribution by a parent to or for his child, as I understand it.
To take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, it seems particularly hard to provide for a system of conciliation when what is being applied is a mechanical formula. The question for this House will be whether the laudable ends of this legislation justify the means. In particular we should ask whether the creation of a new arm or, perhaps more appropriately, a new tentacle of the state, the child support agency—which is not actually given that name by the Bill—is the best way forward.
The financial effects and the cost effectiveness of the Bill strike one as speculative to say the least. The courts service could certainly do with some of the new staff that will be allocated to the new agency to enable the courts to do better the job which they already do well.
The agency will deal with cases in which its services are not really required, either because the means are adequate and the case is not an incomes support kind of case, or because the means are so minimal that there is only one answer. As the primary concern of the Government is to save state benefit, I should have thought that it would be appropriate to confine the new agency, at least in the early stages, to state benefit cases. It could perhaps help in other cases by publishing guidelines which will enable the courts to provide for a greater and more consistent level of maintenance, for example by reference to foster care allowances. I have already referred to those allowances.
Frankly, I doubt whether the agency will have the expertise of the courts, or will ever have the resources to deal effectively with difficult and devious fathers or former husbands. I would mention in particular in this regard the self-employed cash operator with a creative accountant. There will inevitably be duplication of effort where the mother is entitled to go to the court for maintenance for herself. It seems quite absurd that there should be such a duplication of effort, and consequential expense and waste of time.
822
The machinery envisaged by the Bill will undoubtedly be difficult to operate. The formulae strive to meet the argument that they are too rigid in such ways that they seem almost too sophisticated for their own good. In other ways they may not be sophisticated enough. We do not know what the position will be as it is all to be left to regulations that are as yet unseen. As the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, mentioned most effectively, clean break capital orders or settlements may be made much less easy to achieve in matrimonial disputes. There can, of course, never be a complete clean break when minor children are involved. It is less easy to have a capital clean break as between the adults if it is feared that there will be a continuing liability to maintenance of a substantial nature.
Paragraph 4.12 of the first volume of Children Come First seemed to foreshadow a discounting of maintenance in favour of a father who gives up all his interest in the home. Has this been provided for in the Bill? I believe it may be covered in the regulations which will be made under the terms of paragraph 9 of Schedule 1. However, I should be grateful for confirmation of that.
I accept that this is not an easy matter to deal with. It may be thought that to give the father credit for giving up his interest in the home is being artificially fair. A child costs no less to keep whether the father has given up all ownership of the home or has simply given up occupation and the use of his capital interest in the property for a deferred period which could last a good many years. It is a matter of considerable importance to the practitioners to know how this provision is to operate. We need to know that now because we have to advise people now how the law will work in the future. We need to know whether we can advise people now to agree to forgo their capital interest in their matrimonial home in the expectation that they will have a lesser maintenance obligation, or whether we should say, "No. You will in fact always be liable for possibly quite a significant amount of maintenance. I would not advise you therefore to give up your interest in your home which may be paid to you at some future date".
It is by no means clear to me that a father who agrees to make a capital settlement on a child can now do so confident that there will be no further claims on him. In 1982 the Law Commission recommended a power to allow a once and for all capital settlement on a child—in the context of the Law Commission's report those were children born out of wedlock—in cases where the father wanted no further relationship with that child. That power was given by the Family Law Reform Act 1987. It is useful in certain types of case. Cases are being settled on that basis. But, again, if there is now to be some comeback from the state demanding maintenance which it was thought had been capitalised, it is appropriate that we should know about it.
Will the formula provision be flexible enough to deal with flexible and transitional arrangements which parties make for themselves? I am conscious of the fact that some special cases are provided for in Clause 34, and that it is not meant to be an exhaustive list as

823
I read the provisions of that clause. However, it is also a clause which provides for regulations to be made but does not tell us very much about how its provisions will work in practice. For example, it does not tell us how they will work where the care and expense of the child are shared on an alternating basis, or where there are generous access arrangements, or where a child is at a boarding school for say three-fifths of the year, particularly when that is being paid for or has been paid for in the past out of income or capital, with some sacrifice, when the family were together in happier times.
We must also remember that not all relationships end abruptly or tidily. A father or husband may go away and come back. A mother may go away and come back. There are cases where a husband continues to meet domestic bills months or even years after the separation. Those kind of arrangements must be covered. In other words, before we approve this legislation, we must be confident that the new formulae will cater for the great variety of factual situations which will arise.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, referred to access. This is a sensitive subject. In that regard I approve of the approach of the White Paper. The questions of access and of maintenance must in law, and as far as possible in practice, be separated one from the other. For a father to say, "No access, no maintenance" seems to me as unattractive as for a mother to say "No maintenance, no access". Access and maintenance must be separate questions.
There are other matters that we shall have to consider in Committee. There is the matter of stepchildren. I am surprised that stepchildren, who have become a "child of the family" within the sense given by the matrimonial causes legislation, are not covered, and will not be covered, by the Bill, but recourse may be made to the courts, as hitherto.
There are other matters such as the watered down proposals of the White Paper to penalise mothers who fail to co-operate. Those provisions are now to be found in Clause 22. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor told us there would be a range of exceptions, and that the matter would be dealt with sensitively. Surely this is a matter of such importance that it should be spelt out clearly in the Bill. If there are to be cases where penalties are to be applied—there is no other adequate word to describe the situation—there should be express statutory criteria and express statutory defences so that the circumstances are clearly defined on the face of the Bill. I entirely echo what the right reverend Prelate said about carrots and not sticks. I had already made a note of that before he spoke. It is certainly a question of incentives and not penalties in that particularly sensitive area.
Another sensitive matter is the proposal in the White Paper to deduct 5 per cent. from the income support of fathers who are in receipt of that benefit or other state benefits. The provisions are to be found in Clause 35. They seem to me to be utterly pointless. The courts have always recognised that payers who
824
are on state benefit, or near state benefit level, should not be taken below subsistence level. A deduction of 5 per cent. from state benefits is not just a token deduction; it is a real deduction and it will be hard felt. It will probably also be utterly pointless, particularly if there is to be no corresponding benefit to the child. I do not believe that Clause 35 provides any corresponding benefit to the child.
Finally, in my view we should not approve of the proposal to reduce the parental care element in the maintenance requirement as children grow older. Older children are in no less need of proper care and supervision. They are no less expensive. We all know that they are more expensive. The underlying intention is to encourage mothers to go out to work, but that raises the spectre of latchkey children. The maintenance disregards are to be provided but it is my impression that they are inadequate, the incentives are inadequate and the protection for the children in that area is inadequate. Those are matters that we shall have to look at in Committee.
7 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, this very important Bill has been the subject of a balanced response from your Lordships. On the one hand strong reservations have been expressed about many of its provisions and constructive suggestions have been put forward. We can already see the shape of many of the amendments which will be tabled in Committee. On the other hand most of those who have spoken this evening have warmly welcomed the intention to speed up the procedures for obtaining, collecting and updating child maintenance orders and also to provide for their efficient enforcement. Those features of the Bill, subject only to our reservations about the machinery, represent an enormous improvement on the present situation, which is totally unsatisfactory. We all agree that that reform is long overdue.
I am also left with the firm impression that there is broad support for the principle that maintenance should be calculated by reference to a fair and objective formula. That will tend to make for more consistency throughout the country. It should also ensure that many mothers with a low income will receive higher maintenance awards. Therefore that part of the Bill is also seen by many of us as a step forward.
However, there are concerns about the rigidity of the formula. I have no doubt that in Committee we shall have to set ourselves to open up the maintenance formula in order to clarify or refine—and possibly change—some of its elements. For example, many of the voluntary organisations which have written to us have told us that they fear that the formula as it stands may not provide a fair balance between the interests and the needs of the first and second families and that it may in consequence threaten the stability of the second family, or of both families. If that were to happen what then will have been achieved?
It is not an easy balance to achieve where a father is on low earnings of £150 a week, as many are in my part of the country, and expected to contribute out of

