Lords Sitting of 28 February 1992

Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock: The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord Ampthill) on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Lich field.

Health Authorities: Responsibilities
Lord Morris of Castle Morris Lord Morris of Castle Morris asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether it is the case that there is no general duty on a health authority to provide in-patient medical or nursing care to every person who needs it.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, Section 3 of the National Health Service Act 1977 lays on the Secretary of State a duty to provide, to such extent as he considers necessary to meet all reasonable requirements, hospital accommodation and such other services as are required for the diagnosis and treatment of illness. In general, the Secretary of State discharges his duties by delegating the responsibility for provision of service at local level to NHS authorities.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Is she aware that there is deep anxiety among a wide variety of people about the obligations of the health service to provide care for people with long-term illnesses? Without a community care programme—and if the comment of the National Health Service chief executive that there is no duty on health authorities to provide such care is correct —who is responsible for caring for people with long-term illnesses?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, under this Government NHS spending has risen by 55 per cent. in real terms. There is a concern for people of all ages in intensive, emergency and long-term situations.
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that Mr. Duncan Nichol, chief executive of the health service, has said that if in a doctor's professional judgment a patient needs NHS care there is a duty upon the health service to provide that? If a patient is discharged from hospital into a private nursing home, which now happens a great deal, who is responsible for providing the continuing medical care?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, one of the prime areas of the new National Health Service reforms is that GPs keep contact with their patients throughout their illness. They have a responsibility.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, is it not a fact that nowadays fewer people are being treated as in-patients and, therefore, that there are changing patterns in medical treatment?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, we have heard in this House on many occasions how medicine has changed so that there is much less in-patient care. More people are at home and able to be with their families because of the developments in medical techniques.
Lord Carter: My Lords, I am a little confused by the Minister's answers. She stated correctly that the 1977 Act places a duty on the Secretary of State to provide comprehensive health care. However, that duty does not extend to health authorities. The Minister has now said that GPs should be responsible. If the duty does not extend to health authorities how do GPs have such a responsibility?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I apologise. The National Health Service works with both the health authorities and with the family health services.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, will the Minister answer this question? If an elderly person who is extremely ill and immobile needs nursing care but cannot afford to pay for that privately, whose responsibility is it to ensure that that person receives the necessary proper nursing care?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, the health care services will ensure that such a person receives the care necessary.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, the Minister said that patients are discharged and are able to be at home with their families and the whole House will agree that that situation is desirable. However, in a sense it is going back 100 years or more to the time when families looked after sick relatives, in particular parents who were becoming old. Today, great difficulties are suffered by families, particularly when people are out at work. Will the Minister ask her right honourable friend to look again most carefully at the matter?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, of course I shall draw attention to the anxiety expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn. However, I must point out that health authorities can enter into contractual arrangements with independent sector nursing homes whereby the patient remains the responsibility of the NHS. We are extremely conscious of the load that illness puts on the carer.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that no patient in this country who needs medical care is ever denied it? Therefore, there is not a problem and the questions asked by Members on the other side of the House are merely confusing the issue.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that people's needs within the health service are met increasingly well.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for all those replies, although she will not be surprised to learn that we on this side

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of the House find them a little disappointing and perhaps confusing. Will she, for example, define what she means by "the health authorities" in each case?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, rather than give a cold definition, I will say that the various stages within the health service will look after the concerns of the patient. If a patient is discharged from a home he will, like any other citizen, be entitled to look to the NHS for help through his general practitioner. If he has need of a home the district health authority will arrange that the home in which he is looked after is to its high standard.
Lord Gridley: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is a procedure, certainly where I live, whereby doctors have sent letters to all patients on the register asking them to let them know whether they would like it to be recorded that they have asked a doctor to visit? That is to help the people concerned. It seems to me therefore that doctors are carrying out their duties within the National Health Service.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that remark. It illustrates that the best way of looking after people is at local level, where needs are recognised. My noble friend pays tribute to the great work which is being done in our health service.
Baroness Faithful!: My Lords, does the Minister not agree that when people are discharged from hospital, that fact is reported to social workers by the social services department within the hospital? It is then possible to provide the service within the community, at the patient's home, through the various services which the social services departments run in conjunction and in partnership with the health service.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, my noble friend identifies the situation as it is, as she so often does. The responsibilities are clearly reaffirmed in the booklet Caring for People.

Health Authorities: Finance
11.12 a.m.
Lord Carter Lord Carter asked Her Majesty's Government:
How many health authorities are in financial deficit and how many are in surplus.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, at the end of the third quarter the National Health Service remained on course to achieve a financial balance for the year. Details of the number of authorities in deficit and surplus are collected during the year only as unaudited management information.
Lord Carter: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Is she aware that a survey of health service managers in November showed that 65 per cent. were expecting to close beds or to cut services in order to break even by 1st April? Is she further aware that that shows that the main feature of the National Health Service reforms—the concept that the money should follow the patient—is not working.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carter, has great experience in this sphere. He knows that there are situations this year, as the reforms have been set up, where everything was not thrown into the pot. Matters developed in a systematic and slow manner. That applies to the Question asked by the noble Lord. As we have discussed in your Lordships' House on several occasions, the issue of beds is not what is important. It is the patient who is important.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there is now evidence forthcoming that those health authorities and hospitals which have put their affairs into good financial order are giving good service to patients and satisfaction to their staff?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I thank my noble friend. He pays tribute to the staff who are devoted to the care of people. I sometimes find it very strange that we are defensive of the best health service in the world.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, if the Minister cannot give the audited figure, will she give us the unaudited figure? I am sure that the department will be monitoring what is happening at the present time.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right that the standard of monitoring what is happening in the health service has improved enormously over the past two years. The proper way to report publicly on the financial position of the service and its component parts will be at the end of the financial year in the 1991–92 annual accounts. I reassure the noble Lord that not only do we monitor but in each region there are reserve funds —in the private sector, they would be called contingency funds—which enable support to be given to those people whose management may not be totally of the best.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, in order to put this matter in its true perspective, is the Minister aware that for 14 years I was chairman of a hospital management committee? We never had enough money to do all the things we wanted to do. That was years ago. The truth is that the National Health Service is the kind of body which takes in every possible amount of money that can be thrown at it. This is quite nonsensical. The real question is what we are putting in now compared with what was put in 10 years ago.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, as ever, the noble Lord addresses the relevant facts of the matter. This year the planned spending on the hospital and community health services in England amounted to £20 billion. Next year that will increase to £21.9 billion—a 9.5 per cent. cash increase. As the noble Lord rightly points out, the health service could absorb every penny that was ever directed towards it. We must have some sympathy with the experts and committed people who have to make difficult decisions about priorities.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that it was a Socialist Government in 1976 which brought cash limits into the hospital service? Those responsible must be glad to know that we are breaking even. Does she also agree that it is refreshing not to have so many unscrupulous politicians hanging around Guy's Hospital wishing for it to fall? Does she further agree that the good news is that we are breaking even and will have broken even on 1st April?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, my noble friend's memory, experience and specific knowledge of Guy's Hospital greatly outweigh my own. The message that he always brings to your Lordships' House is that matters are improving and that money is being well used —again I stress—to the benefit of the patient.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, is it not clear that the assumption of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, that the reforms are not working is not borne out by the facts? On the contrary, is it not clear that with the pressures now being generated by the reforms, particularly by the purchaser/provider provision, the money following the patient and the management changes made by the introduction of the trusts, a standard, policy and speed of service have been brought to the health service that will redound enormously to the advantage of patients? Is it not a tragedy that the party opposite has committed itself to reversing so many of those valuable reforms?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I can only say to my noble friend that I could not have said it better.
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Bloomsbury in south west Hertfordshire, the Bromsgrove and Guy's at South Manchester and Withington Hospital, Manchester—to name but a few —have all forecast problems? Yes, the health authorities will break even. They will do that by closing beds and cutting services. In her answer to my supplementary question, the noble Baroness said that it is the throughput of patients that matters rather than beds. Therefore why, in south Manchester, has the health authority and the chief executive said that 100 beds have been closed to reduce the number of patients treated, as it is running above the level contracted for?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, there are many individual cases for discussion, and there are also leaked documents which your Lordships' House would not wish to discuss. I stress that the closing of beds bears a relationship to the new developments in medicine. Regional authorities have the opportunity to help individual situations. There is not, this year, a cash problem in the health service overall.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, does the Minister have the answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord McColl? Why would anyone want to hang around a hospital if they do not have to do so? I have just spent a little time in three hospitals and would quite cheerfully avoid them, being a politician.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, that is the second time this week that the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, has brought common sense to a debate in which I have been involved.
Baroness Eccles of Moulton: My Lords, can I make my noble friend aware of another individual example; that is, the purchasing authority of Ealing? It will be in balance at the end of this year. I hesitate to say in surplus because we still have another month to go, but that is our hope. We have not achieved that through cuts, scrimping and saving. Within the budget allocated to us we have opened a new psychiatric hospital and will also have reduced a two-year waiting list from 500 to zero by the end of the financial year. I hope that that serves as an example that it has been possible both to improve our services and to remain within budget.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I know that my noble friend Lady Eccles spends an enormous amount of time with her health authority. However, I hope that she will forgive me if I say that she is just one of many such chairmen who have accepted the challenge our reforms presented and have dealt with them to the benefit of all.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that noble Lords and honourable Members of another place who ask questions about the National Health Service act in all sincerity and are not unscrupulous politicians?
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, my noble friend may be rather on her own this morning. However, I hope that she will take encouragement from the fact that she has the warm support of those behind her, and that she will take the opportunity to contrast some of the questions she has faced from those opposite with that asked by the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, who is aware of the facts.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I thank my noble friends for their support.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, on the question of unscrupulous politicians, does my noble friend not agree that what is unscrupulous about them is their stating that 10 per cent. of the beds have been closed in the past 10 years? It is not 10 per cent.; it is 13 per cent. Does my noble friend not agree also that it was 13 per cent. in the previous 10 years? Every year since 1965 7,000 beds have been closed in the NHS irrespective of which government were in power.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, my noble friend states the facts. It is unfortunate, given the many thousands of people who work in our health service and acknowledging its good record of patient care, that it should be used as a political football.
Lord Morris: My Lords, can my noble friend help me? I know how to make a bed; I can unmake a bed; I can even remove a bed. Can she tell me how one closes a bed?
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the last time the noble Lord, Lord McColl, intervened

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on the question of bed closures, I had the Audit Commissioner's report with me? We showed him then that he was wrong.

Students: Personal Finances
11.20 a.m.
Lord Judd Lord Judd asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will initiate an immediate review of student poverty.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, no. Following the introduction of student loans, students now have substantial additional resources. In the academic year 1991–92 the full-year grant and loan is more than 30 per cent. higher than the grant for 1989–90. In addition, access funds are available for those in particular financial need. We have no plans to conduct a review.
Lord Judd: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that reply, does she not agree that it is deeply disturbing that real hardship is being encountered, not least when the parental contribution is not forthcoming? Too many students are running into debt, living in squalor, suffering ill health and having to seek employment, if they can find it, beyond what is acceptable if they are to take their studies seriously. Apart from humanitarian concerns, does that not run counter to the whole purpose of expanding higher education? Are the Government going to finance expansion on the backs of students who are suffering hardship? What are they doing to provide adequate funds and resources for the expansion of higher education?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and I have close links with the London School of Economics. I understand his anxiety and closeness to the issue. First, the Government's policy is that higher education places should be available for all those qualified and motivated to take them. Secondly, the noble Lord quotes the possibility of hardship to students. Perhaps I may point out that last year loans were taken up by only 28 per cent. and the evidence obtained from monitoring indicates that this year less than 50 per cent. of students will take up loans.
We believe that education in the higher sector is a responsibility to be shared among the taxpayer, the student and the student's family. I also ask the noble Lord whether or not he recalls that most of us at university also worked during that period.
Lord Desai: My Lords, is the Minister aware that an unemployed youth will obtain more from income supplement and housing benefit than a student receives either inside or outside London? Are the Government happy that they are encouraging students to leave education and become unemployed? Is she also aware that the value of the grant is 25 per cent. less in real terms since 1978–79 than it is today?
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Is the Minister happy that the level of debt among students is running at £1,400 in London and at £600 outside London?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I am not sure whether it is right to respond to a considerable number of questions with a question. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Desai: is he also aware that the privilege of higher education is of benefit to a person for the whole of his or her lifetime and that it certainly gives that person an edge in obtaining employment? I also stress what I said in my original Answer. In looking at the support for students it is essential that the grants and loans are looked at together, which are 30 per cent. higher this year.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, as one of the handful of Members of your Lordships' House who is not associated with the London School of Economics, will the Minister consider that there should be encouragement for more students to live at home when they are taking their courses? Does the Minister agree that that would not only alleviate the problems referred to by my noble friend Lord Judd, but also release hundreds of thousands of rented units of accommodation which could be used for homeless and deprived families?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe, brings his strong streak of realism to this question. He raises an interesting point despite his disadvantage of not having an association with the London School of Economics. This is a matter for the students themselves. Some consider moving away from home as part of their growth; others welcome the comfort which staying at home brings. Sometimes the courses of study they follow mean that they have to stay away from home. It is a matter of personal choice. I repeat, the noble Lord makes a very good point.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, is it not misleading the House and students for the noble Lord, Lord Judd, somehow to imply that if parents do not pay their contribution the party which he supports is somehow going to make it up? Has there ever been any suggestion that the party opposite will in fact abolish the parental contribution or what it will do if there are parents who are reluctant to pay? Does my noble friend agree that that is part of the mischief-making of this pre-election period?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I say that I am not responsible for the views of the party opposite. In replying to my noble friend, I point out that in giving evidence to the Select Committee neither the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux nor the NUS could produce solid evidence of real hardship or of students abandoning their courses.
Lord Judd: My Lords, in thanking the Minister for the care which she has taken in replying to the questions, I ask her again: does it really make sense to expand higher education in the context of considerable anxiety and insecurity among the student population? Is that a sound investment in the future of

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the nation? As regards parental contributions, will the Minister give some indication of the Government's willingness to look at how we can ensure that parental contributions are paid? Does she not agree that that is the issue because too many parents are not paying them?
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, the concern that I express in my answers is because the future of this country depends on the growth and experience of young people. There is no solid, reliable evidence to show that students are under the great pressures that he talks about. Local education authorities' awards officers say that student drop-out rates are no higher now than in previous years. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals and the heads of the polytechnics appear to be coming to the same conclusion.

Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 (Continuance) Order 1992
11.34 a.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers)The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 12th February be approved [13th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Earl said: My Lords, the Prevention of Terrorism Act is an exceptional measure, justified only by the wholly exceptional threat which this country faces from terrorism. Today I would like to invite your Lordships again to approve the continuation of the Act in force. It remains an essential part of our defences against terrorism. These defences cannot be lowered while the terrorist threat remains high. And the House will know that there was no let-up in the terrorist campaign last year nor indeed this year.
In Northern Ireland in 1991, 94 people died and over 900 were injured as a result of republican and loyalist terrorism. On the mainland of Great Britain in 1991 there were more terrorist incidents than at any time since 1975. There were more incidents in 1991 even than there were the year before. So the threat continues and remains high. In 1991, attacks were aimed at a variety of targets—military, political and economic—and a variety of means were used. Three people died and 39 were injured.
Your Lordships may recall a few of them: the explosion at Victoria station last February in which one man died and a number of children were injured; the mortar bomb attack on Downing Street in the same month; and the large number of incendiary devices which were planted in shops and on trains. More recently, a bomb was planted in a telephone kiosk in Parliament Street which mercifully, and by the professional competence of the police, was successfully defused before it did any damage.
This morning I have been to London Bridge where a device exploded at 8.20 a.m. The details have yet to be confirmed, but I understand that it has all the hallmarks of the IRA. A telephone call was made to Ulster Television with a registered, recognised code
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word to say that a device had been planted in London stations. No indication was given as to which station it was or whether it was a British Rail station or an Underground station. The result was that a device exploded in a gentlemen's lavatory on a platform at London Bridge station. There was far too short a time in which to clear the station and prevent injury.
I understand that there was very little panic, but that some 22 people were injured and taken to Guy's Hospital. Fortunately, no one was killed. I congratulate the police and the emergency services which, as usual, arrived on the scene very quickly and conducted the work which they do with the efficiency, professionalism and calm one associates with them. It would be the expression of the views of the whole House and indeed of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to pass our sympathy and condolences to those people who have been affected by such wicked behaviour.
It is ironic that yet another device should be set off in London on the day when your Lordships are debating the continuation of the measures for the prevention of terrorism. There can be no greater reason why your Lordships should pass this order today. Such incidents heighten even further the contempt which everyone has for organisations of this nature with these objectives, which use such inhuman methods against innocent people going about their daily work and having every right to live in peace and quiet. No words can be sufficient to condemn these people and organisations. But the robustness of the British people is well known.
We should be under no doubt today about what it is that we face. It is a ruthless campaign of murder and destruction both in Northern Ireland and here on the mainland. It is a campaign which is conducted regardless of the risk to innocent people. It is a campaign which is conducted by terrorists who are committed fanatically to causes in which there is neither rectitude nor justice. The Prevention of Terrorism Act provides powers which are essential to counter this terrorist campaign. Without the powers the police would be severely hampered in their work of fighting terrorism.
In urging your Lordships to continue the Act for another year I am glad to say that we have the backing of my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross who carried out the independent review of the operation of the Act during 1991. I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude, and that of the House as a whole, to my noble friend for his report and for the time and effort which he expended in compiling the information which formed the basis of it.
I should like to explain what the Act's powers are and why we need them. The first is the power to proscribe in Great Britain organisations which are concerned in, or which are promoting or encouraging, terrorism which is connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland.
At the moment the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army are proscribed. Without the Act those organisations would be free to meet openly in this country, to recruit new members and to raise

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funds as openly as any other political party. That would be a quite unacceptable situation, as I am sure your Lordships agree.
Then there is the power of exclusion. The Act permits a person to be excluded from all, or part, of the United Kingdom. The purpose of that is to limit the areas where terrorists may carry out their activities. Ideally, it would be possible to charge such people and to bring them before the courts. In practice, though, this cannot always be done as our information comes from sources which we cannot disclose without risking people's lives. The power of exclusion is, therefore, a valuable one in limiting the sphere of operation of the terrorists, and by so doing these exclusion orders help to protect the public.
It may be helpful if I give an example of the use of the exclusion power. The House will recall the recent incident in Coalisland in which four men, including Kevin O'Donnell, died. O'Donnell had been stopped in north London with firearms in the boot of the car he was driving. He was acquitted of possession of firearms with intent to endanger life but the Home Secretary was satisfied that he had been involved in terrorism and therefore excluded him from the mainland of Great Britain. Following his recent death the IRA boasted that O'Donnell had been a member of its terrorist organisation since 1988 and had been active in operations throughout the United Kingdom. Without the powers of the Act the Home Secretary would have been unable to exclude O'Donnell.
Decisions to exclude are not made lightly, and the person who is excluded has the right to make representations to an independent adviser. My noble friend Lord Colville, in his review of the Act, said that he cannot find anything to criticise in the way in which decisions were reached. He also stated that the exercise of the power has been modest in 1991 and that the balance, which had been imparted by the advisers, has shown its worth.
There are then the powers of arrest, examination and detention. The police may examine people at ports and airports in order to determine whether they are involved in terrorism. They may arrest and detain people on reasonable suspicion of involvement in terrorism and they may detain people without charge for an initial period of 48 hours, and for a further period of a maximum of five days on the authority of the Secretary of State. Those powers would not exist but for this Act, and they are essential for the investigation and the prosecution of terrorist crime.
It is pertinent to remind your Lordships that careful consideration is given to all applications for extensions of detention. My noble friend Lord Colville acknowledged that in his review. He also noted that the lengths of further detention were, in his words, "astutely fitted" to the stage at which the police had reached in their investigations. I can, therefore, assure your Lordships that not only are these powers necessary but that they are used with all due care and attention to the rights of those who are detained.
I must now refer to the provisions for dealing with financial assistance for terrorism. These measures have given the police an additional and invaluable
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investigative power which has enabled them to obtain information, not only on the funds themselves but also on the movements and the activities of the terrorists.
I know that my noble friend Lord Colville has repeated in this year's review his criticisms of those financial provisions. We have examined the provisions of the 1989 Act, as we undertook to do, and we have identified some improvements. We hope to introduce them as soon as we have a suitable legislative opportunity.
The Government are determined to continue the fight against terrorism. If this Act were not renewed a vital part of the means for that fight would be removed. In view of the events which have happened today I do not think that any of your Lordships can underestimate the need for the continuation of these powers. There must be no reduction in the powers by which we can resist and overcome terrorism. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 12th February be approved [13th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Earl Ferrers.)
Lord Richard: My Lords, perhaps I may start by echoing the words of the noble Earl in relation to the incident at London Bridge this morning. Noble Lords on this side of the House will wish to be associated with his expressions of sympathy and outrage. I also agree with him that words are not enough. The litany of our language has almost run out in expressing condemnation of the IRA. On behalf of these Benches I merely associate myself with his expressions of sympathy and outrage, which we all share.
This Act is debated and renewed each year and, in a way, there is a sense of déjà vu about the debate today. Many of the issues to which the noble Earl referred have been aired in the continuation debate each year and if the Government are returned I suspect they will be aired in the continuation debate next year. Therefore, it is important that we put the Act against the context and background of what seems to be happening.
This consideration takes place against a background of escalating terrorist violence in Northern Ireland and here on the mainland. Recent terrorist outrages have plunged the Province into new depths of gratuitous violence, which we all condemn and deplore. In the aftermath of these events the Prime Minister has taken the unprecedented step of calling a meeting of representatives from all the main democratic parties in Northern Ireland. Such meetings are of course welcome. Indeed, I understand that one is taking place this very day. However, it is abundantly clear that putting an end to the cycle of violence in Northern Ireland and promoting dialogue between the two communities will require great effort and imagination on the part of the British Government. It is against that background that we have to consider the renewal of the Act.
I make no apology for saying at the outset that in our view the reform of the Prevention of Terrorism Act can play a vital and necessary role in the process of negotiation and discussion. What are the principal aspects of the Act? The noble Earl outlined them in detail and perhaps I may follow him. First, it bans

