Lords Sitting of 15 July 1991

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

NHS Low Income Scheme
Lord Stallard Lord Stallard asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will abolish the health benefits low income scheme and simultaneously widen the grounds for exemption from dental, optical and prescription charges.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper): My Lords, we have no plans to do either. The National Health Service low income scheme ensures that no one is called upon to pay more than they can afford and complements the existing charge exemption arrangements which are available on the grounds of health or status.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that fairly disappointing reply. Is she aware that the grounds for exemption under the low income scheme are inconsistent? For example, a pregnant woman can get help with some charges but not for a visit to hospital. Pensioners are exempt from prescription charges but not from other charges. The help available rarely covers the charges, the scheme is too complicated and the claim form is 19 pages long. As we know from experience, that automatically deters very many needy claimants. Does the noble Baroness not accept that what is needed is a review of the whole scheme, with particular emphasis on the cost-effectiveness of the low income scheme? I am sure that the result of such a review would be the abolition of the scheme and an extension of the exemptions.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the present arrangements have been in place since 1968 but the method of assessment was changed to its present form in 1987. We conducted an internal scrutiny during last year and as a result my honourable friend the Minister for Health has announced a review of the administration of the low income scheme. It is intended to complete the review and to consider proposals before the end of this year.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, the Minister replied as if the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux had not already published its study of this matter. Has she noted that the CAB report shows that, because people on low incomes are failing to receive assistance with NHS charges, poor people are doing without or are not fully receiving the health care to which they are entitled? Does she agree with the CAB report that the grounds for exemption are inconsistent and that the claim form, at 19 pages, is absurdly complicated? Why are not the Government prepared to take serious note of the CAB study and re-examine the scheme, which the CAB says is not working?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, it so happens that it was shortly after the Government announced their intention earlier this year to have a review that the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux produced its report. It has been welcomed. We find the recommendations helpful. We are looking at a scheme which handles in excess of I million claims each year and cases of dissatisfaction represent overall a very small percentage of the total.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, are the Government considering the recommendations made in the CAB report?
Baroness Hooper: Yes, indeed, my Lords. The recommendations will be carefully examined as part of the review.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, will the review of which the noble Baroness has informed the House consider the possibility of changing the way the current system

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is administered? Such a change in the procedure might prove less expensive. Maintaining the rules is a burden on the NHS, whereas when the procedure was reasonably free the burden of administration was reduced.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the review will examine all aspects of the administration of the scheme, including the length and content of the claim leaflets, publicity and current procedures.

Economic Recovery: Forecasts
2.41 p.m.
Lord Ezra Lord Ezra asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they consider that the economic recovery is going to start.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Henley): My Lords, the timing of turning points in the economy cannot be forecast precisely, though it remains though the Government's view that the recovery should begin in the second half of the year and gather momentum in 1992.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that many forecasts have been made about the start of the recovery? In fact, in March of last year the Government were estimating that it would start in the first half of the year. The noble Lord is now suggesting that it should begin in the second half of the year. Is he aware that the Engineering Employers Federation takes a rather more pessimistic view and thinks that its members, who represent a large part of manufacturing industry, will still see a fall in their activity in the first half of next year? In those circumstances, do the Government not agree that they should accelerate recovery by introducing further cuts in interest rates and by stimulating more investment in industry?
Lord Henley: My Lords, we shall make further cuts in interest rates as and when we are able. The noble Lord draws the attention of the House to other forecasts of growth in the latter half of this year and next year. We remain of the view that there will be growth next year. Our figures show growth next year of some 2.1 per cent. Some forecasts suggest higher estimates of growth; others suggest lower estimates. I can give the noble Lord one estimate of 1.9 per cent. which is achieved from an average of 26 independent forecasts. Some have forecasted much higher estimates of growth. The most optimistic is that from the Henley Centre for Forecasting, with which I have no connection, which forecasts growth of 3 per cent.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, apart from the forecast from the Henley Centre, what other evidence are the Government using to forecast an upturn at the end of the year? What will be the source of that recovery? If it comes primarily from domestic consumption, how does the noble Lord think the Government will be able to sustain it, given the current balance of payments deficit?
Lord Henley: My Lords, there are many signs that the recovery is on its way. Inflation was down to 5.8 per cent. in May and was 5.8 per cent. in June, after peaking at 10.9 per cent. during last September and October. I can also say that an EC Gallup survey shows consumer confidence on a slowly rising trend and retail sales prices in the past three months are I per cent. up on the previous three months. Further, the results of a recent CBI survey point to an improving trend in business confidence.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, is it not possible that the end of the recession would he brought closer if we all stopped talking ourselves into a state of gloom and tried to instil a note of confidence and optimism into our public utterances?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I totally agree with my noble and learned friend. I should like to remind him of the words used by President Roosevelt many years ago when talking about a recession in another age. He said that there was nothing to fear but fear itself.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, when will the Government indicate their confidence in the recovery by announcing the date of the next general election?
Lord Henley: My Lords, that is another question. The date of the next general election is not a matter for me.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, does the Minister accept that his replies this afternoon smack of complacency? We have been told that we should not talk ourselves into gloom. But let us try to tell that to the 900 small businessmen who are going bankrupt each week, the thousands who have already gone bankrupt and many others who are on the brink of it and living in dread of the next few weeks. Tell them that the recovery is on the way.
Lord Henley: My Lords, obviously I do not wish to sound complacent. There are still high figures as regards unemployment and insolvency. However, these lag behind the changes in output and do not indicate that the recession is getting any steeper.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, taking into account the remarks made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, on the subject of confidence, will the Minister explain to the House and to the country how it is possible for there to be a return to confidence so long as the present Government remain in office?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I, and many other people, have a great deal of confidence in Her Majesty's Government as presently constituted.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the least helpful proposals to encourage economic recovery would be the introduction of a national minimum wage? It would price many people out of work, greatly reduce spending and cause a considerable economic decline.
Lard Henley: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely correct. I do not believe that many people—except, of course, a few misguided people opposite—believe in a national minimum wage.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, the Minister predicts recovery in the second half of the year. However, are the Government aware that we are already in the second half of the year? Further, does he agree with the remarks made this weekend by his honourable friend Mr. Maude who said that there are no current signs of recovery?
Lord Henley: My Lords, the first part of the noble Lord's remarks was somewhat naive. We have never said that the recovery would start on the 1st July; that is, the beginning of the second half of the year. We said that the recovery would come some time in the second half of the year and that is somewhat different from saying that it would start on 1st July. I have not seen the reports of the remarks made by my honourable friend Francis Maude, but I understand that he was misquoted. However, I can quote the words of one of his colleagues in the Treasury, Mr. John Maples, who said:
"Cur forecast has been that the economy will start to grow again in the second half of this year. We made that forecast at the time of the Budget. Nothing that has happened since makes us want to change that and we believe that events are starting to bear that out".
Lord Desai: My Lords, does the Minister agree that he has as much to fear from the recovery happening as he has from it not happening? Surely inflation will return as soon as the economy revives.
Lord Henley: My Lords, inflation must be kept down. We shall continue to keep the pressure on inflation to ensure that it moves downwards. We wish to see steady growth that will not cause the pressures on inflation which occurred in the past.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, is it not the case that the underlying rate of inflation is rising at present?
Lord Henley: No, my Lords; it is not.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I was interested to hear the Minister's reference to Franklin Roosevelt. Perhaps he is aware that it took the Second World War to get America out of the recession about which he was talking. I hope that there is nothing similar waiting for us. However, can the Minister tell those of us who are interested in this subject what we should be looking at? How will we know when the economic recovery is under way? Further, can he tell us when we should look at it? I accept that it is a difficult matter, but can he tell us what and when?
Lord Henley: My Lords, a simple statistic at which to look as regards what happened in the past will be growth in the GDP.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is it not a fact that the Government have the wrong priorities at present? Should not the priority at this time be to secure growth in the economy rather than to protect the exchange rate? Further, is not the protection of the exchange rate now taking precedence over growth and
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unemployment? Is not that where the Government have gone wrong? Therefore, surely they should now reduce interest rates very sharply and by a large amount.
Lord Henley: No, my Lords; the Government's first priority must be the battle against inflation. There is no painless way of reducing inflation. However, the recession has come after years of very rapid growth. Low inflation will mean a return to stable growth.
Lord Williams of Elvel: The noble Lord invited us to look at statistics for gross domestic product to see when the economy would recover. Is he aware that the statistics for gross domestic product are made up well after the event? They refer to time past, not to time future. Will the noble Lord be kind enough to tell the House precisely what indicators the Government seek—since Ministers make statements almost every weekend—which will tell us that the economic recovery is occurring and what exactly the Government mean by "economic recovery"?
Lord Henley: My Lords, of course I realise, as I thought I made clear, that statistics merely recognise what has happened. The forward indicators will show what will happen. I can, for example, draw the noble Lord's attention to the CSO longer leading cyclical indicator which is consistent with recovery in the second half of this year.

NHS: Patient Confidentiality
2.50 p.m.
Lord Ennals Lord Ennals asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are satisfied that the operation of the contract system in the NHS provides sufficient safeguards for patient confidentiality.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the National Health Service has an excellent record in protecting patient confidentiality. Staff are aware that breaches are a serious disciplinary matter. Health authorities have been told to put in place safeguards which are to the satisfaction of their senior medical staff. Action is in hand to strengthen further the security of personal health data in contracting.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for her reply. Does she accept that the new NHS billing system is creating an open breach of confidentiality? NHS finance officers are now well acquainted with information, for example, about abortions or people with diseases which are sexually transmitted. In consequence, many doctors are now refusing to provide the information that is requested of them in order to protect the confidentiality of the information about their patients. Did the noble Baroness notice that confidentiality was one of the series of complaints made by 600 consultants who stated their views about the NHS reforms clearly in the Observer yesterday?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, there is a need for named data to facilitate the new contracting arrangements. However, the examples quoted by the

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noble Lord are already taken care of. Statutory regulations are in force which do not permit the use of named contract data in some areas, including sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS. The abortion regulations of 1991 also restrict the disclosure of information provided to the CMO. Thus, steps are being taken to ensure that the anxieties that have been expressed are not valid.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, is it not the case that the BMA believes that the present system which collates information in Liverpool, or at any rate on a centralised computer, contains people's names in plain? However, the BMA would greatly prefer some kind of coding system to be introduced so that extraneous people could not look at the documents.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, as I said, all National Health Service staff have a duty to maintain confidentiality. Where it is essential within the contracting process for the identity of the patient to be known, this information should only be disclosed to authorised persons on a need to know basis. Any dangers of the information being widely disseminated are being taken into account.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am sorry to return on the matter, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, but does she recognise that if names and addresses are always given then the breach has already taken place? Following the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, will her department examine the coding in order to give that protection which does not exist even for the types of condition to which she referred?
Baroness Hooper: Yes, my Lords. Perhaps I may go further in answering the previous supplementary, as well as that of the noble Lord. All contract minimum data set items other than name and address must be in code. This is of special importance for diagnoses and operations where free text is not permissible. For computer medium and fax machines, the practicalities of encryption of name—that is, scrambling the data in a coded manner—are being studied. Advice on the introduction of these techniques will be issued as soon as practicable.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that having the names of patients in a computer is much more confidential than the systems we have had in the past?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, that may be so, but clearly we must ensure that safeguards are in place.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, surely that depends on who has access to the computer records. Whereas in the past access to the records was limited, it may be much more widespread now.
Baroness Hooper: No, my Lords. I have already said that it is only on a need to know basis.

High Court Judges
2.55 p.m.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their response to the statement of the Lord Chief Justice concerning the inadequate number of High Court judges and the immediate threat that this poses to the administration of justice.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, like my noble and learned friend the Lord Chief Justice, I am concerned to keep the High Court Bench up to its appropriate strength. I was glad therefore to be able to inform my noble and learned friend and the other Heads of Division on 25th June that an extra Chancery Division judge was to be appointed. That brings the total number of additional High Court judges since I took office to five, the number of additional Lord Justices in the same period being four.
While waiting times in some parts of the court are a good deal higher than I should like, in the ordinary list of the Queen's Bench Division waiting times have been reduced to two months on the warned list, 13 months on the fixtures list and seven months on the after fixtures list. Despite the number of long cases being heard in London, the waiting times for Crown Court trials in London on average are the lowest they have been for 14 years.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I note with pleasure the announcement that the noble and learned Lord has been good enough to make in regard to one additional judge. However, does he recollect that the Lord Chief Justice said in his Mansion House speech that the whole situation of the adequacy of judges was critical; that this was causing the administration of justice to be in peril; and that part-time judges were trying important cases when it was not suitable for them to do so? Does the noble and learned Lord agree that, if accurate, that is an alarming picture? If it is accurate, what are the Government doing about it?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, when my noble and learned friend the Lord Chief Justice spoke at the Mansion House the other evening he dealt with a number of these matters. I believe that it is right to consider the waiting times as an indication of the situation. I have pointed to the important reduction in the level of waiting times.
It is also worth pointing out that a great deal of the work of the Crown Court is carried out by circuit judges. In the period from November 1987 to the present there was an increase of 49 circuit judges. I believe that it is right to keep these matters under review. I see the Heads of Division regularly, once a month, and of course I take account of their anxieties.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware that the situation described by the Lord Chief Justice last week will become dramatically worse? More deputies—58 per cent.—than High Court judges—42 per cent.—were trying cases in the non-jury list and in the chambers list. As from next

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term, October, there will be no High Court judges available to try any cases in the non-jury list or the chambers list. Thus, 100 per cent. deputies will be required to do High Court work which, since the remission of a great bulk to the county court, will involve cases of £1 million or more, as the Lord Chief Justice said. Does the noble and learned Lord agree that this situation should not be tolerated and that it requires urgent action?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, the priority that is accorded to different types of work within the High Court is a difficult and important matter. When the appointment that I have just mentioned is given effect there will be a total of 84 judges in the High Court. The way in which the services of those judges are allocated will be an important factor in considering whether the prophecy of my noble and learned friend Lord Ackner will be fulfilled. For many years in the High Court in this country opportunities have been given to deputy High Court judges—that is, senior Silks—to undertake High Court trials. That is a way of dealing with the workload and giving them appropriate experience in work that they are qualified to undertake. Circuit judges who are competent to do so sit from time to time in the High Court and deal with important cases.
Lord Oliver of Aylmerton: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord explain to the House how the regular and consistent use of deputy judges under what I believe are the terms of Section 9(4) of the Supreme Court Act is reconcilable with the terms of that section which prescribe such action only as a temporary measure?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I have a degree of difficulty with that question. However, it is a temporary measure. As my noble and learned friend Lord Oliver knows much better than I—he has been closely associated with the High Court of Justice for much longer—this practice has continued for a long time. As far as I am aware, it has had the effect of providing experience and qualifications to those who will ultimately attain the High Court Bench.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, will my noble and learned friend give the House an assurance that whatever other remedy is found it will not be one of reducing the quality of those who are given pensionable employment in the High Court? Is that not an overriding consideration in the appointment of High Court judges?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, where it is within my responsibility, I will certainly do my best to nominate to Her Majesty's service those of the highest quality. I believe that those who have been nominated during the terms of office of my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham and Lord Havers and myself, and prior to that, have been people of the highest calibre. They have been able to carry out the onerous and demanding responsibilities that fall on members of the High Court Bench.
Lord Morris: My Lords, does my noble and learned friend recall that at the end of the 1950s there were
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approximately 20 High Court judges whereas nowadays there are approximately 100? Is that because as a nation we have become more litigious, more criminal and less competent in administering justice, or is it because of the insidious economic effect of legal aid?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I am perhaps more capable of recognising facts than of analysing the reasons behind them. The workload of the High Court and of other courts has increased markedly over the period that my noble friend has referred to. It is a considerable tribute to the members of the High Court Bench as well as to the members of the Court of Appeal—I must not omit to mention Members of your Lordships' House who sit as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary—and to members of the Circuit Bench that that workload has been covered without an undue increase in the total judicial strength.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord dissociate himself—and, I hope, also the Government—from the remarks made by the noble Lord opposite who referred to the insidious economic effect of legal aid? I believe I heard him correctly. Does the noble and learned Lord agree with those comments?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I have already said that I am better at recognising facts than analysing the reasons behind them. The galaxy of reasons that my noble friend gave obviously form his opinion. I do not think it is necessary for me to enter into the field that he referred to. However, I believe it is appropriate that legal aid should be available in appropriate cases and that we must try to ensure that where it is available it is available at an appropriate level and at an affordable cost. We in this country provide legal aid at a level which bears comparison with any other country in the entire world.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is it not clear from what noble and learned Lords have said that a critical point has been reached in relation to the manning of the High Court Bench? In those circumstances, is there not a strong case for setting up a commission to examine the position without delay and also to examine the legal aid system? We on this side of the House fully support the legal aid system so I hope the noble and learned Lord will consider that suggestion very carefully.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, we have already announced the setting up of a Royal Commission to deal with matters connected with the criminal law. I have no doubt that the matter of long trials to which my noble and learned friend the Lord Chief Justice referred in his Mansion House speech will be considered by the Royal Commission. As regards the workload of the High Court and the appropriate manning of the High Court Bench, I believe that those matters can be dealt with in the same way as in the past. One can reach an appropriate decision having regard to the nature of the workload and the way in which the judicial resources of the High Court and the Circuit Bench are deployed.

Standing Orders (Private Business)
3.7 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This Motion gives effect to certain recommendations of the Joint Committee on Private Bill procedure which reported in July 1988. That committee recommended that each House should incorporate an environmental impact assessment into Private Bill procedure by making new standing orders for Bills which authorise the carrying out of works.
The Joint Committee also recommended that promoters of Private Bills should be required by standing order to deposit and advertise with their Bills an explanatory memorandum setting out in plain language the effect of the Bill and of its clauses. The necessary amendments to standing orders were agreed by another place in March and May of this year and now come before your Lordships for approval. If your Lordships approve the Motion, the amended standing orders will take effect from the beginning of the next Session of Parliament. I also propose, if the House agrees to this Motion, to have all the private business standing orders edited and reprinted as amended. I hope your Lordships will welcome this proposed new edition of the private business standing orders. It will be the first comprehensive reprint since 1982.
Finally, I take this opportunity to thank those Members of the House who offer their services on Select Committees on opposed Private Bills. That work is an essential function of the House and is quasi-judicial in nature. It can be onerous and time consuming work. I am grateful to those noble Lords who offer to serve on those Select Committees and have done so this Session.
Moved, That with effect from the beginning of the next parliamentary session the standing orders relating to private business be amended as follows—
After Standing Order 27, insert the following new Standing Order—
("27A—(1) Subject to paragraph (8) below, in the case of a Bill authorising the carrying out of works the nature and extent of which are specified in the Bill on land so specified. there shall be deposited on or before 4th December in the Private Bill Office and at the Public Departments at which copies of the Bill are required to be deposited under Standing Order 39, either—

(a) a copy or copies (as specified by paragraph (2) below) of an environmental statement containing, in relation to the works authorised by the Bill, the information set out in Schedule 3 to the Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1988 (referred to below as "Schedule 3") or such of that information as the Secretary of State may in any particular case direct, or

(b) a copy or copies (as so specified) of a direction by the Secretary of State that no such statement is necessary in relation to the works authorised by the Bill.

(2) The number of copies required to be deposited under paragraph (1) (a) or (b) above shall be three in the case of a deposit at the Department of the Environment and one in any other case.
(3) Where any such works authorised by a Bill relate to two or more distinct projects each project may be treated separately for the purposes of paragraph (1) above; and the
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references in sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of that paragraph to the works authorised by the Bill shall accordingly be construed, where the paragraph applies separately to each project, as references to the works comprised in that project.
(4) Notwithstanding any direction given as mentioned in paragraph (1) (a) above, any environmental statement of which copies are deposited under this Order shall contain the summary (referred to below as "the non-technical summary") required by paragraph (2) (e) and, where material, paragraph 4 of Schedule 3.
(5) Where the Secretary of State has given a direction as mentioned in paragraph (1) (a) above, a copy of the direction shall be deposited with every copy of the environmental statement deposited under this Order; and every copy of a direction so deposited or deposited under paragraph (1) (b) above shall be accompanied by a statement by the Secretary of State of his reasons for giving the direction.
(6) Copies of every environmental statement deposited under this Order shall be made available for inspection, and for sale at a reasonable price, on and after 4th December, at the offices at which copies of the Bill are required to he made available under Standing Order 4A; and there shall also be made available separately on and after that date at those offices, for inspection and for sale at a reasonable price, copies of the non-technical summary.
(7) The reference to Schedule 3 in this Order is a reference to that Schedule as amended from time to time and includes a reference to the corresponding provision of any regulations which re-enact the Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1988, with or without amendment; and references to particular paragraphs of Schedule 3 shall be construed accordingly.
(8) This Order does not require the deposit of copies of an environmental statement in relation to any works for which planning permission has been granted.")
Standing Order 38, line 4, at end insert—
("( 1A) There shall be attached to every copy of a Bill—

(a) delivered under this Standing Order,

(b) deposited, delivered or sent under any of the Standing Orders following this Order,

(c) made available for inspection and sale under Standing Order 4A,

a printed memorandum describing the Bill generally and, subject to paragraph (1B) below, every clause in the Bill.
(1B) Related clauses may be dealt with together in the memorandum and it shall not be necessary to describe clauses providing only for the short title, commencement, interpretation, extent or costs of promotion of the Bill.").—(The Chairman of Committees.)
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, your Lordships should be grateful to the noble Lord for that explanation. This is an important procedure. The Joint Committee's report was published over two years ago. It has taken quite a long time for it to come into effect. The proposal reflects the recommendation set out in paragraph 40—or perhaps it was paragraph 80—of the report.
We do not often have an opportunity to consider our procedure, and I should like to ask some questions. First, why does the Secretary of State have power to rule that the environmental statement should not be deposited? Secondly, it is stated that:
"This Order does not require the deposit of copies of an environmental statement in relation to any works for which planning permission has been granted".
I fully appreciate that if planning permission has been granted in a sense it is unnecessary to publish it, but it would be useful to colleagues and to the general public who want to know what the environmental statement says. Finally, why is it Standing Order 27A? Why is it not Standing Order 28, since there is a gap in the standing orders?
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for those penetrating questions. Perhaps I may congratulate him on his 80th birthday.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord's first question, the Secretary of State can give a direction that no such statement is necessary if, in his opinion, the works involved are not of sufficient importance to have any significant environmental effect. However, as the noble Lord will see from paragraph (5), if he does so he has to give reasons.
As regards planning permission, the object of this standing order is to extend to Private Bills the arrangements under the Town and Country Planning (Assessment of Environmental Effects) Regulations 1988 which now apply in the case of planning permission.
The number 27A will disappear when we re-edit the standing orders.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Business of the House: PARBUL Membership
3.11 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That as proposed by the Committee of Selection (4th report, HL Paper 67) the following Lord; be named as members of the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Ltd. (PARBUL)—

