Lords Sitting of 16 July 1992

Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Worcester.): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Viscount Mackintosh of Halifax—Took the Oath.

Royal Assent
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Appropriation (No.2) Act,

Finance (No.2) Act,

Community Care (Residential Accommodation) Act,

Carriage of Goods by Sea Act,

Protection of Badgers Act,

Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act,

Tribunals and Inquiries Act,

Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Disclosure of Information) Act,

Peterhead Harbours Order Confirmation Act,

Ulster Bank Act,

Cattewater Reclamation Act,

River Humber (Upper Pyewipe Outfall) Act.

Brompton Hospital: Future
11.2 a.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby Lord Hatch of Lusby asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will give an assurance that the Royal Brompton National Heart and Lung Hospital will be maintained and not be moved from its existing site in Chelsea as a result of the Tomlinson findings.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, the Government cannot decide the future of individual hospitals until after Sir Bernard Tomlinson's report is received by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, does not the noble Baroness agree that the hospital, with its treatment, research and teaching, is a unique national asset? In the international world it is upholding British medical traditions in all those aspects of its work. Is it not important therefore to keep that national asset on the site of the new hospital to where it was recently moved?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I know the great respect and esteem in which the hospital is held both in this country and internationally. Eighty-five per cent. of the patients treated at the Brompton come from this country.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, as one whose wife was recently a patient in that magnificent hospital, I find myself in the unusual position of strongly supporting the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, unity is pleasurable.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the Government are aware of the great role that attaches not only to the Brompton but to all the special health authorities which have the postgraduate teaching institutes for medicine attached to them, bearing in mind the important role that they play in educating our doctors? Will the Government take that fully into consideration when deciding the future of services in London, and will they bear in mind the national importance of hospitals such as the Brompton, on whose board I served as a governor for 17 years?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, my noble friend is right. That is one of the many considerations that Sir Bernard and his team will bear in mind when producing their report.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I warmly support what was said about the Royal Brompton Hospital, and the Minister's reply in relation to the Tomlinson report. Can the noble Baroness assure the House that we shall have the opportunity to consider the recommendations of Sir Bernard Tomlinson before any decisions are taken by the Government?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I cannot believe that a review on this scale would not generate some public debate.
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Royal Brompton, like some other London hospitals, is facing a severe financial crisis? It is having to cut back some of its services and to downgrade some of the senior and clinical nursing posts. Can the Minister assure the House that changes in the hospital service in London which follow the Tomlinson report will be based on a system of proper planning and consultation rather than the haphazard operation of the so-called internal market?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, any major decisions such as hospital closures are always subject to consultation before the Secretary of State takes a view.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell the House when she expects to receive the Tomlinson report? To return to my original Question, does not the noble Baroness agree that it is important that the Royal Brompton Hospital, as a national asset with an international reputation, should have its name preserved? As the hospital was moved quite recently, is it not important also that its work should not be disrupted once again by its being moved to another site?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, considerable investment has been placed in the Brompton Hospital. Over the past four years, £26 million has been invested

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in the new capital plant, and the revenue allocation for the current year was increased by nearly 15 per cent. The Tomlinson inquiry will report early in the autumn. The Secretaries of State for Education and Health will then establish a special unit to implement the Government's decisions and to help manage the changes. The Government wish to ensure that their decisions are acted upon decisively and rapidly.

NHS Staff Contracts: Confidentiality
11.6 a.m.
Lord Carter Lord Carter asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will introduce legislation to prohibit confidentiality clauses in National Health Service contracts of employment.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, the Government have no plans for such legislation. However, new staff guidelines for expressing views about NHS service provision will be issued for consultation shortly.
Lord Carter: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Do the Government agree with the Health Service Commissioner that NHS staff should not be inhibited from raising issues concerning the care of patients? Does she further agree with the NHS consultants' association that the priorities of NHS staff should be, first, to the patient; secondly, to the original concepts of the health service; and, thirdly, to the hospital unit in which they work?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, all staff should have an opportunity to bring before their local management any grievances that they feel. Banning confidentiality clauses is not the answer. However, as the noble Lord said, there is a need to strike the right balance between the responsibility of staff to patients and loyalty to their employers. The guidance we propose to issue will help to ensure that the right balance is struck.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the Minister agree that a special situation exists in relation to those NHS staff who are directly involved in patient care? Therefore is not their first responsibility to patients? Will she accept from me my pleasure on hearing her say that there is no place for confidentiality clauses in such agreements?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, the noble Lord misunderstands me. I said that I did not believe there was a case for banning confidentiality clauses in the terms and conditions of service. Staff have a duty to patients; they also have a duty to their employers. Open hospitals that are self-critical and generate an atmosphere of care and compassion certainly encourage staff to come forward with any complaints that they may have.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, as I misunderstood the reply given by the Minister, will she permit me to withdraw the compliment that I paid to her?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am heartbroken.
Lord Carter: My Lords, if the Government are not prepared to ban so-called gagging clauses, will the Minister say how they are compatible with the aims of the Patient's Charter? How can the Government and the health service ensure that standards set for the charter are achieved if staff are silenced and prevented from speaking about the poor standards of care which sometimes occur?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, it is up to local managers to manage. The NHS has invested considerable sums of money in improving management within the NHS. Aggrieved staff, or staff who feel that they have a case concerning patients, have the opportunity to go not only to their local manager, but to the chief executive, the non-executives and the chairman of the board. They can also go to the regional health authority and the NHS management executive. They can seek support from staff associations and professional bodies. As a last resort they can take their case to the Health Service Commissioner.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, will the noble Baroness clarify the position as regards aggrieved patients? As she well knows, there are cases in which patients have a legitimate claim against a particular institution for lack of proper care. Are we to understand from the Minister that a person in a hospital who knows that things are wrong is prohibited from communicating in any way with the patient concerned? Does she believe that the confidentiality clause that she proposes will override any subpoena served on the person concerned?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, of course staff have a very responsible and prime duty towards their patients. I am saying that if the staff have a cause for grievance then their first port of call should be the local management. If that management is uncaring or does not listen, then there are the lines further up the chain which I mentioned in my previous answer.

Thoroughfares in London
11.12 a.m.
Lord Greenway Lord Greenway asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will take action to preserve thoroughfares of special tourist interest in London.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, we have in this country an excellent system for ensuring the conservation of buildings, including development planning controls for their erection or modification. These take into account the impact of developments on the surrounding environment and help to ensure the conservation and preservation of our built heritage. This is of benefit to both visitors and local residents.
Lord Greenway: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Are the Government aware that certain areas of special charm and interest in London are in danger of disappearing? For instance, there is the area of Cecil Court and St. Martins Court between Charing Cross Road and St. Martins Lane which is well known for its specialist book and ephemera shops and where

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owners are in grave danger of being forced out by ever-increasing rent rises. Can the Minister say whether there is any way that action can be taken now before it is too late to prevent central London being deprived of these areas of special interest to both tourists and locals alike, presumably to be replaced by yet more litter-producing fast-food outlets and tat shops?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, rent increases are a matter for negotiation between the landlord and tenant in accordance with the terms of the lease. It is not for the Government to intervene. However, I am not aware in the area that the noble Lord mentioned of any rents being demanded which are exorbitant. Of course the change of use from a retail shop to something else requires planning permission.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, is it not a fact that Cecil Court is already in a conservation area? Is it not also true that use class orders prevent a change of use between different shops without planning permission from the local authority? Does the Minister agree with me that the best service that bibliophiles like him and me can render to Cecil Court would be to get up there this afternoon to purchase some of the excellent books which are to be had at most advantageous prices?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I certainly agree with the last point made by the noble Lord. Local authorities have powers to designate conservation areas and Cecil Court and St. Martins Court are within such an area. The local authority is required to formulate proposals for preserving and enhancing a conservation area. Use class orders prevent certain types of shop use being changed without planning permission; for example, a book shop could not become a building society or an antique shop a fish-and-chip shop without planning permission.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that he is aware of the importance of tourism to London which is mentioned in the Question and of the great income which it creates, besides the importance of retaining all our traditional things which are so valued by people overseas?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I certainly am aware of that. Tourism represents at least £25 billion to this country's gross domestic product. It also employs 1.4 million people. I would draw your Lordships' attention to a letter in The Times today from the Chairman of the British Tourist Authority in which he says:
"Official figures for the first four months of this year show that overseas visitors are, once again, arriving in record numbers. In April alone,1.5 million overseas visitors spent an estimated £570 million".

Legal Aid
11.15 a.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter Lord Boyd-Carpenter asked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they are taking to halt the growth in the cost of legal aid.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, we are determined to improve the control over legal aid expenditure. I have already announced that standard fees are to be introduced later this year for the majority of criminal legal aid cases in magistrates' courts.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend for that helpful reply, but can he indicate whether the increase in the cost of legal aid over the past two or three years has been faster than for any other social service?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, it is true that the rising cost of legal aid is a source of anxiety. There are two elements in this. One is that the number of people helped is increasing. The principal concern that I have is that in my view the rate per case is increasing faster than it should. It is certainly rising faster than the annual rate up-rating that I allow under the regulations. That is one of the reasons why in my view an extensive system of standard fees would be a considerable improvement.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, does the noble and learned Lord agree that, as regards the first part of his reasoning, the most effective way of controlling the cost of legal aid is to control the growth of crime in this country? Does he further agree that it is the enormous increase in crime which is mirrored in the increasing cost of legal aid, certainly on the criminal side?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, the noble Lord has just pointed out that there are two sides to the question of legal aid; one is civil and the other criminal. The rise in prosecutions for crime rather than the crime rate itself has an effect. That is the first factor that I mentioned. The second factor remains important and it is one which I believe should be subject to control.
Lord Renton: My Lords, as regards legal aid in civil cases, is my noble and learned friend quite sure that all that can be done is being done to take advantage of the conciliation process which exists, especially in Family Division cases?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, in granting legal aid the legal aid authorities have to take account of what is a reasonable action on the part of the person applying for legal aid. I personally would like to see conciliation used greatly in matrimonial and family cases. I believe that it is a very useful way of helping people to solve their own problems in that area.
Lord Richard: My Lords, perhaps I may put two questions to the noble and learned Lord. First, why is it that he has decided to proceed with standard fees in magistrates' courts in advance of the decision of the Royal Commission which, as I understand it, is going to consider this point in particular? Secondly, does he agree that, however one wants to slow down the growth in legal aid, one way in which it should not he done is by delaying the payment of fees which have been properly incurred and properly taxed? In that

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respect is he satisfied with the operation of the central taxation unit which he has set up as regards the payment of legal aid in criminal cases?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, it is clear that the present system of legal aid taxation in individual cases is a costly procedure which takes time. As regards the central taxing units, they are concerned primarily with cases in which the fees charged are £4,000 and over. It is necessary that these should be examined thoroughly. The improvement in the performance of the taxing teams has been quite considerable. I hope that further improvements will eventuate.
On the first point, the Royal Commission is considering the system of criminal justice under a wide-ranging remit, but I have responsibility for determining legal aid remuneration. I shall, of course, pay attention to anything that the Royal Commission may say on the matter, but it is quite clear to me that the Royal Commission does not wish to intervene between me and the profession in my discharge of my duty. It may comment on the result.
Baroness Faithful,: My Lords, may I ask the noble and learned Lord whether a lot of legal aid could be saved by the better programming of court hearings?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, the programming of court hearings is quite a difficult operation because so many people have to be considered. Obviously, in so far as it is possible, we are seeking to improve these arrangements and any improvement necessarily produces a saving in costs when it works. The main difficulty in programming courts is the number of people and interests which have to be taken into account in reaching a view of the date on which a case will start. Perhaps I may say in elaboration of that that, even when one has fixed a date for a case to start, one often finds that the case collapses at the last minute. That is the sort of problem that the listing officers face.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord aware of the statement made by Judge Stephen Tumim in his report on Feltham young offenders' institution, pointing out that in the first nine months of last year over 700 inmates were not produced in court, thus causing wholly unnecessary expenditure on legal aid? Is he also aware that when replying to the debate on young offenders, the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, said that that problem existed in other institutions as well? Given his responsibility both for legal aid and for magistrates' courts, can the noble and learned Lord tell us what action he hopes to take to deal with this situation?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, there is undoubtedly a difficulty and this is an illustration of the point that I was making in response to the last question. If a case is listed and one of the principal parties to the case does not arrive for reasons within the control of others, whatever arrangements the listing officer has made are rendered nugatory. I am very concerned about this particular problem, and I
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believe that it is being dealt with, particularly by the department for which the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, was speaking when replying to that debate.

Foreign Compensation (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
11.22 a.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Chalker of Wallasey, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the Foreign Compensation Act 1950 so as to extend the powers to make Orders in Council under Section 3 of that Act; and for connected purposes.
I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time. Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Baroness Trumpington.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Damages (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Macaulay of Bragar, I beg to introduce a Bill to clarify and amend the law of Scotland concerning the right of certain relatives of a deceased person, and the right of executors, to claim damages in respect of the death of the deceased from personal injuries; to make provision regarding solatium where personal injuries result in loss of expectation of life; and for connected purposes.
I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Midland Metro Bill [H.L.]
Read a second time, and committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.

Liaison Committee
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Ampthill): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a select committee be appointed to advise the House on the resources required for select committee work and to allocate resources between select committees; to review the select committee work of the House; to consider requests for ad hoc committees and report to the House with recommendations; to ensure effective co-ordination between the two Houses; and to consider the availability of Lords to serve on committees;
That as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the Committee—

L. Belstead,

L. Cledwyn of Penrhos,

L. Dormand of Easington, B.

Hylton-Foster,

E. Jellicoe,

L. Jenkins of Hillhead,

L. Thurlow.,

L. Wakeham (L. Privy Seal) (Chairman).

That the Committee has leave to report from time to time;
That the Committee has power to appoint specialist advisers.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Boundary Commissions Bill
11.24 a.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
The purpose of this Bill is to facilitate the work of the Parliamentary Boundary Commissions so that their reports can be presented in good time in order that the next general election may be fought on up-to-date boundaries. Were it not for the Bill there would be a very real danger that the next election could be fought on boundaries which would be nearly 20 years out of date.
Since the present boundaries were drawn up, population changes have caused wide disparities in constituency electorates. In England, these now range from just over 42,000 to more than 101,000—a difference of some 60,000. Similar disparities exist in the other parts of the United Kingdom, although on a smaller scale. Northern Ireland has a difference of 25,000 electors between its largest and its smallest constituencies. The difference is 41,000 for Wales, and 58,000 for Scotland—although, of course, both in Wales and Scotland the geographical considerations make some of these differentials legitimate.
These differences, jolt the principle of parliamentary democracy. At the 1992 general election, a vote in Hammersmith was twice as valuable as a vote in Huntingdon, and this is not an isolated example. A similar comparison was drawn in the debate on this Bill in another place between the constituencies of Kensington and Peterborough. These disparities do not, of course, come about by design. The present boundaries were drawn up using the electoral figures of 1976. Since then, of course, there have been huge population movements.
The constituency of Eastleigh now has over 92,000 electors on the 1992 register. It had only 70,000 on the 1976 register. Similarly, the electorate of Hampshire, East has risen from 67,000 to 93,000. That of The Wrekin has risen from 65,000 to 92,000 and that of Swindon has risen from 68,000 to 91,000.
There have also been dramatic decreases in electorates. Chelsea, for example, had an electorate of 63,000 in 1976. It is now down to 42,000. That such a decrease can occur over a 15-year period—and it is one-third of the whole of the electorate—indicates that the timescale within which boundary commissions are required to hold their reviews is too protracted.
I give your Lordships these figures because it is the easiest way to explain how necessary it is to review the present parliamentary constituencies. There are plenty
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of other examples which could be used. Without this Bill, there would be a danger that an election in 1996 would be fought on electoral figures which would be 20 years out of date and which would then include disparities which would be even greater than the 60,000 difference in electorates which exists today.
The Bill therefore sets a deadline of 31st December 1994 for the completion of the next review of each of the commissions for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I would emphasise that this new deadline is only around six months before the reviews were widely expected to be completed—although it is around three years before they actually had to be completed.
The problem is not confined to the electorates for the next election. The present system of reviews of parliamentary constituencies could give rise to a similar situation in, say,20 years from now. The Bill therefore seeks to put a permanent provision on the statute book which would ensure that the situation in which we find ourselves now cannot repeat itself. This means shortening the time within which the commissions have to report.
The present requirement is that each commission should report not less than 10, but not more than 15, years after its previous report was submitted. Under the Bill, this will be shortened to between eight and 12 years after the previous report.
It may be helpful if I were to remind your Lordships of a little of the historical background to the work of the Parliamentary Boundary Commissions in order to put these changes into perspective. In 1939, constituencies ranged in size from 15,000 to 150,000 electors. In order to deal with this situation, four boundary commissions were set up in 1944—in the middle of the war, of all curious things—one for each part of the United Kingdom. Each commission had to produce proposals for the redistribution of parliamentary constituencies every three to seven years. The commissions first reported in 1947. They then reviewed the situation, for the first time, in 1954.
To ask the commissions to produce reports in such a short timescale after their first review was found to be unsatisfactory and so the timescale in which they had to report was extended in 1958 to between 10 and 15 years. These arrangements were consolidated by the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 and remain in force to this day. But this now seems to be too long a period. The Bill contains three main provisions which are designed to correct the defects of the current system.
Clause I amends Schedule 1 to the 1986 Act in order to allow for the remuneration of commissioners. At present commissioners provide their services without reward. Assistant commissioners are though paid when they hold local inquiries and when they prepare reports on these inquiries for the commissioners to consider. This is obviously an anomalous situation. Leading people from the legal profession and from public administration give up their time to this important work, and it is only fair that they should receive some reward.
The second provision, in Clause 2 of the Bill, is one to which I have already referred. The clause states that

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the next reviews of all four commissions are required to be submitted by 31st December 1994. At present the report of the Northern Ireland Commission is due by 1997 and those of the other three by early in 1998, although they are expected much earlier. These reports are in fact required more quickly.
The deadline which is proposed can be achieved. The English commission started work in February of last year and the Scottish commission started in February of this year. The other two commissions have considerably smaller tasks.
There is a provision in this clause which states that the failure to submit a final report on time will not in itself invalidate the report. This will take the pressure off the commissioners and will ensure that their democratic procedure of consultation will not be threatened.
As I have said, subsequent reviews will also be subject to a shorter timescale. A period of between eight and 12 years has been substituted for the 10 to 15 year period in recognition of the fact that the electorate moves about much more than it used to do.
It is important to remember that nothing in this Bill in any way affects the ability of the commissioners to undertake interim reviews between those which are required by law. Interim reviews can be undertaken when it is considered by a commission that the electorate in a small area has departed so far from the norm that it is not possible to wait for the next general review before correcting the situation. The power to carry out these interim reviews will remain.
The third clause deals with positions of local government boundaries and how the commissions should take them into account both when publishing their provisional recommendations and when submitting their final reports. In general, how much regard the commissions are to pay to local government boundaries will remain as is set out in the 1986 Act. But Clause 3 of this Bill specifies the latest dates by which commissioners can reasonably be expected to take account of changes which may have occurred, or which may occur, in local government boundaries.
It is important that the distinction is recognised between the provisional recommendations and the final reports of the boundary commissions. For each area a commission publishes provisional recommendations well in advance of the date of the submission of its final report. This is in order to allow time for local inquiries if they should be required. As well as that—and specifically in the case of England—the publication of provisional recommendations can take place several years in advance of the final report, just because of the sheer size of the task which faces the commission. For this reason, separate guidelines are required, both for the purposes of provisional recommendations and for the purposes of final reports, which will detail those local government boundaries of which the commissions need to take account.
An exception has been made for the Boundary Commission for Wales which provides that, for the forthcoming report only. the Welsh commission should take account of any boundary changes which
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are included in an Act of Parliament which may be passed by 1stJune 1994—even if these boundaries are not operative by that date.
The provisional recommendations, which will precede the next report of the Boundary Commission for Wales, must take account only of those boundaries which are included in a Bill which has received its Second Reading in another place before the recommendations are published. For example, for the forthcoming review which is to be completed by 31st December 1994, the latest date by which changes in local government boundaries would have to take effect in order to feature in the final report would be 1st June 1994. But when publishing recommendations for a particular area, a commission can take account of a boundary which has been included in primary or subordinate legislation even if this boundary is not by then in operation. The purpose of this special dispensation for the Boundary Commission for Wales is to allow for the possibility of a Welsh Local Government Reform Bill.
After the Welsh Bill has received its Second Reading in another place, the commission will be able to publish its proposed recommendations on the basis of any boundary changes which may be included in that Bill. The effect of this clause is, therefore, to make it abundantly clear to each commission which boundaries are to be taken into account for each review.
A safety net exists as a result of the fact that interim reviews can be conducted if it is felt that a local government boundary change, becoming operative subsequent to a boundary commission report, has such significance that it warrants the alteration of parliamentary constituencies before the next general review. There is no question of altering any of the admirable democratic procedures which these politically impartial commissions follow in arriving at their conclusions. To do so would require the English commission to halt the work which it has been doing for the past 18 months, and it would have to start all over again.
The English commission has already published provisional recommendations for 17 counties, and it has already held the first local inquiries. The Scottish Commission, too, has already started work, although more recently.
The intention of the Bill is simply to bring forward the deadline for the next review and to shorten the timescale for future reviews. In order to make this feasible, the Government have proposed that funds are made available for the extra costs of the commissions, and they have set out clearly the framework of local government boundaries on which the commissioners should base their work.
That is what the Bill proposes—and why. The methods by which the boundary commissions reach their conclusions have proved fair and beyond political reproach. We are, indeed, fortunate that this has been the case, and the Bill does not affect those methods. The only drawback throughout the whole process has been the time which has elapsed between each review. That one drawback is addressed by the Bill. I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Earl Ferrers.)
11.38 a.m.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Earl for so clearly explaining the provisions of the Bill. As he said, this is a very important matter. Although, like me, your Lordships have no vote in parliamentary elections, we are deeply interested in parliamentary democracy. Therefore this Bill is a vital contribution to our democratic system.
The noble Earl made it quite clear that the Bill in no way changes the rules or procedures. However, it is how the commissions carry out the rules that is important. It was stated clearly in the Second Reading debate in another place that there was no proper consultation with the other political parties. I deeply regret that. Consultation would have removed any suggestion that the work of the commissions was there for a particular party's advantage. In a previous capacity, before I came to your Lordships' House, I attended consultations with the commissions in order to discuss how they proposed to work. That should have been done this time. I may have to return to that point before I conclude my speech.
I agree completely with those who have said that it would be wrong to proceed to the next election with constituencies based on out-of-date electorates—that is, those of 20 years ago. As the noble Earl said, without the Bill, we could be in the position of going into the next election with electorates based on those of 1976. Therefore, the provision in the Bill for the payment of commissioners has the Opposition's full support. Provided that the commissioners do what we want them to do in the form of extra work, the reviews will be speeded up and we will receive them on time. However, I hope that there will be consultation at the appropriate times with the other political parties on the appointments that are made to the commissions. That will also encourage full support and approval of the commissions' work.
As the noble Earl explained, the proposal in the Bill is to reduce the periods in which reports may be submitted from 10 to 15 years to a new figure of 8 to 12 years. We are in complete agreement with that. In the debate on Second Reading in the other place, the shadow Home Secretary, Roy Hattersley, said that it is preferable to have details of new constituency boundaries well before an election rather than when it is imminent. As the noble Earl pointed out, without that change in the Bill, we could be in the position where a review is not presented until 1998 or, in the case of Northern Ireland,1997. That would undoubtedly be after the next general election and would not satisfy the Opposition's request that changes should be agreed well in advance of a general election.
During discussion in another place, considerable attention was given to the work on the constituency electoral register. Many Members stressed the importance of the electoral register of a constituency having some relationship to the resident population of that constituency. Instances of unsatisfactory work on registration were given. I know that that has
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concerned political parties for some time: it has even concerned the organisation representing the officers who deal with the administration of elections.
In the debate the Home Secretary appeared to be satisfied that registration had achieved 95 per cent. success. I should like to point out—as, indeed, did other Members of another place—that a 5 per cent. shortage in registration could mean the difference between winning or losing a constituency. Therefore, the maximum amount of success in registration work is vital. If proper consultation takes place—which, as I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, should be the case—then a consensus might be arrived at as to how registration work could be improved. I was fortunate enough to be a member of the recent Hansard Society commission which looked at various questions regarding the running of elections. The noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Kilmorack, was also a member. Considerable attention was given to the question of how best to improve our registration work within the constituencies. Indeed, it may well be possible to achieve some consensus if there is proper consultation.
It should be pointed out that Rule 5 of Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 provides that a boundary commission may depart from the rules where there is,
"an excessive disparity between the electorate of any constituency and the electoral quota".
When he replies, perhaps the noble Earl can interpret what will be regarded as "excessive disparity". Alternatively, is that one of the cases where, if there had been consultation, the views of the commission could be ascertained as to how it proposed to interpret certain matters before the actual review began? How one interprets the phrase "excessive disparity" is most important.
During the Committee stage in another place, which was taken on the Floor of the House, an amendment was proposed to allow a delay in the submission of a report if the electorate of any area was significantly different from that of the population. The Secretary of State said that the amendment would serve no worthwhile purpose and that it would cause needless delay. The promoters of the amendment were not impressed by that argument. The matter was pressed to a Division which was lost, but only by 303 votes to 244. So there was considerable support for the view that something should be done. I suggest that there is a difference between the electorate and the population and that it is as important as the difference between the electorate and the electoral quota.
Rule 4 of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act, in respect of the boundary commissions, provides that consideration must be given to the specified parts of a local authority area which shall be included in a constituency. Keeping that point in mind, Clause 3 of the Bill gives rise to some concern. After reading the Bill carefully and listening to the noble Earl's introduction, I take it that, other than in Wales, it will be in order for a commission to take into consideration recommendations included in a Bill approved by Parliament irrespective of the actual date