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organisations such as the IRA and the INLA, which are involved in the promotion of terrorism, from operating in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Secondly, it takes steps against the funding of terrorism and provides for the seizure of such funds. The noble Earl reiterated today what the Home Secretary said in another place; that if the Conservatives win the election they will introduce further amendments to the Act dealing with money laundering and with drug trafficking.
Thirdly, the Act permits the exclusion of a person from all or part of the United Kingdom. Fourthly, with respect to powers of arrest, examination and detention, the Act permits the police to examine people at ports and airports to determine whether they may be involved in terrorism. It also allows the police to arrest and detain on reasonable suspicion of such involvement, and to detain without charge for an initial period of 48 hours with the option of an additional five days in custody on the authority of the Secretary of State.
What are the main points raised in favour of renewal of the Act in its present form? First, as the noble Earl said again today, terrorism continues to take a heavy toll of human life in Northern Ireland where, in 1991, 94 people were killed and 900 injured in terrorist incidents. The Home Secretary noted the increase in terrorist attacks on the mainland. The argument that he put up in another place was that put up by the noble Earl today. He said that the defences allegedly provided by the Act,
"cannot be lowered while the terrorist threat remains high". —[0fficial Report, Commons, 24/2/92; col. 689.]
I repeat at the outset, if it needs repeating, the Labour Party's abhorrence of terrorism. We share the Government's views in that regard. However, we believe that reform of some of the aspects of the Act would help and not hinder the defeat of terrorism in Northern Ireland.
The Home Secretary told the House of Commons that the Government are committed to providing sufficient resources in terms of manpower and equipment to help combat terrorism. He also informed the House that,
"the central co-ordination of anti-terrorist activity across the country, on the whole, has been achieved".—[Official Report, Commons, 24/2/92; col. 690.]
I ask this question not in any combative spirit. Is that really so? If the noble Earl, when he comes to reply, could address himself to that question, I should be grateful.
We believe that cross-party agreement is crucial to fighting and defeating terrorism but this cannot be achieved by the Government, in effect, staking out a position and expecting the Opposition to go along with them. A Labour government will be willing to work with other parties to help rebuild consensus with respect to defeating terrorism. I echo the tributes paid to the work of the police and security forces in dealing with terrorism and to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, for carrying out his independent report on the operation of the Act during 1991. A Labour government will implement a wide-ranging review of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and this
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process will involve cross-party support where it can be achieved. We shall work positively and hard towards the restoration of consensus.
With reference to the banning of terrorism organisations, I emphasise yet again that no one likes proscribing political organisations but in the present difficult political climate in Northern Ireland it is necessary and we support it. I say again, if it needs repetition, that we also support action to prohibit the raising of funds to finance terrorism. Parts I and III of the Act should remain, but tougher powers and harsher penalties must be imposed on those who raise funds for terrorism. I also repeat the call made last year for the Home Secretary to consider extending to England and Wales the special powers available under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1978.
Part IV of the Act relates to the powers of arrest and detention. One of the main problems encountered in the fight against terrorism, and one which has been highlighted by, among others, the Bar Council, the Law Society and indeed the police, is that of obtaining convictions in terrorist trials. It should be emphasised that those bodies all emphasise that Part IV of the Act does not improve the judicial process. Indeed it is clearly not designed to. This, and civil liberties arguments relating to the operation of certain sections of Part IV, all highlight the need to look again at this section as part of a wider review of the operation of the Act.
We accept the principle that a period of extended detention even before charge might be necessary but we question how extensions are to be approved and we question what treatment the suspect is to receive during the period of his detention. That is significant when we remember that the suspect is arrested on reasonable suspicion alone; and it is even more important when it is considered that last year 153 people were detained but only four were charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
We are also concerned about the issue of extended detentions of up to seven days being made by ministerial, as opposed to judicial or quasi-judicial, authority. Against this background we supported the demands of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, made last year, for a "bold new initiative" to set up a new tribunal,
"drawing on Scottish and Channel Island methodology".
That is, an independent and quasi-judicial authority to oversee these powers. This, as my right honourable friend Mr. Hattersley said, is,
"why the Scots, unlike the English, have not been arraigned before the European Court for the way in which they extend detention from 48 hours to seven days. It is why the Scots, unlike the English, are not in breach of article 5 of the convention on human rights".—[Official Report, Commons, 24/2/92; col. 699.]
We believe that the judiciary should approve extended detentions, and that the proposed tribunal should be judicial. Ideally it should be a judge sitting in chambers so that he can approve the detention without any risk of leakage of security information.
With respect to suspects detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, or subject to an extended detention, we do not accept that the Police

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and Criminal Evidence Act will protect those detained, as the Government claim. I am fortified in that view by the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, who has emphasised that the safeguards governing rules of evidence that are common in this country do not apply to detention under the Act. We have therefore called upon the Government to take steps to remedy the situation. A Labour government would introduce as many police and criminal evidence safeguards as are reasonably practicable and possible, including the taping of interviews, which is crucial both in principle and in practice if convictions are to be obtained. I am disappointed that this has not yet been introduced. That was echoed, if I remember rightly, in the annual report of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville.
I turn now to exclusion orders. Both the noble Earl and I pray in aid the report of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, on exclusion orders. The noble Earl seemed to find approval in it. I find in it somewhat gloomy resignation to the renewal of that part of the Act. The Labour Party believes that these orders are wrong in principle and counter-productive in practice. They stigmatise Northern Ireland as a dumping ground for terrorists and alienate its law-abiding citizens. Furthermore there is the danger that exclusion orders, by returning excluded suspects to their colleagues, merely serve to transfer the danger from one part of the United Kingdom to another. What should happen is that these people should be convicted. That can be effectively achieved only if the Prevention of Terrorism Act is changed in such a way that the courts will respond to it. The noble Earl referred to the case of Mr. O'Donnell. By excluding him from one part of the United Kingdom—the mainland of Great Britain—the problem was transferred to Northern Ireland. It did not cure Mr. O'Donnell's terrorist activities. It moved the problem from one part of the United Kingdom—the mainland —over to Northern Ireland. I question whether that in itself is necessarily desirable or effective or whether it aids the general fight against terrorism itself.
From looking at the arguments on both sides, I do not believe there is a vast amount between us but what there is is important. We have offered on a number of occasions a cross-party approach to try to achieve a consensus on this most difficult issue but, regrettably, that has been spurned yet again. I now wish to say something to which I hope the Government will listen and of which I hope they will take account. They really must not be allowed to elevate legitimate criticism of a measure which quite rightly has to be approved annually into some kind of litmus test of patriotism or political will, even in this run-up to a general election. Our criticisms are detailed. They are based upon a belief that the Act as it stands does not contribute as fully as it should to the fight against terrorism. As such, we cannot, I regret, support its continuance in its present form.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Richard, perhaps I may say that we are vividly reminded this morning by the tragic incident at London Bridge of the significance of the
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order whose renewal we are discussing. From these Benches I should certainly like to associate ourselves with the noble Earl's understated but nonetheless extremely eloquent expression of sympathy to the individuals concerned. We are now clearly confronted with people whose motives can no longer be described as idealism gone sour; we are confronted with people whose sadistic disregard for normal civilised life has gone beyond the pale. I think that the lack of adequate warning which the noble Earl described is an indication of the attitude of the kind of people with whom we are dealing. I shall return presently to the detailed security implications involved.
At this point, I had intended to ask the Government a slightly critical question about the management of these incidents in terms of London stations and London traffic. However, what I had intended to say is, I believe, slightly misplaced in the light of the circumstances that the noble Earl described. If the warning given was simply that the bomb was at "a station", one can understand why the police felt obliged to close all stations. But let us try to generalise our experience of these impudent incursions in the mainland by the IRA over the past year or so. I invite the noble Earl to consider whether there is a way in which we can try to minimise the impact on London.
Quite obviously, the instincts of the police and of the counter-terrorist squad will be to do everything they can to ensure that no life is lost which does not need to be lost. They will tend to be as secure as they possibly can. I am too young—except, that is, as a small boy—to remember the war. However, there will be noble Lords who remember that during the war one of the important things was not to give the enemy the satisfaction of spreading confusion. It certainly gives that kind of satisfaction if London as a whole is repeatedly brought to a standstill.
There is a balance to be struck. It is not an easy balance. But we would be giving the terrorists a kind of prize if they felt that they could easily bring London to a standstill, create enormous traffic dislocation and close down every station so that the acute tragedy of those who have actually been injured and died is mirrored by traffic problems, traffic incidents and mainline junctions being completely jammed for half a day. I take it no further than that. When he responds, I invite the Minister to say whether he thinks that there is a balance that can be struck between total security and, at the same time, showing the IRA that it cannot bring the city to a total standstill.
I have a second point to make about the incident. I believe that it proves the desperate need for the Government to maintain the twin-track policy of political progress and tight security. It can be no coincidence that the incidence of terrorism in Northern Ireland and the incursions into the mainland have risen very sharply since the Brooke talks came to a halt and failed. There must be some connection between the hopelessness of the political vacuum and the terrorists' intensified activity. I should like to return to detailed questions of security in a moment. But if there is a connection between the absence of any

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hopeful political dialogue and terrorism, then we must ensure all the more that the political process is maintained.
There will he universal support in the House for the very hopeful meeting between the Prime Minister and the new Taoiseach. One senses that the shutters are being opened and there is willingness on the part of the Taoiseach and of the Irish political parties to consider the amendment of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution. That would be a very major prize for the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. But, by the same token, if talks are now to resume —and I gather that there is promising information on that score—then it is for the Unionist leaders also to consider what they can surrender, what they can give up and what they can bring to the party; in other words, what they can do to help promote the peace process and thereby advance it further.
When the noble Earl replies—and I realise that these are sensitive matters—perhaps, in view of the Downing Street meeting, he can give us a sense of the likelihood of the all-party talks between the constitutional parties and the British and Irish Governments being resumed. It would be most interesting to hear more about that aspect. I have only taken the time of the House to talk about that matter this morning because I do not believe that we can consider a prevention of terrorism order in isolation from questions of political progress.
Perhaps I may return directly to the question of security. Given the dramatic escalation in terrorist activity and the signs that the Protestant paramilitaries are growing in strength and intensity of activity, I do not believe that there can be any confusion about the renewal of the order. I want to say quite unambiguously from these Benches that we believe that the order is a necessity. Of course, it is a regrettable necessity; but, nonetheless, it is a necessity. We support its renewal. There can be no two positions on it. Everyone should know where the parties stand. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Richard, that there is not much between us. But, on this issue, there can be nothing between us. We must have absolute clarity. Any confusion damages the consensus bi-partisan approach which is our strongest weapon in standing up to these people.
Both noble Lords who spoke before me expressed the appreciation of the House for the work of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. I really think that he deserves our thanks. He is one of the unsung heroes of this whole process with the conscientious and thoughtful reports that he produces for Parliament on the operation of security. There is one aspect of his report that I should like to raise with the Minister. I refer to the question of the allegations of assault during detention. As policemen are not angels, quite obviously there will be occasional lapses and occasional assaults. There will also probably be quite a few cases in which people will complain of assault in order to cause trouble. Therefore, we have to deal with both real assaults—a few, I trust—as well as complaints and allegations of assault which are made precisely to cause trouble and to take up time.
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I wonder whether it is wise—perhaps the Minister will comment on this—that so many of those claims appear to be settled out of court. That point was made by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville. He believes that there is good documentary evidence on which such mendacious claims of assault could be rebutted. If that is so, surely it would be far better that such cases should be fought and that documentary evidence is produced to prove the contrary. Everyone knows that there are very few real cases. A settlement out of court does have the slightly murky implication that if you are prepared to pay something in order to settle the matter then there is something in it. That does no good to the reputation of the police in such cases.
By the same token, perhaps I may extend the question raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, during the previous year; namely, the videotaping of interviews. I know that the Government are most reluctant to move on that issue. However, if they did, I think that they would do a great deal to reassure public opinion throughout the world and certainly in Northern Ireland that there is nothing to be hidden. The noble Viscount recommended that course. I am surprised that the Government have not in this instance taken up his recommendation.
The last point that I should like to raise in connection with the noble Viscount's report is that of cash for terrorists. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, mentioned the point. The noble Viscount is mildly critical in that respect. What more do the Government propose to do to ensure that the life-blood of the supply of weapons, ammunition and of explosive materials is cut off from the terrorists? They are surely right to have identified that the cash line has to be cut off; but it looks as though we are still not totally effective in doing so.
From these Benches last year, my noble friend Lord Harris referred to the idea, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Richard, introduced, of a national agency to deal with terrorism—a sort of British FBI. At that time, my noble friend welcomed the better co-ordination of intelligence and crisis action. But he expressed misgivings about the concept of an operational, national agency. Since then we have read rather detailed reports in the press that the security chiefs at MI5 are asking—perhaps they are impelled to ask this because of the end of the cold war and the necessity to find an enlarged role—that they should take over some or all of the police responsibilities for counter-terrorism. I know that the Minister will say that he cannot comment on intelligence matters. I understand that that is the tradition. However, if he cannot comment, perhaps I can—and in this way. I believe that any movement of those responsibilities from accountable policemen, who are the servants of the community, to the intelligence fraternity, who are the all-too-unaccountable servants of the state, would be a matter for Parliament. Whatever the merits of that, it should be a matter for Parliament. It should not be resolved privately and administratively.
Before I sit down, in supporting the renewal of the order, perhaps I may urge the Government not to let the very natural reaction of fury and frustration at these continuing acts of terrorism find expression in a

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renewal of internment. Voices are raised and, each time such an incident occurs, people say, "Let's bring back internment." However, we must remind ourselves not only that internment is a direct affront to civil rights and civil liberties and is in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights but also that in 1974 it demonstrably did not work. It created martyrs where before there were villains. It increased the number of terrorist incidents manyfold. When they are thinking about security, may I please ask the Government to reassure us on that question of internment?
12.12 p.m.
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, I want to speak in this debate because a few years ago I was invited by the then Home Secretary to carry out a study of anti-terrorist legislation. My particular reason for wishing to speak is to make it clear that, despite some of the things that were said in another House, the Labour Party is wholly committed to the battle against terrorism. I am grateful that the Minister did not throw anything at the Labour Party on this matter. He gave us a balanced speech. I agreed also with most of what my noble friend Lord Richard said, although I am sceptical about the desirability of a judge in chambers replacing the present arrangement under which the Minister is directly responsible for appeals and reviews of both detention and exclusion orders. That is rightly an executive action and it should be seen as such.
I hope that the Government will give further consideration to the recommendation by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, in favour of a different kind of tribunal. I am against having any form of judicial tribunal at this stage. I do not think that that would be right and I believe that the Government are right to resist it.
A number of suggestions have been made and it is worth the Government looking at them. However, I want to make it clear that, as my noble friend Lord Mason said recently, I too am utterly opposed to terrorism. I think that it is a pity—and I will say so —that the Opposition in another place voted against the order. There are, however, grounds for complaint, for criticism and for inter-party talks. I make a plea to the Minister that he should not reject such talks out of hand. He should urge his colleagues to give further consideration to the possibility of some inter-party co-operation in this area. If ever there was a subject on which there should be agreement and action between the parties to win this battle, this is it.
I do not propose to say any more, but I am interested in some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Holme, which I hope will also be given further consideration. I am very nervous about interfering in intelligence matters, having been in the intelligence field myself. It is not an easy area for Parliament to intervene in, but perhaps a little more thought could usefully be given to the matter.
The other area of concern is the accusation of torture. At the end of the report by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, is a report from the United
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Nations containing a deplorable series of accusations. It will not be possible to provide satisfaction on this but, having had to deal with this sort of thing when I was the Minister in charge of Aden, perhaps I may say that I never knew whether there was improper treatment, if not torture, of people in detention. Forms of behaviour less severe than torture can involve a degree of pressure. I know that sensory deprivation has now long gone, but I hope that we shall continue to do our utmost to make it clear that our hands in Northern Ireland—in Castlereagh—are clean. I do not think that the Minister should shrink from holding further inquiries involving outside people. This is a matter of the British reputation. It should always be made clear that we do not indulge in such things. That should be fully demonstrated. Other than that, I support the order and hope that it will be agreed to without any serious disagreement in this House.
12.15 p.m.
Lord Fitt: My Lords, in the first two months of this year Northern Ireland has seen some of the most brutal atrocities since the beginning of the troubles in 1968. The Minister referred to incidents and deaths that have occurred here on the "mainland". Some people in Northern Ireland do not like that term. However, by far the greatest tragedies of the opening months of this year have occurred in Northern Ireland when almost totally innocent people have been brutally murdered. I refer, for example, to the Teebann murders, when eight innocent workmen were blown to their deaths by a purely sectarian terrorist organisation. Its members killed those workmen because they were employed in building security positions in Northern Ireland. Then we had the answer to that—the brutal murder of innocent Catholics in the bookmaker's shop in Belfast. Northern Ireland lives with the reality of terrorism. Whatever incidents may have occurred here in Britain, the people of Northern Ireland have to live with that fear every day, every hour and almost every minute.
I totally agree with what was said by my noble friend Lord Richard. We must bear in mind what the Home Secretary said in another place about exclusion orders. People in both the majority and minority communities in Northern Ireland find what has been said in justification of the exclusion orders to be highly offensive. I should like to quote what the Home Secretary said at col. 693 of Commons Hansard. When justifying exclusion orders, he said:
"The purpose is to limit the areas where terrorists may carry out their activities."
That sounds all very well from the Dispatch Box of this Parliament, but the area to which those activities are being limited is Northern Ireland. It is possible that some of those who were killed, such as O'Donnell, may have been involved geographically in mounting the attack in that area that killed those eight innocent Protestant workmen. That is how the people of Northern Ireland see it. The Home Secretary continued:

