Lords Sitting of 11 March 1992

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

Lord Slynn of Hadley
The Right Honourable Sir Gordon Slynn, Knight, having been appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and thereby created a Baron for life, by the style and title of Baron Slynn of Hadley, of Eggington in the County of Bedfordshire—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Rochester and the Lord Wilberforce.

Lord Mustill
The Right Honourable Sir Michael John Mustill, Knight, a Lord Justice of Appeal, having been appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and thereby created a Baron for life, by the style and title of Baron Mustill, of Pateley Bridge in the County of North Yorkshire—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Roskill and the Lord Alexander of Weedon.
Earl Attlee Earl Attlee—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

EC Budget: UK Contribution
2.57 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter Lord Boyd-Carpenter asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the total contribution made by the United Kingdom to the European Community in the current year; how this compares with the contribution of other member states; and how much of it is allotted to the subsidy paid to growers of tobacco.
The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, the UK's gross contribution after abatement to the European Community budget in 1992 is forecast to be 7.5 billion ecus, equivalent to £5.5 billion. This represents nearly 13 per cent. of member states' gross contributions. Germany is the Community's largest contributor. At 16.8 billion ecus in 1992, its gross contribution represents nearly 29 per cent. of the total. The gross contributions of France and Italy are also both larger than that of the UK, at 19 per cent. and 15 per cent. respectively. The Community budget for 1992 makes provision for expenditure support for tobacco of 1.3 billion ecus, or £900 million.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for those rather disturbing figures. Is he aware of the proposals by the EC substantially to increase the contributions? Is he in a position to say whether Her Majesty's Government are prepared to resist the increases?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: Yes, my Lords. We certainly agree, and have already stated, that the proposals for the increased provisions are far too large. The Commission's budgetary proposals cannot be implemented without the unanimous agreement of the Council of Ministers, and there is no question of the Government agreeing to the proposals.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, why should the taxpayers' money be used at all to subsidise tobacco growing? The Minister will be aware that today is National Non-Smoking Day. It may be that other events will sweep it off the front pages. However, since Ministers are trying to reduce the amount of smoking in this country, particularly among children, will the Minister say why taxpayers' money should be used to subsidise tobacco growers?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the United Kingdom has long criticised the operation of the CAP in this sector. It is the most expensive per hectare; production and budgetary expenditure have risen markedly over the years. The stabiliser has been inadequate, and fraud has been conspicuous. There is the conflict with health policy. A particularly unpleasant feature is that much expenditure is for subsidies on exports to third world countries. The Government would like to see this support come to an end.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, is the Minister aware that each increase in cigarette taxation encourages more cigarette imports, both legal and smuggled? Apart from the revenue loss which is inevitable—Her Majesty's Government already lose much revenue through imports—this also undermines the Government's health policy. It means that cheap, high tar content cigarettes are entering the country and becoming more readily available to both young people and the unemployed. Does the noble Lord agree?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I believe that that is a completely different question from the one on the Order Paper.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, reverting to the first part of the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, is the Minister aware that the figures that he gave were the gross contribution of the United Kingdom? Much more important is the net contribution after all deductions and abatements which shows a much more unfavourable position for the UK. Is the noble Lord aware that under the new proposals put forward by the Commission at Maastricht, in a publication entitled The Means to Match our Ambitions, the United Kingdom contribution will increase even further? Some attempt will be made at the instigation of the Commission to make Britain fight for the abatement that it secured at Fontainebleau many years ago.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, of course the figures I gave in my original Answer were the gross figures, but the UK's figure was after abatement. The net figures, as best I could produce them, appeared in a Written Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of

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Swindon, on 25th February, at col. WA6 of Hansard. As regards the United Kingdom abatement, the Commission makes no proposals to change abatement at this stage. In any case, a change would require unanimity and we shall not throw away what we fought so hard to win.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, if we resist the extra contribution called for, can my noble friend say whether we will also resist the extra expenditure envisaged by the Community, particularly on the CAP?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as concerns the CAP and any extra expenditure on it, we welcome the Commission's recognition that the CAP needs reforming. Reform is needed to increase the exposure of agriculture to market forces and to reduce the burden of the CAP on both consumers and taxpayers.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, in view of Her Majesty's Government's great disapproval of the expenditure on tobacco we have been discussing, what proposals have they made as regards growing other crops in the areas where tobacco growing is important to rural communities?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we welcome the proposals the Commission has now brought forward on the tobacco regime as part of its CAP reform package. Those proposals involve the abolition of intervention buying and export refunds, the imposition of quotas and a system of tightly controlled direct payments to growers. We support the Commission in those aims. As I said, we would ideally like the Commission to move towards phasing out all support for tobacco over a period of time. We recognise that that process would cause difficulties for growers whose opportunities for diversification are limited. To deal with that the Commission should devise appropriate alternative means of support.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, will the noble Lord confirm that Greece receives in net terms £1.8 billion per year in contributions from the EC? Will he also confirm that Greece receives the major tobacco subsidy and that its tobacco crop has the highest tar content of any tobacco crop in the world? Does he agree that government policy which seeks to increase the price of British cigarettes, with the result that they become the second highest priced cigarettes in the Community, and the proposed ban on advertising will lead only to additional imports of high tar cigarettes to the detriment of people's health in this country?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as I said, the second part of the question constitutes a different subject. There has been a net gain by Greece of £1.8 billion from the Community budget. I cannot, however, say how much of that money is connected with tobacco subsidies. I cannot confirm either the tar content of cigarettes produced in Greece.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, given the fundamental contradiction between, on the one hand, taxing tobacco for health purposes and banning advertising
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in the EC while, on the other hand, subsidising lethal tobacco production to the tune of £1 billion, could not the Government use our coming presidency of the EC to establish a priority for eliminating this lunacy? Would it not surely be better to spend that £1 billion on research and investment in the countries of the southern Mediterranean to enable them to switch from this unwanted production?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as I said, the Commission has put forward some proposals for reform of the tobacco regime that we could support. Ideally, we should like to see support for that regime phased out altogether. We shall certainly press for that measure to be adopted during our presidency.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, does the original Answer of my noble friend to my Question mean that Her Majesty's Government have a veto on the proposed increases in Community expenditure, and if so will they exercise it?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as regards future expenditure, budget proposals cannot be implemented without the unanimous agreement of the Council of Ministers. There is no question of the Government agreeing to those proposals.

The Gas Industry
3.7 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick Lord Dean of Beswick asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the recently published annual returns of British Gas show that the objectives set by the Government for the privatised gas industry are now being achieved.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, yes.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that short Answer. However, he must be aware that a recently published report showed that British Gas had made just over £1.5 billion profit last year. That resulted in British Gas being on a collision course with Ofgas. We should bear in mind that during the passage of the Bill on the privatisation of the gas industry the Government indicated through various Ministers that the protection of the consumer would be safeguarded by the Government and Ofgas ensuring that British Gas would be prevented from adopting a monopoly position at the expense of the consumer. Has the industry addressed that matter? If it has not, when does it intend to do so?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, since privatisation, domestic gas prices have fallen in real terms by about 13 per cent; industrial gas prices have fallen by about 29 per cent; and standing charges have fallen by about 22 per cent. Disconnections are now at their lowest level since records began. Competition is beginning to develop in the contract market and some 10 companies are now supplying gas in direct competition with British Gas. The Competition and

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Service (Utilities) Bill strengthens the powers of Ofgas and introduces standards of service for British Gas. It also strengthens the complaints procedure.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, bearing in mind the announcement today of the agreement reached between the Office of Fair Trading and British Gas on the extension of competition in the gas sector as regards commercial and industrial premises, will the Government indicate whether that is the full extent of the amount of competition they wish to see in that sector or whether this is a matter they will return to?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I welcome the agreement that was announced this morning. We are fully committed to the development of competition in all areas of the gas market. However, it must be recognised that this may take some time to occur.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, can the Minister say how many gas consumers have had their supply disconnected in the past year and whether the Government are satisfied with that situation?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, following pressure from Ofgas, the number of domestic gas consumers disconnected for debt has fallen dramatically from a peak of nearly 61,000 in the year ending December 1987 to just over 18,600 in the year ending December 1991.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the achievements he has listed have been to some extent the result of the pressure and effective operation of Sir James McKinnon, the Ofgas controller? Will he take Ofgas as an important model to be applied to other monopoly industries which have been privatised?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to agree with the noble Lord and to pay tribute to the work of Sir James McKinnon. We shall indeed use it as a model for the future.
Lord Mowbray and Stourton: My Lords, can my noble friend say what can possibly have got into the minds of noble Lords opposite who appear so unhappy with the news which he has given us?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I am not sure that they are unhappy. Perhaps they are disguising their real happiness at the good news.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the announcement this morning, though welcome, was of a limited nature? Does he agree, not only in relation to gas but also other monopolistic private utilities, that the developments show that we need a more systematic reappraisal of the role and objectives of the private utilities and the role of the regulators, which are developing in a rather ad hoc way, with the interests of the consumer and considerations of the environment being given a much higher statutory role?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Lord. The Bill which has just
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passed through the House addresses the problem of making the powers of all the regulators match the powers of all the most powerful regulator.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, does the noble Lord accept that the Bill which is passing through your Lordships' House has not yet been passed by the House? One of the features of the gas industry which is much approved on all sides of the House is the Gas Consumers' Council which has had a very strong influence in representing the consumer to both the regulator and British Gas. Is it not a pity, therefore, in the light of the noble Lord's recent comment, that that type of consumer council is not being extended to all the other utilities covered by the Bill?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, this Question is limited to gas.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, in his reply to my supplementary question the noble Lord gave figures indicating how the price has been reduced in real terms. However, there is no doubt that Ofgas showed deep concern about the £1.5 billion plus profit that had been made and what it meant to the industry. It is not a question of sour grapes on this side of the House. Are the Government satisfied that the protection they promised the consumer is now a reality or close to being achieved?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I could not conceive of the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, suffering from sour grapes. The return on capital of British Gas on current cost accounting is 7.4 per cent. before tax and interest, which is hardly out of the way. Two-thirds of the profits made were generated from outside diversification. Perhaps it is worth saying that for every pound of profit British Gas spent £2 for the future of the business.

Carbon Dioxide: Disposal
3.13 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth Viscount Hanworth asked Her Majesty's Government:
What they consider to be the long-term possibilities and costs of extracting carbon dioxide from the flue gases of coal-fired power stations and burying the carbon dioxide in deep oceans or in spent oil drillings.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, the Department of Energy is evaluating, in collaboration with United Kingdom industry and internationally under the auspices of the International Energy Agency, a range of technical options for the recovery of carbon dioxide from the flue gases of coal and gas-fired power stations and for its subsequent disposal.
Initial indications from those studies are that should such action ever be necessary as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere considerable capital and operating expenditure would be required and there would be a substantial increase in the cost of generating electricity from fossil fuels.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, which probably provides as much information as he can give at the moment.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, on the question of cost can the Minister say what is the recent estimated cost of fitting the flue-gas desulphurisation unit at the Drax coal-fired station and what progress is being made on further installations?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, if the noble Lord were to put down a Question to that effect I should be very happy to answer it.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the Minister not aware that the Question is a very important one and that in my view his Answer was very unsatisfactory? Does the Minister accept that the reduction of CO2 emissions is a very high priority for the Earth Summit to be held in Rio in June this year? Should we not be taking a more positive view, such as now committing ourselves to ending emissions contributing to ozone depletion by 1995? Secondly, should we not make a commitment in respect of the point made by my noble friend Lord Mason? Surely we can give a more positive answer at this time.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, is hard to please. The study is taking place. I merely made the point that action would be expensive. It may not be wrong to say that the cost of electricity would be significantly increased and I could not rule out an increase of the order of 50 per cent, or more. Nevertheless, we are taking the option extremely seriously.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I know that I shall be rather unpopular for asking this question, but are we absolutely certain, before we impose huge costs on coal-fired power stations, that it is only CO2 emissions which cause global warming? Are we convinced that sunspot activity and cloud formation do not have as much, if not more, effect on global warming? Would it not be wise to be certain of those factors before we impose such enormous costs on coal-fired power stations?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I do not know who the noble Lord thinks he will be unpopular with, but he has made a very important point. Many of those factors are still uncertain. So far as concerns the present study, one would need to consider the results and implications carefully and there would have to be environmental assessments of the problem in relation to where the CO2 would be dumped in the oceans.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, when does the Minister expect to have the results of the research to which he referred? Is it not vital to have the answers before the summit conference in June?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, preliminary feasibility studies by the Energy Technology Support Unit and consultants have been completed. The main conclusions were presented last week at an international conference and will be published in due course. The studies were limited to particular
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technologies and the results should be regarded as indicative only. Copies will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, given that investment in clean coal technology has recently been so low, will the Government give an assurance that if the results of the investigations are positive they will make the electricity generators accept an environmental obligation to install such clean coal technology in order to clean the carbon dioxide emissions?
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I do not quite know what the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, means by "positive". A great deal of information will come out of the studies and much will remain to be done. There is no question that as a result of the studies there will be immediate action. That is a long way off.

Bloodstock Transactions: VAT Rate
3.18 p.m.
Lord Donoughue Lord Donoughue asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have any proposals to bring the United Kingdom's rate of VAT on bloodstock transactions on a par with those operating in France and Ireland, in order to keep the bloodstock breeding industry in this country.
The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, the Government prefer a single positive VAT rate. That simplifies administration and lessens burdens on business. Member states' ability to maintain or introduce a reduced rate for bloodstock after 1992 depends on discussions in Brussels on the "reduced rate list". The UK could not match the Irish VAT rate after 1st January 1993 because EC finance Ministers agreed that super-reduced rates of below 5 per cent. can be kept only if they were in force on 1st January 1991 and conform with Community law. The UK has never applied a reduced rate to bloodstock.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, bearing in mind that the EC Commission has already authorised France to have a VAT rate of 5.5 per cent. on bloodstock sales and Ireland will have a rate of 2.7 per cent. after 1993, is the Minister aware that rigidly insisting on a 17.5 per cent. rate will simply force buyers of bloodstock to abandon their traditional market in Britain to seek the lower VAT costs in France and Ireland? Is he further aware that the British bloodstock sales industry will be forced to follow those buyers abroad with disastrous impact on related industries, such as breeding, auctioneering, training, insurance and transportation? Why do the Government neglect that aspect and allow this highly respected and valuable industry to be driven abroad? Does the Minister agree that we need a level playing field with competitive VAT rates with France and Ireland?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the noble Lord assumes that the French will be able to retain their VAT rate. I understand that that is not certain. The EC Commission agreed that bloodstock should not be

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within a reduced rate. It could well be that the rate will rise to 12 per cent. As I said in my original Answer, the Irish will be able to keep their rate because it was a super-reduced rate which was in force on 1st January 1991.
The rate of VAT is not the sole factor in deciding the fate of an industry. Many large UK breeders have said that they have no plans to stop breeding in the UK although they may not be selling all their horses here. One should not be surprised at that in a single market.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that if France does not upgrade—as, he said, the EC hopes—we shall then see to it that we have the level playing field for which the noble Lord asked? Or must we perpetually have an inferior position in what is a very important industry?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as I said in my original Answer we should prefer to have a single positive VAT rate. Many industries no doubt would plead special circumstances for a reduced rate but we have not encouraged them.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, is the Minister aware that only the Commission in Brussels can order equity in this matter between all the nations concerned? Is he further aware that at the Commission hearings last December I initiated such an intervention by the Commission which it is taking up? I hope that the Government will not interfere with the benign actions of Brussels in this matter.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we should like to see comparable VAT rates in this and other matters. As I said earlier, it is quite possible that France will have to increase its rate but, as I also said, the Irish are safe with theirs.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that Her Majesty's Government will determine the rates for the United Kingdom irrespective of what Brussels may endeavour to impose upon us? Having asked that, does he think it wise that under our own authority we should retain our VAT rates at such a high rate, thus rendering the United Kingdom slightly uncompetitive with the bloodstock industries in France and Ireland?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we have agreed to a minimum rate in Europe. On the second part of the noble Lord's Question, as I said, we do not intend to reduce our rate for this industry.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there exists an all-party bloodstock group with members from both Houses? Does he feel that it would perhaps be wise and sensible for the Government to have talks with the leaders of the all-party bloodstock group, from whom I am sure he will obtain some good advice and guidance to help him with this problem?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer received representations from many different industries and, I believe, many from the bloodstock
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industry in the run-up to yesterday's Budget. I have no doubt that if the all-party group to which the noble Lord referred wishes to make representations, it will be heard.

Dissolution of Parliament
3.24 p.m.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships to know that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has today asked Her Majesty The Queen to proclaim the Dissolution of Parliament. Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to signify that she will comply with this request.
Parliament will be prorogued on Monday 16th March. The Dissolution will take place on the same day. The general election will take place on Thursday 9th April. The new Parliament will be summoned to meet on Monday 27th April when the first business will be the election of the Speaker in another place and the swearing-in of Members of both Houses. The state opening will be on Wednesday 6th May.
Today's business will remain as it appears on the Order Paper, though in the light of this announcement it is proposed to adjust the rest of this week's business in your Lordships' House.
With the leave of the House, I propose to make a further Statement about those adjustments later this afternoon. I shall arrange for adequate warning of that Statement to be given on the annunciators, but I can tell your Lordships now that it is likely to be after the first debate this afternoon, that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, which is limited to three hours. I therefore expect that the further Statement will be made at about six o'clock this evening.
It may, however, be for the convenience of the House to know that the only change proposed to tomorrow's business is that the Third Reading of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill will be taken immediately after the Report stage. My noble friend the Lord Privy Seal will this evening table a Business of the House Motion to suspend Standing Order 44, no two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day, which is usual in these cases, to be taken after Starred Questions tomorrow.
I observe that it is now 25 minutes past three and so the Statement will be made closer to 6.30 p.m. than six o'clock, as I mentioned earlier.
With the leave of the House, I should also like to say a word about the two debates standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington. As the mover is allowed 15 minutes, and the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, in the case of both debates this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of six minutes. If any noble Lord were to speak at greater length, he would do so at the expense of subsequent speakers in that debate. With the greatest deference, I draw your Lordships'

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attention to the fact that when the sixth minute is indicated on the electronic clock we have entered the seventh minute.

Procedure of the House: Select Committee Report
3.27 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move, That the 2nd Report from the Select Committee on the Procedure of the House be agreed to. Perhaps I should mention just one or two items in the report. The first concerns references to the House of Commons and its Members. There is a suggested redraft of the Companion to the Standing Orders. The redraft contains very much what was in the previous Companion but adds one or two sentences for greater clarification.
The committee also considered the matter of referring to MPs and suggested using their names and not their constituencies, or, in the case of Ministers, using their ministerial titles.
On another matter, the committee recommends that no noble Lord should be entitled to have more than one Starred Question on the Order Paper on any one day. On Third Reading amendments, we endorse the present guidance: that it is undesirable that an issue which has been fully debated and decided at a previous stage of the Bill should be reopened by an amendment at Third Reading. We recognise that certain difficulties have arisen in respect of groupings and a suggestion is made for anyone who feels himself badly treated by that rule.
Finally—it is not in the report—we have had a number of points made to us about late sittings and time-limited debates. As the noble Lord the Leader of the House said yesterday, it was decided to set up a special sub-committee to look into the position at the next Session.
Moved, That the 2nd Report from the Select Committee be agreed to.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
Following is the report:
ORDERED TO REPORT:
REFERENCES TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND ITS MEMBERS
1. On a number of recent occasions, doubt has arisen over what degree of criticism of the House of Commons and its members is appropriate in the House of Lords. The Committee decided that the current guidance in the Companion to the Standing Orders (pp 42–43) should be expanded to clarify the situation, in particular to stress the distinction between political and personal criticism. This distinction will never be clear-cut, but the Committee recommends that every effort should be made to ensure that personal criticisms are not expressed. The current text also makes no mention of Lords' freedom to quote from Commons parliamentary papers, and does not define the extent to which criticisms can be made of Parliament and of the House of Commons as an institution. We recommend the following redraft:
(ix) House of Commons
(a) Quotation of speeches
The content of a speech made in the House of Commons or a committee of the House in the current session may be
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summarised, but it is out of order to quote from such a speech unless it is a speech of a Minister in relation to Government policy.
This rule has been established for the purpose of avoiding anything which might bring the two Houses into conflict, and to prevent a debate in the House of Lords becoming a continuation of a debate in the House of Commons.
The House of Commons committee reports and the Vote may be quoted.
(b) Personal criticism of Members of the House of Commons
It is undesirable that any Member of the House of Commons should be mentioned by name, or otherwise identified, for the purpose of criticism of a personal, rather than a political, nature. Public activities by members of the House of Commons outside their parliamentary duties may be referred to.
(c) Criticism of Parliament as an institution
Criticisms of proceedings in the House of Commons and of Speaker's rulings are undesirable, but criticisms of the institutional structure of Parliament or the role and function of the House of Commons may be made.
2. The principle behind this revised text has been to make the rules for references to MPs and the House of Commons made in the House of Lords broadly similar to the rules governing references to peers in the House of Commons (as laid out in Erskine May). One feature of Commons practice not mirrored here is MPs' freedom to reflect upon the conduct of Members of either House in a substantive motion, such as an Early Day Motion. The Committee expressed deep concern at the inequality of treatment accorded to the members of the two Houses in this respect and will continue to pursue the matter.
3. The Committee also considered how MPs should be referred to in the House of Lords. Past practice has been to address MPs by their names, and not by reference to their constituencies. In the case of Ministers, there is also the option of using ministerial titles. It is not the practice to use "Right Honourable", "Honourable" and "Learned". The Committee recommends that guidance to this effect should be included in the next edition of the Companion.
STARRED QUESTIONS
4. The Committee considered a proposal that no Lord should be entitled to have more than one Starred Question on the Order Paper on any one day. It was argued that this proposal would improve both the variety and the topicality of Question Time. The Committee recommends that this proposal be adopted from the beginning of next session.
THIRD READING AMENDMENTS
5. The Companion to the Standing Orders (p 111) gives the following guidance concerning third reading amendments:
"It is considered undesirable that an issue which has been fully debated and decided upon at a previous stage of the Bill should be re-opened by an amendment on Third Reading."
The Committee endorses this guidance, in the interests of avoiding repetition in the House.
6. The growing use of groupings of amendments has made interpretation of this rule more difficult. Amendments are commonly grouped together which are not consequential on the first amendment of the group, but cover the same subject area. If there is a decision on an amendment in the group, it might be presumed that all amendments in the group would be caught by the third reading amendment rule. However, groupings are compiled in haste, and there are occasions when Lords find that their amendments have been placed in a grouping with amendments which they do not believe cover the same issue.
7. In such a case it is still open to the Lord to move his amendment separately at the earlier stage. The grouping of amendments is purely informal. But if Lords who disagree with the grouping do not take this opportunity, they should make clear in debate that they consider their amendment to cover a different issue. This can be taken into account when amendments are tabled for third reading. Otherwise it is likely that any Lord seeking to re-table the amendment at third reading would be advised that the amendment was in breach of the third reading rule.
MOVING OF CONSOLIDATION BILLS EN BLOC
8. In recent sessions, there have been a number of cases where several closely linked bills have been introduced to

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consolidate legislation in a particular area. When such bills are considered by the House at the same time, particularly at committee stage and third reading, there is a need for a succession of repetitive procedural motions. The Committee therefore recommends that the Lord Chancellor should be free to move stages of linked consolidation bills en bloc. Notice should be given by means of an italic note on the Order Paper, and any Lord should have the right to propose that a particular bill should be moved separately. On the rare occasion that a committee stage on re-commitment is required, we recommend that the House should be able to resolve itself into a committee on more than one linked consolidation bill, and that the committee should only report when all such bills had been considered. The procedure should be applied by a business of the House motion.
INDUCTION COURSE FOR PEERS
9. In its 2nd Report, 1990–91, the Committee recommended an experimental induction course to help new peers to learn about the House and its procedures. A course took place earlier this session, and the Committee considers that it was a success. We recommend that such courses should be held regularly.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the Chairman of Committees for explaining the contents of the report. Perhaps I may refer briefly to paragraphs 1 and 2 of the report which I noted with interest. I refer to the last sentence in paragraph 2. It states:
"The Committee expressed deep concern at the inequality of treatment accorded to the members of the two Houses in this respect and will continue to pursue the matter".
It means that the Lord Privy Seal, the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, will pursue that rather important matter. We wish to make it clear that we on this side will give him full support.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Constitutional Reform
3.30 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead Lord Jenkins of Hillhead rose to call attention to the case for constitutional reform, including a fair voting system, fixed term Parliaments, a Bill of Rights and a control over their own affairs satisfactory to the peoples of Scotland and Wales; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, reeling under the shock of the surprise announcement which the Chief Whip has made, the secrecy of which was so carefully guarded, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
After yesterday's ephemera in another place, I shall endeavour to turn your Lordships' attention to longer-term constitutional issues. Looking back I am often struck by the thought that Chancellors who occupy an immensely central political position in their day are nonetheless able to do little except put footprints in the sand—footprints which are washed away by the next high tide of their successors. Perhaps I feel that more strongly, for my successor, the noble Lord, Lord Barber—I do not see him in his place— was a particularly effective washerwoman in that respect. But I do not wholly think so, for if one looks even within governments of the same party Mr. Lawson did not leave many of Sir Geoffrey Howe's monetary targets in place for long.
By contrast, in the Home Office—which is my other main experience in government—for good or ill, what
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one does lives much longer after one, and this is particularly true with constitutional matters. If economic management is almost inevitably too short term, our constitutional practices are too stubbornly unyielding to the changing needs of a changing nation and society. We still live broadly under a constitution based on a late 17th century compromise between monarchy and oligarchy which was much more concerned with the rights of Parliament than it was with those of the individual. A system that settled roughly into its present form by about 1868 has not vastly changed since then and has hardly changed in the past 40 years.
Yesterday the annual spring festival of the Budget —hardly less hallowed in our national life than the Boat Race—was abolished. Like most ancient British traditions, it was mid-Victorian in origin. I believe that the change—particularly as the penumbra of secrecy had been largely dissipated by this Government's passion for leaking and counter-leaking, briefing and counter-briefing—was more than due and I welcome it. But institutional reform should certainly not stop at just getting rid of the Gladstone budget box which even two decades ago I thought showed serious signs of structural exhaustion.
So, rather more seriously, is our present voting system. It was quite a good system so long as two parties, and two parties only, had an overwhelming grip on the loyalty and even the enthusiasm of the British electorate, so long as,
"every child that's born into this world alive was either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative",
with over the 50 years from 1900 to 1950 Labour being substituted for Liberal.
The reason that I earlier cited "the past 40 years" was that the 1951 election was the apogee of two-party dominance. At that election 83 per cent. of those on the electoral register voted, and of that 83 per cent. no less than 97 per cent. voted either Labour or Conservative. The result was that in 1951 the Labour Party was able to achieve the remarkable feat of polling 40 per cent. of the total electorate—that is, of those who did not vote as well as those who did—and still lose.
By contrast, in 1983 the Conservative Party polled 32 per cent. of the total electorate and won a majority of 140 seats. If that is not elective dictatorship—of which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, spoke so eloquently in 1976 when the system put him temporarily into opposition—I do not know what is.
What of course had occurred in the 32 years between 1951 and 1983 was that the 97 per cent. who flocked to the banner of one or other of the big parties had been reduced to barely 70 per cent. and that, partly because of the increasing inappropriateness of the system, the numbers bothering to vote had come down from 83 per cent. to just under 73 per cent. Thus a system which was reasonably appropriate 40 or even 30 years ago has become increasingly inappropriate, effectively disenfranchising large sections of the electorate, thus producing an alienation which shows itself in lower polls, and thus—a secondary effect—

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exacerbating the problem of a minority of the electorate producing large, nearly all-powerful, parliamentary majorities.
The effects of that are not confined to national government. The excuses for the weakening of local government, carried through by successive government measures in the 1980s, were almost all provided by the excesses of a few party caucuses given by the voting system a power out of all proportion to their popular support.
The justification for all that distortion is that it gives the electorate the inestimable benefits of strong, coherent one-party government. And how have that strength and coherence shown themselves? They have shown themselves in the legislative shambles of this Parliament, with the Government performing the unprecedented feat of repealing its own flagship measure within a single Parliament and buttressing it with such supporting nonsenses as the Football Spectators Bill and the Broadcasting Bill. Joy has definitely not been produced through alleged strength, and in any case the indications are that the electorate do not like one-party omnipotence but would prefer to see parties working together.
I am more than enough of a relativist to know that there is no perfect electoral system. There are some disadvantages to each system. Most of the objections to a proportional system need not apply under sensible variants of the system, but one or two will always remain. However, that is not a reason for sticking stubbornly to the present manifestly and massively unfair arrangements.
I turn more briefly to the other points in the Motion. Our practice in regard to the choice of election dates really is very odd if one stands back even the shortest distance and contemplates it. To give the starting pistol in a race to one of the competitors and to encourage him to fire it when he thinks that the others are least ready—when they are tying up their shoelaces or something of that kind—is not in accordance with the best athletic practice.
Nonetheless, I believe that in practice Prime Ministers have sufficiently often shot themselves through the foot with the starting pistol that it is the indignity rather than the unfairness which worries me here. We need all the respect that we can muster for politicians these days and Prime Ministers hovering on the brink rarely enhance their reputations. It was not the finest hour of the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, when he kept the TUC waiting at the church in the autumn of 1978; and Mr. Major has not done himself much good with his hesitations of the past six months. On the whole I believe that a fixed four-year term would certainly be more rational, somewhat fairer and maybe militate against both the economic uncertainty and the awful cacophony which has been the too long-drawn-out overture to this election.
A Bill of Rights would essentially put into British law the fundamental human freedoms already recognised by our adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights. But those rights cannot now be enforced except by going to the Strasbourg Court, with all the expense, delay and
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general cumbersomeness for the individual which is involved in that; and for the country the disrepute of having more cases before that court, and more of them lost by the British Government than is the experience of any of the other participating states. It is a matter, first, of enabling the British courts to deal with our national dirty linen and not sending too much of it, expensively and often embarrassingly, to be dealt with at the Strasbourg laundry; and secondly, of redressing after 300 years the imbalance left by the fact that the 1688 Bill of Rights was much more about the rights of Parliament than about those of the individual.
I turn finally to devolution and particularly to the Scottish question. I do not see how it is possible now to deny that there is now a settled Scots wish, fluctuating in intensity but settled in direction, to have a substantially greater degree of control over their own affairs. I was persuaded of that well before I had any thought of becoming MP for Hillhead. I was fortified in that during my five years as a Scottish Member of Parliament. I thought that the degree of devolution should go quite far, with powers to raise and spend money but not to run a budget deficit, and should stop short of anything which might endanger the currency union, let alone the political union, the achievements of which, both historical and actual, would make its severance a disaster both for Scotland and for England.
In fact I never took that possibility seriously, as it is only the effects of recent government attitudes which have made me begin to change my mind about that. The unholy alliance, for such it is, between the Conservatives and the Scottish Nationalists which has recently reared its head is disreputable. To say to the Scottish people, as the Government are currently doing, that if they elect a majority of nationalists they can have independence but that if they vote for devolution and reform they cannot have it, is a frighteningly irresponsible attitude.
The Conservative Party used to call itself the Unionist Party. I recall a phrase of Arthur Balfour's when he set your Lordships' House off on one of the most unwise excursions in its long history—the root and branch opposition to nearly all the legislation of the 1905 Liberal Government. The object, he said, was to ensure that:
"the great Unionist Party should still control, whether in power or whether in Opposition, the destinies of this great Empire".
Well, the great Unionist Party in the first quarter of this century succeeded unnecessarily in completely severing the link with Ireland. It would be a supreme irony, but even more a supreme tragedy, if in the fourth quarter of this century, by sheer stiff-neckedness, it severed the link across the Scottish Border. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.46 p.m.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, the whole House always listens with pleasure and attention to whatever falls from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. I am sure that it will wish me to begin by congratulating him on selecting as a subject for debate the future of the constitution, which is very much in the air for public discussion.