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on which the changes come into effect. If that is the correct interpretation, then I, and I think the Opposition, would support the proposal.
However, the proposal for Wales causes considerable concern. I believe the best that I can do is to read the actual part of the Bill. Clause 3(3) (b) states that,
"a boundary which has not yet come into operation on a particular date and which, apart from this subsection, would not be regarded as prospective on that date shall be so regarded if it is specified in a Bill which, on or before that date, has been read a second time by the House of Commons".
That is an assumption that a Bill containing a local authority boundary change would not be amended between the Second Reading and Third Reading stages in the House of Commons. It ignores any possibility of changes being made by your Lordships' House.
It was pointed out in the debate in another place that local government reorganisation, as the noble Earl said, is further ahead in Wales than in England and Scotland. A Bill to give effect to that reorganisation may be introduced and have a Second Reading in the other place. Under the Bill, the boundary commission would be allowed to take account of those proposals even though there were still further stages to go through in the House of Commons and all stages in your Lordships' House. The Minister actually admitted that there was a risk that the Bill might be amended after Second Reading. If such an eventuality occurs, perhaps the noble Earl can tell us what action is proposed.
The proposal was described by Members of another place as showing contempt and disregard for Parliament and particular disregard for your Lordships' House. I urge that the Government should either vary the proposal or withdraw it from the Bill. One can hardly say that it is a democratic suggestion. We have emphasised all along when discussing the Bill that the question of democracy and democratic procedure is the sole purpose of the Bill.
I wish now to refer to the situation that may arise in London. Rule 4 of Schedule 2 to the 1986 Act states that,
"so far as is practicable",
constituencies should not cross London borough boundaries. Again, given proper consultation, what is regarded as being "so far as is practicable?" That may be an important definition when we deal with boundaries in London. I have already referred to Rule 5 which gives the commission discretion to depart from that rule. But what is regarded as an excessive disparity when dealing with the matter'?
The problem in London arises because the Local Government Boundary Commission is to complete a review of London's boundaries by 31st October 1992. The disparity between the electoral quota and the 1991 register is already being worked out. People are busy establishing what the difference will be. In London, the allocateion of constituency seats depends upon the electorate in the borough. It may result in three, four or five constituencies. Consultation would have decided how the commission proposed to deal with that matter. If a number of boroughs have their figures raised to the next point, that might affect the position
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of one constituency party. If they are lowered to achieve an equitable result the other constituency party might be affected.
Vast changes of population in London take place regularly. As the population bears no relationship at the moment to the electoral register—the 1991 register—that is an important matter. When it was raised on Third Reading in another place the Secretary of State said:
"We are satisfied that the boundary commission, which will have regard to that rule, can, if it judges fit, use that rule to justify crossing borough boundaries, which it declined to do when it adjusted the London boundaries on the previous occasion. Rule 5 gives two bases on which it is perfectly proper for the boundary commission to depart from a strict adherence to the boundaries. The first basis is when it is necessary or desirable to avoid a disparity between the electorate of a constituency and the national quota. That is less likely to arise in the London area".
I do not know what basis he had for saying that. He continued:
"More importantly and relevantly in parts of London, borough boundaries may be crossed if it is desirable to avoid an excessive disparity between the electorate of any constituency and that of neighbouring constituencies. I am sure that the boundary commissioners will have regard to what was said in debates in the House".—[Official Report, Commons,30/6/92; col.722.]
I can only hope that that will apply. Sound criticism came from various quarters in the other place.
The commission has certain powers and duties. How it carries them out should be the subject of genuine consultation between the parties so that it does its work properly and there can be no suggestion that the boundary revision has been arranged to suit any one party.
11.53 a.m.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I too thank the Minister for his clear introduction of the Bill. Like him and the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, I take as my starting point the fact that democracy must operate as well as it possibly can and that that must be the principal criterion for the Bill. As we have been reminded, there are huge disparities between the electorates of certain constituencies. We have been given a number of examples. We on these Benches cannot let this moment pass, even if it means detaining your Lordships for a further 30 seconds at the end of the Session, without mentioning proportional representation. I hear your Lordships' laughter. I knew that that remark would obtain a reaction, but I have it on the record, and I shall not detain your Lordships longer on that matter.
Democracy means that we need to look also at public participation in the work of the boundary commissions. It is a broad issue. One of its aspects must be to allow time for objections to the provisional recommendations to be made. I understand that the Government have accepted the recommendation of the Home Affairs Select Committee that the present short period of one month for objections to provisional recommendations be increased to two months. That provision is not in the Bill. I hope that it will be brought before your Lordships before too long.

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I am bound to compare some of the processes involved in setting parliamentary constituency boundaries with the criteria identified in the recent Local Government Act for the structure of local government where the commissioners must look at what is effective and convenient for local government. Your Lordships spent a good deal of time when considering that Bill seeking assurances that local community, identity and accountability would all be taken into account. We were assured that that would be so. Indeed, the guidance to the commission refers to such matters, although it refers at far greater length to financial rather than community matters. I feel strongly that they are matters which need to be borne in mind in the setting of parliamentary boundaries.
As we have also been reminded, Rule 4 in the schedule to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act, which deals with the local government boundaries to he taken account of, takes precedence over Rule 5. In other words, not crossing a county boundary is to take precedence over the rule relating to the size of the electorate so far as is practicable. That is another example of the contortions produced by a voting system which is less fair than it might be.
There is another paradox: a parliamentary boundary commission is to take account of county boundaries but not those of districts, although the Local Government Commission may result in us shortly having districts but no counties, depending upon its views on the structure of local government.
I understand the anxieties over Wales expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, and the feeling of the Welsh people that yet again they are being treated as somewhat poor cousins of the English. The word used in Clause 3(1) which adds a subsection to the principal Act provides that the boundaries of which a boundary commission may take account are those which are "prospective" in the case of English constituencies. That provision is different from the one contained in subsection (3) (b). If one were to use one term for the boundaries to apply in Wales I think that that would be "potential" rather than "prospective".
I also understand the anxieties expressed in another place by those who represent Scottish constituencies about the problems that might arise in Scotland when the restructuring of local government arrives there, as I dare say it will. There may be a lack of coincidence between local government and parliamentary boundaries there.
With regard to the frequency of reviews, I support the recommendations but with a slight reservation' which I believe it is right to mention. The increasing frequency of reviews may make it more difficult for a Member of another place to represent his constituency if he is certain only that he can represent it for the life of two Parliaments. It might undermine the development of a long-term relationship between a Member of Parliament and all parts of his constituency if at every second Parliament Members are uncertain about what the boundaries will be at the next general election. That may not be good for the democratic process, which should involve party organisations prepared to offer a choice at each general election. Uncertainty can be detrimental to
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effective representation and democratic choice. In that connection, I note that the Select Committee did not recommend a change from the current period of 10 to 15 years.
We are not today discussing a change in the rules under which the commission is to work, but I wish to take the opportunity to welcome the assurance given by the Minister in another place on 30th June, at col.750 of Hansard. He said:
"Next time, there will be time to consider carefully between the parties what changes perhaps should be made to the rules that exist now".
I believe that there is a need for changes to the rules and we on these Benches are grateful for the assurance that there will be inter-party consultation.
12 noon
Baroness White: My Lords, I had not intended to take part in this debate-
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, if the noble Baroness wishes to speak, perhaps she should do so after the last of the speakers on the list and before the Front Bench speakers. I thought that she was rising to put a point to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. However, she seemed to wish to take part in the debate so I hope that she will not mind if I speak. I did not wish to appear discourteous.
Baroness White: My Lords, I apologise, but I have another engagement to go to. I simply wished to ask for active consideration—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, in that case, I give way to the noble Baroness so that she may make her point.
Baroness White: My Lords, I apologise. I had not realised that the position for Wales would be as serious as my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on the Liberal Benches indicated. It is a worrying situation if we are to accept only a Second Reading in the other place as regulating the procedures in Wales. That is the main point I wish to make and I apologise to the House and am extremely grateful to the noble Lord.
Noble Lords: Order!
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt. I do not hesitate to mention to the noble Baroness, since she is disappearing and leaving the Chamber, that the conventions of the House are that normally noble Lords listen to the speech after the one they have made. My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy gave way to the noble Baroness and I think it is slightly unparliamentary to blow off and then blow out. I think that she should at least have listened to the speech that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, was going to make had she not intervened.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, my noble friend the Deputy Leader of the House has made a point which will ensure that everyone recognises and remembers what are the conventions of the House. I

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am happy that I could enable the noble Baroness to make her point, short though it was, on behalf of Wales. For those who may not have a list, I am the next speaker on it and I shall now try to proceed.
I thank my noble friend Lord Ferrers for the clarity with which he introduced the Bill to us and explained its purpose. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, who speaks from his knowledge and experience, particularly having been the national agent of the Labour Party. I hope that the Government will take note and consider the points he made about the importance of having an efficient and effective system of registration.
I support the purpose of the Bill, in particular in reducing the interval between the reviews of the commissions from the existing 10 to 15 years to eight to 12 years. The sizes of the constituency electorates can change materially in a few years. Even when the present limit of 15 years has applied, practice has shown that a general election can be held with constituency boundaries as much as 20 years out of date so far as concerns population surveys, with the necessary procedures adding to the time.
Because of geography and sparse, scattered populations in some rural areas, it has been accepted that precise numerical equality is not feasible. The commissions are expected to get as near to that goal as possible, taking the special factors into account. The first of these special factors is the historical one, which has not yet been mentioned. It is that Scotland should have at least 71 constituencies and Wales at least 35. In the case of Scotland, the reason is the continuation of a principle agreed in the Act of Union in 1707. I suggest that governments would be rash to change those minimum figures for Scotland or Wales unless they were generally agreed as part of a major constitutional reform.
After the periodic reviews each of the four boundary commissions is required to produce a report making the most sensible distribution within the part of the United Kingdom with which that commission is concerned. It is clear from this that the average size of a constituency in England will be larger than one in Scotland because of the historical factor that I mentioned. I intend to concentrate in particular on features of the subject which I believe have been a cause of political controversy for the past half-century at least but which I suggest should raise less argument now.
Since World War II there has been an exodus of population from the centres of cities. Electorates there have become smaller. Most of the constituencies concerned have normally been expected to be won by Labour. There has naturally been concern when what seemed like the severe re-carving of boundaries in the centres of great urban areas was producing fewer of those constituencies. I completely understand the anxiety of the Labour Party's officials about that in the past.
At the other extreme, constituencies in areas with few inhabitants in remoter parts of the country have contained relatively few registered electors, although geographically vast. My home near Inverness is close
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to some of those constituencies. I live in what was my constituency, although the names and boundaries are all different now. However, I make it clear that my constituency was not itself one of the huge, sparsely populated ones.
The Scottish Boundary Commission, like the other three commissions, in that situation has to balance numbers with distance, mountains and salt-water barriers. There was a time when it was thought that making such constituencies larger to raise the electorate figures to nearer the average, thereby increasing their geographical size, would reduce the number of parliamentary seats normally held by Conservatives. That is no longer so. Almost all such seats in Scotland are at present occupied by the other parties. Who knows for how long that may be?
While there may be a case in those remoter areas for increasing their size, based on improved, modern communications, the boundary commission still has the aim of producing constituencies that are manageable, both as entities and for the Members of Parliament.
I am familiar with such problems, but more familiar still with them is my noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, who will speak after me, because he represented one of those constituencies, which was also formerly represented by my noble kinsman, the late Lord Glenkinglas.
I wish the boundary commissions well and all success in trying to even out the electorate between constituencies as best they can, given the factors that must be taken into account. At present, the diversity extends from the largest electorate of some 101,000 for the Isle of Wight to about 23,000 for the Western Isles of Scotland, which consist of several islands separated from the mainland by many miles of sea.
The chair of each commission is taken by the Speaker of another place but he plays little other than a formal part. The deputy in each of the commissions is a judge. The other members, I suggest, should be remunerated as now proposed. There will be more frequent reviews and the work is no doubt challenging and at times arduous.
I hope that there will be no reason in future to have the kind of argument that occurred in Parliament in 1969. That was the previous occasion on which there was a political argument about the commissions and their work. I remember that occasion well as I took part in that debate as a Member of the Shadow Cabinet from the Opposition Front Bench in another place. Action then on the four boundary commissions' reports was delayed by the government of the day. After legal action was started by a citizen outside Parliament. the necessary orders were laid by the Government, with the unusual recommendation that they be rejected. The government majority in another place at that time made sure they were rejected. That situation continued until there was a change of government in 1970 and the process was started again. I believe that this Bill should not be politically controversial although all the political parties must be deeply interested in every provision which it contains.
12.11 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, there can he no more important subject for a democracy than the building blocks which form the basis of that democracy. For those of us who believe in a single member, first past the post system, it is absolutely essential that those single member constituencies properly represent the population and are numerically equal, as near as we can possibly make them. If they are not equal, the results of maldistribution can bring the first past the post system into disrepute. That occurs more particularly at local government level than at national government level.
In some recent local government elections the party that obtained the majority of the vote, or the largest portion of the vote, did not win the largest portion of the seats. Before I am interrupted from the Liberal Democrat Benches and told that this means that I should support proportional representation, I should say that if the constituencies, the building blocks, had been properly distributed numerically that situation would not have occurred. Indeed, if I believed in proportional representation, which I do not, I would oppose the Bill today because the more we bring about an imbalance between different constituencies, the more ludicrous will be the end result and the better will be the case for those who believe in proportional representation. Therefore it is important that we, who believe in a single constituency and a first past the post system, make sure that those single constituencies are in good heart, are well up to date and are properly distributed numerically.
At the recent election the distribution became very skewed and deviated greatly from the average figure in England, in Wales and indeed in Scotland. I shall say more about Scotland later. However, the same principle must hold throughout the United Kingdom. I warmly welcome the decision by the Government to narrow the periods between the boundary commissions because it is absolutely clear to anyone who takes a mathematical interest in these matters that between the 1983 election and the one just past the distribution of numbers between the smallest seats and the largest seats has become far too great. That is an important aspect of the Bill; it explains why I at least warmly welcome its provisions.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned the 71 constituencies in Scotland which are clearly spelt out in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986. Paragraph 1(2) of Schedule 2 to that Act states:
"The number of constituencies in Scotland shall not be less than 71".
As my noble friend said, that imbalance goes back to the treaty of union and the fact that the historic union between our countries was always considered to be a little out of kilter, as England is that much larger than Scotland, and therefore a degree of redistribution was necessary to give Scotland a slightly better voice in another place in numerical terms. That was perhaps a better arrangement than Scotland deserved. The principle is as justified today as it was when the founding fathers—I hope I may use that American expression—laid down the treaties of union in 1707. If other people prevail and there is some kind of
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parliamentary devolution in Scotland, my argument is immediately torpedoed and there is no justification for 71 constituencies. However, I do not believe there is much justification for 72 seats in Scotland. That leads me to the main part of my speech.
There are 72 seats because at the previous meeting of the boundary commission a commissioner was persuaded that the city of Glasgow should have one extra seat. There was no mathematical justification for that decision. Some of the seats in the city of Glasgow are the smallest in Scotland apart from special areas such as the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland and Caithness and Sutherland. The seats in the city of Glasgow are small not only in Scottish terms but also in United Kingdom terms. They were small when the boundary commission decided to give Glasgow an extra seat. I hope that this time the boundary commission will not consider the position as it is today but will be prepared to ask itself more basic and fundamental questions.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy said that one of the justifications for more seats in Scotland that is often proposed is that there are large areas of Scotland, including the constituency I had the honour to represent in another place, where the population is pretty thinly spread. One would think on that basis that the constituencies in Scotland with the smallest electorates would be situated in the rural areas of Scotland. Indeed, the bottom three are situated in the rural areas of Scotland. Interestingly, however, of the 10 largest seats that currently exist in Scotland—the position was roughly the same when the boundary commission finished its work in the early 1980s—six are rural while of the smallest 10 seats, half are urban. In Scotland the seats that have slightly smaller electorates than even the Scottish average comprise largely urban seats. The seats that have enormous electorates in Scottish terms are rural seats.
The Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Inverness Nairn and Lochaber represents a greater spread of real estate than many noble Lords in this House, even those with the most extensive land ownership. That seat has an electorate now of 70,000. However, at the other extreme, a seat in the city of Glasgow—Provan—has an electorate of 36,000. A boundary commission that produces figures such as those is not attempting to make sure that the only case for departing from average figures is a geographical one. Interestingly enough, the top two seats in numerical terms are held by the Liberal Democrats. In Scottish terms those two seats are enormous. The constituency of Gordon has an electorate of 81,000. There is not a seat in the central belt of Scotland which comes anywhere near having an electorate of 81,000. If noble Lords are thinking of tramping round a Scottish constituency on their holidays, I suggest they will need to train hard before visiting Gordon. Many of the small seats in population terms would constitute a gentle afternoon stroll, although I suspect that the countryside may not be quite as pretty.
I now come to the main burden of my speech. It is important that we consider some of the restrictions which are imposed, or else are self-imposed, on the boundary commission when it considers drawing up

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constituencies. Schedule 2 to the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 lays down the rules for drawing up constituencies. There are simple rules such as those about the minimum number of seats in the constituent parts of the kingdom and about single member constituencies. The important rule is Rule 4. That rule has already been referred to: it is relevant to changes in local government boundaries. The rule states:
"So far as is practicable having regard to rules 1 to 3 … in Scotland, regard shall be had to the boundaries of local authority areas".
The same is true of England and Wales and causes many of the problems that other people have identified in relation to London. The arguments about London will no doubt be well rehearsed in your Lordships' House. They were well rehearsed down the corridor. This is not just a Scottish parochial argument; it was heard over and over again in the other place in connection with London. The argument is that Rule 4, if given primacy, leads to enormous distortions, which, in my view, are totally unjustified. Rule 5 says:
"The electorate of any constituency shall be as near the electoral quota as is practicable having regard to rules 1 to 4",
in other words, having regard to local government boundaries.
The Boundary Commission for Scotland accepted that it could not abide by district council boundaries all the time and that it had to breach some of them. I may be wrong—my noble friend may be able to help me when he sums up—but from my reading of the Acts the Boundary Commission for Scotland imposed on itself the rule that it could not cross regional council boundaries.
That is fine if local authority boundaries are fair and reasonable when it comes to numerical distribution. However, we all know that they were not devised to be reasonable and fair for numerical distribution. They were devised for entirely different reasons—community of interest, natural boundaries, and so on. So the parliamentary boundary commission starts off with building blocks which are inevitably in conflict with Rule 5—which, in my view, ought to be higher up the list of rules—which provides
that the electorate ought to be as near the electoral quota as possible. I believe that even at this late stage of the Bill some consideration should be given to ensuring that at least the new boundary commissions regard electoral size as being just as important as the local authority boundaries. Perhaps I may give one or two examples to illustrate my point.
The constituencies of East Lothian and East Edinburgh are adjacent. I doubt whether most of us would know when we had driven from one into the other. Currently, the constituency sizes are 67,000 and 46,000. All that stops the boundary commission equalising them is the boundary between the city of Edinburgh and East Lothian District Council. I cannot believe that it is sensible to have such ill-distributed constituencies cheek by jowl simply because a local government boundary goes through them.
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More particularly, if we look at regional boundaries we find the interesting case of the two regional councils in the south of Scotland. Borders Regional Council, previously Roxburgh, Peebles and Selkirk, has an electorate today of 84,000. Galloway, Upper Nithsdale and Dumfries, on the other hand, has an electoral population of 116,000. Both regions merit two parliamentary seats. A minute spent with a calculator tells one that in Scottish terms Dumfries, Galloway and Upper Nithsdale indeed merits two seats but the Borders merits only a seat and a half. It has two seats because we cannot cross local government boundaries.
I could take your Lordships on a geographical tour, which would show, as other people have shown for London, that by restricting the commission through rules that accord such high regard to local government boundaries we inevitably cause distortions. Those distortions are bad enough at the first election in which the boundaries are used but their seriousness increases as the second and third elections are fought.
Therefore, I say to my noble friend that perhaps when we deal with the Bill in Committee we can look at ways at least to put the rules on all fours so that the boundary commission has to take equal regard of local government boundaries and of population. For my part I would put population higher. If we do not have constituencies which, taking one area with another, are well balanced and which roughly represent the same numbers of people we create distortion in our first past the post system which rightly brings it into disrepute and allows those who would have us go down the dangerous road of proportional representation the chance to make a better case than I believe they can ever justify.
12.25 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am very grateful for the contributions which your Lordships have made to the debate on the Bill. My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy was quite right when he said that this is not a politically controversial Bill but that each political party will be deeply interested in the results. That is so. I am grateful for the knowledge and the views which your Lordships have expressed.
I could not help being amused when the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned PR. I thought that the guffaws which greeted that stopped her somewhat in her tracks. PR has absolutely nothing to do with the Bill. I do not know how on earth the noble Baroness thought that that subject could have anything to do with the Bill but I admire her ingenuity for slipping it in. My noble friend Lord Mackay, speaking from behind me, knocked the idea on the head when he said that, if one wanted to be really obstructive and if one wanted PR to work as well as possible, one would be against the Bill because the smaller the constituencies and the greater the disparities, the greater the chances of PR operating and the more chance there would be of minority parties having some influence on government. However, that has nothing whatever to do with the Government's philosophy.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, the noble Earl tempts me too far. I did not intervene when the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, made his point, but aspersions should not be cast on my colleagues on these Benches to suggest that democracy somehow takes second place to the interests of a minority party as if that were somehow different from democracy.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the interests of minority parties are always enormously important. We believe that that is so, too, but we happen to believe that PR does not work and will not work. Anyhow, it is not a system; it is 12 different systems and each one of the 12 would produce a different answer. However, let us not get too involved with PR.
The other event for which the debate has been remarkable was the astonishing intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady White. I suppose that I should not refer to it since the noble Baroness is no longer present. However, as she absented herself of her own volition immediately after making her speech, it might be worth re-emphasising that normally noble Lords wait at least until the end of the speech following their own before leaving. In this particular instance that was done with extraordinary rapidity.
There was also the fascinating example of Scotland. I have always wondered how boundary commissions work and have always been thankful that I was never invited and never will be invited to be a member of the boundary commission because it seems to me to be the most insuperable task. Whatever one decides, people complain that it is not right. My noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish produced some very good arguments this morning as to why he thought that boundary distribution in Scotland was not as just as it might be. I have no doubt that the Boundary Commission will take note of those points.
I would just make this point to my noble friend. He said that the boundary commissions were hampered by Rule 5 of the 1986 Act. They are not compelled to keep to regional or county boundaries. Rule 5 allows them to cross those boundaries in order to avoid excessive discrepancies. One of the difficulties in the case of Scotland, and equally one of the charms of Scotland, is its enormously different geographical bases. Clearly in those situations there will be disparities of constituency size.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I pointed out the disparities of geography and sparse population. The point which my noble friend made is that the cases which he mentioned arose because the boundary commission had felt obliged to recognise the boundaries of local government. There are no counties in Scotland but the equivalent of regions, so the boundaries concerned are regional boundaries, and sometimes district boundaries. As I understand it, in the case of Scotland, in the wording the commission is asked to have regard to local government boundaries. If my noble friend cannot reply now, perhaps at Committee stage we can look into how much that requires the boundary commission to follow local government boundaries. I think that a lot of the anomalies pointed out by my noble friend would not
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cause difficulties if the commission did not feel virtually obliged to follow local government boundaries.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I was aware that it was my noble friend Lord Campbell who referred to the geographical charms and differences of Scotland, to which I was also going to refer later. Being a prudent fellow, I have done my homework and happen to have with me the rule that my noble friend Lord Mackay is anxious about. I quote rule 5 because it may help my noble friends Lord Mackay and Lord Campbell:
"The electorate of any constituency shall be as near the electoral quota as is practicable having regard to rules 1 to 4; and a Boundary Commission may depart from the strict application of rule 4 if it appears to them that a departure is desirable to avoid an excessive disparity between the electorate of any constituency and the electoral quota, or between the electorate of any constituency and that of neighbouring constituencies in the part of the United Kingdom with which they are concerned."
I hope that that gives both my noble friends the indication that rule 5 permits the boundary commission not to stick rigidly to local or regional boundaries where it thinks fit.
My noble friend Lord Campbell also referred to the difficulties in Scotland because of its geography. It is perfectly true that it is very difficult. He referred to the Western Isles. The size of the electorate of the Western Isles is 23,015 which is pretty small by any standards. As my noble friend quite rightly said, if you happen to be the Member of Parliament for that area you have quite a long haul to get round the constituency because the islands are separated by vast expanses of water. It is difficult to get reasonable parity there.
My noble friend Lord Mackay referred to the need for better sized constituencies and mentioned one or two of them. I have no doubt that the boundary commission will take note of what he has said; but I do not think it would be particularly appropriate for me to get involved in too much individual detail on that basis.
I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, for saying that he agreed with so much of the contents of this Bill. However, he said that there had been no consultation. That is perfectly true, because this is not a political Bill as such. If the idea was to get the Bill in time so that the next general election could be brought about on up-to-date figures, it was necessary to have a certain amount of expedition. If we had consulted, not only would it have delayed the process, but it would not have helped it, because it was not a question of any political moment. Time was of the essence, and if we had undertaken to consult there would have been considerable delay. I can assure the noble Lord that as they always have done, the Government will consult the opposition parties before any appointments are made to the commissions.
The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, was also worried about electoral registration. I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was concerned with proportional representation and not so much with electoral registration. I am bound to tell the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, that we undertake various initiatives to improve the accuracy of electoral registration. This is done by electoral registration