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"The power of exclusion is a valuable one in limiting the terrorists' spheres of operation. To remove it would be to remove an important part of our ability to protect the public". —[0fficial Report, Commons, 24/2/92; col. 693.]
It is up to the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom to protect the public in every area of the United Kingdom—not to restrict his protection to the major part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland has suffered grievously in the past few years.
I sometimes wonder whether the British people or the police in this country have ever tried to discern the mind of the terrorist. Recently, whenever it has been trailed that the four leaders of the Northern Ireland political parties were going to meet, the IRA has immediately set out to draw attention to its case. When the Prime Minister called the four leaders of the Northern Ireland parties to Downing Street a fortnight ago, anyone with any experience of the terrorist mentality in Northern Ireland could have told him that the IRA would mount what they called a "spectacular" to divert attention from the meeting and to establish its interest. What happened? On the day that the four leaders were to meet in Downing Street and Vice-President Quayle was to meet the Prime Minister, the IRA deliberately got into Downing Street to set off the bombs.
What was even more dangerous, within 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour of the bomb in the telephone box being defused, in an exercise which must have been organised, many IRA supporters marched past Nelson's Column into Whitehall shouting, "IRA all the way". Those people obviously did not gather there by accident. They were IRA supporters in London —the capital of the United Kingdom—who knew that the bomb was going off. That bomb could have brought with it untold tragedy, and yet those people were prepared to gather in the Strand and march down Whitehall. So far as I am aware, none was arrested.
The four Northern Ireland constitutional party leaders are meeting today in London—that meeting has been trailed as a great hope for Northern Ireland —and we again have this morning's tragedy at London Bridge station. Every time there is an attempt by the constitutional parties to get together—I believe that some of the meetings may have been for the benefit of their own supporters or the press, with not a great deal behind them—it can be predicted that some attempt will be made by the IRA to draw attention to its own case, as happened this morning. I do not, however, suggest for one second that the police or the security forces could have predicted or prevented what happened at London Bridge station this morning, because all other stations would also have had to be protected.
On proscription, I remember that for many years in another place I took the view that if the organisation was a terrorist organisation it was entitled to be proscribed. I never objected to the proscription of the IRA or the Ulster Volunteer Force, but if there are to be proscriptions then the Loyalist organisation which is now carrying out murders in Northern Ireland (the UFF—the murderous wing of the legally constituted UDA) should be proscribed. We cannot proscribe a selected few of the terrorist organisations. The net
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must be cast widely. Many people within the Catholic and Protestant communities have for many years been asking why the UFF (that part of the UDA which carries out the murders) has not been proscribed.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme, said that terrorist activity in Northern Ireland might be brought to an end, lessened or prevented if the political parties had some success. I hope so, but I have reservations. My reservations are born of an intimate knowledge of the political differences which exist in Northern Ireland. I listened to Radio 4 yesterday morning. I heard that the newly elected Taoiseach was to meet the Prime Minister to discuss ways ahead in Northern Ireland. For the first time for many years I heard that the Government of Ireland Act 1920 was also to be on the table. That has never been mentioned throughout the 20 years of murderous activity in Northern Ireland. That is understandable. On the face of it, if Articles 2 and 3 are to be discussed, the Government of Ireland Act should also be discussed. However we often talk in this House about perceptions. Once I had heard that broadcast I telephoned friends in Northern Ireland. I said, "Rather than being helpful, that will create more difficulties because Articles 2 and 3 and the Government of Ireland Act 1920 are not comparable". First, Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution represent a territorial demand. They say that the six north-eastern counties of Ireland belong to Ireland and should be under its jurisdiction and are excluded only temporarily.
Section 75 of the Government of Ireland Act makes no claim to the territory of the Republic, but there are certain sections of the Act that I have queried over many years. For example, Section 5 clearly states that there should be no discrimination in Northern Ireland. That patently has not worked since the creation of the state. Another section (Section 6 or 7) talks about discrimination, but says that the masonic lodges in Northern Ireland should not be encompassed in the legislation. That was clearly discrimination in favour of the masonic lodges in Northern Ireland. There are other matters which could be looked at.
The Unionist majority in Northern Ireland will see the inclusion in the talks of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 as a further erosion of their position. It was that Act, which created partition and divided the island of Ireland, which gave Unionists their little part of the world—the six counties of Northern Ireland. It gave them what they would call their cultural and religious identity in that part of the United Kingdom. They see the consideration of Articles 2 and 3 as an attempt to water down Section 75 of the Government of Ireland Act, which states clearly that Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom. It is unfortunate that the Government of Ireland Act has been put on the table for those discussions, because the perception of the Unionists is that it is another attack on their way of life in Northern Ireland.
In the press statement the newly elected Taoiseach said that we could perhaps look at European models with a pooling of sovereignty. That, again, is seen by the majority in Northern Ireland as an attack on the way they are governed. They are being asked to accept

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some nebulous European model. I have yet to find out what it is. The suggestion is a pooling of sovereignty. At the moment the Unionists in Northern Ireland think that they have quite enough pooled sovereignty, with the Government of the Republic, through the agency of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and the British Government both trying to control them in what is almost a joint authority.
So long as the territorial demands and divisions as to who will own the land of the six counties exist, it is far easier for the IRA and other terrorist organisations to continue their murderous campaign. The IRA will say, "We want to abort the border. We want to include Northern Ireland in the Republic". The other murderers, the UVF, UDA and other murderous Loyalist gangs say, "You're not going get us, we're engaged in this campaign to prevent that ever happening". A great responsibility lies on the elected politicians in Northern Ireland to do nothing, to say nothing which would in any way give justification to those terrorist organisations.
I agree with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton and by the noble Lord, Lord Richard. It is unfortunate that there has not been unanimity of purpose between the Government and the Opposition in another place in relation to the order. It is sad that in our attempts to curtail the activities of the terrorists, party matters appear to be raising their head. I am glad that the atmosphere here this morning is rather more controlled than in another place. We must not forget that a Labour Government were in power between 1974 and 1979 when the Labour Party was forced to put the Act on the statute book because of the terrible, murderous bombings in Birmingham. In those years from 1974—and I was a Member of the other place, right up until 1983—there was unanimity of purpose and concern between the Government and the Opposition.
The terrorist situation in Northern Ireland is so serious that we cannot afford party political divisions in Parliament. I would not feel in any way justified in uttering a single word in opposition to the re-enactment of the order. I believe that it is necessary. My only hope is that I live long enough to see the day when it can be taken off the statute book because peace has returned to Ireland.
12.30 p.m.
Lord Bottomley: My Lords, if it had not been for the kindness of the honourable Member for Newham North West in another place, Mr. Tony Banks, I doubt whether it would have been possible for me to be present today. As the noble Earl said, London Underground stations are closed and there are tremendous bus queues. Tony Banks stopped at one of the queues to pick up passengers. He then spotted me and was kind enough to say, "Come on, Arthur, join me on the trip to Westminster". During the journey we saw car after car driven by owners, with no passengers. Is it not possible on occasions like this for the Government to give wider publicity asking owner drivers to pick up passengers? Perhaps the BBC and ITV in their radio and television broadcasts of the sad
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incidents, such as the one this morning, could make a special plea for passengers, who are queuing up for buses, to be picked up. I ask the noble Earl to consider the suggestion.
Lord Blease: My Lords, I compliment the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers and my noble friend Lord Richard on the constructive and reasoned way in which they have approached the debate on the order today. Other noble Lords who have spoken have used measured tones and it is to be noted that the debate took place in this House in those terms.
The order and the legislation present us with complex problems of law and order, security, individual freedoms and human and civil rights. These are measured and valued against a background of rising crime, violence, terrorism and other serious offences, as well as the provisions to prevent such crimes.
Not only are these matters and the provisions of the order difficult for the public and also, as it appears, the media to comprehend, but much of the political wrangling over the issues has led to confusion. That in turn has given rise to great public anxiety and anger in some cases about personal safety, the safety of family life and property and, I may add, the future of parliamentary democracy. The reasons for terrorism are directed at that.
Briefly, I support the view that there is an urgent need for an official parliamentary review of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. I suggest that such a review should include the obvious matters which have already been mentioned: the inclusion orders and the report of the noble Viscount Lord Colville. In addition, I suggest that it should include the memorandum of the three police federations which was submitted last week by the Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons. There is also a need for special training and co-ordination of officers and officials who carry out the provisions of the PTA.
Much has rightly been made of the Irish affair and its effects on the situation in Northern and Southern Ireland. I firmly believe that there ought to be an awareness of what will be required in terms of internal controls with the opening up of the ports and air0ports when the single European market arrives. This will considerably add to the burden, and therefore a great increase in appropriate measures is required for co-ordination and for the effective training of personnel at these sites to enable them to cope with the situation. I cannot leave this House without saying that I support the proposed measures.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am grateful for the manner in which your Lordships have dealt with the order. It is a sensitive issue and there is no doubt in anyone's mind—I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, emphasised this—that every party is keen on the prevention of terrorism. Whatever side of the House we sit on, we all dislike it. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, said that for his part he supported the order. Obviously, there are differences of approach. I accept that, even though I find it hard to agree with some of the proposals put forward.

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The noble Lord, Lord Richard, said that there was not much between us. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, that there should not be anything between us on being against terrorism. There is nothing between us. I should like to think that there was nothing between us concerning the order. I was sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said that he found that he could not support the order.
The noble Lord, Lord Fitt, rightly said that he hoped he would live to see the day when the order was not necessary. I sympathise with the view and concur with it. None of us wants the order. It is an offence to the dignity of the life which we have in the United Kingdom that such orders are necessary. However, without question they are necessary when we are subjected to the kind of terrorism which we have suffered over the past few years. Of course, we shall consider all that your Lordships have said about the order. Various aspects do not have the agreement of all noble Lords. But we must be clear about one thing. And this is where I differ slightly from the noble Lord, Lord Richard. While there is the possibility of terrorism and of that terrorism having the effect which it has had in the United Kingdom, then it is the Government's duty to do all they can to protect the people from terrorism.
The noble Lord, Lord Richard, and the noble Lord, Lord Fitt, were concerned about the exclusion orders. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, said that that was using Northern Ireland as a dumping ground. The Northern Ireland dimension is a United Kingdom problem but it is primarily a problem of Northern Ireland. If people wish to conduct their lives as some do in Northern Ireland and decide to escalate the problem and to project their views and aims into the mainland of the United Kingdom, then it is perfectly reasonable for the Government to say that we do not wish to see those people escalate their own actions against the interests of those on the mainland. Therefore it is appropriate to return them from whence they came. If people deliberately leave Northern Ireland in order to perpetrate their crimes here it is not unreasonable to protect the people on the mainland by returning those people from whence they came.
The noble Lord, Lord Richard, raised the question of judicial supervision. If we were to establish a tribunal or any form of judicial supervision of applications for the extension of detention, its conclusions would often be based on strong intelligence that the person concerned was involved in terrorism. It is very difficult for such intelligence to be given as factual evidence. People would be required to give their evidence and would be reluctant to do so. The sensitivity of the information would often be such that if a case went to a tribunal or was considered by a judge or a group of judges neither the detained person nor his legal advisers could be given any details of the case. There would be no proper means of representation. The judge or chairman of the tribunal would be obliged to do what my right honourable friend the Home Secretary does at present.
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The noble Lord, Lord Richard, was concerned about the co-ordination of anti-terrorist investigations. The Government recognise the importance of an effectively co-ordinated national effort against terrorism. That is why the commander of the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist branch was appointed national co-ordinator of investigations into the activities of the Provisional IRA on the mainland. The anti-terrorist branch has specialist skills and the experience and resources upon which provincial police forces may draw in their fight against terrorism.
The noble Lord said that he was worried by the fact that there was a different system in Scotland for extending detention. I can tell him that all extension of detention applications are dealt with in the same way throughout the United Kingdom. They are all considered by Ministers. In Scotland the applications are dealt with by the Secretary of State for Scotland and in England and Wales by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary.
The noble Lord was also anxious about the financial provisions. He suggested that the Government should extend to Great Britain the provisions of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act which are concerned with the proceeds of paramilitary racketeering. Those provisions are addressed to a problem which is specific to Northern Ireland and cannot readily be altered to apply to Great Britain. However, as I said in my opening remarks, we have some improvements to the financial provisions in mind and we shall introduce them when we have an opportunity for legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham—to whom I am grateful for the measured way in which he reacted to the order—asked about the talks. The position is that the Government are now talking with the political parties in Northern Ireland on the basis of giving information to the parties about the machinery of government. At the same time, as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said, the Northern Ireland parties are meeting together without the British Government being present. The two national governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland are involved and the Downing Street meeting provided a welcome and valuable opportunity for discussion.
The noble Lord also referred to video recordings. The position is that whatever arrangements were to be made to facilitate and safeguard the video recording of interviews with terrorist suspects, we believe that its introduction would seriously jeopardise the process of the investigation of crime. The position remains as set out in the report of the Bennett committee of inquiry into interrogation procedures in Northern Ireland which recommended that closed circuit television should be installed in the holding centres but that video recordings should not be introduced. Suspects would be less prepared to offer information to the police, which might be necessary to save lives and prevent crime, if they knew that a permanent record was being made of their co-operation with the police.
Lord Richard: My Lords, before the noble Earl leaves that point, can he say whether that also applies to sound recordings?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it refers to video recordings. Sound recordings are a synopsis of the investigation which takes place. That synopsis of the investigation is given to the person being questioned to find out whether he agrees with the result. In other words, it is not the full verbatim recording, for the very same reason. It would be as undesirable from the point of view of the person being interviewed as a video recording.
With regard to assaults in custody, I was interested by the remarks of my noble friend Lord Colville. His report has, of course, only just been received and we shall study it with care.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme, referred to warnings and asked what could be done to prevent London being upset and thrown into a state of relative chaos. He said that if the IRA achieved that, it would have made some inroads into achieving its target. There is a difficult balance which has to be maintained. The security forces, police and emergency services have to take care of people in London. One cannot prevent people from planting bombs. All one can do is take as much preventive action as is necessary to ensure that that risk is as small as possible. Where such information is received police have to take action and that will inevitably cause some form of disruption.
The noble Lord also referred to the working group on intelligence responsibilities. We seek continually to ensure that arrangements for countering the terrorist threat are as effective as possible. That is what the Government have always done and it is what we shall continue to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Richard, wondered whether reform of the Prevention of Terrorism Act could be part of the dialogue. Discussion between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland over matters of terrorism is bound to take place and it is right that it should. If the noble Lord was referring to dialogue between the political parties, then by all means let the noble Lord and his party explain to us what his party wishes. However, I am bound to tell him that we do not at present see how one can possibly lower the guard against terrorism. That means that one has to have the provisions that are sought in this measure. They are hard provisions. They are provisions which no government would ever request of Parliament were it not for the fact that they are necessary. I do not believe that people would wish to see those preventive measures reduced. Nor do I believe that people would expect any government—in particular after an incident such as we have had this morning—to lower their guard against terrorism and their reaction to it.
If the noble Lord or his party wish to offer some suggestions, by all means let him do so. However, I am bound to say that we would find it difficult to lower the principle that it is the Government's responsibility to protect the people against terrorism which comes about in a totally selfish and inhuman way.
Having said that, I realise that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, together with most other members of his party, would be wholly against terrorism. That is something that we must be united about. I can only return to what the noble Lord, Lord Holme, said at the beginning: there should be nothing between us. I
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hope that that will be so. Despite the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, found it difficult to accept that the order was necessary, I hope that he will nevertheless realise that it is prudent and proper that the order should be passed. I commend the order.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Industrial Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1992
12.52 p.m.
The Paymaster General (Lord Belstead)The Paymaster General (Lord Belstead) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th December 1991 be approved.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of the order is to consolidate and modernise existing trade union law in Northern Ireland and to enact new provisions to bring the law broadly in line with that applied in Great Britain by the Trade Union Act 1984 and the Employment Acts of 1988 and 1989.
As your Lordships will appreciate, the legal and administrative framework for industrial relations in Northern Ireland is separate from that in Great Britain but the legislation has generally followed that in the remainder of the United Kingdom.
Thus the Employment Acts of 1980 and 1982 have already been replicated by the Industrial Relations (Northern Ireland) Orders of 1982 and 1987. Currently therefore trade union law in Northern Ireland is substantially the same as that which applied in Great Britain prior to the Trade Union Act 1984 but it is based on more ancient Acts extending in some cases back to 1871. This old legislation was modernised in Great Britain in the 1970s. The proposed order would effect a similar modernisation and would also reflect the industrial relations provisions of the Trade Union Act 1984 and the Employment Acts of 1988 and 1989.
The reforms in Great Britain are equally relevant to Northern Ireland where the days lost in the 1970s due to industrial action were comparable to those in the remainder of the United Kingdom. As with the rest of the 'United Kingdom I am glad to say that the 1980s' figures show substantial improvement—in the last five years of the 1980s the days lost due to industrial action were a quarter of those lost in the last five years of the 1970s. The figures for 1990 and 1991 have shown further improvement and demonstrate that the reforms already introduced have proved their worth.
The order is designed to provide an open, democratic and balanced framework of law within which responsible trade unions should operate. It places limits on unacceptable behaviour but no union going about its business in a reasonable manner has anything to fear from its provisions. Indeed the acceptance of the role of law in industrial relations by trade union members and the general public has been one of the most significant developments of the 1980s.
At the heart of the order are the provisions for pre-industrial action ballots and secret ballots for elections to the principal executive committees of unions. Those democratic provisions will help to ensure openness in trade union activities, prevent the

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misuse of industrial power and give Northern Ireland trade union members the right to have a say in the conduct of their union's affairs.
Very importantly for the Northern Ireland economy, the reforms will also help to reassure employers and inward investors that a fair framework of law is in place in Northern Ireland.
The proposal for the order was published on 24th September 1990 and a wide range of interested parties was invited to comment. During the consultation period discussions were also held with both sides of industry. On the one hand, the trade union movement objected to further trade union law while employers' organisations urged parity with Great Britain. Having considered the various representations made, the Government came to the conclusion that there is no compelling reason why Northern Ireland's trade union law should not be broadly in line with that in the remainder of the United Kingdom. The draft order has that effect.
The order contains 108 articles and six schedules. New provisions account for approximately half of the order and the remainder consists of a re-enactment and modernisation of existing legislation.
The key new provisions deal with the rights of trade union members in Articles 29 to 38; industrial action ballots in Articles 44 to 46; trade union elections and membership registers in Articles 47 to 56; the appointment of a Certification Officer and a Commissioner for the Rights of Trade Union Members in Articles 69 to 73; the removal of the statutory trade union recognition role of the Labour Relations Agency in Articles 82 to 90; and the removal of statutory support for the closed shop in Article 101.
All of those provisions already apply in the rest of the United Kingdom and it is worth noting that some 80 per cent. of trade union members in Northern Ireland belong to unions based in Great Britain. Because of local considerations, two significant differences from Great Britain law have been retained in the order. The first is the "contracting in" arrangement by which trade union members in Northern Ireland may not be required to contribute to their union's political fund unless they have given written notice of their willingness to do so. This arrangement has worked satisfactorily in Northern Ireland since it was introduced in 1927. The second difference is the absence of an Employment Appeal Tribunal in Northern Ireland. The present caseload of appeals would not justify the establishment of a specialist appeals body and appeals will continue to be dealt with by the courts.
I would also draw your Lordships' attention to two minor and technical amendments to the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Acts of 1976 and 1989. Both are contained in Article 106. The first ensures that agreements reached in cases conciliated by the Labour Relations Agency are final and brings the law into line with that applying in unfair dismissal and sex discrimination cases. The second in Article 106 is an "avoidance of doubt" provision about the powers of the Fair Employment Tribunal when determining religious and/or political discrimination complaints which also include allegations of unfair
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dismissal or sex discrimination. It would be remiss of me in this context if I did not take this opportunity to stress the importance the Government attach to tackling the problems of religious discrimination in the workplace, and here I would most certainly acknowledge the very constructive role played by both trade unions and employers in combating sectarianism and in encouraging fair employment practices.
As I have already sought to indicate, around half of the provisions in this order consist of a consolidation and modernisation of existing law. Apart from the fair employment amendments and the two differences to which I have already referred, the balance relates to provisions which already apply in the remainder of the United Kingdom and with which employers and unions are already familiar.
This order will therefore give Northern Ireland workers rights and privileges which are already enjoyed by their counterparts in Great Britain. The fact that it will bring a uniformity to trade union law throughout the United Kingdom is a benefit to both sides of industry in Northern Ireland and to potential inward investors. Overall the order will help to secure industrial relations stability and thereby assist in Northern Ireland's economic regeneration and prosperity. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th December 1991 be approved.—(Lord Belstead.)
1 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Blease should be leading me in a discussion of this order because he is the one Member in your Lordships' House who has devoted his lifetime to the trade union movement in Northern Ireland. His is the voice that should be heard.
It is a substantial order and it is controversial. The Minister explained its provisions with his customary clarity and fairness but I did not find his defence of the order persuasive. The Government only just managed to collect sufficient support for it in another place. However, the real question is: what lasting damage has been caused by the order?
Damage has been caused because the order has been so offensive to trade unionists in Northern Ireland who do not believe that they deserve it. It is not clear to me and, I am sure, many noble Lords, on what basis the Government decide whether GB legislation should be extended to Northern Ireland. The point is relevant because I note that the Government have decided that a Public Bill which is currently before the House is not to apply to Northern Ireland. I refer to the Prison Security Bill. When the Bill was introduced into this House on 14th February the Chief Whip, who piloted it through the Second Reading stage, explained that it was not necessary to extend it to Northern Ireland because of the different circumstances which prevailed there. He set out the general principles which appeared to guide the Government in such a situation. He then said:
"There is no advantage in seeking parity between the jurisdictions for its own sake. Decisions for Northern Ireland must be made on the basis of what is needed for the Province".—[Official Report, 14/2/92; col. 967.]