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that £150 a week towards the maintenance of two families. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, made that point. One cannot extract a quart from a pint pot.
The Bill introduces other profound changes which in turn raise many important issues which are the cause of criticism and concern. We have heard of the 94 sets of regulations which we have not as yet seen. Those regulations may well reveal further grounds for anxiety. As I understand it, we shall be powerless to amend those regulations. In that connection I listened with deep concern to the impressive speeches of my noble friend Lord Mishcon and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale.
Your Lordships are anxious to hear the response of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and in the time available I cannot possibly pick up all of the criticisms and suggestions that have been made. I shall therefore focus on three main areas of concern. The first relates to the two critical powers which can be exercised or activated by the child support agency, namely the power to make deductions from income support of the absent father even though he has no assessable income apart from social security benefit and the power to be exercised by the adjudication officer to reduce the income support payable to the mother who feels unable to co-operate with the child support agency.
I was glad to hear the criticism of those powers expressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Lord, Lord Henderson. The powers have been variously described as harsh, petty, miserable and appalling. They have provoked widespread criticism and concern from a wide range of voluntary bodies promoting the welfare of children or with experience of working with families with handicapped children, one-parent families in adverse circumstances and families affected by the breakdown of marriage.
I have tried to analyse the briefings that we have received from nine voluntary organisations: the Child Poverty Action Group, the Children's Society, the National Children's Bureau, Church Action on Poverty, the Legal Action Group, the National Council for One Parent Families, MENCAP, the Spastics Society and the Campaign for Work group. Those are responsible organisations which have already earned the applause of your Lordships for their sterling work over the years. We have received the benefit of their opinion; surely it behoves us to listen to their message. I believe that they are saying something very important.
Apart from the National Council for One Parent Families, all of the organisations want those two powers rejected outright. I believe that the National Council for One Parent families would reluctantly go along with those powers subject to certain conditions. Both powers involve important principles on which we cannot afford to be silent in the course of a Second Reading debate.
Why and how can an absent father make a contribution to a child's support if he has no income
826
apart from income support? It is claimed in the White Paper that he should suffer that deduction in order to bring home to him that he can never walk away from his responsibility to his dependent children. In the abstract most of us would agree that that proposition has some attraction. However, in the context of the Bill your Lordships will wish to weigh that proposition against the basic principle that the individual has the right to a basic income which is set at subsistence level and that it is the duty of the state to maintain it.
We are asked to give the agency the power, via the adjudication officer, to penalise the mother who feels unable to co-operate with the agency. As I understand it, that is the combined effect of Clauses 5 and 22. Noble Lords who read the briefing from the Child Poverty Action Group may recall that it found it necessary and right to advise the House that, if that power is granted, it will be the first time in the history of this country that a person will have been coerced into co-operation under the threat of loss of state benefits.
If that advice is sound, it gives us an indication of the significance and gravity of that power.
I should like to quote just two sentences from the briefing that we received from the Spastics Society:
"The possibility that there should be sanctions to ensure the naming of an absent parent so that maintenance can be collected by the Agency is a cause of grave concern to the Spastics Society. Where a relationship has foundered on the birth of a disabled child, such measures might put unnecessary and regrettable pressure on the caring parent who might prefer to sever connections with as little pain as possible".
I suggest that those sensitive words give a glimpse of the pressures and worries that can build up if the child support officer has the power to authorise deductions.
The White Paper suggested that the mother should be exempt from complying with the requirements of Clause 5 in cases of rape and incest. That is not mentioned in the Bill. But, as the quotation from the briefing of the Spastics Society illustrates, there will be many other situations in which that power should not be activated. I hope that the Government can see their way clear to abandoning those two powers. If not, as my noble friend Lord Mishcon and other noble Lords have pointed out, the grounds for the exercise of those powers must be carefully delineated in the body of the Bill.
I now turn to the second main area of concern. The Bill will force all parents who seek an enforceable child support order to use the new child support agency, which will be a semi-independent agency within the Department of Social Security and accountable to the Secretary of State for Social Security. With two minor exceptions, the courts will have no power to make, vary or revoke a child maintenance order.
But is there a need for a separate agency, independent of the courts? Is there a need to spend so much money on assembling and setting up the agency? Is there a need to recruit 2,200 staff, with, it is hoped, the necessary skills to meet the demands of that body? Is that necessary?

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From the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, who has immense experience in this field and possesses a network of contacts, we have heard testimony that the parents do not want such a separate agency, independent of the courts. I quoted the nine voluntary organisations and I must accept that four of them support setting up a single agency, even though it will be independent of the courts. On the other hand, if I understood them correctly the Law Society and the Justices Clerks' Society believe that the establishment of new machinery is unnecessary. For my part I believe that new machinery is necessary but it should be part of a wider strategy than that aimed at reducing public expenditure in this particular area.
Over the years many noble Lords have strongly advocated setting up a family court. But, if that is not acceptable to the Government, we should not move away from the concept of a family court—as we shall do, as we see it, if we set up an independent agency. Would it not have been better at this stage to go for a middle solution, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale—a middle solution which would permit the courts to continue to make, vary and revoke child maintenance orders but at the same time would enable the agency to develop as the welfare arm of the court to collect and monitor payments and put in motion the enforcement proceedings. Would it not be better if the agency and the courts were to work in partnership? That would also be a means to advance in the direction of a family court.
We should like to ask the noble and learned Lord whether that opportunity has in fact been lost? If it has been lost, we shall have the two different jurisdictions. Is the noble and learned Lord satisfied that they cannot be in conflict from time to time? I ask the question; I am not sure of the answer. Suppose that the parties are hostile and contest one another's financial statements. What would happen if the agency and the court reach different and inconsistent findings? I am not sure of the implications of such a conflict.
My third concern relates to the damage which the scheme can do to the negotiations leading to a post-divorce property settlement. That worry has been voiced by the Law Society and practitioners. There is very little that I can add to what has been said so forcefully by my noble friend Lord Mishcon. But this aspect of the scheme has also been criticised by Mr. John Eekelaar, a Fellow of Pembroke College, who recently addressed a meeting of the parliamentary group for children which is chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. We found his guidance to be particularly helpful.
It is clear that if the Bill is passed, even where the parties have negotiated the terms of a package settlement, its child support element will not be binding on the agency but must always be assessed separately by the agency in accordance with a maintenance formula. That will bring its perils. It may be said, "Well, if the parties feel that the agency's assessment would be inconsistent with their own
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wishes, they need not go to the agency, leaving the child support as a voluntary non-enforceable agreement". That has one huge snag. Clause 8 leaves it wide open for either party to go thereafter to the agency and obtain a child support order in terms of a maintenance formula even though the resort to the agency in those circumstances was totally contrary to the agreement arrived at between the parties and was in total breach of a settlement agreement.
We suggest—I believe that Mr. John Eekelaar made this point—that that can do twofold damage to the negotiation process, which every practitioner values. It will hamper the negotiations because it will have restricted their scope. It will also follow that the settlement, although agreed between the parties, will be unstable from day one because at the behest of either party the agency can redefine and re-assess the child support element. To weaken the role of negotiation is contrary to the thrust of recent family law policy which seeks to encourage agreement.
I ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor this question. Why not allow the court to continue to have the right to make a binding child support order at least where it forms part of a divorce settlement provided that the court is satisfied that the order is in the best interests of the child and is just in all the circumstances?
Many other issues will need to be explored in Committee upon which we are not clear. We shall wish to seek to extend the scope of Clause 7(6) to include special medical, housing and caring needs for the mentally or physically handicapped child which cannot be met within the formula.
As my noble friend Lord Mishcon indicated, we have anxieties about the powers of the inspectorate. The powers may not be novel but the context in which the powers will be exercised is novel.
I shall not delay the House any longer. In conclusion, I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will give the criticisms and suggestions which have emerged from the debate his usual careful consideration between now and Committee stage.
7.22 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I am grateful for the extent to which the principle behind the Bill has been supported by your Lordships. In saying that, I also understand certain anxieties which have been expressed. However, the principal and absolutely vital purpose underlying the Bill is to create a certain and effective method of assessment and collection of child maintenance. I believe strongly that that is very much in the interests of the child and therefore justifies the claim that the principle of the Bill is to put children first.
With his long experience of the inland revenue, the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, was apt to treat the issue as though it were a taxing arrangement. I do not consider a requirement that a father should pay for his child analogous to the arrangement under which the inland revenue obtains money from someone to maintain the organs of the state.

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The purpose behind the Bill is to create a suitable frame work within which parents will be liable for maintenance for their children and children will be entitled to be maintained at a reasonable level having regard to the circumstances determined in accordance with a formula.
The child support agency involves a commitment of resources which have been described as bureaucratic. I do not know that the body in question would be less bureaucratic if it were part of the court bureaucracy, but it is an agency which will carry out executive tasks. It will ascertain the amount of maintenance in accordance with a formula—an executive task—and seek to enforce it, using if necessary the machinery of the court where enforcement is required.
The agency will have functions of an executive character which have not traditionally been carried out by the court. The court is there to decide questions between parties where there is a dispute which is properly the subject of judicial determination. However, the function of the agency is more of an executive character, resulting in a determination which in the ordinary case will not give rise to dispute.
Where there is a dispute, the proposal is that the dispute should first lead to reconsideration within the agency. I believe that that is an extremely simple way of trying to rectify an error by bringing out any further information that either party may have so that the matter can be reconsidered before embarking on any other form of appeal. Once the agency has reconsidered the matter, the Bill makes provision for appeal to a court or tribunal in accordance with arrangements which we may make. No doubt we shall wish to examine that matter in some detail in Committee.
As I made clear in the debate on the Children Act before the legislation was passed, and in other statements to your Lordships, I am committed to a review of the family justice system which takes account of the substantive law. The agency has a part to play in providing an effective means of collecting maintenance which does not exist in the present system. I have no doubt that noble Lords will have experience of people, notably mothers, who say, "I have an order from the court for maintenance. I cannot find the other party who is supposed to pay. What g pod is this piece of paper to me if I can't get the money?" That is one of the important problems which is addressed by the Bill.
My noble and learned friend Lord Simon of Glaisdale asked whether the agency could be married to a family court in the future. I do not preclude the possibility at some time in the future of wishing to alter the responsibility for the agency. However, for the foreseeable future it seems sensible to use the expertise of the Department of Social Security in such tasks as the agency will undertake and to free the courts in order that they may concentrate on the tasks for which they are particularly fitted and which they undertake.
The noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, suggested that the Bill should make provision for a conciliation service. Conciliation is certainly under consideration, together with all the matters referred to
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in the Law Commissioners' report on divorce which was published in November last year and which we debated in your Lordships' House not long ago. Since it is essential that all the recommendations are studied in depth, it would be premature to draw conclusions about the future role, organisation or funding of conciliation and related services until we are clear about what changes, if any, we need to make to divorce law and procedure. However, one of the objectives of the Bill is to create a formula which will determine maintenance and thus avoid the need for dispute. It is therefore not an appropriate place in which to consider setting up arrangements about conciliation.
My noble friend Lady Faithfull, with her superb experience in this area, and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, with his experience of a somewhat different character (I shall not say calibre) drew attention to the rigidity of the formula. In a sense a formula is supposed to tell one the answer when one feeds in the circumstances. One of the reasons for the complexity of the formula is the variety of circumstances with which it tries to deal. We must look at that in detail in Committee. Basically, one can have either a discretionary system which produces inconsistencies when used widely by different courts or agencies, or one can have a system of rules. The Bill attempts to set out a system of rules, which we call a formula, which will apply and give a variety of answers according to the circumstances.
My noble and learned friend Lord Simon asked for an example. One is set out in the White Paper and we have distributed other papers illustrative of the policy which contain other examples. The White Paper gives an example of two children under the age of five living with their mother. Their father lives alone and earns £160 per week; that is less than the average income. He would pay £46 per week in maintenance; that is 29 per cent. of his net income. He would keep £114 per week for himself; that is 71 per cent. of his net income. The survey of how the present system works shows that the average payment is £16 per child. Of course, there is a tremendous variation and the average is not particularly meaningful. The payment of £46 in maintenance, which is still less than 30 per cent. of the father's net income, is therefore to be compared with an average payment of about £32 for two children under the current system.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and other noble Lords asked about the treatment of the family home. It is an important issue to which we shall no doubt return. It has concerned me during the course of the formulation of these proposals. The issue that one must keep in mind is that, in accordance with the formula, the absent parent will receive his full reasonable housing costs as part of his exempt income, as will the caring parent. If the absent parent transfers his share in the home to the caring parent his housing costs will rise because he must provide a home for himself. Those of the caring parent will often be reduced. The result will be that the absent parent will pay less maintenance. Given that balancing, or trading