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officers in local government. The noble Lord mentioned that about 95 per cent. were on the register. He went on to say that very often 5 per cent., if they had been on the register, might have swayed the result of the election. That is perfectly true. But to get 95 per cent. is not bad at all, and it is a very accurate figure. Incidentally, it compares very well with other countries. We are not totally satisfied and this year we intend to spend £617,000 on a registration campaign. We are always looking at ways to try to improve the register, and we send out codes of practice to electoral registration officers.
The noble Lord, Lord Underhill. referred to the Welsh provisions. He said they were unconstitutional. I believe that prompted the noble Baroness, Lady White, to make her intervention. The provisions are not unconstitutional. In my speech, I stressed the difference between proposals and final reports. It is only the proposals which can be published after the Welsh Bill has been read a second time in another place. However, it is perfectly true that by the time it has gone through the process of Parliament, the basis of the Bill may be changed. I repeat that it is only the proposals that can be published after Second Reading has taken place in another place. There is no question of the final report being based upon boundaries not already framed in legislation. The Second Reading will not be conclusive.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said that she thought eight to 12 years was better than the present 10 to 15 years. But she said that it might be difficult if a Member of Parliament felt that he had a constituency for only two Parliaments before finding that the boundaries had been changed. Frankly, that is always a difficulty. Wherever you draw a line there are bound to be arguments in favour and against. One of the advantages of 10 to 15 years is that there is much more continuity; one of the disadvantages is that there is total disparity. That was the reason why, looking back over the history, the three to seven-year period was too short and the 10 to 15-year period too long. We felt it was more appropriate to take the period proposed in the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, also referred to the timetable for the boundary commissions to await representations. The Home Affairs Committee recommended two months instead of one month, and the Government agreed with that. In practice, the commission usually allows two months.
My noble friend Lord Mackay referred to the number of Glasgow seats. Last time the boundary commission did not award an extra seat to Glasgow. The commission proposed one seat below the entitlement. The assistant commissioner adjudged that to be in error and the proposal was revised. Since then the electorate numbers of the Glasgow constituencies have fallen and the review will address that. The example of Glasgow serves to emphasise the justification for the Bill.
I am grateful to your Lordships for the contributions which have been made. On the whole, I think most noble Lords approve the general line of the Bill, which is to allow the next election to be fought on
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up-to-date figures. That is what lies behind it. A number of your Lordships have been kind enough to give your own views as to what ought to be done in individual circumstances. It is the duty of the boundary commission to take those matters into account, and I am sure that they will do so.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Child Support (Maintenance Assessment Procedure) Regulations 1992
12.40 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Henley)The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Henley) rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 22nd June be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that the draft regulations be approved. These regulations have been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and have been approved by affirmative resolution in another place. The first child support statutory instrument which is before us today is the Child Support (Maintenance Assessment Procedure) Regulations.
It had been my intention to speak to all four child support regulations at the same time but after representations from my noble kinsman Lord Russell I have agreed to separate the first from the others. However, if the House finds it convenient to speak more generally in the course of the debate on the first, I shall have no particular objection.
It may also be convenient for the House if 1 briefly outline the common purpose which lies behind all four statutory instruments for debate today and then dwell in slightly greater detail on the first set of regulations.
The regulations which we are debating today are the first to be made under the Child Support Act 1991, which provided the framework for the Government's new scheme for the assessment, collection and enforcement of child maintenance. As the House will no doubt be aware, the current system for child maintenance does not work as it should. Not least, it is uncertain and fragmented and as a result only 30 per cent. of lone mothers and 3 per cent. of lone fathers received regular child maintenance in 1989. The White Paper Children Come First, followed by the Child Support Act itself, represents the Government's response to those problems.
Regulations making provision for the collection and enforcement of maintenance will be laid shortly by negative procedure; and further provisions covering the detail of the appeals system, jurisdictional issues, fees and transitional issues will be brought forward later in the year.
I turn now to the maintenance assessment procedure regulations. The majority of these regulations deal with technical and procedural matters such as applications, notifications and terminations. It may therefore be helpful if I highlight only two of the provisions which are likely to be of particular interest to the House this afternoon.
First, Regulations 8 and 9 deal with interim maintenance assessments, which I remind the House are designed to be used only when an absent parent is refusing to provide the information needed to make a full assessment. It is important that interim maintenance assessments should retain their deterrent effect, but the House may wish to be aware that, in response to comments made during the consultation exercise on the content of the child support regulations, we have reduced the level of an interim maintenance assessment and extended the warning period before it can be imposed.
The second area is, I know, of much greater concern to the House. Regulations 34 to 50 provide for a reduction in benefit to be made where a parent with care in receipt of certain benefits fails, without good reason, to comply with obligations to allow maintenance to he recovered from the absent parent.
The House will be aware that there was much discussion of this issue during the passage of the Child Support Bill, that the Government responded constructively to address the legitimate concerns expressed then and that they built in a number of safeguards to protect the position of the parent with care. We made provision in the Child Support Act to deal with cases where there would be a risk of harm or undue distress either to the parent or to any child living with her. The provision gives scope to enable each case to be looked at individually. If there are reasonable grounds for believing that co-operation would lead to harm or undue distress, then the requirement to co-operate will be waived.
The parent with care will have a six-week period after the Child Support Agency has first contacted her about non-co-operation: she will have six weeks to consider her position and make further representations. At the end of that period the case will go to a child support officer for further consideration, and the child support officer will give the parent with care a further two weeks in which either to comply or to make representations. Only after that can a reduced benefit direction be issued.
As my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said, when the Child Support Act passed through this House, we were minded then to set the deduction at 20 per cent. of benefit for 26 weeks and 10 per cent. for a further 52 weeks. That is what the regulations should do. I should also remind the House and stress that the deduction can only be made once. There is no question of that benefit's sanction being reimposed at the end of the period if the parent with care still refuses to co-operate.
As regards the evidence required to support a claim that distress or hardship would result, I remind the House that it has been made clear on a number of occasions that, while corroboration will be welcomed, uncorroborated evidence of a parent will be accepted unless there are strong reasons not to do so.
I accept that this is a difficult area. I can assure the House that we shall be monitoring these cases most carefully to see how the provisions work in practice.
However, it remains true that both parents have responsibilities to their children. An absent parent should not be able to refuse to pay maintenance for his
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child. In the same way, a parent with care should not without good cause be able to refuse to co-operate in obtaining maintenance for her child, and thereby pass all the responsibility over to taxpayers, many of whom have children of their own to bring up. For that reason, this is a necessary and important measure.
I commend these regulations to the House.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 22nd June be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Henley.)
12.45 p.m.
Lord Carter: My Lords, the House will be extremely grateful to the Minister for explaining these complicated regulations. We have still a great deal of business to get through today and I therefore accept the noble Lord's invitation to make an en bloc speech and deal with all the regulations, intervening extremely briefly only if I have to when he proceeds to the next regulations. I do not propose to go through each regulation in detail. I should just like to deal with particular matters of concern or where there is some doubt over the exact implication or operation of the regulations.
The first point—this will not surprise the Minister—is one which exercised this House and another place very much indeed during the passage of the Bill. It covers the situation where the parent with care does not wish to name the absent parent. Are we to understand now that this is a matter to be left entirely to the discretion of the child support officer? What is the guidance that will be given to the CSOs? Will that guidance be published? Will it be published in draft so that all those interested in the matter will have a chance to comment?
Can the Minister also tell the House the rights of appeal which the lone parent will have when the CSO, in a sense, has ruled against him or her? Are there grounds for refusal to reveal the name of the absent parent besides the fear of violence or harassment? Will other grounds be accepted?
The Minister will remember the debate about the formula for assessing child maintenance. The algebra in Schedule 1 of the Bill has now been turned into figures. We welcome the Government's change of heart regarding the original proposal for a reduction in the amount of maintenance assessment when the child or children reach the age of 11.
Obviously—I am sure that the Minister expected to hear this—the major criticism of the regulations, as it was in the Bill itself, concerns the benefit penalty. We understand that over 100 organisations provided evidence during the consultation process in the drafting of these regulations. I believe that that evidence is not available en bloc but is still in the department. If we wish to find out what the organisations said, we shall have to approach them individually.
Can the Minister say how many of the organisations consulted in the consultation period supported the concept of the benefit penalty? Perhaps I may also ask a question which has been asked many times before in this House: how can the welfare of the

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child be paramount if the benefits are reduced via the penalty system? This does not hurt the parent; it hurts the child. So who is being punished?
There is also concern over the size and length of the benefit reduction. It is felt that it is harsh and must therefore have a negative effect on the welfare of children in one-parent families. Also the reduction seems to fail to incorporate the safeguards which exist within the comparable voluntary unemployment deduction for lessening the effects of the deduction where that is necessitated by the circumstances of the claimant. The Minister will know that the voluntary unemployment deduction ranges from one day to 26 weeks, whereas the deduction under the Child Support Act runs for a fixed length—a fifth over 26 weeks and then 10 per cent. for a further 52 weeks. The voluntary unemployment deduction, which I think can be compared because it is a benefit penalty, also contains provision for the deduction to be halved when a member of the family is seriously ill or pregnant. No such provision exists within the maintenance deduction. I am sure that the House will be grateful if the Minister can explain in a little more detail why there is that difference.
Another problem relates to second families on low income. Will the majority of any increase in the income of the second family be diverted to the parent with care? What are the safeguards in the regulations to prevent the two families being forced into poverty? What is to stop some lone parents being worse off through the loss of certain benefits when maintenance is paid?
It has been pointed out by the Child Poverty Action Group that some lone parents may be lifted off income support and will he worse off when the ex-partner agrees to pay maintenance. The group cites the case of a mother with four school-aged children who is £20 a week worse off due to the loss of free school meals after her ex-partner agreed to pay maintenance.
On the basis of receiving maintenance, other lone parents may decide that they can now find some paid employment. They can of course claim family credit if they are working at least 16 hours a week. As well as the loss of benefits which are passported by income support, there are other ways in which that group may be worse off than on income support. We know that the take-up of family credit is low, about 50 per cent., compared with the take-up of income support for lone parents. Family credit does not cover mortgage payments. A number of women remain in the family home to avoid disruption to the children. If the absent parent fails to pay maintenance and the amount of family credit payable is fixed for a six-month period, no mechanism is currently available to make up the shortfall if the maintenance agreed is not received. The Minister will know that the CPAG has pressed the Government to guarantee payment in such cases. It will be helpful if he can comment on that.
Shared care is a complicated area. There are complicated rules to deal with the situation of care which is shared between the parent with care and the absent parent. However, there is a feeling that the rules are inadequate. Parents who care for children for
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less than two nights a week on average will not be recognised as doing so by the formula. I am advised that an absent parent could look after children throughout the school holidays yet have to continue to pay full maintenance to the other parent. In the same way, no account will be taken if an absent parent cares for the children every other weekend. That anomaly needs to be addressed. It could lead to disruption of the arrangements for the children; and the children will suffer enough anyway as a result of the family circumstances.
Also how will the income of the absent parent be calculated if he or she is self-employed, with a variable weekly or monthly income?
Those are all important points of detail. I do not wish to detain the House because there is much business to be dealt with. I do not propose to go over again the debate that we had concerning the very wide regulation-making powers. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, is not present. I am sure that the Minister is pleased because the noble and learned Lord would have had much to say about the fact that some regulations which are retrospective amend the Act. I do not need to mention the phrase "Henry VIII" for the Minister to know what I refer to. We protested about the Henry VIII clauses when the Act was discussed. Some of our worst fears have come true.
As we know, the regulations concern some of the poorest people in society. I am sure that the Minister is aware of the publication only yesterday of official figures which indicate that one in four children is living in poverty, with a higher proportion in the lone parent families. The poorest families have suffered a 6 per cent. cut in real income since 1979. In 1979,5 million people were living below half average income; in 1989,12 million were living below half average income. Will the Minister confirm whether those figures were available before 9th April, the date of the general election, but were held back? Will he comment on the fact that when the Government can hold the figures back no longer they choose to publish them on the eve of the parliamentary Recess?
Nothing in the regulations causes me to alter the view that I expressed consistently when the Act was before us. I have always believed that it was designed as much with the saving of public expenditure in mind as looking after the welfare of the lone parent family and children and parents with the care of their children. Despite the improvements that the Government have made during the process of consultation, which we welcome, nothing in the regulations suggests that I was wrong in that original belief.
Earl Russell: My Lords, first, I refer to the good news. I thank my noble kinsman and his department for the care and courtesy that they have put into the process of consultation over the draft of the regulations. It was welcome. It has resulted in some improvements. However, the regulations before us are so long and complex that I was going to describe them as a mini-Bill but decided that I had to delete the adjectival qualification. Were we treating the matter as

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a Second Reading to be followed by a Committee and Report stage, we would by no means have too much time to consider the business in the regulations.
I also wish to thank my noble kinsman for the care and courtesy that he has put into correspondence over the past few days which has saved the time of the House on several points that we need not now discuss.
I am pleased that the regulations are under the affirmative procedure. Some noble Lords who have read the Minute may have noticed that I have tabled a Prayer about other regulations under the negative procedure. I have been told that we do not have time to debate that before the Recess and that after the Recess—because judicial sitting days count as praying days—I shall be out of time. Therefore were the regulations not under the affirmative procedure we might not have had a debate. I wish to express my gratitude to those noble Lords, most notably the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, who have pressed for the affirmative procedure.
I wish too to draw my noble kinsman's attention to the number of reports that we have received of officers jumping the gun and attempting to disentitle mothers from benefits before the regulations are in force. I have received such reports from the National Council for One Parent Families, from the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux and from Gingerbread. They all say exactly the same. Gingerbread reports 66 cases in the past three months. The greatest dismay comes from the National Council for One Parent Families, which met the chairman of the Benefits Agency in March on that very point. It was offered assurances, which it welcomed, that that would not occur again. I has. I shall be grateful if my noble kinsman will undertake to look into the matter and to ensure that the regulations will not be enforced until their commencement.
My noble kinsman has told us many times that the Department of Social Security deals with matters of principle in the Act and with minor matters in regulations. I am occasionally somewhat surprised by the definition of "minor matters". I wonder about the definition of major matters. I am reminded of my favourite quotation from Edward Gibbon, which states that the graver charges against the supreme Pontiff were dropped and they persisted only with the charges of murder, heresy, rape, arson, piracy, sodomy and incest. I have always wondered what Gibbon meant by the graver charges. I wonder what the Department of Social Security means by major matters.
As I understand it, disentitlement to benefit is a penalty on a level with loss of liberty. We would take a dim view of a Bill which established a power of imprisonment and left the length of imprisonment to he fixed by the Secretary of State by regulation. I know that the principle of disentitlement has been discussed by the House. But the amount of disentitlement is now before us for the first time. I believe that of the two choices I would probably prefer imprisonment, although my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich would no doubt tell me that I would be wise to find out first in which prison I was to be incarcerated. If I were in prison I would have three
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meals a day and a roof over my head. With disentitlement to benefit one cannot always be sure of that.
Nevertheless, I concede that these regulations contain some minor matters, and I shall mention one of them in passing. Schedule 1, paragraph 3, relates to full-time education being defined by the number of hours of formal instruction. Where sixth forms are now developing, especially in the humanities, people are given books to read and told to go away and write essays. The department cannot do it that way. I have no objection to its aims; but what it is attempting will not work. I shall ask once again why disability working allowance is a prescribed benefit for the purposes of these regulations. I know that my noble kinsman has explained that before, but I have not understood him. Maybe I am stupid; but I should like to try again.
The amount of disentitlement is 20 per cent. of benefit for 26 weeks, followed by 10 per cent. for 52 weeks. I shall take the rates for those under the age of 25 because often single mothers are young. According to my calculations, what is left will come to £26.72 for 26 weeks, and £30.08 for 52 weeks. I wish to ask my noble kinsman another question and, if I may impersonate Winnie the Pooh, an answer is required. Does he believe that the single mother is capable of living on that amount and that she can do so without harming the health of the child?
I am also anxious about the duration of the disentitlement. Hardship is cumulative; shoes wear out, coats become threadbare, socks get holes in them, leaks in the roof become more serious, and so forth. Therefore, a long-lasting disentitlement grows progressively more severe. In that context, I ask my noble kinsman whether mothers who have been disentitled to benefit are construed to be too poor to have loans from the Social Fund. I have previously asked my noble kinsman whether he can explain why it is right that people should be too poor to be helped by the social security system. I ask him again. If such people are not construed to be too poor to be helped by the Social Fund, does he believe that they could carry the burden of repayment?
One aspect has changed since we debated this matter; it is the publication of the excellent Government White Paper, The Health of the Nation. I have studied the excellent section in the White Paper of the link between health and diet. I find it thoroughly convincing and wonder whether government policies are in conflict with each other. In future, will my noble kinsman's department when considering income support levels consult the Department of Health about the cost of an adequate diet? Will he refer the amount of money that mothers are receiving under this regulation to the Department of Health's committee on the medical aspects of food policy; known, perhaps appropriately, as COMA?
But if my noble kinsman assures me that single mothers can survive on £26.72 per week, that will not necessarily protect him against the charge of using starvation as an instrument of policy. He is familiar with the problems of deductions from social security benefit; Social Fund loans, gas, water and electricity,

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over-payments and so forth. I have done my sums on the subject and I shall go into them afterwards if my noble kinsman wishes. I have calculated that with maximum deductions, benefit could be reduced to as little as £13.30 per week. I do not believe that my noble kinsman will say that a woman can live on that. For the sake of clarification, will he say whether other deductions affecting a single mother disentitled to 20 per cent. of her benefit, which are normally assessed as a percentage, will be assessed as a percentage of the full benefit or the reduced benefit? That could be a vital issue.
I welcomed what my noble kinsman said about the absence of double jeopardy—I am glad of that. I also welcome the concession made on Third Reading of the Bill about cases in which enforcement might cause harm and undue distress to the mother. People outside this Chamber are worried because that is discretionary. I understand why it is of the essence of the concession and of its value that it has to be discretionary. However, will he confirm that he will publish that concession in the guidance and stress that most strongly? For many centuries this has been an area in which some of those involved in enforcement have been zealots and those zealots need controlling.
My noble kinsman said that disentitlement will not occur without good reason. I accept that it will not happen without what the Department of Social Security believes to be good reason. But the Department of Social Security does not know or understand the secrets of everybody's marriage—I do not believe that even Dr. Kinsey did so. In many cases people may feel a justified anxiety about contact with their former partner for reasons which are too much of the atmosphere to be capable of being explained to a child support officer. I believe that we have an issue which must be regarded as being covered by the principle of subsidiarity. My noble kinsman should be ready to find single mothers who react to these investigations in very much the spirit in which the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, would react to a directive from Brussels—they would feel that it was not proper.
There is an important underlying disagreement between us. The department will say that it does not intend to produce such hardship because its intention is to achieve compliance and not to inflict the penalty. The department believes that women will act for rational economic motives and therefore faced with the threat of penalty will name the father. But love and reproduction are not entirely rational areas. I do not believe that the department has at all taken on board the intensity of women's resistance to such personal investigations. Compliance has been attempted on and off for six centuries, even to the point of withdrawing the midwife in the middle of labour if the mother would not name the father. I do not believe that cruelty can go much further than that; but it still did not produce compliance.
I believe that these regulations will fail as such attempts have always failed in the past. I do not usually go in for prophecy. If my noble kinsman asks me why I hold that belief, I shall reply,"Six centuries
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of human experience". What does my noble kinsman have to set against that? Why does he feel that human nature has changed? I used to believe that it was part of Conservative philosophy that government could not change human nature. If that has ceased to be part of Conservative philosophy, I should like to know when, why and under what circumstances.
My Lords, I am normally allergic to the more militant forms of feminist. I do not like being disliked for something which I cannot help and of which, in any case, I am not ashamed. But there are some moments when I see what the world would look like if I were a militant feminist. This is one of them and I do not like it!
Lord Rix: My Lords, I rise today to speak on behalf of disabled children who certainly have had six centuries in regard to disregard behind them. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for agreeing to the widening of the debate at this stage.
I know that MENCAP, Barnardos and the Spastics Society made strong representations during the passage of the original Bill with regard to the process for maintenance payments for disabled children. The organisations argued for the additional costs related to bringing up a disabled child to be reflected in the formula which will now be used for the calculation of maintenance in ordinary circumstances. There were good reasons for that. First, the formula had been designed to make the amount a lone parent received in maintenance more predictable and therefore able to be decided more quickly. Secondly, it removed the stigma, cost and unpredictability of the court process.
Those reasons hold good for families with disabled children just as much as others. However, the conclusion was that for full assessment of the maintenance needed for a disabled child the courts would remain the decision-making body. I believe that going to the courts could well be an obstacle to many uncertain lone parents with a disabled child truly benefiting from the child support system that the Government wish to see. There is little evidence that court maintenance awards offer any consistency or easy access for parents. There can be no guarantees that proper account will he taken of the child's extra costs associated with disability.
I seek an assurance that the child support officers will advise parents of the right to have the needs of their child assessed by a court. If that does not happen there is a risk that lone parents of disabled children will not receive an adequate income for care of their children. I therefore ask the Minister to ensure that the objectives of the Child Support Agency are met for families with a disabled child and to look closely at how the interface between the regulations and the decisions of courts on awards to disabled children actually operates in practice. I urge the Government to undertake responsibility for monitoring the relationship between the operation of the formula and court decisions on maintenance for disabled children.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, I speak as chairman of the Children's Society, which has expressed misgivings in regard to the present regulations. I should first like to point out that

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approximately 70 per cent. of lone parents depend on income support. Under the present requirements of the new legislation they will not gain in any way. For every £1 they receive in child maintenance support, they will lose £1 in the benefit entitlement under the new legislation. It is a form of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I should be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Henley, would comment on that point and perhaps he could also outline the regulations. They are somewhat complicated. It produces something of a difficulty because parents who are seeking to care for children need every assistance in handling the regulations and in obtaining the benefits that they deserve.
I move on to the matter so elegantly expressed by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, in regard to the difficulty a lone parent may face in not wanting to name the other parent and thereby suffering the possibility that the child support maintenance needed will be reduced. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Henley, can advise me on that matter.
It is the view of the Children's Society that the regulations and guidance should contain the explicit welfare principle set out in the Children Act and the Child Support Act—that the good of the child should be foremost in all considerations—and they should determine the carrying out of the duties of the child support officers at all stages in the assessment and enforcement process. After all, the Government White Paper is entitled Children Come First. Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to give me some assurance on that matter when he sums up.
It has been said, and I am sure will be said again by other noble Lords, that the handling of the regulations will require the greatest possible sensitivity in the child support officers. We hope that they will receive special training. The Government said that they seek a better and more secure maintenance for children. That can only be achieved if the lone parent is given a safeguard that if she does not wish to name the true father, money will not be withdrawn from an already inadequate family budget. I seek the assurance of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, on all those matters in regard to these otherwise improved regulations.
1.15 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, we are almost at the end of the process which started in your Lordships' House with the introduction of the Child Support Bill. Many of us, including the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lord Carter, stayed here day after clay into the far reaches of the night trying to improve a Bill which I disliked then and, as an Act, I dislike now. But for all our discussions and hours spent in Committee and on Report, we had little effect on government thinking. In my view the effect was little indeed. Even the notorious Clause 8, which penalised women who were in fear for themselves and their children—which your Lordships had the good sense to reject—was reimposed by another place.
As the noble Lord, Lord Henley, will be aware from my previous speeches in this House, I believe that these regulations, and indeed the Act, have nothing to do with child support; they have everything to do with saving the Treasury £400 million. That was the
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position I and other people expressed when the Bill was first introduced into the House and the same position applies today. The Act is no better than it was when it was first introduced. The White Paper which preceded the Child Support Bill was entitled Children Come First. That was indeed a misnomer. It should have been The Treasury comes First. There is no doubt that the Act is not concerned with children; the regulations are not concerned with children. It can be shown that it is concerned with saving Treasury money.
Seventy five per cent. of the recipients of maintenance live on social benefits. There is no benefit under the regulations or the Act for children. For every £1 of increased maintenance there will be a £1 reduction in benefit. So there is no benefit to children or mothers in any way from these regulations or the Act from which they flow. As has already been mentioned by my noble friend, and in particular by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, what about the women who out of fear are not going to name the father? The noble Earl has done some calculations as to how adversely that will affect women and their families. It will amount to £8.49 per week for 26 weeks and half of that sum for a further 52 weeks. What hardship that means to poor people.
But let us look at the matter in another way. I too have done a calculation. I have totalled up the amount which a mother or a family will lose over that period. It amounts to £442. That is a fine of £442 being visited on the woman and child because out of fear or for some other good reason she refuses to name the father. What kind of government are they who impose such a fine on poor women and children? It is called the Child Support Act. How are the children going to be supported when the mother has to pay a fine of £442, even though it may be paid over a period of 18 months? Where are the benefits to the children out of that? Yet, as I have said, these regulations are called the child support regulations. That is a misnomer. The children will gain no support from them at all. Indeed, in most cases there will be no additional financial support and, as we have seen in some cases, there will be a substantial reduction in support. For many there will be a reduction in their quality of life as a result of the stresses and strains that the Child Support Act and these regulations will engender. There is the possibility that they will hinder or prevent reconciliation that might otherwise take place.
The Tory Party is always prating on about the family. But Tory Party family policy is a shambles and a disgrace. Virtually everything it has done, including the Act and these regulations, militates against family life and reconciliation. As I have said, these regulations are no exception. It is about time that this Government put the family first, lived up to their slogan and really did something for the family instead of doing things which split families and make things difficult for them.
Family credits and the situation if the absent parent fails to pay have already been mentioned. But surely under those circumstances, if the Government really believe that assistance should be given and they want to help single parent families, that is a matter which

