Lords Sitting of 27 January 1993

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

Treasury Officials: Consultations with Industry
The Earl of Buchan The Earl of Buchan asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they consider that one day per year is adequate for Treasury officials to acquaint themselves with the exact needs of British industry and commerce.
The Minister of State, Department of Transport (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, no.
The Earl of Buchan: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his fulsome and lengthy Answer. We might have expected a little more from the noble Earl bearing in mind his experiences in dealing with the subtleties of the Orient in Hong Kong. We may still wish him well over his problems in the murky waters of privatisation.
Will the Minister arrange for parties of people who have suffered from the incompetence of the Treasury, in particular from the long period of high interest rates, which ended only by accident in September, to visit the Treasury on what might be called a reciprocal basis? I refer to businessmen who have been made bankrupt, mortgagees who have been dispossessed, zookeepers, businessmen and many others who have been put to great inconvenience.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I thought that my Answer to the noble Earl was succinct, accurate and covered the remit of his Question exactly. I take note of what he says. I shall put it to my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, did not the Treasury demonstrate yesterday that it had received the most important message from British industry loud and clear?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, certainly my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has had many discussions with British industry. He acted promptly and decisively yesterday.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, if the Treasury is sufficiently well in touch with industry and commerce, why did it wait until yesterday? The Treasury must have known that industry wanted such a reduction in interest rates a long time ago. Was the reason that the green shoots were in danger of turning brown?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I thoroughly enjoy questions from the noble Lord. As a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury he will know that those matters are kept continuously under review.
Lord Rippon of Hexham: My Lords, will the Minister agree that if the Treasury were to spend two days doing what is referred to on the Order Paper, it would be twice as wrong as it usually is?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, what my noble friend says contradicts what the noble Earl, Lord Buchan, wanted initially. Perhaps the Treasury might have it about right.
Lord Richard: My Lords, if one day is insufficient for Treasury officials to acquaint themselves with the exact needs of British industry and commerce, will the noble Earl comment on how long it might take Ministers to so acquaint themselves?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, as the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition knows full well, Ministers keep in regular touch with industry, both big and small, private and public.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I refer to the original Question and Answer. Does the Minister agree that while Treasury officials are probably the ablest in Whitehall, they are the least streetwise? Their lack of understanding of how the real economy works limits the value of the advice that they can give to Ministers and therefore is a limiting factor on economic policy. Will he consider discussing with the Head of the Civil Service the possibility that Treasury officials who are going to the top might spend a period of one or two years, perhaps twice in their careers, in the real economy? I suggest that that period might be in their late 30s or early 40s. They might then be better equipped.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I agree with the first part of my noble friend's question. Treasury officials are very able and extremely competent and they keep in touch with business on a regular basis. The initiative that has been put forward is to make sure that that aim is fulfilled to the best advantage.
Viscount Caldecote: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in 1968 the Committee on the Civil Service, under Lord Fulton, recommended that engineers and scientists in the Civil Service should be given greater responsibilities and wider career opportunities? Does he agree that it is now most unsatisfactory that, when industry depends so much on scientists and engineers, there is not a single Permanent Secretary with qualifications in science or engineering? Will he draw this point to the attention of his right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who is also in the Office of Public Service and Science?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I give full credit to my noble friend for the way in which he managed to get that question in under the main Question on the Order Paper. However, of course, I shall do what he asks.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, if Treasury officials take a day,
"to acquaint themselves with the exact needs of British industry and commerce",
how long do they take to consider the far more important needs of the man in the street?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the noble Lord refers to the Question on the Order Paper and it was to that Question that I said "No", because it is an ongoing process.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic
2.44 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis Lord Clinton-Davis asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have undertaken any consultations with the board of directors of British Airways concerning the effects on British aviation interests generally of the campaign waged against Virgin Atlantic.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, no.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, is that not a surprising Answer? Will the Minister at the very least agree that the behaviour of British Airways in this case was utterly unconscionable? Does he agree that it is in the interests of British aviation that the reputation of the world's finest airline needs to be repaired without delay? Have not the Government an interest in the matter?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the reply to the noble Lord's first supplementary question is again "No". We have a different philosophy from him. I understand that he likes to interfere with every business, whether successful or not. But this is a matter between two private companies.
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we should compliment the board of British Airways on creating an airline which is the envy of the world? Should we not deplore Mr. Branson's continuing threats of US litigation, which will benefit foreign airlines?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we should certainly compliment British aviation, not just the two airlines that my noble friend mentioned. However, it is sad that when there is so much competition from across the Atlantic our two prime airlines which cover that route are arguing among themselves. The sooner that stops and we get on with competing with the Americans the better.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that if British Airways intends to keep its claim to pre-eminence and successfully to handle competition it must stop packing people in like sardines on its long distance jumbos, particularly in economy class? People are not sardines but at the end of a long flight in economy class on British Airways they feel just like sardines.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord would like to take up his complaint direct with British Airways.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the noble Earl may not yet have had the opportunity of studying the recent court proceedings involving British Airways
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and Virgin Atlantic. These matters require consideration. But does he agree that on the basis of the press reports which have so far appeared there is a case for the Government to interest themselves in the way in which the whole business has been conducted? It would be in the interests of the general public and the reputation of the country as a whole to make representations to British Airways, which is clearly culpable in the events that have taken place.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we must be careful—I know that the noble Lord will agree with me on this—about acting upon what is said in the press. One must look at the facts of the case. It was a libel case. But at the same time it is a matter between two private companies and they must sort it out themselves.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, does the Minister agree that British Airways generally has improved enormously since Ministers ceased to intervene with it?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I could not agree more with the noble Lord.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, will the Minister not even say that in general he disapproves of the kind of conduct of which a major British company has been accused?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, one must look at the particular case. If there is justification for action to be taken, it must be taken by the appropriate company in the circumstances.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, the Minister said that my noble friend wished to interfere in everything. Could he provide a little evidence to show that that allegation was not wholly irresponsible?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, one has only to look at the Labour Party's manifesto at the last election to see what it would have done and, indeed, at the recent announcement proposing to put a supertax on a number of successful British companies.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, will the noble Earl give chapter and verse as to where in the manifesto we say, or the Labour Party says, it will intervene, directly or indirectly, in British Airways?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I referred to the manifesto in general, as the noble Lord knows full well. It is a difference of philosophy between the two sides of the House.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, is it not clear that the Minister was, in the most misguided way, thinking on his feet and made a totally unfounded allegation? There is nothing in the manifesto on that at all. Does he understand that there has been revealed in British Airways' own statement an admission of the most appallingly illicit behaviour? Do the Government appreciate that there is a case for Ministers saying to the chairman of British Airways and to senior management, "This is not good enough. It damages the reputation of British Airways and British aviation generally and we shall not allow it to happen again"?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, if a company has been aggrieved by another company there are the usual remedies to go through, and that must happen.

Anthony Jeffs: Release from Prison
2.51 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter Lord Boyd-Carpenter asked Her Majesty's Government:
Why convict Jeffs, serving a life sentence for the murder of a police officer, is to be released after serving 20 years of his sentence; and whether the release accords with recent practice of treating life sentences for the murder of police officers as sentences to be served for life.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, a life sentence is a sentence for life of which part is spent in custody. The murder of a police officer requires a minimum of 20 years to be spent in custody. The decision in principle to release Mr. Jeffs after 21 years in custody was taken in accordance with the normal policy for the release of mandatory life sentence prisoners.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware, as I am sure he is, that the police realise that, in view of the nature of their work, they are particularly dependent on the effective application of the criminal law when they are attacked? In those circumstances, is it not a little depressing for them, as perhaps it is for the public, that this gentleman should be released after serving 21 years on two life sentences: one for killing a police officer in the execution of his duty and the other for seriously injuring another? Does my noble friend understand that the fact that this man can be released in middle age after such a record must have a very depressing effect on the police force?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, of course I understand the anxiety which the police force have about murderers who have murdered policemen. The whole of society condemns that and is anxious about it. My noble friend said that the police depend upon the proper application of the criminal law. I can assure him that the proper application is undertaken. As I explained, a life sentence is a sentence for life. It is the current policy that those prisoners who have murdered policemen should serve a minimum of 20 years. That policy was stated by Mr. Brittan when he was Home Secretary in 1983. After their release, their liberty is restricted for life by the life sentence.
Lord Renton: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether when a prisoner is released after 20 years the responsibility for the decision taken is that of the Parole Board or of the Secretary of State?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, in a mandatory life sentence the Home Secretary decides whether to release a person. The Home Secretary considers the tariff, and in this case the judge chose 20 years. He also has to consider both the risk and wider considerations.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, was any recommendation made when sentence was passed at the trial?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the recommendation was that he should serve at least 20 years in prison. He has served 21 years.
Lord Bethell: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there is particularly strong feeling among members of the Police Federation on this point owing to the cold-blooded attitude of Anthony Jeffs towards the police force, and in particular that he was found to have the initials ACAB—standing for "All coppers are bastards"—tattooed on his knuckles? In this connection, does he agree that in the case of a cold-blooded murder of a policeman such as this, a tariff of more than 20 years would in the present circumstances be more appropriate?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I can only repeat that I quite understand any policeman feeling deeply aggrieved when a person who has murdered a colleague is released. That is a perfectly natural understanding. But the law has to operate in the correct way that it does. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has taken the advice of the Parole Board and has consulted the Lord Chief Justice. All the letters that my noble friend said were tattooed on the gentleman are a matter of his personal concern. But they cannot affect the running of the law. The policy has been that the murder of a policeman should require at least 20 years in prison. That is what has been done.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, since doubt is being cast on the wisdom of the 20 years' policy, which, as the Minister rightly says, was first introduced by Mr. Leon Brittan, will he confirm that the policy was reconfirmed as recently as 1990 by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, who was not the softest of Home Secretaries?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the policy has continued just the same ever since it was announced by Mr. Brittan.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind the concern of the police force, which I do not think he can dispute, over the knowledge that, when they are performing their duties, if one of their number is murdered the murderer will be released after 20 years? Does he realise what a bad effect this appreciation of the situation must have on the morale of the police? Will he undertake to speak to the Home Secretary about it and ask him to give it the most serious consideration?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I quite understand the concern which is felt by the police. I can also understand the concern which some people feel that those who have committed murder should suffer capital punishment. I know that that happens to be one of my noble friend's views. Many people think that. But the law has to be operated in the way in which it is. My right honourable friend has responsibility and has consulted widely. The Parole Board considers that there is no risk. It recommended

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Mr. Jeffs's release. He has been a model prisoner and has shown remorse. When one thinks of the condition of the prisoner as well as the condition of those whom he has affected, it is appropriate that all matters should be considered. They were. But I understand my noble friend's concern.
Lord Carr of Hadley: My Lords, as someone who once had to exercise that responsibility and knows how carefully these matters are looked into, I ask my noble friend whether he will make quite clear something which I believe is the case but could get overlooked; namely, that the prisoner does not have to be released after 20 years. It is possible to release him after 20 years, but only after the most careful inquiries in depth and recommendations from many sources.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. The sentence was for life, with a recommendation that he should spend at least 20 years in prison. My right honourable friend takes advice particularly from the Parole Board as to the condition of that person and as to the likelihood of his reoffending. As to the risk which would be attached to him being released and other public interest matters, these matters are considered very carefully. It is not just decided on the whim of my right honourable friend. I am glad that my noble friend drew that matter to the attention of your Lordships.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that if somebody is sentenced to life and that in fact means 20 years, the word "life" is rather misleading?
Earl Ferrers: No, my Lords. I can understand my noble friend's concern. The sentence is for life. The imprisonment is for a part of that time. When released, that person is still out on licence, to be recalled if ever he or she reoffends.

Hospitals in London: Waiting Lists
2.59 p.m.
Baroness Jeger Baroness Jeger asked Her Majesty's Government:
The total number of patients waiting, first, for consultant appointments and, secondly, for admission at the London hospitals named in the Tomlinson Report.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, in the year to September 1992, the total number waiting for in-patients or day case treatment in inner London fell by 13 per cent., while the number waiting over a year was more than halved. Information on out-patient waiting lists is not collected centrally. However, under the Patient's Charter health authorities are setting and publishing local charter standards for waiting times for first out-patient appointments for each hospital speciality and consultant.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. Is there not some contradiction in the figures we are getting and in the figures which occur on page 39, paragraph 145, of the Tomlinson Report? There it is stated that 1,700 beds in London have already been closed, and the Tomlinson proposals would reduce the number by another 2,500. Surely there is some relationship, even in the mind of the Government, between supply and demand. Does she agree that the closure of so many beds will make it more difficult for doctors to get their patients into hospital or to get appointments for out-patients?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, your Lordships will be aware that we will be debating the recommendations of the Tomlinson Report in terms of the Statement shortly to be made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. Last Monday I answered a Question on the Tomlinson Report. I explained the great dilemma that exists in London in terms of beds and the way that they are used. We know that 60 per cent. of people coming into accident and emergency departments are visiting London and would not normally use those departments. One of the main thrusts of the Tomlinson Report, upon which my right honourable friend will be commenting, is the provision of primary care. It is not just beds and acute services; it is the whole range of London healthcare that is important.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, can the Minister tell us whether she is concerned about the frequency with which general practitioners in London need to have recourse to the emergency bed service to get their patients into hospital?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, yes. I believe that is the answer I gave a moment ago.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the noble Baroness may not have the figures available today, although she has quoted percentages. Is she aware that to be able to quote percentages means that she must have the figures and statistics upon which those percentages are based? Presumably it would be quite easy to obtain the figures and publish them. It is perhaps too late to ask the noble Baroness to do that today. However, when she comes armed to debate the Tomlinson Report, will she ensure either in advance or at the time that the actual figures are made available as distinct from the percentages?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, in my short time in your Lordships' House I have learnt never to come to Questions unprepared. There are 78,573 people on waiting lists in London. It is not the total number that is important; it is the time that they wait for their appointments that is important. Should there be any hospitals about which the noble Lord has a specific question, I am prepared and I hope able.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, does not my noble friend agree that the problem in regard to the health service in London is that the obsession about which we hear in this Chamber and read of outside regarding the hospital provision and the

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dominance that that provision has had on the budget of the health service in London has led to what is the poorest primary health service in the country? The Government must turn their hand to that.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, my noble friend is right. I am sure that that will be a major plank in the Government's strategy for the future.
Lord Annan: My Lords, is it not correct that in some of the departments in our great teaching hospitals there is a waiting list; but, equally, in other departments there are vacant beds? Is not the answer the kind of rationalisation which was suggested in the Tomlinson Report? For instance, while rendering great gratitude to St. Bartholomew's Hospital for the services it renders to those who come and work in the square mile of the City of London, is it not reasonable that obstetrics and gynaecology should be concentrated at the Royal London Hospital? That hospital serves an area in which many babies are born, whereas one hopes that in the square mile of the City of London there are relatively few babies born.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that question and those comments. I am sure that he will make a major contribution to the debate which will be before us in the next few months.
Lord Hayhoe: My Lords, does not my noble friend agree that it is not the number of beds which is of high significance but rather the number of patients who are treated? To have beds which are not used efficiently and effectively does not help the healthcare provision in our capital city. Let us concentrate on patients while of course recognising the significance of beds in any specific specialty in a hospital.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, my noble friend is correct. One of the great thrusts in the health service at the moment is the use of day-case surgery which does not involve beds at all. People prefer it; it is more efficient, and we know that in this respect London lags behind the rest of the country.
Lord Howell: My Lords, will the noble Baroness consider the experience I have just undergone? I spent several days in Westminster Hospital where the demand for emergency work was astronomical. On two occasions on two successive days four patients were brought into my ward when the previous occupants of the beds were still in them. That illustrates the demand. There were people from hostels and those who were tourists in the Westminster area; there were people from the large day-time working population. The suggestion that Westminster Hospital and possibly also St. Thomas's should close and that the whole of the Westminster area should be left with an inadequate amount of emergency beds is lunatic.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, the reasons for some of those problems revert back to the earlier questions on primary care and its inadequacy in London. At this moment, I do not want to make any comment regarding the future of London hospitals. However, I can reassure the noble Lord that we shall
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be looking at accident and emergency services specifically. We recognise how crucial they are to people living and working in the City.
Lord Desai: My Lords, will the noble Baroness give us an assurance that primary healthcare facilities will be in place before beds are closed in London?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am afraid your Lordships will have to wait for the announcement by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in another place.

Business
3.5 p.m.
The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne: My Lords, I should like to say a word about this afternoon's debates standing in the names of my noble friends Lord Oxfuird and Lord Pearson of Rannoch. 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 the debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Oxfuird, that means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 10 minutes and in that of my noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch, 14 minutes. If any noble Lord were to speak at greater length, he would be doing so at the expense of subsequent speakers in that debate.

London Underground (King's Cross) Bill
Read a third time, and passed.

Road Transport: Pollution of City Centres
3.7 p.m.
The Viscount of Oxfuird The Viscount of Oxfuird rose to call attention to the case for the control of combustion-engined road transport in city centres; and to move for Papers.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, it is my pleasure to welcome this afternoon my noble friend Lord Cadman, our maiden speaker. I am sure that his contribution will be significant, particularly in regard to the City of Bristol. I am grateful also to other noble Lords for their support in the debate and I am sure that all contributions will be important in this complex subject.
In calling attention in the debate to the need for the control of combustion-engined road transport in city centres, I should like to structure my remarks this afternoon into the format of a new standard published by the British Standards Institution. The new standard—BS7750 —for environmental management systems was published in March last year and is currently being piloted through about 300 enterprises of all types in the United Kingdom. Its contents have had a significant influence on eco-audit regulations published recently in Brussels and it was commended in the recently published 12th Report of your

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Lordships' Select Committee on the European Community and its activity within the context of the eco-audit scheme.
That should therefore provide a framework for the debate. The standard calls first for commitment, demonstrated not only by the presence of your Lordships here today, but also by the work being carried out by the Government, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and a host of other organisations. Next it calls for an initial review followed by the formulation of policy. From that formulation would evolve an organisation for the achievement of objectives and targets and for operational control over the programme. Records and audits should be properly maintained. Finally, there should be a review of the whole programme.
The initial review is under way. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution is currently undertaking a study to explore the options for developing transport strategies aimed at reconciling the necessary movement of people and goods with the need to protect the environment. The Department of the Environment and the Department of Transport have already issued a joint memorandum by way of evidence to the Royal Commission and it is clear that the need to address the problems of transport-related inner city pollution is central to the study.
Your Lordships will recall that Her Majesty's Government came away from the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June last year with a firm commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels by the year 2000. It is my belief that, within the context of this debate, the significance of reducing levels of carbon dioxide cannot be overstated. In the UK, approximately 20 per cent. of all carbon dioxide emissions result directly from fuel used in transport. About 90 per cent. of this figure is derived from road transport alone, and of this, a staggering 67 per cent. is derived from private cars, vans and taxis.
Air pollution from transport has grown with the increase of traffic everywhere, particularly in the inner cities. Road congestion is making the problem worse as combustion engines work less efficiently in heavy traffic. In addition to carbon dioxide, emissions from combustion engines include, first, the oxides of nitrogen, split 60 per cent. to 40 per cent. between petrol and diesel-engined vehicles; secondly, hydro-carbons, which arise largely from petrol car exhausts; thirdly, carbon monoxide, almost all of which emanates from petrol engined vehicles and which in the UK accounts for 90 per cent. of emissions of this type; fourthly, particulates emissions, the source of most of which come from those diesel-engined vehicles which have been poorly maintained; fifthly, lead, mostly from petrol-driven vehicles. However, lead content in the atmosphere of our inner cities is declining dramatically because of government fiscal measures supporting the use of unleaded petrol. Sixthly, and finally, there is sulphur dioxide, of which transport only contributes about 3 per cent. to total emissions.
Another aspect of combustion-engined transport which has been a focus of technology is that of traffic noise. In inner city areas, where cars move at slow speeds, engines, gearboxes and exhausts have been the primary cause of this noise, while at higher speeds the surface contact between the tyre and the road has been responsible for the most harrowing of screeches and noises in our streets.
The third environmental challenge we face is urban congestion and the impact of the combustion-engined vehicle on towns and cities. Road traffic in metropolitan areas increased by 20 per cent. between 1983 and 1990, and as the joint memorandum by the Departments of the Environment and of Transport recognises, urban congestion has gradually spread from the inner cities to the suburbs. The fourth is the issue of inner city crime, and in particular the escalation in the theft of vehicles.
These are all facts that we encounter in the reality of our everyday lives. The key issue before us is what objectives and targets should be set to ensure greater control over these machines so as to achieve the proper management of combustion-engined vehicles within our environment.
For some, the objective is to eliminate the combustion-engined vehicle from our streets forever. For others there is to be no limit or restraint on the use of cars and lorries in our inner cities. A more realistic objective would be to accept that 67 per cent. of British households own a car. It is not the job of government to tell people when, where and how to travel. The Department of Transport forecasts car ownership rising between 18 and 31 per cent. by the end of the century, and between 48 and 77 per cent. by the year 2015. In greater London alone there are estimated to be 2.32 million cars. If all those cars were parked on the M.25 at one time there would need to be 50 lanes to accommodate them. Moreover, the Department of Transport's projections to the year 2010 suggest a further increase of nearly 50 per cent. to 3.4 million—another 24 more lanes on the M.25. Can one imagine such a car park with 74 lanes the length of the M.25? Car use, as measured in vehicle kilometres, is expected to increase even more rapidly. Furthermore, many car journeys cannot be conveniently made by public transport. The truth is that public transport provision varies within and between our cities. Most routes in London are radial rather than orbital. Towns are served better than rural areas.
The car is therefore here to stay. Today we are debating whether or not the environmental costs of combustion driven engines can be contained and controlled. It is my contention that they can be, and that British industry is playing a significant, if often unrecognised, part in providing technical solutions to the challenges posed by increasingly stringent environmental targets. And if we were to place greater emphasis on technical rather than commercial or political solutions, we would not only drive forward Britain's advanced technology base, but would also arrive at solutions which are acceptable to both UK commercial interests and the range of political interests represented in this House.
The British record for providing technical solutions is remarkable, if seldom remarked upon. I once spent some time with a Danish consultant working on a new type of medical pump. His comment was, "If you want something invented you go to Britain". Today the same philosophy applies but now we can produce as well.
I hope that in this debate we will be able to draw attention to the achievement of British industry—in particular its scientists and engineers—in providing solutions to environmental challenges. The most successful solutions are likely to come from both the engine component manufacturers and the oil industry working closely together with legislators to achieve real reductions in emissions rather than artificial standards which vary significantly from country to country. The oil industry is already doing much to lower the lead and sulphur content of fuels. Sulphur emissions, while lower from the transport sector than the quantities emitted by power stations, still contribute to the creation of acid rain. An EC directive which is due to be in place by October 1996 aims to reduce the sulphur content in diesel to 0.05 per cent. At the same time, motor and components manufacturers have combined to improve engine and emission control technology. There can be no doubt that these technical solutions, particularly when combined with fiscal incentives, have had a profound impact on air quality. No longer the Stygian gloom of Limehouse in the 1940s.
The effect of improved technology on air quality is dependent on the emission characteristics of vehicles in use. Dr. Franz Pischinger has shown, in a report for the European Commission's Symposium on Auto Emissions 2000, that diesel engine technology,
"has been refined to a degree beyond which it was thought possible two decades ago".
Dr Pischinger reminds us that the emission behaviour of cars is determined largely by maintenance. Insufficient maintenance increases the emission factor by more than two. He goes on to note that in respect of the life of an engine diesel cars are better. There is only a modest deterioration over the vehicle's life. Diesel engines burn fuel more efficiently, using 30 per cent. less fuel than the equivalent in petrol cars and producing about 20 per cent. less carbon dioxide per mile, a factor which the Chancellor has already recognised by widening the fiscal advantage of diesel over standard petrol. Cleaner cars using unleaded petrol, catalytic converters, diesel fuel and engine technology have been developed through European-wide scientific and technical co-operation.
It is essential that the United Kingdom should continue to play a role in joint European motor and group industry research programmes to tackle road transport emission problems in a co-operative spirit. I shall highlight to your Lordships some of the areas in which I know technical solutions are being sought; for example, hydrocarbon based fuels—all of which pollute and all of which can be made cleaner.
BP, along with other major oil companies, is studying the role of fuel chemistry on emissions' performance and as a measure of its commitment, has recently invested £12 million in an acute, clean fuel
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laboratory at its Sunbury research centre. British Gas and Johnson Matthey are doing serious research work to improve catalytic converters and pressurised gas. Lucas Industries are developing electronically controlled fuel injection systems which offer significant emission advantages over the present mechanical systems as well as improving fuel consumption and overall performance.
However, there is no single fuel formulation which has been found for diesel or gasoline that offers the complete panacea. There will have to be collaboration for these technical solutions both between industries and with our European partners. An example of that collaboration was the invitation from three oil companies, Agip, Elf and Fina, to British manufacturers, like Lucas, to discuss joint research initiatives in the presence of European Commissioners. That collaboration between oil, engine and fuel injection manufacturers has led to the development of joint standards.
Collaboration also occurs within the framework of the standards institutions. There are many issues which are defined by these bodies, including the technical specifications, nomenclatures and methods of testing. The collaborative process is greatly assisted by the fact that national trade associations representing national companies are represented within these different bodies at all three levels. Therefore, collaboration is widespread and the relationship between the bodies is close.
Collaboration between local authorities and the public to reduce toxic emissions is already a feature of inner city government. I particularly have in mind Westminster City Council which has just launched its "Exhaust Watch" scheme whereby residents are encouraged to report cars which they see producing visible emissions.
There have been striking successes in reducing noise levels in vehicles over the past 20 years. I understand that Britain is currently one of the leading countries worldwide in the production of environmental noise analysers, a business which is driven by the environmental regulations from our own Government and the European Commission.
Perhaps I may now turn to the problem of inner city congestion. Traffic growth and congestion in city centres across the United Kingdom are serious problems. Projected growth will cause increasingly severe and more widespread congestion, imposing a severe burden on the economy of the region.
One method of dealing with congestion is congestion metering, a process which is currently the focus of research at Newcastle University. The research is being partly funded under a European Commission project called "Drive" and involves a wide range of European manufacturers. The system works on the basis of a charge being levied for a unit of congested road; a unit being half a kilometre or a third of a mile. The system is activated by electric monitoring scanners which are placed on the boundaries of congested areas. When a car crosses the boundary the on-board computer monitor is activated and the charges are registered on a card. The "beacon technology" is developed by Saab in Sweden with the