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That said, except for his last two sentences I agreed with nothing in his speech. I am against all 57 varieties of alteration in the method of electing the House of Commons. I am against fixed-term parliaments. I am against a Bill of Rights in the sense in which it would have any significance —that is to say, in the American sense and not in the sense of our own statute of 1688 which can be altered as easily as any of our traffic laws. I am against the form of what was proposed in the last feature of the noble Lord's speech. I confess modestly to being British. My nationality would be destroyed if different systems of government were operated in the various regions of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. I believe that a uniform system is better than a diverse system.
Almost half of the noble Lord's speech was devoted to the voting system. I shall not devote so much of my speech to that topic since I have to polish off the entire constitution in six minutes! The variations in the voting system—all 57 varieties—would be a recipe for nobody getting the government for which they had voted and nobody getting the programme for which they had voted. What would occur would be a botched-up compromise reached among various distinguished statesmen in—I fear, on this No Smoking Day —smoke-filled rooms and it would bear no relation to what people had voted for. It would also be a recipe for splinter groups of extreme views and of various bizarre kinds and a recipe for no organised or continuous policy in the centre of affairs.
I am against fixed-term parliaments. If we had fixed terms of parliaments, as happens in every country which has them, the phoney war which has been going on for the past few weeks would be going on throughout the second half of every four-year parliament in which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, has declared an interest. I am against the Bill of Rights in the sense in which it would have meaning. That is not because I do not favour the European Convention but because we cannot have two Bills of Rights. If that were the case, within six weeks there would be a divergence between the requirements of both.
I would say that the American experience is not altogether satisfactory. It failed to save the negro from chattel slavery for 80 years and from discrimination for the following 80 years. It led to the assassination by gunfire of a large number of successive presidents and an innumerable number of innocent citizens because of Article 2 of the Bill of Rights. There is no effective law of defamation because of Article 1.
The truth is that a Bill of Rights is obsolete by the time the ink is dry on the signatures. In this country we have one of the most sensitive, flexible and evolutionary constitutions in the whole history of civilised political life.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, would not merely interfere with that system; he would destroy it. Our constitution can be reduced to perhaps three or four propositions. The first is that the sovereign in Parliament is the supreme legislative authority with unlimited powers. It is not elective dictatorship because it is a forum for discussion. The second is that one parliament cannot bind its successors. Therefore, we can change our laws without
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any Supreme Court intervention as often as they require changing and by evolutionary and gradual means. The third is that we go in for Cabinet government, with members of the Cabinet all in one House of Parliament or another and responsible to the whole Parliament for what they do, and not an elective system of offices of fixed terms like the American presidency.
So much for the Bill of Rights. I have already touched upon control by Scotland and Wales over their own affairs. The truth of the matter is that there is a case for regional government throughout the United Kingdom but that is not what is asked for in the Motion. I conclude simply by saying that I am British and proud of it. I do not wish to lose my nationality.
3.52 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for this opportunity to debate constitutional reform and for his thoughtful speech. We also enjoyed the stimulating speech of the noble and learned Lord although I must proceed to differ from him on a number of points.
The debate assumes a greater significance because it takes place on the eve of a general election. People are entitled to know what plans the parties have for constitutional reform and what their implications are. Thus far, there has been no progress in the areas listed in the Motion, although we must not overlook the changes which have taken place and which continue to develop as a result of our membership of the European Community.
I regret to say that the record of the party opposite on constitutional reform has been less than stimulating. The Government have made it plain that they are opposed to any type of electoral reform and that they will not contemplate fixed term parliaments, a Bill of Rights or any form of devolution for Scotland or for Wales. Furthermore—and we have debated these issues in the House on two previous occasions in recent years—they have increased centralisation and have gravely eroded our individual and collective rights during their long tenure of 13 years.
Ministerial and bureaucratic authority has increased. Quangos have multiplied and local authorities have been undermined. Whole tiers of local government have been abolished and replaced by joint boards. Britain, which has always set an example, has been turned into one of the western world's most centralised and secretive states. That is a sad and depressing picture and I know that many noble Lord opposite are unhappy about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, dealt with the complicated subject of electoral reform, also referred to by the noble and learned Lord. As noble Lords are aware, we have set up an inquiry into electoral reform and representation under the chairmanship of Professor Raymond Plant. His report will not be available for some weeks. Professor Plant has however made some important suggestions, one of which is

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that a constitutional convention to settle the voting system should be established. He made the interesting remark:
"In a sense the outcomes of politics are not legitimate unless the procedures are seen to be legitimate as well".
That subject has been debated and discussed throughout this century and in the last. It is not easy, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, said, to find an ideal "fair" system. All the systems have advantages and disadvantages but a Labour Government will consider which is most appropriate for the House of Commons, the European Parliament and local government in the light of the Plant Report.
I regret to say that the general public are fed up to the back teeth with the Government's failure to be decisive. The way the Government have handled their legislative programme in the past few weeks has been deplorable. A Budget Statement followed by an election proclamation is not the way to run the country. Their truncation of a Finance Bill is not the way to conduct parliamentary affairs. Those are indeed arguments for a fixed term parliament.
As regards a Bill of Rights, as I have said on a previous occasion, we favour a Freedom of Information Act together with the measures set out in a Charter of Rights, which we have published. We propose to introduce legislation to guarantee the following: first, an individual's right to prohibit or restrict the collection of personal information; secondly, the parliamentary scrutiny of the security and intelligence services; thirdly, the equal treatment of all citizens of this country irrespective of their sex or racial origin; and, finally, equal access to the law as well as equal treatment before the law. We would also introduce a Bill of Rights to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights. Of course, it will be necessary to look at the working of the convention at the time.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, dealt with devolution. He will be aware that I have great sympathy with what he said. I have never wavered from the view that measures of devolution to Wales and Scotland are desirable and right. Lloyd George entered Parliament in 1890 on a home rule ticket and the founding fathers of the Labour Party took a similar view. Of course, independence is one thing and devolution is another. At a point in history when the countries of Europe are drawing closer together and when their sovereignty is diminished, I cannot think that total independence is a practical objective. However, to deny a measure of national responsibility to the two old nations in these islands when devolution operates across the world from the United States to Germany and Switzerland is short-sighted obstinacy.
For the Government to try to argue that there is no constitutional formula between independence and centralisation is to be blind to all that has happened in the countries which I have mentioned. If New South Wales and Nova Scotia can be given a measure of devolution, why should Wales and Scotland be treated with such disdain?
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Another task which must be undertaken in due course is the reform of this House. We have on several occasions raised that question, and the subject must be explored very carefully and without unnecessary delay.
I regret coming to the conclusion that the party opposite has no plans for any constitutional change. I suppose it is right to say that we have not yet fully adjusted to the new world, which this country, with others, helped to create. Dean Acheson said that Britain had lost an empire and not yet found a role. In fairness, Britain voluntarily dissolved the empire and has now found a role in the European Community, the Commonwealth and the United Nations. However, many of us still tend to look back with nostalgia. Side by side with the huge task of getting the economy right, of creating work for our people and giving them higher standards, we must have the courage and foresight to undertake essential constitutional changes. They cannot be achieved overnight, in a Session of Parliament, or even in an entire Parliament. We must however make a start, and that is what the next Labour Government propose to do.
4 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for his stimulating and wide-ranging introduction to the debate.
It may be felt unnecessary that anyone from these Benches should speak in this debate. The terms of the Motion are broad. They are principally concerned with Wales and Scotland rather than England and do not apparently raise any question of relations between Church and state. However, I want to make the point that the breadth of the Motion does not exclude a possible reform of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, specifically mentioned that. Such an issue would inevitably and rightly involve a consideration of the role of bishops in this House. Furthermore, any proposal for constitutional reform might find itself, even if that were not the intention, raising the whole question of the Church's establishment.
Through its establishment, the Church of England may seem to some people to enjoy privileges which are anachronistic, unjustified and in need of abolition. At the very least, some say, it would be more appropriate if those privileges were shared by other Churches. I should like to comment briefly on those views, even though I sense that they exist rather more outside this House than within it.
While it is true that the senior bishops of the Church of England enjoy the great privilege of Membership of this House, it is a fact that leaders of other Churches have publicly stated more than once that, far from resenting that privilege, they value it, because more often than not when we speak we do so not merely in the name of the Church of England but on behalf of the other Churches as well.
Relationships between the Churches are close and cordial, and we regularly consult each other about matters affecting the spiritual and moral welfare of the nation. That ecumenical growing together has been a major feature of Church life this century, and we

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continue to draw ever closer. Of course, we have the odd setback in that progress towards unity, but the Church lives with long perspectives. In that context, such setbacks should be seen as no more than hiccups which do not in the least affect our commitment to unity. We do not jealously guard our privileges on these Benches, and if a constitutional reform proposed a wider representation of leaders of other Churches we should no doubt support such a development. But in the meantime I believe it is true that we are able to represent a wide Christian constituency which goes far beyond the boundaries of the Church of England.
Privilege is an empty thing unless it is accompanied by responsibility. I am a relatively new Member of this House —the junior but one of the senior bishops, to be exact—but I have already come to a much deeper appreciation both of the crucial importance of this House in the affairs of the nation and also of the potential value of the contribution that can be made from these Benches. The courtesy shown by your Lordships is legendary, but I believe that it is more than good manners which expresses its appreciation of the presence of bishops. Our duties locally in our dioceses, as well as our national and international responsibilities, prevent us from being present as often as we should like. But I feel sure that your Lordships will agree that the Lords Spiritual have a vital function and responsibility in standing for the truth that the sacred and the secular, the spiritual and the material are not two separate aspects of life but are essentially intertwined.
Establishment consists not principally in the privileges enjoyed by a few Church leaders or in ceremonies of state, but in the responsibility felt by the Church to care for the nation as a whole. That central meaning of "Establishment" is seen not only in our national institutions but also in such places as the rural areas of my diocese, where the parson exists to serve not merely those who go to Church but the whole community. Equally, the villagers regard the parson as belonging to them all, and the Church building as theirs, whether or not they darken its doors. That is a meaning of Establishment. It is a tradition I value greatly which can easily be threatened by those in Church and state who fail to see the essential interconnection of the sacred and the secular.
I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, for raising matters beyond the scope of his Motion. Of course, it was not his intention to raise any questions concerning bishops in particular or the Establishment in general, but debates about constitutional matters can have reverberations in unanticipated and unexpected places. A debate about the Establishment of the Church of England may one day be appropriate, but it will need the most careful preparation and should not happen, as it were, by accident.
I personally hope that little will change in the near future because I very much enjoy being here.
4.5 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, a number of voters will today be asking themselves to which constituency they belong. When one has one-member constituencies,
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one has to carve up the United Kingdom into 600-plus areas of roughly equal population. That means one cuts across natural communities. We cannot have constituencies like Bristol, Edinburgh or Manchester. They must be chopped up into unnatural artificial slices like Bristol East, Edinburgh West or Manchester Central.
Having decided to which constituency they belong, on 9th April the voters will advance to participate in an electoral system which, as the polls plainly show, they heartily dislike—a system clamped on them by the Conservative and Labour parties acting blatantly in their own interests. At the polling stations they will be faced with two serious restrictions on their liberty —both unique in the European Community. First, they will be forbidden to show which candidate they would like to win if their chosen candidate fails. They will be forbidden to do other than place one mark on the ballot paper which must be an "X"—the universal symbol of illiteracy.
That is a totally unnecessary and serious restriction on the liberty of the voter. Among other things it means that if their main concern is to beat the Tory candidate and the main challenger is Labour, they will be tempted to vote Labour even though they are Liberal Democrats. If they are Tory supporters and their main concern is to beat the Labour candidate, they would be wise to vote Liberal Democrat. On 9th April millions of electors will vote, not for the candidate they like most, but for the candidate most likely to defeat the candidate they like least.
Secondly, their ballot paper, unlike the ballot papers of other countries, will prevent their showing any preference for different candidates of the same party. They will be unable to show preference for a moderate as opposed to an extreme Labour candidate; for a hard-working Tory as opposed to an idle Tory; for a female Liberal Democrat as opposed to a male Liberal Democrat; for an Asian candidate as opposed to a white candidate, and so on. The Tory and Labour parties insist that those choices must be made in advance for the electors by party activists in smoke-filled rooms. Experience shows that such choices unfairly favour the male and the white. That is why there are so few women in Parliament; that is why there are so few MPs from ethnic minorities. It is from those smoke-filled rooms that the half-baked, extreme Leftist MPs manage to make their way to Westminster. The electors are not given a choice between a moderate and an extremist Labour MP.
When the results of the election are published on 9th April the commentators will point out that half the votes have been wasted; that 6 million or 7 million voters could have stayed at home without changing the result in any way at all. For 23 years I represented a safe Labour seat. At each election a small gallant group of constituents would visit the polling station and vote Tory. My admiration for them was unbounded. They turned out and wasted their vote at election after election until death mercifully removed them from the register. Nor were theirs the only votes to be wasted. Half my own voters could have stayed at home without making the slightest difference to the result.

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Objections to proportional representation have changed over the years; some have disappeared. The one most frequently heard today is that proportional representation tends to produce hung parliaments, as it does, and therefore puts too much power into the hands of minority parties. The experience of Germany is quoted; how the Free Democrats arranged first a Social Democratic government and then a Christian Democratic government. The flaw in that argument is that any king-making powers of a minority party arise solely from the mutual hostility of the larger parties. That has happened in Germany. The larger parties agree to come together and then the minority parties are marginalised. The Tory and Labour parties may not wish to do that, but it is their decision and their choice. They can do it if they like. If they insist on the politics of confrontation they naturally confer on minority parties considerable influence. In this case, the country will be fortunate to have, in the Liberal Democrats, a party capable of requiring them to abandon or modify their more extreme policies such as the poll tax for which they will have failed to get an electoral mandate.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Thomas of Gwydir: My Lords, in the short time at my disposal I intend to refer solely to Wales. I do so because I raised this matter a few weeks ago in the House and was unable to get a reply. What concerned me was what the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, said—that there is a forthcoming election and people are entitled to know what constitutional changes are proposed in Wales by the various parties there. I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, when he said that. I waited with great interest to see what he was suggesting should be Labour Party policy for Wales in the forthcoming election.
We know that the Labour Party is in favour of an elected Assembly with fiscal powers for Scotland. I was a little concerned when all he gave us was something vague. He said that after the report a Labour Government would consider which was the best system for Wales. He referred to himself as one who had never wavered from the view that a measure of devolution in Wales was right. I certainly agree with that. Time and again I have listened with great interest to his powerful speeches in favour of a Parliament for Wales.
What concerned me was this. The Liberal Party in Wales is quite clear about its policy, Plaid Cymru is quite clear, and both their policies are tenable. They say that they wish to have an elected Assembly with tax-raising powers and a measure of legislative and executive independence from Westminster. I am sure that what concerns the people of Wales is what exactly is Labour Party policy. The only guide that one has had is from the 1990 document, The Future of Local Government in Wales. It states that the Labour Party intends to set up an elected body for Wales to deal with Welsh Office functions and with functions carried out on an all-Wales basis by nominated bodies. The document continues:
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"We recommend that the power of taxation should rest with Parliament".
The elected body is referred to as a "regional government". The document goes on:
"It will be important for the regional government to have the opportunity to scrutinise any parliamentary legislation and regulation with relevance to Wales so that it may make appropriate representations on them to the Secretary of State and the Government".
That is something which has concerned me somewhat. I, like the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, was a Secretary of State for Wales. Since 1964 I believe that the office has increased in value. It has done a great deal to help Wales. It is an effective institution. The Secretary of State is the legitimate executive authority for government policy in Wales. When he is abroad he speaks with authority for Wales and he is accepted as being the executive authority. It seems to me that the position of the opposition parties in Wales is to diminish that authority. That should be known so that the people of Wales understand exactly what is proposed.
Is it proposed that there should be an Assembly in Cardiff, presumably dominated in numbers by representatives of the populous South Wales? Is this regional government which is referred to in the 1990 document to be an executive talking shop unable to raise a penny in revenue and under the financial thrall of the Welsh Secretary? Is it intended that Wales should be relegated to what is in effect similar to a region of England? Is that what is intended?
This is a recipe for conflict between the Secretary of State and Westminster on the one hand and the Assembly on the other which may well lead to deadlock and economic disaster. I refer the House to what happened in 1979 when it was proposed that there should be a Parliament for Wales. There was a referendum in which 80 per cent, of the people said no. Following that, my party captured Montgomery, Brecon and Radnor and Anglesey, which were all places in favour of a Parliament for Wales. Plaid Cymru captured Meirionnydd and Caernafon. In 1983 the Conservative Party had 14 seats.
What that amounts to is that a panacea policy is not a real option. In Wales it is a decision between an autonomous Wales within a federal Europe or a continuation of the Union. My party believes in the continuation of the Union. Anything else would lead inevitably to a serious constitutional conflict. I shall adopt the words Mr. Kinnock used in 1979:
"It will be a costly millstone around the necks of the people of Wales".
4.16 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I am terrified that in a debate of this kind the time allotted may at some time be three minutes instead of six. Then I suggest that we shall have a breathtaking debate in which there is no time to do anything except recite our catechism of political belief. What the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, did in his interesting speech was to give your Lordships a whole collection of his prejudices in a matter of six minutes. When we come to deal with the Motion we should pass it because we want the Papers. There will be a great

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many of them and it may be worthwhile reading some of them on all these subjects while we are waiting for the House of Commons to be elected.
I am not going to recite my political catechism or express my prejudices over a wide area. I am going to deal with a part of constitutional reform which requires us to look at our own navel. I say that reform of the House of Lords is part of constitutional reform. It has been much talked about. Since the Labour Party gave up the idea of abolishing us and found that we are extremely useful and effective, even when there is a Conservative government, they decided that some kind of reform is on the books and not total abolition.
Our defeat of the Government the other evening on the Education (Schools) Bill was not really to do any harm to the Government or to the Bill. It was to demonstrate to the Labour Party the fallacy of the myth which they still stick to; namely, that in this House the Conservative Party has a built-in majority. It has not. All these debates prove that when the Cross-Benchers apply their minds to problems, as they occasionally do with great depth and understanding, we can defeat a Conservative Government.
I want to take noble Lords back to what we did in this House before I came here in 1968. There was a scheme which your Lordships passed by 251 votes to 56 votes. That scheme was put forward by the Labour Party. The Bill introduced on 19th December 1968 was passed by a very large majority in the House of Commons. It looked as if we had an accord for the future of the House of Lords, but owing to a series of misjudgments of strategic importance the Bill eventually had to be withdrawn. What the Labour Government had overlooked was that in order to get a Bill through, even with a good deal of support in the House of Commons, a good command of the procedures of the House is required because a Bill cannot proceed unless there is the power to move, and obtain, the closure and so make progress on the Bill.
When the House of Lords reform Bill had been on the Floor of the House for nine days and was still on Clause 1, it was time for the Prime Minister to consider what should happen to it. I was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party at that time and the Prime Minister asked me what I would do with it. I said that I would drop it; but it remained on the agenda for the rest of that Session just to show that that government were not dropping anything.
We had an agreement, and I believe that that is the starting point for our consideration of the future of the House of Lords. Unless we deal with the House of Lords I do not think we shall make much progress on other items of reform.
In the remaining few seconds left to me I suggest that in the new Parliament we should attempt to get a corporate view in this House about our own future. That would be an exercise in wisdom, in mutual accommodation and in looking forward. Perhaps we should offer that corporate view based upon what was agreed in this House in 1968 because, if we look at it, a great deal is relevant and apposite today. Even the scheme that the Labour Party is talking about takes its roots in the report of the constitution committee—a committee of which I was a member—which linked
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the House of Lords with regional development. But I think that the House of Lords should be reformed quite independently of regional government. It is the repository of wisdom and experience. With suitable conditions of arriving here and departing—there is, of course, one condition of departing, but we do not like to face that—we are on the way to getting an agreed scheme.
Finally, let me say that no one party will get reform of the House of Lords through Parliament without a very large measure of all-party agreement. That is quite impossible. History shows that it is impossible for one party to carry through substantial constitutional reform of Parliament itself. Therefore, we should give some attention to our own position, our own future and what part we feel we can play in the forward looking period that we are entering, whichever party is returned. There is a good deal of forward looking necessary for this country.
4.23 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, in the current political atmosphere which has even invaded your Lordships' House, as is apparent from the speeches that have been made, there is little hope I fear for a still small voice from the Cross-Benches to carry much resonance. Nevertheless, I desire to intervene to make one overriding point. What has already appeared abundantly from the general discussion today is the desirability of these important matters being considered by a Royal Commission on the constitution.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, has raised issues of far-reaching constitutional importance. Other issues, too, were raised by subsequent speakers. Those issues are not going to go away; nor are they going to be conjured away by rubbery phrases or putting down markers for subsequent negotiation in a hung Parliament. These are serious issues and not one has been raised that does not demand much further consideration than it has had.
My noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham, in his rumbustious speech, dealt with all the points that previously have been raised. But I missed one note which, to my mind, is the most percipient constitutional insight since the war. I refer to the danger in which we stand of an elective dictatorship. We cannot escape from that either.
I said that there was not a single issue that does not demand further consideration. Practically all of them will have abundant further consideration in a controversial way. I only desire to take one as an example—the question of devolution to Wales and Scotland. The further question that arises is that to which my noble and learned friend referred; namely, how far should that principle be carried into the English region? That is a profoundly important question. As soon as that is done, we have to consider what is the division of power between the regions, including Scotland and Wales, and the centre. That brings in the all-important question of how we are to deal with finance and taxation. At the moment both Scotland and Wales benefit financially from the union. We then have to decide whether it is right to face them

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with that sacrifice; though probably it is better to ask whether it is right that they should be faced with such a sacrifice. If we are to allow local taxation, what form should it take? There is much to be said for a local income tax, but the difficulties were spelt out at length in the Layfield Report. Those difficulties have to be faced, but they cannot properly be faced on the hustings.
Therefore, I end as I began, in a plea that these matters shall be considered carefully by a Royal Commission. Your Lordships will bear in mind the stark difference between, on the one side, the engendering of the American constitution, discussing constitutional conventions one after another and discussed at length by scholarly lawyers in the papers on the federal list, and the febrile constitution thought up in the heat of the moment during the French Revolution, none of which survived.
As I said, I end as I began by hoping that all parties —or at any rate the Conservative Party in its manifesto—will publish a commitment to a Royal Commission on the constitution.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, your Lordships will not be surprised if I talk about Scotland. I have been involved in politics for a long time. The first election in which I took part, although I was not a candidate, was in 1950. From then on in Scotland we in the Liberal Party—as it was then; it is the Liberal Democratic Party today—were talking about a Parliament for Scottish affairs. That is what we are talking about now. I should tell the noble and learned Lord that if our scheme comes into operation he will not have to cross any borders and nothing will be done to make him take out a visa. Indeed, we will offer him a dram when he comes to visit us with the greatest friendliness and we shall consider ourselves still British together.
The whole history of the Union is rather interesting in the way that it has developed. There is no shadow of a doubt that when the 1707 Act was passed there was much skulduggery in the arrangement of the measures. But there is also no shadow of a doubt that Scotland and Scotsmen benefited from the access to English colonies and from the development of the tobacco trade, which is much maligned at present. All that brought a degree of prosperity to Scotland which was exploited.
The Scots have always been great travellers. In the Baltic states in the days of the Hanseatic League I believe it was said that regulations were put out that dogs and Scotsmen were not allowed on the streets after dark. But since the Reformation the Scottish character has changed. Indeed, Scotsmen have made tremendous use of their talents all over the world. Of course they had to do so because they came from a poor country. But it is a country and a people with a culture. It has great poets—and not only Burns. It also has writers and painters, not only Raeburn. Moreover, it has had and has economists—some of
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whom are much misquoted today. It has all the capacity to be an entity on its own within the British constitution—if there was one.
I much regret that there has crept into the SNP's propaganda today an appalling blowing up of a natural pride in Scotland into a hatred of the English. I personally rather like the English. They are a nice people. They are kind to animals; indeed, I have many friends among them. But looking at the Scottish Office and its achievements—and there have been considerable achievements and very good Secretaries of State —we can see that it has been fighting a corner to try to adapt English legislation to Scottish affairs. What we need in Scotland is a centre of power in a Parliament for Scottish affairs.
The control of great companies has drifted south. Many of the Scottish industries are now controlled from London. All of that has led to the unease which sensible people in Scotland are feeling. It is the sensible people—and, happily, the nonsense about independence and Europe is dying down—who want a centre of power which would eliminate a great deal of the unease and make Scotland a centre for people to return to, to stay in and to develop in all sorts of ways.
There is an example of that process. It is often said to be an impractical one but it is, nevertheless, a recent example. I refer to Ulster. Despite the appalling racial hatred, technically the Stormont Parliament worked extraordinarily well. I shall merely give your Lordships two examples, both of which I know of from personal experience. The first involves agriculture. I remember well just after the war when a new method of preserving grass by using silage was introduced. The Irish Department of Agriculture grasped it at once, co-operating with the university and Professor Morrison. It produced sensible legislation to give farmers in Ulster with their wet climate a subsidy for building silos to the great value of the livestock industry.
The other example was the attraction that industry had to locate in Northern Ireland. They were superbly good at that in that closely-knit community. There we have an example of such a process working without breaking up the United Kingdom in any shape or form. It would work in Scotland. It would work well and improve the relationship. Indeed, the United Kingdom would be much more of a united kingdom than it is today.
4.35 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow my neighbour, the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie. I go along with much of the earlier part of his speech. His party, the Liberal Democrats in Scotland, do not, I understand, favour the setting up of an Assembly along the lines of the Stormont Parliament but a Parliament along the lines which the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party have spent so much time designing through the so-called constitutional convention. I think that most people would agree that the criteria by which we should judge such a parliament, whether it be that one