L. Aberdare,

L. Boston of Faversham,

V. Davidson.—(The Chairman of Committees.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Mental Health (Detention) (Scotland) Bill
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Moved, That the order of commitment be discharged.—(Lord Mackie of Benshie.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill
3.13 p.m.
Report received.
Clause 1 [Establishment of review body to consider statutory conditions of employment of school teachers]:
Baroness David Baroness David moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 13, at end insert:
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("(2A) From the relevant date in considering the statutory conditions of employment of teachers of pupils in sixth forms, the review body shall have regard to the prevailing conditions of employment (including remuneration) of persons occupying teaching posts in sixth form colleges carrying out the same or similar duties in respect of the teaching of sixth formers.
(2B) For the purpose of subsection (2A) above, the Principal of the sixth form college shall after the relevant date notify the review body of the conditions of employment (including remuneration) in that academic year of persons occupying teaching posts in the college, together with such other relevant information and by such date as the review body may determine.
(2C) For the purpose of subsection (2A) above, the relevant date shall be the date (if any) determined by the Secretary of State under separate provisions from which persons employed in teaching posts and sixth form colleges shall cease to be defined as school teachers.").
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, at Committee stage we discussed the position of teachers in sixth form colleges and the strange situation in which they will find themselves when the new arrangements come into force. In particular, the point was made that teachers in sixth form colleges will be paid on a different scale from those doing identical work in sixth forms in schools.
At col. 1129 of the Official Report of 4th July the Minister said:
"The aim is to bring coherence to an area of education vital for the future both of the nation and of the students themselves".
It does not seem to us that the arrangements are coherent if teachers doing the same work are to be paid on different scales and to have different conditions of work.
The original amendment, which was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, at Committee stage, aimed to ensure that after the control of sixth form colleges was transferred in April 1993 from the LEAs to the new councils the pay and conditions of those teaching in sixth form colleges would continue to be determined by the pay review body. That amendment was defeated on a vote. We are now adopting a slightly different approach.
The purpose of the amendment which I am now moving is to ensure that the review body considers the pay and other conditions of service of teachers in sixth form colleges when making its recommendations on the pay and other conditions of employment of teachers in sixth forms once legislation is introduced to separate sixth form colleges from LEAs.
The Government's decision to remove the further education sector from LEAs and to include sixth form colleges in that change means that from April 1993 teachers in sixth form colleges will no longer be covered by the review body. At Committee stage the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, said:
"the Government firmly believe that sixth form colleges have more in common with FE colleges than they do with the schools sector".—[Official Report, 4/7/89; cols. 1129–1130].
That is clearly not the case. The work carried out by teachers in sixth form colleges is much closer to the work carried out by teachers in sixth forms than that of lecturers in further education colleges. Teachers in both sixth forms and sixth form colleges teach primarily GCE A-levels covering recognised subject

15
areas. Lecturers in further education colleges are involved in a very different range of work, including BTEC and vocational courses.
At present all teachers in sixth form colleges are school teachers and therefore qualified as such, unlike further education lecturers who are not required to possess the same qualifications. Therefore, since the work is similar and the qualifications are the same, the same kinds of applicants are attracted to jobs in each sector. Those who are qualified to teach in sixth form colleges are also qualified to teach in schools, and vice versa.
Once the sixth form colleges are separated from LEAs responsibility for determining their pay will rest with the individual governing body. The danger is that conditions of employment, including pay, of teachers in sixth form colleges could become very different from those in sixth forms in schools. That could well result in teacher shortages in one sector or another. It is, therefore, important that the review body, in considering its recommendations for the pay of teachers in the schools sector who teach sixth formers for part or all of their time, should take into account the pay and conditions of service of teachers in sixth form colleges.
As I said in Committee, I am a governor of a sixth form college. There is a good deal of anxiety and uncertainty about what the teachers' position will be. It has not yet been made clear what teachers' pay and conditions will be. They are anxious about that and I believe that clarification is required. I hope that the approach set out in the amendment will be acceptable to the Government. I beg to move.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, in opposing the amendment which, as the noble Baroness, Lady David, said, I moved in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, said that in the Government's view the pay and employment conditions of teachers in both sixth form colleges and colleges of further education should in future be settled by negotiation between employer and employee. He acknowledged that much of the work done by teachers in sixth form colleges was the same as the work of teachers in sixth forms in schools. However, he also claimed that in large measure teachers in the two sectors did different work.
The amendment has been drafted with the Government's view in mind. The noble Baroness, Lady David, has explained its terms and I do not need to cover that ground again. It will be plain to your Lordships from what the noble Baroness said that we continue to feel that, in terms of the work the teachers do and the qualifications that are needed to do it, teachers in sixth form colleges have more in common with sixth form teachers in schools than with teachers in further education colleges.
It follows that in considering the remuneration and other statutory conditions of employment that should apply to sixth form teachers in schools, the review body should have regard, as the amendment suggests, to the pay and employment conditions of teachers in sixth form colleges. If that is not done, conditions of service in the two sectors might come to differ
16
significantly. Sixth form colleges now recruit staff mainly from the secondary school sector. Differing employment conditions would necessarily impose constraints on the movement of staff between the centres and recruitment might well become difficult for the sector that is perceived to have the less advantageous conditions.
At present where I live in Cheshire there is healthy movement of teaching staff between those in schools for 11 to 16 year-olds, 11 to 18 year-olds and those in sixth form colleges. That is particularly valuable in ensuring that sixth form college teachers have experience of the national curriculum and of work for the GCSE exam. Acceptance of the amendment would help to ensure that that freedom of movement was not impaired. For those reasons I am glad to support the amendment.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, there is another aspect of the matter which might not be covered by the amendment but must be considered. In the Catholic sector in London—I cannot speak for the others—the sixth form college has taken the place of the sixth form in secondary schools with the result that teachers in secondary schools have had their work downgraded. If I know the system, because they are not teaching sixth form subjects their pay will probably be downgraded. The teachers who have been left behind as a result of the creation of the sixth form colleges will therefore be at risk. Westminster—my un-favourite borough—has made all heads of department redundant following the creation of sixth form colleges, but the real reason for those teachers being made redundant is that they were the highest paid. The council says that it still needs teachers, but it wants cheap teachers—those who come straight from college.
All those factors must be taken into account when we consider teachers' pay. It must be protected as never before, particularly under the system with which the Government have now landed us. I am sorry to say that, so far as I understand it, the creation of sixth form colleges—I do not know whose bright idea they were—has merely complicated matters in London.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, will the Minister clarify a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady David? Is it not the case, as I think the noble Baroness said, that the people in the sixth form colleges will be teaching for exactly the same examinations as the people in the sixth forms? Presumably, if they are preparing students or pupils, or whatever one must call them, for exactly the same exams, and they are doing the job properly, they will be doing the same job. If that is so, how can we justify paying them differently?
Lord Renton: My Lords, the difficulty that I find with the amendment is that it does not appear to fit in with the scheme and purpose of the Bill which is to establish a review body to consider statutory conditions of employment of school teachers. It will have a general remit relating to the whole of the teaching profession, including the teachers of children at schools of various kinds. At the time of each review, the review body will consider the latest information

17
available to it. It therefore seems unnecessary to do as the amendment proposes and to introduce a rather elaborate set of provisions fixing a relevant date, stating that the review body must be bound by things as they are at that date and enabling the Secretary of State to say what the date shall be. Therefore, on the matter of timing, I should have thought that the amendment was strictly speaking unnecessary and I cannot see the advantage of it.
However, new subsection (2B) states that:
"the Principal of the sixth form college shall after the relevant date notify the review body of the conditions of employment".
When the review body is to have a general remit I wonder what is the purpose of referring to the principal of the sixth form college? To which sixth form college does the amendment refer? There will be a number of them. I shall listen, as will all noble Lords, to what my noble friend on the Front Bench says about the amendment, but at the moment I cannot see how it will fit into the scheme of the Bill.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I, too, should like to seek clarification on one point. In moving the amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady David, said that the work of sixth form colleges was much closer to that of normal sixth forms than to the work of FE. However, at the sixth form college at which I was once a governor the tendency was to move towards a broader mix of A level and BTEC subjects which was found to be much more attractive to the local youth of the region and gave rise to much higher staying-on rates to 17 and even 18. The Government wish to give a further impetus towards a lowering of barriers between school subjects and FE subjects. My worry about the amendment is that it might imperil that mix by imposing a rigid scale of remuneration which would make matters more difficult. I shall be interested to hear whether the Minister shares that worry with me.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, expressed anxiety in Committee about the position of teachers in sixth form colleges and moved an amendment designed to ensure that such staff would remain within the ambit of the review body after their institution joined the FE sector. This amendment would not give the review body responsibility for making recommendations on the pay and conditions of sixth form college teachers, but it would require the review body to have regard to changes in the conditions of employment of teaching staff in sixth form colleges when recommending changes in the statutory conditions of employment of teachers who teach pupils in secondary school sixth forms.
I do not find the arguments that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness have advanced very persuasive. I accept that there is room for a genuine disagreement about whether sixth form colleges should remain part of the schools sector, or whether they and their students would be better served as part of the new, unified FE sector. The Government firmly believe that sixth form colleges have more in common with FE colleges and should enjoy the same freedoms. Others
18
may disagree, but, as the White Paper Education and Training. for the Twenty-First Century makes clear, this is the Government's position.
As I explained in Committee, staff in sixth form colleges will initially be transferred to the employment of the institution in the new sector on their existing pay and conditions. Thereafter, it will be for the staff themselves and their employers to decide on changes in pay and conditions. The noble Lord's amendment is, I think, based on the premise that because A levels will continue to be taught in both schools and sixth form colleges some kind of read-across should be established, so far as these teaching staff are concerned, between the two sectors. The proposed solution in the amendment is to require all 120 or so sixth form colleges to tell the review body what changes have been made to the pay and conditions of their staff, and for the review body to have to take that into account when making recommendations on school teachers.
I do not see the logic in that, nor how the arrangements would work in practice. A levels are already taught in FE colleges, yet there has not been any suggestion that the staff concerned should be other than on FE pay and conditions. The case for requiring a link between a particular category of employees in the FE sector and some, though not all, teachers in schools rests on comparisons between the duties and responsibilities of the staff concerned. But there are important differences between the two groups of teachers.
I address that remark in reply to a number of noble Lords who raised this issue during the debate today. A person referred to in Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, as a "sixth form teacher" is likely to be someone who spends about 80 per cent. of his or her time teaching children below the age of 16 in an institution which is primarily responsible for the education of pupils of statutory age. I hope that answers the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. These distinctions are enormous. Teachers in sixth form colleges, like teachers in FE colleges, teach only students over that age. The institutions are organised very differently as a result. That seems to me to be a crucial distinction and one reason why the institutions and their staff should be part of the new FE sector.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord who is spokesman for the Government. The point I made in Committee was that the work undertaken by schoolteachers in sixth forms was virtually identical to that undertaken by full-time teachers in sixth form colleges. Of course, I am perfectly aware that they may spend up to 80 per cent. of their time teaching young pupils, but the real point is that their sixth form work differs very little from that going on in sixth form colleges.
Perhaps the Minister could address the problem faced by the Government. Does he consider that it will be acceptable for teachers in sixth form colleges who are doing the same work as teachers in schools, in so far as they are involved in sixth forms, to be paid quite different salaries under quite different conditions'? My

19
view is that it will cause us considerable difficulties in the teaching profession in regard to both recruitment and retention.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I understand what the noble Baroness is saying. I acknowledge that the work in sixth forms in both sectors is the same. I have drawn attention to the vast differences outside. I do not say that that fact precludes some kind of harmonisation between people doing similar work in different areas. But we are coming to the point of not agreeing on what the Government consider to be a very considerable difference between a teacher who is teaching in a sixth form college and a teacher who is teaching a sixth form in a school.
The problem of recruitment has been raised. I believe it will be for the review body to consider the recruitment needs of all secondary schools, including those with sixth forms. In the new FE sector it will be for the employers to take the necessary action to recruit and retain. The needs of the two sectors may well be different. It will be for those concerned to respond as they think best. I believe it does not help to require some kind of read-across between the two sectors.
The review body will be able to take into account any evidence it wishes and draw upon such information as it thinks fit in making recommendations on school teachers' pay and conditions. I have argued that there is a very real distinction between school teachers and those who will be employed in the new FE sector. On the other hand, it would be impossible—or very nearly so—for the review body to distinguish between teachers in secondary schools with some sixth form responsibilities and those with none. Even if they were able to do so, I cannot think it desirable that they should be asked to make different recommendations for different groups of secondary school staff who may be teaching in the same school and whose timetables can, and do, vary from year to year. One of the most important achievements of recent years has been the creation of a simple, unified structure of pay and conditions for all school teachers. I cannot think that the review body will want to turn the clock back.
I believe this amendment to be misdirected and, as my noble friend Lord Renton said, fundamentally unworkable. For the reasons I have given, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.
Baroness David: My Lords, we do not seem to have a meeting of minds on this matter. Clearly, there is an anomaly here which in my view has not been sufficiently recognised by the Government. There is a real danger that if pay and conditions between two sets of teachers who are doing the same work are different there will be a difficulty about recruitment. If conditions are very much better in sixth form colleges when teachers are working under their own college arrangements it is likely that teachers of sixth forms in schools will gradually drift across. In many ways, I think it would have been very much better had the Government taken the bull by the horns and got rid of the sixth forms in schools, putting all 16 to
20
19-year-olds into one sector. That would have been the sensible and logical thing to do. However, the Government have not chosen to do that and have therefore left themselves in a muddle. Since we are not going to agree upon the matter, I think we should test the opinion of the House.
3.36 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 1) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 67; Not-Contents, 124.

Division No. 1

CONTENTS

Ardwick, L.

Lockwood, B.

Blackstone, B.

Longford, E.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Bottomley, L.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Briginshaw, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Milverton, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Mishcon, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Molloy, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Nicol, B.

David, B.

Northfield, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Ogmore, L.

Desai, L.

Peston, L.

Ennals, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Rea, L.

Ezra, L.

Redesdale, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Richard, L.

Foot, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Gallacher, L.

Rochester, L. [Teller.]

Galpern, L.

Seear, B.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Shackleton, L.

Shepherd, L.

Gregson, L.

Stallard, L.

Hampton, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L

Hanworth, V.

Strabolgi, L.

Hayter, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Tonypandy, V.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Tordoff, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

John-Mackie, L.

Underhill, L.

Kearton, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Kilbracken, L.

White, B.

Leatherland, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ailesbury, M.

Cottesloe, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Craigavon, V.

Ampthill, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Astor, V.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Auckland, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Aylestone, L.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

De Freyne, L.

Belstead, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Blatch, B.

Effingham, E.

Blyth, L.

Elibank, L.

Boardman, L.

Elles, B.

Borthwick, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Elton, L.

Brigstocke, B.

Faithfull, B.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Ferrers, E.

Butterworth, L.

Flather, B.

Caithness, E.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Gainford, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Carnock, L.

Gridley, L.

Cavendish of Furness, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Clanwilliam, E.

Cockfield, L.

Halsbury, E.

Coleraine, L.

Harmsworth, L.

Colnbrook, L.

Havers, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Henley, L.

21

Hesketh, L. [Teller.]

Oppenheim-Barnes, B.

Hood, V.

Orkney, E.

Hooper, B.

Oxfuird, V.

Howe, E.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Pender, L.

Ironside, L.

Plumb, L.

Jeffreys, L.

Porritt, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Joseph, L.

Renton, L.

Killearn, L.

Renwick, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Saint Oswald, L.

Kinnaird, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Knollys, V.

Sharples, B.

Lauderdale, E.

Shaughnessy, L.

Long, V.

Stedman, B.

Lyell, L.

Strange, B.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Strathmore and Kinghorne, E.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Strathspey, L.

Manton, L.

Sudeley, L.

Mar, C.

Tenby, V.

Margadale, L.

Terrington, L.

Marlesford, L.

Teviot, L.

Merrivale, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Mersey, V.

Thorneycroft, L.

Middleton, L.

Thurlow, L.

Monteagle of Brandon, L.

Trumpington, B.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Morris, L.

Waddington, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Munster, E.

Wedgwood, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Westbury, L.

Nelson, E.

Wise, L.

Norrie, L.

Wynford, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to according.
3.44 p.m.
Lord Peston Lord Peston moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 1, line 18, after ("considerations") insert ("including, subject to subsection (4A) and section 2(1A) below, financial considerations").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving this amendment, which stands in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 4, 7 and 8. They are related. The first question to which we must address ourselves is the meaning of the word "considerations" as set out in the Bill. I must confess that only as the Bill progressed did I fully begin to understand—or look into and try to understand—what might be meant here by "considerations".
First and foremost, the Bill must be regarded as simply derivative from a general objective; namely, the education of pupils at school. Therefore, the main purpose of any provision under the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill is that it must be judged according to its likely effect on education. Therefore I assume that the considerations which the Secretary of State will draw to the attention of the review body will include matters of a purely educational nature.
But beyond that there will be specific matters to do with teachers. Obviously—I shall not deal with the point in detail now because it comes under Amendment No. 3—the question of teacher scarcity and so on will be relevant considerations. Other considerations that come to mind relate to teachers receiving additional training and bringing themselves up to date and so forth. When listening to the debate
22
on the first amendment, it occurred to me on reflection that perhaps one answer which the Government might have given but did not give was that the Secretary of State, when setting the pay of teachers in sixth forms, would include in the considerations the need to take into account what is happening in sixth form colleges and further education. That is quite a good consideration, and I am surprised that the Minister's brief did not include it in his answer.
Considerations can cover a lot of useful items. As an economist I feel that the most obvious one to come into the list would be financial considerations. Earlier, when we debated finance we argued that it should not be set down as a constraint. It seems to me more reasonable—I strongly believe this—that the review body should take into account financial considerations and that the Secretary of State should guide it in that regard. Therefore I view the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and myself as coming well within the spirit of the Bill. They are meant to be helpful and sensible and to lead to a rational outcome of the review body's deliberations.
In that connection, another point which has not been given enough weight in our discussions of the matter is that those who are affected by the review body must have confidence in it. In other words, however we argue about the details, if in the end there is a review body, it must be a body which teachers feel will give them a proper, reasonable and fair deal when it comes to pay and conditions. It would be hopeless, after having gone through so much discussion, if we end up with provisions which teachers themselves feel on a year-on-year basis constantly betray them. In other words, the considerations must be such as to give confidence to teachers.
While the considerations of a financial nature that the Secretary of State will bring to bear should give teachers confidence, I hasten to add—for all sorts of reasons, not least because of my own profession—that taxpayers must also have confidence in the deliberations of that body. They must believe that while, on the one hand, such a body takes into account the need for our schools to have sufficient numbers of teachers of quality, at the other extreme taxpayers' money must not be wasted. Financial considerations must be brought to bear so that the money is sufficient but not excessive. Financial considerations are important. It will be enormously helpful if the Secretary of State indicates the financial considerations that he has in mind and their statistical and economic underpinning.
Finally, we need a commitment from the Secretary of State which will help to give the confidence that the review body should achieve. The Secretary of State having placed various financial considerations before the review body, and the review body having taken them properly into account—in other words, it has not in any meaningful sense departed from them—there ought to be some definite presumption that the Secretary of State will not arbitrarily change his mind and reject the review body's recommendations. I emphasise the word arbitrarily because, wearing my economist's hat, I understand that having placed financial considerations before the review body the

23
economy could be hit by some adverse shock. The Secretary of State might have to say, "Although broadly speaking we believed that this was the sum of money you ought to be considering, the economy has deteriorated". In other words, I do not say that the decision should be automatic. I say that at all times the Secretary of State's response should be reasoned and based on evidence. That is the nature of the amendments.
I anticipate one possible answer; namely, that the Secretary of State's response will be so anyway. The Government always play that answer when they wish to agree with some issue for which they do not want to make provision. Placing such a provision on the face of the Bill has one specific, good consequence; namely, it gives the people affected confidence in what has occurred. The result is a specific provision on the face of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Peston, moved a probing amendment aimed at establishing the Government's intention on the financial side. In supporting that amendment, I stated that its terms accorded with the undertaking that the Government had earlier given: that the review body would not be bound by any financial constraints. We wished that undertaking to be included on the face of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, considered that there was no need for such an amendment because under the Bill the review body could simply ignore any attempt by the Secretary of State to constrain it in that way. The amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Peston, moved today takes the matter a stage further. He explained its purpose; I shall not do so again.
The Government may claim that when the Secretary of State gives any direction to the review body as to financial considerations, there is no need for him to justify such a direction by reference to economic criteria, as the amendment proposes, because the Office of Manpower Economics can supply the review body with relevant statistical data and any advice that it needs on the economic effects of such a direction. I hope that that will not be the Government's response. I believe that the Secretary of State should be prepared to justify on economic grounds any direction he may give to the review body concerning financial considerations. I support all that the noble Lord said.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I agree with what my noble friend Lord Cavendish said in Committee: that an amendment on these lines is not necessary. However, the amendment before us—I hope the noble Lord, Lord Peston, will not mind my saying this—is one which may lead to controversy and indeed uncertainty. If we were to have anything written into the Bill about financial considerations, I should have thought that it would be undesirable to refer to economic criteria. Every good schoolboy knows, and every good schoolgirl knows better, that every department of state has to go along with the Treasury in financial matters so that the country does not
24
become bankrupt. Therefore any provisions with regard to financial considerations would be of the simplest kind.
However, to say that economic criteria should be brought in is an invitation to controversy and uncertainty. The noble Lord, Lord Peston, once disagreed with me when I ventured to describe economics as an inexact science. He could not understand why I said that. I am only a rusty old lawyer. I am not an economist. But if we were to go into the various economic criteria which change every week, and which affect the attitude of the Treasury from time to time, then there could he no end to the arguments into which the Secretary of State and the review body could be plunged. I suggest that their minds could be diverted from the real issues: to secure a good teaching profession which is well paid according to the needs of the rising generation. But to have controversy thrown in regarding the issues that affect the national economy would be wrong.
Lord Desai: My Lords, I beg to differ slightly from the noble Lord, Lord Renton. There are financial considerations and economic criteria. It is important to note that not only recently but for a long time we have run the education system on short-term narrow financial criteria rather than on longer-term good economic criteria. It is recognised on all sides—the Prime Minister recognises this—that education is an important but sorely neglected area which is vital for our economic betterment.
Economic criteria do not necessarily change from day to day. It is important that we do not have a shortage of teachers and that our teachers should perform to the best of their ability in order to build up the human capital of this country for the future.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I speak from experience on an advisory committee rather than a review body. However, I believe that there are many factors in common. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that the confidence of teachers is critical to the success of the body. That was a factor at which we always aimed.
I make the assumption that a review body is a step forward and therefore that anything that an advisory committee was doing would be better undertaken by a review body. I am surprised, for example, that we ask for restrictions on a review body relating to statistical data. I should have thought that a review body would, where necessary, call for whatever material it needed. In the advisory committee reports, not only did we call for statistical evidence in many areas, but on many occasions we criticised the data which were available. It is important that we stop talking about teachers in terms of numbers and start talking about them in terms of quality. A great deal of research needs to be done in that direction.
I agree with my noble friend that in talking about economic criteria we were asking for a view inside the crystal ball. Even had we been given that, should we have believed it? I do not say lightly that in looking forward I believe that the judgment of the review body must be considered. As regards Amendments Nos. 7