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We fully agree with that principle; we fully agree with that test. However, in our submission the Government have not demonstrated that Northern Ireland needs this industrial order.
There is no evidence that trade unions or trade unionists have abused their position and there is no evidence of malpractice. On the contrary, the affairs of the trade unions in Northern Ireland have been well-regulated and well-served by people of the quality of my noble friend Lord Blease. Moreover, it is the trade union movement which has bravely and consistently opposed the campaign of intimidation that has been waged in the Province.
The trade union movement in Northern Ireland is one of the most important centres of stability and democracy in the turbulent currents there. That has been acknowledged by a succession of Ministers; indeed, it has been acknowledged this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Belstead. We on these Benches regret that so much time and effort has been devoted to this order, which will contribute very little to inward investment or to economic development in Northern Ireland.
If it were thought by Ministers that trade union relations should be improved, would it not have been far better to put in train a comprehensive review of the whole field of industrial relations involving both sides of industry and that to be followed by legislation if it were deemed to be necessary? That was the constructive proposal put to the Government by the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Sadly, it was not taken up by the Government.
As the order's principal object is to achieve parity we are sorry that an opportunity was not taken in the order to give a right of appeal to the employment appeal tribunal, as is the case in England, Wales and Scotland. That was requested by both the trade union movement in Northern Ireland and the Labour Relations Agency. Further, we regret that the order continues the existing contracting-in arrangement to pay the political levy instead of introducing a contracting-out arrangement, as is the case in Great Britain. I appreciate that the Minister has touched upon those two matters. However, we believe that they were reasonable requests to which the Government could have acceded—and they would have been consistent with the principle of parity—if they had a real desire to meet the reasonable requirements of the trade unions in Northern Ireland. The Government conceded nothing.
There are three categories of trade unions in Northern Ireland. There are the GB based unions, the Republic of Ireland based unions and the few unions based in Northern Ireland itself. The trade unionists believe that some of the provisions of the order will have an unequal impact on the unions, depending on their Republic of Ireland domicile, their GB domicile or their Northern Ireland domicile. For example, it will be difficult to apply a sequestration order against a Republic of Ireland based union. Therefore, the perceived unequal application of the order is a matter of some anxiety. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Belstead,
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whether the department will issue a statement setting out in clear terms the exact implications of the order for the three categories of trade unions that I have mentioned. That is another reasonable request which was sent to the department by the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
I now wish to raise three other specific issues. The first is an important issue concerning the life and safety of those trade unionists who are employed in security-related work. I am sure we all agree that as a consequence of this order nothing should be done that would or might endanger the lives of those working in prisons or police stations or who are employed by firms which are contractors with the Crown. That is a particular risk which is unique to Northern Ireland and the order should, if necessary, include unique provisions to deal with the risk.
The department will know well that anxiety has been expressed by the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance—the union concerned—that Articles 48(7) and 51(3) may in some circumstances expose the identity of its members who are working in sensitive locations such as those I have mentioned. Therefore, those two articles in particular are potentially risky.
It is appreciated, in fairness to the department, that amendments have been made to the original draft to endeavour to meet the criticism, but I am told by The Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance that its worries remain. In the real world of terrorism—we have heard about that this morning—it could be relatively easy for a member or supporter of a terrorist organisation, acting in bad faith, to obtain access to information on the register of members and exploit it for his own purposes.
The Minister's right honourable friend in another place, Mr. Michael Howard, has listened to the advice of the TUC on this issue. He has given an assurance that only the independent scrutineer should be allowed access to the register of members on behalf of any union members who are concerned that the list may be inaccurate. That is the effect of the words which are to be found at col. 815 of the House of Commons Hansard for 28th January. It would be appreciated if the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, could give an assurance in identical terms when he replies to the debate.
A small point arises out of Article 48(7) (b) when it is read in conjunction with Article 60(4) (b). Those two articles deal with a postal vote. Do they mean that trade unions will have to issue to each member who is entitled to vote a pre-paid addressed envelope? We would appreciate guidance on that point.
Finally, I turn to two matters relating to the certification officer. It is to be regretted that he is to be serviced by the Labour Relations Agency. The Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Trades Union Congress believes it is essential that the agency must be seen to be independent of this new office that will exercise the quasi-judicial functions set out in Articles 74, 77 and 79. However, the officer will be attached to the Labour Relations Agency and serviced by the agency. Article 69 is clear on that. I must confess that I do not see how one can negotiate a way around that difficulty. I should have thought the

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officer should be serviced, and his staff should be appointed, by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland himself.
Why does the order not contain a power for the certification officer to exempt a trade union from strict compliance with the provisions of an article if he is satisfied that the rules of a particular union achieve the objectives of the legislation? That would have been a useful and helpful provision.
I have no more to say about this order which we fear will achieve little of real value for Northern Ireland but which has and will continue for some time to cause unnecessary offence to the trade union movement in Northern Ireland.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, I fear that if we need an example of the inadequacy of this way of governing Northern Ireland, we need look no further than this order. It will have a major impact in Northern Ireland on the trade unions. It is being dealt with by affirmative resolution. It is difficult to analyse precisely why the Government felt it necessary to bring this legislation forward at all.
I can quite see that administrative tidiness might suggest that Northern Ireland should have the same trade union laws as the rest of the UK. I can see that party dogma might suggest that if it is thought to be a good measure for GB, it is therefore a good measure for Northern Ireland. But surely it is a good principle of legislation, as it is for handymen, that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". There is not the slightest evidence that there is a trade union problem of the kind there undoubtedly was in the United Kingdom as a whole at the time the Government undertook their programme of trade union reform.
The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, will know that we on these Benches, by and large, supported the thrust of trade union reform as it came along during the 1980s. However, that legislation was designed to deal with the problems of over-mighty unions; unions run by tiny, unrepresentative minorities; unions meddling in politics and unions exceeding their legitimate place in society. My own observations in Northern Ireland and my discussions with many people involved in the trade union movement lead me to believe that none of the problems that I have just referred to could remotely apply to Northern Ireland. I wish to ask the Government what problem they are trying to solve because there does not appear to be a problem to be solved in terms of trade union relations in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Needham, the honourable friend of the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said in another place on 10th February that employee/employer relations in Northern Ireland are good. The Minister himself conceded that in his introductory remarks. I believe there is fairly widespread agreement that trade unions in Northern Ireland have good standing and they have a good relationship both with their members and with employers. What is of crucial importance is that the level of strikes in Northern Ireland is considerably lower than that in the rest of the United Kingdom. The number of days lost through strikes in 1989 was well under half the level in the rest of the United Kingdom.
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The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, has referred to my next point. It is a matter upon which I know that the noble Lord, Lord Blease, is expert. The trade unions in Northern Ireland have a particular role to play as champions of the fair employment and anti-discrimination legislation. They play that role vigorously and well. Therefore, there are justifiable fears, to which I hope the Government are sensitive, that any weakening of the trade unions could work towards discrimination on grounds of religion or other background. That role of the trade unions as defenders of fair employment can be underestimated and undervalued, but in my view it is crucial to the success of the Government's policies to end discrimination.
Finally, if one looks at the pattern of trade union and employer/employee relationships in Northern Ireland, one should really look at measures that we on these Benches have long advocated. Those matters are greater employee participation, greater profit sharing and all matters that build on and improve what are generally good industrial relations by involving employees more in their own success and destinies. We on these Benches wish that the Government had not felt it necessary to impose reforms on Northern Ireland which, although appropriate in the rest of the UK, do not seem particularly relevant in the Province.
Lord Blease: My Lords, first I wish to thank my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies for his kind personal remarks. He delivered a thorough, constructive and searching response to the Minister's clear and comprehensive presentation of this major industrial relations order. The order contains some 150 pages. I fully support the principles and approaches of my noble friend's speech and the questions he put to the Minister. I welcome too the useful and interesting contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham.
I wish to make three points. First, I repeat my criticism of, and opposition to, the completely circumscribed and undemocratic nature of the Order in Council in terms of parliamentary procedures presently operated under the Northern Ireland Act of 1974. The procedure adopted for parliamentary deliberation on this important order is, in my opinion, a denial of natural justice, especially as the order proposes sweeping legislative changes which seriously affect the employment rights and the conditions and protection of Northern Ireland workers.
I should make clear my position in respect of these matters. In no way are my remarks meant as a personal criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Belstead. I fully accept that in his ministerial duties the noble Lord must adhere to the direct rule provisions enacted by Parliament.
The noble Lord is bound by the procedures approved for today's debate, which do not provide for changes or amendments to the order as tabled. I am aware that, as the Minister mentioned, the initial stages of the order commenced some four years ago. The process of consultation was promoted by the Northern Ireland Department of Economic Development in September 1990. However, as this order is hailed by the Government as so important

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and vital to the whole operational future of industrial development, economic growth, inward investment, industrial productivity and harmony between management and workers, why was it not deemed appropriate to be considered in detail by an appointed Northern Ireland Standing Committee of another place?
The order repeals, re-enacts and amends 14 separate Acts, covering a period of some 121 years. Six of those Acts are primary United Kingdom enactments. Is there not a responsibility on the Government, on Northern Ireland Ministers and, indeed, upon Northern Ireland elected representatives to exercise all available parliamentary procedures and functions to ensure that this major legislative change is subjected to deliberative scrutiny and debate in a Standing Committee under Standing Order 101?
My second point concerns the argument presented by the Government that the order will harmonise industrial relations legislation and the rights of workers in Northern Ireland with those in Great Britain. Desirable as it may be to promote standards and procedures which provide for good industrial practice, the order does not provide for the individual rights of workers nor for the management-worker partnership in industrial affairs already referred to.
Those matters were dealt with at length in well documented and argued submissions made over a year ago by two Northern Ireland trade union representative bodies, the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance.
My noble friend Lord Prys-Davies has already mentioned, in connection with the NIC, the paper that it submitted. I should like to refer to the contents of that paper and its conclusions. The paper states:
"The NIC reiterates its previous position that the provisions in this Draft Order are not based on any empirical examination of the industrial relations situation in Northern Ireland, but represent merely a dogmatic decision to introduce such parts of the GB legislation as suits the political philosophy of Government. Nor has there been any attempt to analyse the GB experience of the implementation of the equivalent legislation provisions. As stated earlier in the document, the NIC is prepared to participate in a full and open review of industrial relations".
However, we know that that request by NIC was not granted.
The second paper from which I wish to quote was presented by the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance—NIPSA. Some matters have already been mentioned in the debate about NIPSA's proposals or conclusions in respect of the order. It would be useful to quote from that document. It states:
"If there were a case for bringing the law here exactly in line with Britain, even though we have a separate legal and administrative framework for industrial relations, there could be no justification for departing, as the Draft Order does, from the GB provisions for appeals from Industrial Tribunals and for 'opting-out' of the payment of a political levy. If the Government is insisting on setting up the full machinery for a Certification Officer and for a Commissioner for the Rights of Trade Union Members and on the public purse meeting the expenses of these officers, it can no longer defend its refusal to set up for Northern Ireland an Employment Appeals Tribunal to deal with appeals from Industrial Tribunals. To insist that
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these appeals must be made directly to the Court of Appeal is to condemn people in Northern Ireland to an inferior and more expensive system of justice.
In Britain the Government was forced to recognise that once a trade union had gone through all the elaborate procedures to acquire political objects and set up a political fund, it was unreasonable not to insist that its members would have to sign individually … that they were willing to contribute to its political fund. If the general aim of the Government is to make our legislation the same as in Britain, there can be therefore no longer be any case for insisting that in this respect Northern Ireland must remain different".
Perhaps I should make some reference to the substance and intent of that industrial relations harmonisation which the Government propose to bestow on the workers of Northern Ireland. The provisions in Britain are not considered by trade unionists and the British TUC as bringing harmony, industrial development and economic expansion to the workplace.
I must quote from a letter sent to me on 14th February by the TUC which stated that it was enclosing documents which went before the General Council of the TUC,
"about the conclusions of the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations in 1989 and 1991. The actual conclusions are attached to the documents … The point … is that the legislation which the Government is extending to Northern Ireland has been held by authoritative and independent ILO bodies as being inconsistent with the obligations on Britain arising out of the ratification of ILO Conventions 87 and 98".
The paper stated:
"Working people in Britain already have fewer rights than those in any other European Community country. The Government wants to keep it that way … As well as being out of step in Europe, the British Government's employment legislation has been found to be in breach of international conventions. The Government's record has been criticised by the International Labour Organisation, the United Nations body responsible for employment matters. The ILO called on the Government to amend the law on eight specific counts in order to bring it into line with the minimum requirements accepted by well over a hundred countries around the world. The eight counts on which Britain has been found guilty by the ILO are: the union ban at GCHQ; the denial of negotiating rights to teachers; allowing employers to blacklist union members; restrictions on unions' rights to discipline members; the ban on unions paying fines on members' behalf; the restrictions on sympathy action; allowing employers to split companies artificially to limit legal industrial action; allowing employers to sack members who go on strike".
That is the situation in Great Britain. It is the sort of situation which we are asked to foist upon Northern Ireland.
My noble friend Lord Prys-Davies mentioned the matter of working days lost through industrial action. When the order was debated in another place, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mr. Richard Needham, stated:
"Great Britain's poor industrial relations record in the 1970s was closely paralleled in Northern Ireland, which makes it just as important that the process of step-by-step reform of industrial relations law be extended to Northern Ireland. Those who would contend that there is no need for the Great Britain reforms to be applied in Northern Ireland should remember that, in the last five years of the 1970s, the average number of days lost in Northern Ireland was more numerous than in Great Britain. On too many of our shop floors the 'I'm all right, Jack' attitude seems to have crossed the Irish sea. Now all that is beginning to change". [Official Report, Commons, 10/2/92; col. 731.]
That was a misleading statement by Mr. Needham made in Parliament. I have the total figures for the

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comparisons in Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland for working days lost per 1,000 employees over an 18 year period from 1973 to 1991. The references Mr. Needham made to the 1970s covered three periods of critical community unrest in Northern Ireland. The increase of working days lost during those periods did not occur because of trade union action, nor were they disputes about wages or working conditions. The working days lost were the outcome of political partisan organised widespread community action. It was politically motivated action which included workplace stoppages. Many active trade unionists took part in those political stoppages, but not as trade unionists, nor for any great trade union decision or approval of procedure.
In my view it was wrong to use those inflated figures to bolster support for this industrial relations order. No trade union procedures nor trade union industrial relations legislation could have prevented the work stoppage then promoted. While I hope and pray that there will be no reason for recurrence of those ugly events in the community, the legislation proposed in the order cannot prevent such a work stoppage nor can the penalties for breaches of the law and provisions in the order be enforced.
Mention was made of the number of days lost in strikes both in Britain and in Northern Ireland. I could expand on that at some length but I shall make only one reference. There is a direct and relevant ratio between the full-time working days lost and the dramatic fall in full-time employment, and the tragic effect that that has on family life and happiness. It could be debated at some length and demonstrated that there is this interaction. However, I feel that this is neither the time nor the place.
I have no doubt that the order will proceed, with all its disadvantages to workers and trade unions in Northern Ireland. Whatever the future may be for the full implementation of the order, I am confident that trade unions in Northern Ireland will continue to work earnestly for the rights, wages and working conditions of their members. I believe that they will continue to enjoy the good, honest and creative working relations that exist between the trade unions and management in the Province.
1.30 p.m.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I thank the three noble Lords who have responded to the moving of this order. I agree with all three that this is not the way to deal with important legislation for Northern Ireland. However, at the moment it is the only way. I thank your Lordships for the detailed way with which the order has been dealt, even though I realise from what has been said that it does not attract universal support, notwithstanding the fact that all the new provisions it contains already apply in Great Britain.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, it is correct that the case for the order is that the legal and administrative framework for industrial relations in Northern Ireland is separate from that in Great Britain; but the legislation has generally followed that in the rest of the United Kingdom. The noble Lord says that it is no good simply saying something as
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though by rote; there must be a reason for a specific order. In this case there is such a need. Without going exhaustively over the ground again, it is quite clear that if one looks at the number of days lost through industrial action in Northern Ireland, there has been a steady improvement. I take pride—as quite rightly does the noble Lord, Lord Blease, with his record and knowledge of these matters—in the fact that by and large the record in Northern Ireland has been better than it has been both in the Republic of Ireland and in Great Britain. There has been a steady improvement in Northern Ireland at the same time as there has been a steady improvement in Great Britain. I account some of that improvement to the fact that we have replicated some of the industrial relations legislation passed in the Westminster Parliament for Northern Ireland. I now ask your Lordships to take another step and replicate three more of the industrial relations and employment Acts which have been passed by both Houses of Parliament.
Having said that, perhaps I can add that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blease, that the contribution made by and large by harmonious industrial relations in Northern Ireland, and particularly by the keeping of sectarianism off the shop floor, has been of the most enormous importance in recent years to the industrial and commercial history of Northern Ireland.
One last point that I wish to make on this general lead-in matter, to which all noble Lords referred, is that we must not forget the importance of the perception of those we want to be inward investors in Northern Ireland. If they see what they believe to be a fair and transparent system of industrial relations in place in Northern Ireland, it is the more likely that inward investors will set up there, which is what we want them to do. Surely in that context no one can possibly query the need and desirability for holding secret ballots prior to industrial action and for trade union elections.
I shall not go on about that. There is something of a political gulf in that regard between the official Opposition and the Government. However, your Lordships will perhaps forgive me for again reiterating the general case.
The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, was good enough to give me notice of a series of questions that he intended to ask. Some of them overlap with what other noble Lords have said. The first question concerned whether there was not an unequal impact of the order on unions based in Northern Ireland, in the Republic of Ireland and in Great Britain. With regard to the technicalities of the order, there is practically no difference between the unions which are based in the three different territories. The only outstanding difference is that the balloting requirements for unions' principal executive committees will not apply to the unions outside Northern Ireland. That is the only significant difference.
That recognises the realities of the situation and does not in some way give the unions based in the Republic of Ireland some kind of advantage over those based in Northern Ireland. As I said, only 8 per cent. of Northern Ireland trade unions belong to

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Republic of Ireland based unions. I believe that puts the matter in context. With regard to enforcement, the Government take the view that all the unions operating in Northern Ireland should observe Northern Ireland law. Failure to do so will be a matter for the courts.
The noble Lord asked whether the balloting provisions of the order would place at risk the identity of persons working in security-related establishments. It is the fact that the order was amended during the consultation period in order to provide adequate flexibility to safeguard trade union members working in security-related establishments, and in particular so that there would not be open access to union registers and members would only be able to inspect their own details. Where security is a consideration a member's name and an identifier, such as a payroll number, is all that needs to appear on the register. That is possibly the most important point which has been injected into the order. All that is required is not necessarily the name and address, but the name and some form of identifier, such as a payroll number. Incidentally, as the noble Lord will probably be well aware, but it is worth me saying so once again where security is again a consideration, it is possible for the ballot papers to be delivered by means other than just through the ordinary postal system.
The noble Lord asked whether in elections trade unions would need to provide members with pre-paid and addressed envelopes. The answer is yes, but the order provides that members must be given the opportunity to vote by post and to do so without direct cost to themselves. The union may apply to the certification officer for assistance towards the expenditure incurred. I hope that the noble Lord will consider that equitable.
The noble Lord asked two further questions about the certification officer. The first question which the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, asked was whether the certification officer could be seen as independent of the labour relations' organisation. It is important to bear in mind that the certification officer is serviced by the Labour Relations Agency for purely administrative purposes, or in the jargon, "pay and rations". That is in line with what has happened so far as ACAS and the certification officer are concerned in Great Britain.
Importantly, the certification officer is to be completely independent of the Labour Relations Agency. When detailed arrangements as to office accommodation are being finalised I give an assurance to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, that the point that he has made this morning will most certainly be borne in mind in order to see if there is any way in which we can meet that particular point.
Finally, the noble Lord asked whether the certification officer will be able to exempt unions from strict compliance with the provisions of the order. The noble Lord will forgive me if I cannot give a definitive answer to that question in the absence of specific details. All I can say this morning is that the certification officer can only approve rules if they comply with Northern Ireland law.
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The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, also recommended that there should be a comprehensive review of trade union law. As I believe I said earlier on, 80 per cent. of Northern Ireland trade unionists are members of the trade unions of Great Britain. Great Britain's legislation has been most successful in reducing the number of days lost and in returning unions to their members in a variety of ways. Although the Government would be prepared to listen to any constructive proposals which had the support of both sides of industry, for that reason I believe that a full-blown review is something which need not be on the agenda.
Before I finish perhaps I may say that I very rarely find myself in disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Blease. I felt that the noble Lord was a little extreme, in my terms at any rate, in his references to the International Labour Organisation. The Government believe that there is nothing in general employment law of this country which contravenes any ILO convention ratified by the UK. Where the ILO committees have made observations on aspects of UK law, the Government have always responded, and will continue to respond, as and when appropriate. I end by thanking noble Lords for taking part in what I know is a controversial order. I commend the order to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Industrial Relations (Northern Ireland Consequential Amendment) Order 1992
1.45 p.m.
Lord Belstead Lord Belstead rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th December 1991 be approved [8th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said, My Lords, this is a purely technical amendment. The effect of it is to apply the revised definitions of trade union and employers' associations, contained in the order that we have just agreed, to the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988, which applies throughout the United Kingdom, in order to exempt union provident funds from tax. The reason for a separate order is because it is being done under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 and this is a transferred matter. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th December be approved [8th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Belstead.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1992
Lord Belstead Lord Belstead rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 14th January be approved.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is an important piece of legislation. It extends to Northern Ireland many of the provisions which already apply to local authorities in Great Britain. It covers three