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use, in part, of American technology. The research into developing the on-board computers is primarily being dealt with by Newcastle University.
In the past the policy of "park and ride" has been proposed by many local authorities and in many cases it has been rejected by opposing views. However, if we look at what is going on in London and in other cities, that policy is being implemented by stealth. Car owners are parking near public transport junctions such as tube stations and bus stops, with the result that vast areas of residential streets are blocked and are being turned into creeping car parks, denying a source of revenue to local authorities and making life very difficult for the residents of those areas. Surely, the potential for "park and ride" must be one of the alternatives to the present chaos.
In conclusion, I hope that, in tabling this debate, I have created an opportunity for your Lordships to tackle the last part of BS7750; namely, a review of the whole programme. Before rushing to legislate or to implement solutions, we must take care to clarify the facts. We should urge further collaboration and dialogue between interested parties. Technology has driven progress forward a great deal over the past 20 years and that is apparent. However, we must increase our efforts to ensure that this progress is sustained. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.27 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, is to be congratulated on having introduced this Motion at this time. He made our minds boggle with his reference to what might happen to the M.25 if all London's cars were parked along it. I suppose that one beneficial consequence would be that it would be easier to move around in the rest of the city. We could at least walk in peace, ride our bicycles in peace and perhaps go back to horse-drawn vehicles. However, I should utter a word of caution here. I am quite convinced that over a century ago or so, in this very House, there could well have been a Motion from a Peer with a similar interest to that of the noble Viscount, drawing attention to the environmental hazards of the ever-increasing quantities of horse manure which were impeding movement on the roads of London. I am sure that some fanciful projections would have been made as to where that might lead in due course. Very shortly after that the petrol driven vehicle came to the rescue.
Now we are concerned with emissions of a different sort. There is no doubt that this problem is a very serious one. I am glad to note that the Government fully recognise that, because in the second progress report on This Common Inheritance, a document which was issued in October, 1992, it is stated that while pollution from industrial and domestic heating has declined,
"pollution caused by traffic has grown. Emissions of nitrogen oxides from motor vehicles increased by 38 per cent. between 1986 and 1991 … and in London during December 1991, there was the worst episode of nitrogen dioxide ever recorded in the United Kingdom".
The report goes on to say,
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"Diesel vehicles have taken over from domestic fires as the main source of urban smoke".
The Clean Air Act 1956 removed smoke from domestic chimneys in built-up areas in Britain. It was one of the most dramatic changes that we have seen in the way we live, particularly in urban areas. But there is now a new menace and pollution from vehicles is the most significant contributor to poor air quality. So I believe that it is extremely timely, in view of this very serious situation with the prospects of ever-increasing quantities of motor vehicles, to have another look at this question.
There is no doubt that a great deal has already been done, but it has been done on a fairly disparate basis and these various actions need to be brought together in order to have a comprehensive policy to deal with this new environmental menace, which is certainly growing, and will grow, unless more urgent action is taken. In the early part of last year the European Commission issued a consultative document on transport and the environment which attempted to do that on a European basis. I believe that we should have a similar overall review for the United Kingdom and that, rather than waiting for standards to be proposed by the European Commission, we should move ahead and act in advance of the thinking of the rest of Europe.
Within the broader framework at which we need to look, we should consider technical developments, regulations, fiscal measures, traffic management and public transport. A number of these issues were referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird. He was quite right in respect of technical developments in referring to the fact that very much positive and valuable work has been carried out. In a Question asked in the House on Thursday by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, who I am glad to note will be speaking in the debate, attention was drawn to some of the significant technical advances that have been made. There has been progress in the development of lean-burn engines. Above all, there has been progress in the development of catalytic converters, especially the three-way catalyst with which the firm of Johnson Matthey, to which the noble Viscount referred, has been much associated. It is interesting to note that 15 million of its converters have already been sold within Europe alone. There has been a big development in their use and, as a result of the standards that have now been established by Brussels, more and more such converters will have to be installed.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the British Gas research centre near Birmingham, which is developing the natural gas vehicle. This vehicle, to which the noble Viscount briefly referred, is indistinguishable in its performance—so far as I could tell and from what I was told—from any normal petrol-driven vehicle, but its polluting impact is vastly reduced not only in the more obnoxious ground-level pollution from petrol-driven engines, but also in CO2 by some 20 to 25 per cent. The problem associated with natural gas vehicles is the distribution of the fuel, because it has to be compressed. It is, therefore, likely that it could best be used initially for fleets of vehicles where there could be a central point for fuelling.

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However, what was particularly interesting is that work is being carried out into a domestic-sized compressor, which means that we could each have a small compressor in our garage, link in to the domestic gas supply, and refuel our cars overnight.
That seems an interesting development and it has, in fact, been perfected at Vancouver in British Columbia in Canada. The process is already being used there, helped by substantial government grants. There are already 0.75 million natural gas vehicles being driven around the world and the likelihood is, particularly with the stringent regulations that are being introduced in the United States, and especially in California, that their number could rise to some 2 million by the end of the century. That is a most interesting development.
The conclusion that we can reach is that in the technical sense enormous progress has been made. It needs to be further stimulated, no doubt, but what is much more important is to see how effectively the technical progress which has been achieved can be applied.
That leads to the second issue, which is the question of regulation. There is no doubt that the setting of evermore stringent standards is the only way in which, by regulation, we can help to resolve this problem. The Community now has regulations, applying from the beginning of this year, which will mean that all new cars have to conform to a much more stringent emission requirement. However, the standards set in Europe are below the standards set in the United States on a federal basis, and the United States' federal emission requirements fall below what is now being enforced in California. So, much higher standards are being enforced in other parts of the world. We should study them with care and see what we can do about this matter.
I have been much impressed with the work that local authorities have been doing in monitoring emission concentrations. In the City of Westminster, for example, some very detailed emission monitoring is taking place. As the noble Viscount mentioned, Westminster has introduced an "Exhaust Watch Scheme", which is an attempt to mobilise all who live and work in Westminster to watch out for vehicles with noticeable emissions. A good deal of work in this area has also been carried out in the city of Sheffield and, I have no doubt, by many other local authorities. I hope that they can be encouraged to persevere along this route.
Fiscal measures are another way in which we can help in this area. We have seen what happened with lead-free petrol. There is a growing case for having a graduated vehicle tax to take account of the extent to which vehicles are fitted with what can be called "green accoutrements".
Traffic management is perhaps the most effective method of dealing with congestion, which is another way in which pollution is concentrated. It is estimated that more effective traffic management throughout the country could reduce fuel consumption by some 7 per cent. and journey times by 10 per cent. We all know
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how much congestion costs everybody. It is estimated that congestion on the roads costs up to £500 per household per year.
To sum up, this is not only a timely debate, but it draws attention to the fact that, although the importance of the issue is fully recognised and although much has been done, perhaps the time has now come to bring together these various facets. Perhaps the Government could consider issuing some consultative document in this area which could bring all these issues together, following on from what they said in their last report, to which I have referred. Perhaps they could indicate whether they feel that further legislation covering all these issues might, in due course, be appropriate on a more general basis than the particular lines which have so far been pursued.
3.36 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, for introducing this debate and to congratulate him on his opening remarks, which were learned and very much to the point. I very much agree with him that it is difficult physically to prevent people from using the form of transport that they wish to use. However, while the Government cannot interfere with freedom to that extent, they could nevertheless refuse to accommodate too large a future increase in vehicles and traffic on the roads.
It is accepted that vehicle exhaust fumes are very dangerous. They appear to be acceptable to people at large because they are invisible, but that makes them no less dangerous. Carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, soot and particulates are undoubtedly harmful substances and are a real cause of many respiratory diseases. I believe that too little research has been carried out into the results of vehicle exhaust fumes. Perhaps if it were made compulsory to add a harmless chemical agent to petrol to colour exhaust fumes (to resemble cigarette smoke, for example) there would be an immediate outcry—perhaps even a call for cars to be banned in public places and a European-wide ban on advertising motor vehicles. That, of course, is not going to happen, because people love their cars, and I understand why. They get them from A to Z reasonably efficiently—except, of course, in town centres—and they go from door to door. Nevertheless, people need to be reminded that exhaust fumes are dangerous to health in the same way as many other substances are dangerous.
The first law of road transport is that traffic expands to fill the available road space. Therefore, of course, the Government must examine their roads programme and pay special attention to what local authorities are doing. Local authorities must be told not to increase road capacity into town centres through the widening of roads unless that is necessary to improve an accident black spot or something similar. The Government should not merely reduce the transport supplementary grant for such schemes, they should say to local authorities, "If you go ahead with that scheme against the Government's will, we

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shall withdraw from your total transport supplementary grant an amount equal to the sum you are spending on that undesirable and environmentally bad road". That sort of thing can be done by government.
Public transport policies are important and have already been mentioned. They must be based upon a full cost benefit analysis which should include health, the environment and the cost of road building. Public transport must be made more competitive with private transport in terms of cost, convenience and reliability.
When I was chairman of the Reading transport undertaking, my objective was to provide frequent, reliable, comfortable and cheap bus services. It is becoming increasingly difficult to provide such services profitably in competition with the private car. It will become impossible to do so unless the bias against public transport is removed and reversed. Let me give an instance of what happens in Reading, where I live, in relation to bus and private car costs. If a man, his wife and two children go into Reading town centre on a bus, that costs them £3.60. On the other hand if they go in by car, the total costs are £1.80, because they can park in a car park for three hours at 60p per hour. They naturally take the cheapest way and take the car into the town centre. Those costs should be reversed. It should cost them £3.60 by car and £1.80 by public transport. That would be an encouragement to people to use the bus instead of the car.
One of my hobbyhorses is electric vehicles, which I have favoured for a long time. Far too little effort has been put into the development of electric vehicles over the years. We need a spur. The Government should set a deadline of 2003, after which date no internal combustion vehicle would be allowed within two miles of a town centre. That would wonderfully concentrate the minds of vehicle manufacturers. It is no good people saying that that would merely transfer the problem to power stations. It would be different and more easily dealt with than the problems which arise in the thousands of towns and cities up and down our land. If the Government do not want to go that far, they could give substantial assistance to electric buses—trolleybuses, battery-powered vehicles or a mixture of both.
I suppose that I should declare an interest, because I believe that I am still the president of the British Trolley Bus Society. The trolleybus is probably the finest form of stage carriage transport ever devised. It has good acceleration and braking and is a silent, comfortable ride. Of course there is no pollution. The Government should consider giving assistance to bring back the trolleybus.
Let us take Oxford Street, as an example. I expect we have all been to Oxford Street recently. All cars are banned there, but the pollution from oily diesel fumes is a disgrace. A case can be made out for banning diesel vehicles and replacing them with electric vehicles. I hope that the Government will take that point on board.
We need also to do something about the huge goods vehicles which pound our streets and go into
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town centres. Although I cannot develop that topic, it would be possible to bring bulk goods into town centres by rail. Most of our town centres have a railway station. The goods could then be distributed by electric vehicles. That would help considerably to relieve congestion and pollution. I recommend those suggestions to the Government.
3.46 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Viscount for introducing this important subject. I am looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cadman, who will follow me. I first made contact with this subject some 30 years ago when I became chairman of the Institute of Cancer Research. That was in the pioneering days when the influence of smoking and smog, for example, on cancer of the lung and other pulmonary disorders was very much under investigation.
I have two statistical memories of those early investigations which have stayed with me because they are memorable. The first is that among the non-smoking urban population there is a higher incidence of pulmonary trouble than in the non-smoking rural population. So there is something about cities that is lethal to some people. Secondly, to show how sensitive we are to it, first generation non-smoking New Zealanders are more subject to lung troubles and cancer of the lung than are second generation non-smoking New Zealanders. Most of the first generation would have been subjected to city pollution here with a higher degree of probability than they would be in New Zealand. Once subjected to the polluted atmosphere of the city, one is more liable to run into pulmonary trouble. Whether it is life in the city as a smoker or a non-smoker, there is something objectionable in the city.
I am sure that your Lordships will remember the terrible smog that we had in 1952 when the death rate increased to almost astronomical proportions. There just happened to be an atmospheric inversion layer at that time and several days' accumulation of smog descended upon the City of London.
What could be the causative agent? It is not carbon dioxide. One breathes out far more carbon dioxide than one ever takes in. Carbon dioxide is easy to detect on analysis so it is a good marker for all the other things. In the same way with carbon monoxide, the amount of carbon monoxide that you fix as carboxyhaemoglobin is entirely proportional to the partial pressure of carbon monoxide and oxygen in your lungs. If somebody is suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, one only has to feed him a little oxygen and he is back to a normal state.
As regards oxides of nitrogen, I have tried for a long time to find out what proportion of NOx in the air is due to manmade pollution and what is due to thunderstorms. There are 1,000 thunderstorms in progress all over the world at any one point in time. All of them are shedding oxides of nitrogen. They are very difficult to isolate because one does not have the apparatus near the thunderstorm at the time.

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My own choice of culprit is smoke and unburned hydrocarbons. We all know that tars and such things are active and most unpleasant carcinogens.
There are always the two problems of prevention and cure: the problem of clean-up versus some kind of alternative lifestyle. I wish to introduce your Lordships to this question: why do people commute? Why do they go from low density residential areas to high density city areas once a day, polluting the atmosphere with their cars as they go?
There are various motives but the main one is communication. Those people travel to be close to one another by juxtaposition so that they can communicate. They can communicate with others face to face and even more important, they can communicate with their filing systems. They want to be in touch with other communicators. All that leads to a high density population of communicators which can be rendered low density in the course of development.
Let us take telecommunications, the telephone and its development as the fax. Let us think of the two in combination with a home-based secretary. You simply ring her up, dictate what you have to dictate over the telephone. She sends you back a fax which you correct and send back to her. She then posts it for you. That involves no commutation to the same office.
The face-to-face television will come in the course of the next generation. There is also the distributive filing system. You do not have to have a filing system consisting of paper, boxes, filing cabinets and so on. Your filing system can be merely a series of dots on a microfiche or something of that kind. I look forward to the day when people will not come to large concrete boxes at high density in order to be able to talk to one another or to look up things in their filing system. You will have an electronic sitting room which will have a fax machine, a telephone, a desk computer and a television camera so that other people can see you if you want to talk to them face to face and vice versa. People will not need to leave their homes.
Your Lordships may think that that is all a counsel of perfection. Your Lordships may wonder whether such things will ever happen. I look forward to them happening because I look back at what has happened during my lifetime. I was born in 1908. Bleriot flew the Channel in 1910. The Marconi scandal erupted in 1911. The radio came in and I listened to the Beckett-Carpentier fight in my bedroom on a radio which I had found on the junkheap. I repaired that and got it working myself. That was in 1921. I saw the first television set by Baird. I listened to the results of dialling on the first automatic telephone exchange. I did sums on the first computer. For years I have been accustomed to photocopying devices. Now, there is the latest gift from the communication engineering industry to a hard-pressed Parliament—the fax machine.
That will not stop; it will continue. That is why, coming to the end of my fairly lengthy life, I do not believe that progress will stop. By all means let us clean up hydrocarbon exhausts as much as we can. However, I believe that we may find that the urban density of traffic, far from reaching the type of
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astronomical proportions to which the noble Viscount referred, may diminish and we shall be smog free one day.
3.55 p.m.
Lord Cadman: My Lords, I rise this afternoon with some slight misgivings since these words of mine will not only be my first in this House but also my first anywhere in public. I was tempted to begin with the old cliché, but having listened to a number of maiden speeches since taking my seat, some by experienced speakers and some by those less so, and having been encouraged by the splendid and most interesting effort by the noble Earl, Lord Portland, last Thursday, also a "primeur", 1 shall desist.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Oxfuird for introducing this Motion. I am sure that his intention is to invite some discussion not only with regard to reducing traffic congestion but also to reducing both atmospheric and noise pollution in our city centres. Controlling access to city centres by vehicles with combustion engines could be construed as being somewhat controversial so I shall confine my remarks to the subject of electric traction.
Our Victorian forefathers introduced electric vehicles, more often than not as part of a railed tramway system, as a solution to the problems of operating such a system with horses. As advancing technology improved the reliability of internal combustion engined vehicles and the availability of relatively cheap petroleum fuels increased, electric tramways found themselves at a disadvantage due to the difficulty and expense involved in adapting the system to the expanding transport needs of the city. A bus can go just where a driver points it but an electric tram or trolley-bus must follow the rails or wires.
Today, however, the wheel has turned full circle and many cities which kept their electric systems are now able to take advantage of that pollution-free method of people movement. I live in Bristol and recently we were introduced by our local bus undertaking to a large and rather cumbersome looking vehicle referred to as a "Bendy Bus". It is a highly sophisticated vehicle which forms part of an urban transportation system known as guided light transit. The bus is 85 feet long and in three articulated sections. It is geometrically designed so that all of the wheels follow exactly the same track. That means that, despite its size, it can be confined to a given section of road. When operated by a road-based guidance system it can be powered by an overhead electric supply.
In fact, the vehicle also has a diesel engine which drives a generator. It can be driven about, away from its guidance system just like a normal bus. In the city centre it is electrically powered, reducing pollution, and in the suburbs it reverts to diesel power where the fumes seem to be less of a problem.
It was fascinating to watch that vehicle negotiating the streets of central Bristol. The system seems to have all the advantages of a tramway, with very few of the disadvantages. Let us hope that Bristol can be in the

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forefront of the possible introduction of what appears to be an ideal system of pollution-free urban transport.
Once you have most of the buses in the city centre replaced by electrically powered vehicles and, it is hoped, advancing technology making electrically powered goods delivery vehicles more of an economic proposition than they are at present, it should be possible to persuade people to accept some form of controlled access to our cities by combustion engined vehicles. I am sure that a positive approach to the introduction of modern electrically-powered mass transit systems to our inner cities will go a long way to enable people to be persuaded or even directed not to bring their vehicles into our city centres, with a consequential reduction in pollution.
4 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I congratulate most warmly my noble friend Lord Cadman on his notable maiden speech and his contribution to our discussion which has enlightened us about electric traction. I know that as well as speaking on my own behalf I am speaking on behalf of the whole House in saying that we look forward to hearing him again on many occasions in the future.
I should also like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Oxfuird on the clear and thorough way in which he introduced the subject of the debate: the problems created by motor vehicles in cities and towns. I intend to touch on two of the unfortunate effects: pollution and congestion.
My noble friend drew attention to the air pollution caused. In some situations this can lead to unhealthy smog, which we remember from 1952 in London. However, it happens more often in Los Angeles, which has a very bad reputation in regard to this. I believe it also happens in certain Japanese cities, although I have not visited them. In this country the pollution of the air is less obvious but it happens nonetheless where concentrations of motor vehicles are active. The situation can be improved, and the adoption of catalytic converters and other measures, including the increasing use of unleaded petrol, is helping.
Your Lordships may recall that only last Thursday the Government brought us some startlingly good news, mentioned just now by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra. This was in a reply from my noble friend Lady Denton to a Question of mine. A month earlier I had seen a press report of a car engine which cleaned the air passing through it in urban areas. Between the air intake and the exhaust it was reported to extract more pollution than it added. It was indeed "hoovering" the atmosphere. At the time I found this astonishing. It sounded like the eighth wonder of the world. However, my noble friend confirmed that this was happening and stated that government support for experiments of this kind was continuing. Question Time last Thursday was not the best time to pursue the subject further. Other questions, of course, come to mind, such as how expensive is this going to be? How complex? When is it likely to have practical
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application to most motor vehicles? These questions are still before us, but it is very welcome progress in the right direction and the Government should give full encouragement to those working in this field.
I now turn to congestion. Besides the inconvenience, there is the substantial cost to the country arising from traffic jams in city centres and from the inefficient use of road space. Some cities have adopted pedestrian precincts, especially for shopping areas, where no vehicles may enter. Some cities abroad stipulate that deliveries to commercial premises by lorries and vans must be made within certain periods during the night. This applies also to rubbish collecting. Is this policy being adopted anywhere in this country yet? I do not know, but perhaps my noble friend can tell us when he comes to reply.
One radical change which has been much discussed is the introduction of road pricing. I understand that the Government are considering the issue of a Green Paper soon on this subject, and again I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell us about that later today. I believe that road pricing will have to be adopted eventually. Difficulties will mainly arise in finding a system which is simple, workable and accurate. I believe that parking must be covered as well as mileage if road miles are to be a factor.
I come now to a further consideration which must not be overlooked, and perhaps I am the most appropriate person to raise it in this debate: that is, arrangements for disabled people. In carrying out pedestrianisation in some schemes in this country, the needs of people who are dependent on wheels must be catered for: those who cannot walk or can manage only short distances with difficulty.
There is a well-known city where motor cars have never been allowed and which can provide lessons for us: that is Venice. There, any fumes which escape into the atmosphere come from the vaporettos, or the motor launches. It is a beautiful city, but difficult for those whose legs do not function. I have been well aware of that on private visits to this city. I could plan my own movements, but your Lordships may be amused to hear of my experience five years ago when I had to be in the chair of an international conference there.
The meetings were on the conference island of San Giorgo Maggiore and the Mayor of Venice had kindly put a launch at my disposal for the period. Difficulties arose only when I had to reach premises which were some distance away from the Grand Canal when I was acting as chairman or host and had to be there. The launch was halted by pedestrian bridges over the smaller canals. Seeing me struggling on my sticks, Italian colleagues started searching ancient Venetian collections for a sedan chair as the best expedient. That was a stark reminder of the problems that occur when no wheels are allowed in an area. It is not only one for severely disabled people but for those with problems in walking.
Turning to central London, severely disabled people have been much restricted because the councils concerned have not accepted the orange badge scheme for parking. That is entirely understandable to me, as I have told your Lordships' House before, because