25
and 8. I strongly believe that if teachers are to have a review body it should be on the same lines as those of other professions.
4 p.m.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Peston, for explaining the amendment, which I did not immediately understand. I too support his comments about there being confidence in the review body not only as regards those who will benefit but also those who will fund it. I have experience of review bodies. Those with which I have been acquainted have established that confidence without the measures proposed in the amendment.
I am responsible for a demand-led service and I know that it is extremely difficult to live within a defined budget when review bodies can produce adjudications. We must absorb the settlements and must also keep the show on the road. However, that is a matter for the skills of management. People are paid reasonable salaries—I do not include myself—to take on that job. They have the knowledge and the skills to do so. That should be recognised as a part of local management.
Clearly decisions must be made. In some of the locally-managed schools which has gripped this philosophy already I see governors using a whole range of skills in order to absorb increases in costs, to obtain better value for money and to generate income. By using their local knowledge they are tying in schools more closely to the local community and we should welcome that. Although I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Poston, is trying to achieve I do not think that the amendment is necessary, as he may have anticipated.
The Paymaster General (Lord Belstead): My Lords, I shall answer this short debate by commenting first on Amendments Nos. 2 and 4. Clause 1(5) requires the review body to give notice to various representative bodies both of the matters referred to it by the Secretary of State and of any relevant directions that he may give. Therefore, right from the start all interested parties will be aware of what the amendments describe as a "financial consideration", should there be one. The noble Lord, Lord Peston, reflected on the different types of considerations which might form a direction under the Bill. Whatever type of direction the review body may be asked to pay regard to—for instance, financial—everyone will know about it from the beginning.
The next stage is for the review body to invite evidence from the local authorities, the teacher associations and others; the Bill requires the review body to do that. The Department of Education and Science will submit its own evidence to the review body just as it has done in each of the past four years to the Interim Advisory Committee. Without plunging down the road which my noble friend Lord Renton warned against, the evidence from the department will comment on and explain any direction that has been made about affordability. No doubt that will include:
26
"statistical data or other information on which economic criteria may have been based",
as Amendment No. 4 states. Such material forms an important part of the evidence given by the Government to the existing review bodies. The noble Lords, Lord Peston and Lord Rochester, said that the department should give evidence which can explain why a direction has been given, and I hope that will be possible through this process.
It is the practice of the other review bodies, as it has been the regular practice of the Interim Advisory Committee, to provide each of the main interested parties which submit written evidence with copies of the others' submissions. Thus it has been possible for any of the representative bodies concerned not only to challenge the statements of other parties, but also to comment in detail on the data on which it has been based. It is not for me to give any undertakings on behalf of an independent review body which we are seeking to set up under the Bill. However, I join with my noble friend Lady Denton in saying that I should be surprised if the School Teachers' Review Body were to depart from that sensible working practice. Copies of the evidence will be made available to Members of your Lordships' House.
I believe therefore that the Bill will meet the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that there must be confidence in the review body. The steps that I have outlined should engender confidence. However, there is a further step. In scrutinising the evidence that is put before it, the review body will have the help of the expert secretariat provided by the Office of Manpower Economics. The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, warned me against making that statement, but I do so because it is an important step. The initiative to use the secretariat was taken and clarified in another place. It has been widely welcomed and goes some way to meet the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Desai—
Lord Rochester: My Lords, I did not mean to criticise the work of the Office of Manpower Economics. I am sure that it fulfils a most valuable function. I said merely that the use of the secretariat does not mean that the Secretary of State should not be prepared to supply his own data.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I take the noble Lord's point. I hope that I have made clear that the department will expect to continue to give evidence. As my noble friend Lady Denton made clear, one would be surprised if the review body did not want such evidence to come forward from the department, without plunging off down the road against which my noble friend Lord Renton warned and into the whole economic scene. However, in addition, as icing on top of the cake, there will be an expert secretariat which will be able to continue to quarry out further information for the review body as is required.
I turn now to Amendments Nos. 7 and 8. One of the themes running through the debates in this House and in another place has been the nature of the directions which the Bill empowers the Secretary of State to give the review body. I hope that we are now at one in

27
seeing a fundamental difference between a constraint—which is binding—and a consideration to which the review body may be asked to have regard.
These amendments, though they certainly refer to considerations, seem, nonetheless, to be more about constraints. If the Government were to set a binding financial constraint, and the review body were to recommend in accordance with that constraint, I agree that under the amendment it could be argued that the Government should never reject those recommendations on cost grounds. But this is not how the new arrangements under the Bill will work. It is important that they are in line with the way in which other review bodies work.
The Government have said that they will direct the review body to have regard to affordability as expressed in the level of education standard spending. The review body must have regard to that but then it will be free to form its judgment. No doubt there will be those giving evidence who will argue that the review body should give a much higher priority to considerations which have nothing to do with the cost of the review body's recommendations. There will probably be a whole cross-current of views given by different people to the review body and there will be many different thoughts going on within it.
However, at the end of the day the review body must reach decisions. In that context, I simply do not believe that there can be hard and fast rules which provide, in effect, that if the review body makes a particular set of recommendations, having been asked to take particular matters into consideration, then the Government will or, as the case may be, will not implement those recommendations. I emphasise that that is not how any of the existing review bodies work.
They work in this way. When the Prime Minister receives the report of a review body—in this case the School Teachers' Review Body—he and his colleagues must consider very carefully the recommendations that it contains and the arguments that support them. The Government must look at the changes which the review body recommends on teachers' pay and conditions and the cost of those changes. The Prime Minister and his colleagues must take account of all relevant facts.
At this point the noble Lord, Lord Peston, said that he expected to hear those sort of remarks but he wished to have an assurance that the Secretary of State of the day would not arbitrarily turn down the review body's recommendations. However, the Government will implement the recommendations of a review body unless they conclude—and I repeat an assurance which has been given many times by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State—that there are clear and compelling reasons for not doing so.
That is how the Government look at the recommendations of all the review bodies in this country. The difficulty here is that that is not the effect which these amendments would have. Because that is not the case, I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendment.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, and all noble Lords who have joined in
28
the short debate. There is not a great deal between us on this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, said that the science of economics is inexact. In fact, all sciences are inexact. Although I agreed with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Denton, said, she made it worse because she implied that economists are crystal ball gazers. However, I shall save my ammunition on that subject for another debate. This is all a question of restrictive practices. I must make sure that economists are kept fully employed and that their professionalism is not undermined.
We agree that financial and economic considerations will be brought to bear. There is no possibility that the review body could deal with these matters except in such terms. The question is how they will be brought to bear. The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, clarified an important matter when he made a distinction between considerations and evidence. He said that the Department of Education and Science would bring its economic and financial considerations to bear. That would be in the form of evidence rather than considerations but that would still take place.
I believe that this is an important group of amendments because it would be helpful if, instead of relying on evidence from many different sources, the Department of Education and Science placed rather more of its cards on the table. That is the point of the amendment.
There must be—and I believe that this was implicit in what the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said—a presumption in favour of the review body. If there is no presumption in favour of the review body's recommendations, why should a review body be set up in the first place? If the Prime Minister thinks he knows better, then he does not need a review body but will just announce the outcome. There must be a presumption in favour of the review body, which is the point of the amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, concluded by saying that there would be such a presumption except for clear and compelling reasons. I shall not press the point but I do not understand—perhaps because I am not an expert on review bodies—why that should not be written into the Bill. He says that the Prime Minister has given a pledge that the review body's recommendations will be implemented except for clear and compelling reasons. The point of this amendment is concerned with clear and compelling reasons. However, I am willing to take the Government's words rather than have this matter written into the Bill although that is what I should prefer. Having said that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Peston Lord Peston moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 1, line 20, at end insert:
("(4A) Where the Secretary of State proposes to issue any direction as to financial considerations to the review body under subsection (4) above, he shall first satisfy himself that no such considerations would be likely if given effect under section 2(1A) below to any shortages of teachers (whether in one or more subjects) in any local education authority area, and shall lay before Parliament a statement that he is so satisfied.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am not sure why this amendment was not grouped with the others.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I believe that we offered a different grouping but the noble Lord's party favor: red the present grouping. However, I should be delighted to do whatever the noble Lord wishes.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I am merely anxious to make progress and the noble Lord will be delighted to know that I have little more to say on this amendment. When considering the considerations it seems to me essential to the review body's purposes that it looks at the question of scarcity as regards the aggregate of teachers within both subject groupings and areas.
That arises only because this is a managed market. In ordinary free enterprise conditions in a competitive market, scarcity is in principle impossible because prices rise to make supply equal to demand. However, that is not allowed to happen as regards teachers. In other words, the Government or education authorities do not increase the price until scarcity appears. The essential point of the amendment is to emphasise scarcity as a central criterion in assessing what happens. I beg to move.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, I commend to the House the thought which underlies this amendment. In my view, its great merit is that it seeks to ensure that any direction which the Secretary of State gives to the review body relating to affordability fulfils the Government's own test as recorded in the Secretary of State's words on 17th April. He said:
"school teachers' pay should be such as to recruit, retain and motivate sufficient staff of the appropriate calibre within what can be afforded, as expressed at present in the level of education standard spending set by the Government". [Official Report, Commons, 17/4/91; col. 434.]
That must mean that directions should be such that as the amendment proposes, they will not lead to any teacher shortages. I am pleased to support that principle.
Lord Belstead; My Lords, in moving the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Peston, said that he felt that scarcity should be one element of the review body's considerations. The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, said much the same, quoting the remarks made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, who said that he would not only expect to require the review body to take affordability into account but also would be likely to direct it to have regard to the need to recruit, retain and motivate sufficient teachers of the right quality within what can he afforded nationally.
The amendment suggests that these two considerations might sometimes pull in opposite directions. Of course, he is perfectly correct. However, this amendment does not simply acknowledge this potential conflict, but seeks to impose a single solution. It is possible that the effect of this amendment, whether the noble Lord intended it or not, would be that, wherever there is such a conflict, affordability must always take second place.
The amendment seeks to require the Secretary of State, when giving a financial direction, to lay before Parliament a statement that, if the review body were to
30
act in accordance with that consideration and its subsequent recommendations were to be implemented by the Government, the effect, in the Secretary of State's judgment, would not be such as to make it more difficult for authorities to fill vacant teaching posts.
That is becoming somewhat complicated and I believe the position to be more straightforward. The Government said that they will ask the review body to take into account the need to recruit, retain and motivate teachers, and also to take into account the resources available to local education authorities through education standard spending.
Those who will be giving evidence while the review body is deliberating will be free to suggest that the review body should attach more importance to one or other of those considerations or should pay greater heed to quite different factors. But the Government will be looking to the review body to exercise its own independent judgment in the light of all the evidence placed before it. That is exactly the purpose of all review bodies in this country. Amendments to the Bill should not alter that fact.
When the review body reports to the Prime Minister it will be for the Government to exercise their own judgment. At the risk of being tedious I repeat once again the assurances given many times by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in another place, that the review body's recommendations will be accepted unless there are clear and compelling reasons why they should not be.
Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that the Government have taken a significant step in offering a review body to teachers, and that step has been widely welcomed. Existing review bodies are free to make up their own minds about the evidence available to them. The school teachers' review body ought to be allowed to operate in exactly the same way.
Although the amendment gave rise to what has been from my point of view an interesting exchange—it was interesting to hear noble Lords on the other side—and there was a great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Peston, said with which I agreed, it would entrench upon the freedom of the review body to make up its mind because it imposes a precondition. It is on that ground that I resist it.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for his reply. Teacher shortage and the way the labour market works is a difficult subject and I am not sure that there is an easy solution to the problem. The anxiety felt by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and myself was that we did not want the review body to operate in a way which exacerbated the shortages. We want to go further; we hope that one outcome of the review body is that sooner rather than later we may move away from the era of teacher shortages. In a sense it is a kind of irrationality that one defines the demand—in this case the need—for teachers and then one does not provide a pay structure to enable that demand to be met; in other words, we end up with this peculiar phenomenon called shortages. Shortages do not occur in trade in most

31
goods and services. They seem to occur in one or two specific areas, usually in the public sector and usually to do with occupations like teaching.
The point we were attempting to emphasise was the desirability for the pay review body to move forward and come to grips with the shortage problem, which involves some fundamental thinking. The amendment was not concerned with the technicalities of that; it was an attempt to tease out some commitment from the Government side as well as ours in favour of dealing with shortages. We have at least learnt a little. I speak as a non-expert, but it was not the aim of the amendment to make the problem worse rather than better.
Having said that, and having commented on the shortages and accepted that there will be a pay review body, we shall keep an eye on the situation as something that interests us when looking at the outcome. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 4 not moved.]
Lord Ritchie of Dundee Lord Ritchie of Dundee moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 1. line 20, at end insert:
("( ) The review body may consider matters other than those specifically referred to it by the Secretary of State").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I raised this issue at Committee stage but withdrew it because I felt we should discuss also the issue contained in Amendment No. 6, to which I shall speak presently. I feel that the two are connected.
We on these Benches and the profession accept the principle of a review body not because we believe it to be an ideal solution but because it is perhaps the best in the circumstances. We do not like the centralisation involved and the profession will only be reassured when it sees the scheme in action and believes in it. Here we come up against the all important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, and others, regarding the absolute need for confidence on the part of all those involved—the teachers and the taxpayers.
The teachers' position at the moment is sensitive. On the one hand, a great many of us have in the background of our minds the unfortunate events of the 1980s when certain sections of the profession were perhaps ill advised enough to enter upon industrial action. Therefore, the profession tends to be regarded as needing to be watched closely; the headmaster must be at hand with the cane at the ready. On the other hand, we are all well aware that the great plans for education which all three main political parties have in mind are absolutely and quintessentially dependent upon the willing co-operation of the teachers. Without that everything will come to naught.
It is in order to ensure the teachers' co-operation and bolster their confidence in the review body that Amendment No. 5 is advisable. I cannot see any objection to it. I am sure that I shall be told that it is not necessary. I cannot accept that because it can do no harm and will inspire confidence.
At Committee stage the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, said,
32
"the review body can decide to address matters other than those specifically referred to it by the Secretary of State".— [Official Report, 4/7/91; col. 1140.]
Amendment No. 5 contains virtually those exact words. As far as I can see there can be no objection to that. A little later the noble Lord said,
"The Bill defines duties. In this case the Prime Minister's duty is to set up the schoolteachers' review body for this purpose, and the review body's duty is to examine and report on the matters referred to it within a specified time".
I would argue that it should also be the duty of the review body to discuss any other matter which it considers to be relevant. If that is also its duty, why not state it in the amendment? I beg to move.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, we on these Benches support the amendment. It is a simple and straightforward change to the Bill and one that everybody in the House should have little difficulty in accepting. As the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, said, it contains the very words used by the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, at Committee stage.
It may be argued that the amendment is unnecessary. But governments change, Secretaries of State change and if it is the case that the Government believe that the review body should be allowed to address matters other than those specifically referred to it by the Secretary of State, then that should be included on the face of the Bill. I argue in favour of doing that for two reasons. The first relates to the confidence question referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie. The amendment is likely to make the teaching profession, parents, students and all those affected by the nature and quality of our education system, feel greater confidence if they believe that it is not simply a review body that must respond to central diktats by the Secretary of State. I know that not only did the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, deny at Committee stage that that was the case, but at Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said:
"Can the Secretary of State prevent the review body from considering any matter? Again it is important for me to say that from my reading he cannot. Clause 1 defines the review body's duty to make recommendations on any specific matter referred to it and to report within a set time. But its report will be able to range more widely if it considers that to be appropriate".—[Official Report, 21/6/91; col. 361.]
If the Minister believes that, surely it is acceptable to write this small but sensible amendment into the Bill, the purpose of which everyone seems to accept.
The second reason for doing so, besides building confidence in the education world, is that it will go a long way to completely guarantee the independence and integrity of the review body. That again is something that everybody in the House feels is important. Therefore, I very much hope that the Government will be able to accept the amendment.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness over this matter for a purely technical reason. It could be construed that, when the Secretary of State has given reasons under Clause 1(4), those reasons should be the only ones which the review body is to consider. I hope I shall be forgiven for expressing an old Latin tag which lawyers still use; namely, expressio unius est exclusio alterius—if we

33
express one thing we are deemed to exclude another. It would be very unfortunate—if it is the intention that the review body may consider matters in addition to those referred to it by the Secretary of State—for someone to come along, perhaps on judicial review, and say, "No, you cannot consider those other matters because you have been given the directions as to the matters that you are to consider". Although I do not expect an answer at this moment from my noble friend on this very technical point, I hope that it will be considered. If the Government agree in substance with what the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, have said, they need not necessarily show it in the form of Amendment No. 5. The matter could be put by saying at the beginning of subsection (4):
"Without prejudice to the power of the review body to consider other matters, the Secretary of State may give directions to the review body",
and so forth. Something on those lines could save trouble in future. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will consider that proposition.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, I have listened very carefully to the movers of the amendment. I am still trying, to assess what kind of "other matters" need to be referred to the review body. Clearly, we are dealing with remuneration and conditions of employment for school teachers. I was a little disturbed during the last debate because we were talking in terms that if there is not enough money presumably one then juggles with salaries. I do not know what other interpretation can be, put on the matter. Surely it is unwise to have too many matters referred to the review body, which has very definite terms of reference. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, would like to explain to me what he has in mind and what kinds of other matters he would like referred to the review body.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, it is implicit in the setting up of the review body that it should consider other matters should they become apparent. There is little point in a review body being set up, listening to the evidence presented to it, and not examining all the matters that come through. That is one or the most important factors for the review body. Giver, that the report is delivered on time, which is crucial for school teachers, I ask my noble friend the Minister whether that is implicit in the Bill.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I thank noble Lords for taking part in the discussion on this amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie of Dundee, for his broad welcome for the principle of the review body, whatever other reservations he may have. This amendment pursues an issue which has been given a thorough airing in your Lordships' House both during debate on Second Reading of the Bill and in Committee. It has also been the subject of debate on several occasions in another place. On all those occasions we have made it as clear as we could that the amendment is unnecessary because it confers on this body a power which it already enjoys. However, I recognise that the question continues to trouble your Lordships.
34
I ask your Lordships to forgive me if I appear to be covering old ground. I fear that that is exactly what I am going to do, and there is little I can do to light up the landscape despite my own words being used in the text of the amendment. The Government fully accept, as noble Lords have argued, that the review body should be free to consider issues which go outside the specific matters referred to it by the Secretary of State. They have no difficulty with the notion that, having decided to consider other matters relating to statutory conditions of employment, the review body may see fit to make recommendations on those matters. They accept that the Secretary of State should be able to put those recommendations into effect through a pay and conditions order; and the Bill gives him the power to do so.
Where noble Lords opposite and I part company is over the fear that the review body may not have those powers unless they are written on to the face of the Bill. I confirm, once more, that it does have such powers. Certain matters need to be written on to the face of the Bill and others do not. The Bill certainly needs to specify duties. It must place a clear duty on the Prime Minister to appoint the review body and require it to report on specific matters referred to it by the Secretary of State within a set time. Where a power is given which is to be constrained, that too must be on the face of the Bill. So, if the Secretary of State is to be given the power in certain specific circumstances to make a pay and conditions order without reference to the review body, those circumstances must be specified in the Bill.
But it should not be thought that specifying the duties of the review body, of the Prime Minister and of the Secretary of State, necessarily constrains the power which the review body, as an assembly of individuals, has to consider and to make recommendations as it wishes on such additional matters relating to the statutory conditions of employment of school teachers. These recommendations would have exactly the same status as those which address matters referred to it by the Secretary of State. It may help noble Lords if I emphasise that the Government's commitment to implement recommendations, unless there are clear and compelling reasons for not doing so, applies to all recommendations.
The noble Lord, Lord Renton, raised a technical question which I hope I can answer by saying that Clause 1(4) is about the directions given to the review body and the amendment is about the matters to be considered. As to the matters referred, the review body would need to be expressly constrained to prevent it from considering whatever it wished.
Lord Renton: My Lords, before my noble friend goes any further, perhaps I may say that it seems to me that that is a good answer to the purely technical point that I made.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I thank my noble friend. The words contained in the amendment are a statement of fact. Putting them on the face of the Bill will add nothing to their force. In those circumstances, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Peston: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, and so that I can understand, essentially, his answer to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is he saying categorically that, having said that the amendment is a statement of fact, the worries of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, as applied to that amendment, cannot possibly arise and that, as long as the review body is dealing with matters to do with the pay and conditions of teachers, no problem of judicial review or anything like that can arise? I am a layman in these matters. Is the noble Lord saying categorically that no problem can arise along the lines suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, in connection with the matter in the amendment? Is that what he is saying?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to read what my noble friend Lord Renton said. I shall read everything, but I think I am saying precisely that. It cannot arise.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, is he saying that because he has asserted that it is the intention of the Government it should be so, or is he saying it because he reckons that it is covered in the words of the Bill? That is a very different matter. It is the old, old story. What is said in the House is of no significance when it comes to a case. What is important is what is in the Bill. If the noble Lord can tell us that the Bill provides that this matter cannot be challenged or be subject to judicial review, that is one thing, but however much we believe the noble Lord—and we do—that would have no force of law.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I believe I covered that point when I said that it should not be thought that specifying the duties of the review body, of the Prime Minister and of the Secretary of State necessarily constrains the power which the review body, as an assembly of individuals, has to consider and to make recommendations as it wishes on such additional matters relating to the statutory conditions of employment of school teachers. Those recommendations would have exactly the same status as those which address matters referred to it by the Secretary of State.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: My Lords, I have not followed all the intricacies of the argument but it seems that the Government have still not given the assurances that we should like for the sake of the confidence of the teachers. The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, asked what other matters the review body could possibly have to consider. The Bill states that it will consider only what the Secretary of State asks it to consider. Other matters of equal importance also related to remuneration and to conditions of service of teachers may not have been referred to it. It is the intention of the amendment that it should be on the face of the Bill that the review body may consider such matters. In the circumstances, I should like to press the amendment and test the opinion of the House.
4.42 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 5) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 69; Not-Contents, 123.

Division No. 2

CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Ardwick, L.

Lawrence, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Blackstone, B.

Lockwood, B.

Blease, L.

Longford, E.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Lovell-Davies, L.

Bottomley, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Mar, C.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Nathan, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Nicol, B.

David, B.

Ogmore, L.

Desai, L.

Peston, L.

Ennals, L.

Phillips, B.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Prys-Davies, L.

Ezra, L.

Rea, L.

Falkland, V.

Redesdale, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Ritchie of Dundee, L. [Teller.]

Foot, L.

Rochester, L.

Galpern, L.

Scanlon, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Seear, B.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Sefton of Garston, L.

Shackleton, L.

Grey, E.

Shepherd, L.

Hampton, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Hanworth, V.

Strabolgi, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Tordoff, L.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Underhill, L.

John-Mackie, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Kearton, L.

White, B.

Kennet, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Denham, L.

Astor, V.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Auckland, L.

Derwent, L.

Aylestone, L.

Downshire, M.

Beaverbrook, L.

Eccles, V.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Elibank, L.

Beloff, L.

Elles, B.

Belstead, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Bessborough, E.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Birdwood, L.

Elton, L.

Blake, L.

Erroll, E.

Blatch, B.

Faithfull, B.

Blyth, L.

Ferrers, E.

Boardman, L.

Flather, B.

Borthwick, L.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Grantchester, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Butterworth, L.

Gridley, L.

Caithness, E.

Haig, E.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Carnock, L.

Halsbury, E.

Cavendish of Furness, L.

Harlech, L.

Clanwilliam, E.

Harmsworth, L.

Cockfield, L.

Havers, L.

Coleraine, L.

Henley, L.

Colnbrook, L.

Hesketh, L.[Teller.]

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Hood, V.

Cottesloe, L.

Hooper, B.

Craigmyle, L.

Howe, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Cumberlege, B.

Jeffreys, L.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

Johnston of Rockport, L.

37

Joseph, L.

Oppenheim-Barnes, B.

Kitchener, E.

Orkney, E.

Lauderdale, E.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Lindsay, E.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Long, V.

Pender, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Prior, L.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Mancroft, L.

Renton, L.

Mantor, L.

Renwick, L.

Margadale, L.

Richardson, L.

Marlesford, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Merrivale, L.

Saint Albans, D.

Mersey, V.

Saint Oswald, L.

Middleton, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Milverton, L.

Seccombe, B.

Monk Bretton, L.

Sharples, B.

Monteagle of Brandon, L.

Stedman, B.

Montgcmery of Alamein, V.

Strathclyde, L.

Mottistone, L.

Strathmore and Kinghorne, E.

Mountevans, L.

Sudeley, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Terrington, L.

Munste, E.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Trumpington, B.

Nelson, E.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Newall. L.

Waddington, L.

Norrie, L.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Westbury, L.

O'Brien of Lothbury, L.

Wynford, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
4.51 p.m.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee Lord Ritchie of Dundee moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 2, line 16, at end insert:
("(6A) Any of the relevant persons referred to in subsection (6B) below may request the Secretary of State to refer to the review body under subsection (1) above such matters relating to statutory conditions of employment of school teachers as that person may consider appropriate, and the Secretary of State shall not refuse such a request without clear and compelling reasons stated in writing to the person concerned.
(6B) For the purposes of subsection (6A) above, the relevant persons shall be—

(a) any association of local education authorities;

(b) bodies representing the interests of governors of voluntary schools; and

(c) bodies representing school teachers.").