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off, within the operation of the formula, account will be taken of that particular problem in a reasonable way—
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, perhaps the noble and learned Lord will not mind giving way in order that the House may be clear about what he is saying. Is the noble and learned Lord saying that, where a parent is absent from the home but retains his interest in the family home, some kind of allowance will be made against him on the basis that he still has an interest in the family home? If that is the case does it not upset the noble and learned Lord's reasoning?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I was giving an example of the absent parent parting with his interest in the family home to the caring parent. The result will be that he will have housing costs greater than they would have been if he had kept the family home for himself. The formula will allow him to use those costs by way of deduction against the amount of maintenance that he must pay. In other words, if he incurs extra costs in housing himself as a result of having parted with the home in which he had a share to his ex-wife—that is the typical case—he will be entitled to use his housing costs, which will then be greater, as a deduction in the application of the formula—
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord is so kind that I know he will forgive me for rising a second time—there will not be a third. If the absent parent has retained an interest in the family home he will not be occupying that home because we are dealing with parents who live apart. Therefore, he will have an interest in the family home, will not be occupying it and must occupy another home for which he will receive precisely the same allowance as that to which the noble and learned Lord has referred.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, the noble Lord has sought to apply the example that I have given to a different situation. I am dealing with the situation in which the absent parent has parted with his interest in the family home to his ex-wife in order to provide a home for the children. In that situation the formula will give him the housing costs which he incurs on the basis that he has parted with his former home and must have a new home. The cost of that will be allowed by way of deduction.
That is not the same example as that just put forward by the noble Lord. His example involved the family home being made available to the wife while an interest in it is retained by the absent parent. That is different from the example that I have given. Even if he postpones realising his interest in the home he will still have the benefit of his own housing expenditure. Therefore, the way in which the formula operates will properly take account of that problem.
Various questions were asked about second families, notably by the noble Lord, Lord McGregor. The question also featured in the more root and branch approach of the noble Lord, Lord Houghton. In future an absent parent will know of the extent of his liability to his first family and can be expected to
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take that into account when deciding whether to go forward into the future with a second family. One of the important aspects of the formula is that people will be able in advance to determine their liabilities with reasonable precision. I regard that as important because at present the matter is entirely discretionary. One may receive good advice from the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and his colleagues about what the award might be but not even they can forecast the court's decision with the kind of precision that a formula confers. One of the important effects of a formula will be to give precision to forecasting. Even if the husband decides to have a second family, or has already acquired one, his exempt income will take account of his liabilities to his own children in a second family. The protected earnings level, which is part of the formula, will ensure that a second family's income does not fall below the income support levels.
The noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord McGregor, asked whether the provisions would undermine the principle of the clean break. The Act which promoted the clean break dealt with the situation in which it is reasonable to expect both parties to become independent of one another. In cases where one party has the care of the children, and is therefore often restricted in the work that he or she can take on, it would not be right to apply that principle. In any event, while one has children who are under age there can be no question of a clean break between the parents and the children. That is the basis of the obligation of maintenance and there can be no clean break in that respect.
Perhaps this is a suitable point at which to deal with an issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. He pointed out that fathers have a right to access. Subject to particular circumstances, we might generally agree with that belief. However, I prefer to put the issue on the basis that the child has a right to contact with his father. The child's development depends on contact with the father and that should be encouraged. The sooner we get rid of the idea that because a father pays maintenance he should be entitled to access, even if that is bad for the child, or that if he falls behind with maintenance payments he should be penalised by having access refused, the better for all concerned. I believe that those who have experience of operating within the family jurisdiction know how terribly difficult are disputes where, quite wrongly, there is an attempt to set up a connection between maintenance on the one hand and access on the other. The seven voluntary societies which got together to issue a statement the other day make the point that there should be a careful distinction between maintenance and access. Therefore, in that sense, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, is good. However, the matter is not one which is dealt with in this Bill. Controls already exist in the Children Act in relation to access or, as we prefer to call it, contact. With great respect to the noble Lord, I believe that it would be a mistake to attempt to link those two matters in this Bill.
I believe that I have mentioned many of the basic points raised in connection with the system proposed

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in the Bill. I turn now to a matter brought up by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and other noble Lords. The Bill provides that the Secretary of State shall be able to make regulations allowing a reduction in certain cases where the caring parent refuses to give relevant information to determine maintenance obligations and in particular the name of the father.
Generally speaking, that does not arise. The absent parent will often be known and is named. That must be the proper situation. It must be right that, where the state is making a substantial contribution for children and the father is able to pay, the state should have the necessary power to enforce that obligation and for the woman to give that information.
In the course of my opening remarks I gave examples of some circumstances in which it may not be right to require the caring parent to give such information. I believe that I gave two examples. The Bill accepts the principle that, where it is not right to demand that information from the caring parent, it will not be demanded. There will be no question of penalising a woman who properly refuses to give that information.
The next suggestion is that the precise circumstances for proper refusal should be spelt out in the Bill. That is an extremely difficult task. Your Lordships may wish to embark on that in Committee but unless it is possible to state every circumstance in which a woman may properly refuse to give the information as stated, then in the future a great disservice may be done to a woman who may be in just that circumstance which has been omitted.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, perhaps I may ask my noble and learned friend to tell me who decides on the propriety of the refusal.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, the child support officer will decide in the light of the criteria but the regulations will specify the criteria. At present, we are dealing with the criteria.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, if it is possible to state the criteria in regulations, why cannot the criteria be stated in primary legislation?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, if a ground is omitted in a regulation, it will be very easy to change that. However, if it is omitted in primary legislation we must wait for the next legislative opportunity, which may cause consequent hardship to the person or persons who find themselves in the circumstances which have been omitted. Personally I should be quite happy to attempt to state the criteria if that could be done. However, so far, I am persuaded that, subject to hearing your Lordships' eloquence in due course, this is a fundamental difficulty and that it would be better to maintain on this matter the sort of flexibility which I have described. Your Lordships will no doubt bear in mind also that the better known the criteria the more one may have to deal with a situation in which people seek to adjust their affairs in order to meet the criteria.
The other matter of principle with which I shall deal briefly is whether there is any carrot which could be
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produced instead of the stick in relation to this subject. The fact that most people give the necessary information suggests that there is no need for any general additional incentive. The incentive would be very general because in most cases the information is supplied. In the circumstances, I suggest to your Lordships that it is better to deal with the exceptional cases by a special provision of this kind rather than to give a general reward to everyone.
The noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, has a skill which I do not possess. He says that he is able to read writing in invisible ink upon the pages of this Bill. According to him in that invisible ink is written the word "harassment" or "harasses". I repudiate entirely any suggestion that the authentic copies of the Bill have any such inscriptions on them. However, there must be an effective system. One of your Lordships—and I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Meston, with his experience of the family jurisdiction—recognised that there may be devious rascals who will try to evade their obligations. That demonstrates to your Lordships that there must be an effective system. If it is effective, then people realise that they cannot evade their obligations by deviousness. Therefore, the system will work. However, if the necessary powers do not exist then people will all too often try to evade their obligations. If the system is not effective then the children will lose out when it is the children whom we intend shall benefit.
The powers of the inspectors are precedented in the social security legislation. For my part I believe that it is just as important and necessary for those powers to be available in the context of maintenance for children as it is in relation to the social security responsibilities of the state. In very restricted circumstances, as an ultimate sanction, prison is the last resort. That carries on the present law as regards obligation to maintain.
I am sure that there are many matters which your Lordships will wish to raise. I hope that I have dealt with the principal questions put to me by your Lordships. Whether or not I have, I have certainly exhausted the time available to me.
Lastly, perhaps I should mention the confidentiality of revenue information. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, mentioned that. The right which the Secretary of State has to such information under this Bill is very restricted. It is available only in order to trace the address or employer of the person involved.
In my submission to your Lordships, the powers contained in this Bill, which have been described as draconian, are no more than are necessary in order to give the agency an effective method of carrying out the task assigned to it. If we are setting up an agency of this kind, surely we want it to be effective.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