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they should grasp and give assurances about today. If they really want to help the family that is one way in which they can do so; namely, by guaranteeing payment in cases where the maintenance is not paid. There is nothing in these regulations to put that right. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, can give us some assurances that in due course that matter in particular will be put right.
This legislation has been rushed at every stage. Even at the last moment when there was plenty of time available the Government rushed the Bill through before the parliamentary Recess in 1991. There would have been plenty of time available properly to discuss everything afterwards. But the Government wanted to get the Child Support Agency on the stocks before 1993.
These regulations are very complicated. One might say that they are a bureaucrat's dream but a citizen's nightmare. How are ordinary people to understand their rights under the regulations? They will need an army of lawyers to advise them. Again in rushing things through the Government allowed the House of Commons only nine days in which to consider four sets of complicated regulations. Yet this morning we are supposed to agree them without amendment. The fact is that we cannot amend them.
I believe that the Act and these regulations will not only cause hardship but very much resentment. It may very well be that in the course of time the Government will find to their cost that what they have introduced by this Act and these regulations is another poll tax fiasco.
Lord McGregor of Durris: My Lords, like the noble Lord, I disliked this legislation from the beginning. My dislike has hardly been modified by the marginal improvement represented in these regulations. Also like the noble Lord, I would like to add my voice to the complaints about the way in which this legislation has been managed by the Government. Not only did the other place have only nine days in which to consider getting on for 100 pages of regulations, but at the time of its debate the Members of another place did not have the 4th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. We at least have had the benefit of that helpful document in the three bare weeks which we have had to consider the regulations. As many noble Lords have said, in the earlier stages of the passing of the legislation we had only a very short time to consider the regulations which are the content of the Act. To be asked as we now are to consider them on the last day before the Recess makes a mockery of parliamentary criticism of legislation.
Further than that, I understand that there were 100 consultation papers submitted to the Government, none of which has been published. Anyone interested in finding out what the voluntary bodies working in this field had to say about the regulations has had, as I did, to scurry round to try to collect their submissions. The Government treated in exactly the same way the research on which in some measure their original White Paper was based; that is the work done at York University by Bradshaw and Millar. The
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Government declined to publish that work, although they had it, until after parliamentary discussion of the Bill was completed.
I believe that the House has been treated in a shabby manner as regards enabling it to discuss a very important measure. As regards what my noble friend Lord Russell said about the reduced benefit direction and the points made in different ways by others who contributed to the debate, I wish to draw the Minister's attention to what a very large number of people who have discussed these regulations both outside and in the other place see as a central issue. It centres upon a conflict of values.
There is, first, the value to which everyone who has taken part in discussions on this legislation assents fully—the value that fathers should contribute to the maintenance of their children to the full extent of their capabilities. There is no doubt about that. However, there is then a second value—that in a free society there must be some frontiers of freedom which nobody should be permitted to cross. Those include the absolute right of mothers to preserve the privacy of their sexual relationships in so far as such relationships do not involve unlawful practices. Here, however, we have legislation that permits—no, requires—state servants to investigate the nature of sexual relationships in circumstances to which, in my opinion, no civilised society should subject a mother.
Admittedly, the regulations have been modified to some degree in that it was said in another place and by the Minister in his opening remarks that the Government will accept the uncorroborated evidence of parents unless there are strong reasons not to do so. I hope that the Minister will tell us what such reasons would be and that he will give us some information about the manner of the training in this area that is to be provided for child support officers. I hope that he will also explain something that puzzles me—if this principle has now been accepted, could it not have been incorporated into the regulations themselves?
We can only hope that the Government will now act on the principle that the protection of the taxpayer ought not to be the overriding value of the Administration in this particular field of social policy. I hope that the Minister will be willing to confirm that. The intrusion of public policy considerations into the realm of private life which is represented by this legislation also seriously affects legal arrangements, as many lawyers have pointed out, including the Law Society, which stated that the principle of,
"the clean break is now and will in future be undermined by the provisions of this Act".
This is neither the time nor the place to discuss financial settlements after divorce and similar considerations, but it underlines the point that, as I understand it, at no point when this legislation as a whole was being considered and discussed in this House was the judiciary consulted. In the working out of these regulations, we now face the possibility of a considerable conflict between principles laid down by the courts for dealing with the financial and property consequences of broken marriages and the administrative principles that will be developed by the Child Support Agency.

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There is a further legal consideration. Despite many appeals during the passage of the legislation, the Government have refused a right of appeal to the courts on the decisions of the Child Support Agency. Any appeals will not go to the courts but to a tribunal. One characteristic of tribunals is that legal aid is not available. So here we have a situation in which officials can determine the situation of the adult members of broken homes. As many of your Lordships have already said, this is a most sensitive area which could have incalculable consequences for the future of the families involved, yet there is no appeal in the system which carries with it the assurance that the appellant can be legally represented in circumstances in which great complexities may very well be involved.
I hope that the Minister can give us some assurances about how the gap caused by the absence of legal aid will be dealt with in circumstances in which, as has been emphasised many times, those of our fellow citizens who are involved are among the very poorest members of the community and are therefore the most in need of assistance.
Finally, several of your Lordships have drawn attention to the draconian penal provisions in the legislation. I refer to the 20 per cent. reduction in entitlement. Looking at the matter in a much shorter historical perspective than that employed by my noble friend, what that boils down to in practice is the reintroduction of the punitive elements of the old poor law which we thought had disappeared in 1948. That, however, re-emerges in this legislation, and re-emerges against a background in which such penal provisions have historically' never worked (I am thinking only of the past 100 years) and have ultimately had to be got rid of as a result of protests against the uncivilised treatment of citizens by officials which such provisions necessarily involve.
That point also brings us back to one of the major recommendations of the Committee on One-Parent Families which reported in 1974. It drew attention to the fact that throughout the whole of the 19th century and up to 1948 the poor law had been a form of family law which applied to the very poor. It recommended the abolition of a legal system which provided a different series of family laws for different social classes. Under the judiciary, and under the very slow developments which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has frequently told the House are leading us to a family court, the penal provisions disappeared and the population as a whole became subject to a single law to regulate their family relationships.
This legislation is putting us right back by 50 years into a world which we thought had gone for ever. I very much hope that the Minister will ask the officials—indeed, instruct the officials—who are constituting the new agency to consider very carefully the implications of the administrative decisions that they will be taking.
I wish to make one last point. All discussion of this legislation has pointed to the way in which its treatment of second families and the treatment under the regulations of second families is in direct conflict with one of the central provisions of the admirable
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Children Act. These regulations undoubtedly make—the voluntary bodies which deal with these families on the ground have all made this point—second families less eligible than first families.
It may be worth while for those who are to administer the new system just to reflect on a comment by the old National Assistance Board in 1953 on the central issue with which the regulations are concerned. The National Assistance Board wrote in its annual report for 1953:
"if the husband's earnings or other resources are not enough to maintain besides himself both his wife with her children, if any, and the paramour with her children, if any, the defect has got to be met at one point or other by assistance. The board are then faced with the delicate task of deciding whether the assistance is to be given to the wife or to the paramour. Respect for the marriage tie suggests that it is the legal wife who should be the prior charge on the husband's income, but important practical considerations, not least the avoidance of unnecessary expenditure of public moneys, lead inescapably to the other view. Extracting money from husbands to maintain wives from whom they are separated is at best an uncertain business. It is easier to enforce the maintenance of those with whom the man is living than of those from whom he is parted".
I suspect that the new agency will learn that lesson very quickly.
Lord Henley: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, alleges that all this legislation and the regulations before the House today have been brought forward purely—as he put it—to save the Treasury some money. I remind the noble Lord of what I said at the beginning when I introduced the regulations. We do not see it as right that people should be able to avoid their responsibilities and heap them on to the taxpayer or the Treasury.
I remind the noble Lord of who pays for what he referred to as the Treasury. It is taxpayers themselves, many of whom have children. I remind the noble Lord just to bear in mind how much the individual taxpayer pays to support the social security system that we have in this country. On average every taxpayer—every national insurance contributor—is paying something of the order of £10 a day to support the social security system. Those taxpayers—those national insurance contributors—have children as well. It is not purely the interests of some nebulous Treasury; it is the interests of the taxpayer at large that must also be taken into account.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I understand perfectly what he has said. The fact of the matter is that the Bill is called the Child Support Bill but it is not going to support children. The noble Lord has, by his opening remarks, confirmed everything that I and other noble Lords have said; that the Bill is about saving the Treasury money. He confirmed that.
Lord Henley: My Lords, obviously it saves money. It saves money for the taxpayer himself. The taxpayer has children. The Bill is also quite clearly designed for the support of children. It is designed to make sure that fathers—I should not use the words "fathers"—it is designed to ensure that absent parents meet their obligations to support their own children. That has to be in the interests of the children. It has to be

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in the interests of the children to teach them that their fathers or mothers have a responsibility to support them and for them to grow up in that belief.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Even if they have to starve?
1.45 p.m.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I do not accept that. I do not think that the noble Lord will make much progress by emotive interjections of that sort.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I ask my noble kinsman to think carefully about the concluding quotation used by my noble friend Lord McGregor of Durris. I wonder whether this may perhaps save the Treasury after all.
Lord Henley: My Lords, my noble kinsman, again, again and again, comes forward to the House, as I do not think I need remind your Lordships, by suggesting that any expenditure of social security money that he proposes is always likely to reduce expenditure on social security. I do not accept it now and I have never accepted what my noble kinsman argues.
If we accept that where possible the parent with care is supported by the absent parent, it must be accepted that there has to be a sanction for those who refuse to co-operate unreasonably. Again, I stress the word "unreasonably", as I did in my opening remarks. Despite what has been said today by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and others, I do not believe that that sanction at 20 per cent. for 26 weeks and 10 per cent. for a further 52 weeks is unreasonable. It is nothing new in the social security system. Such deductions are made, as noble Lords have reminded us, in the case of voluntary unemployment deduction and such deductions can also be made in the case of income support for those who refuse actively to seek work, in which case they have no entitlement whatsoever to income support and only entitlement to income support under various hardship provisions at a 40 per cent. reduction.
We believe that sufficient discretion is already available. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, and possibly my noble kinsman Lord Russell said that there was no provision to reduce the benefit deduction. We believe that there is already sufficient discretion. There is the position of the child support officer who decides in the particular circumstances of the case whether pursuing maintenance would put the parent or any child living with her at risk of harm or undue distress. If those circumstances apply no reduction will be made. It is important to remember that reduction has occurred only because of the unreasonableness of the refusal to co-operate by the individual parent. I shall come back to those points later on.
I should like to touch on one or two points which have arisen during the debate. First, the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, referred to the concept of "clean break". I think that I must repeat what my noble and learned friend and others said as the Bill went through Parliament in the process of becoming what is now the Child Support Act. The clean break is simply not an
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issue here. There can be no clean break between parents and children. Clean break is a concept which has a great deal of validity; it is a very valuable concept. But it is something relevant to the position of parents without children, or parents whose children have long since grown up.
Again, in passing, the noble Lord, Lord Carter, referred to the recently published—in fact, published yesterday—Household Below-Average Income Statistics. This is not the time and place to discuss them. However, I should like to make one or two brief comments. I suspect that the noble Lord has not read the HBAI statistics. If he had, I do not think that he would have made the allegations about the poor getting poorer in the way that he did. Certainly, if he looks at the composition of the lowest decile, he will find that some rather extraordinary statistics emerge. For example, on average, expenditure by the lowest decile is greater than expenditure in the decile above it. Moreover, if he takes those within the lowest decile who have negative or zero incomes he will find that, on average—and this is rather difficult to understand—they spend more than the average. The statistics are not quite as simple as the noble Lord would have us believe. In fact, they show that, on average, for the entire population, incomes have increased by over 30 per cent. I see that the noble Lord wishes to intervene. I give way.
Lord Carter: My Lords, I am most grateful. The Minister is quite right, I have obviously not had the chance to study the report in detail. As to the increase in the average income which is about 30 per cent., the noble Lord omitted to mention the increase in income of the top 10 per cent. It is a fact that the lowest decile has had a 6 per cent. reduction in real terms. I happen to have the chart here with me.
Lord Henley: My Lords, there are two ways of looking at the figures; that is, either before or after housing costs. Under one measure there is a reduction of 6 per cent., while under another there is an increase of 2 per cent. I was trying to say that, if you then look at the expenditure of that group you will find some rather odd figures emerging. It does not actually reflect their living standards if they are spending more than the average man, woman or child in the population. That was an aside, and one that is not particularly relevant to the subject that we are discussing today.
There has been some concern about the consultation and the number of different organisations that responded to it. I have to say that it is entirely a matter for the 100 or so organisations that replied as to whether they wish to make their replies public. It is a decision for them; it is not a decision for us. I have to repeat, as my honourable friend said in another place, that we have no intention of publishing those particular responses.
The noble Lords, Lord Stoddart and Lord McGregor, also made complaints about the timing of the regulations. They said that the process has been something of a rush job. However, I have to stress that the regulations were laid on 22nd June, so there has been ample time, especially for noble Lords in this

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House to consider their views before debate. That is not unreasonable. Of course, I understand that there were complaints in another place, but that is a matter for them. I understand that those in another place gave their assent to the regulations.
My noble kinsman made a very worrying allegation that staff are jumping the gun and that they are already forcing women to disclose the name of the absent parent before the regulations come into force in April 1993. We are aware of those suggestions. Indeed, the noble Earl stressed that representations had been made to the chief executive of the Benefits Agency. I must stress that the guidance given to staff is clear: there is no requirement on women to disclose the name of the father before the regulations come into effect. I give the noble Earl an assurance that the provision will not come into force before April of next year. We shall certainly take steps to reinforce the guidance to staff. Moreover, if the noble Earl would like me to look into any individual cases of which he has genuine evidence, I shall certainly do so.
My noble kinsman also said that civil servants and the Department of Social Security simply cannot be expected always to understand why a parent will not wish to name the father. To some extent, I believe that that was one of the concerns expressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester who said that these were difficult matters into which we should be very wary of entering. Obviously we recognise that this is a very sensitive and delicate area for many people. Our aim, so far as possible, is to ensure that, where a parent has good reasons not to name, such reasons will be recognised and there will be no reduction of benefit. Parents will have ample opportunity to put their case forward. We shall ensure that the Child Support Agency staff are trained to recognise and deal sensitively and carefully with such cases. The parent with care will have an opportunity to explain her case when she is first contacted by the Child Support Agency. If needed, there will then be a cooling-off period in which she can make her case to an official acting on behalf of the Secretary of State. After that, she can make further representations if her case is passed on to a child support officer. Representations can be made orally or in writing. The parent with care can be accompanied by a friend, a neighbour or by some representative of any particular welfare organisation.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter, asked whether the guidelines would be published. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, said that that would be more properly included in the regulations. We do not accept that the guidance should be in the regulations. Obviously, the staff will be given the guidance and that guidance will stress that it is the interests of the children and the parent with care that are paramount. One must be aware of the dangers that, if any guidance were published, it would certainly have the possible effect of assisting absent parents to evade their responsibilities.
I move on now to rights of appeal. As noble Lords will remember, Section 46(7) of the Child Support Act gives the parent with care the right of appeal if a benefit deduction is made to a child support appeal
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tribunal against the issue of a reduced benefit direction. The noble Lord, Lord McGregor, asked that we should go further and that this should be an appeal to the courts. Obviously, one can appeal from social security commissioners—and this is the same sort of animal—to the courts on a point of law. However, I must stress that it is an appeal to an independent tribunal. The child support appeal tribunals, just as with other social security appeal tribunals, are not composed of officials from my department. They are independent tribunals operated by legally qualified people and set up by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. I see the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, wishes to intervene. I give way.
Lord McGregor of Durris: My Lords, I am most obliged to the Minister for giving way. My point was simply that the appeal as it stands under the regulations is to a body for which the appellant cannot obtain legal aid.
Lord Henley: My Lords, that is the case with a great many different appeal tribunals—whether they be employment appeal tribunals or social security appeal tribunals. It is really a much wider question as to whether one should extend legal aid, and all the inherent cost, to the tribunals. The original purpose of setting up tribunals was to create some more informal forum whereby matters could he resolved. The necessity for legally qualified representation was, therefore, much less. But, as I said, obviously there is appeal on a point of law to the Court of Appeal where no doubt legal aid would be possible.
My noble kinsman asked about the reduced benefit direction applying to standard deductions from income support. The parent with care's income support may be reduced under a reduced benefit direction if that parent has unreasonably refused to co-operate. At the same time, it might be possible that standard deductions are being made for such items as fuel and housing costs. The overall ceiling of 15 per cent. will continue to be based on the full rate of income support for the over-25 personal allowance. It needs to be borne in mind that those standard deductions, after paying off debts to third parties, are made to safeguard the interests of income support beneficiaries.
The noble Lord, Lord Carter, asked about shared care. He will be aware that the normal maintenance is designed to cater for the most common cases where the child lives with one parent and the absent parent does not live with the child. We recognise that there will be other circumstances. They are provided for in the special cases part of the regulations which modify the application of the formula in such cases. We are aware that there is a feeling that where a child spends a significant amount of time with the absent parent, some recognition of that should be made in the absent parent's maintenance liability. We considered carefully where the balance should be struck. In the end, we concluded that it would be reasonable for the absent parent's liability to be adjusted if, averaged over the year, he provides overnight care for at least two nights per week. Such a level of care would mean

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that the absent parent would be likely to incur more significant financial commitments—for example, for accommodation—and that is therefore the right level at which to start making a formal recognition of the substantial share of the responsibility.
Lord Carter: My Lords, two nights a week over a year amounts to 104 nights. The absent parent would have to have the child for one-third of the year before there would be any change. Is that right?
Lord Henley: My Lords, yes, as I said, two nights a week averaged over the year. One has to draw the line somewhere. Difficult decisions have to be made. On balance, we believed that that was about the right level at which to make changes.
The noble Lord was also worried that some parents might be worse off with child support if floated off income support. The noble Lord will be aware that the general rule is that anyone who loses income support, for whatever reason, loses the automatic entitlement to free school meals and help with NHS charges. It would be wrong to make an exception for cases where a person lost entitlement merely because they began to receive maintenance or increased maintenance. They obviously still have a chance of obtaining some help with NHS prescriptions and the various schemes it operates on the grounds of low income. However, I accept that that is not true for some of the other passported benefits; for example, the free school meals that the noble Lord mentioned.
We believe that most parents who come off income support because of maintenance will be better off. That will be due to the payment of the maintenance itself. It should be more regular and reliable, and, what is important, it will be at a higher level than at present. In addition, for those parents claiming in-work benefits, such as family credit, there is a £15 maintenance disregard which will be of considerable help. The noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Stoddart, also suggested that second families might be made poorer. We have made clear our belief that parents should pay maintenance when they can afford to do so. It is also important to ensure that the absent parent retains an incentive to work to increase his or her income. We have therefore built in a special provision to ensure that an absent parent will always be left with more money than he or she would have were he or she on income support. That is what is called the protected income. Its purpose is to protect the position of the absent parent.
That brings me to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, made—whether the new partner's income will be taken into account for child maintenance. It will not be used in the assessment of maintenance itself, but the partner's income can be relevant to the protected income which, as I have stressed, is designed to ensure that income will be kept above income support levels.
My noble kinsman also asked why the disability working allowance was to be included. We feel—my noble and learned friend made this clear at earlier stages when this matter was discussed—that disabled
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parents have the same responsibilities to maintain their children as any other parents, and should be expected so to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Rix, was worried about the additional costs of disability in the formula. As was said during the Bill's passage, we looked at that issue carefully. Officials from my department met representatives of many of the disability organisations to discuss those issues. We came to the conclusion that because the costs of disability vary enormously, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet all disability needs within the formula. The best way to ensure that maintenance takes account of disability is to obtain a discretionary additional award through the courts which will be able to look at the circumstances of each case. That is provided for in the Act. I give the noble Lord the assurance that that is a matter that will be monitored closely by my department.
Child support will be withdrawn pound-for-pound from income support and the right reverend Prelate asked us to look at some alternative. The only alternative would be a maintenance disregard. We do not believe that a maintenance disregard in income support is necessarily in the best interests of lone parents and their children. Most lone parents want to provide a better standard of living for their children by going to work now, or at some time in the future. Therefore, the recent introduction of a £15 maintenance disregard in family credit, housing benefit, community charge benefit and disability working allowance and the reduction in hours on family credit will make it easier for them to do just that. When they are ready to go to work it will enable them to choose hours which fit conveniently with their care responsibilities. They will be able to receive maintenance in addition to their earnings.
Disregard of maintenance in income support will do nothing to help those parents realise their ambitions for themselves. It will do the opposite. It would put a barrier in their way, and parents would have to earn more to be as well off in work as on income support. The payment of maintenance, as I have argued, is of benefit to children and to those providing care, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said.
These regulations are the next step towards the introduction of a new scheme which will provide a fair and consistent method of assessing an absent parent's liability for maintenance and putting in place the procedures which will allow the system to work. They also contain provision for ensuring that parents with care cannot simply pass responsibility for their children's maintenance on to the taxpayer without good reason for doing so, and they put in place a wide range of safeguards to protect the position of parents with care who will suffer harm or undue distress if an obligation to co-operate with the Child Support Agency is pursued. I commend the regulations to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Child Support (Arrears, Interest and Adjustment of Maintenance Assessments) Regulations 1992
2.8 p.m.
Lord Henley Lord Henley rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 22nd June be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving these regulations I intend to speak to all three at the same time. The three remaining statutory instruments deal with the maintenance assessment formula, special cases and the information to which the child support agency will have access and of which it will be able to dispose and a number of provisions dealing with arrears of maintenance.
With permission, I propose to introduce the debate by mentioning briefly the key intention of each of the three statutory instruments. The Child Support (Maintenance Assessment and Special Cases) Regulations cover the workings of the formula and contain detailed specifications of the values to be used in the formula calculations.
As the House will recall, these specifications are largely based on those which apply in income support. The House will, I am sure, be interested in a number of these provisions, but perhaps in particular the provisions of Regulation 28 which allows for a contribution to maintenance to be made by certain absent parents in receipt of income support.
We think it is important that absent parents, even when they are in receipt of income support, should make some contribution towards meeting their liability and become accustomed to contributing to the maintenance of their children. Equally, however, we recognise the validity of concerns expressed about the position of particularly vulnerable groups and we have extended the categories of those exempt from this contribution. The effect is that it will only be taken from those who are over 18, fit and without children living with them.
Turning to the Child Support (Information, Evidence and Disclosure) Regulations, these regulations have been carefully framed so as to ensure that the purposes for which information may be sought are explicitly listed and for the information to be collected as the minimum required to assess and collect the absent parents' liability. I hope that the House will be reassured by the limited circumstances in which such information will be available for disclosure to a third party.
Finally, the Child Support (Arrears, Interest and Adjustment of Maintenance Assessments) Regulations, in addition to covering a number of
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technical matters, include provisions for interest to be charged on outstanding arrears, should full payment not be forthcoming from the absent parents.
These regulations provide much of the detail of our new scheme which is designed to ensure that parents make full and proper financial provision for their children. I commend the regulations to the House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 22nd June be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Henley.)
Lord Carter: My Lords, I discussed all the points that I wished to raise in my first speech and I do not propose to make a long speech now. There was one point which comes up under the Child Support (Maintenance Assessment and Special Cases) Regulations which I asked about first time round. I believe that the Minister did not answer it. It concerned the calculations of the earnings of the self-employed. I have looked at the regulations and believe that the child support officer will have fun if, for example, the absent parent is on the lump, in the building trade or something similar. There is reference to a balance sheet and profit and loss account to find out the earnings. What will happen if the self-employed person does not have such information and the child support officer has to make the best guess he can?
The other point of detail is on page 25 of the regulations, Regulation 26 in Part V. It concerns someone performing a service without receiving remuneration and who performed the service in order to reduce his income under the Act. The child support officer then has to make a calculation of the income that he has forgone. How is this supposed to be done? What on earth is the child support officer meant to do to work out the income that the person would have had? In effect, he has performed a free service but now to be included in his income is the amount that he would have received if he had not provided the service free. I find that hard to follow.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I must apologise to the House for intervening once again but it was not I who put so many regulations on the Order Paper all in one day. I am concerned about the effect of the regulations on the absent parent. A case has been brought to my attention by a citizens advice bureau in north London, again involving jumping the gun. It is of an absent parent already paying £180 a month being asked for a further contribution which reduces him to £37.16 a week on which to live. That is the kind of regulation which among single fathers has always tended to produce non-compliance.
The young man who got a girl into trouble and took the Queen's shilling is a familiar literary figure. I know that the Queen's shilling is in rather short supply these days. It seems to be subject to measures to control the money supply. However, young men in this situation still have Options for Change. I remind my noble kinsman about the prospects of free movement within the European Community. I ask him whether single fathers may be quite as easy to trace as he thinks.