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central London could be overwhelmed by tens of thousands of orange badge holders from within a radius of 30 miles or more. Now the orange badge scheme is being replaced by a new scheme involving a personal passport-type identification to be carried by the disabled person. It had been hoped that agreement would be reached with the central London local authorities for this new system to cover their areas too. This is a matter of importance to disabled people, who have reason to reside in, or to visit, the centre of London and for whom taxis are not possible because they cannot get in or out of them. My noble friend Lord Caithness may be able to say more today about the new disabled parking system and whether practical measures have yet been agreed on how the system will operate in central London.
4.8 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I too should like to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Cadman, on his maiden speech.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, referred to the silent trolley bus. I like the idea of the trolley bus, but it has its dangers. Being silent means that it is easier for such a bus to run over an unwary pedestrian than a diesel vehicle. I am afraid the same observation also applies to all electric vehicles, although perhaps a bleeper system might overcome that objection. I think there is a future for hybrid diesel/electric and battery vehicles.
With regard to large vehicles, it is worth remembering that a 38-tonne articulated vehicle can carry 25 tonnes of produce at seven miles per gallon, whereas a seven-and-a-half tonne truck can carry, say, only four tonnes at a best possible fuel consumption of 20 miles per gallon. In other words, the articulated truck carries six times as much for less than three times the fuel cost, not to mention lower empty running and driver costs which are incurred when using several smaller vehicles. The emissions from trucks are in direct proportion to the amounts of fuel burnt.
One aspect of control of road vehicles is the MoT testing of vehicles, and also the testing of drivers. The MoT test has now been made stiffer, and the vehicle's engine will not be so polluting, and therefore it will be more efficient. I am a great believer in the annual MoT test, as it means that once a year the vehicle is practically defect-free. A possible weakness is that vehicles under three years old are exempt, even though a company car could have covered over 100,000 kilometres in that time. Thus the engine could be completely out of tune, with obvious implications for fuel efficiency and pollution.
When it comes to the driver, we test him or her for about half an hour at the tender age of 17 or 18. Unless they get tested for a vocational licence, that is it for the rest of their lives. As a qualified army driving instructor, I have in the past been involved with the training for heavy goods vehicle or large goods vehicle vocational driving licences. I found three types of driver: novice, experienced, and expert. It was always clear to me that an experienced car driver stood practically no chance of passing a vocational driving test without at least four or five days' training.
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Apart from not knowing how to pass the test, the student would not normally employ good defensive driving. Defensive driving is a system aiming practically to eliminate any risk of an accident from the planning stage to the end of the journey. An expert driver is a defensive driver. By definition, he or she will rarely have an accident. We are all aware of how much expense, congestion, inconvenience and even grief that accidents cause. They can also cause further accidents, and certainly a lot more pollution. An expert driver will be a progressive driver when it is safe. He will certainly be more fuel efficient, avoiding harsh acceleration, late breaking, or inappropriate gear changes.
I should like to see five-yearly testing of drivers; but I realise that there might be certain practical difficulties. However, who can argue that higher standards of driving would not do more to reduce accidents than stricter vehicle testing? There is a group of drivers who have shown that their standard of driving is far too low; namely, those convicted of careless, reckless or dangerous driving. These drivers should automatically have to take a driving test within six months of conviction or on return of their driving licence if they are to continue driving.
4.14 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, may I just be allowed to tell the noble Earl, with no feeling of rancour, that he spoke about four places out of turn? His father, who was a great friend and colleague of mine, showed me around when I first came into your Lordships' House. I only wish that the noble Earl had followed his father onto these Benches. Then somebody could have gently tugged his shirt-tail and we could have got back to the right order.
I thank the noble Viscount for introducing this important debate. It is one that I have looked forward to. I believe that today I can talk about motor-cycles without cunningly having to introduce the subject in a debate that is not directly connected with them because we are discussing the internal combustion engine in inner-city areas and the motor-cycle is an important part of the problem.
My charming researcher hinted that she would do some harm to my person if I did not mention two-wheeled vehicles that are not motorised. I do not think that they are relevant to today's debate, so all I can say is that all those interested parties who want to talk about congestion in our inner cities have problems in the queue, as it were, of lobbying. Cyclists, pedestrians and to some degree motor-cyclists have great difficulty in getting to the position of the car manufacturers and the motoring organisations in influencing the Government. The position is very much tilted in favour of cars, which, after all, are the main culprits so far as congestion is concerned in our inner cities.
I do not have to tell your Lordships that a motor-cycle takes up a good deal less room than a car on our roads; roughly one-third of the space. This ought to be taken into account when road pricing is considered—a matter mentioned by a noble Lord who preceded me—if the Government should think of

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going down that road. Also the damage to road surfaces is considerably less than with a car. Traffic jams are not caused by motor-cycles, and there are quite a lot of motor-cycles in London. They are relatively easy to park, and there is no need to develop high-rise or multi-storey car parking.
The problem about cars and congestion in London is that the congestion is mainly caused at certain times of day by commuters, either in the process of commuting or when they are in London. A great proportion of commuters are driving company cars; in other words, as a perk. The way that the system of company cars is structured is unique to Britain. Through taxation an attempt has been made to make it more expensive for people to use such cars. But, as other noble Lords have said, when considering mobility and public transport, having one's own vehicle is obviously an advantage. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that it is difficult and probably undesirable for the Government to act in too heavy a manner.
There is not much appeal in public transport today for commuters. It is expensive, uncomfortable and often unreliable. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, gave us a comparison of costs between car and bus. I can give him a good comparison. It was done by a colleague of mine to show exactly what things cost. A train ticket from Guildford to Waterloo costs £12.70 for a day. On a 900 c.c. motor-cycle, which is moderately large, the tank can be filled for £8 with lead-free petrol, which is used in about 90 per cent. of motor-cycles, and that will last for three whole days. The economy of using a motor-cycle, quite apart from the other aspects of road wear and so on, is obvious.
Another problem that I do not think any other noble Lord has mentioned in connection with congestion in cities is not so much the inconvenience, the bad temper and the pollution of the environment. They are all important factors, but there is also the waste of time, and the waste of working time. It is not just the waste of time getting to work. Presumably most commuters make sure that they get up early enough to get to work on time. But what about people who have to ply their trade in London, using their vehicles to get to appointments? The loss of management time and the frustration of drivers must be enormous. I am not suggesting that every manager should try a motor-cycle; heaven forbid. But there is room for considering two-wheeled transport whenever possible.
I must say a few words about parking. I declare an interest in motor-cycles. The noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, and I formed the all-party motor-cycle group, which is now two years old and has some 26 members. I believe we have made quite an impact on a number of bodies, even on Members of your Lordships' House. A number of noble Lords ride motor-cycles and, more importantly, a number of noble Lords have now taken the trouble to take the two-part test. That number includes the Government Deputy Chief Whip. I believe he does not intend to ride his motor-cycle in London, which may be a relief to the noble Earl who is to respond to this debate. It
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is certainly encouraging that there is support across the House not only for motor-cycles but also for the concept of riding them.
Parking for motor-cyclists is a problem but it can be quite easily dealt with. Local authorities have already made quite an effort to provide better parking for motor-cycles. We need more such parking, but there is the question of security. Rings and other fixtures need to be supplied to which motor-cycles can be attached because motor-cycle theft, together with car theft, is still a big problem.
I wish to say a few words about motor-cycles and the environment. I have already said that about 90 per cent of motor-cycles take lead-free petrol. Motorcycles are relatively fuel efficient. Most of the parts of a motor-cycle can be recycled when the motor-cycle has reached the end of its useful life. There have been many misconceptions both in your Lordships' House and outside about the safety of motor-cycles. That was one of the contributory reasons for our forming the parliamentary group concerned with motor-cycles. We felt the misunderstandings needed to be dealt with.
Government figures show that at present motorcycles have never been safer. Those figures take into account the fact that there are fewer motor-cycles on the road now than there were, say, five years ago, as young people now have to take the two-part test and motor-cycles are relatively expensive. There has been a fall of 18 per cent in motor-cycle accidents in the last quarter of 1992 as opposed to an increase of six per cent in car accidents. There has been a decrease in the number of motor-cycle accidents in seven consecutive quarters. The Government's target is to cut motor-cycle accidents by 40 per cent by the year 2000 and to cut car accidents by 30 per cent. Motor-cyclists have already met their target thanks to better motor-cycle riding, better training and better made machines. It is therefore important that the Government certainly do not discourage the use of motor-cycles for many of the reasons I have mentioned. I hope they will encourage their use.
The noble Viscount referred to industry in his introduction to the debate. The British motor-cycle industry was at one time the leading motor-cycle industry in the world. Unhappily it disappeared almost entirely but it is now re-emerging. The Triumph company now produces some of the best motor-cycles in the world. Triumph certainly has the most automated and most modern motor-cycle manufacturing plant in the world. The plant has not been in existence for many years but Triumph is making a quite incredible impact on world motor-cycling products. That is all to the good. I hope the Government can at least supplement the encouragement which was given to the industry by the Minister responsible for transport when he opened the Motor Show at Birmingham.
4.24 p.m.
Lord Nelson of Stafford: My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Cadman on his excellent maiden speech. We are delighted to hear him speak and we hope to hear him on many other occasions. I also wish to add my congratulations to

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my noble friend who has introduced this most interesting and timely debate. He introduced the debate in a splendid fashion when he emphasised the importance of this matter. Other speakers have reinforced that point. Noble Lords have spoken of the problems of congestion and of pollution of the atmosphere. My noble friend also touched on a number of technological measures which have been tackled over the years, and which are being tackled. In implementing those measures solutions may be found to some of the problems we face.
I believe most of the technology needed to solve the problems is in place and is available. The problem is not one of technology but of application. What can we do to apply the technology to meet our urgent needs? I divide the problem into two parts: first, what can we do about reducing the number of vehicles on the roads, particularly in urban areas, and, secondly, what can we do about contamination of the atmosphere? My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy touched on the matter of road pricing. I consider that is one of the more promising approaches to our problems. I believe it has been tried in some parts of the world. If some noble Lords have experience of that system, I should be interested to hear about it.
As I have said, the technology is in place. We have electronic tagging and other methods of collecting fees for entry into defined areas. Those methods are available but it is a question of whether they can be properly applied. However, such systems would have to be used all over the country. It must be possible to drive one's car anywhere without changing to a different system. I shall return to that matter later. Increased vehicle utilisation is another possible solution. Every day one sees cars streaming past with a single occupant in each car. However, I do not know how one could ever persuade people to act otherwise. I do not believe increased vehicle utilisation is a promising solution.
The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, touched on the matter of restricting heavy vehicles. There is a lot to be said for that. Many heavy commercial vehicles entering urban areas belong to contractors who wish to deliver goods to building sites. We all know what that can entail when they are unloading. Why can those vehicles not be driven and unloaded at times of the day when congestion is not so great? Can their entry to urban areas not be restricted to certain times or, alternatively, could the size of those vehicles not be restricted along the lines that have already been mentioned? I believe possible easements could be found along those lines.
If we are to reduce the number of cars in cities, we must link up the use of cars with public transport systems such as the new light railway systems which are now being introduced into a number of cities. Such systems have great possibilities provided there are adequate parking places in "park and ride" car parks and there is co-ordination between one system and another—for example, between a main line rail system, a light railway system and car parks. The information technology is available to enable that to be achieved but it is not being used at present. Why is that? I shall return to that matter in a moment.
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Perhaps we can make vehicle use more expensive by means of taxing vehicles according to their size, the places where they are driven, the petrol they consume and other such measures. However, I rather doubt that that will be a deterrent to vehicle use. I think drivers will simply pay the bills and moan about them. There are ways of reducing the numbers of vehicles entering our city centres and returning from them. There are also ways of reducing the contamination of the atmosphere that vehicles cause in our cities. Reference has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, to gas engines. I was interested to hear about that. Our technologies have made great progress already as regards the internal combustion engine's performance but more can be done as regards reducing the weight of vehicles and improving their aerodynamics and therefore their general performance. Impressive progress has been made in introducing the diesel engine for a personal vehicle. It is widely used in countries such as France. There is a big market for the diesel-engined car. Perhaps my noble friend will explain why the Government do not do more to encourage the diesel car. Such a development is in the interests of pollution reduction and of the motor car industry. I know that the motor car industry has pressed strongly for it.
There are ways and means of lessening the contamination of the atmosphere by our vehicles. In his excellent maiden speech, my noble friend Lord Cadman referred to the large electric vehicle. I am more impressed with the small electric vehicle. I believe that that offers the main practical application for electric cars. I am surprised that there are not more small electric cars or vans undertaking delivery services around our cities. That would assist with regard to contamination and to occupancy of the road surface. We ought to ask ourselves what can be done by special tax arrangements and so on to encourage the use of electric cars, though such cars have a limited contribution to make because of the limitation of the battery. The technology is such that long distance travel in electric cars is still a long way off.
Having considered both sides of the problem, I have to ask: what can we do about it? I remind noble Lords that your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology examined the problem about five years ago. It issued a good report, Innovation in Surface Transport, which touched on many of these problems. Not much progress has been made since then. However, the report referred to the importance of the Road Transport Research Laboratory in giving a lead in the technology of those matters. I hope that the laboratory still acts in those fields.
The report raised one other fundamental point: the problem of the interfaces between the different systems—central government, local government, the nationalised railways system shortly to be privatised into different systems, public transport systems, the private individual and vehicle manufacturers are all involved. How will one co-ordinate all those interests to achieve a practical, sensible approach to the problem that my noble friend has outlined? I was foolish enough to believe that the Minister for Public Transport would do so. That is where we came

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completely unstuck on our Select Committee, because we were told firmly by the Minister for Public Transport that co-ordination between the different transport systems had nothing to do with him; it was for the different authorities to work it out between themselves. I believe that that is the nub of the problem. If my noble friend has anything to say on that issue when he replies, I shall be most interested.
4.33 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I should like to commence my contribution to the debate at precisely the point at which the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, began his: 30 years ago. In 1963 Professor Colin Buchanan produced a report, entitled Traffic in Towns. It states:
"The briefest acquaintance with the conditions that now prevail in towns makes it clear that traffic congestion has already placed in jeopardy the well-being of many inhabitants and the efficiency of many activities. The potential increase in the number of vehicles is so great that unless something is done the conditions are bound to become extremely serious within a comparatively short period of years".
During the intervening 30 or so years, vehicle ownership and use has increased substantially. That increase was forecast in that report. Sadly, both then and in the intervening years we have not heeded the warning. We now suffer what I might call a mild form of anti-motor vehicle hysteria.
Against that background my noble friend Lord Oxfuird will agree that today's debate has an aspect of déjà vu. In his excellent introduction my noble friend produced a mass of figures, many of which I do not contest. However, somewhat sweepingly he spoke about pollution and numbers of vehicles, with percentages of this, that or the other. One might gain the impression that the speech was a condemnation of all internal combustion-engined vehicles. Research by the Royal Automobile Club suggests that more than 50 per cent of the pollution from road transport comes from only 17 per cent of all vehicles; and that I per cent of vehicles generate as much pollution as the cleanest 40 per cent. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, referred to the inclusion of emission testing in the new MOT test. In the fullness of time that will make a considerable contribution to a solution of the problem.
Sadly, I do not believe that congestion will ever be removed. However, I believe that we might be able to contain it. Containment could be implemented by small measures which in total would add up to a formidable attack. I am encouraged by an Automobile Association paper presented in 1991 to the Trades Union Congress Transport Industry Committee which suggests half a dozen points which could be considered. The paper refers to roadworks. Noble Lords will recall that the New Roads and Streetworks Act 1991 which implements the Horne Report of 1985 is coming into force little by little. That will make some contribution.
The enforcement of waiting restrictions must be stepped up. It is estimated that in London alone 2.5 million fixed penalty parking tickets are issued. Half a million are unpaid. The Transport and Road Research
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Laboratory suggests that each day in London there are tens of thousands of undetected parking offences. Purely and simply, the risk of getting caught is minimal and therefore people ignore the restriction. I ask the Minister this question. How much money is raised in London alone from parking meters, residents' parking permits and so on? Where does that money go? Originally it was to provide off-street parking, but that does not seem to occur. Where does the money go? Every journey has a start, a middle and an end. Some of the biggest problems arise at the end of the journey because there is nowhere to put the car.
London has about 40 authorities responsible for traffic transport and parking matters. There is no cohesive policy. In some parts of London there are acres of parking area; in others there is none. The 1991 Road Traffic Act provided for the red route system, with a director. We should have a directorate of transport which could co-ordinate such matters and provide parking. It would mean a big shift in resource. I often leave my car at Winchester Station. However, I am hesitant to do so now when I come up by train because parking costs £1.80 or £2. There is no supervision, no responsibility. There is not a bad, asphalt car park, I grant you. In Kent, it costs £2 a day in an old builders' yard owned by British Rail, or at least that is what it looks like to me. There is thieving, hooliganism, damage. Of course, one can take the car all the way and worry about the problem when one gets to London and the inner city. We are just not grasping the problem.
The park and ride system has been mentioned and the same applies there. The frequency of the ride and the safety of the park are missing so let us not bother, let us find a corner and put the car at the kerbside.
One of the failures of recent years has been in the planning system. Land-use planning has proceeded with little or no regard for the travel demands that development and redevelopment create. One only has to look at Milton Keynes, a marvellous, splendid idea with all its avenues and tunnels. But it failed to take account of the increase in traffic so there are problems.
Development and redevelopment in the future can only be permitted where the demand for travel can be accommodated in the existing infrastructure. Where that cannot be achieved —I make no bones about it —the developer must be required to pay for the necessary infrastructure and improvements thereto.
I had planned to say something about public transport, a sad subject, but perhaps I shall leave it for another day.
Why do people own cars? They do so because it gives them freedom and it is an expression of their own will. They can go where they wish when they wish. It opens up new avenues of leisure. It offers job opportunities. Without a motor car or adequate public transport the chances of getting a job diminish.
Burdening motor car ownership with taxes was mentioned by my noble friends Lord Nelson and Lord Oxfuird. It would create problems and the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said in effect that it would be morally and politically unwise to do so in order to prohibit the use of cars. So we have to accommodate the reasonable demands. I add a little trailer to the debate

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of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, which is to take place early next month, following what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, said. Ten per cent of the UK's population—over 5 million people—have disabilities to the extent that they cannot use public transport, they need a motor car. That must be accommodated. It is perfectly reasonable and cannot be disregarded and perhaps we shall deal with it next month.
Solutions to congestion must be based on balanced transport and land-use policies. I believe that they can also take care of a number of alternatives, including cycling and the use of one's own feet.
The integration of transport does not mean more buses and trains and fewer motor cars. It means using the various modes at three levels: planning, financing and operating. A start has been made there but, as I suggested, we need to go further with a directorate in places like London.
We have talked about modern technology—it is in place. We have failed to use what is available to us; we have wasted the resources available to meet the problem. Before we go dancing down the route of road pricing systems, adding more burdens, we must look at the utilisation of what is available and devote the kind of money which is necessary to overcome the problem. Goodness knows, the motor vehicle industry, motorists and lorry drivers contribute 4.5 points of revenue to 1 point spent on dealing with the problem. Much of the responsibility lies with government, with the firm allocation of resources so that the planners can be sure in their own minds that the funds will last. That would be better than having the stop-start messing about with the money spent on public transport, the management of transport systems and the road network which has gone on over the past 10, 15 or 20 years.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Teviot: My Lords, with all due respect to my noble friend, I fiercely negate the suggestion that public transport is a sad subject. However, I shall not go further into that point now. I too join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Cadman on an extraordinarily warm and effective maiden speech. The topic selected by my noble friend Lord Oxfuird is of vital importance to the health of the country, in both the economic and medical senses of the word.
Our great cities were not so much planned as evolved. We are apt to forget that it is characteristic of this densely crowded island that three-quarters of the population occupies only a small fraction of the available space—perhaps 10 to 20 per cent.—especially during the working day when the great tides of commuters sweep in from suburbia.
Unlike many cities abroad, our heritage and culture have not blessed us with the wide avenues and boulevards of a Paris or a Washington. We must also remember that our cities were partly shaped by transport, especially in the last century and the early part of the present century, first by trains and then by trams. Then came prosperity to the large majority of the population and the explosion of car ownership:
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the new freedom of unlimited personal mobility changed the habits of the post-war generations. Of course, I am simplifying and generalising, but who can deny that people should be free to travel when and how they choose?
However, we must look more closely at that freedom. Her Majesty's Government have committed themselves to meeting the obligations of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, which the Prime Minister signed in Rio last summer. We must cut our emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide, which accounts for half the global warming effect, I understand) back to 1990 levels by the year 2000. If exhaust emissions from private cars continue unchecked and traffic grows as the Government predict, it will be impossible to meet that target.
It is, of course, not only greenhouse gases—carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen—that are of concern. The list of pollutants from motor vehicles (the vast majority emitted by private cars) is a considerable catalogue. Many are injurious to health; concentrations of them increase with congestion. It is no exaggeration at all to say that our cities are in danger, some might almost say literally choking to death.
In September 1991 the Yorkshire Evening Post, the local Leeds paper, warned:
"City in Crisis over Fumes and Noise".
That emerged from monitoring by the council of air quality and pollution at key points in the city. Leeds is not alone. London, Bristol and Sheffield have all reported similar results.
Where can we turn for a solution? We cannot deny people mobility, having built up a society that depends on it. But we can call for more responsible choices. We must seek a renaissance of public transport. In the White Paper, This Common Inheritance, the Government have shown that pollutant emissions per passenger mile by the typical London bus are less than half those produced by cars. A large bus typically carries over 20 times the number of people in cars taking up the same road space, and that is true of buses that are half full or less. Trains, too, are far more economical, both in their emission of pollutants and their use of scarce space in our cities.
Perhaps we should look to Los Angeles, the gross centre of the car culture. There, gridlock occurs now on an almost daily basis and the city swelters under an ever present cloak of photochemical smog. But the authorities are reinstating abandoned urban rail routes as light rapid transit systems, constructing metros and giving ever increasing proportions of their street systems to bus ways, bus priorities and higher occupancy vehicle lanes in which cars can only be driven if all seats are occupied. They are fitting their buses with engines which burn cleaner fuels and marketing transport to attract a better informed public back on to "transit", as they call it. These are the methods of carrot and stick, education and persuasion and "prevention is better than cure". The Los Angeles Times on 22nd August 1990 stated:
"Progress on alternative fuels in the 1980s was driven almost entirely by California's dramatic efforts to clean its air by forcing auto makers and fuel suppliers to meet tough

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emission standards. That program became a blueprint for Congress and … has affected the strategies of auto and oil companies around the globe".
The same issue reported an increase in bus ridership (number of passengers in British terms) in Orange County of nearly one-third in two years because of:
"environmental concerns, high employment and good quality service",
and that for the first time in many years:
"Some rush hour buses are so packed that riders must sometimes wait for a second bus".
I believe that we must catch up with our American cousins. They created the problems earlier than we did. We can learn from them and take action now.
What action should that be? Much work is going on. I pay tribute to the investigations of the Royal Commission on environmental pollution, which recently embarked on a study of transport impacts on the environment, following up its work on diesel engines, to which I am glad to see the Government are responding positively. The local authority associations have published the second edition of their guide to environmental good practice, which has a substantial chapter on transport and case studies on the efforts of cities such as Hull, Leeds and Leicester to solve problems before they become acute.
Our passenger transport authorities and their executives have done sterling work with campaigns such as "Don't choke the city" in the West Midlands and "Cars are bad news for the environment; you're looking at an alternative" on the sides of buses in West Yorkshire. Park-and-ride schemes should also be encouraged, despite the reservations in some ways rightly expressed by my noble friend Lord Lucas.
All that is being done with relatively low resources. I am afraid that the policies of my noble friends are not helping much. Since deregulation the average age of buses in many parts of the country has increased from six or seven years to 10 or more, despite influxes of new, smaller buses. Older vehicles are not necessarily bad; most are well maintained, but obviously they become less efficient, more polluting and less likely to tempt motorists from their cars.
I depart from my prepared speech to recall a recent visit to Malta, which must be the antithesis of Los Angeles. In that very small island masses of buses ply for hire at very low prices. But I am sure that their output of pollutants is enormous. The vehicles are aged, dating from the 1920s and 1930s. If they were illustrated in a children's comic, one would read it and think that it had gone over the top. However, without those vehicles at those low prices, the congestion in the narrow streets of that small island would be impossible. Congestion slows journeys; it frustrates and deters passengers. Therefore, I ask my noble friends to consider what help they can give to promoting increased investment in the bus industry. We need good public transport.
To use an Enid Blyton-type phrase, our "magnificent seven" —the six English passenger transport authorities and Strathclyde, in Scotland—have shown the success of investment in good public transport, in buses, trains, metros and trams and the need for promotion and support. Their policies are models that
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can be built on. But, sadly, they are not helped by the limitations under which they find themselves: strict control of local authority finances, especially under the present precept provisions; the uncertainties of the coming railway denationalisation; and the weak state of much of the bus industry.
I feel that I have only scratched the surface of a very important topic. Public transport use has to be increased, people must be persuaded to use their cars wisely and not to contribute to congestion by journeys that can just as well be made by bus or train. That is the route to maintaining vibrant, healthy cities and stopping their further destruction by private cars.
4.55 p.m.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Oxfuird for the opportunity of debating a subject which is probably of greater interest to more people directly in this country than in any other. I started to be interested in the subject as a young researcher in the Conservative Research Department about 30 years ago, when I was attached as an aide to Ernest Marples, who in my opinion was one of the great Ministers of Transport. He always used to say, "It's not what you say that matters. It's what you do". I do not believe that a great deal new has been said today. (That is not a criticism.) However, I think it is true that a great deal more could be done.
Mr. Marples was very concerned with congestion in cities. He set up the Buchanan inquiry, which has been referred to. In his report Sir Colin Buchanan described the car as "the monster we love". Marples did a great deal of traffic engineering: pink zones and various parking restrictions. He was extremely unpopular when he did it. His public profile was always very high but he was pretty unpopular at the time. But when he left there was a lacuna, when, briefly, nothing happened; then the motto was: "Come back, Marples, all is forgiven".
Later we had another—in my opinion—great Minister for Transport, the noble Baroness, Lady Castle, whom I am delighted to see here. She too was an action person. I am sure that we owe many lives to her. She introduced compulsory seat belts and the breathalyser.
It has already been suggested that there is no way in which we can cope with the number of motor cars. Los Angeles has been referred to. It is a perfect example. They are now changing their road policy. Some of your Lordships may remember in the 1930s that it was, I believe, General Motors which bought up the public transport system in Los Angeles and closed it down in order to promote a bigger market for cars. That is at last likely to be reversed.
I believe that there is still an inclination on the part of the road lobby to claim that it ought to be possible to cope fully with the demand for car space. I am extremely doubtful. Is it wise to be spending £1 billion on an extra lane on the M.25? It would certainly have been right to put an extra lane on the M.25 when it was originally built. But I very much doubt whether in