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

Hospital Beds for the Mentally Ill
7.50 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied that health authorities are ensuring that any reduction in the number of hospital beds available for the mentally ill does not outpace the development of alternative community services.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I wish to start by thanking my noble friend Lady Hooper for writing and explaining to me why she was unable to answer my Question on behalf of the Government. I should like to welcome my noble friend Lord Cavendish of Furness and trust that he will not find his brief to be too much of a strait-jacket. Recently, when I visited the mental wing of our new hospital in the Isle of Wight, I said to the senior psychiatric nurse that I imagined there would be some locked wards and some strait-jackets somewhere. He was shocked. He said, "We try to avoid those at all costs". I hope that my noble friend will avoid his brief at all costs if he finds that it is too much of a strait-jacket.
Perhaps I may remind noble Lords that I am advised on matters relating to the mentally ill by two charities; by the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and also by SANE. Your Lordships will have noted that my noble kinsman Lord Balfour of Inchrye has taken advantage of the debate to make his maiden speech. Due to the nature of debates on Unstarred Questions I shall not be able publicly to congratulate my noble kinsman on his speech. However, I take this opportunity to wish him every success in making it. Perhaps I may take the opportunity also to thank other noble Lords for taking part in the debate.
Over many years I and several other noble Lords have been repeatedly questioning the Government's policy of proceeding too fast with shutting down beds in mental hospitals and, indeed, in shutting down hospitals themselves before providing alternative services for the mentally ill patients whose numbers are probably increasing. I say "probably" because it is becoming obvious that many people—such as several convicted criminals and destitute people on the streets—who were hitherto treated as being wholly responsible for their actions, are in fact mentally incapable of coping with life. For example, in one of the large prisons on the Isle of Wight the senior probation officer informed me that around 25 per cent. of the prisoners, who are mainly in their early 20s, are pathetically inadequate and unable to look after themselves.
Those people need to be added to the number already recognised as needing care either in hospital or in the community. Therefore, there is evidence of a real need for communities in this country to appreciate that there are large numbers of mentally ill or inadequate people who require help. We used to
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call it "asylum"; it is sad that that word has a bad name. At the same time the 150,000 hospital beds that existed in 1956 have shrunk to 37,350 today. That reduction has continued steadily over 30 years, initially for very good reasons but latterly mainly at the personal expense of a tolerable life for dedicated family carers.
That is now clearly appreciated by the Government. They somewhat belatedly told us that health authorities have received guidance making it absolutely clear that the run-down of mental hospitals should not proceed faster than the build-up of care services. Most recently that point was made by my noble friend Lady Hooper at Question Time on 29th January when she said:
"My Lords, the run-down and closure of hospitals should not proceed faster than the build-up of alternative local services. Our guidance to health authorities makes that absolutely clear".—[Official Report, 29/1/91; col. 542.]
I could go on but I believe that that sufficiently makes the point.
The Government also enacted the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, which makes all the provision for assessment of mentally ill patients before discharge and care thereafter for which one could possibly wish. It is the implementation of those good intentions about which I ask. They seem to me to be sadly lacking.
At a recent meeting with the Minister of State for Health, Mrs. Virginia Bottomley—for which I was indeed grateful —I received the firm impression of three possible reasons for the lack of implementation of the Government's care policy. First, there is no machinery in the Department of Health for checking whether care facilities are actually being put in place to match the shut-down of hospitals. Secondly, health authorities only have to notify in advance plans to shut down hospitals, as stated by my noble friend Lady Hooper on 29th January to which I have already referred. Apparently health authorities can shut down beds without formally saying whether or not there are matching care facilities. Thirdly, if the Department of Health hears about the proposed shutting down of beds and warns the health authority against doing so, it never receives the publicity it deserves because it might embarrass those concerned.
An example which demonstrates the lack of enthusiasm by the department for having the information necessary to ensure that the Government's policy of closure and matching care facilities is followed, is illustrated by a Question in another place on 12th February by Mr. David Atkinson MP. The Question asked about the 32 mental illness hospitals planned for closure by 1996. It also asked how many beds and patients were now in them. Mr. Atkinson was told the hospitals' names but informed that the other information was not held centrally. When a similar Question was asked last year the numbers of patients in 35 mental hospitals planned for closure by 1995 was provided. If the information in regard to beds was available in 1990, why was it not available centrally in 1991? That just is not good enough. Furthermore, it does not enhance the Government's reputation for taking care in the community seriously. One would have thought that

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the Government would be only too keen to insist on the necessary information being held at their fingertips to enable them to answer the kind of questions we are discussing, and so that they can restrain the regional and district health authorities from shutting down beds faster than the facilities in the community are provided to care for the patients.
I trust that my noble friend Lord Cavendish will be able to tell us that he and his ministerial colleagues will insist on receiving full information with regard to planned care in the community, and the planned matching of closure of beds currently in mental hospitals with that care.
8 p.m.
Lord Balfour of Inchrye: My Lords, I rise, first, to ask for your Lordship's indulgence while I address the House for the first time and, secondly, to thank noble Lords for all the courtesy and kindness which I have received since entering the House last year. As a layman, I admit to considerable temerity in speaking from these Benches, which are often awash with noble Lords imbued with erudition, expertise and experience in the field of medicine.
My reason for participating in this debate is that, through circumstances, I have witnessed the lives of others racked, if not wrecked, by mental illness. I feel the need urgently to improve the quality of life of all those who suffer from psychological and emotional illness. I am fortunate in that I have never suffered from mental illness. However, when I have been asked what my profession is or how I spend my time and I reply truthfully that, first and foremost, I write music, I have noticed a strange look appearing on the questioner's face which suggests that possibly there is a stronger connection with Broadmoor than Broadwood. Many creative individuals have suffered from mental illness. But it is not primarily on their behalf that I am addressing your Lordships this evening, rather on behalf of the thousands of sufferers who are ordinary people endeavouring to lead normal lives yet burdened by the anguish of mental pain.
Last year some of your Lordships may have watched a television programme about just such a person. The victim was suffering from severe depression. I well remember the agonised expression on her face—a look that I have seen on numerous visits to National Health Service hospital wards and private nursing homes. It is a sort of hellish maelstrom raging in the head. But what to me was so satisfying about the programme was not merely its depiction of the victim's recovery but the fact that it was screened at all. I believe that for far too long the subject of mental illness has been swept under the carpet or, if talked about at all, in hushed, reverential tones. It is a taboo topic. That may be a legacy of our Victorian past but even today ignorance of and prejudice and intolerance towards the mentally disordered exist within our society.
Apropos ignorance, I remember a few years ago when studying the county cricket scores—I often turn to the scores as an antidote to our front page news—and reading of how a county had omitted a young player because he was suffering from depression. That
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was an enlightened and laudable action. But what was the reaction of the cricket correspondent of a leading national daily newspaper? He said, "Oh well, we all get depressed". To me that was a somewhat fatuous and thoughtless response, though in the correspondent's defence it is only fair to say that he was only revealing the inadequacy of a term that spans everything from feelings of sadness to desperate illness.
What of prejudice? Let us contrast the attitude displayed towards patients suffering from physical as distinct from mental illnesses. While the former will receive cards, flowers and gifts from well-wishers, the latter receive precisely nothing. For the mentally ill the flowers are conspicuous by their absence. Fortunately, there are signs that the public is beginning to show some understanding of both the nature and extent of mental illness. A recent MORI poll, conducted on behalf of the Mental Health Foundation, shows that only one in 10 people still consider mental illness to be due to weakness of character. That is half the number of those who believed that to be the case when the poll was conducted in 1979. That is encouraging because it means that the "Come on, pull yourself together" brigade are on the retreat.
I should like to see a programme of health education to teach everyone about the character and consequences of mental ill health. In the eyes of the general public, while mental illness may have lost some of its stigma, by and large it remains an enigma. I shall give your Lordships some statistics concerning mental illness. The Mental Health Foundation estimates that no fewer than 6 million people in the United Kingdom suffer from mental illness in the course of a year. That represents one in 10 of the population, which is more than the total population of Scotland. I should point out that Ministers at the Department of Health differ in their interpretation of what constitutes mental illness from that advanced by the Mental Health Foundation. They consider the figure to be lower. However, I have it on good authority that the figure of 6 million sufferers is based on the number of people identified by general practitioners as suffering from a mental illness according to the international classification of diseases.
The great majority of those affected (4.5 million) are in the 15 to 64 age range—that is to say, the working population. A further 1.2 million are over 65, while, sadly, 300,000 children under the age of 15 are similarly afflicted. Mental illness is as common as heart disorder, three times as common as cancer, five times more common than mental handicap and 3,000 times more common than AIDS. Mental illness is not regarded as a killer in the same way as heart disease and cancer yet, in addition to the massive extent of suffering caused, it results in the deaths of a substantial number of people—up to 20,000 individuals each year. That figure comprises 4,500 suicides, which is 13 a day, 1,800 fatalities due to alcohol and drug abuse and 13,500 deaths from causes directly attributable to chronic mental disorder within the elderly population.