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important areas which the Government are confident will result in major improvements to the methods of operation of district councils.
The first area dealt with is competitive tendering. That is being introduced under Parts II and III of the order for a range of council services and will result in greater value for the ratepayers' money. That does not mean that all services will end up in the private sector and it is not a measure designed to reduce council powers. Councils retain responsibility under the order for the service and their direct service organisation will be able to tender for the work. Another important point is that councils will be required to specify the standard of service they require whether or not that service is provided in-house or by contractors. There will be, therefore, no lessening of standards. Indeed, standards should improve since the wider choice which competition will achieve will inevitably mean clearer and more efficient work practices.
Article IV of the order defines the services which are the subject of compulsory competitive tendering. However, councils will not have to seek competition for all the services listed in the order. Competition will be limited to contracts above an annual running cost of £100,000. The contracts we plan will be introduced gradually by regulations and councils will be fully consulted about the timing of these.
Finally, before leaving competitive tendering, I assure noble Lords that the Government are very conscious of the potential for paramilitary exploitation in this field. Every step will be taken to eliminate that risk in whatever form it takes. In Article 21 of the order we are taking additional powers, over and above those introduced in Great Britain, to enable councils to ask non-commercial questions in order to allow the department to specify certain information which a contractor must provide if he wishes to tender. That will act as a filter and should thwart attempts to win contracts by the para-militaries posing as bona fide contractors.
There will, of course, be difficulties in preventing exploitation by the paramilitaries and those difficulties are very real. However, the Government are determined that they will not be allowed to muscle in; and because it is difficult to deal with the problem by way of primary legislation the order also includes, in Article 25, a general power of direction over councils. I know that the House does not like a general power of direction, but this is supposed to be an additional safeguard. It will be used to take additional steps to combat the para-military threat, should it arise, purely as a help to district councils and for no other reason.
The second important area is the proposal in Article 28 in Part IV of the order to allow councils to spend the product of a twopenny rate on the promotion of economic development. This additional power will allow councils to expand their involvement in promoting the economic development of their areas and is being introduced at the request of councils wishing to have a more active role in this field. The Government are delighted to see that positive approach by councils in Northern Ireland and we are glad to be able to recognise their enthusiasm in a positive way in the order.
The third area is dealt with in Part V of the order and sets out standards of behaviour and conduct for councillors. An updated code of local government conduct will be introduced under Article 29 in Part V. That will set out the standards of behaviour and conduct expected of councillors. Each councillor will be required, on accepting office, to sign a formal declaration that he or she will be guided by the code. The code will be introduced only after full consultation with district councils.
It is also important for councils to have clear and effective working arrangements for the despatch of business. The arrangements are contained in standing orders but not all councils have these arrangements. Of those that do, some of the standing orders have fallen into disuse and are no longer effective. Therefore, Article 33 of the order will allow the Department of the Environment to introduce a model set of standing orders for the dispatch of council business, which will allow for a statutory core for councils to follow. That should allow business to be carried out fairly and reasonably and in a manner which properly reflects the interests of all members of the Council. Again, that provision will not be introduced until there has been full consultation with district councils.
Article 38 gives the local government auditor power to prevent district councils from incurring any unlawful expenditure. This will help to ensure that ratepayers' money and interests are protected.
Finally, Article 41 will prevent district councils from spending money on publicity which is designed to attract support for one particular political party. Money which has been spent in this manner in the past has led to division in the council chamber and among local ratepayers.
I remind your Lordships that ratepayers are entitled to expect high standards of service and value for money. They also expect their elected representatives to be accountable for their actions and to conduct business in a way that is fair and reasonable. I am confident that this order will help provide a better framework within which the business of local government in Northern Ireland can be conducted. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 14th January be approved.—(Lord Belstead.)
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for explaining the provisions of this order. We do well to remind ourselves that the functions of local government in Northern Ireland are very few. Nevertheless, local government is still important to all members of the Northern Ireland community. This order, although it is a miscellaneous provisions order, introduces the most important changes in local government in Northern Ireland since 1973. Some parts of the order have been welcomed as worthwhile reform. However, there has also been criticism of some of the concepts outlined in it.
The order therefore merits at least a full debate even if it cannot, under present arrangements, be given the Bill procedure treatment. Therefore, it is very much to be regretted that it had only about two hours of debate in another place. Within that limited

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timetable only four Northern Ireland Members were able to make a substantial contribution to the discussion. Bearing in mind that Northern Ireland Members of Parliament, unlike those from England, Wales and Scotland, usually have an unrivalled experience of local government, it therefore seems to me that the arrangement for discussing this important order is extremely difficult to defend.
The present Government lay great stress upon compulsory competitive tendering. It is therefore not surprising that CCT is one of the main strands of this order; it dominates Part II in Schedule 1. The Labour Party fears that CCT will weaken even further the limited role of the local authorities in Northern Ireland when more outlets should be created for skills, ideas and enterprise to flourish in local government. Furthermore, we are not convinced from the evidence that CCT will lead inevitably to higher standards of service. We believe the evidence is mixed.
As CCT will be a part of the Northern Ireland local government landscape, I should like to ask three questions. First, to what extent will there be a level playing field for all the contenders for a contract? Is it envisaged that the detailed specifications to be drawn up by the councils will contain minimum standards and minimum conditions in certain key areas such as skills, level of wages, holidays and sickness entitlement of the labour force? Secondly, if a contract has been awarded in good faith, but performance during its currency is unsatisfactory, what remedy, if any, is immediately available to the council? Real problems can arise in the real world. Thus, in a cleaning contract the cleaning may be less thorough and less frequent, or the contractor may go bankrupt. What remedies are available to the council in those circumstances? Who will undertake the services in the interval between termination of the contract and the appointment of a new contractor?
I have asked those two questions because they were raised by a Back-Bencher in the debate in another place. As the time which was available to the Minister was so limited it appears that the position has not been fully explained.
The third point about CCT is that it is not clear what remedies are available to an unsuccessful applicant who has grounds for believing that his tender was not properly considered in accordance with the terms of this order. I believe that also to be a matter of concern for the Government because under Article 21(6) (a) he has locus standi to take judicial review proceedings. But your Lordships will know that a judicial review challenge will in general succeed only if the council's decision was perverse. Moreover, assuming such proceedings to be successful, would it be practicable in the real world for that decision to be reconsidered? I therefore ask the Minister whether there will be another remedy? In passing, I also ask whether the department would also have locus standi to institute judicial review proceedings.
The Labour Party welcomes this part of the order. Article 26 should be useful. That article allows a council to apply for a scheme authorising it to give financial assistance in an emergency. By definition an
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emergency emerges without prior notice and the scheme under Article 26 should therefore be available without endless delay. I ask the Minister how long it will take to obtain such a scheme. I should also like to know what will be the criteria for granting or withholding such approval.
Another helpful provision is to be found in Article 28 which allows a local authority to spend at a rate of 2p in the pound on the promotion of economic development. Can the Minister give us an indication of what would be the product of a rate of 2p in the pound on the rateable value? Here again the question of criteria arises and we should like to know on what grounds consent will be given or withheld.
I have considerable sympathy with Article 29 which introduces a code of local government conduct in Northern Ireland; but I appreciate that opinions differ on that.
I should like to make a general comment about the use of a statutory code. According to my count this order provides for at least three statutory codes. In addition to Article 29 there is a code in Article 35(1) and Article 41, together with regulation-making powers in Articles 7, 9, 21 and 33. Are the codes and regulations available in draft form? If so, have they been fully discussed with the local authorities and the professional and voluntary organisations whose interests will be affected? We certainly accept that there is an important place for a code of practice, with statutory authority, to provide a detailed guidance which would otherwise clutter up the statute book and is sufficiently flexible to be changed in the light of experience. It is desirable that a copy of the proposed code or regulations should be available in draft form before the legislation leaves Parliament. That is what we ought to be aiming at.
Part V contains other important provisions. We completely share the Government's concern about the important need to prohibit a council from using its resources or its position in a way that is designed to give public support for a political party. But does the first amendment, in Article 41, achieve this end? Perhaps I may give an example. If a council publishes a leaflet setting out the perceived merits of the Anglo-Irish Agreement—that being the policy of the SDLP and of the three main parties in Great Britain —or if it sets out the perceived demerits of the agreement—that being the policy of the two Unionist parties—would such a publication be in breach of the proposed Section 115A? Would it make a difference if a council produced a leaflet balancing the merits and demerits, provided it did not attempt to draw a conclusion? Would a council's contribution towards the costs of carriage of this leaflet to distribution points in Northern Ireland be banned by subsection (3)?
My final point relates to the role of the auditor under the proposed Sections 82A and 82D. What exactly is the precise relationship between those two sections? I am in some difficulty in grasping the full implications of those two sections and their relationship, though I readily concede that the fault is probably mine. However, it would be helpful if the Minister could briefly clarify or explain the

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relationship. Is it envisaged that in practice the auditor will proceed to issue a prohibition order if he believes that he has firm grounds for issuing such an order but may seek judicial review proceedings when he believes that he has less firm grounds?
One could say a good deal more about this important order but I shall not burden the House with any more questions or detailed Committee points. Your Lordships will know that this is the only opportunity we have to raise issues which we believe require clarification and on which people in Northern Ireland have written to us seeking clarification. I end by saying that, notwithstanding the CCT provisions, this order will introduce many necessary changes which will go some way to enhance local government in Northern Ireland. On that basis, I support it on behalf of the Labour Party.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, from these Benches I thank the Minister most warmly for his, as always, clear and helpful exposition of the order. I am afraid that we have to give it a somewhat mixed welcome. We support the principle of competitive tendering but I wonder whether the Government are wise to insist on compulsory competitive tendering. We are now beginning to see some of the results of experience in the rest of Great Britain. We have seen, for instance, local authorities being forced to tender for the sale of tiny plots of land with little market value. Although competitive tendering is welcome, the principle of compulsion is not necessarily wise. However, having said that, we warmly welcome the code of conduct and the model standing orders which I think will make a great contribution to local government in Northern Ireland. We also welcome the decision to include fair employment considerations in the factors that can be taken into account when agreeing contracts. Would it not be better if local authorities had a statutory duty to take fair employment into consideration when they decide those contracts?
I have one or two other points. First, I very much welcome what the Minister said about the possibility of paramilitary exploitation of tenders for contracts, for instance, by posing as bona fide contractors for refuse collection or street cleaning. I take his point that Article 21 deals with that. I also take his point that it is something of which the Government are aware. However, I cannot urge on the Government too strongly that this is an area of risk and an area where a good idea could actually become extremely dangerous.
My second specific point concerns the people who were at one time employed by the public service being then taken on by private companies to do the same job. The Minister's honourable friend in another place reported that 80 per cent. of the services contracted out in the rest of the United Kingdom have stayed in-house. Yet presumably the problem is presumably that when workers are re-employed they do not necessarily have the minimum standards or clear wage policies which they had when they were in the public service.
Baroness Phillips: And pension rights, my Lords.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, the noble Baroness mentions their pension entitlements too. The Government need to consider, given that they are talking about the worst paid section of the community, what they can do to put some floor under them in terms of minimum standards in the new situation with which they will be confronted.
The final specific point that I wish to put to the Minister and on which I ask him to comment briefly concerns how he will ensure that, when tendering is done on the basis of relatively small local community areas, it is not done on sectarian lines. A particular local authority may largely be of one community or the other. What will the Government do to ensure that these quite lucrative private contracts do not fall into the hands of contractors aligned in a sectarian way?
In conclusion, one of the problems that the Government have in this piece of legislation—it is a problem that has been accumulating in Northern Ireland—is that, because there is such a lack of any real power at local authority level in Northern Ireland, many responsible members of society are not seeking election. Health, education, social security and planning are already taken out of the hands of local authorities. Is it not possible that, if we begin to remove the only remaining duties of local councillors, we will not get good people who are in touch with their local communities? It is because we somewhat fear the further erosion of the contribution that local government can make in Northern Ireland that our welcome for this order can be only a qualified one.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Prys-Davies and Lord Holme of Cheltenham, for speaking in some detail—although I know we have been brief because we are discussing an order—about such an important local government order. The part about which we have all spoken and to which we have given the most attention is that which concerns compulsory competitive tendering. That is a parity measure in the sense that it is, more or less, putting into effect the provisions of the Local Government Act 1988. However, there are other important matters in the order. Both noble Lords have said a few words about them.
The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, was kind enough to give me notice of about five questions that he wished to ask. Perhaps I may reply to each of them in the order in which they were asked. The noble Lord first asked whether there would be a level playing field so far as concerns the tenderers in compulsory competitive tendering. Of course, I cannot anticipate what councils will put into their specifications. But there are safeguards built into the legislation to ensure that the private sector and the councils' direct service organisations (as they are called in Northern Ireland) are treated on a fair, level playing-field basis.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, asked the very important question as to whether in certain circumstances—and he identified a situation where the council area is a smaller one—the spectre of sectarianism could come stalking onto the scene in tendering. It is important to note that, under the order, councils will be prohibited from doing anything which has the effect of restricting, distorting or

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preventing competition. The Department of the Environment will be monitoring councils' behaviour to ensure that that is complied with. All the time in Northern Ireland we have in the front of our minds the desirability to prevent precisely the point upon which the noble Lord, Lord Holme, put his finger.
The second question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, was what would happen when something goes wrong in mid-contract. He said that problems can occur and spoke cogently about the matter. I appreciate that it is a difficult area. However, it is essential that councils get specifications right and that, in opening up a select list of tenderers, careful consideration is given to the financial standing of those companies applying for the contract.
If the noble Lord will forgive me for saying so, I believe that his question begins to move into the area of contract law. I know perfectly well that he knows a great deal more than I on the subject. If the noble Lord will forgive me for saying so, I do not think that it would be appropriate on this order to seek to cover matters which are properly covered in contract law. I say that, bearing in mind—and in the simplest possible way for my own benefit—that, as I understand it, if a contractor is not performing, then the council, under contract law, will be able to go to arbitration in the first instance. However, I must not move into contract law about which I know little. I shall just say to the noble Lord that I believe that there are safeguards for good practice written into the order. So far as concerns the rest of his question, I believe that contract law applies.
The noble Lord's third question was to ask what the remedy would be for a tendering party who believes that his or her tender has not been properly considered. In addition to any damages which could be awarded as a result of a judicial review in such a case, district councils are subject to sanctions and direction from the department to ensure that they award contracts on a commercially fair basis. I believe it is fair to say that Articles 14, 15 and indeed 19 and 20 are relevant in the matter.
The noble Lord was good enough to welcome Article 26 which is about emergency assistance to councils; for example, in a flood situation. However, he asked how long it would take to set up a scheme of emergency assistance—a very relevant question under the circumstances—and what the criteria would be. There are no plans to introduce a formal set-piece scheme. The power will only be used following an emergency or a disaster. That will enable the department to take into consideration the particular circumstances of the case. By adopting that flexible approach, we believe that the department can respond as sympathetically as possible to councils' requests. It is important that I underline the fact that there is nothing in the order to prevent a scheme being adopted quickly.
It is worth adding—I shall be honest with the noble Lord —that there is no precedent for this in Northern Ireland. I do not think that anything of this kind has ever been produced hitherto. The reason for that is not an overemphasis on caution; it is that usually when
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there is a natural disaster, the main expenditure is found to fall on the statutory organisations, such as the police, the fire service or the Housing Executive. Help is therefore brought to the community through expenditure on the statutory services. Nonetheless, Article 26 is in the order and I am grateful to the noble Lord for welcoming it.
The noble Lord asked me, fifthly, about the criteria for making the twopenny rate payments and what the product of that twopenny rate would be in Northern Ireland. Specific criteria have not been drawn up on what the twopenny rate payments can be put to because it is very much a council-led initiative. The department will be sympathetic to any council proposals, provided that they do not conflict with the work of the statutory bodies, such as the Industrial Development Board and the small business firms' organisation, LEDU—the Local Enterprise Development Unit. The expenditure of twopence in the pound will allow councils to spend, on average, about £100,000 in Northern Ireland, with the larger councils able to spend about £150,000 and the smaller ones about £50,000. Belfast city council will be able to spend about £800,000 on this new provision.
The noble Lord also asked me about the codes in the regulations and about whether they are available now. I must apologise: they are not. The reason is that we are going out to consultation with the district councils before any of the codes or regulations can be introduced. It is important that the department is drafting the codes and regulations with which to take into account the views and the comments of the district councils in Northern Ireland. This is no different from the procedure that we often follow with Westminster legislation. I am thinking of the emergency provisions legislation that we considered last summer, under Section 61 of which we said that there would be an important code of conduct, to which we are sticking, relating to the way in which matters are conducted at the holding centres.
I do not believe that the noble Lord expressed a demand to see the drafting before we introduced the legislation. Therefore, I hope that he will not think that I am being unreasonable when I say that I take his point, but that it is because we are going out to consultation in Northern Ireland, where some changes will undoubtedly be made to the original draft, that I am not able to put drafts before your Lordships before the order is, I hope, agreed to.
The noble Lord fully supports the intention of Article 41, but asked how it will work. The intention of the proposal in Article 41 is to stop councils using council funds to promote a particular party line or dogma for purely party political reasons. In the circumstances described by the noble Lord—he gave an example—it would be for the auditor and/or the court to decide whether such expenditure was legitimate. I would apprehend that that would depend upon the content of the leaflet concerned.
Finally, the noble Lord said that he had difficulty with the role of the auditor under Sections 82A and 82D of Article 38. The two sections that the noble Lord is talking about empower the local government auditor to take immediate steps as soon as he becomes

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aware of a council's course of action that may result in unlawful expenditure. Therefore, in answer to the noble Lord's question, "Does the first section mean that the auditor can go straight for a prohibition order?", my answer is "Yes". When the noble Lord asked, "Does Section 82D refer more to judicial review?", I should put it slightly differently. That section would be used where the auditor discovers, in the normal course of his audit work, that the council has acted unlawfully. The auditor has always had that power. The new power is to be found in Section 82A. With those replies to the points that have been put to me, perhaps I may thank both noble Lords who have spoken and, once again, I beg to move.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Medicinal Products: Prescription by Nurses etc. Bill
2.19 p.m.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
It gives me unusual pleasure to introduce to the House this short Bill. My honourable friend in another place Mr. Roger Sims, who is a recognised champion of nursing and nurses, steered his Private Member's Bill through another place with the utmost speed and dexterity, and he has charged me to do the same. With great skill and success he resolved, with the help of my honourable friend Mrs. Bottomley, the Minister for Health, all doubts and concerns, so that any objections and amendments were put on one side and support from all quarters gladly given. The Bill flowed unimpeded. I am aware that it is asking a great deal to give it equal and exceptional treatment in your Lordships' House but I hope that that will be the case. Perhaps exceptions are in order when a Private Member's Bill has been given total support by the Government, Opposition parties and all the professional bodies involved.
There are nearly half a million nurses in this country. They are heartily tired of being referred to as handmaidens and angels. The Bill refers to them as practitioners. That is as it should be, for years of training amply qualify them as nursing practitioners and have put them in a position of great trust.
In 1985, I chaired a review team to advise the Secretary of State on the future of community nursing. We spent three months touring the country, visiting community nurses and GPs in their practices. It became obvious to us that time was wasted and delays experienced by nurses having to request modest prescriptions to be signed by a doctor. We had sympathy for those GPs who signed blank prescriptions for nurses to fill in, because those doctors trusted nurses implicitly. But those doctors were transgressing. We found other nurses, with years of experience and exceptional skills, frustrated by having to wait, sometimes days, for a doctor to sign a prescription, knowing that in the meantime the patient in their charge was suffering needlessly.
In our many visits we found no one who questioned the skill and experience of, say, Macmillan nurses in
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their ability to care for terminally ill people. Most people we met were aware of and respected the midwives' skills. As one who has had two babies at home, delivered by community midwives, I endorse that. Most people acknowledged that the district nurse was the recognised professional in home care. So often it is the nurse who puts us back together again, physically and mentally, after the doctor has had, perforce, to take us apart. But it is not all tender loving care, nurses need ointments, sprays and dressings, and no one knows better than they do what they need.
As we move to more day surgery and shorter hospital stays, so nurses in the community take on more responsibility. They must be well equipped to do that task. The Bill, although important, is simple. It contains five provisions. First, it specifies that registered nurses, midwives and health visitors, are appropriate practitioners for the purpose of prescribing a limited number of prescription-only medicines under Section 58 of the Medicines Act 1968. It includes a power for the Secretary of State to limit the categories of nurses who can prescribe prescription-only medicines by reference to qualifications and training.
Secondly, the Bill makes a technical amendment to give the Secretary of State additional powers to make secondary legislation under the Medicines Act. Thirdly, it enables community pharmacists to dispense, on the NHS, a specified range of medicines and appliances which have been prescribed by particular categories of registered nurses, midwives or health visitors who have satisfactorily completed a prescribed programme of appropriate training. Fourthly, it applies the provisions to the United Kingdom. Lastly, it includes a provision enabling the Secretary of State to bring the Act into force by order.
By conducting proper consultation, through an expert advisory group, the Department of Health has gained the support of all the nursing professions and organisations. The national training boards are arranging the necessary training courses. There will be nothing slipshod or left to chance. Nurses have always been responsible for their professional actions. I know, from being a member of the United Kingdom Central Council Disciplinary Panel, that that regulating body will allow no nurses to sully their profession.
The BMA has given support to the measure, and after a considerable cost-benefit investigation by Touche Ross, the well-known firm of chartered accountants, even the armoury of the Treasury has been pierced. Touche Ross concluded that nurses make effective use of available resources entrusted to them. They estimate a saving of 2.84 million nurses', carers' and GP hours. To me, that is really significant: all that time wasted fiddling about getting prescriptions when it should be spent caring for people. That is a tangible benefit and it is what people want. The Bill slices through unnecessary bureaucracy and will benefit an estimated 7 million patients every year.
But above all, a highly responsible, highly trained professional group will have the reasonable dignity of being allowed to decide what it needs in order to do