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or any other, is whether it would work and whether it would satisfy the Scots and so keep Scotland within the United Kingdom.
Now that the election campaign proper is beginning, it seems most important that the limitations of the scheme put forward by the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats should be understood. If it is truly understood, I believe that only those who want a separate Scotland will vote for it. If one looks at it in detail, the scheme has a number of major flaws. It is possible that later speakers will point out some of them. One of the least discussed, and one which seems to me to be the most important, is the proposed funding system for the Scottish Parliament.
The proposal is that such funding should come from three sources: first, from revenue raised in Scotland from income tax and VAT—that is, income tax and VAT set in the UK Parliament; secondly, from a block grant from the United Kingdom Parliament based on assessed need negotiated with the Treasury on the current Barnett formula by which the Scottish Office is at present funded; and, thirdly, by the ability to add or lower income tax by a defined amount. It is suggested that the latter might be 3p more or less than the UK income tax level. That in itself produces a number of major problems. The revenue from income tax and VAT—the so-called "assigned revenues"—will vary as the United Kingdom Government vary tax and as the economy of Scotland varies as it expands and declines from time to time.
Further, as the Scottish Parliament's decision-making and legislation begin to diverge from that of the United Kingdom —the Scottish Parliament will be legislating for everything except foreign affairs, defence, social security and fiscal matters—and as Scottish local government flexes its muscles (we must remember that it spends 52 per cent. of the Scottish Parliament's spending) expenditure needs will as a result diverge from the base currently agreed within the United Kingdom, which may be higher or lower. In theory, as that happens the increase or decrease of 3p can come into play. But in practice the extent to which that will happen will depend upon the amount of the United Kingdom block grant. A very small reduction or increase in that block grant will have a major effect on Scottish income tax. That is the gearing syndrome that we see in current local government funding—the effect on the community charge of a quite small change in government block grant funding. In other words, the same thing would happen but to a very much greater degree.
Therefore, under the plan every year there will be an enormously contentious negotiation between the United Kingdom Parliament and the Scottish Parliament. On those negotiations will depend the level of funding of local government in Scotland and therefore what it can and cannot do, the ability of the Scottish Parliament to legislate in the way that it wants if that legislation would add to expenditure and the level of income tax for the Scots and whether it is above or below that south of the Border.
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Professor Arthur Midwinter of Strathclyde University, who is a great expert on local and central government funding in relation to Scotland, estimates that the United Kingdom Parliament will decide between 96 and 100 per cent, of the Scottish Parliament's funding. It seems to me that the people of Scotland will become so frustrated by those annual negotiations that as time goes on separation will become inevitable. Therefore, if we look in detail at only that aspect of the matter—and the proposals for a Scottish Parliament involve many others—only those who want the separation of Scotland from the United Kingdom in due course should vote for it.
4.41 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I should like to testify briefly to my conviction, which has been maturing for some time and which is now quite strong, that the Labour Party should adopt proportional representation as its policy. I hope that no one will tell me that that is opposed to the traditions of the party.
Not long ago I spent the evening in a famous monastery. After dinner I argued as best I could and against most of the monks in favour of women priests. They did not appear to agree with me, but I asked them at the end, "What is your objection to women priests?" The senior monk smiled and said, "Well, trad, I suppose". That is no doubt a strong argument in all walks of life, both secular and ecclesiastical. However, I do not think that there is anything in the tradition of the Labour Party to make it decide in favour of one method of election over another.
One can search the works of Sidney Webb without getting any enlightenment on the matter. So I turn to principles. We believe that all human beings are of equal importance—some would say, "In the sight of God", but I do not think that that can help us to decide this issue. We must look at it practically, taking a long and calm view.
I am glad to find that my party seems to be at least veering in the direction of proportional representation. I have persuaded myself that I am entitled to draw encouragement from the speech of my leader this afternoon and from other indications. I do not think that I am embarrassing my party in any way—even if it paid the slightest attention to my opinion, which is doubtful—in coming out boldly, strongly and quite unequivocally for proportional representation.
It is now almost 60 years since I began setting pupils at Oxford a weekly essay on proportional representation. The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, was one of my pupils and, although I missed his speech this afternoon, I must say that I am not sure whether he benefited from the guidance that I offered him on those occasions. No doubt others will have seen the light more clearly. At any rate, I knew all the arguments backwards and forwards. One could not fail to know them if one listened to pupil after pupil reading out the same or a similar essay on PR year after year.
The arguments were well known then and they are well known now. Proportional representation reflects the mind of the public much more accurately. However, it was argued then—it can be argued much

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less convincingly now—that the first-past-the-post system—or whatever one likes to call it—produces a strong government. Those arguments have been going on for 60 years and as far as I am aware there are no new arguments. The question that remains is how one applies those arguments today.
I hope that I shall not be breaking the rules of party warfare if I express agreement with the line of argument that was taken by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. I hate to say, however, that I arrived at these conclusions on my own and that I am not speciously following the noble Lord simply on the strength of his eloquence this afternoon. I agree with what he said. If there were only two parties and one gained a big majority of the votes, the first-past-the-post system would be the best way of doing things. However, as we now have three firmly established parties, none of which will ever get a majority of the votes, we are therefore left permanently with a series of governments who, on the face of it, do not command the support of the country.
That is why I am driven to the conclusion that proportional representation would strike an objective observer, if such a person existed, as the fairest and most sensible system for Britain to adopt in the future. If I am told that that would give Labour a tactical advantage after the election, I must say that I cannot see any objection to that because, if one believes in a party, one is entitled to want to see it win. As long as the method that is adopted is honourable, one favours a match-winning tactic.
Therefore, to put it in a nutshell, because we must all speak briefly, I believe that justice and party considerations come together in this argument. They do not always do so in this life, but they do in this case. I am glad that my party seems to be moving marginally in the direction of proportional representation. I very much welcome that movement.
4.45 p.m.
The Earl of Perth: My Lords, we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, not only for his speech but for the other powerful speeches that we have heard in the debate that he initiated. I refer, for example, to that of the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, with whom I found myself very much in agreement.
I shall speak about Scotland. I have just returned from the United States where I was surprised by the great interest that is taken in the Scottish position. A whole page of the New York Times was devoted to the Scottish question and the Wall Street Journal had a long leader on it. Perhaps I should begin by saying that I am all for the Union, but for the Union with devolution. I supported that campaign five years ago. We failed, but I am convinced that we must now have devolution.
As I read it, there are two extremes. The first is the status quo. I hope that I am wrong in thinking that that is the position of the Conservative Government because, if it is, I foresee trouble ahead. I do not know whether Ministers really appreciate the degree of feeling in Scotland that the Scots should be allowed to
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run their own show and about the fact that we were the guinea-pigs for the poll tax. Almost all of the people in Scotland are fed up with the way in which Whitehall has behaved. Whitehall does not know best in relation to Scottish affairs. That is one extreme which should be ignored or abandoned in the future.
The second extreme is that of the Scottish National Party, which calls for independence within Europe. As your Lordships know, the Community must be unanimous when accepting a new member. I am almost tempted to use the word "laughable" about the idea of the Community accepting Scotland as an independent member. Just think of the trouble that that would cause with Germany and its Länder, with Spain and Catalonia, or with other countries. It is wishful thinking and unrealistic.
So, what are we to do? I suggest something between the two extremes. If I had time I would quote from the leader in the Wall Street Journal which began with a quotation from Mrs. Howdie from Sir Walter Scott's "The Heart of Midlothian". Suffice it to say for the moment that she said that we must have leaders in Edinburgh so that we can throw stones at them if we do not agree with them. If the leaders are in London, no nail is long enough to get at them.
There we have it. In the days of Walter Scott, it was already clear that Edinburgh should be the centre for Scottish affairs, and I know that that is the position of the Labour Party, the Liberals and, in a curious way, of the Scottish Nationalists, but I am less clear about the Conservatives.
What is the minimum? I am clear that it is an Assembly in Edinburgh, directly or indirectly elected. Further, the division of the block grant should be decided by that Assembly. That will be different from what happens in England. The Scots have a conscience. They are not interested only in material prosperity. They have a special thought for the underprivileged. I am sure that that will affect the way the cake is cut.
Whether an Assembly should have the power to override the Secretary of State or levy taxation are questions to be decided once the general principle that we are to have some form of self-government in Edinburgh has been agreed. The answer is probably gradualism. That has been the history of the steady advance of Scottish rule for Scotland. When I say that, I have in mind that over the last 100 years one has seen a Scottish Secretary of State, a Scottish Secretary of State in the Cabinet and a Scottish Office centred largely in Edinburgh. The Government should not try to buck the trend.
I hope that the Conservatives will mention in their manifesto that there will be a Royal Commission, as my noble and learned friend Lord Simon of Glaisdale suggested. The issue is a deep and important one for the whole Union. We have been together for 300 years. We have shared great times, but the time for some change has come. We must change realistically and not too emotionally; but change there must be.
4.52 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I intend to confine myself to the case for the people of Wales having more control over their affairs. Like all minority peoples in Western Europe, the Welsh people's hope for far more control over their own affairs has increased proportionately with the development of a more unified Europe which promises to provide an economic, fiscal and security umbrella. In people's minds the outmoded 19th century concept of sovereign independent states has been giving way steadily to the idea of surrendering such sovereignty in return for far greater prospects of long-term economic benefit and general security. Indeed, I hope that in the next century there will be no national boundaries, in Western Europe at least. The argument for boundaries is outmoded.
It is our view that devolution in Wales should evolve more gradually than in Scotland. The Act of Union of Scotland and England took place over 150 years after the formal Act of Union of England and Wales. That meant that Scotland retained its own legal system, and it had powerfully developed national institutions and financial institutions which Wales did not have. The Welsh identity was preserved by its language, its religion and its culture. Wales was without any formal institutions until the latter part of the 19th century when steps were taken to establish the University of Wales and the Welsh National Library, and we saw the development, under the Liberal Government of 1906 to 1914, of the Welsh Board of Health and the Joint Education Committee for Wales which was built on the foundations established by Acts such as the Welsh Intermediate Education Act. In our age we have seen the development of Cardiff as an administrative capital—many centuries after Edinburgh was the Scottish capital—and the setting up of the Welsh Office under a Secretary of State. There is general satisfaction in Wales, even among those who originally resisted the idea of a Secretary of State for Wales—many Members on the Conservative Benches opposed it—and with our administrative devolution. However, there is an increasing consciousness of the fact that Wales is ruled largely by quangos —bodies set up by government—with nominated members who often have few apparent qualifications for their positions, save that they may be described as "one of us", and who are appointed to run them without being accountable to any democratic institution.
I approve of the basis for the reform of local government in Wales now proposed by the Secretary of State; but in our view, that development in local government should be matched by the provision of a democratically elected body which can take over some of the functions or the oversight of our many quangos. The process should be evolutionary. In the first instance, we should have an elected senate with limited powers. Its main task would be to hammer out a practical measure of devolution for the future. I envisage that it will evolve naturally into a legislative body, although I would give it some legislative powers from the outset.
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There is an obvious parallel to the European Parliament, which began as a nominated body, became an elected body with advisory powers, is a forum for debate and is now seeking to evolve into a parliament with powers over the European Executive as well as having legislative powers. Its progress will depend upon the evolution of political thought within Europe and the practical necessity of having a European elected body to control the activities of the Brussels Commission. Likewise, in Wales we envisage a similar evolutionary approach which accords with common sense rather than a blueprint. I also envisage negotiations between the Westminster Parliament and the Welsh senate over a period of time. We should work steadily and sensibly towards devolution rather than seek to impose an immediate and so-called final solution.
In the course of that process, I believe that we shall see less of the adversarial politics than we have experienced in the past. The adversarial approach which British politics has inherited and which exists in our legal system could in the climate of modern conditions be a veritable impediment to progress. There is much greater scope these days for seeking a consensus and a gradualist approach to reform.
The vitally important first step is to have an elected body, democratically representing the interests of the people of Wales, within five years from now. Its initial powers may well be in the main advisory, but it can then evolve, gradually and securely, into a sub-parliament with powers to foster and develop the cultural, social and economic life of Wales in a way that is not being done today.
The setting up of the Welsh Office with its Secretary of State was an important step along the way, but the Welsh Office lacks legitimacy. Does the Secretary of State represent central government in Wales or does he represent Wales in government? It is impossible for him to speak as the true democratic voice of the Welsh people, especially when he represents a minority interest in Wales as does the Conservative Secretary of State.
Regional policy is now largely determined in Europe. There is a growing European dimension in the life of the Welsh people of which they are fully aware. The particular aspirations and distinctive political culture of Wales gathers strength on two fronts: on the European front with the realisation that there is an umbrella gradually replacing the British umbrella; and within Wales because, as people prepare to share their sovereignty, they aspire also to a greater control of their own affairs.
4.59 p.m.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: My Lords, we are a pragmatic nation. We do not have an elaborate written constitution; we regulate our affairs by convention and by precedent; and we change them when there is good practical cause to do so, and not before—a point well made by my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham.
The noble Lord who proposed the Motion might be felt to be applying a Cartesian logic, of seeking some lengthy syllogism, some Bill of Rights, some Code

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Napoléonique, some ordered tract, by which we might order our own affairs. But how many of the issues which he raises—all of them important—would best be addressed by this approach of the philosophe? It certainly has not got the French very far. The Fourth Republic was a shambles, sinking in a confusion of coalitions and ballets roses. The Fifth Republic was imposed, let us remember, by a president who came to power after unrest and armed rebellion; and very much less successful it looks when the central figure is a man of lesser stature.
One has only to look across the Channel to several European countries to see that proportional representation and fixed terms can have highly undesirable consequences: parliamentary instability; lame duck presidents marking time till their days run out; and, above all, the risk of giving undue influence to minority and sometimes extremist groups.
The great thing about our parliamentary system is that it works. Generally, there is a clear outcome and that is perhaps the most important point. It works through representative government—you know who your MP is; you elect him or her to represent you and you can go to that MP on constituency matters. That is something which is difficult to arrange under a proportional representative system.
Moreover, in a democracy governments change. Of 13 elections since 1945, the sitting government have won seven and lost six. That is a narrow lead in favour of incumbent governments which I personally would not wish to see diminished in the near future. Noble Lords will remember the dark days during the Wilson administration in 1974 when newspaper pundits like Cecil King proclaimed the country to be ungovernable. Not a bit of it! The constitutional difficulties, at any rate, were entirely illusory. Is this stable system what the noble Lord seeks to lose?
What then is wrong today? There are clearly several things wrong. The Scots and, to some extent, the Welsh—as we have heard this afternoon—sometimes feel that their voices are not heard or at any rate that they are not heeded. I think that they are often right.
However, I submit that it is not the constitutional system that is altogether at fault. In my view, successive governments and Prime Ministers often fail to spend time in Scotland or Wales and fail in practice to give British affairs a Scottish or a Welsh dimension as well as an English one. No new constitution would be required to rectify that omission. Again, no new system is needed to confer the rights which would be listed in a Bill of Rights. For example, oppositions have regularly promised to secure freedom of information by an appropriate Act in this country and to abolish unnecessary secrecy. But successive governments, of whatever colour, have invariably failed us in that respect.
Our successive parliamentary governments may have their shortcomings, but these are not constitutional shortcomings and I cannot support this philosophical Motion.
5.3 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, whatever issues will be debated in the United Kingdom during the forthcoming election, there is no doubt that devolution will be one of the major issues in Scotland. The situation is that in a recent opinion poll 50 per cent. of the people in Scotland voted for complete independence. The current rating of the parties is that 30 per cent. of the electors will vote for the complete independence advocated by the SNP.
We must understand that in Scotland there is a considerable feeling on this matter and the Government would be wise to take heed. Of the 72 MPs in Scotland, only the nine Conservatives are in favour of the status quo. Noble Lords will therefore understand that the people of Scotland feel that their voice is not being listened to.
The campaign for independence is being hyped up by two newspapers read by four-fifths of the population of Scotland: the Daily Record and the Sun. One—the Sun—is in favour of complete independence, for circulation purposes. That does not apply in the south with the London Sun, but it is true in Scotland. In the case of the Daily Record, the newspaper is in favour of the constitutional changes visualised by the convention. So the public in Scotland is to some extent being manipulated by a cynical circulation war.
Why is there this resentment and strong feeling in Scotland? Let us face the fact that the worst piece of legislation in the present Parliament was the poll tax. It was imposed on Scotland a year before it hit England. It passed through this House with little concern about it and only when it hit England did people recognise that it was an iniquitous tax and it was withdrawn or revised. We can understand the feeling of people in Scotland. I notice that the Chancellor said yesterday that the uniform business rate in England would remain at its present level. That places Scotland and Scottish industry at a disadvantage of £362 million a year. These issues have caused an upsurge of the feeling in favour of some degree of independence north of the Border.
I agree with all the speakers who have said that departure from the Union would be disastrous. That should be spelled out and taken out of the emotional arguments about Scottish nationalism. At the same time, I am attracted by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, who has left the Chamber. He said that we must approach the subject in an evolutionary manner. I do not believe that the Scottish convention and other people who concern themselves with the matter have taken into account all the complications of what they seek to achieve. For example, the tax implications have been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour. Income tax will be within the province of the new Scottish Parliament. People pay more income tax south of the Border because they receive higher wages in the South East than in Scotland. Consequently, in terms of income tax it would appear that to sustain present revenue levels income tax would increase in Scotland. The

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implications of that for inward investment and so on must be measured. Apart from income tax, the share of the national revenue must be discussed.
The whole problem of local government reorganisation has not been weighed in the balance. This is an expensive business because Scotland could become the most heavily governed country in Europe, with the Community, district, regional and what could become Strathclyde mark two sitting in Edinburgh as a Scottish convention.
The West Lothian question has not been solved. It concerns the ability of Scottish MPs to come to London and vote on English legislation while they have devolved powers to Edinburgh to deal with Scottish aspects. These issues and the West Lothian question must be faced.
I wonder whether the Scots really welcome the fact that the devolution demanded means the removal of the Secretary of State for Scotland from the British Cabinet. That is spelled out in the convention document. Does this diminish Scotland's influence in British politics? These issues must be faced within a scheme of devolution.
If the demand for devolution is as I have described it, then it would be wise for the Government not simply to say, "We are in favour of the status quo and everything in the garden is lovely". That is a recipe for trouble and growing tension within the United Kingdom. The Government should be much more willing to accept the fact that there is a strong feeling for devolution; there is too much centralised government and too much quango government in Britain at present which involves a reduction in the powers of the elected representatives. If the Government would face these issues, we might make sensible progress in the evolution of a correct balance. I hope that they will listen.
5.10 p.m.
Lord Wilson of Langside: My Lords, I should have liked to follow the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, for there was much wisdom in his speech. However, in view of the timescale of this debate I wish to make a short, sharp point which arises out of the conclusion of the thought-provoking introduction to the debate by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. However, I hope I may also pick up on one or two points made earlier. In his thought-provoking and impressive speech the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, referred to the appointment of a Royal Commission. I was involved during the dark, dismal days of the government of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, in setting up a Royal Commission in the late 1960s.
The report of that commission was profoundly disappointing. The best aspect of the report was the views held by the minority of members of the commission. Their views have provoked a good deal of thought and discussion. The only point in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, with which I could disagree with no equivocation at all concerned Scottish devolution. Up until that point I had agreed wholeheartedly with everything he said.
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But I had some reservations about his remarks on Scottish devolution, although I put it no higher than that.
It is difficult to change a unitary state into a state with separate devolved parliaments. That is an intensely difficult task. I have always thought it was a great pity that the federalists did not win in 1707. The fight then occurred between the federalists and those who accepted the English conception of the corporate state. Concern has been expressed about the state of mind of the Scottish people and about the dangers of ignoring their reactions. It is not only the Sun, the Daily Mirror or the Daily Record that support the Scottish Nationalist Party. The Scotsman also supports that party.
Noble Lords opposite appear to be restless. I have only spoken for one minute. I find it disconcerting to be confronted with their restless behaviour. I could not understand what was happening. We should remember that a referendum was fought on a Bill of the Labour Party in 1979. The polls suggested that anything from 65 per cent. to 80 per cent. of the people of Scotland would vote in favour of the referendum. In fact only 32 per cent. voted in favour and the rest either abstained or voted against. That occurred after a campaign had taken place in which the Labour Party and its many supporters in the Scottish establishment had argued that a no vote was implied in an abstention.
5.14 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, opposes this Motion on the ground that it is a philosophical Motion. That was what noble Lords on the Benches of the noble Lord said to my great grandfather in 1832. Thinking of the parallel, I am tempted to wonder whether at this moment in some obscure recess of Central Office a draft Tamworth Manifesto is even now in preparation. I shall answer the noble Lord in the words of Edmund Burke, who said that a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. There are occasions when those means must be used.
Our constituency system of representation in Parliament is in essence the system devised by King Edward I based on the writs for the Parliament of 1295. In my opinion my great grandfather tinkered with the system not quite radically enough. But the point about this system is that it was never designed to represent parties. It does not work to represent parties. It has not been overhauled at any time since the evolution of the party system. I do not think we appreciate quite what a lottery it is.
My noble friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead mentioned the general election of 1951. That is the only election since the war in which any political party has polled more than 50 per cent. of the votes and then lost. I remember as a boy of 13 listening to those results coming in and listening to the Labour Party turning all its majorities in South Wales and County Durham from majorities of 20,000 into majorities of 30,000, and never a seat the better for it!

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That was the moment at which my unease about the present electoral system began. I do not think we realise quite what odd results it is capable of producing. It is perfectly possible to imagine, if the Labour Party were to gain votes in areas where it has in the past come third, that a Conservative absolute majority might occur with 35 per cent. of the votes.
It is equally possible to imagine, if one agrees with Peter Kellner, that the electorate comprises four kinds of people —Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and opposition. One can imagine an election which just about repeats the percentages of the poll of the previous election and wipes out the Government's majority. It is difficult to maintain consent to a system which is quite so unpredictable. During the course of this Parliament we have suffered a sea change in attitudes to consent.
At the previous election I thought the tide was running in favour of electoral reform, but it was—if I may so put it —a Mediterranean tide; that is, one has to be swimming to feel it. Now, as this debate has illustrated, we have an Atlantic tide. Whether it is a spring tide we shall not know until it reaches the flood which is yet some way ahead of us.
It seems to me that our present Government enjoy a far lesser sense of legitimacy than they did before. I believe the rise of the anti-poll tax federation is a phenomenon that ought to alarm us all. We are seeing the consequences of a loss of legitimacy. Also I believe we have not faced up to the immense extent of the power of parliamentary sovereignty. Absolute power is commonly defined as the power to make one's will law. How many times in this Chamber have we listened to a Minister on the Benches opposite bring in a Bill to repeal a court judgment while saying, "But our intention was"? There is an assumption here that their will is law, and that is dangerous.
We need a Bill of Rights. We also need European law, which is superior to an Act of Parliament, because in the European Communities Act 1972 Parliament has so willed it. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bridge of Harwich, has put it, Parliament's sacrifice of sovereignty was entirely voluntary. That is a good thing as absolute power is not good for the mind. It encourages slothful thinking.
We heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, an objection to devolution because he feels that power must be all in one place. The noble and learned Lord may wish to correct me, but I think that that is the Hobbesian illusion of a single sovereign power. It seems to me that we have the same problem with Conservative thinking on Scotland as with Conservative thinking on Europe and Conservative thinking on local government. They cannot imagine power being shared between a number of different places. They say that that might give us a botched up compromise. I wonder. Could it be much worse than what we have had for the past five years? Would we not perhaps be better off with a botched up compromise than with botched up absolute power?
5.20 p.m.
Viscount Hood: My Lords, I should like to add my remarks to those that have already been made on the subject of devolution or home rule for Scotland and the implications of independence. It is now about 100 years since home rule was a national issue. While the problems of Ireland have no relevance to Scotland, the problems of devolution have.
Finance is the first issue and my noble friend Lady Carnegie has already pointed out some of the implications. It is to be presumed that, if there were a parliament in Scotland either that parliament would have taxing powers or it would receive a large block grant from the Parliament in Westminster. I believe that either would prove an endless bone of contention between the two parliaments and the two countries.
There is a further more serious problem regarding representation at Westminster. Clearly, if there is a parliament in Scotland and powers relating to foreign affairs, defence and certain other matters are held in London, there must be Scottish representation in the Parliament in Westminster. The problem is not so much the number of representatives but their powers.
A hundred years ago two alternatives were discussed endlessly in relation to Ireland. The first was that the Irish Members would have full powers. If that applied in the case of Scotland, Scottish Members would have power over English affairs while English Members would not have any power over Scottish affairs. I think that Englishmen would consider that intolerable. The alternative is for there to be limited powers. That is a very difficult concept, even more difficult now than it was a hundred years ago. We are now members of the European Community and many issues are both domestic and international, and the line of demarcation would be impossible to establish. A.J. Balfour, who was then Leader of the Opposition, concluded that the problem was insoluble and that home rule was impracticable. I share that view.
That leads one inevitably to the question of independence. I am very much of the same view as my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham. I am British, and over the years my family has played a part in the British Navy, not the English Navy. I shall touch on two of the practical problems which have been much mentioned in speeches in Scotland, namely, North Sea oil and a subject mentioned by my noble friend Lord Perth, membership of the European Community.
The position regarding North Sea oil is based on a 1964 convention of the United Nations which led to firm treaties with all the riparian powers, allocating the area which is now British. The North Sea is divided into 10-mile blocks on which major long-term contracts, involving huge sums, have been entered into with concessionaires. The United Kingdom cannot walk away from those contracts. It does not follow that an emerging independent Scotland would be acceptable to the other parties to the contract.
In addition, the issue of which oilfield goes with which coastline is a very difficult one. It may be that Scotland is closer to most of the oil than England, but the Shetlands are closer still, certainly to the major