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To put these figures into perspective, mental illness kills over four times as many people as perish annually in road accidents. That is not all. The cost to the nation of mental ill health is truly staggering. In 1989, of the 417 million working days lost due to sickness absence in the United Kingdom, 71 million (17 per cent.) were due to mental illness. By comparison, strikes accounted for 4 million days. Over the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989 working days lost through mental ill health increased from 33 million to 71 million.
Finally, the price we pay for mental illness is truly alarming. It was £6,825 million in 1989. If I were to be granted sufficient miraculous powers, there are three changes to our current mode of living which I should like to see made during the 21st century: first, a substantial decline in the world population; secondly, a reduction in the speed of many aspects of life; and, thirdly, a diminution of the noise that assails us everywhere. No doubt I shall be branded as naive, told that I am burying my head in the sand and putting the clock back and so on. To all those charges I plead guilty.
Of one thing I am sure. Unless we give some thought to the suggestions that I have made whereby we can somehow reduce the strain and stress of our daily lives, we shall continue to create the conditions in which mental illness thrives. Two years ago the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health remarked:
"Mental illness is the single largest necessity for expenditure within the National Health Service".
Although that is undoubtedly true, I consider that we need to be certain that sufficient resources are also being made available to care for those who are being returned to the community as a consequence of the continuing closure of our mental hospitals. It is surely not enough to care for 60,000 individuals who are resident in our psychiatric hospitals at a cost of £72 per day, when 5.9 million mental illness sufferers living in the community are offered 29p. a day—the price of a cup of tea.
I have personal knowledge of the closure of the external psychiatric unit of a London teaching hospital early in the last decade. Its closure and the subsequent inadequate provision for continuous care caused dismay to the practitioners and staff and distress to the patients and their families. I feel that, given the priority currently assigned to community care for the mentally ill, such uncertainty suggests that arrangements for on-going care may still leave something to be desired. I am therefore extremely glad that my noble kinsman, whom I thank for his earlier very kind words, has initiated the debate on this important issue in your Lordships' House this evening. I thank your Lordships for hearing me.
8.9 p.m.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, it comes to me as a great honour to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, on his maiden speech. I have heard many maiden speeches in my long life in your Lordships' House. I have never heard one so accurate,
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so carefully thought out and so brilliantly produced. I congratulate the noble Lord very much indeed. He has done a wonderful job for those of us who are deeply concerned about the mental health situation. I hope that everyone will have the opportunity to read what he said. I am sure that it will be influential on the Government. I should like to say how grateful we are to you, sir, and I congratulate you on an admirable speech.
I am very glad indeed to support my noble friend Lord Mottistone. He and I have had associations with various of the mental health organisations. The National Schizophrenia Fellowship is the one with which I have had most to do since helping to start it not so very many years ago. I think that all such organisations have made people aware of these terrific problems which, as someone said just now, are apt to be swept under the carpet. They are vitally important to everybody in this country, whether one is a sufferer or simply an ordinary person. I am sorry that the debate has started at such a late hour. I am sorry also that it is taking place after a very long debate and that we do not have the support we might have had. Nevertheless, let us say the things we want to say and let us hope that the Government will pay some attention and that we shall get something done.
I am very much concerned about the reduction in the number of hospital beds. Have the Government provided enough care in the community for the mentally ill? I very much doubt it because it is a difficult thing to do. I was on my local county council for a great many years and I served on the committee with responsibility for the local health authority. I remember very well how difficult it was to get people to understand how to care for those mental patients who were not in hospital but were able to live in the community provided they had someone to look after them, someone to advise them and someone to care for them. Do we have enough care for those people who are being and will be put out of mental hospitals?
On 12th February the Government were asked about the planned closure of 32 mental hospitals—my noble friend Lord Mottistone said 35; he may be right, I do not know. No answer was given that care in the community would be available. I believe that 25,650 beds in hospitals for mental patients are being done away with. That is an enormous number. Is it possible to provide community care for all those people? Such provision involves local health authorities, as I know from my experience. It is not easy to provide trained social workers to cope with these numbers. Without trained social workers one cannot cope. It is vital that that should be one of the priorities.
I received information from the City of Westminster that 25 per cent. of those who are discharged from hospital are homeless. This is a hopeless way—I was going to say a wicked way—of dealing with the matter. Those who are turned out of hospital with no care find themselves in despair and often become involved in petty crime, which can result in imprisonment. Whatever the result, it is the wrong way to treat mental illness, especially schizophrenia.

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Those of us who in one way or another are concerned about mental health care are deeply worried by this turn of events. We press the Government very strongly not to allow any mental patient to be without care in the community. In other words, we must relate hospital care and community care to the enormous numbers which have been cited in this debate and which are well known. I beg the Government to take this matter extremely seriously and do something about it now.
8.14 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, we have listened to three excellent speeches, all by people who have in different ways done a great deal for the cause of the mentally ill. Two were made by established Members of the House and the third by a newcomer—not a chicken, if I may put it that way, but new to this House. There must be some magic in the Bench on which the noble Lord is sitting. His neighbour, the noble Lord, Lord Acton, made a brilliant maiden speech last week and now the noble Lord has done so today. I sat there once in 1961. I do not know if it worked for me: others will have to judge. The debate was on Christian unity. There were two very bigoted Members of the House on the Front Bench—one was Lord Alexander, who was against it, and I was favourable to it. It was thought by our colleagues that we had better adjourn so we both spoke interminably from there. That was my only experience of speaking from that Bench.
I was looking up the record of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour. It would take a long time to do justice to it. It mentions composing, writing, drinking—there is a reference to drinking which I do not take seriously —and dreaming too. There is one concrete statement here that the noble Lord wrote a book on famous diamonds. Unless he is careful he will turn into a famous diamond himself. At any rate, we are very pleased to have heard him speak.
I am absolutely in line with the sentiments expressed in the debate. I only hope that if we keep pegging away eventually we shall achieve something or at any rate obtain some information. It may not be very easy to obtain it even from a Government full of good will or at any rate from a Minister full of good will. When I last spoke on these matters I suggested that community care was a disastrous term. It was full of ambiguities. It is a great pity that it was ever invented. However we are stuck with it and I shall not spend time splitting hairs about it tonight.
Most of us, whether we are talking of schizophrenia or any other form of mental trouble, will have some experience of the gallant and dedicated efforts made to help in the community in the widest sense people who have been in mental hospitals. I venture to recommend noble Lords to visit the hostel attached to the Maudsley Hospital. It is described on the document which I have been studying as 111 Denmark Hill, Rehabilitation Hospital, Hostel Ward. Last Friday I found there 14 men and women, long-stay patients. It is to be hoped that some of them will leave eventually, but there is no emphasis on that. Some of them may stay there indefinitely. The whole emphasis
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is on the hostel being a home. The ratio is quite good. I do not know whether it is better or worse than is found in mental hospitals. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will tell us. For 14 patients there are, roughly speaking, 14 people there to help them. It is a ratio of one to one. Undoubtedly the people there enjoy themselves very much. I greatly commend the hostel.
I do not know how much one can deduce from that. Only 14 people stay there and we know that vast numbers of mentally ill people need some sort of care in the community. So for a start one would need to increase the number of such places. That is one way of making a start. The beauty of this place, if I may say so, following something I said in a previous debate on these matters, is that it links the hospital and the community. It springs from the hospital and yet these people are free to move about. They are voluntary patients and they play their part—not a very large part —in the community. That is one way of dealing with the matter. The more often that example is followed, the better it will be for everyone.
Of course there are many different forms of mental trouble or mental situations; indeed, the varieties are unlimited. Therefore, enormous imagination, organising power and energy must be brought to bear in order to work out a national scheme. I do not for one moment think that any collective thought is being used to solve the problem. If that is not the case, I should like to hear examples to the contrary. However, during the course of many debates in this House, I have seen no sign of collective thinking on the matter.
The example of the Maudsley hostel raises a relatively easy issue. It is one of the most famous hospitals in the world and there is no question of its closure. However, if one considers an area where the hospital has been shut down, the whole problem becomes much worse. I have mentioned before —and I do not apologise for repeating it—the situation which will follow the total shutting down of Hellingley Hospital in Sussex. At one time it held 1,400 people, although it was originally intended for 1,000. At present there are 100 people in the hospital, but soon there will be none because the place is being closed. It is not the same as the Maudsley Hospital, because the latter provides a nucleus for aftercare. But, in the case of Hellingley, there will be no provision whatever when the place is closed. One is bound to ask what will happen in such a situation, or indeed in any other, where the hospital is being closed.
As regards Hellingley, I tried to look into the matter. Bearing in mind that there would be 1,000 people in that hospital if it were not due to close, I managed to trace 200 people in one district or another who would normally rely upon the hospital. Therefore, it is a matter of 200 people being placed in smaller units, against 1,000 former places —although, to be fair, there are plans to provide a further 200 places in smaller units. However, that will amount to only 400 places. The majority of the people who were in the hospital will not be catered for in those smaller units.

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I gained a very favourable impression of one of the smaller units which I visited. In such units, which provide for about 40 people, it is possible to lead a much more constructive life than in a large hospital. I am not for one moment saying that the ideal is to keep these larger institutions open. I think we all agree that we must produce alternative accommodation for these people, whether it is in smaller units or some other form of aftercare.
I have given the Government notice of a few questions that I wish to ask. I hope that they will be able to provide answers. First, do we have any idea of the amount of alternative accommodation which is provided? In the one area I mentioned, I talked about 200 or possibly 400 places against 1,000 possible places in the hospital. It may be said that some sort of community care will be provided for the other people either at day centres or in their homes and so on. Taking a national view, can the Government give us any idea of the scale of the provision at present? Can they tell us, even in the roughest terms, the amount of community care which is being provided in place of the care received in the hospitals which are to be closed? If it is not possible to measure the number of people who are helped in the community in that way, can we perhaps look at the matter in financial terms? For example, how much money has been saved in the past 10 years, or during any other period which appeals to the noble Lord, by closing mental hospitals and how much public money is being spent on community care? That question will not go away. The Minister may or may not have an answer at his fingertips. In any event, we shall keep returning to it.
There is one other aspect of the matter which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, in his excellent opening speech. He quoted a statement made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, on January 29th. In fact, I believe that she replied to me in the same way during a subsequent debate in February. She said that the Government would not allow the closure of mental hospitals in the future. I am not sure whether what she said to the noble Lord was as definite as what she said to me:
"No hospital closures will be approved unless it can be demonstrated that adequate alternatives have been developed".—[Official Report, 13/2/91; col. 184.]
I have a further question for the noble Lord, who I am sure will handle the matter with much sympathy. I have given him notice of it. Can he say when this new policy—a healthy one, at least on the face of it—was introduced? It was certainly not introduced until fairly recently. Further, how will the policy be enforced? We must be told whether there is an effective way of implementing it. It is taking rather a negative view to say that there will be no closures until adequate alternative accommodation is available. What steps are the government taking—this is the nub of the matter—to ensure that adequate accommodation is provided? It is not enough to say, "Well, if there is no accommodation we shall not allow any closures". The Government have a plan—a vision, if you like—of alternative accommodation, but what steps are they taking to promote its availability?
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Every time I reconsider this matter I find something new and horrible about it. I shall not mention a particular case tonight because it may not help the individual concerned. I have not given the noble Lord notice of my next point, but I cannot help wondering whether the position today in England of a long-stay patient is that he cannot make use of the National Health Service without being subject to a means test. Is that the situation in this country? It is true that that is the case in some places. Finally, I should like to express my support for all that has been said thus far in the debate.
8.25 p.m.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Mottistone for raising this extremely important question. It is one which reflects widespread concern that well-meaning policies of discharging patients suffering from mental illness into the community do not turn into a nightmarish reality of loneliness, neglect and physical and mental deterioration.
My noble friend has comprehensively highlighted key facts and figures indicating the extent of reductions in the number of hospital beds. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour, in his moving maiden speech highlighted very powerfully the size and poignancy of the problems of mental illness. I shall, therefore, just mention three issues. The first concerns problems associated with the general policy of community care; secondly, I shall give one specific example which illustrates, tragically, the nature of these problems; and, finally, I shall put forward a related issue of the training of social workers who will be the key professional staff implementing social care as responsibility moves to local authorities and social service departments. That point was touched upon by my noble friend Lady Elliot.
Several years ago, when I was lecturing in the social sciences, the concept of community care began to feature prominently on the agenda of policies for people suffering from mental illness and mental handicap. I was then deeply ambivalent about the concept, and I still am. The problems of long-stay institutional care have been well documented. Those of us who have worked in institutions are familiar with them. I refer to problems of depersonalisation, dependency, loss of initiative and so on. By contrast, community care at its best can provide a quality of life better than that which may be possible in traditional large institutions. Indeed, some examples of good community care have transformed the lives of people who have been hospitalised for many years, thus giving them new-found and previously almost inconceivable freedom, dignity and independence. We should be very thankful for that fact.
But, tragically, discharge from hospital does not always have such a happy outcome. In the first place, hospitals can be very effective asylums, in the best sense of the word, to people suffering from mental illness. Indeed, they can be happy places. Moreover, on the other side of the coin, provision in the community is already proving to be inadequate to meet the needs of some people suffering from mental