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I am also concerned about the housing costs of the absent parent in the event of remarriage. The amount of allowable housing costs for the absent parent drops sharply in the event of remarriage, even if there is no change in the actual accommodation. That is something which the second spouse might misunderstand, which will again tend to bring these regulations into disrepute. I shall not develop the point about the absent parent on income support having to contribute. At Report Stage of a Bill I divided the House on that subject at 10 minutes to 12 at night. I say now only that I am glad I did so.
I ask my noble kinsman to look at an exchange that took place in Committee on the Civil Service (Management Functions) Bill concerning the accountability of agencies to Parliament. As regards that matter, I believe there are general questions that have not yet been addressed. We have had little, if any, trouble with the benefits agency in that area, and I am grateful to my noble kinsman and to the benefits agency for that. However, it is not always possible, when dealing with a parliamentary agency, to obtain accurate records of exactly what has been done. It is vital to the monitoring of what happens under these regulations that we should obtain accurate records. I hope that I may ask my noble kinsman for co-operation in the matter.
As regards the effect of the regulations on students, I believe my noble friend Lord Addington wishes to say a few words. I shall not add to what my noble friend Lord McGregor of Durris had to say about disclosure save to draw the attention of my noble kinsman to what has been said by the Law Society. The Government have greatly underestimated the amount of work that the agency will have to undertake. That is a useful and I think exact statement. It is relevant to the argument about costs because if there is much more work than my noble kinsman foresaw, there will be much greater costs than he foresaw.
I note my noble kinsman said that he would never accept what I said on this subject. I cannot resist asking him,"What, never"? I hope he will go as far as the necessary qualification. I would be more convinced by his resistance in this area if he had more often calculated the net costs of the measures that he is introducing. If then he told me that I had miscalculated, I would be a great deal easier to persuade than if he made no attempt to argue the question.
My noble kinsman may perhaps be aware that this measure has led the Law Society to submit a memorandum to the Government expressing anxiety about the proliferation of Henry VIII clauses, and of changes in the law under them. We have several changes in the law under Henry VIII clauses in these regulations. I shall take one from the arrears regulations—that is, Regulation 12(2) (a). With the leave of the House, I wish to quote a few words from that regulation. It states:
"Section 18(6) of the Act shall have effect as if for 'the refusal, assessment or cancellation in question' there is substituted `the adjustment of the amount payable under
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regulation 10 of the Child Support (Arrears, Interest and Adjustment of Maintenance Assessments) Regulations 1992'".
It is not a particularly heinous change in the law but it is a change in the law. It is something that should have been drawn to our attention so that we could consider it. I hope the committee on the scrutiny of delegated legislation will bring that matter to our attention. It reminds me a little of the famous case of Chief Justice Beresford when he said,"He that drew the statute meant to put it in the statute and only left it out through inadvertence. It shall therefore be construed to be in the statute". That is a method of legislation in which Parliament has never had confidence. I think we must all see why.
We are left considering who will be better off under these regulations. The caring parent will not be better off because the payment will simply be deducted from income support. If the caring parent leaves income support, he also loses passported benefits. I have heard of one case of a family with four children who are £20 a week worse off for losing school meals. The absent parent will not be better off and the Government, because they are undertaking a Sisyphean job of work, will not be better off, either. I cannot help wondering whether the only long-term effect of these regulations will be declining respect for the law. That, I hope, we would all deplore.
2.15 p.m.
Lord Addington: My Lords, I wish to comment briefly on the effect of these regulations on students. Effectively, a student who receives only a grant and a student loan and who happens to be a parent does not have to provide income for the child at that time. However, the minute that student obtains other income, he will be assessed in terms of providing extra support for the child, taking into account the income he receives from the student loan and the grant.
It is almost inevitable that every student will now fall into that category because there are no benefits available to them during the summer vacation. Also, we must bear in mind the fact that the grant and the loan are regarded as the bare essentials on which the student can live. That is not an undisputed point. Many people would say that under current circumstances in many parts of the country the grant, including the parental contribution and the loan, is not enough to live on. Therefore all students are forced to work at some stage.
We have a situation in which the Government say that if one is on the basic minimum income one does not have to pay out, but they will never allow one to be on the basic minimum. They will take into account income up to the basic minimum and will then start to assess the individual on any additional income. I suggest that any student finding himself in that position would probably be unable to continue to be a student due to financial considerations, because he will be called upon to make contributions to the mother and child—which I do not dispute he ought to do—to an extent which will mean that he is unable to continue with his studies.
Something else must be done because we are effectively saying that by assessing them harshly now

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we will restrict the economic bargaining power of such individuals by restricting their training. That means that in future they will probably not be able to provide as high a level of income for the child. I ask the Government to give some thought to that aspect of the matter and to try to arrange matters a little better. It is nonsensical to say that someone must work but if he does work a certain amount of income will be taken away from him. Indeed, the reasoning is difficult to explain because it chases itself around in a circle.
Lord Henley: My Lords, there are one or two detailed points to which I should like to respond. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, complained that the regulations relating to the self-employed and calculation of their income were too complicated. The regulations closely follow similar rules which exist for family credit. Therefore we have some experience of them. I accept that they can be necessarily very, very complicated. But if the noble Lord would like me to write to him with further details I should be delighted to do so. It is certainly a matter we shall continue to monitor throughout the social security system.
The noble Lord also raised a rather complicated question about the calculation of income for someone providing a free service under Regulation 26. I think that the noble Lord would probably be happier if I said that I would write to him on that point. I would rather not respond in such detail from the Dispatch Box.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, raised the problem of a student living, as he quite rightly put it, purely on his grant and loan and not paying any maintenance. As soon as he has some income he may be able to afford some child maintenance, as the noble Lord rightly said. We believe that if he can, then so he should. We can see no reason at all why students should be made an exception. In this situation we need to look at all a student's income, including his grant and loan. I should like to point out to the noble Lord that we have taken proper account of the nature of a student's income in the assessment of maintenance. For instance, there are disregards on parts of a student's income, and in particular £10 a week is disregarded from any student loan he may have. The amount of maintenance a student will have to pay will obviously vary according to whatever other income he may have, his housing costs and so on. A student who has a large private income may well be able to afford to pay more.
Earl Russell: My Lords, if that makes the student withdraw from his course, might the caring parent legitimately hold the view that it is killing the gander that lays the golden eggs?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I do not think that it would necessarily cause the student to withdraw from his course. I was going on to say that if a student has a large private income he might well be able to afford to pay a substantial amount of maintenance.
Lord Addington: My Lords, it is not so much a question of if they can pay they should but the way in which the Government are taking into account the smaller amounts. Could we not have some income
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threshold? That would be so much more sensible than merely saying that everything up to that point will be taken into account if one covers the basic minimum living requirements. It is not a matter of principle but of some of the details. Could the regulations not be applied on a more coherent basis?
Lord Henley: My Lords, there is room. We take into account the income of the individual student. All we are saying is that we will not bother if he is purely on a grant or loan; if he has other income we will look at that income and the grant or loan. I see nothing wrong with that, but obviously we will have to agree to differ.
My noble kinsman suggested that there was already one absent parent paying some £180 per week and being asked to pay more, reducing his net income to £37 per week. The formula is very carefully devised to be fair to both parties. The absent parent will be asked to pay more only if the formula shows that he can afford it. The protected income calculation will ensure that he does not fall below the income support levels plus an extra incentive. Therefore, if he is on income support of £42 or whatever he should not be falling below that figure. If my noble kinsman would like to draw attention to a specific case where he says those requirements are not being met I am prepared to look into it.
My noble kinsman also asked about the allowance for housing costs on remarriage. As he suggested, it will certainly be very hard for the second partner to understand. Just as we will not take into account any income from the new partner in calculating how much the absent parent should pay in maintenance, so we do not allow the new partner's share of housing costs. If we did allow her housing costs we should be putting her costs before those of the absent parent's child. The calculation of protected income will ensure that second families are able to meet their basic living costs.
I accept the case for full accountability of the Child Support Agency. Full records will be kept of all decisions and answers to questions from Members of both this House and another place will he available.
My noble kinsman asked whether I would withdraw my use of the word "never" in terms of agreeing with him. My noble kinsman intervened at Question Time to support me not so long ago, and I accept that there are some rare occasions when the noble Earl and I may be at one.
The three statutory instruments we have just discussed fill in the detail of a number of important features of the new scheme for dealing with child support. I commend them to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Council Tax Benefit (General) Regulations 1992
2.28 p.m.
Lord Henley Lord Henley rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 18th June be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the council tax benefit regulations provide for rebates of up to 100 per cent. of council tax liability and will do so by reflecting both the liability and discount arrangements of the council tax itself. Further, as my right honourable friend the former Secretary of State for Social Security announced last November, the additional amounts included in the income-related benefits to help towards the 20 per cent. minimum contribution towards the community charge will not be clawed back on the introduction of the new tax. That decision will help some eight million people and by April next year income-related benefits will be nearly £700 million more than would have been required to compensate customers for inflation since 1989. Taken together these regulations provide a generous system which will help people on low incomes pay their council tax. Billing and levying authorities will be responsible for administering the benefit which will usually be awarded by rebating the liable person's council tax bill.
The regulations provide for two distinct types of benefit. First, main council tax benefits will help persons on low incomes. Secondly, the alternative benefit, or second adult rebates, will provide help to a liable person where other residents who are living in their home on a non-commercial basis are on a low income.
In framing these regulations the Government's aim has been to maintain alignment with the other income-related benefits, wherever practicable. This benefit scheme therefore builds on the reformed system of income-related benefits which the Government introduced in 1988.
For that reason, I do not intend to speak at length about the detailed workings of main council tax benefit, knowing that the House has, on many occasions in recent years, given detailed consideration to the structure of income-related benefits. However, it may be helpful if I summarise briefly the main similarities and differences between the new benefit scheme and the existing ones.
First, the treatment of capital and income will follow the current procedures under community charge benefit and housing benefit. The upper capital limit will be £16,000 and the first £3,000 of a person's capital will be disregarded completely. The assessment of income under council tax benefit will also follow the normal rules in the other income-related benefits and will include tariff income on any capital between £3,000 and £16,000.
A person's personal circumstances will be taken into account, using the same applicable amounts, made up of personal allowances and premiums, as are now used in housing benefit and community charge benefit.
Main council tax benefit will assume that non-dependants make a contribution to a customer's council tax. This will take the form of flat-rate deductions from maximum benefit, as is the case under housing benefit. However, in calculating non-dependant deductions, any income from disability living allowance and attendance allowance
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received by the non-dependant will be disregarded, and no non-dependant deductions will be made in respect of non-dependants who are in receipt of income support.
Council tax benefit differs from its predecessor in two respects. First, those with income at or below income support levels will be able to get help with up to 100 per cent. of their council tax bill, and there will be no minimum contribution to the council tax. Secondly, for those with higher incomes, benefit will be withdrawn on the basis of a 20 per cent. taper. The House discussed the size of the taper on a number of occasions during the passage of the Local Government Finance Act. I have to say that the Government considered the issue very carefully and concluded that a 20 per cent. benefit taper for council tax benefit, together with a maximum 100 per cent. rebate, will ensure that most help is focused on those with incomes just above income support levels, while those with higher incomes will receive slightly less help.
I now turn to an important innovation in the council tax benefit scheme; that is, the alternative maximum council tax benefit, or second adult rebates. The House will be aware that the council tax includes a system of discounts, which help people who live alone, including, for example, widowed mothers with children. The discount system will also help certain other groups, including persons who are severely mentally impaired and who currently are exempt from the community charge. Second adult rebates will ensure that persons who would otherwise have qualified for a discount will not be unduly penalised by the presence in their household of a person on low income.
A maximum 25 per cent. rebate will be awarded in respect of a second adult or second adults on income support. Lower levels of rebate will apply in respect of second adults with incomes above prescribed levels.
In commending these regulations to the House, I should like to make clear that they were subject to both formal and informal consultations with the local authority associations. During those consultations many helpful comments and suggestions were made by the associations and a number of them are reflected in the final regulations before the House.
I trust that the House will welcome the regulations as offering a comprehensive system of support, which will help around five million people on low incomes pay their council tax. They offer particular help to those on income support who will gain not only from the introduction of a maximum 100 per cent. benefit but also from our decision not to claw back the amount previously included in income support rates to meet the minimum contribution to the community charge. Help will also be extended to those who, though not on low income themselves, are sharing their household with others of limited means.
I am also certain that, by aligning this new benefit scheme as far as is possible with the existing income-related benefits administered by local authorities, implementing the council tax will be eased. I commend the regulations to the House.
Moved, That the the draft regulations laid before the House on 18th June be approved [3rd Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Henley.)
Lord Carter: My Lords, once again the House will be grateful to the Minister for so clearly explaining these rather complicated regulations. Perhaps I may make one comment which also applies to the child support regulations that we have been discussing. A large number of corrections have had to be made and inserted into the regulations. The Minister is always telling us about the £70 billions spent on social security. Could that sum cover payment for a few more proof readers?
We are told that the council tax is simpler than the poll tax. It probably would have been if it were a property tax in the sense that that is normally understood. But the complications of the council tax mean quite naturally that we must have a complicated system of council tax benefit. My first question is an obvious one. If the benefit is to work properly, there will need to be some form of register in order to know who is liable and who is not. If there is no register, how will the Government assess entitlement to the benefit for the single person discount or the second adult discount? I believe that we have been told in another place that there will be no register. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that point.
We are all pleased that the Government do not propose to claw back the 20 per cent. allowance in the community charge benefit from social security benefits. As the Minister correctly stated, that provision affects 8 million people. Is the claw-back amount to be fully protected within the benefit system? Is it an absolute amount of money which is to be frozen or is it a percentage? There are ominous reports of reductions in social security benefits which may be considered as part of the public expenditure round. One hopes that such reports are unfounded. However, what will the Secretary of State have to do if he wishes to claw back all or part of the amount to which the Minister has referred? Is that amount fully protected within the regulations or could the Minister reduce it as part of the public expenditure round?
Ninety-five per cent. of the cost of the benefit is reimbursed to local authorities from the Government. The remainder has to come from the revenue support grant. Why is there not 100 per cent. reimbursement? Is there an obvious reason why 95 per cent. comes from the Government and the remainder from the revenue support grant?
With regard to reimbursement, Mr. Alistair Burt, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, stated in the Official Report of another place at col.792 on 30th June:
"The subsidy arrangements for the council tax benefit have yet to be finally determined, but I envisage that they will closely follow the current arrangements".
That implies that the 95 per cent. reimbursement arrangement will continue. There was no reference in the debate in another place to different subsidy arrangements where benefit payments are backdated. Those attract only a 25 per cent. subsidy.
Local authorities can use their powers to back-date benefit where the claimant has shown "good cause for
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a late claim". That provision is continued for council tax benefit in the regulations. Are the back-dated claims still to remain at a level of 25 per cent. reimbursement rather than 95 per cent.? If so, what is the reason for the lower rate? Will the Minister be kind enough to clear up a technical point? There is to be an arrangement from 1st April next year which allows 56 days for late claims which will he considered as though they had been made on 1st April. One assumes that those claims within the 56 days will be included in the 95 per cent. level of reimbursement and not the 25 per cent.
I have referred to the provision relating to a "good cause for a late claim". It allows for claims to be backdated where the claimant may have been misled by incorrect or misleading advice from officials and therefore delayed in making a claim. It is sad to say that the wrong advice from the Benefits Agency itself can constitute good cause. One indication of accuracy of advice is a survey undertaken by Chester Welfare Rights Forum. It suggested that completely incorrect advice had been given by the disability telephone advice line in 25 per cent. of the inquiries and was partially incorrect or incomplete in a further 50 per cent. Advice was correct in only one in four inquiries.
In effect a lower subsidy for the backdated benefit claim penalises local authorities for the mistakes of other agencies. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether there is any allowance in the calculation of either the 95 per cent. or the 25 per cent. reimbursement for the reasons for the late claims; and if it is shown that there is a good cause for the late claim that claimants will receive the full amount of reimbursement.
The Minster referred to the taper and I expect that he hoped that we would not go into the matter in detail. However, we must face the fact that we still have a system under which, because of the operation of various tapers, the poorest people face a marginal tax rate of up to 96 pence in the pound. Indeed, a Parliamentary Answer in col.95 of the Official Report of 5th November 1991 showed that 50,000 families with children face marginal tax rates of more than 90 per cent. Clearly that acts as an enormous disincentive to take on more paid work.
Unfortunately, the Government's decision to introduce the 20 per cent. taper on this benefit will have an effect broadly similar to the 15 per cent. taper on the 80 per cent. rebate under the community charge benefit. The impact that the steeper taper will have on people whose income increases is serious. I am indebted to the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux for providing me with an example showing that a low paid tenant with children receiving a £10 pay rise would lose more than £9 of that in one way or another as a result of the reduction of benefits, and so forth. Taking account of all the work that the Government have put into the benefits and the amount of money that they are spending, are they satisfied that the poorest families in the country are facing a marginal tax rate in excess of 90 pence in the pound?
The other area of anxiety relates to people aged between 18 and 24. Where an adult aged 18 or more

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is liable for the council tax, there will be no variation in the size of the Bill according to age. However, if the liable adult is in receipt of a low income and claims a rebate, the size of that rebate will be lower for those aged between 18 and 24. That is because benefit for people in that age group is lower than for people over the age of 25.
Young people have to face living expenses identical to those people who are aged over 25. However, in many cases they are likely to be earning below average wages because of their age and will therefore be more dependent than older people on the rebate system. The curious effect of that is that the regulation may act as a disincentive for them to seek work. If young people are in receipt of income support, they will receive a 100 per cent. rebate for the council tax. Only when they move into work and their income rises above income support levels do they find that because of the lower applicable amount they are faced with higher council tax bills than people aged over 25 on identical incomes. In practice therefore the effect of the lower benefit rate for council tax may be to discourage young people from taking on low paid work.
Yet another area of major interest is the single person discount. Single people will qualify for a 25 per cent. discount. However, the second adult, if on low income, will also entitle the liable person to receive a 25 per cent. rebate. Presumably in order to claim that, the liable person will have to obtain highly detailed information so that decisions can be made regarding personal rebates, the second adult rebate and so forth. What will happen if the second person refuses to provide the information? We must assume that liable adults have no recourse and will therefore have to pay the full amount of the council tax. Furthermore, what will happen as the incomes of liable adults and the second persons change? Will there be a continuous recalculation of their benefit levels? Will the effect on the register—or the non-existent register—be continually amended?
We all know that a council tax is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. It is neither a property tax nor a poll tax but has tried to incorporate elements of both. As a result, we have these extremely complicated regulations. Despite what the Minster said, I fear that they will lead to considerable administrative upheaval, and to considerable cost for local authorities. I am afraid that as always under this Government the sufferers will be the poorest people in society.
2.45 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, by now we understand well enough why it is not a good idea to take contentious business on the day the House rises for the Recess. I hope that that may be taken into account in the future and I shall try to take it into account now.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carter, in regard to tapers. The point applies to those who are already in work on low wages as well as to those who have been out of work. Someone in part-time work who receives a £10 rise may find that between tax, national insurance, family credit, community charge or council tax benefit and housing benefit they are losing £9.60.
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We on these Benches take incentives to work seriously. But we believe that for incentives to work there needs to be a supply of carrots as well as sticks. In the administration of the council tax tapers there is a considerable shortage of carrots. I suggest that the Government try to plant some.
We are also concerned in regard to the treatment of students. I know that serious attempts have been made to get the position right. Personally students are invisible. The problem arises when students share a dwelling with non-students. Non-students coming into a dwelling bring the council tax, like the plague, with them. That means that they must pay for the dwelling without receiving any benefit. I understand and am grateful that they receive the second adult rebate. But I would agree with the comment of the citizens advice bureau that the second adult rebate is likely to prove one of the most obscure parts of the council tax system. It will not always be understood. We will find that people are assessed to pay without any reference to their ability to pay. There is also the specific problem of a couple one of whom is a student and the other is not. There we have neither exemption nor benefit. That will produce an injustice.
I prepared for today a major speech on the lower rate of benefit for young people. The House may be delighted to hear that I shall not now deliver it. There is a communication block and a tired House is not the best place to overcome a communication block. However, I should like to give my noble kinsman notice that if, as I hope, we have an opportunity to debate the British Youth Council Report in the autumn, I shall return to the matter to discover why he thinks the fact that young people have lower earnings is a reason that they should receive lower benefits. At present I can make neither head nor tail of that.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I shall deal with some of the points made in the course of the debate. First, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, welcomed the fact that the extra amounts allowed in the income support would not be clawed back. I repeat the assurance given by my right honourable friend the former Secretary of State that they will not be clawed back, but obviously the amounts included in income related benefits form part of the benefit levels which must be considered each year for uprating in the usual way. They will continue to be treated as part of any uprating.
The noble Lord also asked why 95 per cent. of council tax benefit was paid by the Department of Social Security and why the remaining 5.5 per cent. was fed into the rate support grant. Subsidy arrangements have not been finally determined. I understand that it is intended that they should follow broadly the arrangements currently applying for community charge benefit. Under the current subsidy arrangements for community charge benefit local authorities receive 95 per cent. subsidy for the bulk of their benefit expenditure and lower rates of subsidy within certain incentive areas, of which backdating is one.
I should also mention that the remainder, equivalent to 5.5 per cent. of total benefit expenditure, is also taken into account in the local government

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settlement. The additional 0.5 per cent. is in recognition of some unavoidable expenditure within the incentive areas. The rate of subsidy paid on backdated amounts is, for example,25 per cent., as the noble Lord, Lord Carter, said. Since the early 1970s it has been a fundamental principle that local authorities should hold a financial stake in the efficient running of the rebate and allowance schemes. Until 1988 cases not on supplementary benefit were only directly subsidised at 90 per cent. The Government continue to believe that a balance between direct and indirect subsidy is the proper way to safeguard the huge sums of public money involved.
The noble Lord asked at what level benefit awarded under the 56-day rule for claims will be reimbursed: the answer is 95 per cent. I do not accept the arguments that the taper reflects what noble Lords refer to as high, marginal tax rates. All claimants will be better off even though on some occasions they may be better off by only a fairly small amount. The decision to have a 20 per cent. taper strikes the right balance between ensuring that those with incomes just above income support levels receive substantial help while those with higher incomes receive less. That is certainly consistent with the Government's policy of focusing benefit to help those on the lowest incomes. I can assure the noble Lord that even should the taper have been set at 15 per cent. rather than 20 per cent., those very high marginal rates would still only be reduced from 97 per cent. to 96 per cent. and would only apply to someone in receipt of council tax benefit, housing benefit and family credit.
The noble Lord again claimed that the council tax will create the need for a register. There will be no need for a register for all adults and such claims are entirely mistaken. In reality, for the majority of cases the only information required will be whether there is more than one adult resident in any property. I welcome the fact that my noble kinsman decided that today was not the occasion to debate our general policy on lower rates of benefit for the under-25s. I shall respond briefly by taking one small point. To extend the adult rate to the under-25s in housing benefit and council tax benefit would cost about £30 million at 1991–92 prices and benefit levels. I believe that to be a significant amount of money. Pressure would then build up to extend it even further to all under-25s on income support at a cost of about £300 million.
Equalising benefit rates (purely housing benefit and council tax benefit) would not help those simply on income support who will gain from the 100 per cent. rebates and from the decision not to claw back the amounts that I mentioned earlier. It will not help under-25 year-old couples or under-25 lone parents who are already entitled to the adult personal allowance. Rather, equalisation would simply help those single, under-25 householders without children whose income is above income support levels. That group of clients does not have as high a priority as others in the Government's thinking. It is also worth pointing out that if the under-25s live alone they will be entitled to the full personal discount of 25 per cent. of their council tax liability like everyone else.
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The noble Lord, Lord Carter, asked what would happen to the second adult rebates if the second adult would not provide the information. It is the liable person who has to report changes in circumstances concerning the second adult's income. Similar arrangements already exist for non-dependent deductions in housing benefit which local authorities have operated without any problems for many years. There is no reason to doubt their ability to make second adult rebates work. My noble kinsman also asked whether non-student partners of students can claim benefit. In the case of couples where one partner is not a student, the non-student partner will be able to claim council tax benefit as a couple in the normal way. That follows the arrangements which already apply in housing benefit. In these cases the income of both partners will be taken into account and assessed from the applicable amounts appropriate for a couple in their circumstances.
The regulations will be made as soon as they have been approved by Parliament although most of the provisions will not come into effect until April of next year. During the next nine months the authorities will be implementing the benefits scheme. We have certainly built on past benefits schemes and kept changes to the absolute minimum. I am sure that the House will welcome these arrangements and regulations which help around five million council taxpayers at an estimated overall cost of £1 billion. I commend the regulations to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Horticultural Development Council (Amendment) Order 1992
2.55 p.m.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Howe)The Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Howe) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 25th June be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee]. The noble Earl said: My Lords, the order is being presented in accordance with the requirements of the Industrial Organisation and Development Act 1947. A brief history of the Horticultural Development Council and the circumstances which have led to the draft amendment order may be helpful. The HDC was set up in July 1986 with the primary function of commissioning research and development in horticulture on behalf of the industry. It has power to raise a levy for that purpose from growers of horticultural produce, excluding apples, pears and hops. All growers in Great Britain with annual sales of produce in excess of £25,000 are liable to pay the levy. Mushroom growers whose annual purchases of mushroom spawn exceed 700 litres are also liable.
The current levy rate on growers, other than mushroom growers, is set at 0.5 per cent. of sale value and on mushroom growers at 7p per litre of spawn purchased. Annual revenue from the levy for 1991–92 was about £2.2 million and the council has so far commissioned over 150 projects. The council was last reviewed, as required by the enabling legislation, in