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Brent field. That again is a very difficult issue and independence would not lead immediately to Scotland having the oil, which I read is constantly being said.
It would be essential for Scotland to be admitted to the European Community if it became independent. So much of its trade depends upon it being a member of the European Community. However, there is no precedent for a part of a member state being admitted to the European Community, and a number of members would strongly oppose that principle being established.
For those reasons I must stand for the status quo. It is much safer for Scotland to remain a part of the union. I believe that independence would be very damaging for England but it would be disastrous for Scotland.
5.26 p.m.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, in six minutes I cannot speak about both reform of the House of Lords and Scotland so I shall speak about Scotland. I am wholeheartedly in support of the Union, which I believe has been of inestimable benefit to Scotland in the past and will be of even greater importance in our European future, where the United Kingdom must have greater influence than any of its component parts, or possibly the sum of its component parts.
It has been said—indeed it is continually being said—that we must change in order to preserve the Union. That may well be so, but if we are to change a system of government which has not served us all that badly, we must take the time to be very sure that what we put in its place will be an improvement on what has gone before, not just something different, and that our heads rule when we are considering what must be a highly emotive subject.
I am not very happy about the proposals of the constitutional convention for a devolved Parliament. I have read its report Towards Scotland's Parliament. It is heady stuff, but its proposals seem to me to be very general and to get us very little further than we were 14 years ago when the ill thought-out Scotland Bill, having been passed by both Houses of Parliament, was sensibly rejected by the people of Scotland in a referendum. I do not think that the constitutional convention's proposals will answer because I do not think that they have been thought through much more carefully. The convention simply has not got down to the nitty-gritty.
Too many unsolved problems remain. There is the West Lothian question, the question of the voting powers of Scottish MPs at Westminster; and the question of how many Members a Scotland with its own legislative assembly should send to Westminster. In addition there is the question of the assembly's tax-raising powers. It is no use members of the convention just hoping that, if they do not look at them, those nasty problems will go away. They will not.
It may be that the convention is going down the wrong road and that a totally different approach is needed. Perhaps instead of establishing yet another tier of government we should look at building up local
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government nationwide and giving it responsibility for much of what is at present the responsibility of central government. That could ease the burden on Westminster and enable both MPs and Peers to keep more reasonable hours. It could also solve the problem of over-government. If at the same time we went back to single tier local government, perhaps based on the old county councils in the main, with some small national co-ordinating bodies elected by the councils, we might save a great deal of expense while at the same time being able to reduce the number of MPs at Westminster.
One of the problems of a Scottish assembly is that whether it were elected on the first-past-the-post system or by some form of proportional representation, I do not see how one could get over the fact that Scotland would be governed by Strathclyde and Lothian regions. That is historically unacceptable to the northern inhabitants of the land, who are not in fact Scots (who were Irish immigrants) or Angles (who were English immigrants) but Picts or Norsemen. On a purely practical basis it is unacceptable because it means that rural Scotland would still be ruled by urban Scots. A local government solution might get over that.
I wonder whether the members of the convention ever troubled to read the Second Reading debate in this House on the Scotland Bill nearly 14 years ago. Winding up for the Opposition at the end of the third day the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham—I hope that he will not mind me quoting him now—said:
"What one cannot do and what has never been done is to graft on to a unitary state some of the characteristics of a federation as to some of its parts". Whether one goes for an assembly or whether one goes down some other road, constitutional change in whatever form for any part of the United Kingdom must surely involve constitutional change for every other part of the United Kingdom; and that change must be acceptable to every other part of the United Kingdom. Perhaps I am wrong, yet I believe that the convention hopes that that will be the case but has not ascertained whether in fact it will be.
Other noble Lords, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, have talked of finance. Given that the figures in the report Government Expenditure and Revenues in Scotland, published the day before yesterday by the Scottish Office, are even approximately correct, how is the present level of government expenditure in Scotland to be maintained without increased taxation in Scotland? What worries me very much about the present proposals is that I cannot see how they can possibly work. I cannot see how Scotland can fail to become the most highly taxed part of the United Kingdom, nor how the proposed assembly can fail to be in continual conflict with Westminster. We need to return to the drawing board, and a Royal Commission might very well be the way forward.
I am very much afraid that the system proposed by the constitutional convention is bound to fail. When it has done so, people will not say, "We were wrong. We should have carried on being governed by Westminster. Let's go back to Westminster". Instead

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they will say, "We were wrong. We should have gone for total independence". That is what they will do and I very much fear that that will be the end of the United Kingdom and the beginning of a period of decline and strife such as Scotland has not known for centuries.
5.32 p.m.
Lord Perry of Walton: My Lords, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, I am proud of being British. But I also call myself a Scot and boast about it. Yet my Scottishness is very partial. Like most inhabitants of these islands, I am essentially a mongrel. It is true that my mother's maiden name was Flora Macdonald Macdonald but my father was half English and half Welsh. I was born in Scotland but have spent more than half my life in England. All my children were born in England but five of the six are much more vociferously Scottish than I am. For many of us, calling oneself a Scot is a conscious choice rather than an accident of birthplace or heredity. We are not a separate race but we are a kind of separate nation within a nation.
The awareness of nationhood in Scotland has been sharpened, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, said, by the unpopularity of Conservative governments of recent years. People felt that their views carried little weight at Westminster. They wanted a bigger say. It is true that there is a Scottish Office to administer Scottish affairs but it is staffed by Ministers whose views are not those of the Scottish electorate. That feeling of alienation from Westminster has led to the extreme separatism of the Scottish Nationalist Party and growing support for it. Yet we Scots are a canny lot. We may cast our bread upon the waters but only after making perfectly sure that the tide is coming in. The great majority do not want independence and the break-up of the nation. They want some of the powers of central government to be devolved to a Scottish parliament.
There are many varieties of such partial devolution. Labour and the Liberal Democrats in Scotland have come forward with one such scheme. The major problem about it—and the major problem about all schemes which devolve power to one region of a country and not to others—has been termed the West Lothian question. It can be answered most satisfactorily by a scheme which devolves the same powers to all the regions of the country.
The main stumbling block is that England does not easily divide into coherent regions. There would be no difficulty with Wales. But is there a necessity to subdivide England? Is England not a region like any other part? It is true that it has nearly 10 times the population of Scotland. But California has more than 10 times the population of Rhode Island and both have the same state rights devolved from the federal government. An English parliament would be given the same powers as a Scottish or Welsh one and the West Lothian question would not have to be asked. The British Parliament could consist of all the members of the regional parliaments and exercise government for all the non-devolved parts.
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I believe that that would work best with proportional representation. I see no logical justification for elections based on a first-past-the-post system. Assuming a two party system, when 51 per cent, of the electorate support Party A and and 49 per cent, support Party B, given a uniform distribution of people of all classes and occupations, there would be no Members of Parliament from Party B. All the Members of Parliament would come from Party A. It is only the non-uniform distribution that has yielded a relatively balanced legislature. Social changes could —indeed, I believe they are—leading to greater uniformity.
All arguments against PR are specious, for only PR will lead to a legislature which reflects the opinions of the population as a whole. If the population in high proportions wants two or three different parties, that is what it should have. To argue that only the first-past-the-post system yields a strong government —a government in which a party with less than 40 per cent, of support from the electorate can have an absolute majority of seats in the legislature—is essentially to deny democracy in favour of oligarchy and, worse, electoral dictatorship. In any case, where has that kind of strong government led us? Not to where I for one would have wanted to go.
5.37 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, the programme of constitutional reform outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and his fellows, is in itself so absolutely out of tune with the country's needs that it is odd for us to spend any time discussing it. It is based upon the rejection of experience, in particular of experience outside this country. The most extraordinary insularity enables noble Lords opposite to commend proportional representation as though it were a brilliant new idea. In fact, proportional representation has been in force in a great many countries in Europe and outside. Everywhere it has produced disastrous results. At the moment most countries are not trying to achieve proportional representation; they are trying their damnedest to find out how to get rid of it.
One example, which has been quoted before in your Lordships' House, is that of Israel. Proportional representation is the single most important obstacle to the peace process in the Middle East. I think few people would deny that. Nearer to home, there is Belgium, where a fragile national unity, particularly in the linguistic context, is being rent apart at the moment. The survival of the Belgian state, created by the international community in 1830, is certainly at risk. One may say, "Well, a small country like Belgium can't get it right." But what about a large country like Italy? At the moment, Italy is desperate to get rid of proportional representation, which has produced endless bargaining and haggling between a multiplicity of parties and groups and which is breaking up that country's national unity. Indeed, it is putting into question the work of Garibaldi and Cavour which we were all taught to admire: the creation of a unified Italy.

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One could go on. Wherever one looks, proportional representation has brought disaster. Why, then, should we wish it on ourselves? Proportional representation could be described as the HIV of the body politic. However it is introduced into the bloodstream, and the occasion may be gratifying, sooner or later fatal consequences invariably emerge.
Let us pass to another of the nostrums proclaimed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, which has occupied a good deal of our time: devolution to Scotland and Wales. Again, we hear the most irrelevant comparisons with regard to what occurs elsewhere. I believe that it was the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, who said that Nova Scotia, New South Wales and Bavaria have rights. But they have rights within a federal system. The fact that Bavarians govern their own affairs does not mean that they can interfere in the way in which the inhabitants of Schleswig-Holstein govern their affairs. I have yet to find an advocate of devolution to Wales and Scotland who is fully prepared to accept the federal logic.
It is not a matter of the West Lothian question, or whether the egregious Mr. Robin Cook should be Secretary of State for Health in England and have a role in Scotland. It is a simple question of whether one can have an unequal distribution of power. The idea of the noble Lord, Lord Perry—that the matter could be solved by turning the United Kingdom into some kind of federal monstrosity—is extraordinary. Why should one-tenth of the population of the United Kingdom, or—if we understand that the Welsh support the concept too—one eighth of the population, dictate to the vast majority who prefer a unified system of government?
I do not believe that our constitution is perfect. I sometimes wake at night and think that this or that may be wrong. The noble Lord mentioned the possibility of a slight reform in our own affairs. Perhaps we should consider that. However, by and large, this catalogue of disasters—it can be proved to be disastrous from experience elsewhere—is surely a matter that we should take on board. We do not need these nostrums. It is perhaps appropriate that in a dying Parliament we should discuss a dying subject.
5.43 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, plainly does not like proportional representation. However, the debate today has shown that there is a strong mood of support for some form of proportional representation. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, that he chooses the most unsuitable examples in order to support his dubious thesis. One does not have to have the form of proportional representation which the Israelis were unwise enough to inflict upon themselves. One does not have to have exact arithmetical proportional representation in order to achieve a fairer system than the one that we have in this country.
I am delighted at the deathbed repentance—we are not quite sure whether it is deathbed or repentance —from the Labour Front Benches that they are at last moving in the direction of proportional representation. It has taken them a mighty long time. I wish that
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they would reach that conclusion before we go into an election and not after. I took a bet recently with a well known member of the Labour Party that if that party loses the election we shall hear a great deal from it about proportional representation but that if it wins the election we shall hear no more. I hope that I shall be proved wrong, but it is nice to know that the Labour Party is moving in the direction I have described.
Examples have been quoted to indicate how unsuccessful proportional representation has been. But no one has referred to Germany. I had the interesting experience last week of taking part in a forum at the LSE on the subject: what would be the result of a hung parliament? In answer to the accusation that it would be undemocratic for a small party to have such great influence in a coalition— which is what a hung parliament would lead to—I stated that one does not have to look at the numbers of people elected to the House of Commons but at the number of votes cast in the country.
In the last election the Alliance Party achieved 23 per cent, of the poll. The Conservative Party got 42 per cent. I give a totally hypothetical situation. If there had been an agreed programme between those two parties it would have been a programme which had the support of 65 per cent, of the country. No government in recent years have achieved anywhere near such support. For a democracy to have that support is a very strong argument indeed. One of the problems for the Conservative Party has been that it had only a minority of support in the country at a time when difficult changes needed to be made. If difficult changes are to be accepted any government need to have behind them a strong basis of support among the electorate.
In the discussion about proportional representation last week, I had made the point that it was democratic and that through coalition it could give a stable government. Few Members of your Lordships' House would deny that what this country needs more than anything else is stable government over a period of time with an agreed programme so that businessmen and everyone else know where they are. One very much hopes that we shall have stability of some kind after the next election.
My speech was followed by that of a Social Democrat member of the German parliament. I had never met him before. To my surprise, he underwrote everything that I had said. He stated that in Germany under no circumstances would people accept as democratic a government which had only 42 per cent. of the country behind them. He stated that the coalition government had made for a much less adversarial approach. Much greater consensus had made it possible to concentrate on finding the best possible solutions to problems instead of continuously scoring party points. I suspect that in the country as a whole a move to a more consensual form of government would be welcome indeed. He explained how that was supported by a federal system. Herr Genscher once said to David Steel, "You British are extremely generous. You gave our country decentralisation in a federal system, industrial democracy and

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proportional representation. It served us fine. But you never took any of it for yourselves." I hope that after the election we shall proceed to take some of it for ourselves.
The next issue that has been most discussed is Scottish devolution. I agree entirely that Scottish devolution needs to be part of a federal development in this country. I believe that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, agrees with that. Does the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, ever travel north? Does he ever listen to Lancashire people or Scottish people carrying on against the domination from London? We in the South East are not in the least popular in many other parts of the country. A move towards a federal system inside this country is surely urgently needed. I must say how tolerant the English are. I was looking at the Government Front Bench. I do not know the origins of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, but the other three noble Lords on the Front Bench are all from Scotland. There will be great danger of a break-up unless the Scottish demand for more power is met. Of course there are difficulties. But such considerations are part of a real examination of the constitutional position.
Huge changes are taking place in Europe which will affect government in this country. There are demands from Scotland, from Wales and from the regions of this country. There are demands for changes in the way the two Houses are run. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, that these important issues must be looked at altogether and not piecemeal and that a Royal Commission is urgently needed to deal with them.
5.50 p.m.
Lord Macaulay of Bragar: My Lords, the noble Baroness spoke of a deathbed repentance on the part of the Labour Party. I assure your Lordships that there is no question of the Labour Party being on its deathbed. Indeed, it is about to spring into life and take control of the affairs of this country after spending too long in the wilderness.
Unfortunately, the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, is too wide for me to deal with comprehensively. Each topic in the Motion is worthy of a debate. It lists the voting system, fixed term parliaments, a Bill of Rights and control over their own affairs for Scotland and Wales. I am sure that your Lordships' House could have a three-hour debate on each topic. However, we have had to crush the debate on those topics into one three-hour period. I do not intend to review what each noble Lord said but perhaps I may mention a few issues.
In introducing the debate the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, said that he would like to see the parties working together. That matter was also mentioned by the noble Baroness. Working together is not important, but agreeing together is. That is where coalitions fall apart. No matter how well disposed parties are towards each other, no matter what their long-term views are, when the political philosophy of one party overcomes the good will towards the other, the coalition tends to fall apart.
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The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, also spoke of an unholy alliance between the SNP and the Government. I am not aware of when that alliance was signed or whether it has been promulgated elsewhere. In fact, it is not the case. In an act of political cowardice on the part of the Secretary of State for Scotland the Government have hidden behind the Union. They have said, "We are for the Union and for nothing else but the Union". They tried to focus on the issue of the Union but were caught out by the Scotsman debate in the Usher Hall. On that occasion 2,500 people attended to debate the case for devolution for Scotland. To use a football phrase, the Government were well and truly cuffed at the end of the day.
The Government must recognise that in Scotland there is a call not for independence but for people to be able to govern their own affairs because the Westminster machine cannot cope. If it cannot cope with the affairs of Scotland and Wales, those countries are entitled to have something else in its place which can deal with matters pertinent to both countries without destroying the Westminster machine. That is what we should look at.
I was disappointed to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, refer to Scotland as a region. He shakes his head but he equated Scotland with a region. Perhaps I may remind the House that Scotland stands as a nation as part of the Act of Union between England and Scotland. It will always remain so and has no intention of becoming a region of this country. If other regions attain self-government, all well and good, but Scotland stands as a nation and always will. The sooner people down here realise that the better.
I was also disappointed to hear the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, say that the letter X was a symbol of illiteracy. That was a contentious remark. My grandfather signed my mother's birth certificate with an X. That was his mark as a crofter in the Highlands. Fortunately that does not happen now, but one must not confuse illiteracy with lack of knowledge. My grandfather was a most knowledgeable man and the fact that he marked a birth certificate with an X did not mean that he was unaware of what was happening around him. The letter X is a symbol of the power of the people and noble Lords on the Benches opposite will find out about that on 9th April. I also wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, protested about smoke-filled rooms when he was being selected as a Member. But that is another matter.
We on this side of the House agree that there is a case for having a Royal Commission on the constitution. It would pull together all the strands of thought which were set out in the varied and knowledgeable speeches made today. It is a matter which should be considered. I wish to remind the noble Earl, Lord Perth, that there are four parties in Scotland, not three. That gives Scotland a different dimension.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, referred to a poll showing that 50 per cent, of people in Scotland were in favour of independence. That figure is now out of date; it is decreasing rapidly day by day. People are in favour of some form of devolution in order to allow

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Scotland to look after its own affairs. In Scotland there is a growing feeling not of antagonism towards England or Wales but that, if the Westminster machine cannot cope with Scotland's affairs and allow Scottish legislation to be dealt with properly and quickly, the machine should be overhauled or a new one put in its place in Scotland.
5.56 p.m.
The Lord Advocate (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie): My Lords, I have listened with interest to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and others in the course of this debate. I immediately acknowledge the importance of the issues that they have raised. There have been some 23 contributions to the debate. I hope that it will not be taken amiss if during the time allocated to me I fail to respond to all the points raised.
I cannot but agree that constitutional reform of the kind that has been proposed would have far-reaching consequences for the United Kingdom, but I cannot accept that the effects of such changes would necessarily be either beneficial or desirable. No country can claim to have in place a set of faultless constitutional arrangements, but what is missing from the current discussion is the recognition of the very considerable strengths of our own existing system and institutions. We ignore those at our peril.
I shall deal first with proportional representation. The Government have always made it clear that they have no plans to introduce any form of proportional representation for local government elections in Great Britain or for elections in the United Kingdom to Westminster. The system that we have may not be perfect but it is simple, it is familiar and it is well understood by the electorate. I know that to my personal cost. It provides close and direct representation, whether it be in this House or on the local council, and it is much more likely to produce an overall majority for one party to provide strong and effective government at either local or national level. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, thought that that was a dated idea but it seems to me still to be as important as it was when he was lecturing students.
Proportional representation, on the other hand, in whatever form it takes, often results in some form of coalition based on a programme which the electorate has not had the opportunity to approve or disapprove. Voters can only guess what kind of coalition their party might have to enter into after an election, what new policies it might have to adopt and what compromises it might have to make to keep the coalition in existence. Furthermore, parties which poll few votes can exercise an influence out of all proportion to the number of people who voted for them and can keep on exercising it notwithstanding the fact that they continue to be placed low down in the poll. Nor has it proved to be a bulwark against the risk of extremist politics.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, made a splendidly adversarial speech in favour of the consensus that proportional representation would bring. However, I know that she and others are aware that ardent supporters of proportional representation regularly go
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apoplectic when they are reminded that it was within such a system that Hitler first engineered his rise to power. They also tend to brush aside the extraordinary influence that minor and extreme religious parties have had in Israeli affairs under what is arguably a very pure form of proportional representation. They must blush as they regard Italy going, in this Roman spring, into an election where there will be 100 parties which range from a very respectable Republican Party to the Housewive's League, Anybody's Party, the Yes Party and the Party of Love, which is represented by four women who have made careers out of taking off their clothes. What has welled up in Italy as a result of that multi-party approach is that there is now a growing demand for a referendum on the first-past-the-post system. The problem is that the 100 parties cannot agree on what the question should be.
Closer to home we have watched with no surprise the fall-out between the Labour and Liberal Democratic Parties in the Scottish convention over the right model for a Scottish assembly once it dawned on the Liberals that what was under discussion might in its practical application unduly benefit the Labour Party. While two models were put forward, no agreement could be reached. The short answer is that any search through all the models of proportional representation as applied by other countries throughout the world, including the EC, reveals there is no democratic Holy Grail. There is no wholly satisfactory replacement for our present system. I think the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, acknowledged that.
The Liberal Democrats propose a single transferable vote system which necessarily requires the formation of large multi-member constituencies and in consequence—and this is important—severely erodes the links between a Member and his or her constituents. My mind boggles at the idea of a single parliamentary constituency stretching from the Mull of Kintyre to Muckle Flugga in the north of the Shetland islands.
As regards a Bill of Rights, possibly entrenched in a written constitution, which is also part of the noble Lord's Motion, the first thing to say is that such measures would fundamentally alter the constitutional balance between the courts, parliament and the government. The great virtue of our democratic system, with its unwritten constitution, lies in its flexibility; it is able to change and adapt in accordance with society's needs, through legislation, decisions of the courts and the evolution of constitutional conventions. We see no merit in substituting a written constitution or a Bill of Rights for the present delicate system of checks and balances which have been developed over centuries and which provide the safeguard of our democratic freedoms. It is worth reflecting that some of the most repressive regimes in the world have written constitutions: they are hardly a guarantee of liberty.
Aside from that, the Government would argue that a Bill of Rights is unnecessary because the possession of rights and freedoms is an inherent part of being a member of our society. That understanding is fundamental to the United Kingdom's constitutional arrangements. Rights do not need to be conferred:

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they exist unless Parliament decides that the needs of society are such that they must be restricted in some specific way. A written constitution or Bill of Rights would undermine the principle that it is Parliament which has the supreme responsibility to determine society's needs. In the Government's view it is infinitely better for Parliament to enact legislation in areas of public policy rather than to look to the judges, who are not elected to take the lead in these matters. Imposing the task of interpreting a Bill of Rights would inevitably propel judges into the political arena. Some might welcome that role but I do not believe that that is their true responsibility. Many of the matters commonly proposed for inclusion in a Bill of Rights in fact involve hard political choices which Parliament should make. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, made clear in his Reith lectures, the character of those choices is not altered because they are cast in the noble language of fundamental human rights.
The Government are a firm believer in, and supporter of, the European Convention on Human Rights. The United Kingdom played a major role in its drafting and in 1966 accepted a citizen's right of individual petition to the Commission much earlier than many of our European colleagues. But we are opposed to the incorporation of the convention into United Kingdom domestic law for much the same reasons as we object to a proposal for a Bill of Rights.
The noble Lord raised also the question of a fixed-term parliament. That there should be a maximum duration for the life of a parliament is not disputed and there would appear to be little disagreement as to the length of any such parliament. If there is to be a fixed period, the only real issue is the circumstances in which earlier dissolution is permissible. If the circumstances allowing for that are too restrictively stated, it is not difficult to envisage a wide variety of occasions when it could not be for the good of the country to require a parliament and government to continue without seeking a fresh mandate from the electorate. If conditions for early dissolution are too loosely framed, the change proposed would in effect be purely cosmetic.
I believe any public support for fixed terms is mistakenly based on the view that somehow the change would reduce the amount of confounded politicking to which the modern electorate is subjected. On the day after "Super Tuesday", when the American presidential elections are in far distant November, I conclude that such a change would increase rather than reduce that exposure to campaigning.
Perhaps I may turn now to what the Motion describes for Scotland and Wales as "control over their own affairs". I immediately question the assumption that there is any consensus on the degree of change which would be satisfactory to the people of Scotland, or, indeed, Wales. In the development of the debate in Scotland in recent months it is unfortunate that those who should know better have adopted the
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language of nationalism. The noble Lord who spoke before me must be well aware of how unfortunate that is.
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, was horrified when the Liberal Member of Parliament for Gordon, in what was the noble Lord's former constituency of Hillhead, described some Conservatives at the weekend as quislings. I consider that to be a strong term of abuse, well beyond what is reasonable political invective. I hope that the noble Lord, who has great stature within his own party, during the weeks which lie ahead may invite his colleagues to address this matter calmly and rationally, as he did, and not surrender to the forces of xenophobia which are regrettably to be found in Scotland.
Opinion polls demonstrate to me only that there is a remarkable volatility in Scotland. As the debate has extended, there has been a steady rise in support for the status quo. As the various proposals are explored in depth, and when it is realised what are the costs and consequences of such radical moves, support wanes markedly. Today the CBI, after taking a long and cool look at all the proposed changes—when it did not start in favour of the status quo —concluded:
"The separation and devolution proposals would not stimulate Scottish companies to compete on price and quality in international markets, nor to secure higher levels of inward investment. The objectives of Scottish business are likely to be best achieved by an improvement of the current administrative arrangements within the United Kingdom".
If there is to be a debate in Scotland and the United Kingdom about the improvement in administrative arrangements, let us all join in.
I believe that the Union between Scotland and England has been a great and glorious success. The right reverend Prelate, in intervening, adopted a slightly apologetic note as though he should not interfere in these matters. On the contrary, this is a matter that affects all the people of the United Kingdom. Those who live in East Anglia under his religious charge have at least the same right to be interested in the matter as I do as a Presbyterian Scot.
As I understand it, the Liberal Democrat Party advances a scheme for federal reform for the United Kingdom as a whole. In spite of the highly dubious parallels which Sir David Steel brought back from Canada referring to asymmetrical federalism there, it seems to me that if it were to be adopted it could only be done on the logical basis of providing the constituent parts of the federation with the same rights and powers.
Within Scotland there is undoubtedly a desire that there should be an assembly which has legislative power. There is a separate legal system. In some respects we want there to be separate laws applying in Scotland that are different from those that apply south of the Border. But unless I speak to some very strange Englishmen, I have yet to find that those who live in Newcastle or Southampton seriously advance the idea that the laws that the High Court should be asked to apply and enforce on this side of the Border should be different for those living in Newcastle or Southampton. I am bound to say that I have found

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little or no indication that within England there is any desire whatsoever to see the break-up of the nation of England into federal units.
If we turn to what is on offer, as I understand it, from the Labour Party as part of what comes from the Scottish convention, it is something quite different. I do not propose to rehearse what is set out in its rather thin document. One issue that is not addressed within it is the one to which my noble friend Lord Beloff referred—what is commonly known as the West Lothian question. It has been much debated here and elsewhere. What was intriguing is that neither the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, who is familiar with matters of constitutional change, nor the noble Lord, Lord Macaulay, in their contributions sought in any way to address that most difficult of issues.
The only person in the Labour Party of whom I am aware who sought to address the difficult issue of what one does if one is a Scottish Member of Parliament and there are some issues dealt with by a Scottish assembly which are dealt with also by the House of Commons and this House was Robin Cook. When he honestly said that he could not see how he could be Minister for Health in respect of responsibilities in England if there was a Scottish assembly having responsibilities for health there, he was taken into the headmaster's study the next day; and I do not believe that any of us have truly determined whether he has wholly retreated from that position or whether there are others who have been leaning on him.
It is a critical matter. It is important that it should be addressed. There have been a number of calls from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, and others that the way to resolve the matter is by a Royal Commission. Royal Commissions can always be appointed. But as the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside, pointed out—it may be longer ago than some people remember—there was indeed a Royal Commission looking at constitutional change for Scotland. I leave him with his characterisation of it as very unsatisfactory.
I believe that the status quo is what we should persist with. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland called for a great debate on the matter in Scotland. I have no doubt, as others said during the course of the debate, that it will indeed be at the centre of the election campaign that is about to begin in Scotland as elsewhere.
My noble friend Lord Thomas had something to say on matters in Wales. I tread warily into Welsh affairs. However, it seemed to me that his concise summary of the position there was accurate. I remember with great affection and admiration, as he does, the powerful advocacy of Neil Kinnock—now the Leader of the Labour Party—in opposing root and branch any change in the arrangements for Wales.
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister said that if the Union between England and Scotland were to be disrupted and dissolved, it would diminish Scotland. I agree with him. He went further and said that the dissolution of the Union would diminish England. I agree with him. As a United Kingdom we are greater than the sum of our parts. Those of us who wish for some form of constitutional change, I hope
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—at least within this House—share my view that, however we may differ upon those matters and however much we debate them, that is a prize we must not surrender.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and in particular the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate for his engaging with the arguments in an ingenious and occasionally amusing way. I do not think that he took the imaginative high ground in his speech. There are substantial replies to be made to many of the points that he made, but there is nothing that he said which will provoke me, at any rate, into indulging in the hyperbole of abuse in response to his speech.
In general, I do not greatly believe in second goes at the end of a debate. Nonetheless, as we are well within time, I shall take two minutes if I may. I regard this Motion not as revolutionary but as conservationist in order to preserve the best parts of what we have.
The noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, accused me of being a Cartesian, a philosophe and all sorts of dreadful things—at least he made them sound dreadful. I did not entirely recognise my general cautious, relative approach in the terms with which he played around. I was struck by the Burke quotation of my noble friend Lord Russell and I believe that the danger is that, "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation".
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, took his stand on an absolute defence of the status quo on every point. I should love him to explain clearly to us at some time what he meant by his attack on elective dictatorship in 1978. I do not believe that he meant anything other than that for the time being the Labour Party was doing things, whereas he approved of them only when the Conservative Party were doing them. At some time I should like him to expound on exactly what he had in mind.
The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, made, I thought, a slightly intemperate speech. But then I remembered how greatly I enjoyed his intemperate speeches against the Government on educational matters and thought that one must take the rough with the smooth in these affairs. I therefore acquit him of any unreasonable intemperance. However, I thought he could hardly have been more wrong than when he said that these subjects are appropriate for a dying Parliament for they are dying subjects. Believe me, they are not. They are subjects about which we shall hear a great deal more in the future. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Future Business
6.20 p.m.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to make a Statement about the rest of the week's business. As I said to your Lordships

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in my earlier Statement, tomorrow's business will be as previously arranged, with the exception that the Third Reading of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill will be taken immediately after the Report stage, subject to the agreement of your Lordships to the suspension of Standing Order 44.
The business for Friday will be as follows, again subject to the agreement of your Lordships to the Business of the House Motion: the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill, Second Reading and remaining stages; the Competition and Service (Utilities) Bill, Report and Third Reading; the Transport and Works Bill, Second Reading and remaining stages; and the Timeshare Bill, Second Reading and remaining stages. There will follow the orders at present on the Order Paper. Finally, the House will proceed to the Sea Fisheries (Wildlife and Conservation) Bill, Second Reading and remaining stages.
I should point out to your Lordships that the Clerk of the Parliaments has made arrangements for amendments to all Bills, which have not yet received their Second Readings, to be tabled forthwith. That means that your Lordships will, if you wish, be able to raise matters in Committee on those Bills which will be receiving their Second Reading on Friday.
The business for Monday will be dependent on the arrangements for business for the rest of this week in another place. I therefore intend to make a further business Statement tomorrow.
On a more domestic note, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships to know that dinner will be available in the Dining Room tomorrow night when the Barry Room will also of course be open. The Barry Room will, exceptionally, be open for lunch on Friday, as of course will the Dining Room. Tea will also be available in the Dining Room on Friday, and I do not anticipate that your Lordships need be concerned about dinner in the House on Friday night.