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illness. So far, those who have been discharged have been those deemed to be most ready to adjust to life in the community. Subsequent discharges are likely to be less obvious candidates for adjustment from the asylum of hospital care to the challenges of life in the community, for the community can be a lonely place, and it is much easier for people suffering from a mental illness to slip through the interstices of care in the community than it is in the relative safety of a hospital. Moreover, community care cannot, and must not, be a cheaper option than institutional care. Although many relatives are willing to take on responsibilities for the care of people with a mental illness, it may place a great strain upon them, and they need adequate support. There is again evidence that many are not receiving that support and are under great stress.
That brings me to my second point. I offer one vignette which I am afraid is typical of many and it is a true story. Following bed closures in a large hospital, a middle-aged man suffering from schizophrenia was discharged into the community. Accommodation was found for him in a bed-sit flat, but he was told that he had to leave it. He became agitated. He went to a day hospital where he broke a window and set off the fire alarm. He was arrested and sent to prison on remand for three months. The manager in charge of mental health for that locality said that there had been several unsuccessful attempts to provide more satisfactory placements but that there were gaps in the current service provision for patients who exhibit what he called "challenging behaviour", and that the absence of "challenging behaviour facilities" led to great pressures on the carers of people with such problems. He also said that he had not approached other mental health facilities in his region because they would have been in no better position to assist with the containment of problems presented by that client. The man vas eventually accommodated in a private hospital at a considerable distance from his elderly mother who has great difficulty travelling to visit him.
That sad case illustrates a pattern that is becoming disturbingly widespread: a pattern of clients who have been discharged from mental hospitals and who have encountered difficulties of accommodation, isolation and anxiety which have perhaps prompted them to indulge in behaviour which lands them in trouble, or which relegates them to the ranks of the homeless and the destitute. It is no accident that one-third of the homeless in our country suffer from some form of mental illness. Demographic trends are likely to exacerbate the problem as more of our elderly population become more elderly and more prone to associated psychiatric problems such as dementia. There are already too many cases where appropriate institutional care cannot be found and where carers are suffering intolerable stress.
Before I finish I wish to touch on a different but related topic; namely, the shift of responsibility for the provision of social care to local authorities and social service departments, where the lead professionals will be the social workers. My anxiety is whether they have all beam adequately trained to assess the needs of
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people suffering from mental illness. That anxiety is based on my perception of trends in the theoretical basis for some social work courses which have a strong bias against the so-called "medical model" of diagnosis and treatment.
Perhaps I may refer briefly once again to the days when I was lecturing in social sciences. I remember being deeply worried by courses leading to degrees and professional qualifications in social work which gave virtually no knowledge of the clinical basis of mental illness and which taught that medical treatment was a form of "oppression". In its most extreme form, such radical social work was represented by a movement called Case Con, with a journal of the same name. In one issue, typical Marxist approaches to mental illness were identified: one saw mental illness as "false consciousness" with the remedy lying in the acceptance of a Marxist analysis. Another taught that mental illness is merely a product of bourgeois propaganda in a society where people who threaten the bourgeois order are coerced into institutions and where psychiatry serves as a tool of the oppressors. I am not paranoid and I am not hallucinating.
I have sat in on lectures where those theories were being taught in all seriousness. Worse than that, I am aware of situations where social workers would not identify clients with psychiatric problems as mentally ill because of a commitment to such ideological approaches to mental illness. I have read courses leading to qualifications in social work which do not study mental illness at all and do not give those social workers any knowledge of the key insights and facts relating to mental illness, but focus merely on critiques of the medical model. I must emphasis that those direct experiences are not recent, but they were real; and many who undertook those courses may now be in practice.
I talked to the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, and I am sad to learn that it, with its direct experience of people suffering mental illness, is even now deeply worried about the lack of clinical knowledge of many social workers and the ideological bias of some who still see medical treatment as a form of oppression. I talked recently to a professor of social work and I was interested to note that he was worried that in his experience too many social workers seemed to forget that their clients had bodies with physical needs.
Those worries were endorsed by a report from the CCETSW last year which recounted findings of a national survey of approved social workers qualified to work with the mentally ill in which it was recognised that the most strongly felt deficits of knowledge were those relating to mental illness and matters directly relevant to the mentally ill which are, they admit, almost certainly under-taught in basic approved social work training. So serious are those deficiencies that the NSF has recently run 14-day training courses in different parts of the country—and is still running them —to help social workers become more knowledgeable about the condition of schizophrenia and the needs of those who suffer from it and those who care for them. It seems a little anomalous that it should fall to a charitable organisation to make

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up a deficit in professional training for professional social workers who are to be the lead professionals in providing community care.
I conclude by asking my noble friend the Minister for reassurance that not only will there be adequate provision for people discharged from hospital in terms of essential facilities and support services, but for reassurance that the staff who will be responsible for designing and implementing the so-called packages of care will be adequately qualified in terms of clinical knowledge to ensure that patients' mental health needs are met. Unless those basic provisions can be assured, we may see suffering of unprecedented proportions in the form of lost, lonely and homeless people, or of carers who are burdened beyond endurance. Such outcomes would not only be a travesty of a policy which was designed to bring a better quality of life to some of our most vulnerable citizens; it would also be an unforgivable blight upon the conscience of the nation.
8.39 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, for raising this subject for debate because it is one of the most important subjects affecting our society. I also take the opportunity to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, on joining our debate. We look forward to hearing from him many times in the future.
The noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, and the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, mentioned various figures relating to hospitals which are likely to close within the foreseeable future and how many bed closures there would be affecting the mentally ill. There were different figures: 32 hospitals, 35 hospitals—
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, perhaps I might intervene in order to clarify this point for the noble Baroness and for my noble friend. It is 32 hospitals this year and it was 35 hospitals last year. They were different quotes.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord; but I have also been given a figure to say that this means there will be a loss of something like 12,500 beds.
I was delighted, as I am sure were many of your Lordships, when in September the Government announced a specific grant of £30 million for mental health care to local authorities to improve their capabilities in providing care for the mentally ill. It is estimated that will provide care for about 3,000 people. At the moment local authorities spend £200 million on mental health care, and so the £30 million is an increase of 15 per cent. As I said, it will provide care for about 3,000 people. However, the Government admit that there are 25,000 people suffering from schizophrenia. Therefore the finance available to local authorities is not by any means adequate. The £30 million is only available to local authorities if they can put up 30 per cent. Many local authorities have already announced that with the community charge and the capping in regard to the
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community charge, they are unable to find the 30 per cent. As a result, they cannot take advantage of the £30 million.
There is another interesting figure. Over the past 10 years the ratio of expenditure between hospital care and community care has hardly changed. For every pound spent on mental health 10 years ago, 12p was spent on community services. That amount has now risen to the enormous sum of 15p, and in my view the ratio should be completely reversed.
Not so very long ago I was chairman of the South-West Thames Regional Health Authority. The pressure for allowing people back into the community had already started, and therefore the transfer of resources from the big institutions to community care had begun. I argued with the Secretary of State, including the former Secretary of State who is now sitting on the Labour Front Bench, about the impossibility of transferring any resources from the hospital service to the community without getting bridging loans from the Government.
You cannot save money by closing part of a hospital, or closing some wards, and allowing the people with the greatest possibilities to live on their own out in the community. You are then left with patients who need the most enormous amount of care. You probably need more staff because in the past some of the fitter patients did quite a lot within the hospital to help their friends who were not as well off as they were. Therefore certainly the same staff, if not more, are needed; and you cannot let the rest of the hospital buildings fall down. The bridging loans were desperately necessary, and without them resources to the community cannot be transferred.
Last year the Government announced capital bridging loan finance for health authorities to the tune of £50 million. That was for mental health and handicap services. That was also very welcome. However, immediately that was announced, 140 health authorities applied for the bridging loan finance, and 10 of them were granted it. That amounted to £30 million. Therefore £50 million is by no means enough. The Social Services Select Committee in another place have estimated that the bridging loan fund, it it is to be of any help, should be £267.6 million.
It is a tragedy that we cannot organise our finances to help this transfer. We are all convinced that with the proper services in the community it is better for people to live like normal human beings. It is also true that for a very few of them the institution is home, and they should not be pushed out if they are not ready to leave.
We have failed abysmally in creating the right community services. This is pointed to by the fact that 80 per cent. of admissions to psychiatric hospitals are people who have been admitted before. It is not wholly the fault of lack of community services; but I cannot help feeling that that is one of the most important reasons. I am connected with a charity called Crisis, and I am one of their trustees. In particular in London we have found an enormous increase in the number of people suffering from mental disability. This creates great problems in hostels and day centres because these mentally afflicted homeless people create