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July 1989 when there was a positive poll of growers in support of the council continuing. It will be subject to a further statutory review in July 1994.
I turn now to the circumstances which have led us to propose the order before the House today. The HDC is currently required to consist of 22 members appointed by Ministers: 16 representing growers in the industry, two independents, two representing employees in the industry, and two members with wholesale and retail marketing and distribution expertise. Following representations from the chairman of the HDC, Ministers accepted advice that the council has proved too unwieldy in its present form and would benefit from a reduction in its overall size from the current 22 members to 14. The reduction would he achieved by reducing employee, marketing and distribution, and independent representation from two members to one member in each category. The grower members would reduce from 16 to 11.
As required by the enabling legislation, these proposals for a tighter structure for the council were put to the full range of representative organisations in Great Britain for them to consider. The clear message we received from them is that there is general support among the industry for the principle of reducing the overall size and structure of the council to enable it to operate more effectively and in a more efficient and business-like fashion. Ministers are confident that the slight reservations expressed by some groups about adequate representation for all sectors of the industry across the whole spectrum, from production to marketing and retailing, can be resolved by careful selection of the right incumbent for the post. In other words, the onus will be squarely with the nominating bodies to identify candidates not only with a good knowledge of their particular sector of the industry—this has been the main consideration up to now—but with proven entrepreneurial flair and long-term vision for the industry.
I firmly believe that these proposals represent a worthwhile reduction in the size of the council which will improve efficiency and ensure a better balance of view in setting work priorities for the council. There is considerable scope for reducing the present trade gap in horticultural produce. These changes should enable the council to focus its research more directly towards the needs of the industry so that it can compete more effectively in domestic and international markets.
Turning to the order before us, the main amendments now proposed are short and straightforward. Article 3 reduces the total membership of the HDC from 22 to 14. As I said, this is achieved by reducing the number of grower members from 16 to 11; the number of marketing and distribution members from two to one; the number of employee members from two to one; and the independent members from two to one also. Article 4, as a consequence of the foregoing amendment, proportionately reduces the number of council members constituting a quorum from a minimum of eight to a minimum of five.
I should draw your Lordships' attention to the timing of the order. It is proposed that it should come
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into force the day after it is made to allow arrangements for the appointment of the 14 members of the council to be set in hand to ensure that the new-look council is in place for 1st August this year. It only remains for me now to commend the order to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 25th June be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Earl Howe.)
Lord Carter: My Lords, the House will be extremely grateful to the Minister for explaining the order. After two and a half hours on social security I hope he will not mind if I try not to take on board the concept of litres of mushroom spawn.
We welcome the order. On a personal note, I regret that in agriculture we have not used more the Industrial Organisation and Development Act 1947 to try to set up development councils in more sectors of the industry where I believe they would have worked well. The noble Earl referred to the entrepreneurial flair of those who will be on the amended council. That factor is evident in horticulture, which has had to manage with hardly any subsidies at all. Entrepreneurial flair is certainly present. The HDC does an excellent job. With this tighter and leaner organisation I am sure that it will now do even better. I am extremely pleased on behalf of this side of the House to support the order.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Data Protection (Regulation of Financial Services etc.) (Subject Access Exemption) (Amendment) Order 1992
3.1 p.m.
Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 22nd June be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Earl said: My Lords, the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1984 is to regulate how personal data which are held on computer are used. It sets out the principles of good data handling practice with which data users must comply. In particular, it gives people the right to find out if a data user holds any information about them and, if so, what.
The order restricts a person's right of access to data about him held by a new regulator—the Taurus operator. Taurus is the Stock Exchange's paperless share transfer system. It will do away with share certificates and with long delays in transferring stock from one person to another.
Many of your Lordships may remember the difficulties which were caused by backlogs of paperwork just before the stock market crash of 1987. Taurus is a computerised system, and it is one of the Stock Exchange's new innovations. The transfer of the ownership of shares will not now have to depend on the physical movement of stock transfer forms and of certificates. Electronic messages will replace both share certificates and transfer forms. There is to be a

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Taurus operator. This will be the Stock Exchange. The operator will have the responsibility of vetting and admitting the participants in Taurus, which will be banks, brokers and other financial intermediaries.
The operator—the Stock Exchange—will have to keep data on those who apply to use Taurus, including information about their financial standing and technical competence and about whether their directors and employees are fit and proper people to use the system. The Stock Exchange will also have to continue to monitor those who use the system in order to ensure that they are continuing to abide by the regulations and the rules.
The order before your Lordships today prevents those who use the system from gaining access to some data about them which are held by the operator—the Stock Exchange. The data which are held by the Taurus operator may well include information about suspected dishonesty, incompetence or malpractice. If a person were to have access to this kind of data, it might allow him to cover his tracks or otherwise to thwart an investigation.
The Stock Exchange has already started consulta-tion on the draft rules which it will use to assess those who wish to use the system. Once the comments have been received and considered, the Stock Exchange will ask Treasury Ministers to approve the rules, as is required by the regulations.
The order is a small one but it is a necessary part of regulating the paperless share transfer system once it comes into operation. The Data Protection Registrar has been consulted, as is required by the Act, and he is content. I thought that noble Lords would not willingly wish to be wearied with technicalities from me on the last day of term and so be further delayed from attaching themselves to their buckets and spades. Therefore, with this more truncated exposition of the order than I would normally wish to give, and solely in deference to your Lordships' understandable intellectual preferences, I commend the order to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 22nd June be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Earl Ferrers.)
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for his full explanation of the order. I think that the question of the buckets and spades is less important than finding where to use them nowadays along our coastline.
In general, we are broadly in favour of the order, although there are certain misgivings which were raised in another place; namely, that the freedom of the individual could be restricted because of the lack of staff and resources at the office of the Data Protection Register. Of course that office is supposed to act as consultant and investigator of complaints raised by the public.
In another place, the Minister, Mr. Peter Lloyd, said that it was thought that there were enough resources at the office for the task to be completed. Despite the Minister's statement, which was really hopeful rather than authoritative, I feel that we should have the assurance from the Government that they are aware that there could be a stage where a shortfall of
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staff could cause problems and that the individual could then be restricted in his ability to find out exactly where he stood in particular instances. But I do not know whether the Minister can answer at this point. I do not really expect him to. However, it must be stressed again that because of the new system, staff shortages or lack of staff training, a hold-up could arise and people could be restricted in their inquiries. Having said that, in the knowledge that the Minister will certainly report back on the matter, we certainly give the draft order our approval.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for saying that he is on the whole supportive of the order. Taurus will be operated by the Stock Exchange. Those who are participants in the process will actually he charged a fee and the fee will be governed by the number of people who are involved in operating the system. I have no reason to believe that there will not be sufficient people to do so; indeed, I have every confidence that there will be.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Access to Personal Files (Housing) (Scotland) Regulations 1992
3.8 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 30th June be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Strathmore and Kinghorne, I beg to move the above regulations.
I shall try not to detain your Lordships long. However, I cannot resist saying what an unexpected pleasure it is for me to face the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, for the first time. The Access to Personal Files Act 1987 set the framework for giving members of the public a right to see records held about them by public authorities. The regulations before the House today set out how that right should apply in practice to records held by public sector landlords in Scotland. Briefly, the regulations give public sector tenants the right to see personal information held about them by their landlord on non-computerised files as long as they apply in writing and pay any fee charged by the landlord of up to £10. A similar right already exists when the information is held on computer.
There are some necessary exemptions from the right. The first applies when the information held could identify a third person who is not a member of the tenant's family, or a housing official, or a medical practitioner who has been associated with the tenant's case. In that case, the third person's permission must be sought before access to the information is given. The second exemption is when releasing information could cause serious harm to the physical or mental health of the tenant or some other person. If that seems to be the case, the authority must seek the views of an appropriate medical practitioner before releasing the information. In cases where there is no appropriate medical practitioner, the local authority can itself decide whether serious harm will arise, but

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that power should be used sparingly. The third exemption is where disclosure would prejudice the prevention or detection of crime or the arrest or prosecution of offenders; and the fourth is where the information is subject to legal professional privilege.
An important provision in the regulations is the power of a tenant to have corrected or erased any information which is inaccurate. Even if the landlord does not agree that the information is inaccurate, a note must be attached to the file giving the tenant's point of view.
Finally, the regulations also give the tenant the power to seek a review of the decision of the public sector landlord not to give access to information or not to correct information which the tenant believes to be inaccurate. Any such review must be carried out either by members of the authority who took no part in making the original decision or by a meeting of the full authority. I hope that that brief summary of the regulations has been of assistance. We shall be issuing full guidance to local authorities about the operation of the powers under the new regulations and plan to publish an advice booklet for the use of the public.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 30th June be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Baroness Trumpington.)
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, the House is grateful to the noble Baroness for giving a full explanation of the regulations. I think the pleasure is mine that she has entered into the Scottish field. It might give her an appetite to develop her interest in things Scottish. As with the previous regulations, we are in general agreement and welcome these regulations. The noble Baroness spelt out all the exemptions in some detail. A point was raised in another place upon which we should like an assurance. It related to the serious case of a divorced person trying to use the records to get in touch with an estranged wife or husband. That could be difficult, especially if there was a history of domestic violence.
The Minister in the other place said that that point would be considered. We should like to know whether the Government have had any new thoughts about it. We hope that before the regulations go any further that point will be cleared up. Otherwise, we are happy to accept them.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I should like the noble Lord to know that I have always been a keen admirer of Scotch whether it is "the" or just Scotch. Was the noble Lord referring to serious harm?
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, yes.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the Government have not defined serious harm. The fundamental principle underlying the right of access is that tenants should be able to know what is recorded about them. The restriction is therefore confined to serious harm. I consider that its use should be exceptional rather than the norm. The guidance will provide more information about that issue. That exemption may be relevant, for example, where there is a risk of assault on the applicant's partner or where the giving of
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details about a former partner's address might put that person at risk. Apart from that, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his welcome for the regulations. I commend them to your Lordships' House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Education (Assisted Places) (Amendment) Regulations 1992
3.15 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of Education (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, I present to your Lordships for approval the draft Education (Assisted Places) (Amendment) Regulations 1992. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 6th July be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Baroness Blatch.)
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Cox): My Lords, the Question is, That this Motion be agreed to. As many as are of that opinion, will say "Content"—
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I apologise to the House for the delay. I had hoped that there would be an explanation from the Minister before I rose to speak.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am absolutely prepared to give a full explanation; but I checked with the usual channels about half an hour before coming to the Dispatch Box and I was told that it would not be necessary. However, I shall of course give the explanation. I have it with me.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, perhaps I may say something about the Opposition's views of the regulations and the scheme. The Minister will not be surprised to learn that we on this side of the House oppose not just the order but the whole scheme to which it refers. We have made our opposition clear from the outset. It is a bad scheme; it is wrong in its conception and is a failure in terms of its operation. As such, it is a complete waste of public money. Nearly £80 million went down the drain during 1991–92 to fund the scheme. This sum would be much better spent on countless other high priority needs.
Would it not be better to use the money to expand nursery education, especially in our inner cities? Would this not be a better way of helping to improve educational opportunities for children from low income homes? Would it not be better to use the money to provide an extended school day in our primary and secondary schools in inner cities so that young people could benefit from a variety of extracurricular opportunities that the extra time would allow? This again would enrich opportunities for children from poor families far more than the assisted places scheme.
Would it not be more valuable to dedicate £80 million to providing large numbers of children whose family income is low with opportunities for school visits to places of interest, for school trips or exchanges in Europe, or for environmental studies in the country?

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Any one of these alternatives would reach far more children and have a better chance of helping many more pupils who come from disadvantaged homes than the nonsense of the assisted places scheme. It is a nonsense because most of the children benefiting from the scheme come from middle class back-grounds. But more than that, it is an underhand way of using taxpayers' money to shore up private schools. Worse still, it removes talented young people from state schools, demoralising teachers in so doing and implying that state schools are inadequate to meet the educational needs of their pupils. That is worse than nonsense; frankly, it is a disgrace.
What saddens me most about the scheme and the annual ritual we now go through in up-rating the parental contributions and amending the regulations in other minor ways, is the unwillingness of the Government to listen to their own advisers. Despite the clearly expressed views of Her Majesty's Inspectorate that it is perfectly possible to cater for very able children in the normal school curriculum, the Government go on implying that it is not and that somehow able pupils will be worse off in state schools than in private ones. Hence the Government's scheme to provide places at lower fees in the private schools.
I should like to know what evidence the Government have that a pupil who is given an assisted place on the scheme does any better than that pupil would do in a state school. Perhaps the Minister would also comment on the findings of the Audit Commission. Like Her Majesty's Inspectorate, it is an organisation which I should have thought the Government would respect. I should have thought that the Government would respond to its findings. Perhaps the noble Baroness would care to comment on what the Government think about the Audit Commission's view that children assisted in private schools do not receive a measurably greater added value from their schooling as a result. That is an important finding since the last time we debated these regulations.
If the Audit Commission is right, we have wasted £500 million of taxpayers' money on the scheme over the past 11 years. Will the Minister agree that the Audit Commission's finding earlier this year that there was an overspend of £3 million on the scheme, even though the target numbers of pupils have not been met, is in itself a severe criticism of the running of the scheme? Was it not unfortunate that halfway through the year the Government had to intervene to remind schools of the ceiling of 12 per cent. in the increases that could be covered? Meanwhile, state schools were being forced to manage on a 7 per cent. increase in their current expenditure. What do the Government intend to do this year to prevent a recurrence of last year's problems? What kind of cap will be provided, and will it be at the current rate of inflation? Will the Minister undertake to examine the huge differentials in the fees charged in private schools?
Will the Minister find out whether value for money is being provided for taxpayers subsidising fees through this scheme in those schools where the fees are three times higher than in some other schools in the scheme? A number of private schools receive over £1
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million of public money for assisted places and some receive over £1.5 million. So far as I can make out, there is no proper system of accountability and no real checks on whether this is money well spent. It is, as The Times newspaper rightly described it,
"a misuse of public money to subsidise a private industry".
We know private schools are having a hard time in the recession but I thought the Government's view was that the private sector had to stand on its own two feet and operate efficiently in the market place. That is the philosophy the Government apply to firms.
In the debate on these regulations that took place in your Lordships' House last year, I made it clear that the findings of research projects have shown that most of the pupils in the scheme come from homes where the parents have received a relatively privileged education. A majority of the parents have attended either independent or selective schools. I know of no evidence that challenges those findings. Most of the parents are, through this scheme, finding a cheap way into the private sector.
The Independent Schools Information Service admits that only 16 per cent. of pupils in the scheme come from semi-skilled or unskilled backgrounds. Many of the pupils in the scheme have divorced or separated parents. I wish to ask the Minister a direct question on that matter. Does she think it right to continue to assess parental income, where a child is living with a mother, on the basis of the mother's income alone? Should not the child's father's income be taken into account? Fathers ought to be responsible for supporting their children in these circumstances.
It is clear that as only one-third of those on the scheme qualify for full remission of fees, the scheme is not only benefiting what one Conservative politician has described as distressed gentle folk, but it is also providing a way into private schools for the children of people who are on average and above-average incomes. Those people pay reduced fees at the expense of other taxpayers. Parliament is being asked to approve not just continued expenditure on a deeply flawed scheme but also to approve an increase in expenditure from £76 million to £87 million. That is a further £11 million. That represents an increase of 10 per cent. in real terms. We are being asked to approve a scheme that flies in the face of the Government's apparent commitment to improve standards in state schools.
Plenty of talented and able pupils do well in state schools and their very presence in them helps, through the example they provide and the encouragement they can give to their peers by the high standards they set, to raise the overall standards of those schools. Yet the Government wish to continue with this scheme and to increase spending on it which removes these children from maintained schools. The Government are damaging the schools in this respect by siphoning funding away from them to spend on private schools instead. The Government are neglecting the majority of pupils in favour of a misguided scheme that supports a small minority of pupils. In the light of those remarks, it is hard to take seriously the

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Government's claim that they are committed to improving standards for children and young people as a whole.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I should say that we too do not go along with this scheme and that we have always said so. I shall not weary the House by repeating much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has just said as we are in general agreement with her comments. In particular, I do not like the principle whereby the best children are taken from a school. I know from my own long experience that the brightest and best children are important to a school. When they are creamed off, the school, and the other children in particular, suffer greatly. That is a regrettable aspect of the scheme.
I should like to ask the noble Baroness certain questions, of which I should have given her notice. If she cannot answer them immediately, and I think that she probably will not be able to, I should be very grateful if she would write to me.
One point occurs to me, which I have never heard raised before. It arises from the Education Act 1980 when the system was first instituted. It was said, though not in the Act, that this was a scheme whereby bright children from less well-off backgrounds should be enabled to go to high quality independent schools. It has only just occurred to me to wonder who decides which are the bright children? Is it a decision of the headmaster of the schools which they attend? Is it a decision made by the parents? Or is it a totally subjective opinion as to who is bright enough to enjoy the privilege? I feel that I should know the answer to that question but perhaps the noble Baroness will kindly put me right.
I should also like to know what, if any, proportion of children have enjoyed that privilege not so much because they are bright as for certain other specific reasons. For example, some children may be deemed psychologically unfit for the rigours of the state system. They may need a small community and small classes. Have such children ever been able to enjoy the advantages of an assisted place in an independent school?
What about children who obviously need specialist teaching of one sort or another? I am thinking, for example, of a child who is particularly gifted in music. Have such children enjoyed assisted places? Are there examples of their being able to benefit from the scheme? There is also the case of, for example, highly intelligent dyslexic children. Have there been cases of such children being able to enjoy the scheme and, if so, how many?
Finally, I should like to ask the noble Baroness whether she has any information as to whether the benefits are reaching the lowest income families. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, spoke of the places being enjoyed mainly by comparatively well-to-do middle-class families. That idea is current. Is it accurate?
I should be grateful to hear what the Minister has to say in reply to those questions.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the House has just witnessed possibly the best example of the politics of envy that we have heard in this House for a very long time. The assisted places scheme is now in its 11 th successful year. I can assure all noble Lords that any doubts which they may have about it are not shared by the many parents whose children have benefited and will continue to benefit from it.
There are now 27,600 pupils in the assisted places scheme of whom about two-thirds—66 per cent.—come from families with incomes below £12,500 per annum. The scale for determining the amount of fee remission is intentionally a demanding one and only those families with incomes currently below £8,714, to be uprated to £9,056 by these amendment regulations, qualify for completely free places.
In the current school year 35 per cent. of all assisted pupils are eligible for full remission of fees. That means that this year 35 per cent. of those families are earning below £8,714. It is clear that the scheme is working to the advantage of those families of humble means for whom it is intended and who would never have been given the opportunity to consider a choice of education for their children had it not been for the scheme.
The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, asked what would happen in the case of a child with expertise in music or in art. I look to the noble Lord to support us in encouraging specialisms in maintained schools as well as in the independent sector when we come to that matter.
Entry into the scheme is by examination. There is an objective assessment of ability in order to qualify for the places. There is also a means test of the income of the family.
The assisted places scheme provides excellent value for money. In the last year for which comparable figures are available—1989–90—the average cost to the taxpayer of each assisted place was £2,364, and the corresponding average cost of a pupil in the maintained sector is estimated to be about £2,135, a difference of only £229. Even this small difference is largely due to the high proportion of sixth form provision which the scheme supports, and that narrows the gap even more. But in any event I ask noble Lords not to lose sight of the fact in considering the costs of this scheme that if there was no assisted places scheme the costs of educating more than 27,600 children would have to be borne by the total costs to be met for education in the maintained sector and all we would be doing would be transferring the costs to provide for that education.
The excellence of the output from the assisted places scheme expenditure is beyond question. Last summer 90 per cent. of A-level entries by assisted places scheme pupils resulted in grades A to C compared with 61 per cent. in all independent schools and 44 per cent. in maintained schools. In addition,92 per cent. of GCSE entries by assisted places scheme pupils resulted in grades A to C compared with 82 per cent. in all independent schools and 47 per cent. in maintained schools. Of that 92 per cent.,45 per cent. achieved grade A and 33 per cent. achieved grade B. What further proof is necessary as to the success of the

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scheme? Noble Lords opposite believe in equality of opportunity for all pupils. We believe that the assisted places scheme plays a vital part in this process and does so by levelling up rather than down. The assisted places scheme is plainly achieving its objective of opening up some of the best independent schools to children who almost certainly would not otherwise have been able to look to them as an option. That can only be to the advantage of those children and the nation.
The vote on this subject has been taken and the whole of the debate so far is out of order. I hope that the House will now go on to approve the regulations.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, I should like to say that every other order discussed this afternoon was first introduced by the Minister and the Opposition were then allowed to reply. It is entirely wrong to say that a vote has been taken. I was caught completely unawares by the failure of the Minister to introduce this order, as I think is normal practice. Therefore I hope that she will withdraw the remark that this debate is out of order.
Perhaps I may also ask her whether she would accept that it is the marginal cost that we should be taking into account when comparing the cost of this scheme with the cost of a place in a maintained secondary school. After all, there are a large number of spare places in maintained secondary schools and to talk about a comparison using the full cost is entirely inappropriate. I should also be grateful if she would answer the direct question I put to her about parents.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, before I came into the Chamber to answer the debate I spoke to the noble Baroness's Chief Whip on these matters. The Chief Whip told me I would not be asked for detailed information. The detailed information I have been asked for I have given. The noble Baroness chose not to stand up at the appropriate time when the order was called in the House. It was only after the vote was taken that she chose to rise to the Dispatch Box. I believe I am entirely in order and that the House has been exceptionally indulgent in accepting both the speech of the noble Baroness and my own in reply.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I cannot speak for any conversation which went on between the Opposition Chief Whip and either the Minister or anybody else on the Government Benches. All I can say is that this is a complete change from the way in which we debated the order last year. I think it would have been appropriate to inform the Opposition Front Bench spokesman of any intention completely to change the way the order was to be debated.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, with the indulgence of the House I shall make my final comment. I think the fault lies in the communications between the noble Baroness's Chief Whip and the noble Baroness herself, not between myself and the noble Baroness's Chief Whip.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: My Lords, I do not know whether I am in order in rising. The noble Baroness was pleased to describe what the Opposition Benches had to say as the politics of envy. That is not so. We were making detailed comments on our objections to the scheme. They were not based upon envy but upon our sense of equity and justice.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I believe this is entirely out of order. The debate has finished and the vote has been taken.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Indonesia: Aid and Human Rights
3.35 p.m.
Lord Rea Lord Rea rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make development aid and arms sales to Indonesia conditional on the ending of human rights abuses in East Timor to the satisfaction of an international commission of inquiry under the auspices of the United Nations.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should first like to thank in advance all noble Lords who have put down their names to speak on this last item of business on the last day of term. I shall not have the opportunity to do so after the Minister's reply. I am looking forward with interest to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, whose former constituency is close to my home and includes part of the territory of my medical practice.
Like all noble Lords, I am always disturbed by violations of human rights and particularly by the illegal occupation of territory by another nation using military force. I have always known that the Indonesian occupation of East Timor in December 1975 was followed by a fierce and brutal guerrilla conflict. I became particularly interested in the problem when I was fortunate enough to visit East Timor for all of 24 hours at the invitation of the Indonesian Government while I was a member of an outward delegation for the Inter-Parliamentary Union in March 1989. That visit was arranged to demonstrate the opening up of East Timor to visitors, both Indonesian and foreign.
But in 24 hours, as can be imagined, it was impossible to speak to East Timorese people without Indonesian guides being present—except on one occasion in a prison in Dili, the capital, where one detainee described to us his experience of torture while under interrogation before sentencing. We were not allowed to use the military helicopters, which, incidentally, were conspicuous by their presence, to visit areas such as Viqueque where 131 years after the invasion there had been recent fighting. In particular, we were not able to see or speak to Bishop Belo, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in East Timor, although he had been named on our original programme as a key person whom we would be allowed to interview. Much later, after our return to Britain, we heard that he had been totally unaware of our visit.
There is a twofold reason for raising the matter now. First, there is the killing of around 100—

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according to all independent witnesses it may be more—unarmed, mainly young civilians outside the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili on 12th November last year. That event was witnessed by several observers from the outside world. It was filmed and subsequently obtained world-wide publicity. The second reason is that it has now become the stated policy of the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Community that development aid should be conditional upon recipient countries adopting acceptable human rights policies within their own borders. That was mentioned in the Queen's Speech with regard to aid policy:
"[The Government's] objectives will include promoting good government, sensible economic policies and respect for human rights".
Initially, the policy of conditionality of aid was directed at countries of the Eastern bloc. But since the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and the establishment of multi-party democracy in the East, that policy has been applied to other countries as well; notably, in the case of Britain, to Burma, Kenya and Malawi. Also, until recently for many years we operated sanctions against South Africa.
After the Tiananmen episode in China there was a slowing of aid and trade to that country, but regrettably, because of the need to hold a dialogue with China about Hong Kong and because of the huge economic importance of trade with China, that policy has now been relaxed, despite the fact that human rights problems remain and China is still in illegal occupation of Tibet.
Before considering our aid and arms trade policy with Indonesia, I need to give a brief outline of the East Timor problem. We have frequently discussed the matter at Question Time but so far as I am aware a connected account of the East Timor story has not yet found its way into Hansard. I shall therefore now give what must be a grossly truncated account.
Timor is an island some 300 miles long and 60 miles wide. It lies 400 miles north-west of Darwin, Australia, in the Timor Sea. Its original inhabitants are ethnically different from the inner island Indonesians, having much in common with Melanesian people. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was colonised by the Dutch taking the western part and the Portuguese the eastern part of the island. When Indonesia was created from the former Dutch East Indies in 1949 West Timor automatically became part of Indonesia and East Timor continued under direct Portuguese rule for a further 27 years until 1974 when the old Portuguese colonial empire broke up.
Political events were then complex. However, in December 1975 Indonesia illegally invaded East Timor and occupied Dili and other major cities but not without resistance. The short-lived independent government of East Timor, dominated by the Fretilin Party which had declared independence, retreated to the forested mountainous interior and have been waging a guerrilla war against Indonesia ever since. Very few guerrillas are left now but they are still to be found under their leader and have never received outside assistance, obtaining their arms by ambushes and raids on the Indonesian forces.
Indonesia claims that its occupation was legiti-mised by a declaration by a Timorese People's Assembly hurriedly got together by the Indonesians in May 1976, six months after the invasion, while fighting was still continuing. The United Nations has never recognised the legitimacy of that assembly which it considers to have been an unrepresentative body acting under duress. The United Nations Assembly and Security Council resolutions from 1975 to 1982 repeatedly called for the Indonesians to withdraw and allow the East Timorese population to vote freely under international supervision in an act of self-determination regarding their future. That has never been allowed by the Indonesian Government.
Over the past 16 years the war in East Timor has been exceptionally brutal. Actual casualties will never be known accurately, but it is probable that 100,000 civilians have died directly as a result of the conflict and a further 100,000 have died as a result of starvation or disease, forced displacement and the disruption of agriculture, transport and basic services. That figure comes from a total population of 600,000.
During that period about 100,000 Indonesians, mainly from crowded Java, have been settled in the territory and Dili has become largely Indonesian in character. Since the invasion, nearly all East Timorese have at least formally adopted Roman Catholicism, the dominant faith during the Portuguese colonial period. Bishop Belo, whom the British IPU group was not allowed to meet, is a staunch upholder of the rights of the East Timorese people. Because of his prominent position and direct links with the Vatican, he has never been arrested but his residence is closely guarded. There is little doubt that the Catholic Church now forms a rallying point for the East Timorese resistance to Indonesian rule. That is now fully backed by Portugal, which in international law is still the administering power.
That resistance to Indonesian rule has been remarkably consistent even though in the mid-1980s Indonesia switched from direct repression to investment in infrastructure—schools, clinics and roads—in an effort to gain the loyalty of the Timorese. The resistance now appears to have taken on a more political character, relying less on guerrilla fighting, with the result that peaceful demonstrations now take place, in particular when international observers are present. The latest demonstration last November was brutally attacked by the Indonesian forces.
It is possible that greater patience and persuasion, rather than the use of direct military force in 1975, might have resulted in the population of East Timor coming round to the idea of incorporation into Indonesia. However, their treatment as inferior citizens, ruled by a military force carrying out a policy bordering on genocide for the past 16 years, has understandably hardened their resistance. The Santa Cruz massacre was visible but it was only an example of the style of rule that had existed during the previous 16 years.
It must be remembered that immediately after the Suharto regime came into being in 1965 it was responsible for the killing of what is reliably estimated to he 1 million people without trial. They were mainly