Water Pollution and Shortages
6.22 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington Baroness Robson of Kiddington rose to call attention to the problems affecting Britain's rivers, coasts and beaches, including pollution and water shortage, and to the remedies needed to deal with them; and to move for Papers.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, many comments were made about the debate which we have just had; that it was a very wide subject and covered many aspects of our political democracy. It can also be said of this Motion that it covers a wide number of subjects. I am therefore delighted that so many noble Lords have agreed to take part in the debate because all of them have their own particular expertise to give to it. I am particularly delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Monteagle of Brandon, has decided to make his maiden speech, after quite a number of years, on this subject. I am sure that we all look forward to hearing what he has to say and to many future contributions from him after his maiden speech.
Britain is unique in Europe when it comes to
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looking after our own rivers, beaches and water supply. We are an island and we normally have, except for the past three years, a high rainfall. We cannot, therefore, like a number of other countries in the European Community, blame other countries on our borders for whatever is wrong with our rivers nor for the abstractions of water from them by other people. We are uniquely responsible for our own island. If there is anything wrong we have only ourselves to blame.
In looking at the rivers of this country I read with interest the report from the National Rivers Authority on its 1990 survey which shows that 89 per cent, of the rivers were of either good or fair quality. That is nice to know. But it is disturbing to find that 15 per cent, of rivers were downgraded between 1985 and 1990 and that that deterioration happened in what were top quality waters such as the Thames catchment area and in Devon and Cornwall.
In the same report the National Rivers Authority states that 28,718 pollution incidents were reported, of which 3,760 were considered serious. Out of that large number of serious pollution incidents there were only 484 successful prosecutions. I felt a particular concern when reading that the Wessex region, with 1,252 incidents, had only 29 successful prosecutions. The South-West region was equally bad. It is clear, therefore, that a much greater effort must be applied to achieving successful prosecutions and that the fines imposed on perpetrators must be increased in order to deter these incidents from occurring.
In the face of those figures it is even more disturbing to find—I realise that the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, is to speak in the debate—that the National Rivers Authority will receive £15 million less in funding in 1992–93 than originally forecast, having already suffered a 12 per cent, cut in its funding in October 1991.
An increasing number of our rivers and streams are now regularly drying out each year through over-abstraction. Some of them have dried out altogether. Around 50 rivers have been identified as suffering in that way. That is not simply due to the recent drought conditions. It has been going on for a number of years. Many of the rivers had dried out before the past three summers. Many rivers are suffering because it is cheaper to extract clean water near the source of rivers rather than further downstream.
This is all compounded by the practice of discharging into the rivers downstream from the abstraction points whereas in actual fact that process should be completely reversed. It would help enormously the water level in the rivers. It is also sad that much of this abstraction from our rivers is taking place under licences granted over 30 years ago. It does not take much imagination to realise that they must be reviewed.
All of us have come to take water for granted, or we did until quite recently. It was always understood that if there was a shortage somewhere we could build a new reservoir and the problem would be solved. That is no longer the answer to our water shortage. We have to educate people to realise that water is a very scarce

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commodity. Until we learn to appreciate that we are not going to take the right actions. For instance, I can remember as a youngster living on an island in the archipelago of Stockholm where there was no water. We had water butts collecting the rainwater so that we could water our gardens and wash with it, but we could not drink it. Is there any reason why we should not be as careful as that?
As the water shortage is not exactly the same in all parts of the country, as a nation we should consider the idea of having a water grid. I know it is an expensive exercise but I believe that eventually we shall have to consider it. Worst of all, we have an old system of distribution, now taken over by the water companies, in which the leakage of water is enormous, causing considerable wastage. It is estimated that more water is lost in one day in England than is supplied by the largest region in England in one day —the Thames region. So we are just extracting water and letting it run away in an uncontrolled fashion. That cannot continue. The water companies must plan to reduce leakage to 15 per cent, within five years. If necessary, in order to solve the problem of wastage of water, there will have to be some sanctions on price increases.
I turn now to the problem of our beaches. The Department of the Environment sent me a press release dated 12th November in which Mr. David Trippier stated that 76 per cent, of our beaches met the mandatory coliform bacteria standards in 1991as against 77 per cent, in 1990 and 76 per cent, in 1989. His comment on this was:
"These results are encouraging because overall compliance has remained steady".
How complacent can one get? Is that something on which to congratulate ourselves? Should we not be hoping to improve the standard over a period of three years?
On analysing those figures I found that 36 beaches which passed in 1990 failed in 1991. Of those 36 beaches nine were in the Southern region and 16 in the South-West region. This is only being judged against the present EC standards of coliform contamination. The compliance with the EC standard does not mean that a particular beach is safe, because the sampling does not take account of the presence of viruses in the water. The Government should press the EC to amend the bathing water directive to take account of contamination.
What happens to sewage and how it is treated is the single most important factor in determining the quality of our beaches. As a result of public outrage many years ago there was a move against short sea outfalls for sewage and a move towards the long sea outfalls. But even that relies on the "dilute and disperse" principle. There is a danger that the long sea outfall policy might prove to be the tall chimney policy of the 1960s all over again.
No discharge of human sewage should be allowed unless it has undergone both primary and secondary treatment. There are many minor restrictions that should be introduced, particularly in our river
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estuaries. For instance, there is no control over the sewage that is released from the enormous number of boats lying in marinas.
I believe that as we live on an island we have an advantage and we ought to be able to do better for ourselves. It is important that we introduce a coastal zone management plan. Many countries already have such plans. We lack an integrated view over coastal zone management. That is very important. Planning at the coast is fragmented and piecemeal. There is no one responsible authority. For example, in North Wales, after the breaching of the sea wall, there are now something like six or seven local authorities all doing different studies on how to repair that sea wall. Some of them are probably proposing to do something which could interfere with what is planned for further down the coast. Therefore, a coastal management plan is necessary, but it needs a single management authority for overall jurisdiction over coastal land, the inter-tidal zone and inshore waters.
At the moment MAFF is the lead department on sea and coastal defence matters; but that is purely historical because originally it was given that responsibility to prevent agricultural land from being flooded. The role of flood and coastal defence should be transferred from MAFF to the Department of the Environment. That department is already responsible for environmental protection and nature conservation and it leads on town and country planning, local authority finances, and environmental protection. It is also the sponsor of the National Rivers Authority. The Department of the Environment should be the overall responsible body. It is time that the Government created a unified authority for safeguarding our coastline.
The absence of a national policy for our coasts, with a multiplicity of government departments, statutory bodies and agencies being responsible, cannot work. The creation of a coastal management plan is of the utmost urgency. I beg to move for Papers.
6.37 p.m.
Lord Monteagle of Brandon: My Lords, it is with great trepidation that I make my maiden speech today. I took my seat in your Lordships' House in 1947–45 years ago—and I am afraid that since then, as far as concerns making speeches, I have been unduly influenced by the saying, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and leave no possible doubt". I have frequently been asked, "When are you going to make your maiden speech? Surely you must be an expert on something". I hasten to assure your Lordships that I am not an expert on anything.
I have been away from England for more than two months and only returned yesterday. I have therefore had no opportunity to research the problems of water shortages with anyone from the water companies or the National Rivers Authority. For that reason I have no doubt that some of your Lordships will tell me that my ideas are crazy and that I am talking nonsense. However, that is a risk I shall have to take and I ask for the indulgence of the House.

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I should like to mention a few of my random thoughts which I feel may be relevant. As the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, said, up to a few years ago a plentiful supply of water was freely available to everyone and totally taken for granted; one just turned on the tap and out it came. That has now changed, with many parts of England suffering drought conditions and it would seem to be sensible to take precautions before it is too late.
A number of articles have appeared in the press over the past year or so and while there are differences of opinion on how these problems can be solved it seems that a number of steps could be taken, although they would undoubtedly be expensive. Perhaps I could mention a few of them. It is thought that leakage accounts for approximately 25 per cent, to 30 per cent, of the water supply. Surely that is a very high figure. I do not know whether there are instruments or computers that can pinpoint where leakages occur, but I should have thought that it would not be impossible to devise something, if it has not been done already.
I speak with feeling on this particular point. A few years ago a tree was felled at my home, and as the ground was very wet the problem that arose was not discovered for a few days, by which time about 100,000 gallons had literally gone down the drain. I understand that more reservoirs are needed but that there are endless problems such as planning permission, public inquiries, building delays and so on. If it is difficult to build new reservoirs, would it not be possible to enlarge existing ones in some way?
I gather that there are various schools of thought over the feasibility of installing water meters and whether they would be effective. It would seem to me to be essential that they should be installed, particularly where water shortage is acute. I realise that that would cause problems over costs, especially for low-income large families, but perhaps some sort of rebate scheme could be used to help them. I am on a water meter and it certainly concentrates the mind wonderfully not to be wasteful.
I understand that in the Isle of Wight a metering experiment has cut consumption by 20 per cent, over five years. If such a saving could be made in one area, surely it could be achieved in others. Could not builders be encouraged to put water tanks in the attics or on the roofs of all new buildings to harness the rain-water? If that idea is feasible, could not existing house owners be encouraged to do the same, perhaps with a grant as an incentive? In public washrooms —for example, on motorway service stations—some of the taps are of the sprinkler type or shut off after a few seconds. Could not such taps be used in all public buildings?
In view of the fact that television is watched by millions of people, would it not be a good idea for the drought problems to be publicised by the BBC? That would surely be an ideal way to educate people. I quote from an article in Country Life. It reads:
"What is needed most urgently is a change in public attitudes to water".
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I understand that it is well known that desalination plants have always been astronomically expensive and that therefore they are not a practical solution. I believe that they are used by Middle Eastern countries, but perhaps they do not have the same worries about expense that we have.
I spend a considerable amount of time in Ireland, a country which has a well-deserved reputation for being very wet. It is sometimes said that the country needs a large umbrella over it and that its inhabitants need web feet in order to survive. However, over the past few years very dry conditions have existed in certain parts and people are now worried. I was told by an Irish plumber that he was recently called to check out an unoccupied council house. On arrival he found a tap running and on inquiring as to when the house was vacated he was told that it was two years ago. I only mention those points to show how, wherever one is, it is very unwise to take cheap and abundant water supplies for granted. I thank noble Lords for listening to me so patiently.
6.42 p.m.
Baroness White: My Lords, I am sure that I speak for Members from all parts of the House when I very warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Monteagle of Brandon, on his maiden speech. After hearing such an excellent speech, I cannot think why in the world he waited so many years before making it. I found it extremely persuasive. I very much hope—and I am sure everyone will join me in this expression of interest —that we shall hear the noble Lord making frequent speeches on subjects with which he is plainly much concerned. I extend to him our warmest congratulations.
I should also like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, for having chosen as her topic for debate such an appropriate subject as water supply in all its various forms, and the state of our rivers, coasts and beaches, as well as more familiar subjects such as water pollution about which some of us have perhaps heard almost too much over the past few years.
Owing to the restrictions of time, I shall contain my remarks and direct them to the coastline and in particular to our heritage coasts. About one-third of the designated heritage coasts in the United Kingdom are to be found in my own country of Wales. I am, of course, familiar with them. But some of the very finest are to be found in England and are therefore in the care of the English authorities. In both countries a major role is played by the National Trust with which I have been having some discussions over the past few days.
Through the Enterprise Neptune scheme, the National Trust acquires and protects many miles of highly valued coastline in both countries. The trust assures me that the successful or perhaps less successful fate of those purchases is very much conditioned by the attitude of the local authority; that is, the county authority concerned. Where the county authority has members and officers who are really interested in the fate of the heritage coasts and where they are prepared to spend time—and, no doubt, these

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days only limited resources—on the matter, then excellent results can follow. But where such people are not particularly interested, then I am told that even purchase by the National Trust is not necessarily as successful as one might wish.
But, in any case, there are problems. I was especially glad to hear the noble Baroness talk about the need for integrated planning of the coastal areas. I should like to speak particularly about the Welsh situation. I am advised that roughly 70 per cent, of our Welsh coastline enjoys some form of statutory designation. That would lead one to believe that it should therefore be much easier to protect the coastline. But a heritage coast may be in a national park; it may be in an area of outstanding natural beauty (an AONB); it may have one or more sites of special scientific interest; or part of it could possibly be an environmentally sensitive area. All those designations can co-exist.
When one turns to the marine environment adjacent to the shore, the Crown Estate commissioners come into play below high water mark. But the jurisdiction of the local authorities in charge of the heritage coasts ends at low water mark. There are suggestions of marine consultation areas which I understand are favoured by the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office. In other words, there is a bewildering over-designation, an uncoordinated designation, of the coastal areas. The Select Committee on the Environment in another place has been studying some of the problems. I understand— no doubt to take our minds off the forthcoming election—that we can shortly expect to see special guidance on coastal planning from the Department of the Environment.
Meanwhile, there are many interested parties; not only the National Trust but also the Heritage Coast Forum organisations. They are really growing apace. There is now an independent organisation for the Principality of Wales with its own steering committee which co-ordinates with that for England. There is talk of establishing similar bodies in Scotland and possibly even in Ireland. In addition the National Audit Commission has views on organising coastal defence and protection, for which the NRA, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, knows very well, has some responsibility, financially and otherwise.
As time presses, I cannot take the matter further, but the situation clearly calls for statesmanlike intervention and effort. All that one can do is to emphasise the problem and to urge that co-ordinated attention is paid to it as soon as possible. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, is absolutely right to urge that attention should be drawn to the importance of coastal zone management.
6.50 p.m.
Lord Bridges: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, is to be congratulated on introducing a Motion on a subject of such lasting importance. I should also like to congratulate my noble kinsman, Lord Monteagle of Brandon, on his excellent maiden
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speech, which comes into the category of a long-awaited speech. I hope that we shall hear from him again soon.
I should like to address one area of which I have some direct knowledge. I refer to estuaries. It is only recently that the condition and importance of our estuaries have come to attract public notice. Previously, they did not seem to be of much importance, but we now understand the significance of these tidal rivers and of the flora and fauna which flourish in and around them. This is well understood by naturalists and ecologists and, increasingly, by members of the general public. However, we lack an administrative system that pays full attention to the needs of the estuaries and to ensuring that they receive proper environmental protection.
My specific point is that we do not have adequate administrative surveillance to oversee the growing use of the estuaries and to prevent abuse of them. Of course, the National Rivers Authority has control over the quality of the water in a river and has responsibilities in preventing flooding. But the NRA's role is limited and does not, in practice, cover many of the other activities that take place on estuaries. Let us take the case of my local tidal river in Suffolk, the Aide and Ore—confusingly, it changes its name mid-course. It is widely used for a variety of purposes, both commercial and pleasure. A number of small boats are engaged in commercial fishery, both in the river and off-shore. We have some flourishing oyster beds. There is traditional wildfowling for the pot by those living in the adjacent villages. There are also many small boats, ranging from sailing dinghies to large craft. For some years, we have had water skiers in the summer and, more recently, jet skis have arrived.
The river flows through an area that is designated as "Heritage Coast" and an area of outstanding natural beauty. Part of its course contains a site of special scientific interest, owned by English Nature; two separate, important bird sanctuaries, owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; and a new reserve that is being created by the Suffolk Wild Life Trust. All those activities need to be conducted with proper regard for each other and for the environment. To some extent that prevails, thanks to the good sense of those involved, but pressure on the river is increasing all the time. To encourage co-operation between those various bodies, a river association has been set up locally. It enjoys much goodwill and the prospects look promising.
However, all that activity depends entirely on voluntary co-operation and goodwill, and there are limits to what can be done. If a district or parish council, for example, wishes to prohibit excessive speed by motorcraft which damage the river and create hazards, it does not seem to have the legal power or—just as importantly—the administrative resources to track down and restrain persistent offenders. There are particular anxieties about those using jet skis, a sport which seems to attract noisy individualists who do not always take kindly to suggestions that they should confine their activities to a particular part of the river or to a certain time of the

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day or week. Jet skis are a special problem: many people feel about them much as the Chancellor of the Exchequer feels about portable telephones.
I do not wish to suggest that we need a heavy bureaucracy or cumbersome administrative structure to discipline people who enjoy using boats or walking along river banks. What I have in mind is the encouragement of more supervision over the increasing use being made of our estuaries. What we want is a restraining hand to prevent abuse.
There seems to be a lacuna in the legal system that affects the ability of local authorities to act effectively in the way I have suggested. At present, there appears to be a general right to use tidal waters for navigation, but there does not appear to be a set of principles to regulate or control such use. It is true that if a nearby large town or port has passed a law through Parliament to control its various activities and to give it certain powers, some power may be taken in by-laws, but that is by no means the case for all tidal rivers, and especially not for small but significant tidal rivers, such as I have mentioned.
My impression is that a new statutory provision is needed to give effect to what I have in mind. The best solution might be a law to permit or even encourage local authorities to issue by-laws for certain defined purposes for the protection of estuaries. I believe that that task is important and that we should plan new legislation to create a proper legal framework for the future.
At this stage in a Parliament, all that one can do is to note subjects that might be raised in the next Parliament. I believe that this subject requires attention and I hope that the Minister will be able to give me some encouragement in her reply.
6.56 p.m.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, I suspect that today we shall not receive the press coverage that this Motion deserves, but I nevertheless thank my noble friend Lady Robson for tabling it and for the way in which she spoke to it. I congratulate also the noble Lord, Lord Monteagle of Brandon, on his excellent maiden speech which anticipated some of my comments. I hope that we shall hear from him more frequently in future.
When I started work on this speech on Monday, I had before me a picture from that day's edition of The Times of the sun-baked bed of the Graaf-Reinet dam in the Cape Province of South Africa. It was not a beautiful picture, and the caption ran:
"One of the worst dry spells on record has led to crop failure and is forcing Southern African countries to import food amid fears of social unrest".
That should remind us in this country of how exceptionally fortunate we are in the availability of water, yet even here there are signs that demand is beginning to outstrip supply. It is on the problems that could arise from a shortage of water that I want to comment briefly, as did the noble Lord, Lord Monteagle.
I am not one of those who believe that economic growth as more than a temporary expedient is either possible or desirable, and I do not believe that it is
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right to seek to satisfy every demand without seeking sensible restraint. We were told only the other day to expect an increase before long of 42 per cent, in road transport activity. There seemed no suggestion that it might be better to exercise restraint in demand and not to have nearly three lorries for every two that are on the roads today—an idea that I find very disturbing.
I was brought up in a household where the breadboard had carved upon it the words, "Waste not, want not". The lean war years made those words particularly relevant, but the message remains true. In a magazine that was published last summer, the CPRE, the Council for the Protection of Rural England, said this:
"The time has now come to stop abusing our incredible good fortune. Anticipated climate changes may result in increasingly erratic rainfall patterns. The South and East of Britain may take on characteristics more like the Mediterranean, causing drastic changes to the countryside and wildlife and making drought a regular feature of life. With rising demands and limited resources a re-evaluation of the way we manage and exploit our water resources will be essential".
Those who seek to meet an unchecked demand for water advocate the building of quite a number of large reservoirs. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, supports that policy, and I am sorry that, as one formerly closely connected with the water industry, he cannot be here today to make his case. I understand that at least four new reservoirs are proposed in the South of England—in Kent, Oxfordshire, Devonshire and Hampshire. I was disturbed to hear that scheme described as like adding a lane to the M.25 —stimulating demand but not satisfying it. As the CPRE asks:
"Should we really be flooding open countryside to create new reservoirs, which may make matters worse rather than better"?
There is an urgent need for a reassessment for our national use of water.
We are told that the average consumption of water per person per day in Britain is 136 litres. Surely with sensible restraints and without undue hardship there is room for economy. I submit two courses of action for consideration: first, the introduction of water meters, a subject mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Monteagle. That may sound a sad step to have to take, and I cannot deal with the matter in detail now. Where it has been used it has been effective in easing demand.
Ofwat is the Government's economic regulator of the water industry, and it has recommended the water companies to consider selective metering where water resources are stretched. In a press release last December, the CPRE came out strongly:
"Water companies in those areas no longer have any excuse for dithering; we hope they will now take the plunge and introduce selective metering as soon as possible".
Secondly, with or without water meters, the public should be educated—my noble friend Lady Robson mentioned this point —in the need to avoid waste. An important part of that process would be advice on the best equipment to use. An enormous amount of good drinking water is flushed unnecessarily down our lavatories and many of our washing machines (users of as much as 12 per cent, of all domestic demand) are highly inefficient. Add to that the fact that leakages, as

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has been said, in some regions waste more than one third of the supply, then action in that field is clearly necessary.
I should be grateful if the Minister would answer a few questions. First, does she agree with the CPRE that,
"The time has come to stop abusing our incredible good fortune"?
Secondly, what incentive do the privatised water companies have, even with Ofwat on their backs, to encourage sensible economies in the use of water and to educate the public in possible methods of so doing?
7.3 p.m.
Viscount Mills: My Lords, as an employee of the NRA I am responsible for the fisheries in Lancashire. The major river catchment within that area is the Ribble, which faces the full range of environmental problems that beset our rivers. It is affected by industrial and agricultural pollution as well as by problems of sewage and water abstraction.
I could spend the rest of the speech discussing those problems, but that is not my purpose. The point I wish to make is that, although I am a fisheries manager trying to maintain, improve and develop fisheries, my work is dependent upon water quality, water resources and all the uses to which rivers are put—what has been described by my noble friend Lord Crickhowell as the cat's cradle of inter-relationships necessary to achieve integrated river basin management.
That metaphor is vivid and accurate, but it is not accepted by the House of Commons Environment Select Committee. That committee wishes to see a new national regulatory body unencumbered by operational functions and focused upon pollution control. The committee clearly believes that the regulation of water quality and the management of rivers can be carried out separately. I believe, and many who are far more expert than I have argued, that that view is too simplistic.
Water is a resource which both dictates to and is dictated by man's activities. Like any other resource it must be managed to achieve maximum benefit. Regulation of water quality is just one aspect of that management process, but it cannot be separated from all the other factors needed to achieve integrated management of a river system. Such integrated management depends upon two important concepts. The first is catchment management planning which identifies present and future uses of water and associated land, considers interactions and possible conflicts and provides an action plan for improvement. Such plans would, for example, protect fisheries which rely not just on water quality but on water quantity.
The second concept is the setting of statutory water quality objectives. From this year, legally binding standards for water quality are to be set for all inland and coastal waters. The setting of water quality objectives and standards will be complex, incorporating not just a wide range of environmental criteria but the need to protect the different uses made of any given stretch of water—uses which are at present controlled mainly by existing NRA functions. In
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addition, the water quality requirements of existing and proposed EC directives will be incorporated into those statutory water quality objectives.
The influence of such EC legislation upon the structure and working practices of the new environment agency should not be overlooked. For example, compliance with the urban waste water treatment directive may well lead to the strictly controlled input of organic material and nutrients into designated sensitive areas such as estuaries. Such controls would necessitate a high degree of integrated river and land use management. Similarly, it is hard to see how the proposed EC directive on the ecological quality of surface waters will be achieved merely by regulating water quality.
River catchment management planning, the achievement of statutory water quality objectives and compliance with EC directives will all require integrated river basin management. The environment committee itself expresses a strong preference for it to continue; yet it recommends breaking up some of the vital components. I do not believe that there is anything to be gained by stripping the pollution control function from other river management functions. Quite the contrary, I believe that much will be lost.
I shall now move rapidly downstream to the issue of our estuaries and coasts. There is no proposal by government to make the new environment agency responsible for regulating inshore marine pollution, despite the fact that effective management of our coasts, and in particular our estuaries, as the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, emphasised, is required urgently. I quote from the Land Ocean Interaction Study Science Plan published last month by the National Environmental Research Council:
"A piecemeal approach to the understanding and management of the coastal zone is no longer acceptable; effective management requires an understanding of how its ecosystems and physical regimes work and interact".
That plan identifies that effective pollution control in our estuaries and coastal zones is just not possible if it is not linked to the control of pollutants entering into land waters. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, said, there is at present no integrated management of the coastal zone, let alone any attempt to manage inland waters, estuaries and the coastal zone as a single resource. There is not even a national coastal management.
Although the Government are preparing a guidance paper, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady White, for all local authorities on coastal zone issues, it is unlikely to address the problems of conflict between agencies which work without the aid of a common plan. When will government produce a national coastal strategy to guide authorities and industry on the use of our coasts, and who will oversee it?
We are at a watershed. There is a need for a fully integrated environment agency. As the Prime Minister said:
"It is right that the integrity and indivisibility of the environment should be reflected in a unified agency".
I believe that the correct way forward is to integrate regulation and management throughout the water

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environment and that what is needed is not merely a pollution control agency but an agency for environmental protection and enhancement.
7.9 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, the Motion includes the word "beaches", and I wish to draw attention to a special problem which affects the North East in particular but which is seen also in other parts of the country. The problem arises from the dumping into the sea of coal waste from local pits, much of which returns to the beaches.
Those of us who have lived in the North East remember long stretches of golden sands, the playground of generations of families, which are now black deserts. Dozens of communities are paying the price of providing coal for the nation, quite apart from the more serious cost in the loss of life and limb and in lung diseases which occur through the mining of coal.
It is more than 20 years since I first raised the matter in another place. Here we are, all these years and 14 ministerial visits later, with the position unchanged. I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, is to reply to the debate tonight. Who knows? With her great energy and industry, we may see her set the ball rolling towards a final solution to the problem.
There are two basic problems: first, who is to pay for cleaning up such devastation; and secondly, how is it to be done? The principle of payment is at least clear under present policy. We are told that the polluter must pay. In this case, the villain is British Coal and, as Shakespeare said, "There's the rub". British Coal says it cannot afford to pay and if it is forced to do so it will mean the closure of yet more pits. I need hardly remind your Lordships that dozens of pits have already been closed and are still being closed with the loss of thousands of jobs and the destruction of scores of mining communities. I believe that the solution to this aspect of the problem is that the direct provision of government money is fully justified. I fail to see why some areas of the country should pay such a price for an operation which is essentially national in character.
The other problem as to how the cleaning up is to be done appears to be more difficult. I say "appears" because I am continually puzzled by the fact that it has been solved in other countries. I cannot believe that the conditions in this country are so different from those elsewhere that similar action cannot be taken here.
Some of your Lordships, I am sure, are asking why we should not fill up all the big holes in the ground that we see when we travel around the country. All the holes in the North East were filled up long ago, but again the cost of transporting thousands of tons of waste by road—and some of it also by rail—is high, to say nothing of all those lorries causing social unrest and irritation with their constant rumbling throughout the region.
Seven years ago an attempt was made to solve the problem with a new technique. The waste was pulverised and pumped with water out to sea. The intention was that the waste would be dumped so far
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out that because of the nature of its content it would not come back on to the beaches. That was a laudable attempt, but it failed for a number of technical reasons. Thus, once again no progress was made. Perhaps I should mention that there were also protests from conservationists who said that marine life was being affected. It was a legitimate objection and it added to the difficulties.
In a short debate such as this, it is not possible to go into greater detail on what many people in the North East regard as a great and intolerable injustice. I have no doubt that the biggest obstacle to progress is a lack of will by governments of both parties to tackle the problem seriously. Money and technical know-how are, as I hope I have made clear, essential ingredients in the solution. But with a determined government there is no doubt that the beaches will be at least as good as those of Bournemouth, Torquay and all the other seaside areas that have had the good fortune to escape the worst features of our industrial history.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, it was for me a particular pleasure to hear the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Monteagle because I knew him long before he knew me. I was a humble and hard-pressed recruit at the Guards depot at Caterham when he was a young junior officer. To me he was a figure of infinite seniority and distinction. His maiden speech has reinforced that image.
We are fortunate that the noble Baroness introduced the Motion today. It is a subject on which many of us feel passionately. I wish to deal primarily with the heritage coast. We are all aware that once the beauty of our coast is lost it is difficult, if not impossible, to get it back again. I believe that we in Britain have much to teach the rest of Europe. We lead the way in many aspects of coastal conservation.
However, much more remains to be done. Our most sensitive coast is usually too precious to be left in private or local authority hands, for the simple reason that the pressures for commercial development are hard to resist. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, said. At home in Suffolk we share the same rivers and I hope that some of his suggestions will be introduced in the next Parliament.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, referred to the work of the National Trust and the tremendous contribution which Enterprise Neptune has made. I believe that the original target in 1965 was to bring 900 miles of the best coastline into protective ownership and 530 miles has already been secured. I hope it will not be long before Orfordness in Suffolk is added as a jewel to Neptune's crown. Another point important to us in East Anglia is the future of the Iken Cliffs. If they become available I hope Neptune will be able to take them over. I have no reason to believe that this is imminent but we must not miss chances. Government and statutory agencies must assist and support the National Trust with this splendid work.
Secondly, I wish to refer to the concept of Heritage Coast about which the noble Baroness, Lady White, spoke. I must declare an interest as a countryside