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have spoken of our misgivings about too much centralisation. The review body is to consider not merely pay but also conditions of service. That includes hours of work, days of work, duties, class sizes, and so on. That is not the case with any other review body. Therefore, we do not know how it will work in practice. For example, it is not the case with nurses. These matters are to be considered by a body outside the profession. Decisions may be imposed upon the profession by those who are possibly not well enough informed. Our urging that it ought to be stipulated that the review body should include those with relevant knowledge of education has been rejected. We have to accept that fact. However, we feel that at least the profession, or its representatives, should be able to initiate discussion on issues which it considers important.
Under the terms of the Bill, the review body must refer to certain bodies proposed in Clause 1(5) (a). We feel that it should be a two-way process. How may these same bodies refer to the review body any matters which they think need discussion? We think that they should have this express right and that the Secretary of State should have the duty of giving his reasons if he refuses that right. For those reasons, I beg to move.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, we support the amendment. Under the current wording of Clause 1, the review body is only able to consider,
"matters relating to the statutory conditions of employment of school teachers in England and Wales as may from time to time be referred to the review body by the Secretary of State".
However, many other organisations have an interest in teachers' pay, especially in conditions of service. The associations of local education authorities, the governors of voluntary schools and school teachers and their organisations all have a particular interest in the statutory conditions of employment of school teachers. We believe it important that such organisations should be allowed to refer matters to the review body for its consideration.
Education in this country has always been seen as a kind of partnership involving central government, local government and the professions involved. In Standing Committee in another place, the Minister of State accepted that, in submitting their evidence, teacher associations and employers will be able to suggest issues which they believe the review body should consider. That is a helpful reassurance. But, again, we believe that it would be right to place this entitlement on the face of the Bill.
The amendment still gives the Secretary of State the right of veto if there are "clear and compelling reasons" for him to use that power. However, it also ensures that the main interested parties can refer matters to the review body if they so wish. I hope very much that the amendment will be acceptable to the Government.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: I understand the sentiment behind the noble Lord's amendment. But I hope that I shall be able to convince the House that it is both unnecessary and inappropriate.
The noble Lord remains concerned that the review body will be hemmed in by the Secretary of State's references and that there may be matters which LEAs or the teacher associations think should be addressed by the review body but which can be left off the agenda. He therefore wants the various interested parties to be able, as it were, to plug any gaps in the Secretary of State's references to the review body by requiring him—unless he has "clear and compelling reasons" not to do so—to refer such other matters as they may request.
We covered much of this ground in Committee and in discussing the last amendment. As I explained, the review body is under a duty to consider and report on matters referred to it by the Secretary of State. But that does not mean that it cannot report on other matters as well. If the unions or employers believe that there are specific issues which the review body ought to address they can, and no doubt will, make that clear in their evidence to the review body—or earlier than that if they wish. As Ministers made clear during the debates in another place, the Secretary of State intends to remind the review body each year that it can make recommendations across the whole range of statutory conditions of employment, not just on the specific issues identified by the Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State has made it perfectly clear that he intends to make references to the review body

39
on a regular basis. I accept that there may be occasions when a mid-year reference would be appropriate to deal with a specific technical matter or to consider an urgent problem which had arisen. It would, of course, be open to any association or individual to approach the Secretary of State and ask for a particular matter to be referred to the review body in mid-year: that goes without saying. If my right honourable friend were to receive such a request in writing he would of course reply in writing. Moreover, if he were unwilling to grant the request, he would of course give his reasons.
The review body is to be established by the Prime Minister to advise him and the Secretary of State on the pay and conditions of school teachers. The decision whether to ask for advice on a particular matter must therefore rest with the Government and not with the unions or employers. But of course the review body will take evidence from all interested parties and give careful consideration to that evidence. It will, as I have said, be able to make recommendations on any matter concerned with teachers' statutory pay and conditions.
There is a further point I should like to make. Existing review bodies operate on a regular, cyclical timetable. They receive written evidence from September, hear oral evidence over the following weeks, and report in January each year. While it may very occasionally be necessary to give an in-year reference, we would expect the school teachers' review body to operate for the most part in exactly the same way. It would clearly be very disruptive for any review body to be constantly bombarded with requests to look at this or that specific issue which happened to be of concern to one or other of the interested parties. The amendment would open the door to that kind of situation and I cannot see how it could be beneficial to the smooth operation of the review body system.
As I said, there may sometimes be circumstances in which the Secretary of State may make a mid-year reference following representations from unions or employers. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent that happening. But the role of a review body is to give the Prime Minister independent advice when he requests it. The amendment adds nothing to the Bill and is, I suggest, a misunderstanding of the role of a review body. In the circumstances, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
5 p.m.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: My Lords, again we only have assurances. The Minister said something to the effect that any body or gathering of interested parties can at any time make reference to the review body on any issue which it thinks should be discussed. We must accept that to be the case and I appreciate that if constant references were made throughout the year it might be disruptive to the work of the review body. Again, it is a matter of confidence on the part of the profession and all involved. On this occasion, we must accept the assurances of the Minister that any matter can be discussed by the review body and that that will include matters that the interested parties we have
40
named consider should be discussed. In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5 p.m.
Clause 2 [Orders relating to statutory conditions of employment]:
[Amendments Nos. 7 and 8 not moved.]
Lord Rochester Lord Rochester moved Amendment No. 9:
Page 4, line 30, leave out from ("case") to end of line 32 and insert ("no such order shall be made unless a draft of the instrument containing the order has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this amendment is in precisely the same form as that which I moved in Committee. I make no apology because at the end of our discussion on that occasion I said that I was not altogether satisfied with the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Belstead. Accordingly, I gave notice that I might well wish to return to the matter at a later stage, and that is what I am doing.
It is plain from Clause 2(9) that if the Secretary of State decides to make any material modification to recommendations of the review body his decision will be subject to annulment only by a negative resolution of either House of Parliament. In contrast, we feel keenly that a decision to modify materially the review body's findings should be validated by an affirmative resolution in both Houses.
In replying to our earlier debate, the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said that he thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and I had to a considerable extent overlooked the procedures followed in implementing settlements in other public sector pay groups. For example, the Home Secretary made regulations on police pay subject only to the negative resolution procedure. Perhaps the most significant point, in the noble Lord's view, was that both the pay and conditions of staff in the National Health Service—whose remuneration is the subject of recommendations by two review bodies—were simply approved by the Secretary of State without any parliamentary procedure at all.
The noble Lord also gave instances of how, under the Bill, the review body would be subject to what he called a wealth of consultation. He said that at its conclusion the Secretary of State may decide to implement the majority of the recommendations in full, but make one or two changes at the margins, perhaps in response to points made in consultations. He questioned the desirability of then having to resort to an affirmative resolution. I hope that that is a fair summary of what he said in Committee.
I readily acknowledge the validity of the points he made about both other review body procedures and the provisions in the Bill for consultation before decision making. Taken together, however, they do not in my view count for as much as what I believe to be the conclusive argument in favour of the use of the affirmative resolution procedure in this case. It is simply that the review body for school teachers, unlike all the others, is to be a body set up by Parliament. It is therefore Parliament that should positively take responsibility if the body's recommendations are in

41
any respect to be overturned by the Executive. That is all the more desirable because in the case of other public services covered by review bodies the Government are themselves both the paymaster and the employer. In this case, the circumstances are quite different because in making any material modifications to the recommendations of the review body the Government would impose their view on other employing organisations.
No doubt that consideration led to the provision in the Remuneration of Teachers Act 1965 that the Secretary of State could set aside the recommendations of an arbitration body only if each House of Parliament resolved that national economic circumstances so required. That precedent was followed in the Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1987 which established the procedures that were adopted in the case of orders giving effect to recommendations of the interim advisory committee. This amendment therefore provides for what we regard as the maintenance of an essential constitutional safeguard. I beg to move.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, in supporting the amendment I wish to draw the attention of the House to one other matter in addition to what the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, has already said. The pay and conditions of teachers are of fundamental importance in the education system. They are far more important than almost any other legislation. So much else hangs on both the conditions of service and teachers' pay in terms of the quality of education that we deliver in our primary and secondary schools that it seems to me particularly important that the affirmative procedure should apply in this case. Education is a highly labour intensive industry where the costs of staff as against other costs account for a huge proportion of expenditure.
I also wish to support what the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, said about the differences between this review body and others. First, it was set up by Parliament and, secondly, it covers conditions of service. I know that Ministers may reply that this has already had a thorough airing. However, I hope that they will think again and perhaps explain why their views in 1991 are different from those put forward in 1987 in relation to the interim advisory committee. I am still unclear as to why there should be a different approach in that case from the one adopted for this Bill.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, in moving the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, have invoked the precedent of the 1987 Act in arguing that there ought to be an affirmative resolution procedure in the Bill. Before trying to reply to the noble Baroness in a little more detail, perhaps I may generally remind your Lordships that we are not now considering the 1987 Act. We are considering something different. The Bill is concerned with the review body, not the continuation of the Interim Advisory Committee. The relevant precedent is not the 1987 Act but the existing review bodies.
42
None of the review bodies has its pay increases approved by Parliament in the way that noble Lords opposite suggested should apply to teachers, even though their pay rates, if not the review bodies which make the recommendations, have a statutory basis. Individual procedures vary in detail; but as regards other review bodies in each case pay settlements are approved by the relevant Minister and promulgated sometimes without reference to Parliament.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, has mentioned my next point. As regards the Home Secretary putting into effect police pay recommendations, the Secretary of State for Scotland putting into effect or overriding the arbitration recommendations for school teachers' pay or the Secretary of State for Health putting or not putting into effect recommendations for the health service, we do not agree that the procedure urged upon us today is relevant to the review bodies concerned with the professions I have just mentioned.
I have difficulty in understanding why we should wish teachers to be in a different position from the other review body groups that both the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and I have mentioned, particularly as a wealth of consultation has been built into this Bill. I referred to that in Committee and I do not wish to weary the House by reiterating it today. However, the essential point is that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State would modify or reject the recommendations of the review body only where, after full consultation with all the interested parties, he were to decide that there were clear and compelling reasons to do so. That is exactly the procedure that is followed with other review bodies in this country at the present time.
On a purely practical level—this point was not mentioned in Committee or today—the affirmative resolution procedure could lead to delays in pay awards reaching teachers' pockets. Because the implementation of this year's Interim Advisory Committee recommendations was staged, the order putting the pay increases into effect was subject to affirmative resolution. Arguably there is a perfectly good case for that procedure with the IAC which is definitely not a review body and which is subject to cash limits. But although the order for the increase in teachers' pay this year was laid before the House at the beginning of May, we were not able to debate it until towards the end of June. That has meant that employers were not obliged to pay teachers their salary increases until the end of June, some three months after the salary increases were due to take effect.
It is not therefore just philosophical or political differences which lead me to resist this amendment. I have practical reasons for doing so. The noble Baroness said that she could not wholly understand why in 1987 I stood at the Dispatch Box and argued in favour of the affirmative resolution procedure, whereas I am not doing so today. That is the case because the two bodies we are discussing are clearly different. The Interim Advisory Committee set up under the 1987 Act was a body subject to cash limits. It was not a review body. In the case we are discussing today noble Lords are trying to set up a review body.

43
In the case of other review bodies—at least in the case of the examples I and the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, have mentioned—the Government do not have to resort to affirmative resolution. In addition, this Bill bends over backwards to include consultation. There is a difference of view over this matter. I am sorry that I am not being helpful, but I hope that the noble Lord will not press the amendment.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, I am disappointed but not surprised at the noble Lord's comments. It is fair to add that neither he, I, nor the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, have said anything very different to what was said in Committee. On the other hand, I feel—I am sure I speak for others on this side of the House—that the teachers' review body is sufficiently different from other bodies as it is a statutory body. I mentioned that in moving the amendment. In this case we feel it is appropriate to have an affirmative resolution procedure. I do not wish to waste any further time of your Lordships' House, but I feel strongly enough about this matter to wish to press the amendment to a Division.
5.15 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 9) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 64; Not-Contents, 109.

Division No. 3

CONTENTS

Addington, L.

John-Mackie, L.

Ardwick, L.

Kilbracken. L.

Aylestone, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Lockwood, B.

Birk, B.

Longford, E.

Blackstone, B.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Blease, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Mason of Barnsley, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Mayhew, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Northfield, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Peston, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Phillips, B.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

David, B.

Prys-Davics, L.

Desai, L.

Rea, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Redesdale, L.

Ezra, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Rochester, L. [Teller.]

Foot, L.

Seear, B.

Galpern, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Shackleton, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Shepherd, L.

Stedman, B.

Grey, E.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Grimond, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Hampton, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Hanworth, V.

Tordoff, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Underhill, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

White, B.

Howie of Troon, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Belstead, L.

Ampthill, L.

Bessborough, E.

Astor, V.

Blake, L.

Bauer, L.

Blatch, B.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Blyth, L.

Beloff, L.

Boardman, L.

44

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Joseph, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Killearn, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Kimball, L.

Butterworth, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Caithness, E.

Kitchener, E.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Long, V.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Carnock, L.

Lyell, L.

Cavendish of Furness, L.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Clanwilliam, E.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Coleraine, L.

Mar, C.

Colnbrook, L.

Margadale, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Marlesford, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Merrivale, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Middleton, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Milverton, L.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

Monk Bretton, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Monteagle of Brandon, L.

Derwent, L.

Mottistone, L.

Downshire, M.

Mountevans, L.

Eccles, V.

Munster, E.

Elibank, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Nelson, E.

Elton, L.

Norrie, L.

Erroll, E.

Orkney, E.

Faithfull, B.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Fanshawe of Richmond, L.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Flather, B.

Pender, L.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Renton, L.

Grantchester, L.

Renwick, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Saint Albans, D.

Haig, E.

Saint Oswald, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Seccombe, B.

Halsbury, E.

Sharples, B.

Harlech, L.

Somerset, D.

Harmsworth, L.

Strange, B.

Havers, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Henley, L.

Strathmore and Kinghorne, E.

Hesketh, L. [Teller.]

Sudeley, L.

Holderness, L.

Teviot, L.

Hood, V.

Trumpington, B.

Hooper, B.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Howe, E.

Waddington, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Jeffreys, L.

Westbury, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Wynford, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
5.22 p.m.
Clause 5 [Interpretation, orders and application of provisions of Education Act 1944]:
Baroness Blackstone Baroness Blackstone moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 5, line 42, at end insert:
("(3A) For the purposes of subsection (3) above, the Secretary of State shall by order make provision for the exclusion from statutory conditions of employment of the following—

(a) conditions of service set out in the "Conditions of Service for Schoolteachers in England and Wales" (the Burgundy Book);

(b) agreements between local education authorities and representatives of teachers as notified to the Secretary of State by the date of Royal Assent relating to—

(i) local arrangements for the allocation of working time;

(ii) local arrangements for the allocation of duties;

(iii) local arrangements for teacher appraisal;

(iv) contractual terms giving effect to regulations issued under race relations legislation; and

(v) contractual terms giving effect to regulations issued under sex discrimination legislation;

(c) such other agreements which may be reached from time to time between local education authorities and

45
representatives of teachers which relate to agreements notified to the Secretary of State under paragraph (b) above;

(d) such other agreements which may be reached from time to time between local education authorities and representatives of teachers relating to conditions other than duties and working time.").

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I apologise in advance for taking a little longer over this amendment than over some of the previous amendments, but it raises a number of rather complicated issues, some of which emerged at Committee stage.
Perhaps I may begin by setting out what I believe to be the present position concerning local flexibility with respect to conditions. On the one hand, the LEA employers have a clear policy on school teachers' pay of developing a national framework which allows for local flexibility. On the other hand, that policy has been broadly accepted by the Government. At the same time the role of the LEAs in setting conditions of service for staff employed in schools following the introduction of local management of schools has been accepted by the Government. It has not, as I understand it, been the policy of the Government since LMS was introduced to prevent local authorities negotiating with the teachers in their areas particular conditions of employment. Nor am I aware of any complaints from the schools to which local management conditions apply that that has constrained them in any way. Perhaps the Minister will tell me if I am wrong about that.
Since putting down the amendment we have received a helpful letter from the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish. He claims in his letter that local management of schools will provide individual school:; with the flexibility to offer different levels of pay as required locally. However, the problem is that individual schools could, as a result, suffer at the expense of schools offering better conditions. I hope that the noble Lord who speaks for the Government will be able to take up that point and let us know the Government's view.
What worries us about the new arrangements is that the wording of Clause 2(7) of the current Bill rules out any local flexibility on conditions of service even though that has been allowed under the Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1987. Given the nature of the debate at Committee stage I should like to take a little time to go through the existing legislation, and I apologise if it may be a little technical.
Under Section 3(6) of the 1987 Act local author ties' contracts can cover conditions of service issues provided they are consistent with the provisions of the statutory pay and conditions document. Clause 2(7) of the Bill states that the contract of employment of a school teacher shall contain no terms other than those set out in a pay and conditions order. In other words, the flexibility which has been allowed up to now under the 1987 Act is removed by Clause 2(7).
At Committee stage the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, made reference to other clauses in the Bill, pointing to areas where local flexibility might be safeguarded. However, that does not answer the main point of why Clause 2(7) is written in such a restrictive way. We are still concerned about that.
The Minister referred at Committee stage to Clause 2(4), which would allow the pay and conditions order to confer discretions on local education authorities or governing bodies in respect of pay and conditions of service. However, to achieve that local discretion local authorities would have to persuade the review body then to persuade the Secretary of State to give them back the flexibility which they currently have. That does not appear to be a sensible way to go about matters.
The amendment deals with Clause 5(3), which has been pointed to as the power which would enable the Secretary of State to allow various conditions of service matters to be regarded as being outside the remit of the review body. That is the central issue of concern. It has two shortcomings. First, it involves the Secretary of State in conditions of service areas which have not been his concern up to now. Indeed, in 1987 the Secretary of State had the clear option of incorporating all conditions of service but chose, sensibly, to concentrate on the key issues of specifying professional duties and working time and not to go into other details.
It is accepted that Clause 5(3) contains key powers for the Secretary of State to act as a watchdog over any action of the local authorities. Under that power the Secretary of State would be able to rule out any agreements reached on issues such as class size and teacher contact time which the Government regard as being within the purview of local management. As with the debate on Clause 2(4), it is difficult to see the logic in the Government taking powers from local authorities in Clause 2(7) only apparently to give them back through the device of issuing exclusion orders under Clause 5(3).
The amendment points to a further difficulty. It is one thing for the Secretary of State to be able to legalise existing conditions of service agreements. However, it is far from clear how future local decisions on issues such as equal opportunities, on which changes in the law in Europe are taking place rapidly, could be sensibly accommodated under the proposed arrangements.
Clause 1(2) defines statutory conditions of employment to include pay and such other conditions of employment related to teachers' professional duties and working time. That is a wide remit and covers a number of areas currently dealt with by local or national agreements.
On working time, paragraph 36(1) (c) of the statutory pay and conditions document states that the provisions on working time do not apply to teachers working in residential establishments. Those are areas where local authorities should expect to be able to reach agreements that are binding on teachers. In terms of working time, the following are examples of issues currently covered by collective agreements: leave of absence on maternity, paternity, adoption and compassionate grounds; in connection with religious festivals and when fulfilling public duties, as in the case of magistrates, councillors and governors; and in instances of illness or health and safety inspections. The examples are numerous.
On the question of school teachers' duties, the pay and conditions document merely sets a framework of duties. A good example of how that framework operates can be found in paragraph 27 of the document. That sets out the overriding requirements for the job of head teacher and specifies the ground rules under which he or she must carry out his or her professional duties by recognising, for example, the role of governing bodies, LEAs and the law in relation to the duties of head teachers. Clearly, that paragraph sanctions the development of local rules and policies to build on the professional duties of head teachers which are set out in the statutory document.
Paragraph 35 of the document, which deals with the professional duties of teachers, begins by stating:
"The following duties shall be deemed to be included in the professional duties which a school teacher may be required to perform".
That makes it clear that the list is not exclusive.
Although the pay and conditions document sets a broad framework of duties, it has often been the case that, in allocating particular duties to school teachers, authorities will use various devices—for example, job descriptions—as part of the contract of employment of the individual teacher. Additional duties may be required to be specified in relation to working in residential establishments or on jobs such as the provision of school-based youth and community activities—another important area—which are not fully covered by the pay and conditions document. Those are just a few illustrations of areas in which local flexibility is important.
That brings me back to the helpful letter of the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish. With reference to the pay and conditions order to which I have referred, the Minister claims that nothing in the Burgundy Book will be included in the order. However, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities has received a letter from a Department of Education and Science official claiming that the department is still considering what to include from the book. Do the Government intend—I ask the Minister directly and I hope to receive a reply—to exclude everything contained in the Burgundy Book from the terms of the order? If that is the case, what will the Government do when revising the Burgundy Book? Will it have to be checked with the order each time to make sure that it does not contain the same matters as the order?
Perhaps I may make one further point in relation to the letter. The noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, says in his final paragraph that an order on race and sex discrimination may be necessary. Does that mean that orders will be necessary every time the Government realise that the terms of reference of the pay review body conflict with the requirements of local flexibility? If the Government, as we argue, were to allow local flexibility, which is not inconsistent with the Bill, such orders would not be necessary. I should have thought that we would all be saved a great deal of trouble. As I stressed, the list of examples could become much longer. If the Secretary of State intends to use the powers under Clause 5(3) rather than restoring the local flexibility in Clause 2(7), the amendment is the only sensible way forward.
In conclusion, when my noble friends moved amendments to Clause 2(7) in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, was unwilling to accept many of the arguments. We are now trying an alternative approach to get round the problem by moving this new amendment to Clause 5. Notwithstanding the letter sent to my noble friend Lady David in which the Government make it clear that they are prepared to make orders under Clause 5(3) defining those matters to be excluded from statutory conditions of employment, we believe that it would be better if the main exclusions were on the face of the Bill. That is the aim of the amendment. I beg to move.
5.30 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has delivered a comprehensive and detailed speech in moving the amendment and I do not intend to say much more. However, I should first like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, for his careful and comprehensive reply even if it does not meet all our anxieties. Our overriding anxiety—we want to have this incorporated into the Act so that we know it is certain—is that there should be the considerable flexibility that is needed if the different conditions of schools in different parts of the country, be they inner city compared with rural, north compared with south, or however one likes to measure it, are to be catered for. There is no question but that the conditions in schools, the requirements, the shortages of teachers and the problems of recruitment and retention are so different in different parts of the country that, if we are to fulfil our obligations to ensure that there is proper education for all children everywhere, there must be a maximum degree of flexibility in the power to recruit and remunerate in order to retain staff. That may mean, as I mentioned in Committee, that there are quite considerable differences in what is offered, not only in money but in other ways.
As I understood it, the burden of the Minister's letter was that all is well and that the Government believe in and always have believed in flexibility. If that is so—perhaps I am being very stupid about this—why on earth do we have Clause 2(7) which states that a teacher's contract of employment may contain no terms
other than those which have affect by virtue of a pay and conditions order".
That boils down to what I want to say: why has the clause been incorporated if everything is to be as flexible as the noble Lord's letter implies that it has been in the past and will be in the future? If there is a guarantee of flexibility, we shall be satisfied, but what is the point of Clause 2(7) if that flexibility is to be included?
I also wish to echo the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, that, although there is an assurance as regards conditions that exist at present, what will happen to changes in the future in relation to the Burgundy Book? I must confess that I am not as familiar with the Burgundy Book as perhaps I should be. I do not even know whether it is a colour