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terms of the opportunity cost of that money it is the right way to spend £1 billion now. Sadly it is probably too late to do anything about it.
I would like to emphasise another point on whether to cater for the growth in the number of cars. There is increasing multiple car ownership in families. It is the number of cars related to the number of people in them which is one of the main causes of congestion. The cost of owning a car is actually falling in real terms. In 1975, for example, the vehicle excise duty was £40. If you relate that to today's prices by using simple inflation percentage you would get to £165. Currently the cost of a licence is only £110. If you were to apply £165 to the 22 million cars that there are it might discourage people having quite so many cars. At the very least it would produce an extra £1.2 billion of tax revenue. That, I believe, suggests that there should be—I hope the Chancellor will consider it—a pretty stiff increase in the vehicle excise duty rate.
I should like to say a word about on street parking. Parking meters are obviously a good idea. However, I believe that it has been a mistake not to allow people to feed parking meters. The object of a parking meter is to ensure that there are always on-the-street parking spaces available. To do this it is necessary to have a price mechanism which ensures that at peak times there are a few meters free. To have complicated rules to stop meter feeding merely makes the administration of a parking meter system more expensive. The logic for these rules—I do not believe that they are logical—is that if parking is made too expensive some people will not be able to afford to park. Most of us would probably agree that on-street car-parking should be one of the many things that the price mechanism is used to allocate.
If I may I should like to turn to something about which little has been said, although it was mentioned on the other side of the House; that is, the role of bicycles. The Department of Transport provided a useful brief for this debate and in the first paragraph I was encouraged to see that it mentioned bicycles. However, I was then horrified to see that it contained a total non sequitur. It states:
"The Government has not specifically set out to encourage people to cycle, since decisions of this kind are a matter of personal choice".
With logic like that I can only be depressed by the quality of thinking on the bicycle front that exists in the Department of Transport.
Little has been done to help the cyclist in cities. Until more is done there are three simple rules which I apply from time to time. Eyebrows may be raised when I mention them so I do so with diffidence. The first is that when there is an unoccupied pavement, use it. Secondly, when there is a one-way street it is sometimes safer to cycle down it the wrong way, then vehicles cannot take one by surprise from behind. Thirdly, if one crosses a red light one probably has less chance of colliding with other cars, at least those going in the same direction. I am not saying that those are virtuous rules to follow. But it is lamentable how little is being done—apart from the first sentence the brief gave me no encouragement at all—for cyclists in Britain generally and for cyclists in cities in particular.
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When my noble friend Lord Caithness answers perhaps he can give us a few simple figures. For example, what is the cost of providing facilities for bicycles per person mile, or whatever way one measures it? Compared with cars it must he infinitesimal. Can he tell us how many miles of bicycle track there were in London 10 years ago, how many there are now and how many he plans to introduce over the next five years? I shall not blame the Minister personally if he cannot answer those questions. It merely reflects the lack of attention being given to a means of transport which must be thoroughly desirable. It is completely green, unlike the motorbike. I am not wholly against the motorbike but it is a jolly noisy beast compared with a bicycle. There is huge scope for greater use of cycles.
I conclude with one specific suggestion. It would not be expensive and should at least be examined. Would it not be possible to construct along the River Thames for whatever distance is necessary, and certainly from the West End through to the City, a wooden shelf cantilevered out over the Thames specifically for bicycles? Clearly it would encourage many more people to use bicycles. I suggest it would also help to reduce road congestion and be good for the nation's health.
5.3 p.m.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I thought that there would be one subject on which I could speak which would be left out of the rich kaleidoscope; namely, bicycles. I hold a brief sent to me by the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, who unfortunately cannot be in his place because his bicycle could not get him here fast enough. He asked me to say a word or two on bicycles but the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has done that extremely well.
Before I continue perhaps I can say just one or two more words on bicycles. It is interesting to see from the brief that 75 per cent. of all journeys in the City start within five miles of the centre, and that is a good biking distance. I certainly support what was said about the need for more cycle routes in central London and indeed in all our major towns. I am glad to say that in the fair city of Taunton where I now live the local authority has been building cycle tracks over the past few years. Not only are people healthier because they ride bicycles, but also they do not have to inhale exhaust fumes while riding on those cycle tracks.
We have had an excellent debate this afternoon, free, I am glad to say, from political polemic on any side. I hope that nothing I say will disturb that placid bond. Indeed, if there has been any political criticism it tended to come from the government Back-Benchers. One heard some remarkable comments regarding the need for transport strategy. Those are words I never thought I would hear from the other side of the House. They are welcome in one form or another from both the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. We are grateful to the noble Viscount for raising this subject and indeed for introducing it in such an excellent way this afternoon.

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We have had a wide-ranging discussion. People talked of their own specific interests. My noble friend Lord Falkland insisted on telling us what a wonderful machine the motor-cycle is. I am sure that it has its merits, although again I tend to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, that they are rather noisy and occasionally come upon one rather suddenly.
We then heard about trolleybuses from the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon—at one stage I thought he was going to talk of electric hobby-horses but I obviously misheard him. Although trolleybuses are extremely efficient at moving people and are non-polluting, I remember that when I was a boy in Manchester and we had them there, we used to refer to them as "the whistling death". One tended to be knocked down before one heard them coming.
It was interesting to hear of the developments in Bristol mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cadman. As a member of the Procedure Committee I am not allowed to congratulate him on his speech. It says in the Companion that only the speaker afterwards is allowed to do that. Nevertheless, were I able to do so I would congratulate him most warmly.
The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, rightly pointed to the need for improved driving and again the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned the question of tidying up our roads so that there were not so many roadworks. We all spent many hours on the Horne Report and the Act last year. The important point in the debate is that all those various facets are brought together and we recognise that there is not any one single solution to the problem. However, we all agree that the problem exists and it is one of enormous magnitude for the health not only of London and the inner cities, but also for the health of the world at large. The impact of the pollution being created is seriously affecting our climate and, in the long term, the world outside.
I want to deal in a little more detail with one or two aspects. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, about the car being something with which everybody has a love affair. It has certainly brought considerable blessings in its wake in terms of giving families freedom and flexibility to be able to move from door to door as and when they wish. As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, pointed out, for people with disabilities of one kind or another, motorcars are now an essential part of life. But it has also been one of the greatest curses of our time because of the pollution that it has caused.
There has been much talk of London. But it is interesting to note that in Manchester where there were something like 80,000 vehicles an hour in the rush hour in 1980, the figure has now risen by another 15,000 vehicles an hour. That trend is continuing. It must stop and it must be redressed. Carrots and sticks have been mentioned. It is true that the carrot and stick approach must be the one that we use.
Apart from anything else the one point that nobody has mentioned, with the exception of my noble friend Lord Ezra, is gasoline availability in the coming years and centuries. He spoke of using natural gas which presumably could be produced from sources other than extracting it from the ground—it would not then
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be natural gas; it would be produced gas. These days we are extremely reliant upon gasoline and cannot continue to rely on it for much longer, which comes back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, in terms of using electrical traction. It is easier to control such pollution because it is produced at a central point, although the investment necessary to clean up the flue gases of our power stations is something to which the Government will have to address themselves sooner or later.
There are three ways to improve the situation. One is to improve our public transport, a subject which has been talked about at length. I hate to mention the fact, but I do not believe that bus deregulation is of any great help in this regard. Bus deregulation in central London will have a deleterious effect on congestion because many of the electronic aids which could benefit passengers—for example, signing at bus stops, which we now have on the Underground—will not come into being because no-one will be responsible for that general infrastructure. There is the opportunity to introduce that kind of technology. Indeed, it is being experimented with at the moment. Those of us who regularly travel on the Underground know how much more confidence it gives us to be able to see what time the next train is coming. If we could know what time the next bus is coming, we would very often be prepared to stay at that bus stop for that much longer rather than getting out our cars, leaping into a taxi or using some other form of transport.
My party went into the general election suggesting that there should be a transfer of taxation from the vehicle excise licence onto petrol. That suggestion caused somewhat of a furore. In various parts of the country little notes were put round saying, "If you want to increase the cost of using your car by £5 a week, you will vote Liberal Democrat". It was not true but it was a good line. I do believe that by putting the cost onto petrol rather than putting it onto the vehicle excise licence there is a better chance of people understanding the true cost of any journey.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, gave some comparative figures for cars and public transport. However, the figures that he used for cars did not show the full cost of the journey. They showed the marginal cost of a single journey. When people are making that decision, that is all they think about. A shift onto petrol pricing rather than using either insurance or the vehicle excise licence would go some way towards redressing the balance. Of course there would be problems in rural areas. One would have to have some kind of compensatory factor for those areas where it is absolutely essential to use a car because no public transport is available. People in those areas should not have too great a burden.
I should like to turn briefly to road pricing. There is a reluctance to go into road pricing because it can be cumbersome. Experiments have been carried out in different parts of the world; in Greece, Singapore and so on. But the situations in those places are different. We are moving to a situation where technology is beginning to catch up. In coming years it will be possible to have electronically tagged cars so that one can have differential rates at different times of the day.

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People will have a bill to pay depending on where they have been, for how long and when. These possibilities have to be borne in mind. We are not there yet but such developments will make a big difference. They will show people the true cost of being in the city centre when it is least advantageous to the community as a whole.
As the end of the day we have to recognise that the car will be with us. We have to learn to live with it. However, we have to learn to control it. The debate today has probably gone a long way to clearing people's minds on what needs to be done. Some decisions have to be made. I hope that the Government are moving towards some decisions. I hope, as has been suggested, that they are moving towards some kind of cohesive and coherent transport policy.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Viscount for introducing this debate with what was an extremely interesting speech. I join those who have already congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Cadman. It is remarkable to think that this was his first speech anywhere. I do not know what has been holding him hack. We have also had some very interesting revelations during the course of the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, referred to the Liberal Democrat manifesto at the last election—a tissue of lies. We had a fine speech from the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, who made a remarkable comment about the brief from the Department of Transport. He is no doubt very privileged. I did not receive a brief from the Department of Transport. I do not think that my noble friend Lord Stoddart or anyone else on this side of the House received a brief from the Department of Transport. But it gave the noble Lord no encouragement, and so he now finds himself in precisely the same position as the Minister—briefs which give him no encouragement whatever.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, said, transport is a major source of pollution. However, having said that, I think that the noble Viscount put too much faith in technological solutions. I join with him in praising those elements of British industry which have made great strides in bringing forward anti-pollution technology, but that will not be the whole answer by any manner or means. The large projected increase in transport movements which were referred to in the Government's White Paper frankly threaten to render insignificant the progress which has been made in improving technical standards. We have to recognise that liberalisation of transport markets, desirable though that may be—I played my part in seeking to achieve that in the European Commission—and plans for the further development of transport infrastructure have potentially damaging environmental impacts. That is as true at national level as it is at European Community level.
We have concentrated on setting technical standards rather than addressing the more fundamental structural conflicts that exist between transport and the environment. The Government's own forecast growth rates to which I have just referred, especially
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for road transport, seem to be environmentally unsustainable. It follows from that that we on this side of the House believe that urgent action, far more dramatic than we have witnessed so far, will have to be taken by government if there is to be the faintest chance of honouring the commitments that they have entered into to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels no later than the year 2000. That is already an inadequate target.
Crucial to any effort to curb pollution from transport are policies aimed at reducing the need to travel by road and increasing the use of public transport, cycling and walking, wherever those may be possible. That note was introduced fairly late in the debate but it was an important one.
The European Community's fifth environment action programme identifies transport as one of the target areas selected in making environment a component of all other policies. That programme identified industry and local authorities, a point made by the noble Viscount at the beginning of the debate, as lead factors regarding five of the transport measures on which action is recommended up to the year 2000, those measures being land-use planning, infrastructure investment, better information for drivers, improved public transport and the discouragement of road traffic wherever that is practicable. Those arguments were deployed in greater detail in the Green Paper issued by the Commission A Community Strategy for Sustainable Mobility.
There is no easy route available to achieve a sustainable transport policy. Transport is inextricably linked with economic and social vitality. The choices, both personal and institutional, are based on cost, convenience, availability and comfort. The question then arises: has society taken proper or any account of the environmental costs, particularly those arising from increased transport use? Choices necessarily involve political choices as well. What is the acceptable level of intervention in freedom of choice by businesses and individuals? Trade-offs have to be made between development objectives and environmental gains. But decisions have to be taken by organisations that are democratically accountable in this regard but not, I suggest, by quangos or individuals who are unaccountable. It was very refreshing to hear the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who had been a Minister at the Department of Transport, call for a director of transport in London. But why not go one stage further and have a properly elected and accountable authority?
The background to this debate—I shall try to bring together the various subjects which were introduced into it by your Lordships—is that most journeys are local. All transport and transport infrastructure make a significant impact on the local environment whatever the length of journey involved—I revert again to the point made by the noble Viscount; consequently the role of local government is critical in this. Being democratically accountable, it has a special role in alerting people to the environmental implications of the choices which are being contemplated and an especial task in representing the interests of local people in discussions and consulta-

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tions about strategic and national transport policy and transport infrastructure as well, which is designed to meet national needs.
It has a role in relation to land-use policies which can influence the type and amount of transport which may be required. It should have a much more important role in making transport investment decisions to determine the way in which journeys may be made. It has a very important role indeed, which is not fully utilised, in transport management strategies relating to car use and encouraging the greater use of public transport and cycling and walking. I believe that it should have an increasing role in undertaking vehicle emission monitoring and control.
To exploit fully the potential advance that can be made, the position of central government is vital. Land-use planning decisions determine the needs and patterns of travel in the final analysis. To that end central government have to take greater account of the environmental impact of transport than they have done hitherto. The Commission's case for requiring environmental assessment of policies, plans and programmes, as well as of major infrastructure proposals, is very important indeed. In a local sense my noble friend Lord Stoddart referred to that point. Where do the Government stand on those particular issues?
We also take the view that some urgent change of priorities from road to rail has to be undertaken in terms of the resources required. That involves long-term decisions regarding grant aid and addressing the imbalance between the resources made available for roads and public transport. New types of policies are being experimented with by local authorities in particular to alter the way in which cars are used and to encourage the greater use of public transport. We applaud that. The use of traffic calming techniques, 20 miles per hour zones for residential areas, bus priority measures and other ways of encouraging public transport and the increased attention which is being given to parking policy, which has been touched on by a number of your Lordships in this debate, all point to potentially significant ways of impacting on people's decisions regarding travel.
I now turn to the issue of vehicle emissions themselves. The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, was right in saying that good monitoring of ambient air quality was the key to any strategy for tackling vehicle emissions. I believe that statutory authority, coupled with resources, needs to be given to local authorities to do that according to centrally determined standards of monitoring which must be capable of being understood by the general public. Up-to-date information also needs to be provided on poor air quality. That can be done in a variety of ways, not least through the local media. Information about public transport availability—a point touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff—is extremely important in that regard.
Smog alert procedures should be invoked to deal with those cases where more radical action may be justified. That is done in the Federal Republic at the present time in a number of the Länder. Central and
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local government should together examine what powers may be required for a strategy along those lines to deal with poor air quality.
I applaud the Government in ensuring that emission standards are now included in the MoT test. But what action is proposed as regards on-the-road control? The technology now exists, such as remote sensors and so on, to record emission concentration and to photograph culprits. According to surveys which have been undertaken in the United States, about 10 per cent of vehicles emit 50 per cent. of carbon monoxide gases. Consequently, there is a need to use such technology to identify the culprits.
Some authorities implement vehicle spotter schemes to identify smoky vehicles. Have the Government any plans to give local authorities powers to set up such schemes to report smoky vehicles and to require the owners to undertake remedial work? In parallel with the use of cameras to detect and enforce speeding and traffic offences, have the Government any plans to permit the use of new technology in that particular area? Do they have any plans to set up a system of penalties for the owners of vehicles which persistently breach emission standards? I put those points specifically to the Minister.
This has been a useful debate and I end where I began by congratulating the noble Viscount in introducing it in a very effective and interesting speech.
5.28 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Oxfuird on proposing this debate to your Lordships' House. It is a most important subject and one which affects the lives of people throughout the country. I join him in paying a special tribute to our scientists and engineers who, as he rightly said, are at the forefront of world technology in this important area, as they are in other important areas.
My noble friend started by using the British Standard for Environment Management Systems (BS7750) as the framework for his remarks. The standard is an important environmental initiative which the Government have strongly supported. We shall continue to take a keen interest in its development. It is the first such standard in the world and it puts Britain firmly in the lead on environmental management. It will be the benchmark against which future environmental management developments will be measured. The standard is designed for the use of business in monitoring and managing its impact on the environment. A company implementing the standard would have to carry out a review of its environmental impacts, establish a programme of improvement objectives and carry out regular audits to ensure that the objectives will have been achieved. The standard provides a management framework to ensure the effectiveness of these measures. We recommend that transport businesses should give careful consideration to the use of the standard.
The Government seek to control the internal combustion engine in our towns and cities in two ways. The first is technological and includes the ways

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in which emissions from individual vehicles are controlled and the scope for alternative methods of propulsion. Here much of the regulatory work we do is international. For example, vehicle emission standards are clearly a matter for EC action. The second strand is the way in which we manage traffic, and it touches on what we can do to make use of all kinds of vehicles more environmentally friendly. I shall take these two broad points in turn.
Most of your Lordships mentioned emissions from vehicles. Those are a major anxiety, and air pollution is worse in congested city centres. The Government have recognised the importance of monitoring air quality and are taking steps to improve it. A system of daily air quality bulletins, forecasts and associated health advice was introduced in October 1990. It now includes sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and ground level ozone. Guidance was issued by the Department of the Environment in May 1992 (Summertime Smog—How to prevent it) on action the public could take, much of it transport related, such as minimising the use of cars and keeping cars parked in the shade, to reduce emissions of ozone precursors during summer pollution episodes. Similar guidance on winter pollution episodes was published in October 1992.
Since 1st January 1993, most new cars need catalytic converters to secure reductions of around 75 per cent. in emissions of harmful substances such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons. In addition, another EC directive introduces new regulations on emissions from new heavy diesels. A new feature of these controls is a limit on particulates. A second stage of limits will apply from 1st October 1995. Tighter regulations to take effect further into the future are already under discussion in the EC. The United Kingdom Government are committed to seeking the tightest practicable standards for vehicle emissions which are cost-effective.
The performance of catalysts in reducing pollutant emissions when vehicles are cold-started and over the first two kilometres or so is a particular problem. Despite pressure from this country, the Commission's proposals for "Stage II" standards are not expected to require any improvements before the year 2000. Nonetheless, with our encouragement, some manufacturers are developing devices to accelerate the warm-up of catalysts; and the department is carrying out a programme of research to help formulate tighter emission standards. I listened with care to what the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, had to say on motor-cycles; but I draw to your Lordships' attention the fact that emissions per kilometre from motorcycles can be just as high as those from cars. That is another good reason why we should tackle the motor-cycle problem in addition to the problem of making motor-cycles safer.
However, we also need to tackle pollution from vehicles already in service. We have introduced an emissions test into the annual MoT test for cars and light goods vehicles: this checks emissions of CO and hydrocarbons. Vehicles with badly tuned engines will fail. A new directive on road worthiness testing of emissions has recently been agreed. It introduces progressively tighter standards up to 1997.
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In its recent report the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended further action to reduce emissions from heavy diesels already on the road. The Government published their full response on 6th November 1992. An instrumented check of smoke at annual road worthiness tests of heavy goods vehicles and public service vehicles was introduced in September 1992, replacing the existing visual check. Specific roadside checks to detect heavy diesel-engined vehicles which are smoking excessively have also been stepped up significantly during 1992 to complement the instrumented annual check. Both the Government and many more local authorities than just Westminster have instigated schemes whereby grossly smoky vehicles can be reported on telephone call lines. In the year from April 1991 to March 1992 it proved possible to take action on 1,169 (78.8 per cent.) out of 1,483 calls received. Where no action proved possible, this was often because of inadequate information given by the caller.
My noble friend Lord Nelson of Stafford argued that the Government should encourage the use of diesel-engined vehicles because they emit less CO2 per kilometre travelled than petrol-engined vehicles of a similar size and power. The greater fuel efficiency, and hence lower CO2 emissions, of diesel engines is beyond dispute. However, these benefits must be weighed against higher emissions of NOx, smoke and particulates, in comparison with a petrol-engined vehicle fitted with a three-way catalytic converter. Emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons from diesel engines can be reduced by fitting an oxidation (two-way) catalyst, but this type of catalyst cannot reduce the emission of NOx and particulates. I would therefore say to my noble friend that there is a balance to be struck between the effect on the global atmosphere and the effect on local air quality. I assure my noble friend that we are continuing to study this question.
I turn next to the "electric hobby-horse" of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. Electric vehicles are the subject of much attention, as they offer the prospect of significant reductions in emissions at the point of use. However, emissions from electricity generation cannot be ignored. At present the burning of extra fossil fuels could increase emissions not only of CO2 but also of oxides of nitrogen and sulphur dioxide, both of which are precursors to acid rain. Again it comes back to the fact that we have to create a balance. Manufacturers are working hard to develop advanced batteries and more competitive electric vehicles to improve their limited range and performance and to reduce their higher cost compared with traditional vehicles.
The Government are sponsoring and watching with great interest a number of research projects looking at alternative fuels and engine technologies. I was surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, did not mention one in his home town of Reading: that is the Reading buses biodiesel project. We are studying that. There is also the possibility of diesel being derived largely from rapeseed oil. That offers the possibility of lower overall emissions of CO2 through the growth of the plants; lower exhaust emissions of carbon