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the job properly. This transcends all other considerations. The whole nursing profession will benefit from this rightful, professional recognition.
I must pay a tribute to the work of the department's advisory group, the experts who hammered out the implications of nurse prescribing. There are six core recommendations and they are very important. The first and second general ones are that prescribing nurses should be well qualified; that they will prescribe in clearly defined circumstances from a limited list and be able to adjust the timing and dosage of medicines within a set patient-specific protocol.
The third specifies that district nurses, health visitors, and practice or private nurses who have had the necessary additional training should be able to prescribe items for people in their care. The fourth is specific to nurses with specialist training who will be able to prescribe for stoma care and continence, and school nurses for lice control.
The fifth recommendation deals with adjusting the timing and dosages by nurses of medicines prescribed by doctors and covers medicines for diabetics and psychiatric patients and nurses working with terminally ill people who need to adjust pain-relieving drugs. I know that my noble friend Lord Mottistone wished to be here today but was unavoidably detained in another part of the country. He is concerned that community psychiatric nurses should not be allowed to prescribe drugs. Under the Bill, they will not be able to do so, thus my noble friend can rest assured that the Government have no intention of introducing such a measure. Paragraph 3.6 of the advisory group's report makes that plain.
The last recommendation is that nurse prescribing should be ready for introduction on 1st April 1992. However, this has been delayed for various reasons and the aim is now October 1993, when training will have been completed.
The suggested formulary covering the range of drugs which nurses will be allowed to prescribe contains only three medicines which cannot be bought over the counter. The formulary will be updated every two years, after wide consultation among the professions by the joint formulary committee. Nurse prescriptions will be distinctive and will be subject to close scrutiny and budgetary control, either by an employing GP or the local district health authority or, where it exists, the local community trust, which employs the community nurses.
The Royal College of Nursing which has done so much to promote the professionalism of all nursing, but in this case of community nurses, makes a special plea for nurses working in rural areas. The RCN can see great benefits to elderly and chronically disabled people, people suffering from a mental illness, those who have diabetes and people who are homeless or dying.
It is now over six years since my review team first made this recommendation; there have been six years of negotiation and evaluation. In other words, 16 million nursing hours have been lost; not needlessly, perhaps, because we have to get things right. But it would be most disappointing if the House were
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instrumental in causing another delay, because without the legislation nothing can happen. It might be a fairly long delay if a general election intervenes and this Private Member's Bill is lost.
I know that there are many Members of your Lordships' House who have great knowledge and expertise in these matters. They may be tempted to improve the Bill, although I gather that at the Committee stage in another place it took less than one minute to pass.
In effect the department has drafted the Bill. My honourable friend in the other place, Mr. Roger Sims, and I have gone through the text with a fine-tooth comb. We have taken advice from many quarters. We hope that your Lordships will feel able to pass this enabling Bill as it stands with no need for further amendment. However, I very much look forward to hearing the debate on this Second Reading of the Bill. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(Baroness Cumberlege.)
2.30 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and many others I welcome the Bill. I congratulate the noble Baroness on the very clear and succinct way in which she introduced it. She is the appropriate person to take the Bill through this House because of her major contribution to community nursing, which is well known to all of us.
The Bill is particularly timely now that, at long last, the primary health care team is receiving the recognition in kind that it has had in words for as long as I have been in practice, which is now most of a professional lifetime. As the noble Baroness hinted, the Bill in effect recognises in law the practice which has long existed in my own case and that of many other doctors. Nurses, particularly district nurses, have virtually prescribed the dressings and appliances which they need for the care of their patients. Prescriptions are sometimes written on a list by nurses and subsequently copied and signed by the doctor. Occasionally, they are written directly on the prescription form by the nurse and signed by the doctor. I do not recommend as a practice the pre-signing of prescriptions by doctors although I know that it occurs sometimes. A high degree of trust exists, as the noble Baroness pointed out, and suggestions from nurses are seldom, if ever, turned down. I know that district nurses are the experts in home care. I value their suggestions.
In hospitals some of the items requested by district nurses from general practitioners are available directly from hospital stores without a prescription being necessary. Even so, I can see that there may well be items which a hospital nurse of appropriate seniority and training, as laid down in and enabled by the Bill, should be able to prescribe, thus saving an over-worked junior hospital doctor considerable routine work. Here I differ from the British Medical Association which strongly objects to hospital nurses being given prescribing rights. After all, only a limited list of items would be permitted, although that may well grow as both professions begin to use the

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provisions of the Bill effectively over the years. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Walton will explain why the British Medical Association is opposed to the provisions of the Bill applying to hospital nurses.
In my practice in anticipation of the Bill we are developing our own list of drugs—and we hope that it will be the same—which our practice nurses, according to a strict protocol and after training and full discussion, will be able to prescribe. That may well be more extensive than the initial list of drugs which the regulations provided for by the Bill may define. We shall watch that aspect with interest.
The professional training of nurses and their ethical code is, in my view, enough to ensure that indiscriminate or unwise prescribing would be extremely unlikely. The provisions of the Bill ensure that only nurses of an appropriate category will be allowed to prescribe. That means that some additional training in prescribing the categories of drugs which are listed will have to be given before any nurse can prescribe. That will act as an appropriate safeguard. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Walton will go into greater detail about the discussions which the medical and nursing professions have had, separately and together, with the Department of Health.
I was surprised that it has been estimated that additional costs of £17 million would accrue as a result of the Bill, because most of the drugs which nurses will prescribe are already prescribed by doctors at the request or suggestion of nurses. However, I understand that that sum has been at least partially calculated to cover the costs of training. Perhaps the noble Baroness will be able to explain that.
It is a good Bill. It will enhance the professional satisfaction and status of nurses; it will save doctors and nurses much time; and, as the noble Baroness has pointed out, it will avoid delay in supplying very necessary items for patients.
2.35 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, I am sure that the House regrets that the noble Baroness, Lady McFarlane of Llandaff, a nurse, has been unable to take part in the debate. It took me nearly four hours to reach here from Oxford this morning. I imagine that the journey from Manchester made it quite impossible for her to reach the House as I am sure that she would have wished to have done.
Perhaps I may echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, in saying how clearly the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, introduced the Bill which I too warmly welcome as a member of the medical profession. For many years doctors and nurses have worked in close association both in hospital and in the community. As the noble Baroness said, many nurses now work in general practices or in association with general practitioners fulfilling the role of a nurse practitioner to the mutual benefit of the patients and of both the medical and nursing professions. The quality of training and experience which many of those community nurses have achieved has increased the level of responsibility which they are able to assume in relation to patient care.
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It is some years since I had the opportunity as president of the General Medical Council, with some of my colleagues, of sitting down with nursing members of the United Kingdom Central Council and with the Royal College of Nursing to discuss the issue of nurse prescribing. At that time we hoped very much that it would become a practical reality. The noble Baroness was one of those who has been most instrumental in making the arrangements possible which have led to the introduction of the Bill.
As the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Rea, said, the British Medical Association welcomes the proposal that suitably qualified nurses working only in the community should be able in clearly defined circumstances to prescribe from a limited list of items and to adjust the timing and dosage of medicines within a set protocol. All nurses working in the primary health care team, including practice nurses, should be eligible for the necessary additional training which would enable them to achieve the qualifications allowing them to prescribe from a nurses' formulary. The arrangements for nurses' prescribing will, under the Bill, ensure that a doctor clinically responsible for the patient is in agreement with the treatment given and that the doctor must ultimately take the final decision if there were to be any disagreement over the treatment of the patient. Good communication with the doctor about variations in dosage will be essential.
All those factors to which I have referred are made possible under the Bill. I trust that your Lordships will agree to give the Bill a Second Reading and, as the noble Baroness suggested, will agree that the Bill has been carefully drafted and is not in need of amendment.
Having made that point, if the Bill becomes an Act, a number of issues may arise regarding the regulations which will be made by the Secretary of State. Certainly, the nurses who would be able to prescribe would include those visiting patients in certain cottage hospitals. However, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Rea, I believe that it would be unwise for that provision to be extended to nurses working in major general hospitals if only because, first, in such hospitals doctors are readily and constantly available to prescribe; and, secondly, the very nature of the illnesses which are being treated in such general hospitals makes it likely that the drug requirements of the patients will be much more complex and that there are potential dangers unless a qualified medical practitioner is available. Those dangers are not only medical. If the extension of the nurses' prescribing powers were to go into such general hospitals, there would be dangers of potential side effects and of those which are medical/legal.
The Bill would give discretion to nurses to take a new degree of independent action, and that is to be welcomed. However, it is important to note that under the regulations which will stem from the Bill there could well be medical/legal implications. If the nurse is an employee of a general practitioner, the GP will be ultimately responsible for his or her actions. If the nurse is an employee of a health authority, the authority will be responsible. The medical defence

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organisations believe that it should be strongly recommended that nurses who will be involved in the new prescribing arrangements should have their own indemnity cover. The clarification of legal liability for nurses, doctors and health authorities will need to be addressed once the Bill becomes an Act, as I hope it will.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Rea, I was surprised by the figure of £17 million in view of the fact that the drugs being prescribed would have been prescribed in any event by the doctors. However, I am sure that the sum covers nurse education and training as well as the cost of producing and distributing a nurses' formulary. Nevertheless, we shall need clarification of the figure. It is also important to bear in mind that in the regulations which will stem from the Bill when and if it becomes an Act we need clarification of the legislative and administrative changes which might enable dispensing doctors in rural areas in particular to dispense items prescribed by nurses. That is not an issue which to the best of my knowledge has been addressed.
The points that I have raised need to be given further consideration only after the Bill becomes an Act. As I said at the outset, as a member of the medical profession I warmly commend this important Bill to the House.
2.42 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I rise to speak on a subject which would normally have been dealt with by my noble friend Lady Robson of Kiddington. She would have congratulated the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, on her work and on her clear presentation of the Bill. It appears to have universal support not only from Members of another place but from medical practitioners, nurses and other interested people.
We on these Benches support the Bill because, principally, it adds to the care of patients in the community. It also adds to the status of nurses, which has lagged behind in recent years. The training given to nurses has fallen behind the increase in their responsibility and capability as regards taking what the noble Lord, Lord Walton, described as discretionary and independent action.
The party for which I speak has a great deal of its representation in rural areas where the new freedom for nurses to prescribe will be clearly appreciated. It has been greatly needed because often there has been a delay which is worrying for patients and frustrating for nurses. They have not been able to prescribe medication which will be included in the new list of drugs available to them as a result of the Bill.
I wish to mention the hospice movement, which I have witnessed in action to some extent in recent times. Admirable developments have been made in the movement, which cares for people who need quick access to medication. There has been evidence of delays which have caused discomfort, pain and anxiety to patients. The Bill will improve that situation.
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I now turn to the amount of additional money that is required to implement the provisions of this Bill. That money has been calculated at £17 million for the United Kingdom as a whole. From what has already been said, I understand that training will account for a large part of that expenditure, but we do not know that that is the case. I wonder why something was not stated on that point in the paragraph of the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum dealing with financial effects. We are left with an unnecessary degree of doubt about how the money will be allocated.
However, I congratulate those who have promoted this Bill on persuading the Treasury to agree to the necessary expenditure. I have no doubt the figure is accurate, but it would be interesting if the noble Baroness in her reply could tell us a little more about the costs and the proportion of those costs that will be taken up for training. What is expected to be the increase in prescribing which will result from this Bill?
We on these Benches thoroughly approve of the Bill and of the consensus it has achieved in all quarters. We wish it speedy progress to the statute book.
2.46 p.m.
Lord Carter: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for introducing this Bill. She has explained it with her usual lucidity and therefore there is no need for me to go through it in any detail. I should follow the convention that applies to those who speak from this Dispatch Box and make it clear that my remarks reflect my personal view. However, my party obviously would agree with my remarks. This Bill is a sensible measure and I would advise my noble friends to support it.
Before I discuss the Bill I should remark that there is a procedural matter that interests me. I believe that this is the fifth Bill on health that has been introduced recently as a Private Member's Bill. We have had the Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Bill; the Osteopaths Bill and this Bill. We shall shortly deal with the Still-Birth (Definition) Bill which is also a Private Member's Bill. The Bill on community care and residential accommodation was also a Private Member's Bill. All those Bills have been welcomed by the department. I believe that most of them have been drafted by the department. In that case why are they not Government Bills? I shall not take up the time of the House in discussing that. I hope that the Minister will write to me about it and place a copy of the reply in the Library for the benefit of other noble Lords who may be interested in the matter. Perhaps the Government's business managers have their business in rather a muddle and have to rely on private Members to get these Bills through.
We have certainly promised the Bill a fair wind and we shall not table any amendments in Committee. The Touche Ross report is a valuable analysis and it underlines a point that was made by my noble friend Lord Rea that nurse prescribing is already happening informally. Like all analyses of this kind, the Touche Ross report is a cost benefit analysis and it depends on

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assumptions. Page 42 of the report contains an excellent summary of the measure that we are discussing. It states:
"We conclude that the nominal value of time saved and the gross costs of nurse prescribing are relatively close, before allowance is made for benefits not evaluated in this study, namely: faster treatment, at times, for patients; benefits from additional items prescribed; increased job satisfaction for nurses".
That quotation leads on to a point which has been made by a number of speakers as regards the financial effects of the Bill. The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum of the Bill states:
"Clauses 2, 3 and 4 will result in an increase in prescribing and dispensing … The cost to the Exchequer has been estimated at about £13.3 million per year for England alone and £17 million for the United Kingdom as a whole".
That clearly implies that the extra cost is due to the extra prescribing and dispensing that will occur. Like other noble Lords I thought that perhaps the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum was ambiguous on costs and that it included training. However, I note that the Touche Ross report states on the page which precedes page 1:
"We have quantified the costs of nurse prescribing that arise from: monetary costs to Family Health Service Authorities for additional prescribing by District Nurses and Health Visitors".
The report then states that there is:
"an annual cost to Family Health Service Authorities, following full implementation of nurse prescribing, of £11.7 million for additional prescription items and £1.7 million for dispensing fees".
It goes on to deal with the costs of the prescription for the pricing authority. We all find that difficult to understand because one assumes that those medicines, bandages and dressings would have been prescribed by doctors which will, after this Bill becomes enacted, be prescribed by nurses. An increase in the number of prescriptions can only mean that doctors have been underprescribing. I find that hard to understand and perhaps the Minister will explain it.
I have only two queries as regards the detail of the Bill and I informed the Minister before the debate that I should be raising these matters. I believe that she is aware of the BMA's anxiety about the effect of the Bill on dispensing doctors. The BMA says that clarification is needed on the legislative and administrative changes required to enable dispensing doctors to dispense items prescribed by nurses. As far as we are aware, that problem has not been resolved by the Department of Health. The BMA says that it is possible that an amendment may be needed to the Bill. I hope that an amendment is not needed, but perhaps the Minister can clarify the position.
The other question concerns the growth of the prescribing of generics and pack dispensing, which will increase over time. As the formula is updated and changed, presumably proper account will be taken of the use of generic drugs.
Apart from those two points of detail, we welcome the Bill and we shall do our utmost to ensure that it reaches the statute book before the election.
2.50 p.m.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Cumberlege for bringing forward this Bill. I welcome the support that it has
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received. Many of your Lordships may know, of course, that the Government have supported the principle of nurse prescribing since it was the subject of a recommendation in the 1986 report on community nursing by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege. The report recommended that:
"The DHSS should agree a limited list of items and simple agents which may be prescribed by nurses as part of a nursing care programme, and issue guidelines to enable nurses to control drug dosage in well-defined circumstances".
Since then a great deal of work has been carried out. As a first step, the Government set up the advisory group on nurse prescribing to advise on,
"how arrangements for the supply of drugs, dressings, appliances and chemical reagents to patients as part of their nursing care in the community might he improved by enabling such items to be prescribed by a nurse".
The advisory group report recommended among other things that nurses working in the community who had district nurse or health visitor qualifications should be permitted to prescribe items from a limited list of products needed for the nursing care of their patients and to supply medicines, or vary their timing and dosage, within agreed protocols.
The Bill of my honourable friend Mr. Roger Sims in the other place provides the primary legislation to enable the prescribing aspect of the recommendations to be implemented. I should, however, mention that we are at the same time taking forward the recommendations concerning supply and changing timing and dosage. However, I understand that they do not require primary legislation.
The advisory group also recommended that a more thorough study of the benefits and a full assessment of the costs of nurse prescribing were needed before final decisions about implementation could be made. As a consequence the Government commissioned Touche Ross to carry out a cost-benefit analysis, copies of which are available in the Library.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter, and other noble Lords raised the issue of financial costs. The Touche Ross report considered that, apart from the one-off costs of implementation, nurse prescribing will cost the Exchequer £15 million per year in England. Most of those extra costs —approximately £11.65 million —are estimated to arise from additional items prescribed. I can understand noble Lords finding that rather strange. I do not believe that those costs will arise as a result of doctors underprescribing in the past. However, I understand that nurses can reach people such as travelling and rootless people. That will be of great help to individuals. Also, they will have greater contact and quicker recognition of symptoms and, one hopes, for the benefit of the people concerned, quicker resolution of the illness. I can assure the House that it is not a figure costed lightly; it will bring benefit to the patients. In addition, there are the costs of pharmacists' dispensing fees, costs at the Prescription Pricing Authority for pricing nurses' prescriptions and monitoring them, the cost of providing copies of the nurse prescribers' formulary, the drug tariff and prescription pads, and various other administrative costs.
Against these costs must be set the considerable benefits from introducing nurse prescribing. Nurse prescribing would do away with the need for doctors