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from Java and merely suspected of being members of the PKI, which is the Indonesian communist party. Human rights abuses have during the years taken place in other parts of Indonesia; in Aceh, in North Sumatra, in the Moluccas and in West Irian, which is the western part of New Guinea. The abuses include disappearances, political killings, extra-judicial executions and unfair political trials. A number of prisoners of conscience are still held, according to Amnesty International.
At this moment the consultative group on Indonesia, consisting of countries which were former members of the intergovernmental group on Indonesia which discussed aid to Indonesia, is meeting in Paris to discuss future aid policies. In view of the record which I have outlined I hope that at that conference Her Majesty's Government will take a firm line on future aid. In a document published this week entitled Indonesia! East Timor: The Suppression of Dissent, Amnesty International gives an outline of the human rights situation to date throughout Indonesia. It makes grim reading.
With regard to arms sales we should take note of a recent vote in the United States House of Representatives to cut 2.3 million dollars from the US military aid budget to Indonesia. I know that this is a difficult area for the Government during a period of recession. Indonesia has been a valuable customer for our arms. When criticised the Government's usual response is that all countries are entitled to purchase arms for their legitimate defence. But Indonesia has no external enemies. Its armed forces exist solely to keep order within its own territories; in other words, to suppress its own people. On the previous occasion when Indonesia fought an external enemy it was Malaysia, which was a member of the Commonwealth, and British troops were involved.
I could go on for an hour giving more details of the case that I have outlined but other noble Lords need time to speak. Indeed, I am sure that they will develop the case more skilfully than I can. I regret having to condemn Indonesia. It is a beautiful country inhabited by friendly, generous and cultured people and it has a number of admirable institutions. However, in order to become a respected member of the international community its government must recognise that in 1992 they must put their house in order. They will not do so unless the rest of the world shows in actions as well as in words that it will not tolerate any further violation of internationally-accepted human rights standards.
Indonesia must conform to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. It should sign the international covenant on civil and political rights as well as the covenant on torture. It must permit the free and regular monitoring of human rights in Indonesia and East Timor by national and international human rights organisations. Those actions are sorely needed by the people of East Timor and the whole of Indonesia.
3.50 p.m.
Lord Finsberg: My Lords, I hope that I will be forgiven for making a maiden speech so soon after my introduction, although I am perhaps not alone in doing so. First, I wish to put the ordeal behind me and; secondly, the subject of East Timor is of great concern to me. I am sure that the Whole House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for raising the issue.
I should like to tell your Lordships as briefly as I can why I am particularly interested and why I believe the matter is of such importance. For the past five years or more I have had the privilege of leading the United Kingdom's delegations to both the Council of Europe and Western European Union. The subject of East Timor has arisen at both those parliamentary assemblies. Your Lordships may wonder why. In those famous words, Timor is a small country far away. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rea, said, it was administered by Portugal and Portugal, as Britain's oldest ally, is a member of the Council of Europe and of Western European Union. Our colleagues in those assemblies asked us to debate the issue. It may interest your Lordships if I say a little about what has happened before I come to my final conclusion.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, rightly pointed out that East Timor was annexed in 1976. Well over one-third of the population have already been murdered—well over one-third! The contrast between the world's immediate reaction to Iraq's annexation of Kuwait and what has happened to East Timor makes us wonder whether there are double standards when a nation is further away and out of the limelight.
The annexation of East Timor was condemned not only by the United Nations but also by the Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, of which Indonesia is a member, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the European Parliament and vast numbers of international parliamentary and religious organisations. The annexation of East Timor is a clear violation of international law and, more particularly, of people's rights to self-determination and independence. Portugal was taking East Timor—slowly, it is true—along the road to independence.
The human rights of the people of East Timor have been appallingly broken. They have not been allowed to decide their own political destiny or to preserve their cultural or linguistic identities. All in all, they have been treated in a way that can do no credit to a nation that wishes to be considered part of the civilised world.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe asked member states—the Ministers of the 27—to implement an arms embargo in respect of Indonesia until the injustices have been put right. The debate then switched to the Parliamentary Assembly of Western European Union. It so happened that I was presiding over that debate. From the speeches of the Portuguese representatives of all parties, ranging from the communists—who are still somewhat unreconstructed—to the rest, one could not tell their political views. The parliamentary assembly made two

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requests, in this case to the Ministers of the nine. They asked for an immediate embargo on arms and the suspension of military support for Indonesia.
I believe that the United Kingdom has to be vigilant in upholding human rights. Our record is exceptionally good. On the occasions when we have been taken before the European Court of Human Rights we have at once complied with judgments where they have been against us. As a nation and as individuals we must speak up wherever human rights are violated provided that we are satisfied as to the truth of the allegations. On East Timor no doubt can exist, as the deaths of so many bear witness.
I wish to ask my noble friend Lady Trumpington two questions. I conveyed to her the fact that I wanted to put them. What is the view of Her Majesty's Government as to what can be done practically? What response was given by the Council of Ministers of both the Council of Europe and Western European Union of which the British Ministers are part?
East Timor has been the subject of murder, rape and pillage for well over 15 years. Yugoslavia has been the subject of rape, murder and pillage for some 15 months. We could have saved 90 per cent. of those who have died in Yugoslavia had any one of our civilised Western nations been prepared to take action at once when Yugoslavia, and more particularly, Serbia, decided to do what she did. Let us at least do something for the people of East Timor who, as I know from conversations with them and with Portuguese, feel cut off and ignored by the civilised world. That is a charge which should lie heavily on our consciences.
3.57 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, when I say that the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, was a masterpiece I am not in any way exaggerating. He spoke concisely and with immense knowledge from his membership of the Council of Europe and the Western European Union. Above all, he spoke with great humanity, which is a quality that has always distinguished him throughout the whole of his illustrious career both in another place and in his great services to local government in which in a small way I can remember co-operating with him in the dim and distant past. He may recall that when he acted as the friend of the London taxi drivers in the early 1970s I believe that we shared a platform. We certainly worked together to see that the taxi service, which is one of the prides of London, was properly looked after. I believe that it was partly as a result of his work that we still have the excellent taxi service which we still enjoy.
Now we have seen another side of the noble Lord's work. His widespread knowledge of foreign affairs, and particularly his grasp of the iniquity of the Indonesian violation of human rights in East Timor, is something which must have struck your Lordships with great force. Not only do we forgive him for his promptness in making his maiden speech, but we
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would have found it hard to forgive if he had withheld from us the benefits of the views which he has just expressed.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, said that he had visited East Timor for 24 hours, which is more than I can claim. I have in fact asked the Indonesian authorities on a number of occasions whether it would be possible to send a delegation of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, of which I have the honour to be chairman, to investigate human rights in East Timor. On the first occasion they declined. The second time around, when I made the request in conjunction with Australian parliamentarians led by Tony Lamb, who was then the convener of the East Timor Forum in the Australian Parliament, Mr. Lamb received the answer that it was inappropriate for the Australians to go there at that time and I did not have the courtesy of an answer at all. That is how the Indonesians treat any person they know to be critical of their policies in East Timor. They will not even let people go there to see what is happening—and for obvious reasons.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, has asked whether the Government will make development aid and arms sales to Indonesia conditional on the ending of human rights abuses in East Timor. One should recognise, as he did, that it is not just in East Timor that the Indonesian armed forces are behaving in a brutal and sadistic manner towards the civilian population that they control. The noble Lord mentioned Acheh, where there are no television cameras or foreign reporters, and which the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Kooijmans, was refused permission to enter last November even though he was allowed to go to East Timor at that time.
The noble Lord also mentioned Amnesty International's recent report, which was published on 13th July. It gives examples of extra-judicial killings and disappearances in Acheh which reinforce the many reports that have been published during the past two years by the American human rights organisation, Asia Watch, and by TAPOL, to which we all owe a great debt of gratitude for chronicling the events in East Timor and elsewhere in Indonesia and for enabling us to speak with greater authority than we could if we had to find our information solely in the western press, which so frequently ignores these matters.
We believe that in West Papua also violence against the civilian population is endemic. As the noble Lord, Lord Rea, reminded us, the Indonesian armed forces have a well-documented record of mass murders, torture and arbitrary detentions which extends throughout the whole breadth of the territory but particularly in areas where the Government rule without the consent of the local people, as in East Timor.
The noble Lord has provided us with a well-timed opportunity also to repeat the questions that were put to the Foreign Secretary in a letter signed by Members of both Houses. I should like to remind the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, of those questions in the hope that she may be able to give us some replies this afternoon. We asked whether Britain would issue a statement on the occasion of the Consultative Group

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on Indonesia's meeting in Paris today and tomorrow, emphasising our deep concern about the human rights violations in East Timor. We also asked whether the Government would make known our dissatisfaction with the commission of inquiry set up by Jakarta to inquire into the Santa Cruz massacre and the savage sentences that were meted out to the survivors who were charged with political offences.
We invoked the principle of conditionality, which the noble Lord, Lord Rea, also mentioned, and which has been stated repeatedly by the Foreign Secretary and by the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker. We asked that aid be suspended until those arrested and imprisoned in the wake of the massacre are released and until a genuine inquiry to pin the responsibility for the tragedy on the senior officers responsible is conducted. Finally, we asked for the immediate release of the report by the special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, Dr. Amos Wako, who went to East Timor to inquire into the circumstances of the massacre.
Jose Ramos Horta, whom several of us saw when he was here in the middle of June, made the allegation, which was not denied, that the Foreign Office had been preventing the EC from issuing any statement on the Santa Cruz massacre and the measures taken to deal with the tragedy. Certainly it was a surprise to some of us that nothing was said on the occasion of the recent summit meeting in Lisbon, which I am quite sure the Portuguese would have liked if it had not been for the resistance of some of her partners.
I drew the attention of the Foreign Secretary to the eye-witness statements published in the Indonesian newspapers themselves but not taken by the commission of inquiry and to the commission's failure to seek evidence from any of the foreign observers, including the Yorkshire Television cameraman, Max Stahl, and several others from various parts of the world, including the United States, or even to ask for a copy of the films taken by Max Stahl of the massacre. Amnesty International described the inquiry as "fatally flawed". A statement was issued by the department on 28th January concerning the preliminary report of the commission of inquiry, but recently it said that it did not intend to make any further statement until the trials were ended. As I understand it, this means the indefinite postponement of any comment, because the Indonesians can string out the trials for as long as another year.
No comment had been made either on the appointment of Brigadier-General Theo Syafei, who took over the East Timor command from the previous officer who was moved as one of the steps taken by the Indonesian authorities in consequence of the massacre. Brigadier-General Syafei is a hard-liner and is worse than his predecessor. He took over command with the declaration that if such an incident were to occur while he was in command,
"the casualties would probably be far higher".
That remark was actually reported in the Indonesian political weekly newspaper Editor of 14th March.
Sidney Jones, the Asia Watch director, in testimony before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee following a visit she made in February,
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described the reign of terror imposed by General Syafei. A ban was imposed on the visits of foreign journalists to the territory, which has remained in force since, except for one BBC reporter who was allowed to cover the so-called June election. But there has been fairly extensive reporting in the semi-free Indonesian press of intense security clamp-downs in the territory, especially at the time of the visit by the Secretary-General's representative, Dr. Wako. Dr. Wako's report to the Secretary-General on the circumstances of the massacre has been withheld from member states of the UN no doubt as a consequence of Indonesian pressure. That statement must be published if donors are to evaluate the atrocity and Jakarta's response to it properly. In any case, we paid for the report. The taxpayers in this country and in other member states of the United Nations finance the work of Dr. Wako as they finance all the other work of the Secretary-General. We are entitled to know the contents of that report.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian authorities have tried and sentenced many of the survivors of the massacre, meting out sentences of up to life imprisonment. At the same time some junior armed forces personnel have been brought before the courts and charged with minor offences such as disobeying orders. Their sentences have ranged up to 17 months. At a recent seminar organised by the School of Oriental and African Studies Mr. Arizal Effendi, the head of the political section at the Indonesian Embassy, appeared to defend the Indonesian authorities. When I asked him whether senior officers would be charged with murder and conspiracy to murder, he gave an unequivocal "yes". But as your Lordships know, the senior commanders were merely transferred to other posts. Therefore the demand in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office statement of 28th January that a clear commitment be given to punishing those responsible at all levels has not been met. I should like to know what the Foreign Office is going to do about that.
Today and tomorrow, as the noble Lord, Lord Rea, reminded us, the Consultative Group on Indonesia meets in Paris to decide how much aid should be offered by donors to Indonesia next year. The Council of Ministers of the EC stated in the declaration of 28th November 1991 that:
"The Community and its Member states will explicitly introduce the consideration of human rights as an element of their relations with developing countries; human rights clauses will be inserted in future cooperation agreements. Regular discussions on human rights and democracy will be held, within the framework of developing cooperation, with the aim of seeking improvements".
I should like to know how that declaration will be implemented at the discussions in Paris.
That statement followed the Foreign Secretary's initiative in which he urged the European Commission to cut aid to countries violating human rights. The noble Baroness, Lady Chalker (then Mrs. Chalker) spelled out that policy in detail in an article in the Sunday Times of 18th August 1991, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Rea, reminded us, it was reiterated in the Queen's Speech. One could hardly imagine circumstances more demanding of action under the policy

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than the situation in East Timor today. I sincerely hope that Britain will take the lead in calling for suspension of aid to Indonesia at the Paris meeting.
On the question of arms sales, the Government have so far declined appeals to suspend sales of arms and other military hardware pending an improvement in the human rights situation. They say that they will not sell weapons which could be used against the civilian population. But every sale of equipment for use by the Indonesian armed forces constitutes tacit exoneration of the crimes that they commit.
The report in a daily newspaper of 25th June that a deal is likely to be signed for the sale of 40 British Aerospace Hawks to Indonesia came five days before the news that Mr. Gregorio da Cunha Saldanha, a 29 year-old paramedic, had been given a life sentence for so-called "subversion". What that consisted of was issuing leaflets calling for the withdrawal of the Indonesian occupation forces and organising the demonstration, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, that took place on the occasion of the visit by the US Ambassador to Jakarta. We certainly should suspend our own shipments of equipment intended for use by Indonesia's armed forces and work for an EC arms embargo.
Similarly, the training of Indonesian armed forces personnel in Britain, whether in Ministry of Defence establishments or by private companies such as British Aerospace in particular, is morally and politically wrong. Those officers are not in front-line posts where they are likely to be directly involved in human rights violations themselves, but their presence here at the expense of the British taxpayer means that we are turning a blind eye to the war crimes committed by their colleagues. We are encouraging other military regimes to believe that whatever they may do in the territories that they occupy in defiance of the United Nations Charter will be overlooked and forgotten by the rest of the world. We are also actively encouraging the process of military involvement in politics, as the remarks by the British embassy on the candidates who are now coming here for military training demonstrate:
"It has previously been agreed with CRD"—
and I should like to know who CRD is; perhaps the noble Baroness can give us that information—
"that the position of Armed Forces in Indonesian society is such that its members are important decision makers and opinion formers and do, therefore, fall within the scope of
FCO SAS"—
which, I think, are scholarships and aid schemes—
"Up to 40% of the participants in Indonesia's political fora are drawn from the armed forces and they are a target for support under the FCO schemes in Indonesia".
That is our policy.
Perhaps I may draw the noble Baroness's attention to the provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Article 147 of the convention prohibits wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, unlawful deportation or transfer, wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of a fair and regular trial and extensive destruction and appropriation of property. Article 146 requires us, as a party to the convention, to,
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"search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches",
and to bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before our own courts. What checks do we make of the backgrounds of personnel from the Indonesian armed forces seeking entry to the United Kingdom, including those invited to undergo training here, to see whether they should be brought before our courts and tried?
The tragedy of Santa Cruz happened because the armed forces of Indonesia continue to occupy East Timor in defiance of many resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council, all of which Britain supported. Legally, there is no difference between the cases of East Timor and Kuwait. Both are violations of Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter which provides that,
"states should … refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or national independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the purpose of the United Nations".
In a letter the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, candidly explained that,
"the United Nations at that time was not in a position with respect to east Timor to take the resolute action that it took over Kuwait 15 years later";
and in a further letter of 9th March 1992, he pointed out that action was taken over Kuwait under Chapter VII of the charter which deals with specific breaches of international peace and security which had been determined as such by the council. The two resolutions of the Security Council on East Timor (384 and 389) omit any reference to Chapter VII. as indeed they might, considering the United States, Australia and Britain had secretly given the green light to the invasion and thus made it unlikely that the conflict would spread.
The noble Earl added that Resolutions 384 and 389,
"constitute powerful points of reference for the Secretary-General as he continues his efforts to promote a solution".
Those resolutions called for the withdrawal of the Indonesian armed forces, and that is indeed the only way of enabling the people of East Timor to express their views freely, in accordance with the Charter, with the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples and with the two covenants, of which unfortunately Indonesia is not a signatory. We have seen a letter jointly addressed to the Secretary-General by members of the US Congress and the Japanese Diet in which they reiterate the demand for concrete steps to enable the people of East Timor to exercise the right of self-determination by means of a referendum held under the auspices of the United Nations, and the Minister should know that Parliamentarians for East Timor, an organisation comprising several hundred Members of Parliament in some 15 countries, is working for the same objective.
Portugal has now proposed that talks be resumed, this time with participation by the East Timorese themselves. Resolution 37/30 of November 1982 required the Secretary-General to consult with,
"all the parties directly concerned",
and Parliamentarians for East Timor has argued that the people themselves are the most directly concerned of all. Yet they have been excluded without a murmur

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of protest from governments, including our own, who insist on the virtues of democracy elsewhere. We know that the Foreign Office is scathing about "megaphone diplomacy", as it calls it, but total silence over the past nine years led to the tragedy of Santa Cruz. It may also have contributed to the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq; Saddam Hussein referred to East Timor when he claimed that in six months' time the international community would have forgotten about his invasion. If the EC would support Portugal and work towards a resolution of the General Assembly this autumn demanding the participation of the East Timorese at any future talks, the way might be opened towards a solution in accordance with the principles of self-determination and the unlawfulness of acquisition of territory by force. That way the martyrs of Santa Cruz will not have died in vain.
4.19 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, perhaps I, who have had little or no experience of foreign affairs, may nevertheless congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, on his maiden speech in this House and thank him for deciding to make it on the occasion of an Unstarred Question.
It is well known in the House that bishops of the Church of England are in no way political animals. Despite that, throughout my ministry I have always believed, when people ask me to speak or do something on behalf of those who do not enjoy the host of freedoms under the law that we enjoy and do not have the freedom to go to and fro as we do, that I should respond in some way.
Although, having attended the General Synod last week and the House of Lords this week, I feel the green fields of the diocese of Worcester pulling me towards them, I could not go home without expressing my view on the Unstarred Question of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for which we are grateful.
The massacre at Santa Cruz was the latest in a series of human rights atrocities committed by Indonesia in East Timor. I shall not repeat facts and figures already given by noble Lords. I know that since 1975 at least 150,000 people have died as a result of military campaigns and starvation induced by forced resettlement, extensive imprisonment without trial, extra-judicial killings, disappearances and widespread torture.
Bishop Carlos Belo, a most courageous bishop, must surely command our admiration. He has constantly said that the Indonesian army regards civilians as enemies. There is no confidence whatever in the new commander-in-chief of the army; indeed, he is a ruthless hardliner. Bishop Belo has said over and over again that self-determination for East Timor is a matter for the East Timorese. That goes without saying in the United Kingdom. The bishop says—I support him and put it to the noble Baroness that Her Majesty's Government should also do so—that what is required is determined intervention by the international community, fairly obviously through the United Nations, to ensure a well conducted referendum of the people. It must ensure that democratic and human rights are affirmed, for dissent
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is treated as treasonable. Those who took part in the demonstrations last November, as we have seen and know, have been picked off and imprisoned for up to 15 years and, in one case, for life. No army officer has been tried for ordering the massacre.
In the face of this, it is to be hoped that the words of the Foreign Secretary to the European Commission that we should cut aid to countries which violate human rights will be heeded in the matter of Indonesia, always considering that humanitarian aid comes into a different category. Can we not have a statement on that? Let us hope that one will be made at the Paris aid consortium.
I also wish to ask Her Majesty's Government for an embargo on all arms sales to Indonesia, although I know that that is difficult at a time of recession. Can we justify the sale of 40 Hawk aircraft at this time and the invitation to three Indonesian army officers to study in the United Kingdom? Can we cancel the sale of the Green Rover to the Indonesian navy?
Those would be clear signals that we cannot condone the present ugly regime in East Timor. It would be the best way to indicate and communicate to Indonesia that it cannot claim—as has already been said in this House—a place in a civilised world community if it continues to behave in its present fashion.
4.25 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I shall not detain the House many minutes for the good reason that the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, in an outstanding maiden speech, said everything that I should like to say about the situation in East Timor. However, as is known in this House, I have pursued this matter for some years now.
I shall therefore confine myself to asking the Government to tell us clearly where they stand not just on the issue of East Timor itself, but also as regards any other similar issues which may arise. I am glad to know that the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, sees a double standard being used by the Government as regards their attitude towards East Timor and as regards their attitude towards Iraq. Ministers have been angry—I have made this comparison before—about this situation.
Will the Minister say how she can justify the attitude taken by the Government to the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia, particularly in view of the condemnation by the United Nations of the aggression shown by Indonesia during that invasion in 1975? If the Government believe that as a member of the United Nations they must accept the leadership of that organisation when it states categorically that aggression has been perpetrated, surely it is not for them to pick and choose as to which aggression they will act on according to some somewhat suspicious forms of so-called national interest. I hope the noble Baroness will tell the House quite clearly—this matter has been debated before and it is not a new issue—whether the British Government consider the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia to be an act of aggression as stated by the United Nations, and if so what action

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the British Government intend to take to back up that declaration of aggression. That is the first issue that I wish the Government to comment upon.
Secondly, will the noble Baroness tell us the actual amount of armaments that have been sold to Indonesia by Britain? According to one estimate by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (with which I have been connected for many years) between 1986 and 1990 the United Kingdom provided major weapons systems to Indonesia to the value of 522 million dollars. Can the noble Baroness tell the House whether that is accurate, or is it inaccurate? If it is inaccurate, what was the amount of arms provided by Britain to that regime which has been condemned by the United Nations as an aggressor? Is it the case that the British Government are still providing facilities for the training of Indonesian army officers in this country?
This all comes down to the original question which I asked and which this House, this Parliament and this Government have to face. Twelve months ago we saw what happens when aggression is allowed to take place, and indeed encouraged to take place, before the actual movement of troops. We saw what tragedy it brings. In Indonesia there is a more long term tragedy. It has been condemned by the United Nations. Where do the British Government, as a member of the United Nations, stand when the United Nations condemns another state for aggression? How do the British Government act?
It is no good saying that every country has a right to self defence. That is not the point here. The point is how the British Government acts when the United Nations has declared another state to be an aggressor. Do the British Government continue to supply that country with arms and training facilities? Do they continue to supply that country with aid, despite the fact that the British Government have laid down, as they did in the gracious Speech, that in future aid will depend on good governance? Do the British Government consider that the Indonesian Government is an example of good governance?
Let them come clean now and let us hear from the Government where they stand now on the issue of aggression and good governance so that we know what we can expect in terms of the actions of the British Government in the future.
4.32 p.m.
Lord Haden-Guest: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for bringing this urgent Question so compellingly to the attention of your Lordships' House. He covered a wide spectrum, as did the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, in his most impressive maiden speech, and other noble Lords who for years have been active on this question. I shall therefore be brief.
The gross and continuing violation of human rights in East Timor by the Government of Indonesia, in particular by its military and security forces, blatantly contravening as it does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and numerous United Nations resolutions, is not a new development. It began in
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1975 with the illegal annexation of East Timor by Indonesia following a brutal invasion in which it has been estimated at least 60,000 East Timorese died while hundreds of thousands of others were uprooted from their homes and forced to flee to other far distant places. Much worse was to follow in succeeding years.
The situation in East Timor has now been on the agenda of the United Nations and considered independently by numerous governments and by a number of political bodies for some 17 years. I have to say that throughout that time there has been a striking and indeed a shameful lack of political will to act decisively and with one voice on the matter. In fact, a number of the most influential members of the United Nations, among them the United States and the United Kingdom, have supported the status quo while continuing to develop their substantial economic interests in Indonesia, no small part of which involves the provision of large quantities of arms to the military forces of that country. It is precisely because of this constant and increasing flow of arms that united action by the international community must be taken without delay.
Nevertheless, there are at long last heartening signs of change in international opinion and political direction. In this country a growing public awareness of what is going on in East Timor has come with the recent publication of well-informed articles in the serious press, notably the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. In addition, active political entities such as the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, which is well known to your Lordships, the British Coalition for East Timor, the Indonesian Human Rights Campaign and others have made a significant contribution to the knowledge of the public. In many countries, including Australia and Japan, citizens have banded together to oppose the Indonesian repression, and publicised statements by respected organisations such as Amnesty International have been extremely helpful in informing the public of what is really going on.
There have been significant developments on the political front. In the United States the House of Representatives has voted to stop funding the Indonesian military and a bill has been sponsored to suspend military and economic aid and trade preferences for Indonesia until that country with-draws from East Timor and allows a United Nations—supervised plebiscite to take place. On 25th June this year the House of Representatives adopted that bill by a large majority and an amended appropriation bill has been sent to the Senate where it will be taken up later in the year. The powerful Conference of United States Mayors has urged the President of the United States and Congress to support the immediate introduction of a resolution in the General Assembly instructing the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to appoint a special rapporteur for East Timor to assist in the resolution of the conflict, providing for self-determination of the East Timorese people. It says that the President should request the Government of Indonesia to permit an investigation