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monoxide, hydrocarbons, particulate and soot; greater energy security for those countries without fossil fuel reserves; and a ready market for any excess arable capacity. However, again one has to look at the downside because these benefits are partly offset by high energy consumption in production and possibly by increased oxides of nitrogen and particulate emissions from exhausts. There would also be a need for a heavy subsidy so that it could compete with ordinary diesel.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned what might be called the "Hoover car". For a car to be a good Hoover car normally means that high volumes of exhaust gas are being processed by the catalyst, but this also means that CO2 emissions are high and that in turn is not a good thing. The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, mentioned compressed natural gas cars. I am glad that he did so. These too could generate lower CO2 and particulate emissions; but again they could lead to higher emissions of oxides of nitrogen. These problems are being studied and we are hoping that progress can be made.
My noble friend Lord Cadman made an excellent maiden speech. I hope that my noble friend will attend and speak on a regular basis. He raised the question of the new technology being considered in Bristol with regard to guided bus and light rail transport. We are watching with care what is happening in Bristol, and I can tell my noble friend that on a different aspect of that policy we are giving some joint funding, with the local authority, on road pricing and parking controls with Avon County Council in Bristol.
My noble friend Lord Teviot will be pleased to know that the Department of the Environment has recently published a discussion document intended to stimulate public debate about the ways in which individuals, businesses and other organisations can contribute to limiting emissions of CO2 up to the year 2000. I commend this document to the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis.
Fuel prices were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff. It is clear that the priority which motorists and manufacturers attach to fuel economy is largely determined by fuel price. During the early 1980s, when fuel prices were high, the average fuel consumption of new cars fell. Higher fuel prices could also help to limit CO2 emissions by affecting driver behaviour. The Government see it as important to continue to influence the cost of fuel through taxation, as the 1990 environment White Paper made clear.
One of the main possibilities in the medium term for restricting further CO2 emissions per kilometre from transport appears to lie in improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency. Estimates suggest that it is technically possible to improve the weighted average fuel efficiency of new cars by 40 per cent. in the next 10 to 15 years by a combination of improved technology and in particular decisions by motorists to buy models which consume less fuel.
Within the European Community discussions are continuing on how the fuel efficiency of new cars might be improved, including the possibility of regulation. In relation to CO2, however, regulation
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would particularly distort the market because there is no single rate of emissions which all vehicles could achieve and no single technological solution is available.
The United Kingdom has pursued an active policy of noise reduction from motor vehicle engines and exhausts for many years. I am surprised that this issue was not mentioned more by your Lordships, although the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, touched on it. Since joining the EC, the UK has adopted the standard of existing directives and this has resulted in reductions in drive-by noise levels of 10dBA in as many years. Perhaps I may put that in layman's terms: it means that noise from individual vehicles has been roughly halved in that time. The new EC Directive on vehicle noise presents a new challenge to attain further reductions in noise from vehicles. The Government will continue to press within the EC for a further lowering of the limits in line with what is technically and economically feasible.
I am sure that, given what I have said so far, none of your Lordships could fail to agree with the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, that undoubtedly technology will improve in the future. The advances which the noble Earl has witnessed in his lifetime will be overtaken by the advances that I shall witness in my lifetime. Goodness knows what my children will witness during their lifetime or whether they will still be driving cars.
Apart from these technological solutions, we are also pursuing a range of policies to manage traffic better. Under this second heading the Government recognise that a variety of solutions is needed to tackle the increasing traffic congestion in our towns and cities to suit local needs. The problem cannot be solved by building more roads simply to increase capacity for car-commuting to city centres which are already heavily congested. In any case, it would be physically impossible and environmentally unacceptable to do so in most places. This is especially true in towns. Bypasses have a significant part to play in removing traffic from town centres; and many more are planned. I hope that my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth will welcome our collaboration with local authorities in a bypass demonstration project covering six towns in which comprehensive traffic management, parking, signing and other environmental measures will help to ensure that the bypasses produce maximum benefits. The results will be published as a guide to good practice.
We want to see as much traffic as possible (both passengers and goods) transferred from road—not just to rail as the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, wanted, but also to water.
We believe that public transport can play an important role, especially in urban areas. Where it is well loaded, it can provide a more energy efficient and more environment-friendly alternative to private cars as well as a means of transport for those who do not own cars. The Government are therefore looking at ways in which the use of energy-efficient public transport might be encouraged. The Government attach particular importance to improving existing services through the application of the Citizen's

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Charter. I hope that that will help to meet the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, as he stands at the bus stop. I hope too that in future he will have more information about when the next bus will come and that he will not get into his car and drive into the city centre.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I am much obliged to the Minister for giving way. He touched rightly—and I omitted this—on the issue of water transport. What are the Government doing as a matter of urgency to encourage the greater use of water transport for freight and for passengers?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I should like to answer that question but a lot of other points have been raised in this debate. Water transport is a subject that we are studying at the moment and I hope that we shall have more information both for the noble Lord and for the rest of your Lordships who are interested in this matter in the not too distant future.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, we would like to see more people using buses to get into our towns. Buses, especially when they are well used, offer environmental benefits in transporting large numbers of people and getting cars off the road. Efficient operation makes the bus more attractive, and this is helped by bus lanes, bus priority at traffic lights, clear road space at bus stops and better passenger information. We have allocated £4 million specifically for new bus priority and park-and-ride schemes during the current financial year. A further £15.5 million has been allocated next year. On the question of park-and-ride, I thought that my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth was, unusually for him, rather dismissive of the benefits that such schemes can offer.
Also in relation to buses I was surprised that red routes have not been mentioned. They have had successful trials. They have shortened bus journeys and increased passenger numbers. We have therefore designated a further 300 miles of these routes.
Traffic calming also has an important role to play. I hope that the measures that we have instituted will be welcomed by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. They constrain vehicle speeds and improve driver behaviour by means of road humps, chicanes and road narrowings. Traffic calming techniques can be used in the design of local safety schemes aimed at treating local accident black spots. In 1992–93 the Government allocated £43 million of TSG to assist highway authorities with local safety schemes as part of the strategy to reduce road accidents.
Like my noble friends Lord Campbell of Croy and Lord Nelson of Stafford and the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, we are considering the role road pricing could play in controlling traffic in cities. Road pricing would be a radical step to take. There is a great deal of work to be done before any judgments can be made. That is why we have under way a major research project to look at the feasibility of road pricing in London. It has a clear remit to look at the advantages and disadvantages of road pricing and is due to be completed at the end of 1994. The scope and depth of our research programme is such that at the end of it we shall be in a position to answer the full range of
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questions which are asked about road pricing. If road pricing is to move beyond the subject of academic argument, it will need to be shown that not only is it effective at making better use of road space but also that the cure is not worse than the disease.
We also need to look at the feasibility of road pricing in smaller cities than London where experiments or trials would be less difficult to mount. We are in touch with local authorities such as Avon, Lothian and Cambridgeshire on this work.
I move from that to pedestrianisation. In recent years there has been a steady increase in the number of pedestrianised areas. They are popular because they improve the convenience, safety and attractiveness of town centres. As my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy pointed out, the key to success is to achieve a sound balance between the needs of different users. There need to be adequate facilities for bus services, adequate car parks, adequate access for the disabled to enable them to take advantage of easier mobility and reduced exposure to traffic.
Finally, from feet to the cycle. My noble friend Lord Marlesford will be surprised to hear that I have answers for him. We fully support the provision of the new 1,000 mile strategic cycle network for London and, wherever possible, we will provide the cycle routes proposed on trunk roads as well as cycle crossing points on the trunk road network.
In summary, the Government recognise that increasing congestion in our towns and cities needs to be dealt with for economic and environmental reasons. We are acting on a number of fronts. National and local government, the European Community and other international bodies, the private sector and individuals all have their part to play in the development and implementation of solutions to deal with the pollution of vehicles. Let us be clear about the cost of doing nothing: businesses are already suffering from congestion, which adds to transport costs, detracts from the attractiveness of towns as places to live, shop and work and encourages out-of-town development. An immobile city is the last thing that city traders need. A better traffic flow and a more pleasant environment are in everyone's interests.
The Viscount of Oxfuird: My Lords, it remains for me to thank Members of your Lordships' House who have participated in the debate, which has been broad and very impressive in many areas. Favoured subjects have been aired. For one or two moments there were almost tears of déjà vu. Technology is serious about emissions from all forms of internal combustion engined vehicles. I am sure that investment, time and sheer hard work will bring the benefits that we seek.
Finally, I shall take great care not to drive backwards down a one-way street but to go down it forwards and to take the greatest care not to meet my noble friend Lord Marlesford going in the opposite direction. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Children's Homes: Training of Staff
5.52 p.m.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch Lord Pearson of Rannoch rose to call attention to government policies on the recruitment and training of those entrusted with the residential care of children; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is of course a great honour to open the debate today even if many of your Lordships will be aware that it is one that I do not exactly deserve. It is therefore a source of great comfort to me to see the list of speakers who are to follow and to know that the depth of experience and wisdom that they will bring to this very difficult subject will be of assistance to the Government in their future policies. It is, I am sure, a special pleasure for all of your Lordships to see that the noble Earl, Lord Longford, will be speaking today. I say that not only because it is always a pleasure to hear him speak, but because the last time that your Lordships debated the quality of care provided in children's homes, which was nearly a year ago on 19th February last year, the Motion was in the name of the noble Earl, but he was unable to speak because of illness. I have read that debate. It is good that my noble friend Lady Faithfull, who spoke a year ago, is to speak again today.
I should perhaps quote again, for the record, the broad parameters of the problem that we are discussing. There are now about 1,300 residential care homes in England, staffed by some 15,000 care staff and heads of homes. There are about 11,250 children in them. This gives an average of about nine children and 12 staff per home. It also gives some idea of the size of the problem we are debating, especially when one considers that most of the children come from very difficult home backgrounds, and that their average age has been going up recently. The average age is now 14, with more 16 year-olds than any other age group.
There have been a large number of reports which cover the selection and training of those entrusted with the residential care of children; that is, children taken for whatever reason into the care of local authorities. Most of those reports seem to have been inspired by disturbing incidents which have come to public knowledge. I do not claim to have read all the reports covering the subject in question, which I understand may number more than 50 since 1945. However, there is not much doubt in my mind, having studied some of the more recent reports, that we are discussing the Cinderella of our state provision for the unfortunate among us. It is doubly depressing that one should have to say that about a service for children and young people.
Since your Lordships' debate last February, more reports have been published, and more scandals have emerged. The most recent scandal is perhaps the story which appeared in the Spectator magazine on 9th January this year of two children being wrongly taken into care against their parent's wishes. I shall put a copy of that article in your Lordships' Library, together with a copy of a letter carried in the Spectator
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of 23rd January, which challenges some of the assumptions in the article, but which does not attempt to deny the tragedy of the case.
This is probably as good a place as any for me to be as fair as I can to those who provide the service we are discussing. I am sure that we all appreciate the pressure under which social workers and others find themselves when a case of bad child abuse comes to light about which they have done nothing, or not enough. No doubt that pressure can make them overzealous at other times, and I am sure that that is part of the problem.
I am also sure that it would be right to pay tribute to those who give good and selfless service in residential homes for children. I am sure that that tribute is due, and I am sure that your Lordships would wish me to pay it.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, most of the recent reports, particularly those with reasonably independent membership among their authors, do suggest that the selection, training, management and performance of most of those entrusted with the residential care of children is far from adequate.
Since your Lordships' debate a year ago, perhaps the two most significant reports to emerge are the Howe Report and the Warner Report. Of those, I am slightly nervous of the Howe Report because it was compiled by providers of the service in question. I do not say that it may not contain some useful ideas, but in general I distrust self-regulation, and I found the report's recommendations somewhat too weighted towards trying to improve the image of the service, without paying enough attention to the possibility that its image might improve if its service improved. Perhaps I am being unfair to the Howe Report, and, if so, I leave it to other noble Lords to do it more justice.
The Warner Report seems to me to be an altogether more valuable document. It is a report which I would urge the Government to take to heart, and to treat very seriously indeed. Apart from the objectivity and common sense which it brings to this highly complex subject, it contains at least one statement which should be music to the Government's ears. This goes as follows:
"A common reaction to a report such as ours is to assume that nothing can be done without additional resources being made available. We are not convinced that this is so".
The report goes on to favour a redistribution of existing expenditure on the personal social services and local government budgets.
On recruitment, the Warner Report has much good advice to offer, and I am sure that your Lordships will do that part of the report more justice than can I. But there is one warning of a situation which arises from our membership of the EEC, to which your Lordships may not refer, and which should be put on the record. The report sees problems arising from the free movement of labour, because it is difficult for employers or the police to make inquiries into the pasts of people from overseas, or to establish details of convictions acquired outside the UK. It is difficult

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under current arrangements in some Community countries to check the criminal records of those who wish to work in the UK. However, it will not be possible to impose restrictions on people from other Community countries which would put them at a disadvantage to UK nationals. The Warner Report urges the Department of Health and the Home Office to consider the implication of this for children's homes. I am sure that we would all agree with that advice.
It is when the Warner Report moves on to training that I find it most useful. There are many excellent passages which, if there were time, I would want to put on the record in your Lordships' House. But I shall confine myself to one quotation, because it leads me on to the main point that I wish to make to your Lordships this afternoon. It is to be found on page 171 of the report, and it goes like this:
"Even if one accepts that the Diploma in Social Work is the most appropriate qualification for residential child care—which we do not—then on present plans it would take over 30 years to train the eligible staff to obtain this qualification. The present training strategy seems more geared to helping able staff to obtain qualifications which enable them to leave, than to providing practical training for the majority of staff in homes looking after children".
I share the Warner Report's doubts that the Diploma in Social Work is an appropriate qualification for residential child care. I say that because in my research for this debate, I have become more familiar with the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, or "Set-swer" as it appears to be known in the trade, which regulates the Diploma in Social Work. The rules and requirements for the Diploma in Social Work are set out in Set-swer's Paper No. 30 which is now in its second edition.
I have to say that this publication is deeply disturbing to anyone well-versed in the language of the gender, race and class fraternity. If our social work courses reflect the biased ethos of this document, which they must, I would be very doubtful if the resulting qualification can be of much help to those about to work in or around children's homes. Indeed, I would have thought that it would be positively harmful. All the old neo-Marxist jargon is here in abundance. Furthermore, any "practice learning" must take place in institutions which are similarly faithful to the bias which I have criticised.
Your Lordships may be aware that for 10 years I have been the representative of commerce on the Council for National Academic Awards which used to validate the degrees in the polytechnics, now miraculously transformed into universities. My experience at the CNAA leads me to be certain that the delivery of these courses at the chalk-face will be even more narrow-minded and virulent than Set-swer's rules and requirements indicate, so I am sure that the courses are even more damaging than Paper No. 30 indicates.
In short, I am fairly sure that we are looking at a secret garden, the secret garden of social work training. This would benefit from some light being let into it, in much the same way as light is at last being slowly let into the secret garden of teacher training.
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Of course, some noble Lords will think that I exaggerate or that I am letting aggressive right-wing emotions distort the evidence before me, in which case I should inform them that Set-swer has just had a little bit of bad luck. It has sent me the programme details of the eight Diploma in Social Work courses being offered under their residential child-care initiative at institutions which they describe as "centres of excellence".
The bad luck occurs in that I have a friend who is actually on one of the eight courses in question. She assures me that:
"The course is totally preoccupied with issues related to class, gender and race, to the detriment of other issues relevant to the education of effective social workers".
So that is what is going on at the chalkface of at least one of our eight flagship courses.
I know that this is anecdotal. The fact that my informant is a friend of mine may convince some of your Lordships that she must share my right-wing paranoia about this subject, but it is not so. A difficulty arises because, as usual, she does not want to be identified for fear of victimisation at her approaching examinations and thereafter when she applies for a job. I say "as usual" because this fear of being revealed as a critic of the gender, race and class brigade was something I often met at the CNAA with students on our teacher education courses. It is a very real fear, and in my view it is wholly justified.
I end by making two suggestions which I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will find helpful. First, in order to discover whether I am exaggerating about the poor quality of Set-swer's courses or not, I suggest that an appropriate sample should be validated by a small group of perhaps five to seven suitably qualified people. The majority of the members of this group should be health care professionals assisted by at least one proven manager. Social workers and social scientists generally should be in a minority. This validating panel should be free to talk to students who would have to he offered convincing protection against victimisation at their exams or their subsequent search for work. This would clearly not be an expensive exercise and I hope that the Government will consider it.
I am sure that the group's findings would justify my second suggestion which is that the Government should accept Recommendation No. 62 of the Warner Report and abandon the Diploma in Social Work in favour of a new diploma targeted at the residential care and after-care of children. I am fairly sure that the Diploma in Social Work is beyond redemption and that any attempt to reform it will be frustrated by the deeply-entrenched establishment which now controls it.
I hope that the Government will look favourably on those two related suggestions. I hope that your Lordships do not feel that I have exaggerated or spent too much time on this aspect. I believe that social work training is the soil in which many of the roots of the problem which we are discussing today may feed. I believe that the time has come to examine the quality of that soil and, if necessary, to change it.
6.5 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, the noble Lord was so kind about me that if only for that reason, although not only for that reason, I must be nice about his speech. He realises that he has been controversial and he seems to feel that he may be accused of right-wing paranoia. In my experience, anyone who feels that he may be accused of paranoia suffers from a mild dose of that trouble. The noble Lord voiced views which will be greatly disliked throughout the world of those who dedicate their lives to looking after children. However, I was glad that a fresh mind was brought to bear on the subject even though it is not quite the same mind that I shall deploy. The noble Lord rightly told us that there have been 50 inquiries into these matters and it may be that we have got into a rut. I should be surprised if the noble Lord receives any support in the world of social work but perhaps he does not expect it. He is against the whole thing. Perhaps when the noble Lord has had many more years' contact with the issue, he may think differently.
As the noble Lord was kind enough to say, I was going to introduce a debate on this subject last year. I lost my spleen. I do not know whether any other noble Lord has lost his spleen but it does not seem to make much difference. People said that I had not got enough spleen anyway. If I had not lost my spleen, I might have spoken more sharply to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. However, the debate was taken over by my noble friend Lord Ennals and the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, spoke in the debate. She is a great expert in these matters and was a child officer for many years. The debate was handled extremely well, and like the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, I read it carefully.
Last year I was going to emphasise the need for better pay and conditions for staff at homes. I recognised then that the answer would be that the staff were not qualified. Therefore, the question of improving pay and conditions is very much linked, as the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, will agree, with improving qualifications. It is on that aspect of the matter that I wish to concentrate today. The Warner Report is a very comprehensive document, but I shall be concerned only with the question of training.
I have complimented the Minister so often in the past that I cannot utter any more compliments without seeming to become hysterical. However, I know that she is well qualified to handle the debate. It is obvious that if we are to improve the pay and conditions of those people—and the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, said that he wants those people to he very different from what they are now, although I do not know what he wants them to be like—we can place on the Government requirements under three headings: willpower, resources and method.
I ask the Government to show us clearly whether they have the willpower to improve the conditions and status of the workers and staff in the homes and whether they are ready to provide the resources, if not tomorrow at any rate at some time in the future. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, seemed to feel that that could be done without increasing resources. It would
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be nice if that were so. However, I do not believe that any great social improvements can be brought about without increasing resources. We do not expect the Minister this evening to promise large sums of money, but I should like to know whether the Government are making plans which are bound to involve increasing resources.
This report is a comprehensive report, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, on the whole has been able to approve. I am afraid that I find difficulties over it. Of course we admire the dedication, learning and exertions of the people concerned, but I am afraid that I find certain difficulties. There are two outstanding features. With regard to the first, I quote two sentences from the report.
"Any training strategy for children's homes which places undue emphasis on off-site training is probably doomed to failure. In our view the only practical way to train a lot more staff quickly and effectively within the resources likely to be available"—
that is where the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, hopes to save and increase the resources—
"is to concentrate more on work-based training."
I must press the Minister to tell us whether the Government accept that conclusion. I feel very dubious about it myself because of the small size of the homes, which was in fact brought home to us by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. He pointed out that the average capacity of a home is nine. In many cases they are much smaller, though some are larger. Experience and some common sense lead me to believe that you cannot improve enormously the training of these people within such very small units. However, obviously that is an issue on which more than one opinion can be held. I cannot think of any parallel in my experience where people in units of that size were professionally trained, or trained to similar standards. That would be the first difficulty.
We may be told, and it may be in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that it is too expensive to train residential staff in any other way. I suppose that it would cost a bit more to do the job properly, but residential care is a closed world and those who give their lives to this—and in most of what I am saying I have not been instructed by anybody, but I am speaking after discussion with people who devote their lives to these matters and the bodies concerned —take the view that residential care is a closed world within these little units, and opportunity for extramural experience and learning is essential. However, it is one central feature of the report that training is to be done on the job in these little units.
The other point is the introduction of what is called a new strategy for a new professional qualification. Here again I shall quote recommendation No. 62, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson:
"The Government should reconsider its current policy on qualifications for heads of homes; and should consider arranging the design and introduction of a new Diploma, focused more on the group care of children and young people at an equivalent level to the Diploma in Social Work as the preferred professional qualification for staff working in children's residential care."
No doubt that recommendation has been carefully thought out and I am not trying to belittle the hard work that has gone into producing it, but that

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recommendation has been widely criticised throughout the world of social work, and not least by the British Association of Social Workers. The association does not accept—and let us be clear that it is the professional body concerned with the people we are discussing today—the Warner proposal that the existing training framework cannot produce the numbers and quality of residential staff required.
Also, the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work is confident that the Diploma in Social Work, which was established only two years ago and which brought together two separate qualifications, has the flexibility to accommodate the anxieties expressed by Warner. That is a flat rejection—they do not mince any words—by the professional bodies most concerned with which I have been in touch. They reject the crucial finding of the Warner Report that there should be a new diploma.
I shall quote one passage expressing disquiet. The body concerned
"shares the report's concern at the numbers of qualified staff leaving residential care, which has been going on for years. But the solution is not to create a new qualification which only has currency in residential child care."
Let me repeat that. The idea of having a special qualification in this little world of child care, with only 11,000 young people in it at one time, and which will be relatively limited outside that, does not appeal. I personally share the anxiety that it does not appeal to the social workers most concerned. Therefore, we must ask the Government whether they do or do not agree. Perhaps they are thinking it over. Perhaps they are waiting for this and other debates. Do they agree with this new professional qualification or do they not? I do not, but it is up to the people who matter, the Government, to tell us where they stand.
I must not take much longer. I hope that the Government will indicate that they have a strong will to improve the conditions of these workers. I hope they will indicate, however they like to phrase it—when resources permit, or whatever jargon is thought most appropriate—that they intend, or aspire, to provide the resources necessary. As regards methods, there is a choice. I have indicated my views and the views of the various bodies. Let us hear from the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has done a lot of work in the education field, and I know that we can all agree that we are desperately and equally anxious to support probably the most vulnerable children in the country and the staff who devote their lives to serving them.
6.17 p.m.
Lord Rix: My Lords, I should like to record my thanks to Norman Warner and his colleagues for their report on staffing of residential care for children, and to the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, for this timely opportunity to debate the issues. I say timely, but I must remark that, pleased as I am to be here and to have the chance to participate, a little of my attention is wandering across Parliament Square to the MCC drama unfolding in the Methodist Central Hall, where many Members of your Lordships' House
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appear to be ensconced. Some small part of my attention is also on my birthday celebrations later this evening.
The celebrations of birthdays assumes a certain urgency when you reach the mature years of many of us in your Lordships' House—even though The Times today has granted me, in some Faustian way, a further 10 years of life. Reaching beyond three score years and ten towards the more accurate but less euphonious three score years and 16 still seems ambitious, despite the recent assurances that there are over 2,300 of our fellow citizens who have scored a century or more. I only hope that the records of these centenarians are more accurate than those which appear to adhere to Graham Gooch in his century of centuries.
I was fortunate that my early birthdays were landmarks in a happy and secure childhood in what was once Yorkshire, is now Humberside, and after the local government review who knows. Windily teetering near me on the North Cliff at Hornsea was a residential home for children with disabilities. The home looked institutional; may have been eminently caring; and labelled its young charges as "poor brave things"—known locally as "the braves". Brave and unfortunate we all thought they were as they clattered on calipers and rattled in wheelchairs to sit in their reserved pews on Sunday mornings. As our language indicated, we felt sorry for them, but were less inclined to see them as part of a shared community.
It is easy to improve on the language. It is even more important to ensure that the staff who determine whether a building is an institution or a home should be carefully chosen, properly trained, and adequately supported. That I take to be the essence of the Warner Report and they are objectives that Mencap stoutly supports. Sixty and more years on from the memories of my childhood, residential care for children is still being debated and I expect that debate to run on well beyond my allotted span. However, we have an historic opportunity to get it right in a way that we have failed to get it right in the past. Unlike the noble Earl, Lord Longford, I believe that training can take place on the job. We have found in Mencap that those highly trained in a hospital setting do not necessarily transfer easily to the cosier, small residential home.
As with others in your Lordships' House, departmental circulars are my favourite bedside reading and I notice that Local Authority Circular (92)21 refers to money for training staff in children's homes but also records that bids last autumn for this money exceeded the amount of money actually available. That means that local authorities are trying to respond to the Warner recommendations; that the Government have accepted those recommendations and are trying to help them to respond; but that there is a gap between what local authorities would like to do and what they can afford to do. I would venture to guess that the gap between what they would like to do and what they need to do is greater still.
In spite of the assurance of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, that costs need not escalate, Warner recommendation 69 states that extra training incurs extra costs. For many childcare staff the challenge is children and young people with very difficult