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enormous disturbance in the hostels and day centres because the people are not being properly cared for by the rig ht kind of services. To a certain extent, that puts off homeless people who want to use the day centres because it is too difficult to cope.
We had one or two terrible examples in Crisis at Christmas. For example, a woman became too violent and could not be kept at the centre. We took her to the Maudsley Hospital. She was examined and considered not to be insane. We then took her to a night shelter, where she apparently became just as violent. The police were called in, but they did not take her to the police station. They asked her where she wanted to go and she said, "King's Cross". They took her there and just dropped her on the corner. That should not happen to anybody in that state. It was only about three weeks later that she died.
All community workers must have very special training in order to look after the homeless mentally ill. These people are in a very special class. They have no connections with society; they are not registered with a GP, and they do not have any people of their own supporting them in the community. Quite often they have had bad experiences in a hospital or they do not like the hospital. They are also very unlikely to keep out-patient appointments or to take medication. This is an enormous problem and it must be addressed.
I was particularly pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, talk about the training which is necessary for social workers. I could not agree more. I do riot know how many members of the medical profession we have in the Chamber at the moment, but I emphasise that the same point applies to general practitioners. There are many general practitioners who do not understand how to deal with the first signs of mental illness. They are not prepared to take the time to probe why a patient has come to see them, complaining of some minor illness, when in fact they want the doctor to take time with them, and they want to be able to talk to someone about their problems.
We need to concentrate, both in our medical education and in our post-graduate training, particularly for general practitioners, on learning more about how to detect what is really behind a person's plea for help. That should also be included in social workers' training.
Many things need to be done, and there is much goodwill among the voluntary organisations and among people in society, but unless we get our finances right we shall not be able to solve the problem.
8.50 p m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House feels grateful that we have had a wealth of well-informed speeches this evening from people who know what they are talking about and who have taken trouble with their presentation, not least from the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, in his maiden speech. He has started very well. I hope that he keeps it up.
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There is a great need for people who have an understanding of mental health problems in Britain to speak up, stand up, and in a sense fight against ignorance and prejudice, but perhaps more against the sense of apathy, that this is someone else's problem.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, for his raising of the issue today, and also for his constant concern about this issue. I share his worries about the gross disparity between the rate of closure of long-stay mental hospital beds and the inadequacy of community care. I touched on this in the debate which we had on 13th February when I referred to mental hospital beds having been cut by 40 per cent. in a period of just two years, which was too much. Then I said:
"thousands of long-stay mental patients have been discharged from long-stay hospitals, landing up in prisons or sleeping rough, because the Government will not provide money for good community care;"—[Official Report, 13/2/91; col. 120.]
The Government accept that some mental hospital beds will be required even when the closure programme is completed. When the Minister replies, I wonder whether he could say something about that. What is their present calculation? What are the criteria on which any calculation is made? I hope the Minister will also reply to the valid points put by my noble friend Lord Longford.
I also share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, that figures of beds closed and beds still required are not held centrally. That is a very unsatisfactory situation. Unless the information is available to the department from the regions, through the districts, there is no way in which the department can effectively monitor a programme on which Ministers can come to this House and another place to answer questions. I am always dissatisfied to hear the answer "This information is not centrally available". On this issue the information must be centrally available; otherwise we cannot follow what is going on. In a sense, it is an abdication of responsibility for the carrying into effect of policies which concern us all.
Principally, I want to say that it is more important to put more resources into good community care than to turn back the clock. I agree with the noble Lord that we must keep the closure of mental hospitals in sync, but I do not want us to turn back the clock. My noble friend referred to "community care" as being words he did not like. I find it to be a satisfactory concept. Providing it is effectively carried through, providing the range of options is very wide, and that there is proper supervision and training for those involved, it is a far better provision than that found in hospital, except for a limited few.
The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, was right to point out that 99 per cent. of all people with a diagnosis of mental illness live in the community, that is, nearly 6 million as compared with under 60,000 who are actually in hospital. But community care services offer a better quality of life than do hospitals, even for people who have been institutionalised over many years. Recent research on the Care in the Community programme sponsored by the

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Department of Health found there were improvements in social contacts, morale, the use of shops and other local facilities, at a lesser cost than the £30,000 per bed per year expended on a psychiatric bed. Generalisations are always dangerous, but most users of community care services also say that they prefer those services to going back into hospital.
Of course, as hospitals close, and as there is increasing recognition of the needs of the community, the needs for community mental health services are growing. Yet health expenditure continues to be concentrated heavily in hospital services, especially in the acute sector. Eighty-five per cent. of all the combined health authority and social services budgets devoted to mental health is channelled into hospitals; in other words, 85 per cent. of the budgets go on 1 per cent. of the population in need. Since 1979–11 years ago—this has dropped by a mere 3 per cent. from 88 per cent. to 85 per cent. The low priority accorded to community services in general and to mental health in particular means that it is common for mental health budgets to be raided to cover overspending in acute medicine. This is something that the department must tackle.
In the absence of ring-fenced mental health budgets, savings made by closing psychiatric wards can be, and often are, used to bail out acute sector budgets rather than to enhance community mental health services. This is an intolerable situation. If the department does not know about this it is because figures are not kept centrally and they are unable to monitor it.
Community care reforms have consistently taken second place to general NHS reforms since the NHS and Community Care Act was passed last year. This is true of the community care reforms as they affect local authorities. In a leaked letter dated September 1990 it became clear that the former Secretary of State, Kenneth Clarke, had offered to reduce his community care bid to the Treasury from £50 million to £4 million, and that he additionally offered to reduce his personal social services capital bid by £22 million, of which the bulk, £15 million, was to come from the community care capital budget.
More recently, it has become clear that the community care reforms expected of health authorities are also being starved of the necessary resources. Regional health authorities have been informed by the NHS management executive that changes arising from Caring for People—the community care aspects of the reforms—will have to be met from within existing resources. This can be a recipe for inaction. Moreover, the new care programme approach means that from April this year health authorities will have to assess and devise a care programme for people leaving psychiatric hospitals with no new resources, in order to fulfil an absolute commitment. They do not have the resources to do it. The noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, makes the bid—and it is a bid that I make —that people should always leave hospital with a care plan, and always after assessment. The money has to be provided to enable that to be done.
I argued the case against the mental hospital as a
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desirable place to live for most people. I once spent a spell in a mental hospital, and I can say that hospital life is a life limited by segregation, by an institutional regime which by its nature cannot accommodate individual wishes and needs. Long-stay psychiatric hospitals are unpopular. A research report entitled I hated it there but I miss the people by Nigel Gouldie found that 70 per cent. of ex-long-stay patients had no wish to return, even though the support they found in the community was in no way sufficient. Later reports have put the proportion much higher. One report put it at 96 per cent. That research was carried out by J. Oliver and K. Wooff and published by the Department of Health.
A glance at some of the headings under which community services in Torbay operate shows that a comprehensive mental health service does not necessarily need a hospital base. Community mental health services, acute care, psychotherapy services, services for people with longer-term problems, services for elderly people with mental health problems, and even the asylum function which is often claimed for psychiatric hospitals, do not necessarily need a hospital. The example given by my noble friend Lord Longford of the Maudsley was a good example of that.
The problem basically concerns money. Part of the resistance to hospital closure is that the closure of any service risks becoming a cut. Cuts have been made in Nottingham's mental health services to meet an acute unit overspend, while Exeter MIND's extensive efforts to find out what happened to the funds released by the closure of Digbeth and Exminster hospitals have shown how difficult it is to keep track of health authority finances. Diverting funds saved through hospital closures away from mental health services is indefensible, but the way to stop this kind of asset stripping is not by ending the closure programme. The Department of Health should not only state that proceeds from hospital sales must be used to develop alternative services, but it should also require authorities to publish what happens to their assets. I shall repeat that. It is absolutely essential that the Department of Health should require health authorities to state that proceeds from hospital sales must be used to develop alternative services, and to make it clear to the department how those savings have been spent.
If community care is to be a reality—in 1986 the Audit Commission suggested it could be a reality—the transfer of resources from institutional to community care services must be made. That is our principal plea to the Government. In my view the reason for service gaps in the community is, at root, that no adequate mechanism has been found to transfer resources from hospital to community.
I tried to do this in a modest way by joint funding. That enabled health authority money to be used by social services departments. I wish I was clear on where we stand on joint funding now. Slowing or halting hospital rundown can only exacerbate the difficulty and the deficiency in this area. Money must be put into community care. The Government must find ways not of moving backwards but of moving