49
or a place, but that is neither here nor there. I am glad to support the amendment as this is a matter of such importance.
Baroness David: My Lords, I should like to say that, as I raised this matter and moved an amendment in Committee, the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, was written to me. I should like to thank him 7or the length of his letter and for the fact that he took a great deal of trouble in trying to cover the points. I shall not go into those points about which we are still not clear because that has been done admirably by my noble friend Lady Blackstone and by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, but I wanted to put my thanks on record.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and others who acknowledged my long letter. Having listened to the long, technical debate, I realise that there may be even longer letters going round.
Before dealing with the details of the amendment, it may be helpful if I recall once again the reason why the Bill is drafted as it is. As was said in Committee, there is an important difference between the Bill and the 1987 Act. The 1987 Act allowed employers to include in teachers' contracts provisions in the areas of professional duties and working time provided that those provisions were not inconsistent with the terms of the statutory school teachers' pay and conditions document 1991. Under the Bill, however, employers will no longer be able to do this. The only provisions relating to duties and working time which will have effect as terms of contracts of employment will be those which have effect by virtue of a pay and conditions order.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Seear and Lady David, expressed concern in Committee. As they have acknowledged, I have written to try to explain the Government's position. Not all of the explanations have been found entirely satisfactory. For the benefit of noble Lords, that letter is in the Library.
The world has changed quite significantly since 1987. The advent of local management of schools means that whilst LEAs remain in the majority of cases the employers of teachers, the day-to-day management of schools is a matter for governing bodies. The Government believe that governing bodies should have the maximum possible flexibility to respond to their own needs and priorities within the budgets available to them. Among other things, that means taking their own decisions on the balance to be struck between numbers of staff, class sizes and non-contact time.
The question of class sizes was raised and it was asked why LEAs could not retain existing terms in teachers' contracts of service setting out a maximum class size. The size of classes has a direct relationship with a school's staff complement. When delegation is complete in 1993 for secondary schools, and 1994 for primary schools, all staffing complements will be determined not by the LEA but by the governing body of the school. That is the power which Parliament in its wisdom has expressly given to governing bodies. It would scarcely be reasonable to permit LEAs to
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override that power by striking local deals with their teaching forces. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said there were no difficulties. I believe that there have been difficulties. Several LEAs have attempted to include class size provisions in their schemes of local management. These have been judged unacceptable precisely because they would have pre-empted the power of governing bodies to determine the staff complement of their own schools.
The Government recognise that there may be some areas where LEAs could be able to make national or local agreements with teachers but which, as matters stand, might be construed as falling within the definition of "professional duties and working time". That is why Clause 5(3) gives the Secretary of State the power to make orders specifying that a given matter is or is not to be regarded as falling within the professional duties or working time of teachers for the purposes of the Bill.
As I said in Committee, the Secretary of State is willing to exercise this power where necessary and will give very careful consideration to representations from employers or others that particular matters should be covered in the order.
I understand that the noble Baroness and other noble Lords are keen to know the Government's intentions with regard to the various issues listed in the amendment. I shall therefore turn to the detailed points that noble Lords have raised.
I turn to the Burgundy Book. Beginning with paragraph (a), I am happy to confirm the Government's view that matters currently covered in the Burgundy Book should continue to be so. But it would be inappropriate to make an order along the lines suggested in the amendment, since the majority of matters covered by the Burgundy Book clearly do not relate to duties or working time and therefore automatically fall outside the scope of the Bill. It is only those areas where there may be some doubt about the employers' right to include supplementary provisions in contracts which need be dealt with by an order under Clause 5(3). The list of local and national agreements relating to working time, maternity leave etc. referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, is standard Burgundy Book territory. We have already made clear that the Burgundy Book would not be covered by the review body.
I turn to existing contracts of employment. Paragraph (b) (i) and (ii) and paragraph (c) of the amendment are not, I have to say, acceptable to the Government. The intention appears to be to allow existing local agreements in the areas of professional duties and working time to stand, and in addition to allow all future agreements relating to those agreements to be incorporated into contracts of employment. But that would inevitably reduce the scope for governing bodies to manage their schools effectively. It would cut right across the policy I have outlined both today and in Committee.
As to teacher appraisal, paragraph (b) (iii) is also inappropriate but for a different reason. As I made clear in Committee and in my letters to the noble Baronesses, Lady Seear and Lady David, the Government do not believe there to be any

51
inconsistency between the drafting of the Bill and the intention behind the forthcoming appraisal regulations. LEAs will be able to put in place local arrangements for appraisal and require their teachers to behave in accordance with them, provided that such arrangements conform to the framework set out in the appraisal regulations and that the statutory pay and conditions document requires teachers—as it does now—to participate in arrangements made in accordance with those regulations. There is no need for an order under Clause 5(3) to address those issues.
I turn to race and sex discrimination. Paragraph (b) (iv) and (v) refer to race and sex discrimination. Again, we discussed these in Committee. I am pleased to confirm today that it is the Government's firm intention to make an order under Clause 5(3) enabling individual employers to place teachers under a duty not to act in a way which would amount to discrimination by their employer under existing race and sex discrimination legislation. That is clearly right. The Government are grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady David, for drawing the issue to their attention.
I refer to other conditions of employment. I confess to being a little confused by paragraph (d). The purpose seems to be to exclude from the scope of statutory conditions of employment all conditions of service matters other than professional duties and working time. But there is no need to make such a provision in a Clause 5(3) order. Such matters are already excluded from the Bill's scope by virtue of Clause 1(2) which defines the statutory conditions of employment of teachers as:
"their remuneration and such of their other conditions of employment as relate to their professional duties and working time".
That means that LEAs will continue to be able to include in teachers' contracts of employment provisions relating to matters other than pay, duties and working time.
I should like to refer to one further point raised during the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, commented on Clause 2(4) (a) which is about allowing government bodies etc. to exercise pay discretion. That is what they do now, and we look to the pay review body to ensure that that happens in future.
This debate has been an interesting one. I may not have covered everything. I will most certainly read what has been said and write to noble Lords.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, he said that he had not covered everything. I do not believe that he has covered the point that I raised. I asked him specifically why, if variation was to be allowed, the clause was there, as it prohibited variation.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, if I understand the question aright, it goes to the heart of the matter of local management of schools and different perceptions of how it will work. We believe that we have transferred that responsibility to schools, giving greater flexibility than otherwise would have been the case.
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I do not know how far I have gone in convincing noble Lords that the issues raised with these amendments can be more appropriately dealt with through secondary rather than primary legislation. Even so, I feel that the amendment is inappropriate and I hope that it will be withdrawn.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his reply to what is an extremely complex set of issues. At the heart of the problem is Clause 2(7). It still gives rise to problems and confusion and will continue to do so unless it is amended. This side of the House would like to reconsider the matter. We shall examine what the noble Lord said in reply to the proposal to list some exclusions under Clause 5 and decide whether to come back at Third Reading. I shall want to read his remarks in detail.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that local education authorities hold the contracts of employment of teachers and determine what is in them. Yet the Government are utterly committed—in a somewhat obsessional way, if I may say so—to giving governing bodies of schools even more control than they have at present over the way in which teachers are deployed in schools. I am entirely in favour of some devolution to schools and delegation of powers, but to concentrate on the opportunity given to governing bodies to manage the staff in schools to the complete exclusion of local authorities from managing the staff that they employ—in other words, school teachers—is likely to give rise to problems and difficulties. It is a pity that the Government appear to be so ideological on this point; they should look at the issue somewhat more pragmatically. For example, with reference to such matters as shortage subjects, I should have thought that it was desirable to allow local authorities to plan the deployment of teachers in their areas. I suspect that the route that the Government are taking will make that rather difficult.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for accepting and recognising that local education authorities ought to be able to make some agreements with teachers about such matters as working time, special dispensations for leave, and so on. That seems to me to be in some conflict with what is said in Clause 2(7). I still believe that the problem is unresolved.
I do not consider that my questions in relation to the Burgundy Book have been properly answered. I should be grateful if the noble Lord would write to me before Third Reading and answer my questions so that we have further clarification. However, I am grateful to him for what he said about teacher appraisal. Those comments were helpful. I am also grateful for his comments with respect to race relations legislation.
In the light of what has been said and my response, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment and wait for Third Reading.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Social Security (Contributions) Bill
5.54 p.m.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a third time.—(Lord Henley.)
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, in the course of this Bill passing through your Lordships' House, I sought to show that its effects will be grave for industry in a period of deep recession. On Report my noble friend the Minister in one of his answers said that those effects will need to he measured against the various benefits to industry which were given in the Budget.
It is not the opinion of the CBI that the benefits are anything like as great as my noble friend sought to persuade the House. But that is not the main burden of what I want to say at this last stage of the Bill. As noble Lords will know, since the Bill was debated at previous stages, evidence has become available to show that the British car industry is in a very serious position. In various ways this Bill will make matters even worse.
In recent years the Government have set out on the Long March towards fiscal neutrality as between cash in kind and the pay packet. So far that march has been relatively painless. The British car industry has continued to thrive. Employers have continued to buy company cars and the Government have benefited from increased income. This time changes have come during the first major recession for over a decade. It is hurting. Businesses are very cost conscious and are actively reconsidering company car policies. That has a particular effect on our domestic car industry because companies prefer to buy British. When these changes were announced in April, it may have looked as though exports could take up the slack; but with world sales now expected to fall by over 1 million this year, And sales in Europe down by 2 per cent. overall, despite the enormous boost from the East Germans abandoning their Trabants, it is now clear that our car manufacturers' best efforts abroad cannot make up for what is lost at home.
We now see the results. When the Ford workers at Halewood return from their summer break, they will not be making cars. Supply has outstripped demand. For two weeks they will be engaged only in training and maintenance. After that they are expected to manufacture for only three days a week. The Cardiff Business School estimates that 100,000 new car sales will be lost this year as a direct result of the changes made by this Bill and other related moves in the Budget. Lost revenue to the Exchequer from that lost 100,000 motor cars will be at least £215 million. So over half the net gains that the Government expected from this measure will simply not now materialise. There will be further lost revenue from workers right across the automotive industry who, like those at Halewood, will spend less because their earnings have been affected.
Perhaps the Government were not looking mainly for revenue but for change in behaviour. The lesson that we have learnt as these debates have progressed is
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that, if we want businesses to move away from company car provision, whether for environmental or other reasons, the signals that they receive should be clearer. When companies reconsider their car policy, it usually confirms to them that the vast majority of cars—over 80 per cent. according to one survey—are straightforward business tools and not perks. There is a myth, which is widely fostered in the press, that business executives are swanning around at company expense in luxury cars which are loaded with every conceivable gadget. It may come as a surprise to noble Lords to learn that more than half the number of company cars are Escorts, Fiestas or their equivalents; in other words, small functional cars. Only one in eight cars is at the large end of the range.
Firms who read the message from the Government as meaning that they are being urged to cut back on car provision find that whichever way they turn they are inhibited by the interpretation of the VAT legislation by the Customs and Excise. That has been the subject of informed press comment. An offer of a cash alternative which is accepted by one employee will lead to that consideration being taken as the basis for charging VAT on company cars provided to the remainder of the workforce.
"Proceed with caution" is the message from these debates, my Lords. Before going any further, whether next year or later, the Government must consult all those affected. The Government's package for industry this year will clearly produce different results from those expected. I have described them. When the Government make impositions on industry such as those referred to in the Bill, they tend to be read as a signal to change behaviour. They indicate that the whole picture needs to be considered. General government policy should be so framed that it offers a path to tread, rather than a minefield in which a move in any direction is fraught with danger.
I conclude with one plea. The world has moved on since the Bill was first drafted, as I and others have sought to demonstrate. Now that the recession will be longer than we had originally hoped, and recovery slower, the widespread anxiety is that delay even until next spring—which the Bill embodies—will not be long enough to avoid real damage in terms of the national insurance costs already accruing. I hope that that fear may yet be recognised by regulations now in preparation and that thought may be given to how the timing of payments will be handled in the first difficult year of living with this watershed Bill. Small though the Bill is, it is also a watershed.
I suggest that ideally thee Government should seriously consider delaying Royal Assent while they discuss whether the Bill will do more harm than good—I have endeavoured to show that it will. The Government could use the Summer Recess for such considerations and, it is hoped, for discussions with interested parties. After that, if those deliberations confirm my doubts, they could withdraw the Bill. If not, it could receive Royal Assent in the autumn.
I hope that my noble friend will give serious consideration to the points that I have made and will bring all that I have said to the attention of his right honourable friend.
6 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with the view expressed today by the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone. However, I have a problem about giving him complete support. On this side of the House we wish to see a strong National Insurance Fund. We are not happy about anything that could result in less money going into the fund than that which is now proposed by the Government. We also object to the way in which the Government's own policies have depleted the fund. For example, the bribe of national insurance rebates given to people to leave SERPS and to take out personal private pensions has cost over £6.75 billion. There has also been the failure over years to maintain the supplement from the Treasury.
However, we have to consider the current situation and not the one that we would have wished existed. We believe that the Government have failed adequately to consult over the Bill. I agree completely with the noble Lord that there should have been more consultation with the CBI. I remain unconvinced that enough has been done to draw a distinction between a car provided as a perk and cars which have to be used by people such as sales representatives, district nurses and health visitors as a necessary tool of the trade. I would prefer, too, to see senior executives provided with safe and efficient transport as part of the tool of their jobs rather than the substantial salary increases that have been recently reported.
I share the misgivings voiced on the other side of the Chamber as to the burden now being placed on small firms, in particular small industrial firms. We are in a recession. There could well be a knock-on effect on employment. I am concerned about that too. The noble Lord is quite right to emphasise the importance of the motor car industry in the British economy.
Those are anxieties that we have voiced on various occasions during the passage of the Bill through the House. On this side of the Chamber we shall not and have not opposed the Bill for the reasons that I have stated. However, I believe that there should have been much fuller consultation. I support the view that in future there ought to be consultation with all concerned before such a Bill is rushed through both Houses of Parliament.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, it is certainly the case that the Bill has not been received with any manifest enthusiasm in any quarters of the House. It is a misdescribed Bill. It is not, as its title suggests, a Bill designed simply to improve social security contributions. It is a measure of taxation levied on employers as the result, no doubt, of some deal between government departments for the raising of additional substantial sums. It is not, as is normal with social security contribution Bills, one directly financing an improvement in social benefits. It is simply designed to raise money by way of taxation. I shall return to that point later.
Any Minister supporting a good Bill, and with good briefs, can do so fairly easily. However, it requires a Minister of very conspicuous ability, when very badly briefed—as my noble friend has been—to
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support what everyone who has spoken on it regards as a thoroughly bad Bill; and to continue to support it with vigour, panache, drive and decision, whatever his real thoughts may be. As has been often said, anyone can argue a good case, but to argue a really bad case demands conspicuous ability in an advocate. I am glad to be able to say—because I am a great admirer of my noble friend—that his handling of this disagreeable, inadequate and unpopular measure has given him the opportunity to demonstrate his very distinguished abilities which I am sure will carry him much further in the service of this House and this Government.
It is significant, as the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, said, that the Bill is not opposed by Her Majesty's Opposition. Of course it is not. They basically like the idea of imposing an additional charge upon employers. I believe that the more subtle of them realise that they are being presented with what in certain circumstances they might feel is a very helpful precedent: that is, the provision of retrospective taxation. As a result of earlier discussions, we now know that there has been no legal provision yet enacted to cover the raising of this money. Simply to say that there is reference in the Budget, or that it was referred to in the Budget speech, simply ignores the fact that putting some factor in the Budget or in the Budget speech has no legal effect unless it is covered by the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act and by the resolutions under that Act taken on Budget day.
Liability to pay that impost is being accumulated and has been so accumulated over the past three months. Until the Bill is law that is a liability that is being imposed without any parliamentary authority to date and simply retrospectively. Many people, in particular in another place, have condemned retrospective taxation as oppressive, unfair and to some extent unconstitutional. One could be left with a certain suspicion that a Labour Government which would substantially wish to increase taxation—indeed, in order to carry out half of their pledges they would have so to do—would find the measure a helpful precedent. A net revenue of more than £400 million per year is proposed to be raised under a measure which is not yet law and when imposing a similarly unfair impost a Labour Government might find it convenient to be able to say, "Well, the Government did it under the Social Security (Contributions) Bill 1991". I fully understand the fact that the Opposition have not found it desirable to oppose the Bill.
The Bill has other technical defects. I shall not waste the time of the House because the matter was discussed earlier in full. It contains two provisions under which it can itself be amended by regulations made under it. In other words, the power to legislate is taken away from Parliament and given to the Government with full capacity to amend what Parliament has enacted. Those provisions are contained in Clause 1(7) and Clause 2(5). That is another thoroughly bad example of legislation.
The practical objection to the Bill is on even broader grounds, although the previous grounds are significant. It is true that the measure could hardly be

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more ill-timed being introduced at a time of recession. The motor car industry is already in difficulties and there is no disputing the fact that the Bill has done additional harm. If one accepts the estimates of the Cardiff Business School it has substantially reduced the purchase of cars just when the industry is in deep recession. The Bill will add substantially to the costs of most employers again just at the time when the Government are rightly urging employers to keep their costs down and urging restraint in wage claims. They are pointing out the necessity of keeping costs down in order to preserve our competitiveness and to counter inflation. Yet, at this very moment the Government have come forward with a Bill which has the direct consequence of increasing industrial costs. Not even the eloquence of my noble friend Lord Henley has enabled them to explain that.
I am glad that your Lordships' House has taken it upon itself to discuss the measure. It will be no secret to some noble Lords that the Government's business managers, in co-operation with those of the Opposition, had planned to take the Bill straight through to Third Reading without a Committee stage or a Report stage. It is to the credit of this House that this measure was not permitted to have that treatment but has been fully discussed.
There arises the question of what the attitude of your Lordships' House should be. In reality this is a measure of taxation. If we were to reject the Bill we should be departing from the conventional understanding between the two Houses. On merit there is a strong case for rejection, but that would breach the understanding and arrangements that exist between the two Houses and would therefore be a considerable mistake. Accordingly, your Lordships' House is right to send the Bill back to another place, if that is the case, with comments that it is ill-conceived, ill-timed and a mistake.
It is no pleasure to me—one who is a whole-hearted supporter of the present Government and a great admirer of so much of their work—to feel bound to make such comments about a measure, not of the first importance, which the Government have brought forward. But the best of governments slip occasionally. Sometimes, in particular during times of transition, deals are done between departments which do not reflect favourably on the Government's policy as a whole. This is such an example.
Having expressed our views on the measure we should send it back to another place indicating that if its Members are foolish enough to disagree with this House it is up to them. We should let the Bill go either to another place or to the statute book with our comments on ill judgment. We should stress once again that measures of this kind should not be introduced by any government without full consultation with those concerned. That point, which I am sure is right, was made so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner. If one wants an awful warning of the effects of neglecting that point one has it in this Bill. We are parting with the Bill but not with the feeling that we are parting with an old friend.
6.16 p.m.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am sorry that my noble friend does not feel that he is parting with an old friend. First, I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, that the state of the balance of national insurance funds is perfectly healthy. I totally reject her allegation that the incentive to opt out of SERPS should be seen as a bribe. I ask the noble Baroness to congratulate the Government on the success of our personal pensions policy which has seen some 4 million people take out personal pensions during the past few years. That will dramatically reduce the burden of national insurance contributions on future generations to pay for the levels of SERPS which are so irresponsibly promised by the party opposite.
During our detailed consideration of the Bill a number of important matters were raised to which I shall turn in a moment. Before doing so it is worth repeating the basic principle on which the Bill is based. As I have already explained, its purpose is to plug a gap in the national insurance system by ensuring that an employer who provides his employee with the benefit of a car for private use—and I stress the words "for private use"—faces a contribution liability in the same way as if he had paid that employee in cash. The Bill is designed to produce greater fiscal neutrality between cars and cash and to achieve a more level playing field for employers. The choice between the provision of a car or the payment of cash will no longer be distorted by national insurance considerations. I believe that there is widespread support for that principle.
I turn first to the allegations made by my noble friends Lord Mottistone and Lord Boyd-Carpenter that the measure will cause damage to the United Kingdom car industry at a particularly sensitive time. We always consider carefully the impact on industry of any such changes. I recognise that the change is unwelcome to the car industry and to retailers at a time when sales have in any event fallen sharply from their recent record levels. However, we do not believe that the proposals will have any significant effect on United Kingdom car producers.
The United Kingdom car industry is healthy. In 1990 exports were 45 per cent. higher than those for 1989, largely balancing out the effects of the recession on domestic sales. The levels of interest rates and business confidence are far more important factors. My noble friends and other noble Lords will know that interest rates have fallen from their peak and are close to the average for the past decade. That is already having a beneficial effect on business confidence.
In any event, company cars are by no means all produced in Britain; many are foreign. Employers are increasingly buying a wider range of company cars rather than merely buying British cars. I do not believe it to be right that the National Insurance Fund should subsidise the British car industry.
Nevertheless, my noble friend Lord Mottistone raised an important point. I confirm that my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made it clear to the car industry that when he makes next year's Budget judgments, he will bear in

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mind the effect of this year's measures in particular as regards national insurance, and he is very conscious of the importance of the car industry to the economy as a whole.
There have been allegations about the lack of consultation before this measure was introduced. As I have said on many occasions, this was introduced as part of the Budget Statement by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Therefore, there was no opportunity to make consultations beforehand. However, noble Lords will remember that, during our Second Reading debate, I said that we had had one round of consultation with the department's employers' panel. The two month period for submitting comments has now come to an end and a total of 32 letters from individual firms and employers' organisations have been received. Among those putting forward views have been the Engineering Employers' Federation; the Retail Consortium; the British Computer Society; and Sainsbury's, together with accountancy firms and the Institutes of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, and of Scotland. There have been many very useful ideas and we are now looking closely at these with the aim of devising a payment and collection system which meets employers' requirements. I should like to take this opportunity of thanking all those who wrote to us; I am confident that the comments we have received will enable us to produce something which meets employers' requirements.
Anxiety has been expressed at the threshold which determines when a car is to be treated as a "tool of the trade". I do understand why this anxiety has arisen; but I think it is important to remember two points. First, the contribution charge arises because of a company car's availability for private use. Bearing in mind what my noble friend Lord Mottistone said about the public's perception of company cars being large limousines, and so on, I should point out that it is entirely irrelevant whether the car is small or large. It is its availability for private use which is important.
Secondly, we know that the level of private use is not affected all that much by the number of business miles. Against this background, I can see no justification for lowering the present threshold. It was introduced in recognition of the argument that where business mileage is exceptionally heavy, there may be some effect on the availability of a car for private purposes. At 18,000 miles, the threshold is intended to deal with the exceptional category of cars where business mileage is very high. Lowering the threshold would mean that the essential link between an employer's contribution liability and the value of the private benefit enjoyed by the employee had been lost.
I now turn to the allegations made by my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter that the Bill contains two Henry VIIIth clauses and that those are unwelcome and should not be allowed. I can go no further than my remarks which I made in Committee. I do not accept that the second clause is a Henry VIIIth clause. As regards the first clause, I gave an adequate justification for its use and I repeat what my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said; namely, that
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there are occasions when the use of such clauses can be an acceptable means of effecting consequential amendments without the need to require Parliament to consider primary legislation. I believe I justified that in Committee and I hope that my noble friend will accept it.
Finally, I turn to the question of retrospection. Here again, I believe that the anxieties expressed by my noble friends are misplaced. The provisions of the Bill were announced before the present tax year and employers were notified of what would be involved. Although liability will begin from the commencement of the tax year, no contributions will be collected until the tax year which commences after Royal Assent has been given.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, although, as my noble friend says, the contributions will not be collected until the end of the tax year, the liability to pay has been accumulating now for three months.
Lord Henley: My Lords, my noble friend is correct and I was about to come to that point. This matter was dealt with in Committee and on Report. My noble friend said that in finance Bills, all such measures would be covered by Provision of Collection of Taxes Act resolutions. As I said on Report, that is not so. I cited precedents. Such resolutions are not necessary. Liability can arise from the beginning of the financial year. There may be no charge or no collection of those taxes until the end of that year and I cited the example of capital gains tax. However, in those cases no Provisional Collection of Taxes Act resolutions were necessary.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, before making such a statement, perhaps my noble friend will study rather more closely how those capital taxes have been imposed. He will find that in respect of most of them, not being covered by the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, liability arose from about 5th or 7th August.
Lord Henley: My Lords, perhaps my noble friend and I can continue this discussion through correspondence. However, I believe that my noble friend will find that he is incorrect and that liability arose from the beginning of the financial year. However, it is obvious that I am not able to convince my noble friend on this matter. The examples which I cited in Committee were not covered by the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, and therefore the tax became liable from the beginning of the financial year.
I reject entirely what my noble friend said as regards this not being a social security Bill. It is a social security Bill. It increases the resources available in the National Insurance Fund. Therefore, having considered that increase in resources, it will be a matter which my right honourable friend can take into account when setting levels of contributions for future years.
I thank my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter for his personal praise. I regret his criticism of my officials in the department who have given me the utmost

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support on a Bill which I believe is just, valuable and long overdue. I believe that we have given the Bill due consideration and I commend it to the House.
On Question, Bill read a third time, and passed.