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commissioner. Heritage Coast is a designation whose history started in 1966, chronologically with Enterprise Neptune, although it took some time to get under way. It was not until Mr. Heath's government in 1972 that it was launched. Now, 927 miles, 34 per cent, of the coast of England and Wales, is designated as Heritage Coast. That must mean more than mere designation. We must move further forward from pure conservation as far as possible towards restoration. The points about which the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, spoke are appropriate to it.
This project is being carried forward to some extent by the Heritage Coast Forum. I feel some parenthood towards it because it came out of the 1988 Dartington heritage coast conference which I had the honour to chair. The Heritage Coast Forum is now chaired by a good friend of many of us, Maldwin Drummond, who is particularly well qualified for the job. It is an independent standing body and carries forward our cause.
I wish to say a word about a particular problem on the coast —litter. There is only one way to deal with it, and that is to pick it up. The new legislation imposes fresh and welcome obligations to do this, but often it is felt that the occasional picking up is enough. Litter should be picked up as often as is necessary. Picking up litter from the coast is a therapeutic occupation. I enjoy it greatly and recommend it to your Lordships. Where noble Lords are not available, it could be part of the community service programme for offenders. They could benefit as much as the coast.
We could teach Europe a great deal about coastal protection. Many noble Lords will be familiar with the environmental degradation which has occurred in Italy, France—in my opinion, the Cote d'Azur has been totally ruined—and in Greece. It is disappointing that the socialist government that was in power in Greece did not concern itself more with these matters and little progress was made during that era. One might have expected more action from a socialist government. Britain's heritage coast is part of Europe's heritage, and Europe's coast is part of the world's heritage. That is a flag we must carry forward.
I must refer to water supplies and the effect that over-abstraction of underground water supplies is having on our rivers and on our trees. In the early 1980s the world conservation strategy was launched. It was based on the concept of sustainable development. That must mean that water needs are met from the storage of surface water which would otherwise run into the sea in winter. There will be a limit to the amount of storage capability in some parts of England, particularly in the South East and in East Anglia. I do not favour the idea of a water grid as I do not think it is right to pipe water from the North West to the South East. The North West needs its water supplies to encourage development. If I lived in the North West, I would greatly resent my water supplies, which constitute a useful asset for development, being taken away to facilitate more development in the South East. The right answer is for those areas that have the water to take advantage of those supplies to encourage local development. Water is crucial for the economic development of this country.
7.21 p.m.
Lord Ashburton: My Lords, these are fascinating and important topics that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, has brought forward for us to discuss. Like many other noble Lords, I am sure the only criticism I could make is that such a wide field is covered that we cannot possibly do justice to it in a two-hour debate. Nor, indeed, can one in the allotted span of six minutes do more than make a very few points. Inevitably the points I make will to some extent be repetitive.
It may help if I say where I, as it were, come from in this whole field. I was brought up in the country and from an early age was interested in and indeed influenced in the direction of being an amateur of nature in the broadest sense. More specifically, I am also a keen fisherman and therefore vitally interested in the variability and sustainability of water flows. As I live near Winchester on the chalk, the problems of that kind of area are most familiar to me and the aggregation of these interests with farming inevitably has sharpened and concentrated my ideas on environmental questions.
Plenty of water normally falls on these islands to satisfy even the growing demands of domestic, industrial and commercial consumers without resort to desalination or the more fanciful idea that is occasionally put forward of towing icebergs here to use as they melt. The potential growth of water demand is, however, considerable and this has of course to be taken into account. The task we have is quite simply put. It is that of trapping enough of the water before it runs off into the sea and conserving enough in reservoirs to even out the natural variability of flows.
Reservoirs are of two kinds—man-made and natural. Natural reservoirs are either lakes or the underground aquifers found in the chalk and limestone areas of the country. Reservoirs sited in popular areas are of great recreational use, providing of course sailing, fishing and water skiing, not to mention the use of jet skis—the bane of the life of the noble Lord, Lord Bridges. If properly landscaped, reservoirs can prove to be marvellous wildlife refuges. But they need to be watertight for the sake of efficiency and therefore rely on suitable rock and/or soil conformation. It is no good, for example, damming a chalk valley. In any case, though reservoirs once constructed are normally regarded as an asset to a neighbourhood, new planning permissions can and will be vigorously fought. Not in my backyard is a perfectly legitimate though perhaps somewhat over-denigrated human reaction which every one of us at times feels.
Chalk aquifers are of course ideal reservoirs. They are already there; they are out of sight and they produce on the whole extremely pure and plentiful water. It is small wonder therefore that in the past so many of the chalk aquifers of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire were over-exploited to the extent that their streams have either become trickles or in some cases ceased to exist at all.
In my part of the world the aquifers are still being tapped but newer schemes involving pumping water

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from the aquifers at times of acute shortage are now being instituted. These new schemes do not involve piping the water away from the headwaters of the rivers where the best aquifers naturally occur direct to the consumer but rather running the pumped water down the water courses themselves to where abstraction normally takes place. That is not always, I regret to say, as near the tidal limits as one would hope.
I should like here to pay tribute to the work of the National Rivers Authority for the remarkable research it put into these schemes before they were implemented. The NRA undertook the most comprehensive and detailed studies of hydrographic and hydrological data and the drilling of boreholes to establish the facts including—this is most vital—the speed of refilling of the aquifers from varying levels of rain. The NRA has also undertaken the most interesting surveys of aquatic and riparian flora and fauna under varying conditions over periods long enough in terms of years to give us a whole new scientific and factual view of phenomena we could only surmise about before. Undertakings were given not to use these schemes if the aquifers were showing, through constant monitoring, signs of being deplenished permanently.
But once installed these schemes which help to preserve and in some cases even enhance the ecology and environment of the streams, and both rural and —this is important—urban riparian areas, are, I fear, a potential Achilles' heel. I hope I am wrong but water demand from those who live away from rivers involves many more votes than those of the people who live along their banks. Undertakings given in good faith will in extremis succumb to pressure and the story of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire could be repeated.
At this moment we are experiencing an extraordinary run of low rainfall years and some streams are lower than they have ever been before. This run of dry years is not unprecedented in the period since rainfall records have been kept but it is certainly consistent with possible climatic change, and if this were to prove to be the case we could have real problems.
I have concentrated on the problems of the chalk land because I have experience of this, but all over the country the provision of water is of vital national importance. I am often surprised at the way people seem to regard water as something which should be free at the point of sale and available in unlimited quantity for every purpose. I am also surprised that people often regard climatic change, in particular higher temperatures and lower rainfall, as an unqualified boon.
At some stage I am sure we are going to have to face up to the construction of a national water grid. In anticipation of this need I believe we should be researching with urgency and with all the resources necessary the likely demands for water over the longer term, the likely or at least the possible climatic changes which may occur and then the design and the costs of a national water grid. At the same time there should be every attempt to make sure that the public realise
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that water is an expensive commodity and is not to be taken for granted. There are, after all, many places in the world, and not just the oil producing areas of the Gulf, where water costs a lot more than oil.
7.28 p.m.
Lord Addington: My Lords, as often happens when one speaks towards the end of a debate, much of what one wanted to say has already been said. In this case other noble Lords have spoken on this subject better than I could have done. Therefore I shall try to avoid repeating their points.
I feel rather put upon because I am followed by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, who knows far more about this subject than I could ever dream of knowing. So I shall restrict my remarks to a few general points. As regards all matters of conservation I am always struck by the fact that there are virtually no wild areas left in this country. Man has been living on this island at too great a density of population to have left any habitat in anything like its natural state. Indeed, when people talk about our wild countryside and wild animals and birds I find that I have to remind them that the natural condition of Great Britain is a large forest and that we cannot go back.
The same is true of our river system. The wetlands which provided the sponge and water reserve for most of our rivers have largely disappeared through land reclamation. That process has been taking place since Roman times. We are continuing to remove a natural wildlife habitat. Once one removes the habitat of any species of wildlife one has effectively destroyed that species far more effectively than by any form of hunting. Not only has one destroyed the animal; one has also removed any chance of its being able to reproduce or even of allowing a small population to continue or expand. Therefore, when we consider our coastal areas and river banks and the wetlands alongside them emphasis should be placed on their preservation because they represent a reserve bank for our natural wildlife.
In addition, the wetlands of this country have traditionally provided the water reserve for our rivers. Much has already been said about the fact that we are taking far too much water out of our rivers and lakes, and even the reservoirs which we have created, especially when we have low rainfall. As the noble Lord, Lord Ashburton, said, low rainfall is not totally new but it may be becoming more common. Unless we are prepared to take positive action—and as we have changed our environment so much we must take positive action, since we cannot leave nature to repair itself because we have changed it too much to allow it to do so—we shall continue to experience those problems.
We are using our water system far more than we have in the past, for divers reasons. We have used it as a waste disposal system in our industrial progress, and that has led to damage. We also indulge in practices such as fish farming. On the face of it that would appear to be an environmentally friendly process. However, a river system, like land, can become exhausted if it is over-used. Fish farming produces

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effluent from the fish, which are kept in large densities. That tends to kill off the life in rivers due to the growth of algae which results from the increase in nutrients.
If crop rotation is the answer to land exhaustion, surely something similar should be applied to rivers if we are not ultimately to destroy them and make them unsuitable for the fish we grow in them. Fish farming is only a short-term project. Something on those lines must be encouraged. Within the confines of privately-owned rivers it is difficult to see how that can be done unless some new system can be worked out. I can offer no overall solution other than suggesting that the Government bring together the people responsible and make them discuss the problem urgently.
Another problem which has not yet been covered in the debate and on which I hope the Minister can provide an answer concerns the marine pollution control unit within the Department of Transport which responds to oil incidents. Apparently the unit can deal with a 14,000-tonne oil spill at sea within a 48-hour period. That is an impressive figure, I agree. Fourteen thousand tonnes of oil seems to be a great deal to be dealt with in that period. However, the "Exxon Valdez" distributed over 300,000 tonnes. More than 232,000 tonnes of oil were spilt by the "Amoco Cadiz". Will the Government ensure that tanker routes are strictly controlled and avoid sensitive coastal areas and that adequate clean-up facilities are provided to deal with a major spill? That is a matter which should be looked into and I shall be interested to hear whether they have any plans.
I see that my time is rapidly running out. All of us who are involved are going to have to pick up the cheque for the sins of our past. That is not a political point. It is something that we had not realised until now. Unless we adopt an aggressive and positive approach to the problems we shall not be able to save the environment we have today.
7.34 p.m.
Lord Crickhowell: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken that we have to take a vigorous approach to tackle the inherited problems of the past. Speaking as Chairman of the National Rivers Authority, I have to obey the Addison Rules, which means that I can leave the Minister to reply to any criticisms of the NRA that have been made during the course of the debate. I hope that she will vigorously defend our prosecution policy, for example. However, I can make a contribution to the general subject under discussion. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, for enabling me to make a few observations this evening.
It is a great pleasure to congratulate my noble friend Lord Monteagle of Brandon, who referred specifically and in some detail to the acute problem of water resources. I hope that he will study the discussion document on water resources development strategy which, as it happens, was published only this morning. That document forms part of the process of preparing a national water strategy in which the NRA
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is engaged. That will take some time because it is a major task, but it is under way and a great deal of work is being put into it.
In introducing the debate the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, said that Britain was unique. That is true, but I hope that we shall stop saying that we are uniquely bad. I was delighted when David Bellamy, when helping to launch an environmental project earlier this week, emphasised that we are by no means the dirty man of Europe. That is a message which needs to be repeated. If politicians and quango chiefs are not believed, perhaps David Bellamy will be. In some ways I believe that we are uniquely good. That is the case in the thoroughness of our supervisory arrangements and public supply of information. I wish that the rest of Europe was as good.
I continue to believe that the Water Act was one of the most important environmental measures ever passed in this country. The fact that the 1990 survey shows some disappointing results does not provide contradictory evidence because it reported on the period prior to the implementation of the new Act and does not give a picture of the position that will emerge over the next five years.
I believe that with the Water Act and the introduction of integrated pollution control we are in pole position in Europe. If we get the Environmental Protection Act right then we shall probably be better equipped than any other country in Europe to deal with the very great problems. We have to get it right and my noble friend Lord Mills was absolutely correct in what he had to say on the subject and on the need to aim not just at pollution control but at the enhancement and protection of the environment. Those were the Prime Minister's words when he announced the new Environment Agency, and that means an integrated approach. That approach is also necessary if we are to achieve the objectives of the draft ecological directive which is now being prepared in Europe.
Great progress has and is being made. Enormous investment is now under way. That is not just the £28 billion over 10 years which the water industry is undertaking or the striking improvement in operational practice in that industry since it came under the supervisory arrangements introduced by the Water Act but includes the very substantial investment now being undertaken by industry in general. However, in a sense all that has been aimed at achieving standards set in the past. It is only this year that we shall begin the introduction of the system of water quality objectives, again referred to by my noble friend Lord Mills, which will enable us to balance our use objective with the costs and practicality of the various options.
In setting those water quality objectives we must concern ourselves not just with point-source discharges but with the equally important problem of diffuse pollution. That is in part, but only in part, agricultural pollution and also pollution from storage of waste, discharge of waste from many farms and the serious problem of contaminated land. Indeed, we shall have to address the problem of contaminated land and mines very seriously in the period ahead.

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There has been a great deal of reference to drought, and drought without parallel in modern times in the South and East, particularly affecting the chalk aquifers. I said that we are preparing a water strategy, working with the other providers of water resources. But in the short term we shall have to get through some very difficult periods. We shall face some very difficult problems this summer.
Partly to help tackle the acute problems of some of our rivers, the NRA will introduce a moratorium on consent to licensed abstractions on those rivers which are under very severe stress as a result of the drought. There will have to be a wait before consents will be granted. I am sure that that must be right when particular rivers are under severe stress.
I agree with everyone who says that water is a valuable resource. People will have to pay for it, including the cost of protecting the environment. I also agree with much that has been said about the need to improve our coastal protection arrangements. There is an enormous job to be done. Great progress has been made in recent years and I hope that soon we shall see more rivers like the Tyne, which 10 years ago was a dead river and is now the best salmon river in England. I hope that we shall see many more rivers in the future giving evidence of the improvement that is taking place.
7.41 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, this has been a good and extremely informative debate. Many noble Lords have contributed from their special expertise. We are indebted to my noble friend Lady Robson for her suggestion of this topic for our discussion today and for the introduction she gave to it.
The whole question of the measurement of pollution and standards of our rivers was dealt with some five or six years ago when I was a member of Sub-committee F (the environmental sub-committee dealing with European legislation). I am not entirely certain whether the committee is still dealing with it. I was never able to fathom—particularly when we had a slight disagreement with most of the Continental countries, which had different problems from ours, as the noble Baroness said—why we did not enter much more into co-operation with the Republic of Ireland, which is the other country in the European Community that faces almost exactly the same problems and equally can collaborate with us in finding the cures.
I was very interested that the noble Lord, Lord Monteagle, in his valuable maiden speech raised the subject of Ireland and made a comparison. We can do rather more to co-operate than we have done in the past.
It is part of my duty in winding up the debate from this Bench to pick up some of the themes that have been mentioned. However, I shall start with an issue that has not been raised. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Grey is not here. Owing to ill health he was unable to make the speech that he had planned. I had the pleasure of reading the speech that he would have made. It was extremely useful and I should like
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to read out just one paragraph from it. It raised a point whose particular application, although touched on by my noble friend Lord Addington, has not been mentioned. He said:
"The sad effect of pollution is a steadying decline in otters. Otters used to be common throughout the British Isles but are now restricted to the more rural areas of the west country, Wales, Northumbria and Scotland. Today it is estimated that there are only 15,000 otters left in Britain. The situation in Devon is grave. The Torridge and the Taw rivers are so polluted with PCB chemicals that the otter is unable to breed and many of the animals which still are there will be barren". That is just one more instance of the many illustrations that have been given in the debate today.
Another instance concerns coastal protection. My honourable friend in another place, Mr. Alan Beith, the Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed, has been leading a campaign, which is in the interests of most of the local people, for the preservation of Druridge Bay. Because of agreements entered into 30 years years ago—how many of our problems stem from such agreements of 30 years ago!—Druridge Bay is losing all its sand. Its sand is literally being carted away. The whole of the area is being ruined by an extraction policy about which apparently nothing can be done.
Any number of points have been made and many noble Lords have raised one that I should like particularly to draw to your Lordships' attention; namely, the growing staging of oak trees all over the South of England as the water table falls. That can be seen any day of the week in Richmond Park only half an hour from Westminster.
These topics above all things need greater co-ordination. It is good to know that much has been done, and the noble Lord who has just spoken brought us some rather cheering news. But there is a need for greater co-ordination in the fight against deterioration. We must be sure to foresee what is likely to be a threat in the immediate future so that the generations to come do not look back—as we look back to 30, 40, 60 or 80 years ago—and say that all their problems were laid up for them by their grandfathers who did nothing to avoid them and were wasteful in the extreme. We are aware of the dangers. It is up to us to tackle them.
It is extremely important that all governments— this Government and any future government—take great care to differentiate between borrowing for current expenditure and borrowing for capital expenditure. We need great investment in capital expenditure.
7.48 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on her choice of subject—but it is impossible to deal with it in six minutes. Therefore I must be very selective. This afternoon we have had some extremely interesting speeches, not least the one made by the noble Lord, Lord Monteagle. I hope that we shall not have to wait for long before he speaks again.
I shall not enter the argument, despite the bait dangled in front of me by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, about the benefits of who owns the industry at the moment. Whoever controls the industry, the same problems remain to be faced. First,

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there is the problem of pollution, about which so many noble Lords have spoken this afternoon. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, illustrated very well that it is not thought to be under control.
I am a supporter of the NRA. It is doing an excellent job. Despite that, we have to face the fact that in 1980 there were 12,500 incidents of pollution recorded, and by 1990 that figure had risen to 28,143. Some of that undoubtedly will be due to increased reporting, but it is still a horrific total. Some of the watchdog organisations believe that the real figure is still higher. Clearly, there is a need for stronger statutory control on discharges and for better policing. I was interested to hear the noble Viscount, Lord Mills, setting out the controls that he hopes will be available to us in future. If those controls were acted upon, they would go a long way towards improving the situation.
However, high pollution levels are exacerbated by lower rainfall, especially in the South and East, where we face severe shortages this summer. I live in Cambridge where the situation is quite desperate. The shortages are made worse by a lack of will to control abstractions or perhaps the lack of facility for doing so, and by the old problem of leaking water mains. The noble Baroness referred to that in her introduction. Between 25 per cent, and 30 per cent, of all treated water is lost between the treatment works and the consumer. Despite the fact that modern technology allows rapid identification of areas of leakage, and despite new techniques for pipe laying and renewal, it seems that the industry has not succeeded in reducing that percentage. I remember drawing the attention of the House to the same figures in 1986 when we first discussed privatisation of the water industry.
Leakage of treated water also means wastage of chemicals and energy used in the treatment. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, said that we must economise, as did the noble Lord, Lord Monteagle. We would have to examine that. It is a subject for a debate in itself because so much could be done to reduce our water demands. But failure to tackle those problems has led to a reduction of flow in many of our rivers in the South and East with disastrous effects for wildlife, angling and other water-based recreations including quiet enjoyment of the river bank.
Much has been said about estuaries and coastal areas. United Kingdom estuaries are biologically rich and remain ice free in winter. They have become therefore internationally important in terms of bird conservation. As a member of the council of the RSPB, I hope that I shall be forgiven for raising the matter in this context. In March 1990 at the last North Sea ministerial conference, the United Kingdom Government committed themselves to the "wise use" of our coasts. However, a recent survey by the RSPB revealed that 80 of Britain's estuaries faced some threat, and 30 of them faced permanent damage. The noble Lord, Lord Bridges, has listed the damages which threaten those estuaries. I shall not use my time in listing them again. But clearly we need to look more closely at what we are doing.
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Many areas are designated sites of special scientific interest. However, as we have discussed on so many occasions, that designation does not protect the site against damage. Now that the European Community's habitat directive has finally been agreed, and will be published in April, with two years for implementation, the Wildlife and Countryside Act will need to be amended to comply with the directive.
I shall have to put this question in these terms in view of the announcement made today. Will a future Conservative Government take action to identify those coastal and marine areas requiring protection under the new EC directive? What new measures would be introduced to protect such areas? English Nature has recently secured £250,000 to assist local authorities in coastal and estuarine areas in developing policies which are sympathetic to nature conservation. Would a future Conservative Government make sure that the same provision was made in Scotland and Wales? It is important that the same criteria are applied in all three countries.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, said that six or seven departments were involved with coastal planning. In fact, 33 government departments, statutory bodies and agencies have a finger in the pie. I have to repeat to the noble Baroness who will respond for the Government my constant plea: that the Government will consider again the need for a coherent coastal management policy because we still do not have one despite all the reassuring words stated in the past. If Shetland and Orkney can do it, surely we should be able to apply their criteria to the remainder of the United Kingdom.
I wish that there were more time to discuss what has been said today. My noble friend Lord Dormand of Easington referred to beaches. My noble friend Lady White had much to say about heritage coasts. Both subjects need to be examined. I cannot do so in six minutes. I support the Motion.
7.55 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, we are all up against time constraints today. I therefore do not believe that I can do justice to what has been not only an important subject but an interesting debate. We are all grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, for introducing the debate. Two hours is not long enough. I am grateful also to my noble friend Lord Monteagle of Brandon. We have waited 45 years for that speech. It was well worth waiting for. However, he left us in no doubt that he was far from being a fool. His contribution to the debate today was valuable and we implore him not to leave it too long before we hear from him again.
Living on a densely-populated island, it is inevitable that water plays a significant part in our national life. We expect a lot. We depend on rivers not only for drinking water supply, and for agricultural abstraction, but also as an inevitable disposal route for effluents. To all of us, as individuals, clean and wholesome water for everyday use is vital. We rightly expect our rivers and coastal waters to be clean, litter free and suitable for fishing and recreation. But we all

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like to think that water will always be available, in unlimited quantities, on tap—however much we may moan when it rains. It is therefore important that our water resources are effectively managed to meet all the uses that need to be made of them.
The Government are committed to securing lasting improvements in water quality, wherever they are needed, and to improved management of water resources, and has made a number of important changes over the past few years to achieve this. A cornerstone of our policy, contained in the 1989 Water Act (now consolidated into the 1991 Water Resources and Water Industry Acts), was the establishment of a separate and independent environmental regulator, concerned with all aspects of water problems throughout the whole of England and Wales. Accordingly, the Government set up the National Rivers Authority, in 1989. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Crickhowell on the work that he has done with that body.
One of the NRA's first major tasks was to review the situation which it inherited. The results of its 1990 river quality survey, published last December, provide an important baseline for the drawing up of objectives and the NRA's work in improving water quality. We are naturally disappointed that the results showed a small net deterioration in river quality since 1985. However, the survey was too soon to reflect the impact of water privatisation or the success of the NRA. The NRA attributed a large part of the small net overall change to the effects of drought, and changes in survey methods. And let us remember that around 90 per cent, of rivers in England and Wales remain of good or fair quality—suitable for drinking water supply after treatment and supporting fisheries. This compares with an average of around 75 per cent, throughout the European Community for rivers of broadly comparable quality. No other EC country betters the UK's position on river quality.
The NRA has been working to develop strategies for tackling pollution, and to chart its priorities for action. It has already published reviews covering the discharge consent system, blue-green algae, river quality, bathing waters, farm wastes, groundwater protection, and pollution incidents. More work of a similar kind is under way.
The Government have given the NRA wide powers to set and to review the standards set for discharges, to seek improvements, to take samples and to bring prosecutions where standards are not met. Only recently we gave the NRA power to secure fines of up to £20,000 in magistrates' courts. And the NRA can and does seek heavier fine in higher courts.
The number of successful prosecutions brought by the NRA has shown a marked increase. It was up by 42 per cent, from the NRA's first to its second year in business; a clear reflection of its commitment to tough and effective regulation of water quality. We also gave the NRA the powers to clean up after pollution and to recover costs. These are a direct reflection of the polluter pays principle and can be particularly effective.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, appeared to agree that growing environmental awareness has in part accounted for the increase. The NRA seeks to prosecute all those responsible for major pollution incidents. Its recent report indicates that nationally 43 per cent, of major incidents were successfully prosecuted in the same year. The figures show a significant rise in the number of prosecutions brought by the NRA.
The Government have also ensured that the water industry is investing to meet higher standards. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, said that we need more investment. I am happy to say that some £28 billion will be spent until the turn of the century on improvements, and some £14 billion will be for improved sewage disposal. Those sums were unthinkable under the old system of a state controlled water industry. Already a steady improvement is apparent in the performance of sewage treatment works. Non-compliance with long-term consent conditions was down to 12 per cent, in 1990 from 23 per cent, in 1986. We are also tackling farm pollution.
I have so far spoken largely about rivers. It is commonplace, even fashionable, to play down British achievement. If so, may I for a moment be thoroughly un-British and say a few positive things about bathing water quality. Monitoring of bathing waters under what is probably the most comprehensive sampling regime of any member state shows the dramatic improvements that have been made in recent years. In 1986, 51 per cent, of identified waters complied with the bathing water directive's coliform bacteria standards. Last year compliance had risen to 76 per cent. This is a real and positive achievement. By 1995 all but a handful of waters will have achieved compliance.
Compliance is assessed using the mandatory standard of total and faecal coliforms. That is the most usual basis for assessment and it is used by the Commission. Information on other parameters which are monitored is contained in a detailed summary placed each year in the Library and sent to the Commission. Informed opinion regards the enterovirus standard as unrealistic and meaningless. There will always be year-to-year variations in quality which reflect differences in year-to-year weather conditions.
We are not complacent—more needs to be done. Many of our old-established resorts have relied for too long on sewage disposal arrangements considered acceptable years ago but no longer capable of meeting the standards now expected. Our objective is to bring all the remaining non-compliant waters up to standard as quickly as possible. By 1995 we will have achieved this for all but a handful of waters. Many of the improvement schemes have been enhanced to include sewage treatment fully in accordance with UK policy to phase out discharge of untreated sewage to coastal waters and to meet the requirements of the urban waste water treatment directive, which we adopted last year well inside the timetable that it sets. This is a comprehensive and ambitious programme