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behaviour. Within Mencap's remit the issue is children and young people with learning disability and very difficult behaviour, and/or with multiple disabilities. A little love goes a long way in looking after children but a little love becomes worn out and ineffective if it is not supported by more than a little training. These children are very vulnerable as well as sometimes very difficult but also on occasions they are very rewarding.
I would add that in modern service patterns the importance of training extends to staff supporting parents who are doing the caring, to substitute families, and to residential and family-based respite care. Let us not make the mistake of assuming that family-based services are always best and necessarily cheaper. Even more important, let us not make the all too tempting mistake of assuming that cheaper means better: generations of children have suffered from that "Oliver Twist" philosophy.
Mencap itself caters for young people with special needs in its three residential further education colleges, and we are very conscious of the responsibility of caring for other people's children. Caring means providing opportunity and support. It means enabling development. It means taking risks, but doing so within a framework of safety supplied by agreed policies and procedures, and by the skills of staff who have been well trained and who know the children they are looking after. I might add that for people with severe disabilities who grow up, but who remain vulnerable, the relevance of the Warner recommendations does not stop at age 18. For adults there is much less protection than there is for children. That worries me.
I have one final point to place on record, if I may. In commending better selection procedures, training, monitoring and support, and complaints procedures to help identify where things are going wrong, I want to join others who have paid tribute to the staff who are doing this vital work on our behalf. Warner is about supporting them more adequately; and I hope that as the Government's initially favourable response unfolds the resources will be invested to help people who, for the most part, are doing their best in a job that would stretch any of us to the limit and beyond. For the vast majority of them, my admiration and gratitude know no bounds.
6.24 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, we are indeed indebted to my noble friend Lord Pearson for initiating this important debate. Before the noble Earl, Lord Longford, leaves the Chamber, I hope I may say how much I have agreed with his comments in the past. However, I must add with regret that, except for one point he made, I could not quite agree with his comments today.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I would never dream of leaving this House when the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, was speaking. I was merely changing place to hear her better.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his remarks. I entirely agreed with everything
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my noble friend Lord Pearson said in his speech except for one point which I shall mention later. Inevitably it concerns resources. I remind your Lordships that in 1967 the Williams Report recommended that training for staff working in residential homes and schools was essential. The fact that the recommendations in that report were not implemented to the full is the responsibility of both central and local government and of all political parties. This is not a party political matter. As a country we have allowed children to suffer as evidenced by the distressing reports on malpractices in children's homes. I refer to the "Pindown" inquiry, the Leicestershire inquiry, the Welsh inquiry, the Northern Ireland inquiry, the Crookham court case and others. Furthermore, we have wasted resources in having to commission these inquiries, which have cost money. I suggest that if we had followed the recommendations of the Williams Report in 1967 we would not be in the position we are in today.
Various reports have been written, for example the Utting Report on children in public care, the Howe Report—that was referred to by my noble friend Lord Pearson—the Meyer/Goodenough Report, which was commissioned by the Association of County Councils, and finally the Warner Report. I believe we all agree that the Warner Report is a most outstanding report. All those reports stress the need for training staff who work in a group setting with children. As has been mentioned, the residential sector has been a Cinderella service. I agree with two noble Lords who have said there are staff who are dedicated to children and who are carrying out good work in difficult conditions. We must acknowledge those staff and pay tribute to them.
The Warner Committee was commissioned by the Department of Health. The committee states that its report covers private homes and homes run by local authorities and voluntary organisations. My noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch has given us figures on this matter and I shall not repeat them. Within the homes there are 9,000 sexually abused children and young persons. There are 15,000 staff. Some 40 per cent. of heads of homes and some 80 per cent. of assistant staff have no training or relevant experience. That is not something of which we should be proud. Training should include studies of human growth and development and therapeutic understanding, and it should be undertaken by people of insight and sensitivity who have sound qualities of character, and commitment.
In 1957 Leila Renold, the founder of the Caldecott Community, which is situated in Kent and caters for deeply disturbed children, asserted that training should be work based. In 1993 that is one of the recommendations of the Warner Report. The Local Government Training Board has already embarked on a national vocational qualification. I believe that that should be incorporated in the wider recommendations of the Warner Committee.
I do not believe the Diploma in Social Work issued by CCETSW is adequate. Like my noble friend Lord Pearson I am distressed that matters of class, gender and race should be brought into the report. In time gone by there was an excellent advanced course for

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residential workers run by Professor Beedell at the Bristol University. It was closed down for lack of resources.
As chairman of the governors, I speak from personal experience of the Caldecott Community. Five years ago we appointed a qualified training officer to the staff, who offered the staff training on site. That has proved of inestimable value to the work being done and of help to the staff. Only by work-based training would it be possible to train the large number of untrained workers in children's homes.
I say this to the noble Earl, Lord Longford. Even in small children's homes it is possible to have work-based training on site. Staff will probably attend their local college of further education for the academic side. On the practical side, it is hoped that on the staff of the social services departments there will be a manager who will co-operate with the college of further education in giving the staff their practical work in the children's homes.
At this juncture I wish to widen the debate. I have informed the Minister of that. The terms of the debate today are,
"To call attention to Government policies on the recruitment and training of those entrusted with the residential care of children".
Apart from the report commissioned by the Association of County Councils, all the reports, including the Warner Report, were commissioned by the Department of Health to deal with children's homes which came under the umbrella of the Department of Health and the social services departments. However, there are residential schools which come under the umbrella of the Department of Education. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, knows about the schools for handicapped children. There are also EBD residential schools. EBD was initiated by the Department of Education, and refers to children experiencing emotional behavioural difficulties. I was unable to discover the number of schools and the number of children in those schools from the Department of Education. Those schools are often run by charities.
There are also the therapeutic residential centres which form the Charterhouse Group, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, is the president. We are sorry that she cannot be with us today due to illness in her family.
In addition there are boarding schools, some run by charities and others privately run. The majority of those establishments employ staff who care for the children out of school hours. They too do not have training or relevant experience.
Training of all care staff in residential establishments should come under one umbrella, not two departments. Indeed, I believe that the Department of Education does not have a training scheme for care staff in residential schools. Therefore the money put aside for resources covers only the children's homes run by the social services departments, the voluntary organisations and those under the umbrella of the Department of Health.
In the Warner Report it is recommended that there should be a joint implementation group. The Utting
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Report recommended a development action group. However, I maintain that there should be one residential care consortium group to cover all children in residential establishments under the umbrella of both the Department of Health and the Department of Education. There should be one scheme for training the care staff in both those sectors.
I have two final points. The first concerns EBD schools and therapeutic centres which fall under the umbrella of the Department of Education. I say this with deep regret. There is evidence that the Department of Education has little knowledge or understanding of the needs of disturbed and disruptive children. That is not surprising as the teacher training colleges no longer teach human growth and development. They have discarded the teaching of such experts as Winnicott and Bowlby. Furthermore, the department seems to give little help, support or encouragement to the schools for difficult children. It allows schools to close without having helped or advised them, and few inspections are carried out. At lunch today I spoke to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. He was most distressed that a very good school in his area was closing.
Many such schools are run by charities. They have to close if they do not have the full complement of children. Such schools are expensive because they have special services to offer difficult children. However, I regret to say that even though the action is recommended by a psychiatrist, a psychologist or a teacher, many city treasurers will not allow those children to be sent to such schools because of the expense. What happens? It means that those children become the responsibility of the social services departments, which are unable to deal with them. Furthermore, responsibility for those children will be expensive and authorities will not have either the facilities or the resources. The fragmentation of responsibility between two departments is a cause for real anxiety.
Inevitably I come to the question of resources. I slightly part company in that respect with my noble friend. So often the treasurers cut down on training and sending children to special schools. But I do not believe that training can be carried out without extra resources. The Warner Report makes recommendations about training. Figures are given for training. But remember that they relate only to the children in the children's homes under the umbrella of the Department of Health. What about the care staff in the children's homes under the umbrella of the Department of Education? Many more resources and the same training will be required for the care staff in those homes.
I believe that all local authorities should have to give an annual report on their training schemes: how many staff have been trained and how much money has been spent. I believe that the report should be submitted to the Department of Health and, in the case of the residential establishments under the umbrella of the Department of Education, to that department. I hesitate to step into realms which are rightly those of the right reverend Prelate. However, I

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would say that, where there is no vision, the people perish. Over the years many children may not have perished but they have been badly damaged. It is timely that we have had the debate. I urge the Government —I refer not only to the Department of Health but to the Department of Education—to look together at this great problem of the training of staff.
6.39 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, in the year 1991 there was a series of serious allegations about the conduct of a community home with education in Gwent in South Wales called Ty Mawr, just outside Abergavenny. The Secretary of State for Wales, to his eternal credit, directed the local authority to carry out an investigation. It instructed me to do so. It was a very humbling experience. In the encircling gloom there were only two shafts of light: first, the quality of the assessor who sat with me, John McReadie; and, secondly, and much more fundamentally, the quality of the children with whom we dealt.
The noble Baroness concluded with a word which I endorse. She said that many children had been seriously "damaged". They have been damaged, many of them irremediably. I was surprised and shocked to discover in my investigation that virtually none of the care staff had any qualifications at all. I endorse what was said by your Lordships earlier that most of them are good natured, well meaning and well motivated people.
Earlier this afternoon your Lordships held a debate about the internal combustion engine. There is not one among us who would entrust the servicing of a motor car or motor-cycle to an untrained person. I could reasonably sit down at that point, but life being what it is I shall not.
The fact that people are well meaning—as most of them are —is a gross dereliction of duty towards the children in their charge. We need to bear in mind when we speak of children in residential care that we are attending to or should attend to a wide spectrum. Most of the children will be profoundly fragile through no fault of their own. Many are there for a brief period, for example, taken in the middle of the night from police stations because of the protection offered them by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Many are there for brief respite care; some are in residential accommodation for assessment. We should bear in mind that some are there because they have nowhere else to go, in other words the children's home is the home of the child.
The training required is such that none of us present would be able to undertake the work without proper qualifications, experience and training. It is not simply the management of a child in what is the child's home. As the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, pointed out, many of the children are well into adolescence. They can be large and may be physically intimidating. Many are sophisticated in crime even at the age of 14. We should not blind ourselves to that. Therefore, the staff need at the very least simple training in the physical control of sometimes large and intimidating youngsters. Often they do not have it.
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There is unfortunately no mileage in an establishment for children. No one is interested in it until, as the noble Baroness pointed out, a scandal emerges and public funds are spent—some would say wasted—on needless inquiries.
Many children who go into residential care do so because magistrates are now rightly ashamed of committing them to remand sections of adult prisons where frequently they harm themselves or even kill themselves, or try to. The alternative is twofold: first, send them into the care of the local authority, which, I regret to say, magistrates do without appreciating that there is no security in most children's homes; or, secondly, commit them to secure accommodation. There is no secure accommodation in the whole of Wales. If secure accommodation, properly certified, means that we can keep a child in security so that he or she cannot abscond, run away or commit further crime within a 24-hour period, it is horrendously expensive. The figures vary, but it is of the order of £80,000 per head per year. Do we want that? If so, then the money must be made available.
Many of the care staff at Ty Mawr are well meaning. They were chosen as a consequence of the rundown of heavy industry in South Wales. People aged about 40 were available for work and they were chosen for this work which none of us today could carry out with any prospect or hope of success. They were chosen on the basis of going down to the jobcentre and being asked whether they would like a job caring for children. That is the literal truth, and I do not believe that home to have been unique.
What happens after training? The work in these homes is very demanding. It leaves the staff feeling like sponges which have been put through a mangle. It is desperately hard, committed, devoted work. If training is offered, the temptation is then to look for work in a similar field but not as hard or harsh, not necessarily requiring residence on the premises. Part of the history of training, alas, has been, with a degree of irony, that those who are trained leave the residential homes because life is easier and better paid outside.
When there is the opportunity of talking to residents of children's homes, or in my case listening to a tape left by a boy who by the time we had reported had killed himself, we do not readily forget the faces, weakness or vulnerability we have seen.
I echo what the noble Baroness said. It is important that children in these circumstances should not only be cared for by trained staff but should not be divorced from the mainstream of life, society and in particular education and skills. That is another significant danger that, when one has isolated communities, education is provided out of the mainstream.
I wish to say a word or two on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He accused himself—I believe that in Army circles it is called a pre-emptive strike—of Right-wing paranoia. I do not ascribe that to him. I do not agree with all that he said, but one remark I wish to endorse. He said that often

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not only are children damaged by untrained or unreflective people who care for them but so are parents, deeply.
The noble Baroness mentioned the Orkney inquiry. I shall touch on it because after those many millions of pounds no parent there now knows, first, why their children were taken from them at dawn; and, secondly, whether they will have any vindication in this world. Not long ago when Cleveland erupted, the editor of the Mail on Sunday at the time, Stuart Steven, wrote an article which is well worth remembering. Its headline was, "In the Secret State". We need to be exceptionally careful not only that we attend to the rights of children in care by making sure that they have qualified staff to look after them but that their parents' rights are properly attended to and not shuffled away. I shall finish the story. Stuart Steven's reward for that courageous piece of exemplary journalism was to be taken before the High Court and charged with contempt. There is a shaft of light—he was acquitted.
Those are the few words I wish to contribute. The children of whom we speak, by and large in the state institutions, have no voice. There are no votes there. There is nothing pleasant about their lives and circumstances. If we do not make trained provision for them we are worse than pre-Dickensian.
6.48 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I join with others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, for introducing this important topic. I feel a certain diffidence in speaking on it in view of the great experience and expertise that I know is enjoyed by many of those who have already spoken.
The Warner Report is the latest in an escalating number of reports which reach similar conclusions. One might think that it is perhaps time to stop, take stock and prepare a summary and perhaps call a halt until progress has been made on the recommendations on which there seems to be a good deal of consensus.
The recommendations on the personnel procedures have, I believe, been accepted by the Government who have asked directors of social services to report by April on how they are implementing them. I know that while directors will endeavour to meet that timetable, in itself it is causing a problem. The other recommendations are being consulted on.
I entirely take the point that the issues in this report and debate are not party political. But the title of the debate refers to "Government policies" which led me to look at the Conservative manifesto. The sections on care services and children are directed to diversity and choice. I do not claim that there is no place for the voluntary and private sector provision. But, as I believe this debate has shown, the issue is about standards and quality. We have listened in other contexts to how one deals with quality when one contracts out services. That, I believe, is an issue for this area as well.
I was interested, when I looked at the terms of reference of the Warner Committee, to see that the question of resources was not included. I wonder whether the Minister can explain the thinking behind
1322
that. She may say that the right way to go about such things is to identify best practice and then work out how the resources can be applied and what the resource implications are. That may be the case in an ideal world, but I know that all those involved will be anxious to know not just that the Government accept some of the recommendations, but also how they are to be achieved. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, and the noble Baroness Lady Faithfull mentioned that point. The costs are far more than just those of the training, a point which has already been referred to fully in this debate.
It is interesting too that we are discussing this issue at the time when care in the community is being introduced, with all the costs that are attached. I realise that community care budgets are ring-fenced, but in a period of fast-increasing demands on social services budgets—including requirements of the Children Act 1989—those budgets are under enormous strain. Community care, being ring-fenced, must rely on other parts of the social services. It is interesting that the question of residential care is so important, as noble Lords have illustrated, at a time when we are perhaps concentrating on other parts of the social services.
Warner does not ignore the resource issues. I support the comment at paragraph 10.34 of the report that it is:
"important to relate the resource implications of [the] recommendations to the wider context of total expenditure on the Personal Social Services and local government activities as a whole".
But I share other reservations expressed by your Lordships about funding by redeploying existing social services and local government resources. I believe there is a dilemma facing us when we assess our priorities in the light of the introduction of care in the community.
I support one particular very narrow comment in the report about the refurbishment of children's homes. It is important because the physical surroundings give people a message as to the value that is placed on what happens in those homes. The report recommends that refurbishment might be achieved by allowing the expenditure by local authorities of accumulated capital receipts, not just the receipts earned in the current year.
I accept that the physical surroundings are an indicator of the regard in which homes are held by the public and by those working in the service. At the root of the problem perhaps is the low regard and low status of homes and some of the staff in them. We have, perhaps, slipped into this situation. Warner identifies the problem when he says:
"Society as a whole has shown considerable indifference to the position of children in residential care. There is a tendency to disbelieve that abuse can occur in residential institutions that are assumed to provide higher standards of care than those families from which children have been removed".
The report goes on to say:
"National and Local Government has shown a lack of interest in defining the role and purpose of children's homes or in obtaining information about how the sector was changing … Too often the profession has seen children's homes as a 'necessary evil'".

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I think that in identifying homes as somewhat of a backwater, Warner has put his finger on a large part of the problem.
The emphasis recently in social work has been on fostering. There must be something of a sense of failure if a child is placed in a residential home. The tendency has already been mentioned for staff who work in residential homes, after they have managed to find training, to go and do field work, which is certainly better paid and in many ways more rewarding.
There is a raft of cross-departmental issues which has been quite rightly identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. I have thought about it more at local level than at ministerial level, and of the needs and provision of education as well as social services. But:
"Under local management and grant maintained changes, there is no incentive for heads [of schools] to take these children and many of the education facilities in residential homes are poor".
I myself might have made some comment of that kind, though not perhaps quite so extreme. But that was Norman Warner himself in an interview in the Local Government Chronicle. He said—and this too is worth putting on the record:
"At the end of the day, the local authority took the legal step in virtually all these cases to remove the child from their natural parents in order to protect that child. Having taken that step, it seems to me that they are under an overwhelming obligation, which is different in kind from the obligations to the physically disabled and elderly, to promote and safeguard the welfare of the child.
"It is very hard to see in a lot of cases in residential care, how the local authority is promoting the welfare of the child in its care. How can you be doing that by not ensuring that they are receiving the education or psychological help that they need beggars belief as far as I am concerned".
Warner also refers to the problems experienced by children who are increasingly among those who are excluded from schools and who lose out in every sector.
Many of your Lordships made reference to the question of training. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, wondered whether he was paranoid. One of the answers is that if one is paranoid, one is not necessarily wrong.
Reference was also made to Recommendation 62, about the suggestion of a separate professional qualification for those working in children's homes. I am a little surprised at that. I wonder whether it does not suggest that there is something different qualitatively and something perhaps not as good, about working in that kind of sector. I know that the Association of County Councils is concerned about setting professional qualifications apart. It is also surprised that a new diploma is suggested hardly before the Diploma in Social Work has been adopted.
I have concentrated on certain concerns. But I must welcome the report. It is too easy on such occasions to forget that basic rule. It is characterised by underlying real concerns and determination, and it aims very high. Mr. Warner regards as most important the recommendations on supervision and appraisal. When I say that he aims high, he says that structured
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supervision must be weekly or fortnightly, and that monthly is not good enough. That is a tremendous target to be reached.
I must also pay tribute to the majority of staff working in residential homes. The scandals that have hit the press must be a source of greater distress and frustration to them than to the general public.
Suffusing the whole of the report is the notion that young people living in children's homes need champions. I am sure that noble Lords agree that they have certainly found a champion in Norman Warner and his colleagues.
7 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, let me first join with other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, for introducing this subject for discussion. The Warner Report is a good report, as many noble Lords have said. We must thank Mr. Warner and the committee who laboured long and hard to bring it about.
I am conscious that many people who have already spoken are much greater experts in the matter than I. We have heard some excellent speeches, especially from the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and my noble friend Lord Williams. I am conscious also that the hour is late. Not only does the noble Lord, Lord Rix, celebrate his birthday today but I note also that the noble Baroness the Minister also shares his birthday. Therefore I must not be prolix.
I shall first quote from the report, which contains three essential messages. First, the report says,
"Society as a whole has shown considerable indifference to the position of children in residential care".
The second point we must remember is that,
"society needs a range of well-managed children's homes as an important and permanent part of its system of public care of children".
I emphasise the words "permanent part of its system". Lastly, the report states that the approach in children's homes,
"must be seen as developmental and therapeutic, and not as custodial".
Those are the three principles that we must bear in mind. We have neglected the problem; it will not go away; and the way to approach it is in a therapeutic and developmental rather than a custodial frame of mind.
The first thing that strikes one about the sector is that it is a shrinking sector. The number of children's homes has been decreasing and there are now a small number of children in the homes—11,000. They are tough cases. Each child has his or her own problems and I do not want to minimise them. The sector is shrinking for two reasons. Most local authorities are reluctant to place children in the homes. They would prefer them to be fostered or adopted. Children are placed in a home either when there is no alternative or when doing so is the proper thing to do because they cannot and should not be placed with a foster family.
Given all that, 11,000 children is a manageable number and small enough not to produce problems if the sector is managed correctly. Because the sector is shrinking, there is a problem in retaining good staff. My noble friend Lord Williams pointed out that as

1325
soon as an individual is fully trained he or she leaves the sector. Before we think of training, recruitment, supervision and all those issues, we must produce a strategy whereby good trained staff can be retained. That means that there is not only a need for training, which many people have mentioned, but that we must look also at the reward structure in the sector in such a way as to provide no easy incentive for quitting the sector. That having been said, we must not make the sector such a closed garden that people within it never get out. There must be reasonable entry and exit so that people from other sectors of caring can bring their knowledge to bear.
One point which strikes a relative stranger to the matter is whether the size of the homes should be seen as a problem. They seem to me to be rather small and that must create a problem as regards the variety of help that staff can offer, especially in terms of psychology and education. By definition that must be limited. I wonder whether there is any thinking going on either in the Department of Health or elsewhere regarding the possible scope for moving towards larger homes which could provide a variety of facilities on the spot and could look after the children's developmental and therapeutic needs. I am concerned especially with the educational needs of the children. It is not always possible, or desirable, that they attend the nearest local school. It may be better to provide educational help on the premises. Therefore one problem to consider is whether or not the current homes are of the correct size.
Many noble Lords mentioned the problems of training and recruitment. The problem of whether the current Diploma in Social Work is suitable or whether something else should be introduced is a practical problem on which one should not take an extreme stance. Coming from a university I am less impressed by the idea that practical training is all and academic training is nothing. I take a somewhat opposite view. I believe that, as well as on-the-spot training, some firm grounding in many of the disciplines which contribute towards the care of children in need is essential.
It must be remembered that we want people to receive practical training only in the homes providing the best practice. It is not sufficient to have on-the-spot training in just any home. We must find the homes with best practice and use them for practical training. I would imagine that a combination of a Diploma in Social Work with one extra year added as a special module on children's problems, combined with practical training, would be the answer. As it is, the Diploma in Social Work, which is a two-year degree, is too short for all purposes. It would be better for it to be lengthened to three years.
I shall not enter into the controversy with the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, over class, gender and race. He will not be surprised to know that my views are exactly opposite to his. I am part of his paranoia. However, while class, gender and race are not everything, they are not nothing. I would place a small bet with him that, if he were to take a sample of children in the homes, I could predict what class they would come from. It would not be socio-economic groups A and B.
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I imagine that many of the problems from which such children have suffered arise from broken homes which have gender problems. Of course, we do not even know, as the Warner Report says, what is the ethnic mix of children in the homes. Therefore, while I take a different view, these are important issues which must not be ignored. Also, I believe that we need to devise a course which will be a combination of some sort of social work course with an added component to train people especially for children's homes.
Lastly, I turn to the resource implications. As I said, there are two kinds of resource implication. One is that although many of the people who work in the sector are sincere and hardworking, they are not as my noble friend Lord Williams of Mostyn pointed out, properly trained. Training is important. Whether we intend to train people who are already in the jobs or to recruit trained people, it will cost resources. It will not be a vast amount but it will cost resources. More than that, I should like to emphasise the career and reward structure which would be necessary to retain people who enter that difficult sector and encourage them to stay to ensure that children receive continuing good care.
Once again I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, for initiating the debate and I look forward to the Minister's reply.
7.9 p.m.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, as one who knows the quality of the NHS better than most, I have every confidence that the noble Lord, Lord Rix, will compete very favourably with the longevity of other noble Peers. As a mere 69 not out, I believe, he has far to go to compete with the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, who is nearing his century. I have even a little further to go.
I thank my noble friend Lord Pearson of Rannoch for initiating and so ably introducing this timely and crucial debate on the subject of children's residential care, a subject which I know your Lordships follow with keen interest, having last debated it just 12 months ago. On this occasion I am also delighted that the noble Earl, Lord Longford, is with us and, as always, he has made a cogent and learned contribution to the debate.
I would like to start with some personal comments. Looking back over my career I realise that, as with many others, I have contributed, with the best of intentions, to creating the circumstances now facing children's homes and which prompted this evening's debate. Fifteen years ago, when I was chairman of East Sussex social services, I took the responsibility, in the face of some criticism, to close 10 family and group homes. I did so in the belief that for most children it was better that they should enjoy the sort of love and care that is best provided within a family. For those of us who have had a happy home life it is hard to imagine how children can be brought up in any other setting. That is perhaps why we admire the work of both foster parents and staff who work in children's homes.
It seems to me that many of the children who need to be looked after in residential care are there because

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through abuse or neglect they have lost faith in the power of love. I remain persuaded that the longer-term solution to providing better and happier lives for children lies in breaking the cycle of deprivation that passes from one generation to another; and of course some preventive programmes have proved to be outstandingly successful in breaking the cycle and in avoiding the need for children to be taken into care. Over the past 10 years we have seen a reduction of 29 per cent. of children in local authority care and over the same period the number of children in residential care has declined by a staggering 60 per cent.
This is a success story, and perhaps paradoxically residential care has played a very significant part in this achievement. Children's homes have had to adapt to support preventive policies. They have provided much more short-term care and helped families to endure temporary crises. Staff in residential homes have worked hard with children and young people, preparing them for living in substitute families, helping them to understand the realities of their lives and thereby reducing their fears of an unknown future in a new family. Children's homes have always been there to provide for children when their foster care has broken down and have patiently met their needs during these painful upheavals and transitions. These homes have faced increasing difficulties, not least in the children themselves, many of whom have suffered a succession of placements. Due to misery and abuse in their earlier years they become under-achievers at school, play truant, are violent, may become involved in or are on the brink of crime, and thus present serious behavioural problems.
The truth is that, through policies which have favoured family support or fostering and adoption, social services departments have relied on the support of children's homes —perhaps even taken it for granted. Sadly, the evidence of the scandals that have hit us in recent years—one so lucidly described by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn —and the subsequent reports on them which have been mentioned by several of your Lordships, suggest that many social services departments have failed to maintain the conditions in which good practice and good management of residential child care have been sustained. This is perhaps the real scandal.
Despite this, having visited a number of local authority homes I have to say how impressed I have been by the fortitude, enthusiasm and caring attitudes of the staff I have met and talked with. I would like to endorse the view of my noble friend Lord Pearson and others. On the whole, staff in residential child care are hardworking and show a great deal of commitment to the children in their care. The majority do a difficult job well, sometimes in circumstances which are frankly adverse. I so agree with the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, that it is a very difficult job. The degree of difficulty in dealing with these children cannot be underestimated. Local authorities need to recognise the stress that staff work under, providing them with first-class training, career breaks and staff development schemes. I commend the London
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Borough of Croydon's approach which makes it possible for staff to leave and recuperate for up to five years with a guaranteed job to return to.
Research carried out by the Dartington Research Unit has shown that positive outcomes for children in residential care are associated with five features. I paraphrase these: young people should feel enriched because they perceive the staff in the home as caring for them; they should feel as though they are acquiring some skills which will be useful in later life; homes should work with the child to tackle some of the problems that have led to the child needing to come into care; there should be a consensus between staff, children and parents about what the home is setting out to achieve, and this consensus should be realised through clear and consistent leadership; homes should avoid large sub-cultures of children, probably by looking after them in small groups. I know that this is not a view shared by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and although he has some cogent arguments, they are ones not necessarily shared by the professions working in this field.
If children's homes are to succeed in creating these features outlined by the Dartington unit then they need proper conditions. Exactly what these conditions are and how they are best created has been the subject of three recent reports: the Utting Review describing the current condition of residential child care; the Howe Report concerning, primarily, conditions of service for staff; and the Warner Report looking mainly at recruitment, selection and human resource management.
Recruitment, selection and training are essential for setting the right conditions. Norman Warner and his team, to whom I pay tribute, have provided a great deal of material which employers can actively begin to work on to improve their methods. His report was welcomed by the Government as a thorough and constructive analysis of the issues. On the day of its publication the Department of Health wrote to local authorities enclosing copies of the report and requiring them to take early and positive action to implement the 24 vitally important recommendations dealing with personnel procedures and practices and those on the supervision and appraisal of staff. We have asked for progress reports by 8th April. At the same time, recommendations directed at government, including those concerned with training, which I shall come to in a minute, are subject to consultation with all relevant interests. Comments have been asked for by the end of February.
There is ample evidence from recently publicised cases—Crookham Court School, Castle Hill School, the Frank Beck case and the Malcolm Thompson case—to show that some child abusers seek to work in children's homes in order to have contact with vulnerable children. How insulting it must be for the vast majority of committed and conscientious staff to read about the insidious activities of predatory paedophiles exploiting vulnerable children to indulge their own perversions. The fact that some of these people had high-flown therapeutic pretensions is a betrayal of those engaged in genuine therapeutic care. These people must be excluded.