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forward. I hope the Minister will say something that will encourage the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, myself and all those who have taken part in the debate.
9.3 p.m.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I wish to join other speakers in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, on a compelling and well informed speech. The noble Lord spoke with humanity and transparent sincerity born of personal experience. I, like other noble Lords, look forward to hearing him speak again and again.
Contrary to popular belief, the development of mental health services is not aimed primarily at closing hospitals. No suggestion has been made this evening to that effect. Rather, health authorities in collaboration with local authority social services departments are seeking to develop locally-based networks of health and social care services for people with a mental illness, including both short-term hospital beds and longer-term provision for rehabilitation and asylum. This is a useful debate on an important and topical issue, and I am glad to be able to reiterate the Government's reaction to some of the problems arising during what is a transitional period when the traditional mental hospitals, including the Victorian asylums, are becoming redundant and are being run down with a view to closure. Our guidance to health authorities makes clear that the run-down of beds and closure of hospitals should not proceed faster than the build-up of alternative local services. Neither should there be any question of patients being discharged from mental hospitals until their needs have been assessed and arrangements have been made with local authorities and other care agencies for those needs to be appropriately met.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. Will he tell us when that policy was decided upon? It certainly has not been applied over the years.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I am not sure exactly when the policy was decided upon. It will come to final fruition on 1st April. Perhaps that point will become clear as I continue with my remarks. If that is not the case, I shall certainly write to the noble Earl.
There is no simple arithmetical formula for ensuring that the run-down of the old facilities does not outpace the development of the new. It is very much a matter of judgment. We would not claim that, in all parts of the country, and at all times over the past 15 years, the run-down has never outpaced the build-up of new facilities.
I do not dispute the difficulty mentioned by my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood, nor the fact that mental illness continues to lead to great tragedies and sorrow. I cannot claim that those tragedies will cease. They are a fact of life. The noble Baroness, in referring to bed reductions of 25,000, asked whether the community could cope with the situation. I should make the point that the number of beds has reduced gradually at a rate of between 2,000 and 3,000 each year or, put another way, between 10 to 20 beds per health district.
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Our anxieties in this matter are one of the reasons why we have introduced improved new arrangements that will come into effect in April. At this point perhaps I should clear up a statistic. It has been asked how many mental illness hospitals closed last year and how many are planned for closure. I am informed that one hospital was closed in 1990 and 32 hospitals are planned for closure by 1996, subject to suitable alternative provision being made.
The key initiative is the introduction of the care programme approach. As my noble friend knows, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health has asked district health authorities to introduce that approach from 1st April. The essential elements are the establishment of systematic arrangements for assessing the health and social care needs of patients who could potentially be treated in the community. They include the identification of a key worker to keep in close touch with patients and specifically to monitor the delivery of agreed health care and social care.
On the subject of bed closures, my noble friend Lord Mottistone, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and other noble Lords sought greater reassurance that the number of beds is not reducing faster than the rate at which mentally ill patients are being discharged into the community, backed by figures on bed closures and their replacement. Such figures are not available until statistics are collated at the end of any one year. That is because the situation is dynamic. Bed numbers shift in an uneven pattern and although the trend has been consistently downwards the rate of fall is uneven from year to year and from region to region.
Nor would such statistics help noble Lords very much. In different areas there are radically different approaches to treatment which affect bed occupancy. Furthermore, a well-publicised decision to reduce bed numbers in any one mental illness hospital could be reversed suddenly and unexpectedly to reflect local needs. Such statistics would therefore tend to be misleading. We believe that it would make no sense for the Government to interfere with that process.
My noble friend Lord Mottistone queried a hospital bed statistic. The figure of 37,350 mental illness hospital beds quoted by my noble friend is not correct. That is no fault of his; I believe that it arises from a misunderstanding. The total number of such beds in 1989–90 was 59,290. The figure of 37,350 relates largely to long-term provision as well as to beds in secure facilities.
For many years now there has been a decline in the number of such beds. That has occurred gradually as community services have developed. Improving services for people suffering from mental illness is one of the Government's priorities. I should like to give an illustration using figures. In this country there may be as many as 6 million people suffering from mental illness of one kind or another. The scale of the problem was borne out by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour, in his speech. Of those 6 million some 2¼ million people may be described as seriously mentally

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ill. Of those 2¼ million seriously mentally ill people there will at any one time be only 60,000 in hospital, of whom more than half will be long-stay patients.
Of the approximately £1.5 billion of health service budget devoted to mental illness, one half is spent on those 60,000 patients. The Government's policy is to change that through the care programme, monitoring carefully as the programme proceeds. It remains to be seen what precise effect that will have on resources and whether or not the new policy will give rise to a need for new additional funding.
We accept that there have been cases in which patients with mental illness have been discharged from hospital without adequate arrangements having been made for their continuing health and social care. An illustration has been given tonight in your Lordships' House. We are therefore requiring all health authorities to introduce from 1st April more systematic arrangements for the care programme approach to ensure that no one is discharged from psychiatric hospital unless his or her continuing health and social care needs can be met.
Health authorities will need to ensure that any further reduction in hospital beds does not outpace developments in community services. For that reason we have introduced a completely new specific revenue grant to local authorities of £21 million next year towards new services, at a total cost of £30 million. That will make a significant difference to the level of local authority expenditure on services for people with mental illness. It is impossible to give the precise figure for the current level of such expenditure but the highest estimate is around £200 million. The new grant would allow 15 per cent. real growth on that figure and contribute significantly to meeting the costs of local authority services for mentally ill people.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, said that many local authorities cannot find the 30 per cent. Other noble Lords also made that point. I dispute that statement. The latest information is that 105 out of 107 authorities will take up the grant. One authority —Salford—appears to have decided not to take it up; we wait to hear from the other one, which is Bromley. Early indications are that there will be a take-up of well over 90 per cent.
The centrally funded portion of mental illness specific grant is 70 per cent., as it is for personal social services specific grants. The 30 per cent. which local authorities must find is taken into account in their RSG settlement and to that extent is provided for from central government. If the specific grant were to be funded centrally at a rate of 100 per cent., it might be viewed as a disincentive to local authorities to make the most efficient use of the funds available.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will give way. Would he accept that the final determinant cannot be made until it is known which local authorities will be charge capped? If they are charge capped they may have to revise the decision taken and an early priority might be taking up their share of the specific grant for mental health.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: I am not aware, my Lords, of anyone having provisionally made that bid and therefore I assume that a number of authorities which have already got into the bid will be charge capped. But I understand what the noble Lord says.
To help local authorities finance the capital elements of the new social care services we are offering supplementary credit approvals of £10 million in 1991–92. Clearly, finance from mental hospital sites provides valuable capital for replacement facilities such as hospital hostels but these facilities are needed before hospitals can be vacated and therefore have to compete for resources with other priorities within capital programmes.
To tackle that problem we introduced the capital loans fund at the beginning of the financial year 1990–91 to provide bridging finance to allow health authorities to develop community services in advance of closing old mental illness and mental handicap hospitals. Bids were invited from all health authorities for payments from that fund. Repayments of the loans would be expected within a few years to enable the fund to continue as a rolling programme. We received over 140 bids. They were all carefully assessed to ensure that they were consistent with the aims of the fund and that the authorities had clear plans to repay the loans so that the process could be repeated somewhere else. In July 1990 we announced that £30 million was being allocated to 10 schemes over the next three years. Additional schemes will be adopted as the fund increases over the three-year period to make up a £50 million rolling programme, the fund being replenished by repayments from schemes in progress.
The development of mental illness services, including the shift to locally based services, is a regular feature of the annual accountability review meetings which Ministers and the NHS Management Executive hold with each regional health authority. The department advises on and monitors the development of services by local authorities through the work of its Social Services Inspectorate. Information is also obtained through the health advisory service, which regularly produces reports on services for mentally ill people.
The Department of Health is asking regional health authorities to confirm by the end of April 1991 that all district health authorities have introduced the care programme approach. The department will commission research to help evaluate its effectiveness. I understand that that will not bring entire satisfaction to my noble friend Lord Mottistone but we believe that we have the basis of serious monitoring. I know that my right honourable friend has every intention of ensuring that this vital element of government policy is made to work.
I turn to a couple of questions asked in the course of the debate. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, specifically asked what savings arose from the closure of hospitals. The answer is that there have been no savings. Put like that, I do not think that one could make sense of savings, in that no money has been realised and gone anywhere else. I speak nationally. It

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may be that there has been a gain to one individual authority through sales. The gross spending on hospitals and community health services for the mentally ill grew by 34 per cent. in real terms between 1978–79 and 1988–89 to a total of £1.4 million. Expenditure by local authorities on mental illness services increased by 80 per cent. in the same period to £63 million.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, said that he felt that community care might be disastrous. I am not sure whether he still thinks it disastrous.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I said it the last time I spoke and repeated it—it is a disastrous word. But as I said, we are stuck with it. I do not want to continue to argue about the word. We have more important things to consider.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I understand the noble Earl. However, there is a growing consensus that virtually all the professionals, patients and carers prefer that approach to the previous one.
My noble friend Lady Cox spoke of training social workers. She raised a very fair anxiety. Unfortunately I am not in a position to give a response this evening, but either my noble friend Lady Hooper or I will write to her.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, will it be possible for my noble friend to send me a copy of the letter?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, yes indeed.
Since I am not wholly familiar with the department, I became confused with some of the statistics given by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. I shall read very
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carefully what he said and respond. I am glad that he mentioned Torbay. It gives me a chance to pay tribute to that authority and to what it is doing.
The noble Lord also asked whether authorities would be required to return the proceeds from the disposal of hospitals to community care and account for those proceeds. Again I am not in a position to give a definitive answer. However, he raises an important point. I should like to draw it to the attention of my right honourable friend. Again he will receive a full response.
We believe that these initiatives will make both a significant contribution to improving the resources available specifically for mentally ill people and help to ensure that the reduction and closure of the old hospitals does not outpace the development of newer forms of service. We have asked regional health authorities to monitor the introduction of the care programme approach and we shall be looking to them to oversee the development of the new forms of service as part of their overall monitoring role. As a backstop we have made it clear that we shall not approve the closure of any mental hospitals unless it can be demonstrated that suitable alternative services have been developed. I hope that our approach will reassure all noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Mottistone, and the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, which he so ably represents.

Torquay Market Bill [H.L.]
Committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes past nine o'clock.