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estimated to cost more than £2 billion —expenditure that it would have been difficult to contemplate a few years ago.
The directive lays down minimum standards for the provision of sewerage systems and sewage treatment, and its main impact in the UK will be with respect to coastal discharges. But it is also important for the quality of surface freshwaters. We announced earlier today the publication of a consultation paper outlining the Government's proposals in England and Wales for identifying sensitive and less-sensitive areas for the purpose of this directive, and "polluted waters" for the purpose of the nitrate directive which we adopted last December. As far as we are aware the UK is the first member state to consult publicly on the way we intend to implement these directives. This demonstrates our commitment to openness in environmental decision-making and to the proper implementation of these directives, which will make an important contribution to improving our environment.
I have set out the many things that the Government are already doing to secure better water quality. We are determined to do still more in the future. We have provided for a statutory framework of water quality objectives to be set by the Secretary of State within which the NRA will work. These will extend the present coverage of informal objectives to include for the first time coastal waters, lakes and groundwaters and will provide us with a powerful new weapon for achieving sustained, programmed improvements in water quality wherever they are needed. Water quality objectives will now be determined through an open public procedure of consultation; they will specify clear, unambiguous standards and the timescale for achieving them.
The NRA set out its proposals for a new system for classifying water quality in a detailed consultation paper published last December. We look forward to hearing from the NRA the results of this consultation process and will publish formal proposals later this year.
Many of those who have spoken this evening have expressed concern about the possibility of a widespread drought this summer and the implications in eastern England. The dry weather that we are experiencing is exceptional; rainfall records are being written afresh as the spell of below average rainfall continues. In fact, 1989 was the driest year since 1976; the 13-month period to March 1991 was the third driest this century. The period from November 1988 to February 1992 was the driest for over 200 years in the Anglian region, and so on.
It is just possible that abundant rain in the next few months will enable us to get through the summer without serious difficulties. But we cannot rely on it and must not be complacent. Nor can we rely on the whingers who complain that it is raining yet again.
The NRA and the water companies have the primary role in dealing with water shortages. Under Section 37 of the Water Industry Act 1991, the companies must develop and maintain an efficient and economical system of water supply in their areas. It is they who must in the first instance judge what
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measures are needed to deal with immediate water shortages. The NRA has the longer-term role of conserving, re-distributing and otherwise augmenting water resources in England and Wales. I commend its publication today.
But with an abnormal situation in prospect we have asked our officials to meet with the NRA and the water companies to discuss the special procedures and contingency arrangements which need to be made.
The measures available include hose pipe bans, reducing leakage—I have noted all that was said about that—improving inter-linkages between supply systems, and applying to the Secretary of State for the Environment for drought orders. All these are the responsibility of the water companies. For its part the NRA exercises control over spray irrigation and can also help where it owns and manages resources such as the Trent-Witham-Ancholme scheme. The NRA has been liaising with those holding abstraction licences in the South East to discuss what measures can be taken.
It is important too to get over to the public the message that we need to conserve water and not waste it. Too many people in this country believe that because water falls from heaven it ought to be free. That belief ignores the substantial raft of provisions and the vast industry that must be put in place to make the water drinkable. I say to people that it falls from heaven as in abundance in Pakistan but in its undrinkable form kills. We need the industry to ensure that the water that we drink is safe. But the message must go out from Parliament because it has the primary responsibility for that education.
The department is being kept fully informed of the steps being taken so that my officials have a full overview of the situation. The NRA and the water companies are fully aware of their responsibilities and are co-operating fully with my officials. This will continue as necessary while the situation develops.
My noble friend Lord Crickhowell was anxious about abandoned mines and contaminated land. They represent a most serious issue. We recognise that although they are not a major problem nationally, they present particular difficulties. The NRA is studying the extent of the problems as part of its continuing review process for pollution problems. We are also looking at the practical and financial problems which are raised.
The noble Lord, Lord Ashburton, is anxious about the siting of reservoirs. There is an appropriate framework of planning control for approving the siting of reservoirs for which the National Rivers Authority is a statutory consultee. The strategy for the future has been discussed in a report published today by the NRA. Of course, the water grid is one option but it is regarded as rather expensive. That was mentioned also by my noble friend Lord Marlesford and the noble Lord, Lord Bridges. They served to illustrate that there are varying views about the water grid option but I am sure that their views will be valued in consultation on the issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Bridges, expressed a view about the use of jet skis in estuaries. I recognise the anxieties generated by the use of jet skis. One function of coastal zone management, particularly in sensitive

1401
locations, is to identify appropriate recreational uses and, where necessary, to seek controls through the use of by-laws.
The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, asked a number of questions about coastal zone management and heritage coasts, as did my noble friend Lord Marlesford and other noble Lords. Today the DoE is publishing for consultation a draft planning policy guidance note on coastal zone planning. The PPG strengthens our commitment to the protection of coastlines and brings up to date advice on coastal planning. It too commends to local authorities and others the value of the heritage coast model. We are also promoting regional coastal groups, including local authorities and the NRA, which examine regional coast defence needs. However, we do not believe that a single coastal zone management unit, the NRA or any other body, could successfully tackle all coastal issues. We need collaboration and co-ordination of all the agencies involved.
The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, asked whether the Government would take action to identify coastal and marine areas requiring protection under the habitats directive. The Government are fully committed to implementing the directive which allows member states three years in which to draw up a national list of sites. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the country agencies for nature conservation are considering the criteria for selection contained in the directive and how they should be applied in detail in the United Kingdom. They will make recommendations to the Government.
On the Scotland, England and Wales question, all three country councils have power to pay grant to any person, including a local authority, who spends money on nature conservation. The total grant in aid provision for the three bodies in 1992–93 is £88.5 million, an increase of 19.8 per cent, over the current year. The Government consider that to be an adequate sum for the fulfilment of all the bodies' functions, including the grant giving powers.
If there were more time, I should like to go into how much work the water companies are doing on leakage control. Whenever they go under ground, for whatever reason, they address the issue of putting in new pipes. A great deal of new material and technology is being used to that end. However, a water leakage of 25 per cent, to 30 per cent, is unacceptable and that problem must be addressed.
Wholesale metering has been mentioned. That is undoubtedly an important option for conservation in the use of water. That forms one option in the document. I have no doubt that noble Lords will look at that. It is not a straightforward matter but it should be considered as one of a range of options. The department has commissioned a joint survey with Ofwat on the impact of compulsory water metering. That report is due later this year.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, is anxious about resources. The NRA's actions have shown that the fears of the worst doubters before its establishment are entirely groundless. We are firmly committed to ensuring that the NRA is able to carry out its role as
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a strong and effective regulator. The number of staff involved in pollution control has continued to increase by 38 per cent, since its establishment. The combination of grant in aid and income from discharges enables the NRA to increase expenditure in its core environmental functions from less than £150 million in 1990–91 to over £180 million in 1991–92 and around £200 million in 1992–93. In particular, expenditure on pollution control is budgeted to increase by 15 per cent, between 1991–92 and 1992–93.
My noble friend Lord Mills mentioned the single agency. That will be a major step forward. The agency will be able to develop a consistent and cohesive approach to environmental protection. It will be able to develop greater expertise and authority than the current arrangements allow. Above all, it will be a powerful voice in influencing the adoption of better environmental standards and practice.
The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, asked what incentives water companies have to encourage economy. In assessing the K factor, pass through costs are allowed for. We must link in the minds of people the cost of those improvements. That must be part of the downward pressure on bringing that message to bear.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dormand of Easington, for bringing to our notice the particular problem of coal discharges on the Northumbrian beaches. As he points out, we are committed to the general principle that wherever possible the polluter, and not the taxpayer, pays. However, that is clearly a long-standing and difficult problem which I shall look into. I shall write further on that matter to the noble Lord.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, is anxious about controls on tanker routes. He referred to the marine pollution unit. He rightly recognises the important measures taken by the Secretary of State responsible for transport both to provide navigational controls on congested areas of coastal waters and to make advance contingency plans to deal with incidents. Clearly accidents on the scale of the "Exxon Valdez" need to be avoided at all costs. They fall beyond the practical scope of immediate contingency plans, but I have no doubt that the unit is as well prepared as it can be.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, mentioned Richmond Park and the effect on the trees there. Only last week I was in Richmond Park to designate it as an area of special scientific interest. It is now in very good hands and the problems mentioned by the noble Lord will be addressed as part of the management plan.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned water resources and the protection of fish and other natural resources. Again, that is one of the reasons why the Government set up the NRA. We believe that the NRA will deal with such matters.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, asked why we cannot work more closely with Ireland. The Government wish to work closely with all their Community partners on such measures, and that of course includes Ireland.
This Government are firmly committed to improving the quality of our water and the

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management of our water resources. We have demonstrated that commitment by a wide range of practical measures.
We are also looking to the future. Only today we published a consultation paper outlining our proposals in England and Wales for identifying sensitive and less sensitive areas under new Community legislation. We are not complacent. In view of the abnormal drought situation in prospect, my officials are already discussing with all the agencies the special procedures and contingency arrangements which are to be made. I assure your Lordships that the Department of the Environment will keep itself fully informed of the developing situation and the steps being taken on water resources.
However, the longer term is just as important. Therefore, I welcome the discussion document which the NRA published today. That is a valuable and timely contribution to securing our water resources for future generations. I thank the noble Baroness, and I commend to this House the Government's record and their proposals for the future.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that extremely long and detailed reply to our debate. In her usual competent fashion, I believe that she answered the questions of every noble Lord. Whether we necessarily agree 100 per cent. with those answers is another matter. However, it is reassuring to have a Minister who takes so much trouble in replying to a debate. I thank all noble Lords who took part and who contributed on so many different interesting aspects of the problem raised by the Motion. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Osteopaths Bill [H.L.]
8.20 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee. —(Lord Walton of Detchant.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN (Lord Skelmersdale) in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Constitution and functions of the general Osteopathic Council and its Committees]:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 11, after first ("the") insert ("General").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 1, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 7, 8, 10, 15, 24 to 28 and 30 to 31. These are all minor technical and drafting amendments to the Bill. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Information to be given by institutions granting qualifications in osteopathy]:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 2, line 2, after ("study") insert ("in osteopathy").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 2, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 6, 16 and 32.
These are all minor amendments to the Bill. Amendment No. 2 to Clause 3 clarifies that only those educational institutions providing courses of study in osteopathy will be required to let the general council have information on the courses and examinations they conduct.
Amendment No. 6 to Clause 5 requires the general council to consult its education committee on whether a course of study will meet the required standards for the safe and competent practice of osteopathy.
Amendment No. 16 to Clause 7 ensures that in order to exercise his entitlement to be registered under the Act with full registration, an osteopath would first have to make an application for full registration, in the due form, to the registrar.
Amendment No. 32 to Clause 8 makes clear that the general council's rules on procedures on appeal will not cover proceedings in a court of law. I beg to move.
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 4 [Powers to appoint visitors]:
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper)The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper) moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 2, line 14, leave out subsection (2).
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 3 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 4,5, 9 and 11 to 14.
The Government believe that the Privy Council's involvement should be less than that envisaged in the Bill. These amendments would provide in Clause 4 for the education committee to decide the nature of the visits and to receive the visitors' reports. The amendments to Clause 5 would remove the requirements for the Privy Council, first, to recognise the standards of proficiency recommended by the general council for the safe and competent practice of osteopathy; secondly, to recognise or, if appropriate, withdraw recognition from a qualification as providing an acceptable basis for registration; and, thirdly, to make orders to give effect to such decisions.
As a result, all these responsibilities, with the exception of making orders, would fall to the general council to decide after appropriate consultation with its education committee.
It is our intention that decisions taken by the general council under this section would require the consent of the Privy Council before they could take effect and, in the case of withdrawing recognition from a qualification, only after the Privy Council has considered any representation or objections from the educational institutions concerned.
I can assure the Committee that these amendments would in no way diminish our view of the importance of ensuring that osteopaths should be trained to, and practise at, the very highest standards. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 4:

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Page 2, line 30, leave out subsection (5).
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to. Clause 5 [Recognition of standards and qualifications]:
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 2, line 38, leave out from ("osteopathy") to end of line 40.
The noble Baroness said: This amendment has been spoken to. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 2, line 41, after ("Council") insert ("after consultation with the Education Committee").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No.7:
Page 2, line 44, leave out ("granting any") and insert ("acquiring a").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 2, line 44, at end insert ("from that institution").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 9:
Page2,line46,leaveoutfrom("may")to second ("qualification"), in line 47, and insert ("recognise that").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 3, line 4, leave out ("granting any") and insert ("acquiring a").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendments Nos. 11 to 14:
Page 3, line 7, leave out ("represent to the Privy Council that it is expedient") and insert ("direct").
Page 3, line 8, leave out ("should") and insert ("shall").
Page 3, line 9, leave out subsections (4) and (5) and insert:
("(4) No recognition or direction shall be given under this section without the consent of the Privy Council.
(5) Before giving, or refusing to give, their consent the Privy Council shall consider—

(a)any report made under section 4 which relates to the course, examinations or institution in question and any observations on or objections to any such report which have been duly made under subsection (4) of that section, and

(b)in the case of a proposed direction, any representations or objections made to them by the educational institution in question.").

Page 3, line 31, leave out ("specified in an Order made") and insert ("recognised").
The noble Baroness said: With the leave of the Committee I shall move Amendments Nos. 11 to 14 en bloc. I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 6 [Keeping and publication of register of osteopaths]:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 15:
Page 4, line 3, leave out from ("sale") to end of line 6 and insert:
("(6) Where the General Council consider it appropriate, they may discharge their duty under subsection (5) by printing, publishing and making available for sale one or more supplements to the last published copy of the register.
(7) Any document published under subsection (5) or (6) shall be admissible as evidence of the contents of the register (except as respects any honours or distinctions accorded to a registered person).").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move.
Lord Desai: That leaves "available for". It ends half way. Is there not one more word to be left out? That is the way I read it after the omission.
Lord Walton of Detchant: I accept that.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 7 [Entitlement to registration]:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 16:
Page 4, line 8, after ("if") insert (",on an application for full registration duly made to the Registrar,").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 17:
Page 4, line 12, after ("(ii)") insert ("in the case of an application for registration made before the end of the period of two years beginning with the day on which this section comes into force,").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 17 I shall speak also to Amendment No. 20.
As the law currently stands anyone may call himself or herself an osteopath and practise as such in the United Kingdom. There is no obligation to undergo formal training of any kind. The patient therefore has no guarantee that people holding themselves out as practising osteopaths are competent or fit to do so. The purpose of this Bill is to give the public that assurance by making it a condition of registration that osteopaths are highly trained in their profession.
Yet we also recognise that there are osteopaths who, while not holding a formal qualification, have nonetheless safely and competently been practising osteopathy for many years. The Bill therefore provides two levels of registration for this group of practitioners: full registration to those who have safely and competently been practising osteopathy for a total of five out of the seven years preceding the opening of the register; and provisional registration for those who have been so practising for a total of four out of six years, subject to the condition that they will, within five years, complete any further training specified by the general council and pass any test of competence it may set.
It is our intention that registration under these criteria should be available for a transitional period only after which time an osteopath would be able to apply only for full registration on the basis that he holds a recognised qualification. As currently drafted, however, the Bill makes no provision for this transitional period. Following discussions with representatives of the profession we feel this should be

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a period of two years from the opening of the register which these amendments will introduce. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 18:
Page 4, line 15, at end insert ("and").
The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment I speak also to Amendments Nos. 19, 23 and 29. Amendments Nos. 19 and 23 are substantive amendments which would remove the statutory requirement that as a condition to being registered under the Act the osteopath has adequate public liability insurance for claims against him for negligence in his practice. Amendments Nos. 18 and 29 are consequential drafting amendments. The Government do not believe that the Bill should interfere with the workings of a free market by imposing a statutory requirement for insurance cover.
We would however expect the profession to regulate itself in this area and will look to the general council to exercise its rule-making powers to satisfy itself that osteopaths would have appropriate insurance cover. The amendments make clear that the general council's powers are sufficient in this area for the protection of the public. These rules would be subject to approval by the Privy Council. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 4, line 16, leave out from ("character") to end of line 20.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 20:
Page 4, line 22, after ("if") insert (",on an application for provisional registration duly made to the Registrar before the end of the period of two years beginning with the day on which this section comes into force,").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 21 and 22. The amendments also relate to the transitional arrangements. Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 are intended to provide a safety net for the student who, in good faith, had embarked on a course of study which he fully expected would lead to a recognised qualification but at some midway point ceased to be recognised by the general council as meeting the standards set for the safe and competent practice of osteopathy. As drafted, the Bill would permit a student in this position to apply for provisional registration and consequently to practise.
However, it is incongruous that a Bill which intends to establish a registration based on prescribed standards of training should make provision enabling a person to practise osteopathy on the basis that he had partially completed a training course which in its entirety would not, in the judgment of the general council, equip him with the skills required for safe and competent practice. We intend that the original spirit of this subsection will be retained by providing a system of credits towards a recognised qualification
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for a student caught in this position but separate from the conditions of entitlement to registration. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendments Nos. 21 and 22:
Page 4, line 24, leave out ("either").
Page 4, leave out lines 29 to 34 and insert ("and").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 23:
Page 4, line 35, leave out from ("character") to end of line 39.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 24:
Page 4, line 42, leave out ("Act") and insert ("section").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendments Nos.25 to 28:
Page 5, line 14, leave out ("Act") and insert ("section").
Page 5, line 18, leave out ("persons who have qualified as osteopaths") and insert ("any person who holds a qualification in osteopathy").
Page 5, line 21, leave out ("their qualifications are") and insert ("his qualification is").
Page 5, line 22, leave out ("the qualifications recognised under this Act") and insert ("a recognised qualification").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 29:
Page 5, line 23, leave out from ("that") to end of line 24 and insert ("he is of good character").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 7, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 8 [Rules with respect to registration]:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendments Nos. 30 and 31:
Page 5, line 41, leave out ("and the charging of fees in respect of those matters").
Page 5, line 45, at end insert:
("( ) the charging of fees and the consequences (which may include removal from the register) of failing to pay any required fee;").
The noble Lord said: I spoke to these minor technical drafting amendments at the outset. I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 32:
Page 5, line 46, after ("procedure") insert (",otherwise than in relation to court proceedings,").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 8, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clause 10 [Preliminary investigation of complaints against osteopaths]:
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 33:
Page 6, line 10, after ("has") insert ("at any time").
The noble Baroness said: With permission, in moving this amendment I shall speak also to Amendment No. 34. Amendment No.34 would remove the powers of the investigating committee to

1409
instigate an investigation on the basis that an osteopath is alleged to have been convicted outside the United Kingdom of a criminal offence. Amendment No. 33 is a drafting amendment.
Generally speaking, convictions in foreign courts have no particular standing or significance in this country and they could not, for example, be taken into account by an English court in considering what sentence to impose after conviction of an offence committed here. Further, it may not be possible to confirm what decision a foreign court reached in a particular case and, given the difference between legal systems, it will often not be possible to say with certainty whether the same actions would have resulted in a criminal conviction if committed in this country. We therefore feel that on balance this provision should be withdrawn. That is the intention of the amendment. I should perhaps add that removing these provisions would in fact put the investigating committee on a par with other professional bodies; for example, the General Medical Council's preliminary proceedings committee. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 34:
Page 6, leave out lines 11 to 13.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 35:
Page 6, line 28, leave out ("in the case mentioned in subsection (1) (b)").
The noble Lord said: This amendment would require the investigating committee to provide the osteopath with details of the allegations made against him in all circumstances and not just, as the Bill currently provides, in cases of alleged unacceptable professional conduct. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 36:
Page 6, line 35, after ("Committee") insert ("or the Health Committee").
The noble Lord said: I will, with permission, move this amendment and speak to Amendments Nos. 37 to 39 and Amendment No. 41. Amendment No. 36 will bring the procedures to be followed in a referral to the health committee, by the investigating committee, in line with those to the professional conduct committee; namely, that the investigating committee must determine the specific terms of the complaint and inform the osteopath that it is being referred to the health committee. Amendments Nos. 37 to 39 are drafting amendments; Amendment No. 41 is consequential on Amendment No. 36. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendments Nos. 37 to 39:
Page 6, line 35, after ("they") insert: (a);").
Page 6, line 36, leave out ("terms of the complaint") and insert ("details of the allegation").
Page 6, line 37, leave out ("it") and insert ("those details").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 40:
Page 6, line 37, at end insert ("and
(b) may, if they are satisfied that it is necessary to do so for the protection of members of the public, make an order suspending his registration pending determination of the reference.
(3A) No order shall be made under subsection (3) (b) unless the registered osteopath concerned has been given an opportunity to appear before the Investigating Committee to give his reasons why such an order should not be made.").
The noble Lord said: Notwithstanding the seriousness of the allegations, the Bill as drafted makes no provision for the investigating committee to take any action against an osteopath pending the outcome of referral to the health or professional conduct committees. This amendment however will enable the investigating committee to impose an immediate suspension where it is satisfied that such action is necessary for the protection of the public. A right to protest to the investigating committee against such action is provided. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 41:
Page 6, line 38, leave out subsection (4).
The noble Lord said: This amendment is consequential upon previous amendments which have been accepted. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 42:
Page 6, line 46, leave out subsection (6).
The noble Lord said: The investigating committee is not part of a system in which there are appellate procedures in place. The only rights of appeal under the Bill come from Clause 14 which does not bite on the investigating committee. Consequently, subsection 10(6) is unnecessary. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 11 [References to the Professional Conduct Committee]:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 43:
Page 7, line 8, leave out from ("(1)") to end of line 16 and insert:
("Where a case has beenreferredto the Professional Conduct Committee under section 10, they may, if satisfied that it falls within paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (1) of that section, take one or more of the following steps—
(a) admonish the registered osteopath concerned;").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 47, 48 and 65. Amendment No. 43 is a drafting amendment upon which Amendments Nos. 47 and 48, and Amendment No. 65 to Clause 14 are consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 44:
Page 7, line 20, at end insert ("or").
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 44 I shall speak also to Amendment No. 45.

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Amendment No. 45 will remove the powers to fine and impose costs from the list of sanctions the professional conduct committee could impose on an osteopath and for these amounts to be recovered as if they were a civil debt. In the most severe cases, the professional conduct committee would be able to prevent the osteopath from continuing in his profession. Amendment No. 44 is a consequential drafting amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Hooper Baroness Hooper moved Amendment No. 45:
Page 7, line 22, leave out from second ("specified") to end of line 32.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 46:
Page 7, line 32, at end insert:
("(2A) Where the Professional Conduct Committee have made an order for suspension under subsection (1) (c), they may order—

(a) that the current period of suspension shall be extended for such further period from the time when it would otherwise expire as may be specified in the order;

(b) that the name of the registered osteopath concerned be erased from the register; or

(c) that his registration shall, as from the expiry of the current period of suspension, be conditional on his compliance, during such period not exceeding three years as may be specified in the order, with such requirements so specified as the Committee think fit to impose for the protection of members of the public;

but they shall not extend any period of suspension under this section for more than three years at a time.
(2B) Where the Professional Conduct Committee have made an order under subsection (1) (d) or (2A) (c) for conditional registration, they may—

(a) order that the current period of conditional registration shall be extended for such further period from the time when it would otherwise expire as may be specified in the order; or

(b) revoke the order or revoke or vary any of the conditions;

but they shall not extend any period of conditional registration under this section for more than three years at a time.").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 47 and 48 which are consequential. This amendment would enable the professional conduct committee to review a period of suspension and either renew it for a further period of up to three years, to erase the osteopath's name from the register or to impose conditions on his registration. Similarly, it would enable the committee, on reviewing a period of conditional registration, to renew the existing conditions for a further period of up to three years, or to revoke the order, or revoke or vary any of the conditions. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendments Nos. 47 and 48:
Page 8, line 3, leave out ("(2)") and insert ("(1)").
Page 8, line 8, leave out ("(2)") and insert ("(1)").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 11, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 12 [References to the Health Committee]:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 49.
Page 8, line 40, after ("of') insert ("members of).
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I shall speak also to Amendment No. 50. As currently drafted, the Bill would require the health committee, in deciding whether to suspend or to impose conditional registration on an osteopath who is unfit to practise, to consider which course of action would better secure the protection of the public and maintain public confidence in the profession. The words "protection of the public" imply, however, that before coming to its decision the health committee would have to weigh in the balance the threat of the osteopath's condition on the public at large, or possibly in a completely different part of the country. Similarly, in seeking to maintain public confidence in the profession the health committee would have to consider the impact of its decision on an unfit osteopath in, for example, Barnsley, and on public opinion in, say, Huddersfield. What is intended, however, and what these amendments will enable to happen, is that the health committee should base its decision on what is required for protection of those members of the public who would otherwise have been treated, or will continue to be treated, by the osteopath. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 50:
Page 8, line 40, leave out ("and the maintenance of public confidence in the profession").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 51:
Page 8, line 43, leave out ("one year") and insert ("three years").
The noble Lord said: If the health committee decides that an osteopath is unfit to practise it would be able either to suspend or impose conditions on his registration. As currently drafted, the Bill would enable the health committee to impose an initial suspension for a maximum period of one year only. The experience of equivalent committees under similar regulatory schemes, such as the health committee of the General Medical Council, for example, is that when faced with a long-term physical or mental condition, a maximum period of one year is too short and often requires the individual in question to reappear before the committee at regular intervals. This amendment would enable the health committee to make an initial order suspending the osteopath's registration for a maximum period of up to three years. I should perhaps add that provision is made in the Bill which would enable such an order to be reviewed in the osteopath's favour if it were subsequently considered to bo too onerous. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 52:
Page 8, line 47, leave out ("if any").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I shall speak also to Amendment No. 53. As currently drafted the Bill permits the health committee to take no action against an osteopath it has considered by reason of his physical or mental condition to be unfit to perform his professional functions. This clearly runs contrary to the intention and the inherent responsibilities incumbent on the health committee in safeguarding members of the public. Amendment No. 53 seeks, therefore, to remove this option thereby requiring the health committee either to suspend or to impose conditions on the registration of an osteopath who is unfit to practise. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 53:
Page 8, line 48, leave out from ("(c)") to ("subject") in line 2 on page 9.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 54:
Page 9, line 7, at end insert ("and").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I shall, with the leave of the Committee, speak also to Amendment No. 55. Although it looks like a sizeable chunk of text, Amendment No. 55 essentially introduces two new provisions while tightening the drafting of the Bill. Amendment No. 54 is a consequential drafting amendment.
The first provision is that the health committee would be required to impose, rather than just to consider, the minimum period of suspension, or conditions, on the osteopath's registration that it considers reasonably necessary to safeguard members of the public. The second provides for the health committee to be able to impose less onerous conditions or a shorter period of suspension as well as to revoke such restrictions, which is the only alternative currently provided by the Bill, should it subsequently consider them too onerous. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 55:
Page 9, line 9, leave out from ("proposals") to end of line 21 and insert:
("(5A) When making any order under subsection (4) (c), the health committee shall not impose a period of suspension which is longer, or conditions which are more onerous, than the minimum which they consider reasonably necessary to achieve the purpose mentioned in subsection (4) (a).
(6) If, at any time after the health committee have made an order under subsection (4) (c) ("the original order"), it appears to them of their own motion or on an application made to them in that behalf—

(a) that the continuation of the order is no longer reasonably necessary to achieve the purpose mentioned in subsection (4) (a); or

(b) that that purpose could be achieved with a shorter period of suspension or with less onerous conditions;

they may by order ("the new order") revoke the original order, or (as the case may be) vary it, either with immediate effect or with effect from such future date as may be specified in the new order.").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 56:
Page 9, line 23, leave out ("has expired or").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I shall, with the leave of the Committee, speak also to Amendments Nos. 57 to 63. As currently drafted, the Bill enables the health committee to renew an order suspending or imposing restrictions on an osteopath's registration after the original order has expired. That runs contrary to natural justice. It also states that the grounds for continuing suspension or conditional registration would be that the osteopath continues to suffer from the condition which led to the making of the original order. However, there are many long-term medical conditions which are capable of being sufficiently controlled through proper treatment so as no longer to impair the osteopath's abilities to perform his professional functions competently and safely.
The other amendments provide for any new orders to be subject to the same considerations as the original order; namely, that only the minimum restrictions considered reasonably necessary to safeguard members of the public should be imposed, that the new orders would be subject to downward variation or revocation if they were subsequently considered too onerous and that any further renewal should be made before the expiry of the existing order. The duration of new orders would be restricted to a maximum period of three years. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendments Nos. 57 to 63:
Page 9, line 27, leave out from beginning to ("a"), in line 28, and insert ("remains unfit to perform his professional functions as an osteopath by reason of the condition which led to the making of the order or of).
Page 9, line 30, leave out ("still").
Page 9, line 32, at end insert ("for a period not exceeding three years").
Page 9, line 37, at end insert ("and").
Page 9, line 39, leave out from ("proposals") to end of line 44.
Page 9, line 45, leave out ("subsection (7)") and insert ("subsections (6) and (7)").
Page 9, line 47, at end insert:
("(8A) Subsection (5A) applies in relation to an order under subsection (7) as it applies in relation to one under subsection (4) (c).").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 64:
Page 10, leave out lines 2 to 8, and insert:

("(a) may at any time hold a hearing in connection with the exercise by them of any of their functions under this section; and

(b) shall hold a hearing before making any determination under subsection (1) or any order under subsection (4) or (7), if the osteopath concerned has asked in writing for a hearing.