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But there is a more positive reason why selection and training are so important. In a cogent and illuminating speech based on his knowledge and expertise in this field, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, was right to say that being well intentioned is not good enough. We must appoint staff who have real potential for skilled and creative work and who can, with training and experience, begin to build up a sound professional base for the specialised and difficult task of caring for children in children's homes.
I turn now to training. The Government are committed to training in the personal social services and have a good record on funding improvements to it. The Department of Health's training support programme has made a significant contribution to the improvement of training of local authority staff working in the personal social services. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, questioned the Government's willpower, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, concerning resources. The Government have a powerful track record in terms of their investment in training. They have increased the level of funding from £7 million in 1988–89 to £31.8 million for 1993–94. The grant is an element of the department's personal social services training strategy, published in 1991, which produced a framework for additional investment in social services training of £10 million in 1991–92, rising to £19.6 million in 1993–94.
The Government have also increased the funding of the Central Council for Education in Social Work which has a budget in this financial year of £33 million. Much of this money goes on student grants, practice placement fees and developmental work. However, CCETSW core functions, given to it by statute in 1983, are to promote and regulate,
"training in relevant social work".
CCETSW approves courses as suitable on behalf of the Secretary of State for Health, and no other body can do so. Its membership is drawn from a wide range of interests, by no means only social work. The performance of CCETSW as a wholly governmental sponsored body is kept under detailed review by the Department of Health and other relevant government departments.
The five-yearly policy review of CCETSW currently being conducted by the Government is particularly addressing issues, some of which were raised by my noble friends Lord Pearson and Lady Faithfull, concerning the content of courses and issues such as quality assurance, management and control in social work training.
My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health, Mr Tim Yeo, shares some of the views which have been expressed tonight. We need a new profile for social work training in the 1990s and beyond. Concerning the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Pearson on validation, I shall undertake to explore that issue with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State.
The department has also funded the central council to implement the new diploma in social work as the professional qualification for social work in all settings. With particular reference to residential child care, CCETSW convened an expert group in February
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1992 to clarify the required content of residential child care within training programmes leading to the new qualification. The work of that group formed the basis for guidance on Residential Child Care in the Diploma in Social Work which was published by CCETSW and issued to all social work training courses in November 1992 with a view to ensuring,
"high standards of social work education, training and assessment in residential child care".
The Utting Report drew particular attention to the training needs of staff working in residential children's homes. As a result the Government introduced a special initiative (the residential child care initiative) to begin a programme to ensure that all heads of children's homes are professionally qualified. The initiative, which this year is funding an additional 144 staff from residential children's homes, including, I am very pleased to say, 12 from the voluntary sector, has been welcomed by local authorities. It has also encouraged many of them to use other training budgets to boost qualifying training for this sector to the extent that 560 local authority staff are undergoing training to diploma standard this year.
The success of the residential child care initiative will be kept under review, as will the Central Council for Education and Training's work, to ensure that sufficient diploma in social work programmes are available to offer appropriate teaching and practice experience in residential child care.
Warner has also focused on the adequacy of training the staff in children's homes. The central thrust of that report's conclusions is entirely consistent with the framework of objectives set out in the Department of Health Personal Social Services training strategy, a key one being,
"to improve the training of the existing PSS workforce at professional and vocational levels".
We shall continue to urge that residential child care staff are given high priority for training through the training support programme.
The Government also fully support the view of the noble Lord, Lord Rix, that training staff at vocational levels should be work-based as far as possible. I believe that we have much to learn from the voluntary sector, not least from MENCAP and the Caldecott Therapeutic Community which was mentioned tonight by my noble friend Lady Faithfull.
The Care Sector Consortium is currently working on new standards to provide the basis for national vocational standards and qualifications for staff in children's services. My noble friend Lord Pearson shared the view of Warner in that the diploma of social work is not necessarily the most appropriate qualification for those working in residential care. Warner is sceptical that effective training for residential child care can be provided through diploma in social work programmes. Hence his recommendation for a new diploma.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, is correct that opinions are divided on that issue. The Government have not yet arrived at a view about the recommendation, but we shall be interested in the comments of employers and others as to whether such a radical breakaway from a unified approach to social work training should be contemplated.

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I say to my noble friend Lady Faithfull that I am very much aware of the important work that the therapeutic communities do, including Caldecott. I am also conscious of the financial problems that they are experiencing due to the high cost of the very specialised treatment they provide. I hope that the therapeutic communities will take action to assess what services local authorities require of them and to provide those services at a price the authorities are prepared to pay. Local authorities have been advised to take account of the services available from independent organisations in planning their children's services.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised the matter of whether all services should be provided in local authorities. As she is aware, this Government have the approach of a mixed economy of social support and services. But the view that she takes about assessment and ensuring and monitoring that standards are high is one that the Government take very much to heart.
Concerning the role of residential care with education, my noble friend Lady Faithfull raised some pertinent points. The Government recognise that the provision of education for children in residential care is not as good as it should be and that at best it is patchy. It must be improved and the department is currently in discussion with the Department for Education with a view to guidance being issued.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, wished to widen the debate to resources generally. The Government have a proud record. In the past three years alone the increase has been 33 per cent in real terms. With regard to community care, the additional burdens which the noble Baroness outlined will be taken care of in terms not only of increased resources but of ring-fenced money. But as a former councillor she will know that it is up to local authorities to make local decisions within the social services budget.
In conclusion, we have all been chagrined by some of the reports which have been presented over the past few years. They highlight bad management and bad practice. These children are too damaged to suffer from further and often preventable distress. The Government are not offering prevarication but action which I trust that this House will endorse.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I believe that it is now my pleasant duty to thank all of your Lordships who have contributed so wisely to this debate. I would like to clear up one slight misunderstanding perhaps with the noble Earl, Lord Longford. If the noble Earl understood me to say that I was, generally speaking, against social workers, I point out that I am not. I know what a very good job many of them do, often in spite of their training, which is what I was criticising. Further than that, I would say that there does seem to be a tremendous amount of public resource going into this area generally. Having listened to the debate, I still believe that it must be possible to redirect some of that to the benefit of new and more relevant courses for training the people that we have been talking about. For instance, I understand that there are about 10,000 students at the
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moment on social work courses at a cost of about £53 million per annum. My noble friend the Minister has mentioned other sums which are fairly astronomic. I would have thought that if there was a will there would be a way in this direction.
I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for saying that she will discuss my suggestion that there should be an independent panel to validate the social work courses which I have criticised. I very much look forward to hearing the outcome of that discussion. Beyond that I think that it is time to close the debate and to thank all of your Lordships for your contributions. As I do so, I think that it would be appropriate to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and my noble friend the Minister on their birthdays. We wish them the very best this evening. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Housing (Fitness Standard) (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
7.30 p.m.
Lord Merlyn-Rees: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I introduced this Bill in another place just before the general election, when, for the first time, I was lucky in the ballot of Private Members' Bills. However, the dissolution intervened and I now reintroduce it for the reason that it was borne upon me by my interviews every month and by letters from my inner city constituents in the city of Leeds that the Bill deals with many of the problems that were brought to my notice on a regular basis. I have been provided with case notes which prove that, but I will forbear from reading them out.
Housing problems took up a major part of my interviews over the years. They changed very much over the years but the heating problem became paramount. Just before I left the other place I was talking to some Members who, as it happens, came mainly from my side of the House, because they are the ones who represent inner cities. I asked them what was the major problem that they had had to face in recent years and they answered "condensation". They said that if they were to write a paper on the problems they faced in their constituencies it would concentrate on condensation. The big wide world does not know about this but I can simply tell your Lordships that if you go and visit many of the older houses, or indeed some of those built in the 'fifties and 'sixties, you will see the black mould growth that is around and smell the smell that arises from it, and that shows that something is wrong.
This Bill is not designed precisely to deal with that, but I am trying to explain why it matters to me. I regard the Bill as a sensible one in the tradition of health and housing legislation since the days of Shaftesbury and Chadwick. I do not know what the Government's view of it will be, but if the Bill is defective as regards that tradition then it may quite properly be thrown out. However, if there is good sense in it I hope it will be allowed to go forward. Certainly my aim and the aim of the Institution of

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Environmental Health Officers, which has provided all the back-up work and which is a bona fide and, in my view, a very eminent professional organisation, is to show that this Bill should be allowed to go forward.
Many years ago when I used to teach social history, I could not understand why legislation in this field took such a long time. There were the royal commissions and the select committees on health in towns and yet it took a period of 30 or 40 years before a Bill appeared on the statute book. I thought how foolish Parliament was not to realise that there was a problem. I now understand that there are always doubters and that it takes time for these things to be understood and appreciated: history does not run in straight lines in the way that the textbooks write it.
However, there cannot be many doubters now that there is a problem, and I raise it in this Bill. Of course we come up against the problem of the Treasury and money. I understand that, because all governments suffer from the same problem. Also, I have been chairman of the Home Affairs Committee and the Legislation Committee and I realise that very good Bills have had to be bypassed and not allowed to go through because of the problem of time. I simply say that this Bill has built into it a time schedule which would allow it to be introduced in bits. It is better to get it on to the statute book, because it deals with pressing problems, rather than for it to have an untimely death. One of these days the issues and suggestions contained in the Bill will be on the statute book. Why not give it a chance now, because it is vitally important to people in many parts of the country?
Clause 1 seeks to restore the ability of local housing authorities to take action in respect of houses and flats of which part only and not simply the whole is unfit for human habitation. I am advised that there was once the power to deal with this but it disappeared by sleight of hand or by mistake. Why is this? As the law presently stands, such action as either the service of a repair notice or the making of a closing order can be taken only where the whole of the premises is affected, whether it is a dwelling house, a house in multiple occupation, a flat or a flat in multiple occupation which is unfit. It used not to be this way. Can we not go back to the situation that we had for many years? It is a very minor technical change which the Bill proposes. Why not agree to that, at the very least? I have been provided with information which notes that prior to the amendment to the Housing Act 1985 a local authority had powers to close part of a dwelling that was substandard: in the case study with which I have been provided this was an internal room. I fail to see, in a non-partisan sort of way, why we cannot go back to the situation as it was before 1985. It matters to my people in the city of Leeds and it has been put to me by the institution that I have just mentioned.
I am advised that Clause 2 is a tidying-up provision necessitated by the change proposed in Clause 1. It cannot be contentious because it is purely a technical change which is required as a result of Clause 1. Incidentally, there is an error in my drafting of the Bill
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—a very minor one—where "1B" is shown instead of "1AA". I shall not go into that in detail now: it will be easy to put right.
Clause 3 is a mirror of Clause 1. Whereas that clause provides for the service of a repair notice in respect of part only and not the whole of any dwelling house, Clause 3 seeks to provide similarly for the making of a closing order in respect of part only of a dwelling house. In other words, if Clause 1 allows only part of a dwelling to be dealt with, then Clause 3 too has to ensure that that is allowable.
Clause 4 is, again, a mirror of Clause 2 and should not be contentious. Whereas that clause provides for an express right of appeal in the case of a repair notice served in respect of part only and not the whole of any dwelling house, Clause 4 seeks to provide similarly for a right of appeal against the making of a closing order in respect of part only of a dwelling house.
Now I come to the substance of the Bill. Up to this point, I would say to your Lordships that I fail to see why the change should not be made. The matter goes back to before 1985. The Bill will correct a problem which local authorities need to face up to. Clause 5 seeks to amend the fitness standard itself. That standard is set by reference to nine criteria. I will go through them very quickly because I want to add two more to those that the local authorities have to deal with at the moment.
The criteria are: Is the house structurally stable? Is it free from serious disrepair? Is it free from dampness prejudicial to the health of the occupants? Does it have provision for lighting, heating and ventilation? The heating side is minimal and I shall come to that later. Has it got an adequate piped supply of wholesome water? Has it got satisfactory facilities for the preparation and cooking of food, including hot and cold water? Has it a suitably located water-closet for the exclusive use of the occupants, if any? Does it have a suitably located fixed bath or shower and wash hand basin for the exclusive use of the occupants, with a satisfactory supply of hot and cold water? Does it have an effective system for the draining of foul waste and surface water? Those are the criteria on which the local authorities have to work.
We want to add two extra criteria to that list of nine. The first is that the dwelling house should be free from poor internal arrangement. The second is that the dwelling house should be thermally efficient. These additions will apply equally to houses and to flats, irrespective of the way in which they are occupied.
Perhaps I may deal first with the issue of internal arrangements. Most of us, when we are students, live in a house or a flat the internal arrangement of which needs to be questioned, and some of us saw such things when we were young—a long time ago. There may, for example, be steep and winding staircases which may be dangerous, particularly to the disabled and elderly. Front entrance doors may open straight into living rooms and provide poor security. In many parts of the country, security is now a much more important issue than 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Rooms may lead off other rooms. In the case of bedrooms, that leads to a loss of privacy. Bathrooms and toilets may open directly into kitchens. It has been put to me

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that that is unaesthetic, but I should have thought that there is a much stronger word for it than that. That problem commonly arises where the property has been extended, for example, by adding a ground floor bathroom to a Victorian house. So, our first objective relates to internal arrangements. The need for this provision has arisen because of the sort of housing that I have seen in the city of Leeds. Those of us who live in proper housing are very lucky. It is important that we all take into account the fact that the internal arrangement of a house should be suitable, sensible and healthy.
I come now to our second objective: thermal efficiency. Last night on the television I saw what appeared to be a very expensive, but a very good, advertisement which had been paid for by the Government. It talked about the importance of thermal efficiency and about how we should try to avoid the emission of CO2 because of global warming and things of that kind. I presume that it was paid for by the Department of the Environment. As I sat there having a quiet drink at half-past ten last night, it came to my mind that my Bill met exactly that requirement, but without the expense of advertising. It gives the task to the local authorities. The advertising companies will not be very pleased, but I warrant that my Bill would bring home the importance of that thermal efficiency criterion far better than all the television advertising that the Government are likely to undertake—and it would save a lot of money.
The Government are committed to reducing energy consumption in the residential sector. They have made resources available for upgrading the energy efficiency of council-owned dwellings. But what about privately owned dwellings such as I am talking about? The building regulations set out minimum standards for new construction. They have been revised and now prescribe a much higher standard than was hitherto the case. However, fewer new properties are being built—I do not want to make a point about that—and even fewer older properties are being demolished. That is the sector that I am concerned about in this Bill. We need to examine the ways in which the existing housing stock may be improved.
We have heard a lot recently about the Select Committees of the House of Commons. When I was a Member of the other place I never realised that they were so important, but I read about them every day now and about how the Secretaries of State will take notice of them—I shall be surprised if they do—because they are so important. When the House of Commons Select Committee on the Environment considered indoor pollution, the institution to which I have referred gave evidence. It recommended that the fitness standard be amended to include a requirement for adequate thermal insulation. So, I am asking only for that for which a House of Commons Select Committee has already asked.
I do not want to let go of the issue of thermal efficiency for a moment. I regard it as one of the most important matters in the Bill. Indeed, the provisions which relate to it form the most important part of the Bill. The 1985 English house conditions survey
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highlighted the fact that 1.3 million households were very dissatisfied with their heating arrangements—that was eight years ago—and having spent time visiting constituents, I can only say "Hear, hear!" to that. I do not think that half of us know the problems that exist in the private sector when homes are concocted out of old houses in city centres that were better in Victorian times.
I have some words to say about the environmental issues, but I shall keep them for the Committee stage, if we get that far. I should, however, like to deal with one such issue which I encountered in my long period in an inner-city area. I first learnt about this as a junior Minister at the Home Office many years ago. I worked flat out in the early days of the urban programme to do something about the inner cities. Some of the problems to which I am referring, however, arise in rural towns also and, although on a smaller scale, conditions there are as bad as in the Newcastles, Leeds, Hulls, Bradfords and Birminghams. The urban programme—or whatever it was called—no longer exists, but apparently it will reappear in a different form and on a wider scale.
Significant social and health consequences arise from the inadequate heating of dwellings, so I turn now to fuel poverty. Simply defined, fuel poverty is the inability to afford adequate warmth in the home. Apparently, the phrase was first coined during the mid-1970s. The inability of many people to pay their fuel bills is a growing problem. The people most affected are those on state benefits: pensioners, the sick or disabled, lone parents, the unemployed and the low paid. Such groups of people spend a larger than average proportion of their income on heating bills—I have the figures with me—so when they are short of money they save on heating. That is particularly true of the older generation. My area contains a large number of widows. That is a statistical fact of life. They come from a different age and they save on heating, but they are saving to their disadvantage. It is because a high proportion of their income is spent on heating that that is the one saving that they feel they can make.
One can talk about the health effects of all this and about the cycle of poverty that is caused by high fuel bills in the attempt to remain warm in a house. It has been estimated that the National Health Service spends £800 million each year to assist people who suffer from bronchitis and asthma which has been caused, or at least exacerbated, by living in cold and damp housing. I have been reading with interest the research that has been carried out into this. I have copies of it with me. I had not realised (because it is not my field) the extent to which concern is expressed in medical and other circles about this problem. It is a major issue.
I referred earlier to the condensation and dampness that is caused by moist air coming into contact with cold surfaces, leading to moist walls. Many such problems arise in the housing that was built in the late 1950s and the 1960s, when this country attempted to build more housing but with the same amount of material. One of the greatest social errors made in my lifetime in politics was in the mid-1950s when the then

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Mr. Harold Macmillan urged that we should build 300,000 houses instead of 200,000 but using the same amount of housing material because there was a shortage.
One can detect the annual building rings in our inner cities. One can tell the houses that were built before a certain date because they are better houses. Now when they are sold, they command a high price. The next ring of houses was produced to lower standards. It is in those houses that much of the condensation and dampness arises.
The two extra criteria I have proposed are important. Of course public expenditure would be increased through additional renovation grant expenditure, but work would be provided for small builders. They require work, as we are only too well aware, for other reasons. The scheme would provide work and effect social change in inner cities and the old areas of our big towns. That explains Clause 5, which is a major part of the Bill.
Clause 6 is merely an interpretation clause. Clause 7 will be worth studying in Committee. I have a copy of the Housing Act 1985, and the clause would enable the Government to put the Bill on to the statute book even if full implementation could not take place straight away. There is much sense in the Bill. I hope that it receives a fair wind. The bottom of a slump is the time to provide an opportunity for work. We should not wait until the top of a boom is reached. That is the great mistake that we have made over the years. I shall not rehearse the arguments again, although at one time I thought that that might be necessary. I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time —(Lord Merlyn-Rees.)
7.52 p.m.
Lord Ross of Newport: My Lords, it falls to me to welcome the Bill, the case for which the noble Lord argued so cogently. I once had the pleasure of visiting him when he was a distinguished Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I know that he played a part in improving the housing conditions in the Province. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive has been an outstanding success. If one wants to see good public housing these days one has to go to Ulster. It has some of the best housing in the kingdom.
The noble Lord explained the Bill in great detail. I wish him every success with it. I hope that the Government will take it on board. As I read it, the key to the Bill is contained in Clauses 1, 3 and 5. The measure calls for the Housing Act 1985 to be amended so that it applies to part of a dwelling-house, flat, or flat in multiple occupation. It should cover thermal efficiency and poor internal management. The noble Lord explained those points in considerable detail. Like him, I cannot understand why that is not already the case. I gather, as we know from environmental health officers, that they were able to deal with that position only a few years ago. I fail to understand why it is not possible to do so today. It is obviously a loophole that should be closed, and the sooner the better.
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I suspect that when the Minister replies he will refer us to an Answer given in the other place only yesterday which said that a consultation paper had now been issued setting out proposals for strengthening the requirements for Part L of the Building Regulations 1991 for the conservation of fuel and power. Unfortunately, I have been unable to obtain a copy of that document although I have tried. It is obviously to be greatly welcomed, if somewhat late in the day. I wonder whether the timing of the document had something to do with the fact that we are debating this Bill, because it covers some of the same ground.
Earlier today we debated traffic control in urban areas. Much was said about the need to reduce emissions of CO2, carbon monoxide, lead oxide and so forth. In this debate it is only right to refer to the link between insulation/thermal efficiency and global warming. I am told that domestic energy use in 1987 contributed 172 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. I am not sure how that was weighed, but the figure appears in official statistics and so one presumes that it is correct. Almost half of that came from energy used to heat homes. We have been talking about coal-mines and the fact that we should not use so much gas, but it would be a good idea if we used more gas to run motor cars and heat our homes because gas is one of the more efficient methods of burning fuel.
It is further claimed that up to 6 million householders in the UK cannot afford enough fuel to keep their homes warm and fit. I lived in the Isle of Wight for 36 years. When I left the other place I spent two years trying to encourage investment in commercial property on the island. Every time I rose in the other place the honourable Member for Bolsover said, "Another bloody estate agent". I was a chartered surveyor and I was involved with property. I went round some very seedy properties in my old constituency, many of which were in multiple occupation. They need attention and the Bill would contribute to that.
The Isle of Wight now has the oldest population of anywhere in the country with the possible exception of West Sussex. We may have now overtaken West Sussex which has been called the Costa Geriatrica. What the noble Lord said was right: to save fuel, elderly people often go to bed in the afternoon with a hot water bottle. I am sure that vast numbers of my former constituents do just that. It is not a satisfactory situation, but it is a fact of life.
Statistics relating to deaths from hypothermia in the UK compare badly with those of other countries, especially Canada and Sweden. We do not have a good record. More therefore needs urgently to be done, although I am not certain where the money is to come from. We need to find it, that is for sure. Research in Glasgow shows that a scheme using loft insulation, fibre cavity wall filling and double-glazing cut fuel bills for those families lucky enough to have that done from an average of about £20 a week to £8.50 a week. However the cost of the work per unit was an average of £4,600.
In my dotage I am now a member of a housing association in mid-Wales. I was at a meeting only last