Companies (Disclosure of Interests in Shares) (Orders imposing restrictions on shares) Regulations 1991
6.28 p.m.
Lord Henley Lord Henley rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 19th June be approved [23rd Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the draft regulations laid before the House are made under Section 135 of the Companies Act 1989. They amend those sections of the Companies Act 1985 which provide for the imposition of orders, either by the Secretary of State or by the court, restricting rights over shares.
These regulations are intended to ensure that the courts and the Secretary of State have the flexibility to make orders in such a way that innocent third parties will not be affected by the restrictions on the shares. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 19th June be approved [23rd Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Henley)
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his usual lucid explanation of the regulations. This seems to be another case in which quite important matters are coming before the House in the form of regulations rather than primary legislation. Perhaps the Minister will deal with that point. It is not the first time that that issue has been raised not only on these Benches but also from other parts of the House. Other than that, I do not oppose the order.
Lord Henley: My Lords, the noble Baroness was right in saying that there has been opposition to such orders previously. The order was not made under a Henry VIII power. She will be aware that I have had opposition from behind me to the alleged use of Henry VIII powers. There is a power to make this change. It will take considerable time to introduce primary legislation. The secondary power exists and therefore we believe that it is right to make the regulations.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Adult Education
6.30 p.m.
Baroness David Baroness David rose to ask Her Majesty's Government to explain their plans for the future of adult education.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am delighted for two reasons to introduce the Unstarred Question. The first is that my noble friend Lady Hilton has chosen this opportunity to make her maiden speech to which we are much looking forward. The second
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reason is that we have a substantial list of speakers. There are many more speakers than one normally expects on an Unstarred Question. That shows the importance of the subject.
Questions about adult education were asked in the House on 7th June and 17th June after the publication of the White Papers in May. The dismay and outrage at the proposals, or lack of proposals, for adult education became obvious. It is for that reason that I am asking the Unstarred Question. I thought that a further exploration of the Government's ideas would be useful before legislation is drawn up. Responses to the White Paper had to be in by last Friday; so I suppose that we cannot expect to hear a summary of those responses or the Government's response to them. I have been sent a number of them. The general dissatisfaction and amazement at the Government's lack of understanding of what is going on, and has been going on, in the adult education world for many years is clear.
One gathered from the original Statement in March that the Secretary of State was unaware that a great deal of adult education went on in further education colleges. Most enrolments in those colleges are of adults over the age of 21. Two excessively glossy volumes costing, I am told, £50,000 contain no mention of adult education in the section on aims; and the section on achievements makes no mention of successes in the field of adult learning through the Replan and Pick-up initiatives and the remarkable work of the Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit during International Literacy Year.
The White Paper concentrates on 16 to 19 year-olds; but important though better education and training for them is, they are a declining minority of the workforce and of the population. Adult learners are not marginal. Most of the workforce in the year 2000 is already part of the labour market and its further training is essential. The question is how to encourage more adults to embark upon some form of education, no matter what.
We welcome the plan to end the artificial divide between vocational and academic learning (although we have grave doubts how far that will be achieved without a reform of A levels), but in the education of adults a new and equally artificial and unhelpful distinction between vocational and non-vocational learning will be a consequence of the present proposals.
The experience of all involved in adult education teaching shows non-certificated adult learning (what the Government like to call leisure classes) makes a direct contribution to the economic health of the country. How else do we explain the enthusiasm with which the example set by Ford has been followed by other firms—for example, Lucas, Rover and Mars? At Ford, the Employee Development and Assistance Programme was set up, with the support of the TGWU, to provide general education opportunities for employees. They are funded from company profits as a product of collective bargaining and a joint determination between the workforce and management. Employees starting with language courses go on to maths and computer studies. Greek and philosophy

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were among the subjects chosen. As the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education stated in its response to the Government:
"Whilst the White Paper focuses on the major tasks facing Britain's needs as an economy and its people's needs as workers, the role of education and training in a civilised, developed and democratic society with an ageing population are broader than this: to stimulate active citizenship; to support family life: to foster creativity and appreciation of the arts; to make and take pleasure in culture are proper concerns of a learning society and are worthy of public investment".
We must make Ministers understand that the terms "vocational" and "leisure" are unreliable ones in adult education, especially when applied to classes. I give some examples that I have been sent from an adult education college in Hounslow. I am sure they are typical of many other colleges. In a Spanish class there is a student learning the language to be able to communicate with his grandchildren and another who is an immigration officer at Heathrow. He needs the language for his job. Both intend to go on to take GCSE. Others will continue, but not take exams. Is that class vocational or leisure? Will it be funded under the new arrangements as part of a GCSE course? The college received funding from the health authority to act as the resource centre for the Care in the Community programme and wishes to encourage people to join in classes such as "cooking for one". How will such classes be defined?
I have two more examples. Louise joined a sculpture class when her child was old enough to go to a play group. She is now compiling an art portfolio and intends to become an art therapist. Michael joined a life drawing class when he became redundant. He went on to take A level art. He obtained a grade A and has now retrained as a teacher. Many students, especially women, gain confidence from returning to study in a familiar area and can only then contemplate more formal study and progression.
All those examples are designed to show that we cannot draw a firm line and say that what is on one side is leisure and what is on the other is vocational. That distinction is artificial. It is impossible to draw in reality and damaging in its underlying assumptions. That raises the whole subject of funding. It cannot and must not be left entirely to the individual, especially when the need for such classes is overwhelming in a time of high and rising unemployment. The Government must see that enough funding is supplied through the RSG for that essential educational purpose. If not, reduced or impoverished local services will he offered at sharply increased costs.
It is important to remember for how much LEAs are responsible at the moment. The recent HMI publication—Education for Adults—showed that LEAs deliver three-quarters of current provision, two-thirds of which takes place in free-standing colleges and one-third in further education colleges. The remaining one-quarter takes place under the auspices of the responsible bodies (the university extra-mural departments), WEA, higher education institutions, including the Open University, and adult residential colleges. I have heard from one extra-mural department, from the WEA and from three residential colleges. They all share the same dismay and horror at
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the Government's proposals. I do not have time to enlarge upon them now, but I am aware that other speakers are covering at least some of them.
If the Open University is forced to increase its fees, as is rumoured, that will inevitably reduce the chances of the less well-off in the community. The National Extension College in Cambridge, of which I am a trustee, provides open learning and offers courses which prepare students to embark upon an Open University course. The largest proportion of students there had a household income of less than £10,000 a year and stated that they found the course fees a burden.
To return to the LEAs: 79 per cent. of them enrol adults at the rate of one for every 20 in the population. The figure rises where the authority primarily organises its adult education through free-standing colleges. It is that sector which is most seriously threatened by the White Paper. LEAs are now experiencing difficulty in maintaining the non-statutory service in the face of severe resource constraint. Once a service is fragmented it will be impossible for the LEAs to maintain the comprehensive provision that has hitherto been provided with the very small sums of residual RSG available to them.
The White Paper is vague about exactly how education for adults will be funded and organised. It is clearly envisaged that further education colleges will play a role but it is nowhere stated that they will have a duty to secure comprehensive provision outside the specific areas identified as being within the remit of the funding council. By the same token, it is not clear whether LEAs will be allowed to bid to the funding council to provide resources for relevant services that local colleges are unwilling or unable to provide. The cost to local people who will be expected to buy leisure courses at full cost will be further increased by 17.5 per cent. Such courses will automatically lose their exemption from VAT by their identification by central government as self-financing leisure activities. I hope that the Minister can clarify those matters.
More than 40 per cent. of LEA career services have an explicit commitment to advise adult clients as well as young people. It is an anxiety that that is neither considered nor acknowledged in the White Paper. There is a recognised need for services offering impartial learning and vocational guidance to adults wishing to undertake educational training and career development. As the Unit for the Development of Continuing Education (UDACE) said in its response,
"We believe that impartial education and vocational guidance is an essential underpinning of the education and training market and that responsibility for providing and financing it should be clearly allocated".
It goes on to say that the demand for guidance is growing and will become more and more essential—I would say at every level. I hope that the Minister can throw some light on that.
I hope that I have clarified many of the anxieties regarding the future of adult education under the White Paper proposals. The HMI publication makes clear the extent of adult part-time participation with a total of 3,400,000 enrolments each year, 1,600,000 of which are in adult education centres. They are an important body of people and we do not want the

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chances and opportunities taken away from them. Whatever the White Paper may do to solve the nation's need for a better educated and trained work force, there is the danger—and a very grave one in my view—that it will bring about the break-up of many of the pathways to learning now available and used by many adults to improve both their lives and their careers.
6.43 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, we must all be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady David, for giving Her Majesty's Government an opportunity to explain some of the extraordinary gaps in White Papers previously referred to in the House, as the noble Baroness stated. A range of speakers is assembled to add further details to those which the noble Baroness so abundantly gave us. We on this side look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton.
My contribution will be of a slightly different kind. A rehearsal of my own experiences, lecturing from an extramural department in Lancashire in the blackout, may by now be thought old hat. I prefer to take the House further back. In recent years we have heard remarks for and against Victorian values. On this topic, we should perhaps look back with some appreciation to what was done in the 19th century.
We experienced a growth of various institutions—mainly voluntary and eventually partly focused on local government. They were intended for those who had not benefited within the narrowly confined possibilities of further or, still less, higher education available at that time and anyone else who felt the need to understand the society in which he lived and the possibilities that existed for personal development. Out of that grew the provision—largely part-time and often in the evenings for people at work—of educational opportunities to which the noble Baroness referred.
Perhaps I may link this debate with the Question asked recently about libraries. The growth of a public library system went hand in hand with the growth of facilities for adult education. It was hoped that people would be stimulated to read and that their reading would take them to the various institutions through which they could obtain instruction or guidance. We had a vision of a country in which although, by 20th century standards, not everyone was highly educated, education was nevertheless regarded as being important for adults as well as for the young.
The ability of people who had followed that path to contribute to the economy is clear proven. But it was not on the basis of a narrow commitment merely to acquring some additional practical skill. The document, Education and Training for the 21st century, contains a good deal about training, most of which is agreeable, but little about education. Yet it is education that makes people value training. It is through education that they perceive the advantages which they personally and society as a whole gain through training.
What appears to have been omitted in the rush to produce a national system of funding for the colleges,
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as well as for the organs of higher education, is any serious consideration of where all this activity fits in. As the noble Baroness pointed out, we find only two or three references to adult education. The first relates to the role of the colleges which will be centrally financed by the new funding council but which are specifically confined to either practical instruction or to preparation for further and higher education through the acquisition of the necessary qualification certificates and so forth. As the noble Baroness pointed out, the rest of it is dismissed as leisure.
It is said that people should pay for their own leisure pursuits irrespective of whether or not they benefit the community as a whole. Unless we hear to the contrary from the Minister, therefore, it appears that those pursuits will have to be paid for. One can bank on the Treasury to put its oar in as awkwardly as possible in any activity with which one happens to be involved. That is a pity, and it is unnecessary. However, it is certainly something that must be looked at before legislation is proposed following the White Papers. Unless legislation imposes duties either on the local authorities, the colleges, a combination of both, or on central government to fund centrally organised institutions, whether residential colleges or voluntary societies, they are bound to be neglected by hard pressed organs of local government and colleges since everyone's resources are understandably limited. It is common experience and common sense that those activities which are prescribed by law will always get preference over those which are of a voluntary nature. So, faced with sacrificing an evening course on a general topic or some other compulsory objective, the former is always likely to go.
It is very important that the whole matter should be looked at again. Although we can hardly expect the Government's response to the various comments made on the White Papers, we would at least like to hear that those comments will be very carefully considered before there is any progress from White Papers to legislation. As I pointed out to your Lordships when the White Papers were first discussed, there has grown up a confusion in public, and occasionally in ministerial discourse, about different branches of education. I refer to the different functions of higher and further education which are and should be distinct, and between further education involving adults and adult education as we have understood it in this country for a century and a half or more.
Before legislation comes before us there is an opportunity for the Government and their advisers to clear their own minds and to take account of what your Lordships and others have said. I received today a letter from a pensioners' association in Hackney—not among my most frequent correspondents. The association says, "They are going to take away from us one of the things that is available to us. Please speak up for our needs in adult education." I do so.
6.53 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, by the number of noble Lords who have put down their names on the list of speakers we have shown how

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grateful we are to the noble Baroness, Lady David, for asking this Question. I am particularly grateful to find my speech sandwiched between the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff—I agree with all of it—and the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, to which I look forward.
I, too, look forward to hearing the Government's plans about adult education. It is time that governments looked well into the future and considered what the society in which we live is likely to be and what education organisations and arrangements will need to be established not only for the immediate but for the rather more distant future.
We now take it for granted that education is for life. We believe that people should be encouraged to go on learning as they grow older, but not just in the sense that one sometimes feels that the Government consider it, as expressed by my late father-in-law. When one produced some esoteric fact he always said, "Well, one learns something new everyday". I am not actually suggesting that the Government learn something new everyday and there also seems to be a lack of looking forward to something rather deeper.
We need structures to help us to take advantage of the enormous amount of expertise which is available in our society, a great deal of which is now wasted. The Open University has been a great step forward in that respect and its efforts must not be underrated or hampered. But more needs to be done. Perhaps arrangements need to be made that are not so seemingly middle-class and daunting as even the Open University sometimes seems to be. If the question "more of what?" is asked, the answer must be "more of everything" and less division into academic, vocational and non-vocational skills.
We live in a age when full employment of the traditional kind will probably never be seen again. That is widely agreed and that opinion is not simply the property of one side of the House. But what are those who are not conventionally employed to do with themselves? What kind of lives will they lead? All philosophies—certainly the humanist and Christian ones—would equally answer that they should be
encouraged to develop skills and to use them for the benefit of society and also for their own fulfilment. That, in turn, will contribute to the fulfilment of society.
Such skills may be found in almost anything. They may be found in matters academic; in matters vocational or in matters which might be regarded as rather trivial. In my last parish there was a lady who was a flower arranger. She carried out that task every Sunday and particularly for weddings. When she arranged the flowers for weddings she refused to take any payment whatever. To my chagrin she refused to accept payment even on behalf of the church. She insisted on doing it free. She was the best flower arranger I have known. She arranged flowers in the church which people remembered the whole week. She gave pleasure and uplift through her skills.
It is that kind of skill which we need to encourage. As I hope noble Lords will realise as I go on, it is not that I believe that many of the people for whom I am
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going to plead, will be able to pursue or will need that kind of skill. I am not conjuring up a middle-class vision of the deprived 15 to 20 per cent. of the population of this country queuing up to learn flower arranging. Neither do I believe that it would be a particularly good thing if they did so. We have a submerged section of our society. I live on the edge of an estate with which I am slightly involved at the moment. The estate is going gradually downhill and it is becoming what I suppose may be called a "sink estate". I know the difficulties of helping people to learn skills who live in that kind of environment and who come from that kind of background. As it is, they have skills which they do not use. A good many of the repairs which need to be done and which are disgracefully neglected by the council concerned could be done by many of the people on the estate, but they are not done from lack of motivation. To tackle this kind of problem will need a great deal of energy, a great deal of work and a great deal of money.
I do not see why the Government should so strongly resist the use of money in this field. We have people being laid off who have skills who are capable of teaching. On the other hand, we have a real shortage of such people where they are desperately needed. It is no use the Government saying that this would need more taxation. Of course it would. There is nothing wrong with more taxation. The Government have concentrated on less taxation—and look at the state Britain's economy is in now. What is more, they now propose, so far as we can see, to put taxation on the acquisition of skills in what they call the leisure sector. If we concentrated on the welfare of people as measured by the "life chances" that we gave to members of our society, we would give up taking too seriously the Treasury attitude in assessing cost benefit.
In a finite and overcrowded island we shall have to join the rest of the world in reorientating the values which govern our society. The party opposite which constitutes the Government will have to join us in this effort. In this particular field the Government could well start making their first advance, because they, too, value skills and they, too, value excellence where they find it. They, too, must wish to encourage a growth of excellence in every part of society, which includes the worst off and possibly particularly the worst off. I certainly hope that they will bear that in mind as they proceed with their proposals.
7.3 p.m.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: My Lords, I, too, am grateful for the opportunity presented by my noble friend Lady David in initiating this debate on adult education. I am also very grateful to noble Lords who have shown me such kindness and encouragement since my introduction to the House.
My qualifications for speaking on this subject may not be immediately apparent to your Lordships but they are, I believe, twofold. First, for the last two years of my police service I was responsible for all training in the Metropolitan Police. On the campus at Hendon I was running the equivalent of a further education college for 1,000 students aged between 18 and 45,

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with about 200 members of staff, all of whom were responsible for training cadets, recruits, detectives and middle managers in a variety of skills ranging from community relations to crime protection and the driving of police cars. My second qualification for speaking to the House on this topic is as a consumer of adult education for nearly 30 years. Since first attending Toynbee Hall in 1963 I have attended courses at more than a dozen colleges throughout London and studied a range of subjects from art to criminology.
Apart from the great pleasure and benefit that I have personally derived from these excursions into the nightlife of London, I have also observed at first hand the benefits of our current adult education system for many of those who have been failed by, or who have not taken advantage of, our schooling system. For many reasons, able and intelligent young people fail to obtain adequate qualifications, and the provision of widespread and affordable opportunities for education has offered a second chance for many adults.
Many such able people join the police service. The Metropolitan Police has a system of financial support for private study and for full-time scholarships which has enabled many, such as myself, to obtain degrees and other qualifications. Last year, for example, more than 600 metropolitan officers received financial assistance for their own time study. Some of those were police staff from the training school who attended the local college in Hendon to study for teaching certificates. All the frontline police recruit trainers now have such teaching certificates or higher diplomas or degrees.
Men and women joining the police service are much better educated now than they were 20 years ago. Two-thirds of all those joining the Metropolitan Police have the equivalent of five O levels, and many have degrees. This is a dramatic change since 1968 when, in the whole of England and Wales, only 168 officers had degrees. Last year, 1990, there were 7,000 graduates in the police service of whom 1,600 were in the Metropolitan Police. Many of those have obtained their degrees through part-time study with financial assistance, and some will have had, as I did, full-time police scholarships.
I know many police officers who left school without qualifications but who restarted their education in small ways—attending evening classes to pursue an interest such as conversational French or English litersature—and with increasing confidence have gone on to take exams and gain a variety of substantial qualifications. Confidence, my Lords, is, I believe, a key feature in acquiring knowledge and skills. Therefore, I view with disquiet any suggestion that leisure study should be divorced from study leading to academic or vocational qualifications. All study increases not only knowledge but also intellectual skills of analysis and understanding. It is moreover difficult to distinguish between "leisure" and other forms of study. In Kent, for example, 100 police officers have been attending French conversation classes at their force's expense. This is in anticipation
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of the opening of the Channel Tunnel, but will also no doubt greatly enhance the enjoyment of their summer holidays.
Most people in this country do not have the support of organisations as generous or enlightened as the police service, but nevertheless the number of part-time students in higher education in this country—no doubt in part due to that excellent institution, the Open University—has increased by 134 per cent. in the past 20 years. Government expenditure on further and adult education in the United Kingdom has doubled in real terms since 1970 and in 1989–90 more than 900,000 people enrolled for adult education classes. These are important gains which should not be jeopardised by future plans.
The recently published White Paper on Education and Training for the 21st Century draws what I believe is an artificial distinction between leisure study and study leading to formal qualifications. It suggests that the only kind of education that should be supported by public money is that leading to academic or vocational qualifications. The White Paper says that, in disadvantaged areas, there,
"can be a case for local authorities subsidising this work".
That is welcome. My main concern is the projected division of adult education into separate colleges or institutions since for many people the initial bridge back into formal education may well be through their leisure interests and studies. It is also, however, important not to erect financial barriers that are too high for the young or unemployed to surmount.
Adult education is an essential if rather frayed safety net to catch those who fall through our education system. Every opportunity for education at all ages should be preserved, so that people may acquire the knowledge, skills and flexibility to cope with the new challenges presented by our entry into Europe and by social, technological and environmental change.
7.10 p.m.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, perhaps I may first thank the noble Baroness, Lady David, for initiating the debate and for her clarity in introducing it. Secondly, it is my great privilege tonight—and I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me—to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton of Eggardon, on her maiden speech. If I may say so, it was appropriate, cogent and erudite. The noble Baroness brings to your Lordships' House a range of experience which stretches from the streetwise to one of the most esteemed academies of higher education. As the most successful woman in the Metropolitan Police force, her knowledge, intelligence and skills are much welcomed. Unfortunately, the one skill she will have to foresake is the taking of accurate notes—at least in your Lordships' Chamber. On her elevation to the peerage, the noble Baroness was quoted as saying that one of the best things she could do in the House of Lords was to show by "just being here" that the police service is not the Right-wing, macho and chauvinist organisation that people think it is. I believe that the noble Baroness has today achieved much more than "just being here". She has made us