(10) At any hearing held by the health committee for purposes of this section the osteopath concerned may be represented by a barrister, advocate or solicitor or by any other person.").
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 64 is essentially a drafting amendment designed to clarify

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the occasions when a hearing before the health committee can be held. That would be at any time of the committee's choosing, and at the written request of the osteopath, before it made any decision to impose or renew a period of suspension or conditional registration. At any hearing the osteopath could be represented by a person of his choosing. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 12, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 13 agreed to.
Clause 14 [Appeals from the Professional Conduct and Health Committees]:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 65:
Page 10, line 30, leave out ("(2)") and insert ("(1)").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 14, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 15 to 23 agreed to.
In the schedule:
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendment No. 66:
Page 17, line 1, leave out ("four") and insert ("eight").
The noble Lord said: With the leave of the Committee I shall, while moving this amendment, speak also to Amendment No. 67, which is a consequential drafting amendment, and to Amendment No. 68. It would be the responsibility of the education committee to promote high standards of education in osteopathy by specifying the standards required for registration, by visiting the bodies providing training and examinations and by coordinating all stages of education.
As currently drafted, the Bill provides for the membership of the education committee to include four co-opted members. Amendment No. 66 seeks to increase the number of co-opted members to eight, thereby enabling the committee to call upon a potentially wider range of experience which it might consider necessary in order to fulfil its responsibilities. Paragraph 17(2) of the schedule requires that co-opted members to the education committee must be employed in osteopathic teaching but not at a school or institution where a member of the general council is employed.
However, the profession is concerned that if restrictions on the credentials of the co-opted members are made in the Act, the education committee may not be able to perform its functions adequately. Amendment No. 68 would remove those restrictions from the legislation and would allow such matters to be decided at the discretion of the general council. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant moved Amendments Nos. 67 and 68:
Page 19, line 5, leave out from ("co-opt") to end of line 7 and insert ("further members on to the Committee, but the number of such further members at any time shall not exceed—

(a) in the case of the Investigating and Education Committees, eight, and

(b) in the case of the Professional Conduct and Health Committees, four.").

Page 19, line 8, leave out sub-paragraph (2).
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with amendments.

Women's Refuges
8.56 p.m.
Earl Russell Earl Russell rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether the provision of women's refuges should be regarded as a local or as a national responsibility.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I believe that this is a completely non-party debate. At this stage of the proceedings, I think that that may be something of a relief to all of us. There are of course matters about which we agree as well as matters about which we disagree. I take it that we are agreed in all parties that help should be provided for women who are the victims of domestic violence; that women's refuges are a good way of providing such help; that refuges are much cheaper to administer than bed-and-breakfast accommodation; and that they also provide for women the sort of help and a sense of security which are not normally available in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. In fact there is a group therapy element in it.
I also take it that we are all agreed that refuges cannot normally be run for profit and that there is a need for some form of funding from public sources; that is, above housing benefit and income support. All those considerations are not in any way a matter of party debate. I believe that the Government are making great attempts to do the best they can in the area and have, especially since Mr. Patten's speech at King's College, London, been giving the subject a rather higher priority.
I have heard people who are active in the field speak of the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, with the sort of warmth that one does not normally hear from members of pressure groups when speaking about Ministers. Therefore, I hope that there is no need for party contention here. I trust that it is a matter of agreement between us that refuges must provide for women a place to go outside their own area. There are many cases where women are followed by the man who was the source of the original injury. First, there are pleas to come home, and then, if they are not heeded, far too frequently they are followed by further violence.
There was the notorious case reported in the newspaper last week of the murder which took place inside a police station. That is an extreme and unusual case. But it is, I think, a caricature of something which if we look at the literature on the subject we all recognise happens. I regret to say that, in spite of the efforts of the judges in this area, the idea of "the man of property" is not yet extinct. Therefore, secure refuges frequently need to be located away from the woman's home area. For the same reason, any permanent rehousing needs to be away from her home area so that she can go out into the street without needing to look over her shoulder all the time, wondering who is behind her.
I should like to bring three questions to the attention of the House. The first is the familiar question: "Are we doing enough on this subject?"; the second is: "Are we doing it in the most effective way?"; and the third is: "Have we come to a stage in the growth of awareness about this problem when there is a need to consolidate the measures that have been entered into with a great deal of good will and in a great many quarters but which nevertheless still have about them something of the character of Topsy?".
The funding for refuges comes from a large variety of sources. A good deal of it comes from the Government, but under a great many different headings. It comes from the urban aid programme and from the Departments of Health and of Social Security under two different sections of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968. Such funding also comes through the housing associations, formerly aided by hostel deficit grant, but now by its successor. On occasion, funding comes also from the local authorities—sometimes from their housing budgets, sometimes from their social services budgets and sometimes from a mixture.
So, the funding is available, but there still seems to be a considerable shortage of places. I wonder whether to an extent the Government might wish to plead that they are a victim of their own success and whether the increased numbers of women seeking places shows that there is a far greater pent-up demand in this area than we were aware of.
Women's Aid (Scotland) issued its annual report this weekend. It was reported in the Sunday Times in Scotland—there are certain advantages to having one's party conference in Scotland. That organisation states that the number of women who have been admitted to refuges in Scotland has doubled since 1982 but that the number who have had to be turned away has increased two-and-a-half times. That shows not only an increase in the number of women coming forward to refuges—although it is a great indication of that, the number of calls that are being made to helplines is perhaps a pointer of even more untapped demand—but also reflects the problem of the slower dispersal of women from refuges. That seems to be the result of the increasing difficulty in finding rented housing. But that is a larger subject than I wish to cover tonight.
Although there are various sources of funds, there is only one source of legal responsibility. Part III of the Housing Act 1985 places an obligation on all local authorities to house the homeless. Although there is specific provision for housing women who are the victims of domestic violence, an equally clear duty to take responsibility for their children does not seem to rest on the local authority social service departments. One area of difficulty seems to be the division of responsibility in local authority administered hostels between housing and social services. The departments do not always seem to be entirely successful at getting their acts together.
The 1985 Act lays down a responsibility only to house such women—not to house them in any particular manner. As I understand it, there is no
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specific responsibility to provide a refuge. If the provision of such housing is to remain the responsibility of the local authorities, I wonder whether such a specific responsibility should not be created. Many local authorities—I understand that there are five such authorities in Wales—simply do not want to take notice of the fact that this phenomenon exists. They find it uncomfortable to think about—a view with which I can sympathise—so they try not to notice it. The fact that it costs a great deal more to use bed-and-breakfast accommodation instead of a refuge seems to slip their attention.
Local authorities also have a responsibility to rehouse. Under paragraph 8(2)(c) of the code of guidance there is a responsibility not to send such women back to their own local authority for permanent rehousing. That is an important provision that needs to be maintained. If it needs strengthening in any way to be effective, then it should be strengthened because that point may slip the attention of local authorities, which tend to have a resistance to anything that is in effect a non-local obligation. It is the fact that we are talking about a "non-local" matter that raises the problem of trying to get local authorities to take responsibility.
The Minister may be surprised to hear anyone on these Benches suggest that any function might be taken away from a local authority because I admit that we more often make the opposite suggestion. Usually, we are talking about functions that are inherent in the local community. However, what strikes me about this matter is that we are not talking about a responsibility that arises from a local community but about a national responsibility. It is a national problem of women moving, not a problem affecting members of a home community only. Local authorities have always tended to resist taking responsibility for anyone from outside their boundaries.
Many centuries ago, it used to be a rule that single parents and their children were sent back to their home parish, but there was so much resistance to that that it was sometimes ruled that the home parish of the mother and the child were different. It took the intervention of central government to stop that.
That national character is even clearer if one thinks of the more specialised types of provision of refuge; for example, refuges for Asian women. Apart from any cultural arguments for them, there can be a strong language argument for them. I have heard of a case of a woman being taken up and down a local London high street after arriving at two in the morning severely injured until at last a local shopkeeper who spoke Punjabi was found. Your Lordships will see why I argue that there is a case for specialist Asian provision. After all, it does not make much sense for every local authority to keep a Punjabi speaker, a Bengali speaker and a Gujarati speaker in every area of the British Isles. It is because of that case for specialisation that I wonder whether this is inherently a national function.
A research report on the funding of refuges produced by Nicky Charles for Welsh Women's Aid has recommended a system of centralised specific

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funding. The point about "specific" is important. The system of housing benefit is designed for tenancies. It does not fit ideally with a floating population, which is what in a refuge one must be getting. There will always be some people who are there for one night only and who move on. There will always be a variation in the number of people in the room because one does not turn away people who arrive in distress at two in the morning. There is a greater misfit between that need and the housing benefit system than there was between the need and the old board-and-lodging system. That might be taken into account in any review of the funding.
From the Welsh report it seems that housing benefit does not altogether cover the costs. It worked out the cost of one family place—a mother and child or children—at £95 a week. That is not that exorbitant, but it seems that there are only three refuges in the whole of Wales where housing benefit covers that cost.
There is here a question which is worth thought. There is scope for consolidation. There is a question to investigate about whether the legal obligations are specific enough and whether they are in the right place. The alternatives to refuges are not necessarily satisfactory. I have mentioned the cost of bed-and-breakfast accommodation. If a refuge cannot cope, one may often end up with children in care. It is striking how many of the women in refuges bring with them children who have been sexually abused.
There is a case here for a new central system. We can all investigate how strong that case is without any party division between us. When we have that up and running, which will take quite a time, we might go on to wondering about what can be done to help with the rehabilitation of the men who created the original problem.
9.12 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for bringing this important matter to the attention of the House and for instigating the debate. I am the joint chairman of Chiswick Family Rescue which will be known to some of your Lordships as the first of the women's refuges, started by Erin Pizzey. It is now in its 21st year. It is sad that the problems are not just continuing but are increasing or perhaps being brought increasingly to our attention. It may also be appropriate in its 21st year that we should consider the role of women's refuges.
At Chiswick, which is only one of 200 refuges in this country, we see the scale of the problem. Chiswick runs a 24-hour crisis line and receives 10,000 calls each year. That represents 10,000 distressed women. Its referrals in the year to last April, from a number of agencies, totalled just under 2,500. Of those it is known—I say that because some of the sources of the referrals were not known —that 1,400 came from London. The balance came from well beyond the immediate area and may have come from outside London. Of the admissions, about 75 per cent, of the women came from the London area.
As my noble friend Lord Russell said, the issue is not just about funding, although it is notable that women's refuges have limited success in raising funds.
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I have recently seen an estimate that on average only 4 per cent, of income is raised from donations. Only a small number succeed in attracting funds from non-statutory sources. Certainly, our experience in Chiswick is that independent income is unpredictable. We are extremely grateful for it. There have been major donations; but I do not feel that it is appropriate. It is an uncertain existence to have to rely on donations.
Perhaps I may say a little more about Chiswick. The refuge is able to provide bed spaces—I use the words "bed spaces" because they give an indication of how crowded some of the refuges inevitably are—to just under 50 women. At any given time, 75 to 100 children are also accommodated. Chiswick runs—as it must—a nursery and other facilities for those children. It runs the facilities for the women and children with nine members of staff. Because of funding problems, last year six full-time refuge workers had to be made redundant. So a staff of 15, who had their work cut out anyway, was reduced to nine. Only three of the staff were available to do the case work. I am sure that your Lordships can imagine the amount of counselling required and the practical assistance that is needed by the 50 women residents.
Noble Lords will not be surprised to know that the workers at the refuge have to work very long hours. They share evening and weekend duties on the 24-hour crisis line. There are two nursery workers catering for the needs of all the children. As my noble friend mentioned, the costs to society from the situation are enormous. As domestic violence escalates, so do the costs to the police who have to make repeated calls to the same addresses, to the courts, to the hospitals who treat injuries, to the social services, and to the housing authorities. On average, residents at Chiswick stay in the refuges for 18 months to two years before they are able to be rehoused. Many are placed in bed and breakfast accommodation which is an expensive alternative, as we all know. There is a cost to society as well as a personal cost of which I was not aware. It is a horrifying statistic that 29 per cent. of all murders in Britain are of women killed by their partners.
It is not only the social services, hospitals and so on who count the cost. Many working hours are lost to industry and commerce as a result of women being assaulted. Children are left scarred by the experience, emotionally, psychologically and physically. I am told that some children arrive at Chiswick so traumatised that they are unable to speak. I am sure that we can all imagine the different symptoms that many children exhibit. I understand also that recent figures show that about 50 per cent, of all recorded crime is committed by young male adults. About 50 per cent, of them have grown up witnessing or experiencing abuse.
It is difficult to establish preventive programmes when funding is so difficult. In this country, we have relied very much on refuges and on the police to contain the problem, and containment is perhaps the right term. We have 200 refuges. To put it in perspective, although I have no quarrel with those who support the protection and care of animals, the 200 refuges for abused women compare with about

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1,500 refuges for animals. Those are the registered animal shelters; many more are unregistered. The 200 refuges are only one-eighth of the provision recommended in 1975 by the Select Committee on Violence in Marriage. Again, it is no surprise, given the funding difficulties, that many of the refuges are overcrowded and in a state of disrepair.
Those who work at Chiswick, the professionals, believe that we need to review our policies, programmes and legislation to co-ordinate the services and to co-ordinate the agencies involved in the problem. The following are required: an arrest, charge and prosecution policy; increased refuge provision; more services for children; second stage accommodation for women who are moving on from refuges; guidelines for the various agencies; training programmes; and training materials for professionals.
In Canada the federal government are spending 136 million dollars over a four-year period. They are adopting a three-pronged approach of prevention, enforcement and improved services. I understand that they estimate that the approach will save something over 390 million dollars over a period of 14 years and will involve less call on police time and hospital services, less dependence on state benefit and less need for foster care for children. As my noble friend so clearly stated, this is a cross-departmental problem. I know that the Minister is extremely sympathetic to the difficulties this matter raises. Chiswick Family Rescue refuge is aware of that sympathy but realises that its hands are tied.
However, I have two final reasons for stating that this is a national issue. We rely on front line workers to help us make policy. Chiswick Family Rescue has provided a resource for information and advice to the Home Office and to the police. The Home Office has asked the director of Chiswick Family Rescue to go to Canada to report back on the Canadian approach.
The women in refuges have taken a major step in leaving home. Many of them are not able to take that step. I am sure we were all shocked and outraged to learn of the recent case of Sally Emery. Her paralysis was such that she could not leave home and she watched as her child was killed. She is now in Holloway. I am not attempting to analyse that case but it must have come as an appalling realisation to many of us that women could be reduced to that state.
If women are able to leave home and find a sanctuary—they cannot find that sanctuary on their own doorsteps—they must be able to start to live as normal a life as possible as soon as they can. They will need help to do that. Their children must be able to live as normal a life as possible as soon as they can. The blunt fact is that abused women cannot risk staying in the same location. They cannot live in a location where, if they go outside the front door, they may encounter the person who has brought them to their abused state. Refuges cannot assist purely on a local basis because the risks are too high.
9.22 p.m.
Lord Meston: My Lords, I wish to speak only briefly in full support of the thrust of the remarks of both my noble friends. Like most lawyers practising family law, over the years I have had a good number of clients who are in women's refuges or who have been in a refuge. It is quite apparent that refuges are all-important first-aid posts in the immediate aftermath of the breakdown of a marital or other relationship. They provide not just protection for women, which is often much needed, but also shelter for children. The refuges offer a respite from the parental crossfire of which they are the innocent victims.
My observation is that the refuges also provide impressive emotional and practical support. Such support comes both from the staff and from other occupants. The support is particularly important when the newly arrived women and children are at their lowest ebb and when they are physically battered, frightened and lonely.
It is quite apparent that no one chooses to be in a refuge. The women are only there because they have no other bolt-hole, either in the wider family or in the community. The refuges with which I am familiar are both situated in new towns where the extended families of the victims of abuse are often far away. There is nowhere else to provide protection from the unwanted attention of the violent, obsessive or remorseful male partner.
The availability of refuges received very strong support from a Select Committee of another place in its 1975 report on violence in marriage, to which my noble friend has just referred. That report observed that in some areas the relationship between women's aid groups and local authorities was excellent. However, it pointed out that in other areas the relationship left much to be desired. I strongly suspect that the same is true today.
It is not just a question of providing hostels but of keeping them well equipped and reasonably repaired and decorated. Some women and children have to stay in refuges for some time, particularly in the present climate to which my noble friend Lord Russell referred. Responsible local authorities recognise that if they did not provide or subsidise refuges the alternative would often be scarce and grim hostels for the homeless or temporary accommodation, which the local authority also has to provide and finance.
Therefore, if, as it seems, there is no consistency in the provision or standard of amenity of refuges the matter must surely be considered on a national footing, if only to ensure reliable funding in place of the ad hoc arrangements to which both my noble friends referred.
I conclude by pointing out that in 1975 the report recommended one family place per 10,000 of the population as an initial target; that target to be adjusted as might prove appropriate. I ask the Minister whether there is any target now and whether it is being met.
Lord Desai: My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for introducing the topic

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and making us all pause and think seriously about the problem, which is clearly not only urgent but very serious. In the spirit in which the noble Earl spoke, I shall make this a non-partisan statement. I shall also try to minimise the overlap between what others have said and what I have to say.
The problem is clearly serious and the size of the problem has been pointed out. Since we have become aware of the problem of domestic violence to women —and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to the Chiswick refuge—the number of cases has grown, partly because we have been able to make some provision. However, we are all aware that the provision is woefully inadequate for the size of the problem.
The fragmentation of responsibility among different government departments has already been mentioned. The Department of Health, the Department of the Environment, the Home Office and the Department of Social Security are all involved. The responsibility rests on local authorities but the funding to allow them to help women's groups is also fragmentary and inadequate.
Perhaps I may raise one or two points which have not already been mentioned and which may be helpful. One of the ways in which women's refuges could derive income would be from rent. If the women concerned were to pay rent towards their stay that would be helpful. However, typically the problem is that women, especially women who have been subjected to domestic violence, are either not aware of their entitlements or, if they are aware of their entitlements, may have to claim them far from their home base because they have run away from where the violence occurred. From all I have read, it seems that there is great arbitrariness about how much entitlement to housing benefit is received. It depends very much on local rent officers. A code of guidance was issued to local authorities about Section 73 of the Housing Act 1985, but it does not seem to be followed in all cases. The arbitrary variation in what people are entitled to should be removed so far as possible.
One way to strengthen the capacity of women to seek shelter would be to strengthen their entitlements. In our society, even today many entitlements are channelled through the family. One problem of domestic violence is that the family is no longer the appropriate unit through which to channel a variety of income entitlements. We need to reconsider how we can restructure some of the entitlements that we want to extend to people in need and channel them not through the family but to the individual. That having been said, there clearly needs to be some kind of national guidelines in respect of what people are entitled to. Somehow, local authorities must be encouraged to follow a consistent practice as to what people can claim by way of rent.
I should like to say a few words about the position of Asian and black women. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, mentioned the case of Vandana Patel. For many reasons, it is a very serious case. It clearly shows that over a number of years, although the police have tremendously improved their understanding and appreciation of the problems of domestic violence,
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there is still further progress to be made. In the case mentioned, it seems that in an attempt to accommodate what was seen as a cultural variation of normal practice, a mistake was made. As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, there cannot be an expert knowledge of Asian languages in every local authority. Nonetheless, we need to rethink the problem in a very serious way.
I know more about Asian women than about Afro-Caribbean women. It seems to me that Asian women especially, because of a lack of knowledge of the English language and the structure of the family, are less used to claiming entitlements and are more dependent for day-to-day living not only on their spouse but on the community. The problem may be precisely that the community cannot be appealed to because the community may not sympathise with the woman. One must understand that. A woman may have to go far away from the place where domestic violence occurred. At that stage she needs a variety of help, some of which may relate to income entitlements and some being instructions on how to reconstruct her life in a new environment.
The women's aid groups are very helpful and, as was pointed out, many local authorities are very good to them. But there is a need for a denser network of aid groups and women's refuges across the country than we have so far. The situation of Asian women may have to be looked at again with some care.
I speak from a rather sparse knowledge about the matter, but it seems to me that it is more difficult for women without children to obtain help than it is for women with children. Women with children are helped by social security. It is not a matter for the Department of the Environment. I gather that women without children—and women who are subject to attacks which are not domestic but attacks from outside—find it difficult to get help. Again it is a serious problem faced by Asian women in the East End as well as other parts of London and elsewhere. If we were to frame a national code, we might be able to arrive at a solution to the problems relating to women with and without children.
First, we must improve, strengthen and standardise income entitlements for women and extend understanding among women of their entitlements. Secondly, although the available facilities are very good, they are insufficient. The financing of them is precarious. Having strengthened the income entitlement of "clients", we have to strengthen the funding of those bodies. That point has been made by other noble Lords. Whatever we do, we ought to make the funding of women's refugees more secure, more generous and more adequate to the existing need.
There are problems about which a government department would take charge. Without being partisan, we need a women's department which could co-ordinate the different problems that women face.
I do not wish to take up more time. Again I thank the noble Earl for bringing the difficulty to our attention. It is a problem that the majority—not the minority—faces. We are all agreed that it is serious. We are all agreed that we ought to help. We need to get our heads together to devise a better solution.
9.36 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Earl and to everyone who has contributed to the short debate for enabling us to concentrate on this area of anxiety and, by doing so, I am sure, to improve the level of awareness and consequently the level of provision.
The noble Earl and his noble friends made a powerful case for that area of concern to be a national responsibility. However, I must preface my remarks by saying that the Government regard the issue as primarily a local responsibility. I am aware of the difference in approach in other countries. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I am aware of the approach that Canada takes. It must be one of the leading countries in its action. As a Government we recognise that domestic violence is a serious problem which has serious consequences for everyone concerned. We have taken a number of initiatives which aim to improve the response to this criminal offence and to reduce its incidence.
In responding to domestic violence, we need to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice—we have heard of very worrying cases which make us anxious—that victims should receive the necessary emotional and material support and that action should be taken to prevent future violence.
Such responsibility straddles a number of different government departments. As one of his three questions the noble Earl asked whether that was the most effective way of dealing with that responsibility. The action is overseen by the ministerial group on women's issues. That is our answer to the suggestion put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, for a separate ministry. We believe that the activities of the ministerial group are most effective. Recent initiatives have included the issue of guidance to the police and to the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure a quick and effective response to incidents of violence in the home and a number of local schemes for tackling domestic violence which are being funded by the Government through the safer cities programme.
The Government also recognise that women who find it necessary to leave the marital home because they are the victims of domestic violence, or because they are in fear of domestic violence, are in an especially vulnerable position. As has been said, the refuge which pioneered the provision of accommodation and support for women in this predicament — and, indeed, for their children—was the Chiswick Family Rescue with which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is associated. It was started as a local initiative, initially without any help from statutory sources. I wish to take this opportunity to express my admiration and gratitude for the pioneering and ongoing efforts.
During the years that followed a network of other refuges was established, again almost invariably as a consequence of local initiatives. Sometimes they had a little direct or indirect help from local authorities, sometimes there was no statutory involvement. The Select Committee report on violence within marriage was published in 1975. It welcomed the expansion of refuge provision but commented that it was not
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enough. I am pleased that the provision has since expanded significantly beyond its 1975 position. There are now about 275 refuges in England and Wales, although I appreciate that that is still a great deal fewer than the target set out in the Select Committee report. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, referred specifically to that matter, asking whether the Government had set any targets. Making accurate estimates of need is particularly difficult. That must be recognised when considering the figures that were suggested in the report. For that reason the Government have not set any targets. They believe that it is sensible to leave the creation of new refuges to local initiatives on the reasonable presumption that if more refuges are needed that will be recognised locally.
The Women's Aid Federation of England was established in 1975 to co-ordinate and support the work of the refuge movement. Parallel women's aid federations were established in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They have all been grant-aided by the Government. In 1991–92 the Department of Health provided £137,000 for the Women's Aid Federation of England under Section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968. In addition, it made a contribution towards the cost of employing a special adviser on child care. We must remember that at any given time more children than adult women are accommodated in refuges. In the same year, the Scottish Office and the Welsh Office made additional grants. The Northern Ireland Women's Aid Federation has also been grant-aided. We believe that it is appropriate that the federations should be grant-aided by central government because of their representative and supportive role. Their task is to help locally-provided refuges to do a better job both through co-ordinating their activities and providing expert advice and professional support. We greatly value the work that they do in that respect.
While dealing with that, I should point out that the Women's Aid Federation recognises the special needs of women from ethnic minorities, especially Asian women. Several refuges are especially geared to that sort of provision and the federation is able to advise. However, I appreciate the particular needs of that group, and it was useful to hear the views of the noble Lord, Lord Desai.
I said earlier that it was our view that the provision of women's refuges should be regarded primarily as a local responsibility. There are a number of ways in which centrally provided money is channelled indirectly to local refuges. In Northern Ireland, local refuges are grant-aided directly by the area health and social services boards. But I must stress that decisions on the allocation of this money are made by the boards and not by central government, so the principle of local autonomy is preserved.
In England, a number of refuges have obtained help towards the salaries of paid workers through the Manpower Services Commission and through the Urban Programme. The Urban Programme is administered by local authorities, which co-ordinate bids on behalf of local initiatives. Recently the grant has included provision for the support of refuges in

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inner city areas, mostly towards capital costs but also towards running expenses. In Wales, certain refuge worker posts are funded through the Urban Programme and some child worker posts under the Support for Child and Family Services Grant Scheme. Another important source of indirect central funding is the Housing Corporation, and it is estimated that in 1991–1992 about £5.1 million was allocated to housing associations providing refuges for women victims of domestic violence. In all these cases the important decisions about provision are made locally.
In arguing the case for a national network, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, referred to the fact that a great many women in refuges are accommodated a significant distance away from their matrimonial homes. In some cases that is because of a desire to escape social stigma but much more frequently it is because of the need by the woman to get some distance away from a violent husband, who is likely to search her out and harass her and in some cases inflict further violence. I accept that that happens, and I appreciate the reasons for it. It is recognised in the homelessness code of guidance which is followed by local authorities. But that is not an argument against the principle of local provision.
The approach is, however, dependent upon the adequacy of capital and revenue funding. I mentioned earlier the Urban Programme and the Housing Corporation, and I know that in England the accommodation used by a number of refuges has been provided by local authority housing departments and by housing associations. The most important source of revenue funding for refuges is social security, and that is likely to continue. Important changes in the social security arrangements for claimants in residential care are being introduced in April 1993 under the community care arrangements, but the arrangements that affect refuges will not change. Women's refuges come within the scope of community care, and I hope that refuges in England are already discussing with their social services authorities the contribution that they are able to make to social care provision and that they will be mentioned in the authorities' community care plans which are due to be published by the beginning of next month. It will then be for refuges to discuss with their local authorities the
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kind of contractual arrangements that are appropriate for providing the sort of care that they are able to offer.
I accept that it could be argued that women's refuges may not be among the top community care priorities of local authorities. Nevertheless, the implementation of community care is a long-term process. It creates a much greater transparency about the provision and gives the opportunity for people who are anxious about any deficiencies in that provision to make their views known. There are therefore continuing opportunities to adjust the balance of provision to meet the need. I hope that the community care arrangements will ensure a more satisfactory framework than any system based on central funding.
The noble Lord, Lord Desai, raised the issue of entitlement to benefit. Once a woman has established her entitlement to benefit, she is entitled to the full range of benefits including income support and housing benefit. She is therefore not dependent upon having a partner, and her entitlement is not reduced.
We have talked this evening about the provision of women's refuges. Some important and useful arguments have been advanced and they will certainly be considered in terms of future policy and decision making. I should like to conclude by quoting again from the 1975 Select Committee report. It said,
"refuges are not an entirely satisfactory solution to the problem, and we believe that our other recommendations, especially the legal ones, will have a significant effect for the future. Ideally, in the pattern of violent family break-up, it should be the perpetrator of the violence—the man—who leaves the home, not the wife and children".
I am sure that the noble Earl and others who have spoken in the debate will agree with that.

Avon Weir Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with amendments; the amendments were considered and agreed to.

Folkestone Harbour Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with amendments; the amendments were considered and agreed to.
House adjourned at eight minutes before ten o'clock.