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to spend their time signing prescriptions for items which nurses need for the care of patients. Appropriately trained nurses would be able to sign them instead. Also, community nurses would no longer have to make trips to the surgery to get prescriptions signed. On an individual basis such time savings are not substantial, but taken as a whole, as my noble friend Lady Cumberlege said, a considerable amount of time will be freed up which community nurses and general practitioners could devote to patient care.
More important, however, are the benefits to patients and their carers. Patients will be able to obtain their medicines and appliances more speedily, which may often mean quicker resolution of problems. In addition, they and their carers will be saved journeys to their doctors' surgeries—not always easy for someone who is ill. And there are other benefits. Community nurses will have the satisfaction of being allowed to take full responsibility for the nursing care they are providing. That is right and proper.
The products which the advisory group thought should be available for appropriately trained community nursing staff to prescribe are listed in Appendix E of its report. Again, copies are available in the Library. Most items on the list can be bought over the counter by patients, if desired, except for the following prescription-only medicines: Nystatin, for oral fungal infections; Clotrimazole, an antifungal preparation; Iodosorb, a medicated dressing, and Varidase, a desloughing agent.
That list is, of course, only illustrative. However, we expect that the final nurse prescribers' formulary will cover roughly the same range as the illustrative one. It is for the nurse prescribers' sub-committee of the joint formulary committee, which produces the British national formulary and the dental practitioners' formulary, to produce a nurse prescribers' formulary. Medical, nursing and pharmaceutical interests are represented on this sub-committee, which has already met twice, and plans to complete its work in the summer.
I said earlier that in line with the advisory group's recommendations nurse prescribing will, at least initially, be limited to those nurses holding a district nurse or health visitor qualification. It is only after monitoring and evaluation of this that other areas may be considered. I hope that that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Walton.
Before such nurses may prescribe, they will of course need training in nurse prescribing. At present the health departments are working with the UKCC and national boards to develop a free-standing module for appropriately qualified nurses. Longer term, it is intended that such training will be incorporated into the curriculum for district nursing and health visiting training. The UKCC has advised the Department of Health about standard, kind, content and length of courses, and the national boards are now organising discussions with course tutors. The courses will cover the items on the nurse prescribers' formulary, drug interactions, reporting adverse
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reactions, communications with other professionals, good practice in prescribing, budgetary accountability and monitoring, and all other relevant issues.
I am pleased to be able to report that extra money has been made available for this training module. Government have provided funds in 1992–93 for setting up the courses and producing training materials, and funds for the subsequent two years for running the training modules. We envisage that about 23,000 nurses will attend the special courses between April 1993 and April 1995. Nurses who have satisfactorily completed the training module will have their details submitted by the national boards to the UKCC, who will identify them as nurse prescribers on the UKCC register. Eligibility to prescribe can then be checked by bona fide enquirers with the UKCC at any time.
I would like in passing to mention the arrangements for budget accountability and monitoring. More work needs to be done in this area and the Department of Health is working closely with the Prescription Pricing Authority to develop suitable mechanisms. Where nurse prescribers are practice nurses—that is to say, employed by general practitioners —we envisage their prescribing costs being linked to their general practitioners' indicative or actual prescribing budgets. Where, however, nurse prescribers are health authority employed, we envisage each provider unit being responsible for prescribing costs. But, as I said, more work is to be done in this area before final decisions can be taken.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter, kindly gave me notice of the fact that he was questioning the "possible muddle" of government legislation. I am delighted to say that that is not the issue. The issue is that there is no way in which this Bill could have been brought forward before the cost-benefit report was available. That was in November and therefore it could not have been part of the gracious Speech. It is felt that the benefits can be obtained more quickly by taking advantage of my honourable friend Mr. Sims's ability to bring the matter forward.
As regards other matters raised by noble Lords, as has been rightly said it is not necessary to discuss them in detail at this stage. I can only assure them that they will be comfortable with the answers on all those issues. I am sure that my noble friend will draw specific attention to them.
Given the strength of commitment to nurse prescribing that exists on all sides of the House and with professionals, patients and their carers, I hope that I have convinced all your Lordships that the Bill of my honourable friend in the other place is a positive step forward and one that the Government are fully committed to implementing.
I thank my noble friend Lady Cumberlege for bringing the measure forward today. There is still much that needs to be done and the work required to train nurse prescribers, prepare secondary legislation and make the developments needed at the Prescription Pricing Authority means that implementation cannot take place before October 1993. We are working hard to ensure that this implementation date will be met.
3.2 p.m.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and for the generous remarks that have been made about my personal efforts in trying to get this particular measure enacted. I again pay tribute to my honourable friend in another place, Mr. Roger Sims, and also to the nursing profession which has been unceasing in its attempts and efforts to ensure that this Bill becomes a reality.
I am grateful but not surprised by the overwhelming support for this measure, which I believe is a very common-sense one. It will be effective. It will not only enhance the professionalism of nursing but perhaps, more importantly, it will benefit sick and suffering people.
Perhaps I may pick up one or two points made by noble Lords. I very much welcome the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, who is, I believe, the only active practitioner in the Chamber today. He may be the only active practitioner in the House, but perhaps there is one other. I know that the noble Lord is very effective in his practice. I know his practice. It combines the elements of efficiency, effectiveness and compassion. It sets the highest standards in patient care in central London, which is not easy.
The noble Lord raised the question of hospital nurses being allowed to prescribe. Although I share the sentiments and the intentions expressed in that view, I favour the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant. It is early days. We have to experience what this measure will mean for both doctors and nurses before we consider further widening the categories of nurses who are allowed to prescribe.
I share with all noble Lords their views on costs. I have listened very carefully to what my noble friend the Minister has said on the subject, and as always she has been most lucid and persuasive. However, I do harbour the suspicion that perhaps costs have been over-estimated, but that is a fault on the right side. So often costs are underestimated, to the annoyance of the Treasury.
The noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, who has had such a distinguished and inspiring career, raised the question of legal implications. As I understand it, the well-known principle of employers' vicarious responsibility remains. But nurses will, of course, have their own professional indemnity. I understand that this is an area where the department intends to issue covering guidance before nurse prescribing is introduced to enhance clarity. I hope very much that we shall be able to satisfy the concerns of the British Medical Association. If this Act is to work properly it needs partnership in its broadest sense between doctors and nurses.
I should like to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, for passing on the kind thoughts of his noble friend Lady Robson who was my predecessor as regional health authority chairman in South West Thames. Her reputation still enhances the work of the authority. I very much agree with the noble Viscount that rural areas will greatly benefit and I share his admiration for the hospice movement.
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The noble Lord, Lord Carter, brought to the debate the support of his party for this Bill. I should like to thank him for that and for his undertaking not to amend the Bill further.
My noble friend the Minister has given the Government's support. That is of course crucial, for I fear that we shall be overtaken shortly by events beyond our control. In conclusion, I welcome the support that has been given this afternoon to give this Bill a speedy passage. That we are able to enact the Bill. I am sure that the nursing profession throughout the country will be very grateful. Finally, I formally request this House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Still-Birth (Definition) Bill
3.6 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. In presenting this short Bill to your Lordships I bring before you a measure which has come unamended from another place where it was introduced by Mrs. Rosie Barnes, with all-party support. I hope that the same fair wind will speed it through your Lordships' House.
The main provision of the Bill is to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Acts by reducing from 28 weeks to 24 weeks the gestational age at which a baby is recognised as still-born. There is an important humanitarian motive for this which I shall shortly explain. It will also make the definition consistent with the consensus view of professional bodies about the gestational age at which a foetus could be said to be viable. Pressure to amend the law in this respect has increased since 1990 when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act inserted the time limit of 24 weeks for the majority of abortions under the Abortion Act.
As the law stands, considerable additional stress can be and is caused to parents if a child is born dead as the formal term of pregnancy is nearing its end but where the period of gestation is just too short for it to fall within the legal definition of a still-birth. In those circumstances the death is regarded as a miscarriage, which gives the baby no legal status and denies the parents the formal procedures which a still-birth involves.
It is true that some hospitals have introduced voluntary procedures, but these vary considerably from area to area. Some hospitals may have made arrangements with their local crematorium, others have burial areas in local cemeteries. But generally the remains of miscarriages are incinerated and the grief of parents has no outlet in any form of dignified procedure.
After 28 weeks the picture changes radically. The law, as it currently stands, requires certain definite procedures. The doctor or midwife who attended the delivery, or who examined the baby's body after delivery, will issue a medical certificate of a still-birth. The parents will attend before the local registrar and formally register their child as a still-birth. The

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still-born child may be given a name and a still-birth certificate is issued. Documents are made available to allow for the child to be buried or cremated.
These formalities—in particular being able to name the child and obtain a birth certificate and, if they so choose, to arrange a funeral—are greatly valued by many parents as a recognition of the baby's existence.
By reducing to 24 weeks the limit by which a child born dead is formally and legally recognised as a still-birth it is estimated that in the UK as a whole the facility to formally register the dead foetus as a still-birth will be available in some 900 cases which would otherwise have been regarded as miscarriages. This is the humanitarian cause to which I referred and which I am sure will find favour both inside and outside the House. It also has the committed support of professional bodies such as the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Nurses, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the British Medical Association, and voluntary organisations, in particular the Still-Birth and Neonatal Deaths Society—SANDS is the acronym—whose publication A Dignified Ending is to be recommended as essential background reading on this whole issue.
It may be appropriate to address here a question that might be forming in some people's minds concerning the very few abortions carried out after 24 weeks—there were only 21 such abortions in England and Wales in 1991—and their position under the Bill. In such cases, which will be very few in number, the delivery will be recorded as a still-birth and an abortion. At that stage in a pregnancy an abortion is most often carried out because of a substantial fetal abnormality. In these circumstances the disappointment of losing a wanted baby is bound to be heavy and the parents are likely to welcome being able to obtain a still-birth certificate. In this respect I would argue that the Bill constitutes an improvement on the present situation.
As a natural accompaniment to the lowering of the definition of still-birth to 24 weeks, the Bill also enables statutory maternity pay (SMP) and maternity allowance (MA) to be paid to those additional mothers who will now qualify under the new definition. This requires an amendment to the definition of "confinement" in the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, which received Royal Assent on Thursday 13th February, but whose provisions do not come into effect until 1st July of this year, or if not in force by the time the provisions of this Bill come into force, the Social Security Act 1986. This will have the effect of enabling SMP and MA to be paid to qualifying mothers where a child has been still-born after 24 weeks' gestation.
As regards the number of women who will benefit from these changes to social security law, it is expected that about 300 more will qualify for SMP and MA than at present. The additional cost of these payments is estimated at £0.5 million in a full year. About 90 per cent. of these costs will be reflected in payments of SMA, with the remaining 10 per cent. being payments of MA. There will be no additional demand on the social security budget, as it has been agreed that the
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Department of Health should cover this additional expenditure and transfer the necessary funds to the Department of Social Security for this purpose. A money resolution to this effect has been passed in another place.
The Bill will apply to England, Wales and Scotland but contains power also to make corresponding provision under the Northern Ireland Act 1974. It is proposed that the Bill should come into force on 1st October this year. This will allow time for making an Order in Council under the Northern Ireland Act and for the issue of instructions and necessary documentation to registrars, hospital administrators and medical practitioners.
I think it is incumbent on me to take the House very briefly through the clauses. Clause 1(1) amends the Births and Deaths Registration Acts in England and Wales and provides for an amendment to the existing definition of a still-birth in the terms that I have described. Clause 1(2) provides for a corresponding amendment to be made to the law of Scotland. Clause 2(1) (a) and (b) amends the definition of "confinement" in the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act for the purposes of entitlement to maternity allowance and statutory maternity pay respectively by reducing the period of pregnancy after which a labour is treated as a confinement, where a child is born dead, from 28 weeks to 24 weeks.
Clause 2(2) (a) and (b) amends that definition for the same purposes in the Social Security Act 1986 in the unlikely event that the Still-Birth (Definition) Bill comes into force before the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act, which comes into effect from 1st July 1992.
The effect of Clause 2(1) and (2) is to confer entitlement to statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance to qualifying women where a child is born dead after 24 weeks' gestation.
Clause 3 gives power to Her Majesty by Order in Council to make provision for Northern Ireland corresponding to that which the Bill makes for Great Britain. The clause prescribes the negative resolution procedure for the Order in Council. That will enable the order to be made as soon as possible after the Bill receives Royal Assent.
Clause 4 provides for the Short Title, commencement and extent.
I should like to conclude with a personal experience which, if not exactly within the scope of the Bill, is very close to it. Many years ago, my wife gave birth to a premature child who died minutes after birth and would therefore have qualified in this country for a birth and a death certificate whatever the period of gestation. However, this took place in Spain where the regulations are different. I am not criticising another country for having different procedures. I think that I could probably have made better arrangements than I actually did had my wife not suffered a serious haemorrhage and had I not been naturally more concerned with her survival than with the disposal of the baby's remains.
However, the result was that no proper burial took place and the child was consigned to a common grave. We had decided on a name for him, but it was never

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recorded. It is something that my wife and I have never ceased to regret. I can testify on our behalf how extraordinarily difficult it is to get over a loss which has not been recognised or signified in any formal way. On those grounds, in addition to those that I have already stated, it gives me a particular satisfaction to present to your Lordships a Bill designed to alleviate the distress of a considerable number of parents faced with a similar type of grief.I commend the Bill to the House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(Lord Kilmarnock.)
3.16 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I rise briefly to express my support for the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, on the Bill, which, as he explained, is in effect consequential. It recognises that legislation which is now applicable to a foetus of 28 weeks' gestation —namely, that it should be registered and given what is in effect a combined birth and death certificate to allow burial or cremation—should apply to a foetus of 24 to 28 weeks' gestation.
The noble Lord very graphically described in personal terms the distress which parents feel when they lose a potentially viable child. It so happens that I have had a personal experience which is almost precisely the same. Therefore, I know that we are dealing with an important and sensitive area. I believe that the noble Lord presented the Bill in a very suitable and sensitive way.
In fact, the moment that the movements of an unborn child are detected by the mother is very significant. From then on the foetus starts to be felt as a separate entity from its parents. That usually occurs at around 16 to 20 weeks gestation. However, it has almost no chance of a separate existence outside the womb until 24 weeks. So that is the logical point at which the current definition should be changed, rather than waiting, as now, until 28 weeks. That may have been the logical age 40 years ago in 1953, when the current legislation was passed. But today it is possible for babies with as little as 24 weeks' gestation to survive.
Because of the remarks that I made about the feelings of the mother when experiencing foetal movements, there may be a case for lowering the age of still-birth even further than 24 weeks. The emotional bond starts to increase from the moment that those movements are felt. The mother's grief will not necessarily be any less if she loses the child at 23 weeks rather than at 24 weeks. Counselling and the parents' personal acclimatisation to their loss is helped, as the noble Lord pointed out so well, by the outward recognition of that loss that is allowed by registration, naming and a form of burial and cremation.
If we were to go below 24 weeks, the question of how far back one should go would arise. I can see endless difficulties in deciding on a suitable cut-off point. However, the organisation that the noble Lord mentioned, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society, which supports mothers who have suffered a still-birth
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or neonatal death, feels that future legislation should consider a gestation period that is even shorter than 24 weeks.
I think that this Bill has got it about right. I hope that the House will carry Mrs. Barnes' Bill through quickly without amendment so that it reaches the statute book before Parliament is dissolved. I have no difficulty in supporting the Bill and I hope that the rest of your Lordships' House will do the same.
3.21 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, I am sure that we are all very grateful to Mrs. Rosie Barnes for introducing this Bill into another place. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, on the clear, comprehensive and sensitive way in which he has explained its provisions in your Lordships' House. My comments, too, will be extremely brief.
An article published in the February 1991 issue of British Medical Association's News Review begins:
"Thirteen years after she gave birth to her first baby, who was born dead 24 weeks into her pregnancy, Jeanette Philpott gave birth to a second baby, also at 24 weeks—and also born dead. Her first baby was taken away immediately, but the second was given a dignified burial in a marked grave. Jeanette is sure she recovered much more quickly from her second loss than from her first because of the sensitive way in which it was handled. 'There was no comparison,' she said.
The burial helped me to face the baby's death.
The death of a stillborn baby is always a tragedy for the parents. Being able to have that death formally acknowledged is an important part of the grieving process. The ability to give the baby a dignified burial and to have a certificate recognising its existence is of very great value to parents suffering such a bereavement. This Bill would help to deal sensibly with parents' wishes. I commend it to the House and trust that it will be given an unopposed Second Reading.
3.23 p.m.
Lord Carter: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, for introducing the Bill and explaining it so clearly. As is the convention, I speak from this Dispatch Box to give my personal view. I shall not be proposing any amendments. My personal view is particularly relevant because, like other noble Lords who have spoken, we experienced a miscarriage with our first child at seven months. Even though that happened 34 years ago, I can still remember very clearly the trauma of that time, especially for the mother.
As has been said, the Bill has been welcomed by everybody, including the Royal College of Midwives, the British Medical Association and others. We are dealing with what is a sensitive and agonising time for parents. Their bereavement would certainly be eased by the ability to say goodbye properly and to arrange a burial service.
Hospital practices in this area have not always been as sensitive as they might have been. There used to be many old wives' tales in maternity hospitals about what happened to dead foetuses. All that can be put behind us. The Bill will go a long way towards making a tragic time a little more bearable.

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One of the financial effects of the Bill is to increase the entitlement to statutory maternity pay, which is entirely proper and sensible. As I have said, we all welcome the Bill. As far as I am aware, it went through the other place with the minimum of debate at all stages. I hope that today the Bill can have an equally speedy passage through this House.
3.25 p.m.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, for bringing forward the Bill and for sharing with us, as did other noble Lords, his own sad experiences. There can be few, if any, more difficult experiences for any person to face than the loss of a baby. I also express our gratitude to Mrs. Barnes who brought the Bill forward in the other place.
We have in recent years seen a radical change in the way the death of a baby, a still-birth or a miscarriage, is treated, and I am pleased to acknowledge the valuable work of health professionals and of the voluntary organisations in that respect. With a better understanding of the feelings of others has come also the realisation that bereaved parents should be given the opportunity to express their grief and time to come to terms in their own way with their loss. We have heard how difficult that is and that there is no limit to the time it takes. The proposals before us will extend to those parents whose baby is born dead between 24 and 28 weeks gestation the right to have their baby's existence legally acknowledged and recorded formally.
The noble Lord described the present situation when a child is born dead at a fairly late stage of pregnancy, even up to 28 weeks, where, because the period of gestation is just too short to fall within the existing definition of a still-birth, the parents are deprived of the registration of their child with all that that brings. The comfort for bereaved parents of being able to give their child a legal identity and to obtain a birth certificate is well appreciated.
Instances have arisen where twins were born prematurely before 28 weeks, with one born alive and the other born dead. As the law stands, one would be registered as a live birth whereas the remaining twin would be classed as a miscarriage and not registered. In other words, the child born alive would receive a birth certificate while the child born dead would receive no formal recognition. The child born alive, even if it died shortly afterwards, would also be entitled to a formal burial, whereas any arrangements made for the twin would be dictated very much by local practice.
Many hospitals have developed special procedures to deal with those tragic deaths, including where a child is born dead before 28 weeks, providing parents with a letter from the doctor or midwife stating that their baby was born before the legal age of viability. Such practices have been encouraged by the Department of Health, which has issued to the NHS copies of the Still-birth and Neonatal Death Society booklet Guidelines to Professionals. Those guidelines are a helpful source of information and play a useful
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role in helping health professionals to have a better understanding of the special support parents may require after suffering the trauma of losing their baby.
The proposals in the Bill will require that all children born after 24 weeks of pregnancy, whether born alive or, sadly, born dead, are formally registered and not, as now, regarded differently in the eyes of the law.
The Bill is uncontroversial and worth while and will be welcomed by professionals and the public. The Government are on record as accepting that a change to 24 weeks in the definition of still-birth is called for and fully support the Bill.
I am also pleased to say that the Government fully endorse the noble Lord's proposal to amend the definition of "confinement" in social security legislation which is a logical consequence of the main purpose of the Bill. That will allow an estimated 300 more mothers every year to obtain statutory maternity pay or state maternity allowance where a child is born dead after 24 weeks of pregnancy instead of after 28 weeks of pregnancy as at present.
Today we may have the opportunity to exercise our privileges in a most worthwhile manner. For the unfortunate people involved in these tragic circumstances, and the professionals who help them, the Bill is an important piece of legislation. I hope that your Lordships will give it swift passage.
3.29 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate for their support. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, that possibly an investigation of a lower limit might be desirable at some time in the future. I was glad to hear him say that at present we have got it about right. I was also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, for his support and to the noble Lord, Lord Carter, on behalf of the Labour Party.
It was interesting to note that no fewer than three of your Lordships, including myself, have experience of something along those lines. That goes to show that it is not so remote a possibility or so unusual an experience.
It is not necessary for me to say more; not a voice has been raised against the Bill. Support has been universal, the Government accept it and will provide the necessary funding for the social security implications. Thus, my hopes that the Bill will receive a fair wind in your Lordships' House have so far been realised. It is very much my hope that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading today and that we shall manage to get it on to the statute book before Parliament is dissolved. I commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Traffic Calming Bill
3.30 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Private Member's measure has come from another place under the careful nurturing of my honourable friend Mr. Mans, who achieved all-party support there. Its purpose is to reduce road casualties in built-up areas, especially in the residential streets of our towns and villages, and to improve the road environment near where people live.
The Bill proposes to achieve that by enabling the Department of Transport and the Scottish Office to lay regulations to provide a framework of acceptable traffic calming measures. It rather surprised me that after today's Motion was put on the Order Paper, several noble Lords asked me what traffic calming measures were. They are defined in Clause 1(3) as:
"works affecting the movement of vehicular and other traffic for the purpose of promoting safety or preserving or improving the environment through which the highway runs".
Clause 2(2) (c) gives the same definition as it applies to Scotland.
That is fine so far as it goes, but I have to explain that the works in question are not road humps or "sleeping policemen", as they are popularly known. These are the only traffic calming measure for which there is currently legislative provision. Although they have their use in slowing down traffic in urban areas, I do not believe that they are successful on bus routes or roads in regular use by the police, fire or ambulance brigades. Indeed, they are widely resented by these groups of professional drivers who find that not only do they cause deterioration to their vehicles, but they cause suffering to their passengers and crew. I refer, of course, to the original type of humps. I am delighted to see that recent regulations on improved design have been achieved by the Department of Transport.
Private motorists, too, have in the past suffered knocked oil sumps and fractured silencers. The emergency services, the RAC and the AA are all supporters of the Bill, as are the highway authorities, Transport 2000 and Friends of the Earth, to whom I owe special thanks for their work on the Bill. That amounts to a pretty powerful combination.
The kind of measures that I see as being covered by the Bill are rough road surfaces, chicanes, gutters, increased kerb heights, with the attendant occasional ramp for disabled people, pavement widening and bollards. They could be used in addition to the measures in the Department of Transport's recent and successful urban safety demonstration project, about which we shall doubtless hear something from my noble friend Lord Astor.
It is a blight on urban motorists that such measures are required. But when I say that in 1990 there were 2,400 fatal accidents on our built-up roads out of a total casualty rate of 234,500, the need is readily apparent. When I add that the number of casualties is 70 per cent. of the total and that they occurred when the speed limit was 40 miles per hour or less, it is clear that, in the words of Edward VIII as Prince of Wales,
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"Something must be done". The tragic loss of life and damage to people's bodies reflected in those figures, to say nothing of the burden placed upon the police, the ambulance service, doctors and hospitals, mean that anything that can be done to reduce them should be done and done quickly.
The Department of Transport has calculated that a vehicle travelling at 40 miles per hour is bound to kill a child, but at 30 miles per hour half the children struck would be killed, and at 20 miles per hour one in 20 would be killed. The "anything" I referred to a few moments ago is clearly reducing urban motoring speeds. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Government wanted to introduce similar measures themselves but, as happens far too often in our crowded parliamentary sessions, were unable to secure a suitable legislative vehicle. The Bill provides them with an opportunity to give a boost to their stated objective of reducing road casualties by a third by the year 2000. I hope that they will seize it with open arms because it has been proved that the measures I have outlined work.
Some 25 years ago I lived and worked for a year in Holland where traffic calming was beginning to be introduced. More recently, in the past 10 years, West Germany has invested heavily in such measures and there has been a drop in pedestrian fatalities from 6.2 to 2.3 per 100,000 of the population, a reduction of fractionally under two thirds. That is a very impressive figure. However, I am afraid to say that that compares with a fall in the United Kingdom of only half that number. I am also afraid that it is a horrific fact that in 1980 there were fewer such deaths in the United Kingdom than in West Germany, but in 1990 there were more, in spite of the Government's success in reducing road accidents in other areas, notably through the drink/drive campaigns highlighted so well by my former colleague Mr. Bottomley.
Horrific as the situation undoubtedly is, I do not bring the Bill before the House only to reduce road accidents. Traffic-calming schemes on the Continent have included very attractive planting schemes, especially of trees. In spite of my green credentials I do not have an interest to declare in this respect. I have never sold a tree to anyone, but I recognise their value in prettifying the urban environment. Shrubs, however, are a different matter. Planting them in large groups often results in a road hazard as children and even elderly people can emerge from behind them very suddenly, resulting in emergency braking, skidding and injury. Trees, however, with the sight-obscuring lower branches removed, can and do, if planted in strategic places, cause traffic to slow down.
It is noticeable that trees do not grow well in tarmac or, rather, in small areas of soil surrounded by tarmac. They do far better in planting holes surrounded by bricks or stone sets so that the rain can penetrate over a wider area. Bricks or stone sets are themselves traffic-calming measures, so those comments are not merely gratuitous horticultural advice to local highway authorities.
Having said that, a recent Kew study, which I received only this week, has shown conclusively that shrubs improve the environment by making it quieter