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aware that vocational courses can be the foundation for a high flying career, and that the Government have set a minelaying course for beginners.
I agree very much with my noble friend Lord Beloff. I believe that the debate will prove to be most valuable if the Government listen and learn from the wealth of experience here in your Lordships' House and thereby reach the right decisions for the future of adult education. The Government are right to set their priorities. This country still lags behind other European countries in investment in further education. On average, people join their companies in Britain at the age of 22, whereas in Germany they join at 27. The proof of the value of five years' extra education and training is the strength of Germany's economy.
Further education has been dogged by status. Great emphasis has been placed on academic education in the past. It has received all the status and the accolades; whereas, as we know, it is the depth of training running through every part of the economic activity of the nation's workforce which is important to a successful economy.
The Government's resolve to help people in their careers, and explicitly their daily lives, by wider access to further education must be applauded. But their resolve to withdraw funding from purely leisure activities means demarcation lines being drawn. Much concern has been expressed by speakers on this issue here tonight.
While serving as a county councillor, I remember when the council drew the line. We drew the line at tap dancing on the rates. I do not know how many Fred Astaires or Ginger Rogers were lost. Indeed, we shall never know. It always seems that flower arranging dogs this debate. However, I know that flower arranging can be a route to a successful career. An example was given to me the other day of a young West Indian who was inspired to set up a florists' business after having taken adult education classes. That business now employs about eight black people in Brixton. The noble Baroness, Lady David, gave us many other such examples.
I believe that the Government's demarcation between vocational courses and those which lead to a qualification; and those which do not, is right. In my view, it is a form of leisure to spend £40 on learning to arrange flowers for one's home, especially where there are courses enough for those who attend and who want to proceed and receive a professional qualification.
Adult education can provide startlingly good value. I have with me the pamphlet from my local education college. It lists bridge for beginners at a cost of £1 per class per week. That is less than the cost of a pack of playing cards. There are many other examples which I could quote. I contend that some of them are leisure pursuits. Of course, there is provision through local determination for subsidising people who cannot afford to pay but who need to take leisure courses. The Government have recognised the fact that they can provide a valuable social function.
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I can think particularly of two areas where subsidies should be used if the financial need is evident. I refer to people who have recently been bereaved and people suffering great social deprivation, perhaps as a result of long term unemployment or through unexpected redundancy. People who become depressed put their health at risk; preventing this from happening is a marvellous investment.
I do not think that we should be totally concerned in this debate with the demarcation which is causing a problem. I believe that we should look closely at the positive commitment that the Government are making to training the country's workforce and to retraining people when that is necessary. This is of the greatest importance to women who have had children and who want either to refresh their skills and return to work or to retrain for different careers.
Industry also has an obligation in this respect, not only to train its employees in workplace skills but also as regards personal development. As the noble Baroness, Lady David, pointed out, some companies have a good record. For example, Ford allocates £200 per person per year to each individual. It is interesting to note that 25,000 employees accept the challenge annually. Rover, Glaxo, IBM, Jaguar and many others also have personal development schemes. Nevertheless, whereas half the largest companies in the USA provide five days training a year for each manager for personal development, the equivalent time given in the UK among the largest half of our companies is one day a year. I think that there is room for improvement.
I am especially pleased to see the positive stance taken by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, although it does have reservations. It feels that too much emphasis is being put on the 16 to 19 year age group. The institute has made specific recommendations for adult education which I hope the Government will consider carefully.
The White Paper makes the point that it is the Government's intention to help people in their careers and also in their daily lives. I have a particular concern for the people we have traditionally called "carers". I prefer to call them "free workers". Many of them spend years acquiring the skills and the confidence to care for either a dying or a dependent relative or friend. I welcome the modular form of NVQ which will allow such people to have their skills assessed. The results of the assessment will go towards a qualification giving them due recognition for the work that they have done and the expertise that they have acquired. That will mean that their commitment over many years in caring for a relative or friend will not go unrecognised. It will be valued and it may provide a springboard for work in caring for others in a paid capacity outside the home, once their current responsibilities have been discharged.
Finally, in every area of our daily lives we need people with great knowledge and skill. Employers need a pool of skilled people. We have not done well enough in training and adult learning, but I believe that we should welcome the Government's initiative as a step forward.
7.18 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, in paying a heartfelt tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton of Eggadon. The trouble with this House is that we now have such a strong convention that every maiden speaker is congratulated. Therefore, when a new Member makes a deeply impressive speech there are no words left which sound sincere. I can only say that if the noble Baroness can maintain that standard, as I am sure she will, she will bring honour not only on herself but also on the House. We are glad to have her among us.
As a person who has become identified somewhat with criminals, it was a peculiar pleasure for me to applaud a former police commander. As I understand it, she is the only commander who has ever served on the Labour Benches in this or the other place; or, indee1, on any Benches. Of course, I am aware of the fact that, without the police we would have no law and order and no civilisation. As I said, it is a special joy to be allowed to say these words.
The other speakers in the debate have all spoken from expert and up-to-date knowledge; that is, with the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, who took us back to the last century, which is further hack than I was proposing to go. My experience in adult education takes me back to the time before nearly all noble Baronesses and some of the noble Lords who have spoken tonight were born. I took my WEA class in Longton; not quite in the 19th century, but some time back. Longton was claimed to be the original WEA class, many years before that. I was teaching there and managed to import my wife into the system. We became engaged in the station waiting room at Stoke-on-Trent under the auspices of the WEA, so it has many romantic associations for me.
As the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, said, we must take a historical view on this, but we must also come up to date. What I had intended to say has already been said very well by several speakers, including the noble Baronesses, Lady David and Lady Hilton. It is almost redundant to repeat it, but it is important that the Minister who is to reply should realise that there appears to be a unanimous renunciation of quite an important aspect of the White Paper on adult education; that is, the attempt to draw a line between vocational education and leisure interests.
Leisure has rightly been derided and I join in the howl of derision that greets it. For example, when I taught political theory in Longton, I do not know whether it was leisure for anyone, but it was a form of education. It was sometimes even called political philosophy. It may not have been quite as grand as that, but my wife was teaching Shakespeare and English literature. Should that be called leisure? The distinction would have seemed ridiculous then and it still seems so now. However, from the government's proposals, we read that they believe it important that good quality education should be available to adults to help them improve their qualifications, update their skills and seek advancement in their present career or in a new career. That is the kind of education that the Government quite rightly wish to promote. However,
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leisure and the teaching of what might be called cultural subjects are passed over with apparent contempt. The whole House has up to now derided the attempt to draw a distinction. I am not sure whether that applies to the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, but all others did.
As always, I turn to the polytechnics for up-to-date learning. Since I am being nasty about aspects of the Government perhaps I should take the opportunity of saying what tremendous pleasure it has brought to friends of the polytechnics that the Government took the step announced not long ago of placing the polytechnics on the same footing as the universities. It would be churlish not to mention that. Returning to today's topic, the polytechnics have been at the forefront in opening up access to degree work. All kinds of students, who were not traditionally qualified, have in the end obtained degrees through them. That is one aspect of their work.
I shall quote one story supplied to me from the Polytechnic of Central London. A mature married woman, with no educational qualifications, took up a place with some friends in an embroidery evening class, a leisure interest leading to no qualification. She enjoyed it and in conversation with others fantasised about making a living out of her new interest. She was encouraged to consider this more seriously and entered courses in business and marketing. She now runs a thriving small business, having started going to a leisure—I emphasise the word—class with friends. Under the White Paper proposals the polytechnic understands that such a class will no longer be available to someone of her limited personal means. That would be shocking enough, and it is just one aspect, but leisure classes can possibly lead on to business success.
However, that is not the only reason that I and others support the so-called leisure classes. I regard education as good in itself, not just as something leading to a career. It does that, but education is good in itself. The White Paper has failed badly in that respect.
7.25 p.m.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend, Lady David, for putting down this Question tonight. I hope that the Government will be able to throw some light on the future prospects for adult education, as the White Paper seems to raise more questions than it answers. It is full of gaps and, strangely, it makes no reference to the Education Reform Act 1988 which requires local education authorities to secure adequate facilities for adult education. Presumably that responsibility still remains with local education authorities, but the funding is not mentioned in the White Paper. However, it recognises that adult education comes from a number of sources. The bulk has come from local education authorities, mainly through further education colleges. The WEA has also been an important provider, as my noble friend Lady David mentioned.
At the top of the adult education pivot, we have had the seven adult residential colleges which have provided special opportunities to people like myself

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who missed out on formal education in their school days and have had the opportunity of an education in a residential and scholarly setting. The residential colleges also pioneer methods of learning and teaching for adult education generally, which is an important contribution to the education scene.
All these providers of adult education seem to have a question mark hanging over the continuation of their activities, largely by the gaps in the White Paper and also the limited list of providers which can seek funding from the new funding councils. We must add to that list of providers of adult education which I have mentioned an increasing number of universities which are also providing adult education in the way of liberal courses, in addition to their professional courses. However, they often provide them on a part-time basis through the associated student scheme, allowing pensioners, people on shift work and the unemployed to take part in university education on a modular basis. However, of course, like other aspects of adult education, there is no specific funding for this work. Thus there are a number of areas on which we need a great deal more information.
One of the strengths of adult education in the past is that it has never been proscribed or limited before. It has responded to the needs and demands of local communities. Indeed, by its very nature, it is difficult to package adult education into neat, watertight compartments, as noble Lords have mentioned this evening and as everyone involved in adult education knows.
To attempt to distinguish between vocational and non-vocational courses for funding purposes is, to say the least, to oversimplify the problems. Adults are likely to have a multitude of motivations for deciding to start a course. As my noble friend Lord Longford has illustrated, a course that is started as a leisure activity may lead to a professional qualification.
I wish to refer to my local education authority in Bradford which has a policy of providing an integrated and co-ordinated programme of education to meet all needs. The main providers of that education have been the three further education colleges in the metropolitan district. One of the colleges, Bradford College, is one of the biggest colleges in the country. It has over 30,000 students and the courses span basic literacy courses to degree courses. Yet even a college of this size has relied on the local education authority to provide the strategic framework in which it can provide courses.
I am informed by Bradford College that something like 15 per cent. of adult education could be classified as non-vocational education. Non-vocational courses usually last for one to two hours per week. If such courses account for 15 per cent. of adult education, that accounts for a lot of people. We must ask what will happen to this service. A glimpse at the current programme of Bradford College suggests that we certainly cannot afford to lose its services. It provides a great breadth and variety of courses, including some which are specially geared to the different ethnic communities. One might ask whether a course on Asian/Western dressmaking is a leisure or a
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vocational course. It could be either. It could lead to a national vocational qualification or it could mean that an Asian woman who was interested in that course could begin to integrate herself more into the local community.
Are French or German courses for beginners access courses to GCSE or A-levels, or are they simply leisure pursuits? Again they could be either. On the one hand such courses could lead to further language study ending with a qualification but on the other hand they might just constitute an additional skill which someone wanted to acquire to develop their growing European awareness. That is a concept that the Government are keen to foster.
What category do courses on property maintenance fall into? Incidentally, those courses are advertised in Bradford not just in English but also in two Asian languages. Bradford has inner city problems. We must ask the Government where such courses would fit into the priority list of such a city. According to the White Paper, such courses would not assume a very high priority from an educational point of view. However, they should assume a high value in a city such as Bradford from an environmental and social point of view.
One could give further examples of courses that could be vocationally orientated or could be considered to be leisure or liberal activities. They are all part of the important human development that is so essential for our citizens today. The authors of the White Paper have also apparently not understood or have forgotten the definition of disadvantaged adults that was given in the Russell Report of 1973 entitled A Plan for Development. That report defined disadvantaged adults as,
"those who, on account of their limited educational background, present cultural or social environment, age, location, occupations or status, cannot easily take part in adult education as normally provided".
The Government would do well to reconsider that definition and the Russell Report.
In introducing this debate my noble friend asked whether the Secretary of State fully appreciated, when he launched the White Paper, the extent of work that is undertaken by local authorities, the Workers' Educational Association and others in the field of adult education. If the Government do not fully appreciate the extent of that work, I suggest it might be a good idea for Government officials to visit a region such as Yorkshire and study some of the provisions that are available for the local community and for the ethnic groups within that community. Perhaps the Government might then take a different look at their White Paper.
7.36 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I find myself speaking, for the first time for six years, without the prop of a Dispatch Box. I have a particular interest in this subject. For the past three-and-half years I have had the privilege of being what is politely referred to as the principal of the Working Men's College in North London. That means that I am the chairman of council of that college. That college is one of the independent

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voluntary adult education institutions which is specifically referred to in the Government's White Parer entitled Education and Training for the 21st century.
The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, referred in his excellent speech to Victorian values. The noble Lord mentioned the motives of those who in Victorian times sought to extend education and training for adults. The Working Men's College does just that. It was founded in 1854 by Frederick Denison Maurice and other Christian Socialists including Tom Hughes of Tom Brown's School-Days. The distinguished teachers of the college have included Ruskin and, at a later stage, Lowes, Dickinson and E.M. Forster. For nearly 150 years the college has been keen to provide liberal education for working people. Originally the college aimed its courses at working men but since the beginning of this century working women have been educated there. Education is provided at a price that working people can afford.
The ideals of the founders of the Working Men's College are still very much before the democratically elected council which runs the college. The council is elected by teachers and pupils. The council has allowed me the privilege of being its principal. At the previous meeting of the council we discussed the Government's White Papers which are the subject of the discussion this evening. The warden, who is the real principal, was invited to write to the Department of Education and Science to express our deep concern at the way in which adult education appears to have fallen off the end of the raft of policies which the Government are proposing for education and training.
I shall discuss in a moment what the college said on this issue but, first, I wish to discuss what I have learnt personally from this involvement with adult education. I wish to consider what effect that experience should have on the policies that should be adopted. The first thing I have learned is that this rather small college of only 2,000 students is just one part of a large movement. The HMI report, which has already been referred to, makes clear that there are 3.4 million students in adult education in this country in any one year. Approximately half of them are studying in adult education institutes, but a considerable number are in further education colleges and extra-mural departments of universities.
In a study on learning and leisure by Professor Naomi Sargant, who is well known to some of my noble friends, it was calculated that 10 per cent. of the adult population was involved in adult education at the time of the questioning and a further 16 per cent. had taken part in adult education in the past three years. A further 10 per cent., while not formally enrolled in any adult education courses, were learning at home. That is 36 per cent. of the population of this country. It is a huge movement and one which ought not to be dismissed in a page and a half of a two-volume White Paper.
I have also learnt from my experience of the Working Men's College that one cannot classify courses, as the White Paper seeks to do, on the basis of the motivations of those who undertake them.
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Many examples have been given, most notably in the excellent maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Hilton, who spoke of the fact that what appear to be leisure interests of police students can very well be vocational interests. It does not matter if they are not. They are still better police officers if they continue learning, whether or not what they are learning is directly related to their present job.
One of the aspects of the White Paper, with its emphasis on 16 to 19 year-olds, which most frightens me is the danger that the vocational education which they are receiving at the age of 16 to 19 is not related to the vocation which they will follow throughout their life but only to their first job. That is the danger which we run if we take too literal a view of vocational education.
When the Working Men's College tries to classify its courses we can say that 80 per cent. of them fall within the definitions of acceptable education and training contained in paragraph 3.2 of Volume 2 of the White Paper—the killer paragraph. However, that does not tell us anything about the students who are taking those courses or why they are taking those courses. Some of them will be doing so purely for leisure; some of them will be doing so purely for vocational purposes related to their present job; some of them will be taking the courses because it will help them with jobs they wish to have in the future. Who is to say whether a class shall be included or excluded from the remit of the funding councils for further education on the basis of the motivation of the student? That does not make any sense at all.
What do we do about it? The first thing which I suggest we can do is not to make matters worse in the way that the White Paper appears to do. We could abandon paragraph 3.2, and we could do so without abandoning any of the rest of the White Paper. The Government could now say that they are thinking again about that particular aspect of the White Paper without in any way reneging on their commitment to improve vocational education and training. Nor should they, but it appears that a mistake has been made which could be corrected.
We could go further than the present emphasis on vocational education and training for 16 to 19 year-olds. In other words, we could treat the education of adults, who are a far larger part of the population, with the same seriousness as the Government now seek to treat 16 to 19 year-olds.
We could do something about the resources available for adult education. We could make it a duty on local authorities to provide adult education. As the White Paper is drafted it appears that there will be no such requirement. Most of the education post-16 will be taken away from local authorities and given to the new funding councils, on which local authorities are not to be specifically represented. It will be small wonder if a number of local authorities, hard pressed by poll tax capping or by the legitimate parsimony of their electors, say, "The rest of it has been taken away from us, so why should we provide adult education? The Government have indicated that much of it, except in disadvantaged areas, should be funded by the students themselves so we, the local authorities,

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will no longer provide it". I suggest that any legislation following the White Paper should require local authorities to provide adult education. It should require them to have a coherent plan of provision to meet the needs and demands of people in their areas. It ought to ensure that the funding of adult education is a proper part of their expenditure and recognised in their standard spending assessment.
Beyond the institutional side of adult education we ought to be moving towards a greater degree of entitlement of individuals to education throughout life. The White Paper and the training credit scheme have given a very good example. Under the training credit scheme 16 and 17 year-old school leavers are entitled to further vocational training over the next few years. It is their entitlement, which they can take where they want. Let us extend that principle later into life. My noble friend Lord Young of Dartington is carrying on his usual very effective campaign for entitlement for those over the age of 50. But why should there be a gap between the 18 and 19 year-olds, on the one hand, and the over 50s on the other? If it is too expensive to carry entitlement into the whole range of education and training—though I do not believe that it is, either in social or economic terms—there should at least be an entitlement to assessment so that people can have free access to advice about what education and training is appropriate for them.
The distinction between education and training is one which can amuse academics until kingdom come. We have to maintain the principle that we must be a learning society. It is learning which is the common element in education and training and it is learning which education for adults can provide.
7.47 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, one of the disadvantages of being the last of the Back Bench speakers is that one inevitably has to repeat a number of points. That does not disappoint me: in politics repetition for the sake of emphasis is a good thing, even more so on the subject of adult education where the Government seem a little hard of hearing. Repetition will do no harm.
When the subject of adult education has been raised in this House in recent months and only partial answers given, we have been told, "Wait for the White Paper". Now that it is with us, it is by any standards a disappointing document. Adult education has long been the Cinderella of the education service. We had some hopes that it would emerge from the shadows with the publication of the policy statement.
The first requirement is a stronger statutory basis. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord McIntosh spoke forcefully on that aspect; at one stage I thought that I would be the only speaker in the debate to say it. It is the lack of such provision which has brought about the very wide variation in adult education.
In the HMI report Education for Adults it is stated that the amount spent on general and basic adult education by individual LEAs in 1987–88 varied widely from over £10 per head to just a few pence. That is a devastating comment and demonstrates
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clearly how much needs to be done. If quality provision is to be made and enacted, the local authority standard spending assessment will need to reflect all of the various requirements of adult education.
Like many others, I express my concern about the Government's differentiation between what they call leisure interests and other courses. That is a perfect example of repetition. But it will not do any harm, particularly following upon the excellent speeches that have been made. On the surface, there appears to be a difference between flower arranging and dressmaking on the one hand and the study of the Greek philosophers and French literature on the other. But, as previous speakers have said, you can never be entirely sure as to where learning, whatever it is, can lead. It need not lead to anything; learning is a good thing and valuable in itself.
I can illustrate the point, not by referring to some of the most interesting examples that have been given, but by explaining that I spent two years as a local education authority further education organiser. It was the most satisfying period of my life. I saw people of both sexes and of all ages try all kinds of courses. And it all sprang from the spur of learning, whatever the subject.
Nor should we forget or underrate the valuable social function that some courses provide. For many people, particularly older people, they are a lifeline. The Minister will know that in some areas there has been a drastic reduction in the number of courses. In that connection I make a special plea for specific courses for adults with special educational needs. Adequate funding is essential if the courses are to have any value. The Government have made comments on that aspect of adult education, but the proof of the pudding, as with everything else connected with adult education, will be in the eating.
It is not possible to deal with the many aspects of adult education, but it must be reiterated that the rich variety of providers is of the utmost importance. Here is another repetition. Over 3.4 million adults in England and Wales enrol every year in some form of education which, for many, provides the only experience of post-school education. There should be as many doors as possible through which entrance may be obtained, particularly as the people looking for entrance come from such different circumstances and backgrounds.
I wish to concentrate on one of those providers: the long-term residential colleges. That type of education is provided by, for example, Ruskin College, Fircroft College and the other five similar colleges. The new councils will be responsible for the public funding of those colleges. In providing studies of high academic standard, they perform at least two important functions. First, they stretch the ability of their students, usually in obtaining a qualification of university standard. I am thinking of diplomas in economics, public administration and similar subjects. As the courses are usually of two years' duration, they call for sustained effort of a high order and a

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successful conclusion gives immense personal satisfaction. Secondly, the qualification is usually accepted by universities as an indication that the student can proceed to a degree course.
There is no doubt about the huge demand for that type of adult education. One proof of that is the large number of applicants for the places available in spite of the problems that long-term residential education brings to many of the people concerned, not least the fact c f being separated from their families. An advantage is that the colleges do not require formal educational qualifications for entrance which is one of the essential features of adult education. I wonder whether the Government—perhaps the Minister will comment when he replies—have ever thought of establishing more of those colleges. They are a government of supply and demand, and the demand is certainly there. I see the Minister agreeing with me by nodding his head, so perhaps we shall have some good news at the end of the debate. It would be worthwhile even from the view-point of having more and better qualified people to contribute to the country's economic well-being.
I am dealing with long-term, residential adult education. The residential aspect is very important. However, there are difficulties, not least, as I have mentioned, with married people. The Government should improve facilities for such courses on a non-residential basis. I am aware that polytechnics and some other institutions can and do provide such facilities and they should continue to do so, but I am convinced that adult education colleges provide an environment, if I can so describe it, which is better for that kind of study.
I take this opportunity to ask about a ministerial review of the purpose and function of the long-term reside initial colleges about which I have heard but not read. I understand that one conclusion is that the colleges should limit their courses to one-year access to higher education and to residential short courses for students on non-residential access courses. I hope that that is not correct. It would change completely the nature of the colleges and be a retrogressive step. Perhaps the Minister will deal with the matter when he replies.
Behind it all there is a big question to be asked: how can the factory worker, the miner, the shop assistant or the clerk afford to attend a full-time, two-year or even a one-year course? In his Statement on further and higher education in another place on 20th May, the Secretary of State said at cols. 644 to 645:
"My right hon. Friends and I are committed to open access to higher education for everyone who has the ability and willingness to take advantage of it. We shall not put financial obstacles in their way".
I am surprised to hear that coming from the present Secretary of State, but it is nice to have it on the record. However, the Government's cuts in education and other fields inevitably raise some doubts, at least in my mind. That is the Robbins principle, and many of us are under the impression that that idea was discarded a long time ago by the Government. We look forward to seeing how it will apply to the many hopefuls wishing to undertake full-time, residential adult education.
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The degree of interest, or perhaps I should say lack of interest, in adult education is shown by the Government in a mere five short paragraphs in vol. 2 of the White Paper. It does not even reflect the worry shown by the HMIs in Education for Adults which is an excellent document. One of the greatest criticisms that can be levelled at the Government is that they consistently fail to recognise that adult education students are the most highly motivated in the education system. The Government have failed to capitalise on that most potent factor and that means that they fail people as individuals and, as a result, the country as a whole.
It is evident that the struggle for a decent adult education service comparable with that of our European partners will need to continue for some time yet.
7.58 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, I found to my horror when I arrived here this afternoon that, through a misunderstanding, my name was not on the list of speakers. I immediately saw the Whips who agreed that I should intervene at this point in the debate.
I shall speak only of one aspect of adult education; namely, the role of the Workers' Educational Association, generally known for decades as the WEA, now facing an uncertain future in the light of those White Papers on education and training. It looks as though the Government are interested only in vocational education. I was extremely interested in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff. Although the association was founded two years after Queen Victoria's death, the WEA was one of those historic, social institutions conceived in the late Victorian age. It was very different from the mechanics' institutes. It was a quasi-religious mission to provide access for men and women without secondary education to subjects such as history, philosophy, economics and literature. It was a set of studies that not only opened people's minds, but equipped many of them to become politicians, magistrates and town councillors.
Sixty years ago I myself found it most rewarding. I decided to go straight into journalism from Manchester Grammar School—a choice regarded as deplorable and eccentric by my schoolmasters. However, at the WEA I found some distinguished scholars of Manchester University eager to educate me. The fee—like my salary in those days—was negligible. Some years later I served with A. P. Wadsworth, editor of the Manchester Guardian who in the pioneering days of the WEA had been a pupil of Tawney. I think that if it had not been for the WEA he would have finished up not as editor of the Manchester Guardian but as editor of the Rochdale Observer.
Times have changed and educational opportunities today are infinitely richer. For example, we now have the Open University and the University of the Third Age for retired people. The WEA itself is different. If you were to attend a class of literature or visual arts in Barnes, (where I live) you would find that most of the members would be well dressed, well educated and well travelled women. That could be misleading. The