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by the United Nations special rapporteur on summary and arbitrary executions in East Timor and elsewhere in Indonesia.
Given the circumstances described, is it not time for all governments involved in the area, including that of the United Kingdom, to join ranks and, by withholding arms to Indonesia, bring to an end the appalling state of affairs in East Timor and prepare the ground under international auspices for a dialogue between Indonesia and East Timor which in the course of time could lead to a just and peaceful political solution acceptable to both parties in the area?
4.38 p.m.
Lord Judd: My Lords, I am sure we are all deeply grateful to my noble friend Lord Rea for having introduced this debate this afternoon. It seems to me that one of the characteristics of this House at its best is a deep commitment to humanitarian concerns and justice. This debate is about that. I think it is very telling and appropriate that we should be having a debate of this kind just before the Long Recess. It shows that we are not prepared to go away leaving God knows how many hundreds or thousands suffering uncared for in a country about which we know more than we sometimes like to admit.
I should also like to join with those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, on an outstanding maiden speech. He has characterised his individual commitment to those principles about which I have just been speaking. I am sure all of us look forward to a powerful future in this House as a guardian of everything that British democracy likes to say it is about.
As we have been reminded in this debate, Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, after the East Timorese, taking advantage of the collapse of the Portuguese dictatorship, had declared their independence. We must remember that the United Nations still recognises Portugal as the legitimate authority in East Timor, which it categorises as the world's last non-autonomous region. Following the invasion, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolutions 384 and 389, which confirm East Timor's right to self-determination and call on the Indonesians to end their illegal occupation, an occupation every bit as serious a violation of the international rule of law as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
The United Nations also acknowledges the Revolutionary Front for the Independence of East Timor as the legitimate representatives of the East Timorese. The front has conducted guerrilla operations against the Indonesian forces of occupation, but those forces, sustained by sophisticated equipment, much of which is British, have exacted heavy casualties on the East Timorese. As my noble friend Lord Rea reminded us, in over 17 years of fighting, exacerbated by famine, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people have been killed out of a total population of 600,000.
The Indonesian Army has conducted a cruel and brutal occupation. Its most recent outrage, as we heard in this debate, was on 12th December last. That
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was the Santa Cruz massacre in which between 100 and 200 people who had been attending a funeral were killed by the Indonesian Army. That massacre, which took place despite the presence of the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and human rights, Professor Kooijman, was condemned by the United Nations and the European Community. In the report of his visit to East Timor, Professor Kooijman concluded that the torture of detainees in East Timor by the Indonesian occupying forces was routine. That is apparently the first time that the United Nations in an official document has unequivocally confirmed that torture occurs in Indonesia.
The Indonesian Government have attempted to dismiss the massacre as an isolated incident. But, as we have just heard, organisations such as Amnesty International have documented gross and systematic human rights violations not only in East Timor but throughout Indonesia for the past 20 years. In the aftermath of the Santa Cruz massacre, the international outcry forced the Indonesian Government to take the unprecedented step of launching an inquiry. By June 1992 a number of officers had been dismissed or transferred from their posts, and 10 officers were convicted by military courts. However. none of the accused officers was charged with murder or even with unlawful killing. Indeed, only one was charged with ill treatment and all were sentenced to only short terms of imprisonment. By contrast, a number of the surviving massacre victims were sentenced to long gaol sentences.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred to an interview published recently in Editor, an Indonesian magazine. In the same periodical, Major-General Mantiri, Commander of the IXth Udayana Regional Military Command, which covers East Timor, has been reported as describing the army's shooting of peaceful demonstrators as "proper" saying that the army had no regrets. Perhaps I may crave the indulgence of the House to quote from the article concerned, because it reveals what we are up against. The question was asked:
"As Commander of the Dili Incident, it's your responsibility to eliminate the bad image which resulted from that incident. Does this make things heavier for you?"
The answer was:
"If you say heavier, it's relative. A good image as seen from where? As seen from abroad, that's true. People from abroad indeed said: 'My goodness! ' But from our vantage-point that is not the case. We don't regret anything. What happened was quite proper … As military, this is so. They were opposing us, demonstrating, even yelling things against the government. To me that is identical with rebellion, so that is why we took firm action. From our perspective there is no question of a bad image. People abroad are yapping away, magnifying things. But things were not as bad as they claim"
The question was asked:
"Proper?"
—to which the answer was—
"If people demonstrate around the idea of opposing the government, we take action. For me that is proper".
The Indonesian Government have consistently attempted to obstruct the outside world's access to East Timor and the news blackout has intensified since the massacre. In effect, East Timor has been closed to human rights investigators despite a February 1992

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appeal by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to allow human rights and humanitarian organisations access.
Despite the Indonesian occupying forces' long history of repression and human rights abuse, the British Government have undertaken extensive arms sales to Indonesia. Indeed, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, between 1986 and 1990 the UK was second only to the United States in the supply of weapons systems to Indonesia my noble friend Lord Hatch has referred to that, and certainly the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute suggests that during this period UK exports were worth 522 million US dollars compared with 538 million US dollars-worth by the United States,455 million US dollars-worth by the Netherlands and 112 million US dollars-worth by the Federal German Republic.
Significantly, over the same period Indonesia seems to have been the third largest recipient of UK weapons systems. The most recent sales took place in June 1991, when British Aerospace announced a major collaborative deal with the Indonesian Government for the production of Hawk aircraft. Since September 1991, following the visit of the then Secretary of State for Defence to Jakarta, the deal was confirmed.
The Government have also sold a naval support ship, the "Green Rover", to the Indonesians and extended training to the Indonesian armed forces. I understand that since 1979 British arms sales to Indonesia have included three Tribal Class frigates, three contracts for the Rapier Air Defence system, Sea Wolf missile launchers, advanced computers for military use and an unknown number of armoured personnel carriers refurbished by a British company for anti-guerrilla operations in mountainous terrain. The Government have also provided extensive training, as we have heard in the debate, and information transfer facilities to the Indonesian armed forces.
The Government themselves have consistently refused to reveal the value of British arms sales to Indonesia, a position which I suggest is totally at odds with their support for a United Nations arms register, so much favoured in theory by the Prime Minister. The British Government justify those sales on the ground that every country has a legitimate right under the United Nations Charter to secure its defence, a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in answer to a Starred Question on 25th November of last year. However, disingenuously, that Answer overlooked the fact that Indonesia has an appalling human rights record, is illegally occupying East Timor and is using for offensive rather than defensive purposes the weapons supplied to it.
The Government also justify the sales on the ground that there is no evidence to suggest that the equipment sold has been used in East Timor to prolong Indonesia's illegal occupation of that country. The House is entitled to know whether that is still the Government's view in the light of the recent massacre and the admission by the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, in answer to a Starred Question
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on the Santa Cruz massacre, that British Land Rovers were indeed used by troops responsible for the outrage.
Subsequently, also in answer to a Starred Question on the Santa Cruz massacre, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said that Land Rovers were used, but added:
"I believe that the House will agree with me that these are not arms".-[Official Report,30/1/92; col.1417.]
Arms or not, they obviously played a crucial part in the atrocity.
Frankly, the Government's policy appears to have been one of selling huge quantities of arms to Indonesia while making the odd protest when the Indonesians used those and other weapons to butcher the people of East Timor. Reflecting that, giving a recent oral Answer in the other place, Mr. Douglas Hogg said that the Government would continue to make their concern about human rights abuses in East Timor crystal clear to the Indonesian Government. Selling the latter large quantities of arms regardless of the use made of such weapons is hardly a convincing way to express that concern, however.
To make matters worse, the Government's willingness to sell arms to Indonesia despite that country's illegal and repressive occupation of East Timor has been translated into a consistent series of abstentions in the United Nations on resolutions condemning the Indonesian Government. Perhaps even more sinister is the fact that that is almost certainly what lay behind the repeated, cynical manoeuvres by the British Government to frustrate humanitarian initiatives on Indonesia by the EC under the leadership of the Portuguese during their presidency of the Community.
Indonesia is the biggest recipient of UK aid in the Far East. The annual average of the UK's bilateral aid to Indonesia between 1988 and 1990 was £20.27 million. In 1990 Indonesia received substantially more aid than Malaysia, a comparable country which is a loyal member of the Commonwealth, and much more aid than the countries in the region which are in most need of aid. Reflecting that issue, it is interesting to note that in the same year Britain gave Indonesia 206 times as much aid as it gave to Cambodia.
The expansion of UK aid to Indonesia contradicts certain key factors which normally determine the allocation of aid. For example, Indonesia is neither one of' the poorest countries in the region nor is it a member of the Commonwealth. Moreover, its poor human rights record and illegal occupation of East Timor raise fundamental questions about its suitability for such aid.
In the light of those factors, we on these Benches fear that the United Kingdom's allocation to aid to Indonesia can now be attributed only to the identification of Indonesia as a key market where British exporters can compete well against foreign competitors. However, I recognise that in the past another factor was probably the perception by the US and UK Governments of Indonesia as a bulwark against communism.
In support of the points made in this brief but vital debate I want to conclude by putting several specific

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questions to the noble Baroness. They are questions of which I thought it wise to give her office prior notice. First, given that the Indonesians have been illegally occupying East Timor since 1975, and that the Santa Cruz massacre in November was just the latest in a long line of outrages committed by the Indonesian forces of occupation, does the Minister not agree that the time for a negotiated settlement on the basis of UN Resolutions 384 and 389 is long overdue? Can the Minister confirm whether the British Government will use the presidency of the European Community actively to promote such a settlement?
Secondly, can the noble Baroness advise the House of the size of the British aid programme to Indonesia in 1991–92, and what it is to be in 1992–93? Thirdly, can the noble Baroness advise the House of the number of East Timorese arrested after the Santa Cruz massacre who are still being held by the Indonesian forces of occupation? Of those, can she indicate the number charged with offences and the number sentenced? What do the Government know of their treatment in detention? Have the Government any firm information on the blood-chilling numbers of those who disappeared altogether at the time of the massacre?
Given the Government's frequent assertion that, despite Britain being one of Indonesia's main arms suppliers, British arms sales play no part in sustaining Indonesia's illegal occupation of East Timor, can the Minister advise the House as to who is supplying the weapons being used against the East Timorese? Can the noble Baroness confirm whether or not the Indonesian Government are still ignoring the appeal of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights to allow humanitarian and human rights organisa-tions access to East Timor in order to monitor human rights violations? Can she confirm whether the British Government have yet obtained copies of the United Nations report on the massacre and whether they will place them in the Libraries of both Houses?
In view of both the Prime Minister's and the Foreign Secretary's repeated commitment to upholding human rights—including their determination to ensure that British aid is tied to the human rights record of recipients—and in the light of the European Community declaration on 28th November last on human rights and relations with developing countries, can the noble Baroness explain to the House why Britain continues to sell arms to Indonesia despite its illegal occupation of East Timor and the brutality of its forces of occupation within East Timor?
Can the noble Baroness advise the House of the specific action-orientated recommendations that, in the light of the recent Santa Cruz massacre and Indonesia's continuing abuse of human rights in East Timor, the Government will be making at the meeting of the World Bank's consultative group on Indonesia taking place in Paris this very day and tomorrow regarding aid to the country?
Finally, above all, will the Government as a whole stop the smooth diplomatic double talk and hypocrisy of their approach on Indonesia? It consists of protesting decent intentions but doing virtually nothing when it matters to take the action to secure
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the ends that they proclaim. It must be an acute embarrassment to the Minister. It is high time for the Government to emulate their determination on Kuwait and vigorously to use their presidency of the European Community to ensure that in the Community and at the United Nations effective pressure is at last brought to bear upon the cruel tyrants of Jakarta.
4.58 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, has exposed the deep feelings held by the House on this matter. It also enables me to set out the Government's case on the question of human rights in East Timor.
The debate has produced an authoritative and moving maiden speech from my noble friend Lord Finsberg. As an ex-constituent of his I expected no less. At the same time it gives me special pleasure to congratulate someone who was so helpful to me when I was a junior Minister. I know that his contributions to this House will always be worthwhile and I wish him great happiness at this end of the Palace of Westminster.
We were all horrified by what happened in Dili last November. It intensified our concerns about human rights abuses in Indonesia and East Timor. But this time the Indonesians responded in an unprecedented way, taking real action themselves rather than simply in response to international criticism, to find out what went wrong. The Indonesian president insisted on follow-up action against those responsible, including courts martial. Importantly, the Indonesians also allowed a visit by the UN Secretary General's special representative, Mr. Amos Wako.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for the advance warning he gave of his questions. He asked whether I could confirm that HMG have the UN report on the Santa Cruz massacre. The answer is that Her Majesty's Government do not have that report because the United Nations Secretary General has decided not to release it. The next question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, was whether I could—
Lord Avebury: My Lords, before the noble Baroness leaves the question of Mr. Amos Wako's report—
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, order! I am very conscious that noble Lords may have many questions to ask. I am sorry, but this is not the time to get me off my feet. I will write letters to anyone, but I am going to proceed with my speech.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I simply wanted to ask about the report—
Noble Lords: Order!
Baroness Trumpington: The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked me to clarify whether the Indonesians are still ignoring the plea of the UN Commission for Human Rights to allow human rights' observers into East Timor. We continue to look to the Indonesians to pursue follow-up action in accordance with the UNCHR chairman's statement of 4th March. The

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ICRC is at present in the territory. We have made it very clear to the Indonesians, in statements by the Government and the European Community, and in direct bilateral representations to the Indonesians, the serious view which we took of the killings of civilians in Dili. We made direct representations to the Indonesians on 30th June on behalf of the Community and acting for the Portuguese presidency about the trials and the discrepancies in sentences of those charged in connection with the events in Dili. We continue to monitor developments on the issue very closely.
My noble friend Lord Finsberg asked about the response to the Council of Europe. The British Government support the declaration of the Committee of Ministers of 26th November last which followed the parliamentary assembly's resolution of 28th June on East Timor. Another question from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, concerned the number of East Timorese arrested after the incident; the number of those still detained by the Indonesians; and those charged and sentenced. The numbers, as known to the FCO on 15th July are: arrested after the incident,56; still detained,20; charged,21; and sentenced,19.
I am sure that your Lordships can agree that our aim should be to influence the Indonesians in whatever ways are most appropriate and effective. That brings me to the two specific elements in the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Rea. Indonesia is a poor country with a GNP per capita of 570 US dollars that is regarded by the donor community as having managed its economy very effectively over the past decade.
Our development assistance to Indonesia is focused on programmes and projects which promote economic and social development. It includes help for primary education, training in management research and conservation of tropical forests, English language teaching, public administration and the promotion of energy efficiency. We also provide concessional finance for major development projects involving the provision of UK goods and services which exist. This helps British firms to establish themselves in the expanding Indonesian market.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, asked about the link between aid and human rights. It is the policy of Her Majesty's Government to take full account of human rights issues in determining their aid policy to individual countries. The form that takes reflects the circumstances of each country and the nature of the human rights problem. As regards Indonesia, we believe that its poverty and its record of sound economic policy justify a continuation of aid. But that needs to be combined with a continuing dialogue on our human rights anxieties in association with other donors.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked a further question about the size of the United Kingdom's aid programme for Indonesia in 1991–92 and what is proposed for 1992–93. For 1991–92, it was £21.4 million, plus debt relief of £2.27 million. We expect spending in 1992–93 to be at about the same level. In making decisions about aid policy, your Lordships
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will be aware that we and other major aid donors take human rights very much into account. Where improvements are needed, we have made this very clear to the countries involved. But the nature of human rights problems differs from country to country, and our response must be graduated accordingly.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred to the meeting of donors which is taking place today in Paris, at which an Indonesian minister is present. In preparing for this meeting, we have, as EC President, consulted closely with our European partners. The noble Lord also asked whether I could advise the House as to the recommendations that Her Majesty's Government will make to the consultative group on Indonesia in Paris this week in respect of aid in the light of the Santa Cruz massacre and human rights abuses. Our representative conveyed our views and those of our Community partners to the Indonesian minister in Paris this morning, making clear our continued anxiety over human rights. I understand that the World Bank will be issuing a statement.
As I said earlier, in the follow-up to the Dili incident, the Indonesians have already taken some unprecedented steps. We believe that the kind of exchanges that are taking place in Paris today have an effect. The steps that have been taken are unprecedented, but they are not enough. We want to see further progress. The point is that we do not believe that the suspension of aid would improve the human rights situation in East Timor, and to deny Indonesia the assistance that I have previously mentioned would be a retrogressive step.
My farmer friends would laugh about the part in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about Land-Rovers and to think that they were driving around in offensive weapons. I cannot agree either with the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, or with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, with regard to the export of defence equipment. The Government's policy is based on respect for the right of other countries, as sovereign states, to protect their independence. This is a right that we claim for ourselves. It would be inconsistent and discriminatory to deny it to others. Proposed defence sales from Britain, including those to Indonesia, are nevertheless subject to strict export controls.
The noble Lords, Lord Hatch, and Lord Avebury, and, I think, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, asked me about military students and their training. Educating and training Indonesians in all fields is a positive way of bringing about improvements in their performance. A number of Indonesians attend further education courses in the United Kingdom, funded under our development assistance and technical co-operation programmes and other schemes, such as the FCO scholarship and award scheme and the UK military training assistance scheme. Training for members of the Indonesian armed forces is intended to improve their competence and discipline; and by introducing them also to our principles, methods and values, it increases their awareness of the importance of good government, democracy and respect for human rights.

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The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked why, in view of the strong stance on human rights taken by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State and the need to take into account the human rights record when allocating aid, Britain is still selling arms to Indonesia despite its occupation of and brutality in East Timor. We very carefully scrutinise all applications for exports of military equipment to Indonesia, as we do with other countries. We reject those for equipment likely to be used for repression of the population. To cease to supply the equipment which Indonesia legitimately needs for defence purposes would not in our view be an appropriate or effective way of influencing the Indonesians. We do not believe that British military equipment sold in the past to Indonesia has been used against the East Timorese.
In view of the Government's continued arms sales to Indonesia but their insistence that they are not being used to suppress the East Timorese, who is supplying the arms? In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, other countries' arms sales policies are entirely a matter for them. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked what amount of arms had been sold to Indonesia. I am sorry that I cannot give the noble Lord the figures he seeks today. We are taking every opportunity to promote restraint and responsibility in the arms trade That is why the Prime Minister proposed a UN register of arms transfers to increase transparency in this field and to alert the international community to excessive and destabilising accumulations of arms. That is why we are participating in international discussions in the UN, the conference on disarmament and the EC aimed at curbing irresponsible arms transfers.
Our position on defence sales to Indonesia is consistent with this broad international approach. Human rights are already a criterion. The Government have made it clear that they will not authorise the sale of arms for repressive use against the civilian population. In answer to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, we see no reason to cancel the sale of the former Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ship "Green Rover". It is unlikely to be used for repressive purposes. Recent sales to Indonesia and prospective sales, such as the Hawk aircraft deal which is currently being negotiated, are subject to such government scrutiny and approval.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, and my noble friend Lord Finsberg were concerned about the status of East Timor. The United Kingdom voted in favour of UN resolutions condemning the Indonesian killings in East Timor. The United Kingdom has not recognised annexation of East Timor; nor has the Community. The United States, Canada and Australia have recognised it. We firmly believe that East Timor's future is best addressed through bilateral contacts between those directly involved—Portugal and Indonesia. The UN Secretary General's efforts to bring them together with a view to reaching a settlement deserve and receive our support. The Government support the UN Secretary General in those ways in a process of reconciliation and a search for a diplomatic solution.
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In all our dealings with Indonesia, we shall continue to make clear the importance we attach to full respect for human rights. But we believe that the improvements we hope to see will be best achieved by continuing to put our views to the Indonesians in a frank and substantive dialogue.
Perhaps I may finish by answering the question of my noble friend Lord Finsberg. It was a point which underlay the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Haden-Guest, and all noble Lords who have spoken. My noble friend asked me what Her Majesty's Government can practically do. I believe that the answer lies in a continuing dialogue among the European Community, other concerned countries and the Indonesian authorities. I do not believe that facile gestures, such as a cutting off of aid, are the answer.

Adjournment
5.15 p.m.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, in moving that the House do now adjourn, I think that it would be appropriate for me to thank all those who make the business of your Lordships' House possible—that is, both those seen and, more important, those who are unseen. Although in recent months your Lordships have not perhaps had to endure the long hours to which we are normally accustomed at this time of year, it remains the case that the work of your Lordships' House is facilitated and enabled by the unfailing efficiency, courtesy and assistance that we receive from those who work in all quarters of the House. All of us are considerably in their debt.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, at the same time I should like to take the opportunity to wish all noble Lords a restful and enjoyable Recess. When we return in October, I hope that it will be with renewed enthusiasm and vigour after the restorative process of the idyllic summer months that lie ahead.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Cledwyn and all my colleagues on the Labour Benches I should like warmly to endorse the remarks of the Government Chief Whip. It is trite to say,"There is nothing more to be said; but I intend to take 20 minutes to say it". I admire and appreciate that, rather than go through a long list of worthy people and groups and always fail to mention one or two and then get into trouble for it, he has done the right thing. I say that because we are indebted to so many people, both seen and unseen.
The great thing is that the service that such people give is, without exception, uniform and generous to all Members of the House on all sides of the House, especially some of our colleagues who may be infirm and in need of special assistance. Already today, as some people will know, there has been an incident where a Member of your Lordships' House had to be taken to hospital. I can say that my noble friend

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Lady Jeger is being well looked after at Westminster Hospital and that I shall be visiting her after the House has adjourned.
Of course this is the time for buckets and spades. When the noble Lord, Lord Hesketh, goes home, I hope that his children do not ask his wife who the strange man is. I know that he has the special privilege and joy of not only going on holiday and having a wife to enjoy it with but that he also has children. That is a joy that many of us do not have at this time.
We are all ready for our holiday. It has been a strange and difficult Session, represented in part by the noble Lord, Lord Finsberg. That is not to say that he is strange and difficult, but that he represents one of 35 new Members of your Lordships' House. Of course that presents not only pleasure but also a number of problems as regards accommodation and in many other ways.
The usual channels work very well together, especially on matters which are non-political but which are purely House matters. On behalf of my colleagues I should like to say to the Government Chief Whip how grateful we are for his tolerance and understanding in many ways. We on this side of the House certainly endorse what he said. We look forward to coming back with renewed vigour and we hope to continue, as we last left off, with the occasional defeat of the Government.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, from these Benches, perhaps I may start by endorsing what the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, said about the usual channels. It has been a year during which things have not always been easy, but where the usual channels have worked well together. I know that the noble Lord may face an election in the autumn, and so it would be wrong for me to praise him too much or suggest that we want to see him back, because that might destroy his street credibility. Nevertheless, the usual channels work well together, and I am grateful to him for what he said.
We face changes in the coming Session. For instance, we might have clocks that work. That brings us to the people who work in this place unseen. Until the clocks broke down we were not aware of the special job that has been done by those people who for so many years have faithfully looked after the clocks in the building. It is only when things go wrong we
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realise that there are people working on our behalf whom we do not normally see during the course of the day.
So, as the noble Lord, Lord Graham, said, off we go to our children or grandchildren or to dig in our gardens while people in another place go back to count their new research assistants. We hope that when we return there may be at least some news about accommodation. We shall not all suddenly have brand new offices but there is some hope on the horizon that there will be a little more elbow room for your Lordships in the Palace in the foreseeable future, or soon, or one of these days, or whatever the phrase is that is normally used on the Government Front Bench.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, when the time is right!
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, my noble friend reminds me that the proper phrase is "When the time is right". Like the noble Lord the Chief Whip, I commend to your Lordships all those people who work so hard for us who are due for a rest much more than we are. Nevertheless, we shall enjoy that rest, and I look forward to seeing everyone again in the autumn.
Baroness Hylton-Foster: My Lords, the Cross Bench Peers are always happy to join in expressing thanks and good wishes to the staff of the House of Lords. In the words of the lift-man today, I should like to include what he calls "the permanent fixture here". We should like to draw special attention to the excellence of the Library department and thank those who work there for the wonderful, quick service they give us. We also congratulate the refreshment department on coping so well with all the parties for the new Peers, while at the same time looking after us so well in all the dining rooms and bars. To staff and Peers we give our good wishes for a restful and happy Recess.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, on the assumption that the Whips' Office can never believe in the land of milk and honey but can, nonetheless, concede that the Chief Whip of the Liberal Democrat Party may have a point and that there may be further space available to your Lordships' House, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn.
House adjourned for the Summer Recess at twenty two minutes past five o'clock until Monday,19th October next.