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and reducing airborne pollution by fixing carbon as they grow, thus offsetting the carbon released by the burning of fossil fuels of which petrol is a major example. Therefore, banks of shrubs parallel but not at right-angles to the pavement are most desirable, but not as traffic-calming measures.
Finally, I refer briefly to the two schedules—Schedule 1 relating to England and Wales and Schedule 2 relating to Scotland. They are the nuts and bolts of the Bill and specify that traffic-calming works are to be the subject of prescribed regulations or to be specially authorised by the relevant Secretary of State. They also make clear that the schemes are to be treated not as an obstruction but as an integral part of the highway and are to be maintained as such. They also put beyond doubt that any powers which the authority already has to erect or remove such works shall not be prejudiced by the fact that they are not covered by the regulations as virtually all the regulations made under the Highways Act 1980, which the Bill amends, are subject to annulment by either House of Parliament.
In summary, this is a useful Bill, a Bill wanted by everyone involved. I hope that it will receive the blessing of the House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be read a second time.—[Lord Skelmersdale.]
3.40 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale for introducing and explaining the purpose of the Bill. While I do not deny that the Bill plugs a rather large loophole in the 1980 Act, it gives rise to some concern.
The specific anxiety that I wish to underline today —I hope that the Minister is able to give me some assurance—is that in the schedules the relevant Secretaries of State have some impressive powers; they can make regulations. Nowhere in the Bill does it suggest that those Secretaries of State shall consult with any other bodies. One has to recognise that the highway authorities, to which the responsibility will be devolved, do not have any consultative obligations. I hope therefore that the Minister will reassure me on that point.
I do not disagree with my noble friend's resumé of the accident rates, and so on. However, I question some of his remarks on those measures which he envisages as traffic calming measures, in particular those relating to trees, shrubs and so on. I do not pretend this afternoon to be able to give a complete list of measures that might be taken. Let us hope that this simple and straightforward Bill gives a spurt of energy to that new breed of people called road traffic engineers or road traffic managers. It seems to me that for too long local authorities and highway authorities have used the road hump, the sleeping policeman, in its various forms as the only method available to them for traffic calming. There are innumerable other measures. If a little more investment and effort went into the design of traffic management schemes, much of the damage which my noble friend seeks to prevent by introducing the Bill would be set aside.
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I should declare an interest to your Lordships. I am a member of the Public Policy Committee of the Royal Automobile Club. The RAC states in its excellent brief:
"Good traffic calming relies on a creative combination of these measures. In countries where traffic calming is well established (largely in northern Europe) reliance on humps is minimal … There is a need for standards and regulations to be wider in scope applying to a wider range of measures so that local authorities are aware of what is permitted".
It suggests, and I concur, that we need higher quality and higher standards.
Perhaps one may be anecdotal. Noble Lords will see that I have been somewhat injured, right outside the Palace of Westminster in Abingdon Street. It appears to me that the new traffic lights in Parliament Square, which culminate in a pedestrian crossing at the beginning of Millbank, have now become a trial site road testing area. Cars leap off that traffic light in a surge in the need to reach Vauxhall Bridge Road faster than anyone else has ever done it. Previously it was a long trail of traffic; now we have a trial. Perhaps those who are responsible might allow some of your Lordships who have been knocked down in that road a greater sense of security.
One hopes that, in the traffic management schemes which the Bill will help to promote, the highway authorities will use all the tools at their disposal rather than imposing blanket restrictions on the use of a motor car, as some authorities are inclined to do. The motor car and motor vehicles generally are an essential part of our economy. They should be fostered but they should also be directed. If the Bill does any reasonable good to the further direction of the use of motor vehicles, I welcome it.
3.45 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, described its contents most ably. I agree that its title is quaint and it is also attractive. I doubt whether in Holland or Germany the Bill would be described as such. Its title pays tribute to the flexibility and charm of the English language. Traffic calming can mean many things. Taken together with the Aggravated Vehicle-Taking Bill, a rather strange picture may be painted for those who are not familiar with the chaos on our streets.
The Bill's aims are clear and they are most welcome. I lived for a while in London in what is commonly known as a "rat run". It was a quiet street in a residential area which was used at certain times of the day to join two major roads. During that period the road became extremely dangerous and there were many accidents. However, the local authority was loath to introduce any of the measures which are included in the Bill—for example, the humps—because of the potential problems that it might face in the event of accidents, claims for damages and so forth. The Bill goes most of the way towards dealing with such problems.
However, I doubt whether the Bill will do much to calm drivers. They will be extremely irritated wherever they go by any measure which decreases their speed. The selfishness, intolerance and rudeness of drivers in

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London has become marked in recent times. On the other hand, I have no doubt that there will be a certain amount of calming for parents of small children, owners of animals and old people who live near roads which produce an enormous amount of traffic noise. There is no doubt that, in reducing the speed of traffic vehicles, one reduces the noise. However, in slowing down the type of traffic that one gets in South London one may reduce the engine noise but not the length of time when one must listen to loud music coming from a car which in the summer has its windows and roof open. The music is played at a level of decibels which will cause damage to anyone who has to listen to it for long. I hope that the problem will be dealt with in the near future by other legislation.
The Bill will be of great benefit to people in built-up areas and it can only lead to further sensible measures in relation to the environment. By introducing measures to reduce the amount of traffic—for example, by using trees —one creates variety in the streets. Sometimes streets are narrowed to create what are called traffic throttles. Bollards are put in place in order to slow down the traffic which must pass between. If done imaginatively, all such measures will enhance the appearance of our streets, in addition to improving safety and reducing noise.
Although the Bill goes some way towards dealing with the increasing problem of motor cars, I suggest that if noble Lords want to be calm in traffic they should think of riding a motor cycle. I rode a motor cycle this morning, not having heard the tragic news about the bomb that had exploded in London. I was able on my motor cycle to pass rather smugly through some of the worst traffic I have seen in London for a long time. Together with the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, I have formed a parliamentary all-party motor cycle group. We have various aims that we wish to tackle, including legislation from Brussels, but we shall also be attempting to persuade people, including noble Lords, to consider moving to two wheels, whether that be a motor cycle or a pedal cycle. We shall seek to persuade people that that is a good alternative to using a car. It is an environmentally attractive alternative and statistics prove that one is less likely to have an accident while on two wheels. Next to walking I believe it is the best way in which one can serve one's fellow human beings in terms of being less of a danger on the road and of being more environmentally progressive, as it were.
We welcome the legislation and I look forward to hearing the noble Viscount's comments when he replies.
3.51 p.m.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, like other noble Lords I, too, wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for introducing this Bill in your Lordships' House. I congratulate his honourable friend, Mr. Mans, for the way he introduced the Bill in another place. No one should have any doubts about the validity of the Bill after listening to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. However, anyone who has any doubts should read the comprehensive speech given by Mr.
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Mans on Second Reading of the Bill in another place. That speech fully outlines and explains the purposes of the Bill.
This is a Private Member's Bill but I am in the fortunate position of being able to say that the Opposition give it their full support. The Opposition spokesman supported the Bill at Second Reading in another place. The purpose of the Bill primarily is to clarify any doubts local authorities may have about traffic calming measures. People may query the term "traffic calming", but it is that process that the Bill seeks to achieve. The title of the Bill does not matter. What matters is what Parliament does with the Bill and what local authorities do with the Bill.
The purpose of the Bill is to tidy up the legality of highway authorities undertaking traffic calming measures. The Bill determines what measures highway authorities may take. There is doubt about what they can and cannot do. The Bill will help them ascertain what they can and cannot do. The Bill enables local highway authorities to take account of the interests of residents and of through traffic that may pass through the residents' areas.
Mr. Mans referred to the matter of pedestrians. I shall not weary the House by giving figures of pedestrian fatalities. However, any noble Lord who is interested may find it worthwhile reading the Second Reading debate on this Bill which took place on 24th January in another place. At col. 613 of Commons Hansard Mr. Mans said that we in Britain pride ourselves on the measures we have introduced to reduce traffic accidents. Those measures have certainly reduced traffic accidents, but as regards traffic accidents involving pedestrians our record is far from being the best in the European Community. However, I repeat that I shall not weary the House with those figures today.
As the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said, the Bill has received widespread support from a variety of organisations. I believe I am correct in saying that it has the full support of the Government. It should pass through your Lordships' House without difficulty. Highway authorities are uncertain as to whether traffic calming measures could make them liable for prosecution for obstructing the highway. The Bill will help to clarify that point. Mr. Mans has emphasised that he wants a minimum amount of regulations but a maximum amount of discretion given to local authorities. I believe that that view is shared by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities of which I am president. It is also the view of the Association of London Authorities.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned regulations. I hope that we shall pay great attention to the regulations when they are issued. I doubt whether there will be many amendments to consider in Committee because we wish the Bill to reach the statute book without difficulty. Therefore, we may not be in a position to deal with amendments to regulations. Much responsibility will be placed on the two Secretaries of State and the Department of Transport in framing those regulations. I agree with Mr. Mans that we do not want too much regulation.

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We want proper regulation with the maximum flexibility so that highway authorities can get on with their work.
I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, stressed what can be done as regards the appearance of streets. As one drives around, one can see where attention has been paid to the appearance of the street. I do not just mean greenery because trees can be dangerous as well as useful. Therefore, attention must be paid to that aspect. However, one can see roads—and there are some in my area —with grass verges which have become disgraceful to look at because cars have parked on them. There is such a verge not far from me with a sign stating that it is illegal to park on the grass. However, nobody seems to take much notice. That is an important point.
The best traffic calming can be carried out by the individual. I echo what some noble Lords have said about the disgraceful, selfish and arrogant driving that one finds. I believe that 95 per cent. of drivers drive decently and properly. However, the other 5 per cent. cut in and generally drive badly. We debated the matter on the Road Traffic Act. That applies also to courier motorcyclists who are an absolute menace in London. I appreciate the care which most motorcyclists exercise but that does not apply to courier motorcyclists. Anyone who drives in the City of London will realise the truth of what I am saying.
All noble Lords could detail points which they believe should be considered by highway authorities in carrying out the provisions to be made under the Bill. There are two points about which I am particularly worried. I am surprised that one or two Members, although not of this House, seem to justify rat runs on the basis that they make the flow of traffic easier. I have been pleased to note in the past couple of weeks that in part of the borough of Waltham Forest, where rat runs have been a nuisance for years, there has been constructed a two-foot stretch of pavement with proper kerbing which has stopped rat running along three roads. It prevents traffic impeding other traffic going from left to right and from right to left. It will be better for the residents living in those roads which have been used as rat runs. Local authorities will wish to tackle that problem.
The other matter about which I am particularly concerned will not be covered by this legislation. That is the problem of drivers jumping red lights. Unfortunately, I find it necessary to travel more often by car these days in the city. Every day I see people jumping red lights and jumping across the yellow criss-crosses. Those are two menaces which must be dealt with. However, I am not certain that they can be dealt with by the provisions of this Bill.
We could all detail points which we should like to see tackled by highway authorities. I hope that your Lordships will give full support to the Bill and that the Government will confirm their support for it. I hope that the regulations will be sufficiently flexible so that they do not inhibit local highway authorities doing what they believe is best for their area.
4 p.m.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, the Government attach considerable importance to the use of traffic-calming techniques. They can be invaluable in enhancing both the safety and appearance of a locality. They form an integral part of most area-wide local safety schemes, which can particularly benefit the most vulnerable road users.
The public perception is increasingly that traffic calming offers an economic means of encouraging people to drive at a speed and in a manner appropriate to the roads they are using. The precise measures to be used in any situation have to be decided at local level. That is a matter for the individual highway authorities, in consultation with the police and others with an interest. The major contribution which we can make is to ensure that they have the appropriate tools for the task. It has become apparent that some of the techniques which have been used successfully in other countries are in doubt under current UK law. This Private Member's Bill is therefore welcome, and the Government have been assisting with it.
The legislation is intended to clarify the legal status of traffic calming measures. It would give highway authorities the confidence to use a wider range of appropriate techniques than hitherto. That is important in tailoring permanent safety or environmental schemes to meet the anxieties of local people, and in ensuring cost-effectiveness. It would permit the temporary use of traffic-calming features, which would help in fine-tuning measures in a particular location, or in restraining traffic speeds in the vicinity of road works. It would also allow authorities scope for innovation and experimentation.
The Government have a continuing involvement in developing new traffic engineering approaches. Development and demonstration work is under way, aimed at providing highway authorities with technical guidance. A number of recent and current projects place extensive reliance on the use of traffic-calming measures. The Government's Urban Safety Project demonstrated the value of an area-wide approach to traffic engineering measures aimed at accident reduction. Subsequently work was undertaken with the Institution of Highways and Transportation to give local authorities advice on improving urban safety management, involving traffic calming. Guidelines were issued last year.
The Bill contains provisions for the Secretary of State to make regulations prescribing traffic-calming works for the purposes of the legislation. This is preferable to trying to define each and every traffic measure in primary legislation; it will ensure that measures available are safe in the sense that their parameters have been tried and tested before inclusion in regulations; and it allows future techniques to be included, without the need for primary legislation. Some doubts have been expressed about the degree of detailed control which might be exerted through regulations, and over the extent of consultation. I am able to give some assurances which I hope will allay anxiety on those points.
The Government's aim would be to exercise a light hand in making any regulations. It is not envisaged

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that regulations would be as detailed as those for road humps. It is thought important to leave as wide a flexibility as possible for local authorities on the design of particular features. In many instances, regulations may need to do little more than list the measures concerned. The intention would be to consult widely with interested organisations in framing any regulations. That would include the local authority associations, as well as professional bodies and organisations representing road users.
The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, raised the question of noise. We believe that a wider range of traffic-calming measures will allow the flexibility to use features which avoid generating unnecessary noise. For instance, in some locations road humps can create noise from the slowing down and speeding up of vehicles and from bodywork and suspension of heavy vehicles passing over them. Access to a wider number of measures will enable local authorities to avoid or mitigate noise nuisances.
The noble Viscount spoke also of motor cycles. I am glad to hear that he does not drive his motor cycle in the same way as some couriers. There will be significant benefits for cyclists as well as for pedestrians and local residents. However, I understand that the recent painful experience of my noble friend Lord Lucas was in fact caused by a cyclist. It is therefore particularly apt that he speaks on the Bill today.
As I have said, the Government are supporting the Bill. The legislation will help in encouraging the development of new and wider traffic engineering approaches. These can have a significant effect on road safety and the street environment. I wish the Bill success. I thank my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale for sponsoring it and I commend it to your Lordships.
4.5 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords in all parts of the House who have supported this Bill today. I particularly welcome the moral support of my noble friend Lord Lucas, with his very long experience in this particular area. I believe that he asked the Government the key question of the day, namely: how, if we put this measure on the statute book, will the Government operate the new power? All the motoring organisations will be grateful for the response of my noble friend Lord Astor in that the highway authorities and other interested parties should be consulted and that relevant Secretaries of State should only specify sensible traffic-calming measures which are pertinent to the area in question with—he did not quite say "a light touch", but he used an expression of that kind for which we are all grateful.
I was concerned with some of the matters about which the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, spoke. He almost talked about an urban driver frustration Bill which I regard as being rather unfair. I remind the noble Viscount that in paragraph 49 of the Highway Code it is stated:
"You must obey the speed limits for the road and for your vehicle. Remember that except on motorways there is a 30 miles per hour speed limit on all roads where there are street lights unless signs show otherwise. Bear in mind that any
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speed limit is a maximum. It does not mean that it is safe to drive at that speed—always take into account all the conditions at the time".
"All the conditions", after these regulations are produced, will include the traffic-calming measures that we have been discussing this afternoon. I was also very grateful for the blessing—almost the beatitude —of the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, and especially for his views on the road environment. The noble Lord spoke of a former rat run in the borough of Waltham Forest and its cure by a traffic-calming measure, possibly of doubtful legality.
That is the point. This Bill will remove legal uncertainty which exists over authorities' powers to use traffic-calming measures. As my noble friend Lord Astor said—and to whom I am also grateful—these measures have been tried both in this country and in Europe, and they work.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Firearms (Amendment) Bill
4.7 p.m.
Lord Kimball: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
This Bill passed through another place in all its stages with support from all sides of the House. It is supported by the Association of Chief Police Officers. It is in line with the recommendations made in July 1991 to the Home Secretary by the Firearms' Consultative Committee, of which I am privileged to be the chairman. The Bill has the support of the shooting community in all its disciplines. There is no risk whatsoever to public safety. Within the Bill there is substantial scope for cost savings.
The Bill does one thing and one thing only. It gives to the Home Secretary power to extend the life of firearm and shotgun certificates. At the moment he has the power to reduce them by order. Under this Bill he will have the power to extend them, but he will only be able to do so by statutory instrument subject to the negative procedures. Therefore, if at the time there was some doubt about the action, it would be debatable both in your Lordships' House and in another place. It is a modest measure and one which is urgently needed. I hope that the House will endorse it. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(Lord Kimball.)
4.9 p.m.
Lord Carter: My Lords, this is a very sensible and welcome measure. I am extremely pleased to support it from this Dispatch Box. It is a Bill which is short in length but long on common sense. I am extremely glad to give the Bill support. Like the other Bills that we have dealt with today, I hope that this Bill will be given a speedy passage through the House and that it will reach the statute book before the general election.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I welcome the sponsorship of my noble friend Lord Kimball for this Bill, which has the Government's full support.

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The Government have been criticised by some within the shooting community who see our every move as part of a hidden agenda to eliminate shooting sports by a gradual process of erosion. That is not our intention. The Government have no quarrel with legitimate shooters, the vast majority of whom are responsible and law-abiding members of the community who are well aware of their responsibilities to a wider non-shooting public. Our overriding concern is for public safety. But, beyond that, we are committed to making life as easy as possible for the shooting community and for the police who have to operate the firearms licensing system.
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The Bill enables the Secretary of State to consider taking a valuable step towards enhancing the efficiency of the firearms licensing system by cutting work and costs for the police without in any way risking public safety. Such a move will be warmly welcomed by the shooting community, and it has the support of experts in policing and firearms alike. I therefore commend the Bill to your Lordships.
Lord Kimball: My Lords, I am most grateful. I commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at eleven minutes past four o'clock.