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WEA throughout the country is still carrying out its traditional, splendid work among less privileged people in industrial towns and in rural areas where sometimes it is the only form of adult education available. Today, it has an enrolment of 180,000 and is giving educational support to school governors, health advisers, family counsellors, hospitalised people and prisoners. It is still the major voluntary organisation working in adult education in the UK.
There is now a fear that the creative partnership that has developed between local and central government in the voluntary sector is in danger of erosion. No longer are the classes recruited with the bait of the negligible fee which I paid all those years ago. It may cost £30 or £40 to enrol for a 20-week course. That sum covers the cost of the tutor but only one-third of the total cost. Although the WEA is and always has been a shoe-string organisation, its total income per year is £6 million, of which half comes from the Department of Education and Science. There is a fear that that £3 million could now be reduced to £2 million.
If greater resources are given to vocational training for adults—an excellent thing in itself—it could mean less for the rest of adult education, or that is how it looks from these White Papers. Restructuring of the kind the Government have in mind could mean that many adults would not be able to afford to take part in this form of education, particularly the low-paid, those without paid employment and those with families.
The WEA is urging the Government to ensure that all the money now paid by central and local government continues to be paid by the funding councils and the Scottish Education Department. I fervently hope that the Government will set all the fears of the WEA at rest and make it possible for this voluntary educational body to continue its historic work.
8.4 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, first, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, on a most informative and interesting speech. She has already begun to educate us in areas of life of which we are all too ignorant, and I hope she will continue to do so on many occasions. Secondly, I have to apologise to the House and to the noble Baroness, Lady David, that I was not here at the beginning of the debate. I was inadvertently locked into the Gallery and lacked the skills to abseil into your Lordships' House in order to be here for the beginning of the debate. However, I was rescued by the police in time to hear the latter part of noble Lady's speech. Thirdly, I have to declare an interest as I am still chairman of a London adult education centre, Morley College, where, needless to say, we are deeply worried by what we find in the White Paper. In many ways I am echoing what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, has said from the standpoint of a sister organisation. But he is better placed than I am because
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the Christian Socialists were good enough capitalists to fund his before they died. Lilian Baylis and her colleagues failed to make any such suitable provision.
As so many other speakers have said this evening, when we look at the White Paper we find reference to what are called "leisure activities"—a brush-off for adult education if ever there was one. What are these "leisure activities"? They include a whole variety of different arts: music, painting and sculpture, as well as philosophy, history. I could go on and on. They also include many perhaps more mundane and practical courses which are available to a wide variety of people. If these are leisure activities, then most of the universities in this country spend a great deal of their time at leisure. However, that is how the position stands at the present time.
Who are the people who are at present taking advantage of what adult education at its best has to offer in this country? One of the great attractions of adult education colleges is that they draw into their student body a wide variety of people. For example, in our choirs at Morley College from time to time we have senior officials from the Treasury (though I am not quoting anybody in particular at the moment) who presumably come to sing their hearts out in the optimistic view that Treasury officials have hearts. On the other hand, we have people who are lacking in basic literacy skills.
People come from both ends of the spectrum. The Treasury officials can afford to pay, and so can some (but by no means all) of the many people working in the City of London who on their way home attend classes from six to eight in the evening on subjects which in many cases are quite different from—though in some cases may be extensions of—their daily work. They provide a stimulus, a contrast, or a relaxation from taxing or boring jobs, as the case may be; but the classes are a very valuable complement to the way some people spend their lives during the day.
There are other people who are deeply in need of basic education. There have been indications from the Government—and it would be very useful if tonight we could have confirmation of it—that basic education for people in need of elementary numeracy and literacy skills, and English as a second language, are going to continue to be funded in those colleges. Can the noble Lord tell us whether that is so or, if it is not, whether the Government will think about it again? That group certainly has a special claim on the resources of the community not only in their own interests but because they are the people who are doomed to be members of that under-class, to which we refer all too often, if they continue to be lacking in numeracy, literacy and the basic skills to enable them to cope in our modern society and in our large cities.
Then there are other groups. When the Education Reform Act of 1988 was passing through this House, those who were connected with it must have received—as I did—some of the most moving letters that they have ever had. For example, I had a letter from a woman who said that she spent all her days and nights looking after an invalid parent. She had managed to

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arrange to get out once a week to attend a class. She wrote, "If I have to abandon that class, that is really the last straw. I cannot go on. It is a lifeline for me".
There are the old. There is an increasing number of old people in society. More and more people are retiring earlier. What do they do? Many of them have started to learn new things. Out of that has come all sorts of skills. Some have turned those new skills, learnt through adult education, into new second careers or partial careers of one kind or another. For some people new doors have been opened on aspects of life that they never contemplated before. Adult education keeps them going. The letters from pensioners are very moving and indeed revealing.
Are we to say to such people that the fees will now be sc much and it will not be possible for them to continue to attend? That is what we are saying to a great many people who exist only on the basic pension. I should be the first to agree that not all pensioners are in that position. I suppose that most of the Feers in your Lordships' House are pensioners, and very few of them exist on the basic pension. It is a different matter to have a good secondary pension. Many pensioners have nothing or practically nothing except the basic pension. If they are to pay the financial cost of classes, it will be the end of attendance for them. They are there and they have a very big demand on adult education. In the past adult education has been extremely successful in meeting those needs.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, put a number of specific suggestions to the Government as to their course of action. I should like to echo his observation that it is surely time that at last adult education is included in the statutory obligations of the authority that will be responsible for it in so far as anybody is to be responsible for it. It has always been a problem that adult education has not been a statutory obligation. If that could be done, to even quite a small extent, it would make a great deal of difference.
Most important of all is for the Government to recognise that such "leisure" activities are of the greatest importance educationally and that they warrant payment support out of public funds. That is the oily way to proceed. In a variety of ways other countries subsidise the arts and music a great deal more than we do. We are a nation of philistines. This Government have been called a philistine government. They have not been falsely so-called. Let them show that they are not as philistine as most people think they are.
Running through the White Paper is the message that so far as the Government are concerned education is about preparing people for jobs. Preparing people for jobs is extremely important. I have spoken of it many times in your Lordships' House. But let us not forget that that is not the primary purpose of education. Education is to turn out people who are capable of thinking for themselves, criticising governments, criticising society and developing the kind of approach and understanding that a civilised society requires. That is what education is about primarily. Skill training is a part of it but it is the smaller part. If the Government will admit that, they
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will do something to restore their reputation and refute the accusation that they are philistine. If the Government destroy adult education, the kindest thing that we can say is: you know not what you do.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, like other speakers in this debate I congratulate my noble friend Baroness Hilton of Eggardon on an excellent maiden speech. We very much look forward to hearing her on frequent occasions in the future. I am extremely glad that her policeman managed to rescue the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, who was locked in the Gallery. If the noble Baroness had been to one of the excellent adult education classes in gymnastics—defined no doubt as leisure—she might have been able to abseil into the Chamber and it would have had vocational relevance and advantage for her.
I must declare an interest, as have a number of other speakers. As the Master of Birkbeck College, I am responsible for a very wide range of adult education courses in the London and Greater London areas. Indeed, the largest department of extramural studies in the country is under the auspices of Birkbeck. We serve some 19,000 students studying a wide range of courses. The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, referred to Victorian values in relation to adult education and my noble friend Lord Ardwick referred to the WEA having been set up just at the end of the Victorian period. But Birkbeck goes back to the pre-Victorian period. It was set up in 1823 as the London Mechanics' Institute, as a place where men who work by day could study by night. We are still doing it 180 years later, and long may that be the case.
This has been an excellent debate in which every speaker has commented on how much adult education is valued and how important it is in our society. While it is undoubtedly the case that there is an urgent need to reform and improve 16 to 19 year-old education, the focus of the White Paper on improving education and indeed training for 16 to 19 year-olds has obscured the Government's plans—if indeed they have any—for adult education, by which I mean education of all kinds for mature adults over the age of 21.
What saddens me greatly is that the emphasis on initial education for 16 to 19 year-old students has resulted in a serious failure to consider the importance of continuing education—lifelong education—which is often of its nature intermittent and fragmented, but none the worse for that. Nonetheless, it is highly significant for the education and social wellbeing of the country.
As my noble friend Lord McIntosh said, it is a huge movement and one that we should value. For example, the proportion of mature students aged over 21 in further education colleges is now very substantial. One would not have thought it from reading the White Paper. Those students engage in education for a very wide variety of motives, which may be professional, practical, recreational, or academic. Moreover, on any one course in adult education there will be students in the class who have all those different motives all mixed together. It may

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well be that during the course of such a class their motives will shift from initially being recreational to later being either academic or vocational.
In their main White Paper proposals the Government wish to secure equal status for academic and purely vocational studies. I do not wish in any way to disagree or dispute the approach. In many ways it is long overdue. But it is strangely at odds with the new division that is being introduced. Courses for adults which have a predetermined outcome—NVCQS, GCSEs, A levels, access to higher education, access to higher levels of further education, basic skills, literacy and numeracy and English for speakers of other languages—are to be funded by the new councils; those courses which relate to so-called leisure interests are expected to be self-financing. As many other speakers in this debate have said, that is a totally unrealistic and unworkable separation.
It is extremely interesting to note that those companies to which my noble friend Lady David referred which have started major programmes of education for their workforce are not making this philistine and unworkable distinction. Perhaps I should declare another interest. I am on the board of the Rover Learning Business which provides opportunities for people from the shop floor to senior executives to register for a variety of courses. Such absurd distinctions are not made in that regard.
The study pathways followed by adult students are enormously varied. In my own institution, Birkbeck, there are many students who started by taking general interest courses—which the Government would presumably define as recreational or leisure—in local education authority institutes before going on to an extramural certificate or diploma and on to a degree level course. How do the Government propose to maintain such pathways in the future if those courses are all to be self-financing? That will mean that relatively high fees are to be charged which many people will not be able to afford to pay.
There are many forms of public service and role-related education which do not appear to fit within the framework of the White Paper; for example, parent education, or education for carers of the disabled. There are many such examples. All those activities improve the quality of life of the nation. Can we be assured that those education opportunities which are so important to many people will be supported under future arrangements? Many other examples have been given by noble Lords.
The White Paper mentions the possibility of LEAs financing otherwise non-funded activities in socially disadvantaged areas. However, will the standard spending assessments of the poorer LEAs be adjusted to take account of that? Will the Minister give us an answer to that question? Although there is recognition of the social value of leisure education in advanced areas in vol. 2 of the White Paper, if local authorities are eventually divested of the powers and funding to provide further and adult education it is unclear how they will be able to provide those subsidies. In many
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ways why should they? They are no longer providing the service. I should like clarification on how such a discretionary system might work.
My noble friend Lord McIntosh of Haringey suggested that adult education should be left with the local education authorities and that there should be a statutory requirement by local authorities to provide adult education. Other noble Lords referred to that. I agree with that proposal.
I suggest that the restrictive categorisation of fundable courses must be reconsidered when detailed regulations are worked out. Emphasis on the post-school age group should not have an inadvertently damaging effect on the educational opportunities of much older age groups. That appears to be the net effect of the White Paper.
Many other points in the White Paper are disturbingly vague. Some institutions, such as the four central London colleges currently funded through the London Residuary Body and the WEA, are completely unclear about their future role when funded by the new council. My noble friend Lord McIntosh, who is the principal of one of them, will confirm that. It appears that those institutions are not to be funded to perform what is, and has been for many years, their primary role—to provide general cultural education. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide clarification, if not today in the very near future.
Adult education can be maintained only if there are buildings in which classes can be held. Have the Government taken into account the implications for adult education of the new funding and organisational arrangements? There is not much sign of that in the White Paper. Appropriate capital resources must be provided for the education of adults. The provision of accommodation is a central, not a peripheral, matter. In many areas of the country, adult education takes place in school premises. There is anxiety that adequate facilities will not remain available if LEAs cease to have any responsibility for further education and the schools become increasingly independent under LMS arrangements. It is vital that that aspect of the proposed changes is given serious attention.
Adult educational opportunities are an essential component in a democratic society. It would be short sighted and very foolish if a substantial part of our educational heritage were to be destroyed by inadvertence—perhaps I am being generous to the Government—or worse, by an attempt to achieve rather small economies. I believe that spending on non-vocational adult education is less than 0.5 per cent. of total education expenditure. It is now nearly 20 years since the Russell Report recommended that expenditure on adult education should rise from 1 per cent. to 2 per cent.
Surely in a civilised society we should be able to spend at least that amount on helping adults to continue to learn. Learning should take place over people's entire lives. It should not be confined to the years between the age of three, or perhaps five, through to the early 20s. Staff working in adult education are at present confused and anxious about the White Paper's proposals. They fear that the many

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years spent in building up an adult education system within this country will he thrown away. I agree with my noble friend Lord Dormand of Easington about the importance of having a specialist adult education environment rather than assuming that all adult education can continue in FE colleges, schools or wherever.
The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, referred to teaching in the blackout. We kept our adult education classes going throughout the Blitz and later in the war. Surely this Government will not wish to jeopardise teaching now during a period of peace and relative affluence. I regret to say that the White Paper is an opportunity lost to make a major commitment to adult education, to the need to expand it, and to build on the expertise available. If we want a better educated and better trained society, there are few aspects that provide better value for money than the voluntary network of evening classes around the country.
I hope that on receiving the many concerned responses to the consultation—and, like my noble friend Lady David, I have seen some of them—the Government will think again. Let us hope that they will relent and take a less narrow, less instrumental and less philistine view in their approach to adult education. Full cost fees will lead to the collapse of many of the so-called leisure courses around the country. When that occurs, it will not be the privileged middle-classes which lose out but some of the less advantaged members of the community to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, referred—the elderly, those who missed out at school and young mothers seeking the opportunity to escape the relentless demands of small children. Many speakers today have registered their anxieties about the White Paper. The Government must reconsider their position and I hope will do so urgently.
8.30 p m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady David, for asking this Unstarred Question on the important subject of adult education. However, I must say that at times it has sec med more like a two-and-a-half hour debate on a White Paper. The House will also be grateful to her for providing an opportunity for the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton of Eggardon, to make her maiden speech. It was not only an excellent speech but a valuable contribution to a debate, and it was based on her experience as a provider and a receiver of adult education.
This has been a fascinating debate, and I am sure that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will read the Official Report with great interest. In my reply, I propose first to explain the Government's plans for adult education, and then I shall do my best to answer the specific points that have been raised if I have not already done so.
I must tell the noble Earl, Lord Longford, that my grandfather was closely involved with the Polytechnic of Central London in the days when it was called the Regent Street Polytechnic. Like the noble Earl, I am pleased to learn that under the proposals in the White
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Paper it will be allowed to call itself a university when the necessary legislation is passed. I am sure that my grandfather would also have been delighted.
In explaining our plans I think that it would be useful to place our new policy in the context of the many opportunities in education which are already available to adults and which the Government have been instrumental in providing. Opportunities for adults in both further and higher education have never been so numerous or varied. The evidence is impressive. Figures for November 1989 indicate that some two-thirds of the 1.8 million enrolments in further education establishments were by people aged 19 or over. Between 1979 and 1988 the numbers of mature home first-year students in higher education increased by 55 per cent. from 131,000 to 203,000.
The facts speak for themselves. Adults are occupying their place in the education system with increasing confidence. I shall explain how this confidence has been built up. It is partly by increasing flexibility of provision in FE institutions through schemes such as accumulated credit transfer. This enables students to gain exemption from study for the qualifications that they already have. It also introduces greater flexibility by allowing students to put together programmes to meet their own particular needs.
The Council for National Academic Awards has taken the lead in this field through its credit accumulation and transfer scheme, which was launched in March 1986. The CNAA is now proposing to set up a national framework for the recognition of general academic credit. This would enable locally determined credit ratings to achieve wider general currency. It would be used by students, educational institutions, employers and professional bodies.
The DES has also been prominent in this area in its funding for the educational counselling and credit transfer information service developed at a cost of nearly £5 million to provide a national computerised information service about opportunities in further and higher education and to assist counselling and careers guidance services.
There has also been a significant increase in the number of access courses which represent an important route into higher education for mature entrants without traditional qualifications. There are now, for example, something like 600 access courses throughout the country compared with some 130 in 1984. So a demand is clearly being met. Although a relatively recent development, they have matured rapidly. The early courses were in the social sciences and humanities—traditional disciplines for the mature student. The provision has rapidly spread to other areas, including law and business studies. Twenty per cent. of access course provision is now in mathematics and science-based disciplines.
Both the DES and the Department of Employment have supported research and development work aimed at improving access opportunities. We have sought to safeguard standards and establish the currency of access courses through support for a national access courses recognition scheme. I must

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mention the Open University which has done an unprecedented amount in bringing university education to a large number of adults with a wide range of qualifications. The Open University is teaching some 75,000 undergraduate students, 40 per cent. of whom lack standard entry qualifications, and last year awarded a degree to its 100,000th graduate.
Those in employment are increasingly taking opportunities to update their skills and acquire new ones. The PICKUP programme, supported by the Government, has been highly successful in encouraging colleges, polytechnics and universities to improve and increase their provision to meet the training needs of the adult workforce. Enrolments to PICK UP courses have been increasing by an average of 20 per cent. a year during the past five years.
The further education and higher education White Papers build on these achievements. The HE White Paper, for instance, lays great emphasis on the importance of both access and of flexible learning opportunities. But I want today to pay special attention to further education where there are exciting opportunities to provide an even better deal for adults than exists at the moment. The recent White Paper Education and Training for the 21st century signals the Government's firm commitment to the further education of adults. It outlines our clear goal—to secure a highly-skilled and well-qualified adult population.
A substantial amount of money is already available to LEAs for the further education of adults. This year's local authority financial settlement allows for local education authorities to spend some £150 million on adult education centres. In addition, the £1.7 billion to be spent on further and higher education colleges includes their provision for adults. A great deal is being achieved. But I must admit that provision remains patchy. Our aim is to ensure that resources are concentrated on priority areas of provision and that those kinds of education are uniformly available.
We propose to achieve this by channeling resources through new further education funding councils in England and Wales into crucial areas of education which will be of lasting, worthwhile and practical benefit to adults in their jobs, certainly and as citizens too. Let me make it plain that the Government are concerned about securing the future of both vocational and non-vocational education for adults. The duty will remain to secure adequate provision of all kinds of further education; but in future it will be divided between the funding councils and the LEAs.
On the council side a very wide range of provision will be supported. It will embrace courses leading to both academic and vocational qualifications. It will also include education leading to the acquisition of basic skills (that is, literacy and numeracy); to proficiency in English as a second language; and provision which meets special educational needs. I hope that answers the anxieties expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear.
We believe that it is crucial to give every encouragement to adults aspiring to the higher levels of further education and to higher education. The
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funding councils will in addition therefore support courses giving access at all significant levels. Meanwhile, it is important to emphasise that LEAs will retain the duty to secure the provision of other kinds of further education. This will include recreational and leisure classes; for instance photography, philosophy, holiday Spanish and the rest. We know that these are much valued by local communities and by people of all ages. Their-costs are already met largely from fees and we believe that that should continue to be the case.
The White Paper recognises the case for local education authorities subsidising such classes, particularly in disadvantaged areas, for those who cannot afford the fees. But we do not believe that it is unreasonable to expect most people to pay for education which is intended to meet leisure purposes. In many places adult students are already paying all or most of the cost of such classes. The classes need not be expensive.
Many people fear that our proposals mean the end of LEA education services for adults; that we want to put a stop to a long tradition of courses in creative writing and motor car maintenance. Let us be quite clear that this is not the case. As I have said, local education authorities will retain their duty to secure the provision of that part of further education for adults which will not fall to the duty of the new funding councils. Accordingly the range of duties in relation to further education which is already on the statute book—it is in Section 41 of the 1944 Education Act as amended—will not be diminished.
So there need be no uncertainties about the continuation of recreational and leisure classes. Where there is demand there will be a range of bodies—colleges and voluntary bodies as well as local education authorities—prepared to put on such classes in places readily accessible to local communities. We also propose to extend the range of providers by making it easier for schools to run classes on their own initiative. School governing bodies will be able to admit adults to sixth forms and provide day and evening classes for adults on school premises.
The newly independent further education colleges will be responsible for providing the education for adults which the new funding councils have a duty to secure. They may provide it themselves or they may buy it in from other providers; whichever best suits the local circumstances. Often the education may best come from a local community college, for example, or from a voluntary body. What we want to see, and what we expect to see, is the best use being made of the available resources in each area in the interests of further education opportunities for adults.
We recognise that certain colleges have a special role to play in the new framework. The new funding councils will therefore support directly the seven long-term residential colleges for adults: Ruskin, Plater, Hillcroft, Fircroft, Northern College, the Co-operative College and Coleg Harlech in Wales. The Council for England will also support the four inner London colleges—Morley College, the City Lit,

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the Mary Ward Centre and the Working Men's College. Furthermore, the councils will provide direct funding to the Workers' Educational Association.
The opportunities for adults in Scotland will be equally exciting. The Government's policies are outlined in the White Paper Access and Opportunity—a Strategy for Education and Training. Funding of FE colleges will be made directly from the Scottish Office education department from 1st April 1993. Funding will cover a similar range of activities to that supported by the funding councils for England and Wales.
I shall now reply to the specific points raised in the debar e. The noble Baroness, Lady David, asked if LEAs; would be able to bid to the funding councils for funds for their own institutions. That is not intended. LEAs; will have their own source of funds through the revenue support grant. The noble Baroness quoted a number of cases in Hounslow where adults were progressing from one class to another; for example, to a GCSE in Spanish. The White Paper makes it clear that the funding councils will have a duty to secure provision which will enable adults to progress to higher levels of further education.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, and my noble friend Lord Beloff asked about the imposition of VAT on adult education classes. The Government are aware of that issue and will be looking at it carefully before legislation is brought forward. My noble friend Lord Beloff also asked about response to the White Paper. I assure him that the responses will be carefully considered and analysed before the Government bring forward a Bill. My noble friend mentioned classes for adults; in Hackney. The Government are not proposing to take away those classes. It is now for LEAs to put on those classes and subsidise them so far as they wish. LEAs will retain the duty to secure the provision of those classes and a power to subsidise them so far as they wish.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Viscount, but this is an extremely important matter. He used the word "duty". Does that mean that now LEAs will have a statutory obligation? Is that how we should interpret "duty"? I do not know how we shall get the money out of Lambeth, but that is another matter.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, that is another matter. We must discuss the duty further when we debate the legislation. At present that is the word I use and I can go no further than that.
I welcome the general support which my noble friend Lady Cumberlege gave to the White Paper's proposals. I assure her that the Government have no intention of erecting hurdles for those returning to learn. She spoke also of LEAs taking particular account of the bereaved and socially deprived in subsidising courses for adults. I am sure that that will be done.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, said that lines should not be drawn. However, lines are always drawn. LEAs decide now which courses they will subsidise and for which courses they will charge higher fees. They decide to whom they will grant
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concessionary fees and to whom they will not. It is not realistic to suppose that all education can be treated in the same way without some priorities being given.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, although it is the case that lines must be drawn in certain respects, I do not believe that any local education authority has drawn the kind of lines which are proposed in the White Paper between on the one hand those courses which are defined as leisure or recreational courses and other courses. That is the anxiety which many speakers in this debate have addressed. Perhaps the noble Viscount will elaborate further on that and will reveal whether he is happy for that distinction to continue to be made.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, with respect, this is an Unstarred Question. The noble Baroness's question is more suited to a debate on the White Paper. I have been asked to give the Government's plans for the future of adult education which I am attempting to do.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I must protest. This is an Unstarred Question about the Government's plans for the future of adult education. This is a central issue to that Question. Therefore, I believe that the House deserves a reply.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am sorry but my understanding of an Unstarred Question is different from that of the noble Baroness.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, and the noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, asked about the future of long term residential colleges. Following a review of the long term residential colleges, they have been asked to concentrate on access to higher education for the disadvantaged. This is not a cost-cutting exercise. We believe that on education grounds the courses at some of these colleges need to be modified. They need bringing up to date. The Colleges should be well-equipped to provide intensive access courses for those who missed out in early life.
In general, access courses need to last for only one year. LEA access courses usually last for one year, and they are non-residential and less intensive than the courses at the LTRCs.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, spoke about courses which would be of social value in inner city Bradford. The White Paper makes it clear that LEAs will continue to support courses of social value. There will be no question of the ethnic minorities in Bradford losing educational opportunities.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, expressed worries about the future of adult education under the LEAs. I should make it clear to the noble Lord that LEAs will have a duty—and I repeat the word "duty"—to secure adequate provision of those parts of further education for adults which are not the duty of the funding councils.
The noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, asked about provision for adults with special educational needs. The funding councils will have a statutory duty to secure adequate provision of further education for adults with special educational needs.

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They will need to ensure that colleges have adequate resources to make such provision. The noble Lord referred also to access to higher education and the Robbins principle. I reaffirm the Government's commitment to that principle covering access to higher education. That was made clear in the HE White Paper which also stated the Government's continuing commitment to awarding higher education a fair share of public expenditure.
The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, expressed worries about the future of the Workers' Educational Association. The Government are anxious to secure the future of the WEA. The Council for England will take over some £2 million per year now being paid to the WEA by the Department of Education and
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Science. Local authorities will keep the sums of over £1 million transferred to them for the WEA and we expect them to continue to fund the WEA.
I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, that LEAs will continue to have recognition in their standard spending assessments for adult education. That will be weighted towards disadvantaged areas. The Government will consider carefully the funding of both the new council sector and what is left with LEAs.
We have set our priorities for the further education of adults and we shall set in place the arrangements needed to give them effect. I am confident that under those new arrangements adults will have more educational opportunities than ever before.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes before nine o'clock.