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week. Some of the houses we have been able to buy as a result of the Government's initiative which I support fully will cause the housing association some problems in bringing them up to a proper standard. There is also another problem which is not covered by the Bill, although it should be and that is the issue of smoke alarms.
In Welshpool the other day at two o'clock in the morning someone put a lighted taper through the letter-box of a flat. That was presumably done to try to burn the occupant. I think it was probably put into the wrong flat. If it were not for the fact that the person involved awakened at four o'clock to go to the toilet, he would probably be dead by now. That block of flats was built in 1986. The housing association is now faced with costs of about £50,000 to install proper smoke alarms. We cannot install battery-operated alarms because there has apparently been a court ruling that they are unsatisfactory. Unfortunately tenants take the batteries out of them from time to time and so we have a problem. We have considerable difficulties in obtaining the money to do these things, but they must be done. We must find the money somehow. I believe I am right to say that smoke alarms are now required under the building regulations.
The great need is to get things right in the first place. I gather that the Association for the Conservation of Energy is producing a handbook for this year's annual conference of the Institute of Housing. It relates to the conserving of energy in buildings, and of course it is very welcome. Having said all that, there is an interesting article in this week's edition of the Christian Science Monitor. I do not know why it has been sent to me. I imagine that it has been sent to other noble Lords. I did not have to pay for it. The article is by Mr. Robert Cowan. It points out that if we were too successful in reducing CO2 emissions we could destroy the whole process of life. We do not want to go too far, but we have a long way to go yet because CO2 emissions are regrettably still increasing at 0.5 per cent per annum. The heat in this House this evening tells me that there is no shortage of CO2 coming from the House of Lords at the moment.
I believe that most of us are aware of the appalling standards of fitness in many properties of multiple occupation. The noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, mentioned condensation. He is quite right that condensation occurs in even the most modern of buildings. It is an absolute disgrace that we have still not been able to conquer that problem. Therefore, it is surprising to me to learn that since the Local Government Housing Act 1989, environmental health officers have not been able to issue orders in respect of parts of buildings—attics or cellars—which are regrettably being used for accommodation in some properties in this country today. It is very important that that should be dealt with. At present action may only be taken in respect of a self-contained unit of accommodation, whether an entire house or flat. As I
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said at the beginning of my speech, it seems to me that that omission should be dealt with and the pre-1989 procedures should be restored.
Among other things the Bill will remedy that defect. Therefore, it must be supported. We owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, for bringing forward this legislation.
8 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, first, I must declare an interest, although not a financial one, in that I am vice-president of the Institution of Environmental Health Officers to which my noble friend referred. That body has been extremely active in promoting the Bill.
At the risk of boring your Lordships, I wish to concentrate on Clause 5, which is the clause which has attracted most attention so far, and in particular I wish to concentrate on that part of it which refers to the provision of thermal efficiency.
As we have heard from my noble friend, the Government are committed to the reduction of CO2 emissions and to the conservation of energy generally. Housing makes a sizeable contribution to that. I do not have the percentage figures although I believe that my noble friend gave them.
The state of our present housing stock is poor. The Department of Energy supplement to the 1986 House Conditions Survey provides extremely depressing statistics. I shall quote your Lordships a few brief items from that. For example, only 8 per cent of private rented accommodation can be categorised as energy-efficient, compared with 31 per cent. of owner-occupied homes. That is not an impressive statistic in itself. Council properties achieve only 11 per cent., although 52 per cent of local authority stock reaches what is called average efficiency. The housing associations do better, as 40 per cent of their stock is thermally efficient.
Clearly at the time of the report there was plenty of room for improvement. I do not know whether the Minister has any more recent statistics. Although the survey was produced in 1986, it was not published until October 1991. Moreover, I understand that when it was finally published, it had been severely edited. Perhaps the Minister will take this opportunity to explain to the House why there was such a delay.
My noble friend told us a great deal about the poor who are most affected by the need to pay so much for their energy. Proportionately more of their limited incomes must be spent on fuel. They are not only unable to afford to install insulation but they cannot cope with the increases in fuel prices which have taken place in recent years and which have outstripped any increases in pensions. Pensioners, the sick and disabled, and indeed people who are out of work, must spend more time in their homes. Therefore, they must have a higher heating level for longer than those of us who are more active and can leave our houses for a large part of each day. It is in all our interests to avoid the extra social and financial costs of cold-induced illnesses.
The present requirements are flawed. Age Concern quotes a case to illustrate that. It tells us of an elderly

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woman whose home was undergoing major work, including re-roofing, at a total cost of over £7,000. She could not have her loft space insulated at a cost of only £180 because the council said that it was not covered by the fitness standard. As she was already making a £400 contribution towards the work, she could not afford to pay for the insulation work herself. That is a flaw in the present arrangements.
The Institution of Environmental Health Officers quotes an equally frustrating situation of an elderly widow living in a house in poor structural repair lacking even a bathroom, with no heating or hot water system. Quite rightly the house was declared unfit and the occupant applied for and was given a renovation grant. All the structural works were carried out under that mandatory grant; but because of the financial and legislative constraints on the local authority, it could not give a discretionary grant. Therefore, that now sound house was left without insulation or heating, although the added amount to provide that would have been small in comparison with the amount spent on the renovation.
If this Bill had been operative at that time, that further modest expenditure would have been mandatory. Further difficulties for the occupant, which will inevitably arise in the future, could have been avoided. Clearly, there is a need for this clause on environmental, social and commonsense grounds. I hope that the Government will support the Bill in its entirety, including the useful Clause 5 which so many of us have supported.
8.6 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I hope the House will forgive me for speaking although my name is not on the speakers' list. I support the Bill.
Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, and the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport, brought home to me an occasion when I was in the sometimes unenviable position of my noble friend on the Front Bench. I asked to visit and went to a house in multiple occupation in West London which was sometimes used (wrongly in my view) by the local authority as a bed-and-breakfast hotel. That is by the way because the whole point of the story is that the house that was selected by civil servants for me to visit was, very unusually, a worst case. Civil servants love to show Ministers a best case and very rarely show them a worst case. However, in the example that I was shown, there had been a recent fire and a man had died. Had there been smoke alarms, as noble Lords have suggested, that would most certainly not have been the case, although I have no doubt that the house would have gone up in flames.
That said, I can recall other examples of houses in multiple occupation, council flats, and so on, where the condensation was, in anybody's terms, appalling. I believe that the builders and the building scientists in the past, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, had a lot to be blamed for in that respect because, generally speaking, there is less condensation when there are wooden-framed windows rather than aluminium or
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metal-framed windows. The point is that one needs plenty of air around a window in order to reduce condensation.
As regards heating, I have been to establishments where I needed to retain my overcoat whereas the old person living there, who was not feeling the cold, could not understand my comment that it was perishing. All those matters can be dealt with by fitness standards and building regulations and by sensible changes, such as those proposed in this Bill, to the Housing Act 1985. I was a Whip at the time, but I am afraid that I cannot remember why these provisions were dropped from the previous legislation and not included in the 1985 legislation. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, will remember or perhaps my noble friend on the Front Bench will tell us why this was so. Be that as it may, they are not there now, they jolly well should be and I support the Bill.
8.9 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees for bringing this Bill before us. I am delighted that, so far, it has attracted universal support. I hope that the same can he said at the conclusion of the debate this evening.
As the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, suspected, I have a particular interest in this Bill because I cut my teeth in local government on this very issue. I came on to a city council in 1969 when local authorities still believed that the right way to deal with unfit houses was to slum clear them.
As venue housing chairman I faced 15,000 unfit Victorian terraced houses. With the help of Conservative colleagues, and in the face of Labour opposition on the city council, we won a stay of execution and obtained improvement grants for 13,000 out of the 15,000. Then, with the aid of the Housing Act 1969 and the enlightened Conservative housing action area Act 1974 these properties have found their way—colour-washed courtesy of Sandtex—into conservation areas where they grace the city and provide housing choice to people of modest incomes. Houses that were in slum clearance areas are now in conservation areas to the enrichment of our city.
Thereafter in places like Norwich, and others, we were able to target our work by using repairs notices and partial closing orders. I am referring, for example, as so many noble Lords have said tonight, to those larger houses perhaps built on a slope where there is a basement room with a front area, or where people are sleeping in back rooms with no natural lighting or ventilation, or in rooms created artificially by partitions or sloping ceiling attics. Two-thirds of Norwich's current closing orders are partial orders, targeting a problem within an otherwise acceptable and fit house.
But apparently, as my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees said, by oversight this power has been removed, and that is simply silly. Problems of lighting and ventilation—for example, of the basement—cannot be placed on a repairs notice even if it is practicable or financially sensible to remedy it, for

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example, by excavating the front area. In consequence, local authorities have to close the entire property, thus losing a habitable home; they have to rehouse the occupant and possibly pay compensation, leaving a boarded up property in the middle of a terrace to create damp, dereliction, and the risk of squatting for the adjacent terraced houses, which then find their own heating bills, their own repair bills, and problems of damp increasing.
But the alternative to not closing that house is to leave families to live in rooms unfit for human habitation. That is the dilemma in which this Government have placed every decent housing authority and every environmental health authority in the country. I am sure that it is by oversight. If it is by oversight, I hope that the Minister will be graceful enough to acknowledge it tonight and pledge to support the Bill in order to remedy that oversight.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, before the noble Baroness leaves that point, would she not accept that that particular problem is not restricted to this Government but has been a feature of the policies of all Governments since the war?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, under previous legislation local authorities have had the power partially to close a property. That power was removed by the present Government. That was the point that I was making. If the removal of that power was an oversight—and I have no reason to think that it was otherwise than that—then I hope that the Minister will be graceful enough to acknowledge it and therefore to remedy that situation, and allow local authorities again to have the power to target the problem and to use the land.
We warmly welcome the first part of the Bill. It allows us to address a problem of public and personal health in flexible and sensible ways and at modest expense. The second part of the Bill extends the fitness criteria. As other speakers have made clear and in particular my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees, at the moment in order to be fit a house has to meet a nine point standard. If it falls short of these criteria it is entitled to a mandatory renovation grant. Then there is a second order set of criteria; internal arrangement, space heating, insulation and future prospects of repair, which are eligible for a discretionary grant. This Bill increases the nine-point standard to an eleven-point standard by moving two other criteria, internal arrangement and thermal efficiency, from the discretionary range into the mandatory range, thus attracting mandatory grant. That is highly desirable.
Let us take the first of those two internal arrangements. Until 1989 that too was a consideration that could be used by environmental health officers and legal staff in determining the fitness of a house. Again it was removed, I trust and suspect, by oversight. Yet a house condition survey in my own authority, Norwich, in 1990 as to whether people found their internal arrangements satisfactory found that a third of all dwellings, nearly all of them pre-1919 terraced housing, were unsatisfactory, and in a small percentage of cases substantially so. Noble
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Lords have already given examples of this. Bathrooms which are reached only by passing through a bedroom; kitchens off which the WC and bathroom open, with all the implications for ventilation and hygiene; steep staircases, and the like. It is highly important that internal arrangement, which is the fitness and appropriateness of the house in its lay-out of space for present-day living arrangements, is addressed.
The second criteria, which is currently within the discretionary range and which my noble friend is arguing should be brought over into the mandatory range, is that of thermal efficiency. There is no doubt again that this is a real problem. In Norwich a third of all house condition complaints in the private sector were that the house was damp, and in half of those cases it was due to condensation. That is a consequence not only, as the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said, of metal windows, or as my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees said, of add-on ground floor unheated bathrooms, but also of the unwise adoption by governments of all colour of new and untried building materials, in particular prefabricated materials and concrete. We know that this, especially in blocks of flats, acts as a conduit to dampness and condensation where it hits warm living space, and as a result has made many of the 1960s concrete flats, Yorkshire-designed blocks of flats and the like, places which are unliveable.
Old insulation grants provided for loft insulation, and now something like 90 per cent. of houses have some, but not to the appropriate six inch standard. Subsequently in its first year the Government's home energy efficiency scheme has helped some 200,000 families on benefit with loft insulation and draft-proofing. I am happy to give credit to that scheme. But unfortunately it is limited essentially to those on benefit. It is taken up mainly by pensioners as a way of avoiding going into residential care. It is limited to insulation and draft proofing, when too often more major work such as cavity wall insulation and new heating systems require additional resource beyond the reach of these schemes.
Extending the criteria for fitness—that is, by internal arrangement on the one hand and thermal efficiency on the other—for the reasons that my noble friend Lady Nicol and the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Newport, have already addressed, is important. I should like to congratulate my noble friend for raising this point with us. Unless proper resources are made available to local authorities, the situation will be impossible. I should like to ask the Minister to respond to us on that.
Local authorities are already struggling with mandatory renovation grants. Last year in 1991–92 local authorities spent £185 million on mandatory grants to bring homes up to the nine point standard. But that expenditure, according to the survey by the Institute of Environmental Health Officers, to which I should like to pay tribute, suggested that barely half of the requests for mandatory grants were being met. Such grants are mandatory, and they are an open-ended demand-led system. But local authorities' resources have been deliberately constrained, capped,

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reduced and abolished by central government, and therefore local authorities cannot—but are required to —meet mandatory renovation grants.
So local authorities now are spending well in excess of their normal allocation from the Exchequer. In the current year 186 local authorities have asked for additional supplementary credit approvals, or capital allocations, of £94 million to meet the statutory commitments that they have to undertake. Yet the DoE could find only £30 million of the £94 million that local authorities are required to provide. Will the Minister tell us what local authorities are supposed to do in that situation? According to environmental health officers and the Association of District Councils half the authorities questioned had waiting lists of over 300 families, which would require additional expenditure on mandatory existing renovation grants of something like £2 million pounds an authority.
What are they supposed to do? The pressure on credit approvals—that is, capital allocation—is bad enough. However, there is worse to come because central government only refund now 75 per cent of the cost of grant-aided works and next year this will go down to 60 per cent. Local government have to meet the rest at an additional cost to local authorities of something like £80 million. Would the Minister please tell me—I would love to know—how a local authority district council with a budget of perhaps £14 million, which is required under capping to cut £2 million from that (my authority has £18 million and is required to cut £5 million) can then find an additional £1 million or so of revenue to meet its share of mandatory grants which are demand-led and will be a statutory requirement from 1993 onwards? Will the Minister please tell me how that can be done?
Local authorities cannot now meet mandatory demand-led renovation grants. It will be even harder next year when their contribution will rise while their capped budgets are required to fall. The queues for mandatory grants will grow and therefore I fear that to add additional requirements—although I support them wholeheartedly—to the standard of fitness and thus to enlarge the potential demand for mandatory grants in the present perverse system of finance imposed on local government by central government will make it impossible for local authorities to meet those requirements. Does the Minister accept—everyone has remarked on this tonight—the long term wisdom and investment associated with this Bill, and will he do his best to ensure that local authorities not only have the capacity to meet their mandatory renovation grants as presently constituted, but will also have the capacity to take on these additional responsibilities to effect longer term savings?
Like my noble friend Lady Nicol, I too am intrigued by the research that the Government fail to publish—I am sure through oversight. Will the Minister please tell us the numbers and sums involved in such a Bill? Can he give us advance notice of the findings of the house condition survey which took place in 1991 but which has not yet been published? When will that be published?
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I support my noble friend Lady Nicol on the following point. Can the Minister tell us how many research programmes since 1988 the Government have commissioned into private housing energy efficiency and how many of those research findings the Government have published? No one doubts that thermal efficiency standards would reduce fuel poverty—that has been argued tonight—would improve living comfort, and would reduce CO2 emissions. Given the Government's recently published document entitled Climate Change—Our National Programme for CO2 Emissions, how do the Government suggest the proposals be met, if not by funding local authorities properly to take the measures advanced by my noble friend in his Bill tonight? We on this side warmly support our noble friend's Bill. We invite the Government not only to support it but also to ensure they provide the finance to meet its objectives.
8.23 p.m.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, for bringing his Bill before us today. In doing so he has provided us with the opportunity to discuss the establishment and enforcement of standards for our housing.
While we are not opposed to all the concepts covered by the noble Lord's Bill, I should make it clear that we are not in favour of changing now the contents or application of the fitness standard. Indeed, we find some of the Bill's objectives most worthy and we shall certainly consider them further when the time comes to make changes to the housing fitness standard. But we do not feel we have yet reached that time.
A fitness standard for housing has in one form or another been with us since Victorian times. Over the years there have been many changes to the matters the standard addresses and the way in which it is used. The amendments contained in the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 were, however, the first made to the standard for over 20 years and represented the first major revision since 1954. Changes have therefore not been undertaken lightly by any government over the last quarter of a century. That is only right as the standard has much riding on it—not least because of the role it serves as the minimum standard for enforcement by local housing authorities.
Any addition that is made to the already wide-ranging requirements the standard sets is likely to increase the numbers of properties in the country that are determined unfit. This in turn potentially exposes more private individuals to enforcement action by local authorities and will possibly leave them having to undertake such remedial action as the authority decides is necessary. Public intervention in this way is, of course, sometimes necessary and desirable. But it is clearly right that any measures which would increase the likelihood of such intervention are fully considered before they are introduced.
We should not forget the implications for public expenditure that any increase in the demand for grant would bring with it. Owners of unfit private dwellings may qualify for mandatory renovation grants and

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local authorities are already facing increasing financial pressures because of the existing demand for mandatory grants arising from the current standard. Obviously the Government must have regard to considerations such as this in deciding the way forward.
The changes introduced by the 1989 Act were preceded by extensive consultation and consideration. They were not minor changes. The requirements made by the standard were extended to cover more matters known to be crucial to health, and the way in which local authorities apply the standard was fundamentally altered.
I shall now answer the point raised by the noble Lords, Lord Merlyn-Rees and Lord Skelmersdale, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, regarding the consideration of part of dwellings. The decision is now based on the property having to meet each individual requirement set by the standard and not on a combination of them, as was previously the case. This means that the standard can only be sensibly applied to a complete unit of accommodation—anything less, such as a single room or cellar, would be most unlikely to ever meet each of the wide-ranging requirements the standard makes. The changes have barely been in place for two and a half years. Of course standards must change over time but it is perhaps somewhat premature to be amending the new standard so soon after introducing it.
This is not a question of dragging feet. The Department of the Environment has a number of research projects in progress to review the standard and to inform the Government of the direction in which it should evolve. One project has been looking particularly at how the standard is being applied by local authorities. This work will conclude very soon and will identify any difficulties authorities have encountered in working with the new system. Recommendations for any government action considered necessary in this area will be made.
A second and more long-term project is currently reviewing the health, safety and—this was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Ross of Newport and Lord Skelmersdale—fire risks associated with housing. This project will also guide us on any revision necessary to the standard and also on any future changes we might make to the building regulations. In addition, a third project is under way which embraces a feasibility study on a minimum rating for energy efficiency, and this has been undertaken with a view to including such a criterion in the fitness standard. Noble Lords will appreciate that we are on very similar lines here with the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, and with the views of the Select Committee on Indoor Pollution, which recommended that a requirement for adequate thermal insulation be added to the standard.
We expect reports from all these projects to become available over the next year or so. We wish to consider their findings most carefully before we seek any further changes to the detail and usage of the fitness standard. Given the importance of this matter, that is
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only right. In addition to having noble Lords' views this evening, we propose to consult other organisations such as the local authority associations.
I shall now address the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. The grant system as a whole underspent in its first two years which made it difficult to justify allocating more resources to it. It is now likely to spend fully this year for the first time. It is also becoming clear that a growing number of authorities are facing increasing financial pressure as a result of demand for mandatory grants. The Government have concluded that we need to take stock of whether the system as it currently stands offers the most effective way of supporting the essential repair and improvement of run-down private housing given the resources likely to be available in future years. We plan to issue a consultation paper in the spring setting out possible options for change. We want a wide debate on what changes are needed and the form they might take.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, raised a point on the results from the 1991 English Housing Conditions Survey. We intend to publish results as soon as our analysis of all the information that we have received is completed. The large size of the survey means that it takes time. We are not yet in that position. Collecting data began in September 1991. For the last survey in 1986, it took just over two years from the start of data collection to publication of the results. I can assure noble Lords that the Government are as anxious as others to have results from the survey.
I hope that it is clear from what I have said that we feel unable to support the Bill at present. We need longer to take stock of the current standard. We need to be absolutely satisfied about the case for changes, which will increase intervention. It would be premature to conclude on the matter in advance of considering the results of our surveys.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, before the noble Viscount sits down, perhaps I may intervene to ask this question. I asked about the energy supplement to the 1986 survey report. It took from 1986 to the end of 1991 before the result was published. I am curious why that might be so. I understand that the noble Viscount may not have the answer. Perhaps he will write to me.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I apologise. I forgot to answer the noble Baroness's question. Perhaps she will allow me to write to her on this specific matter.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Merlyn-Rees: My Lords, I agree with the noble Viscount that we ought to have a wider debate on the issue. If we have a Committee stage, other noble Lords could become involved. It is a most important issue. I understand that the Government have undertaken a number of inquiries. Let us have a wider debate soon. I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Europol
8.31 p.m.
Lord Bethell Lord Bethell rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the activities of Europol receive proper democratic scrutiny.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I congratulate the Government and the other 11 governments of the European Community on their readiness to set up the Europol organisation. I believe that it will be a thoroughly popular measure in the United Kingdom which will contribute considerably to the fight against crime. In the area that I represent in the European Parliament, I have found great enthusiasm for the idea of a European police force and of co-operation across boundaries in the solution of crime and in the clearing up of offences especially in areas such as terrorism and drugs.
Some weeks ago I was able to visit just outside Strasbourg, the project team of Europol. A few dozen brave souls are putting together a European or international police force in embryo in what can only be described as a Portakabin with very few resources and without even a decision on where the site of Europol will be.
It has been said that Europol is a small child, a small beginning to what could be a substantial enterprise. At this stage it involves only the idea of pooling information about drugs-related offences. At present it does not include terrorism or other serious crime, but it involves principles of the utmost importance. I welcome the chance to discuss them with your Lordships today.
Provided that the Maastricht Agreement is ratified, and that Europol comes formally into existence, there will be a variation in the sovereign nature of the police force and of the constable. Once the Maastricht Agreement and the convention which will have to follow as soon as possible are in place, I presume that there will be the concept of a policeman working for many countries rather than only the country from which he derives his authority as a constable. I shall be grateful for the Minister's confirmation that I am right. It will mean a policeman working for an alliance of police against the criminal. It will involve certain increases in the power of the police, and in the power of the computer. In some European Community countries that is an extremely controversial matter. I refer not so much to the United Kingdom but to the Benelux countries and Germany, where the subject of data protection is extremely sensitive. However, if we are to go ahead with the project, we have to contemplate the idea of a British citizen possibly being arrested by Belgian police in Belgium on the basis of information fed into a central Europol computer by the Spanish police. If anyone finds that in some way objectionable, then he is an opponent of the Europol project. I find it a logical continuation of the fight against serious crime.
We should therefore consider the Europol idea as being an international police force in embryo and perhaps the catalyst for something greater in future years. It may well be that if Europol succeeds, it will
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spread its wings and take off into other areas of international crime, such as fraud, terrorism, serious theft, movement of goods illegally across frontiers, and so on.
When I was at the Europol project team headquarters, I was told by the team, which included a number of British policemen, that Europol is besieged by the media, parliamentarians and Ministers from all over the Continent. They were surprised that so little interest had been shown in Europol by the media and parliamentarians of the United Kingdom. I hope that more interest will be shown in the future. I am glad that the British police are particularly interested because it could mean a change in the status of some of them if the project becomes a reality. It could be an opportunity for them to work in a different way against the criminal. I declare an interest. I am the European adviser to the Police Federation of England and Wales.
The issue is part of what is called the home affairs pillar of the Maastricht Agreement. At present there is no provision for democratic control over what the home affairs Ministers do or will do. It has been said in various letters by Home Secretaries and Foreign Secretaries that the European Parliament, your Lordships' House and another place will be informed of what is done at home affairs level and specifically on Europol. With the greatest respect, I do not believe that that is enough. It is not enough for this House, another place or the European Parliament simply to be informed of the decisions on Europol after the event.
I refer to Article K.6 of the Maastricht Agreement which states:
"The Presidency shall consult the European Parliament on the principal aspects of activities in the areas referred to in this Title and shall ensure that the views of the European Parliament are duly taken into consideration".
We no longer hold the presidency of the European Community; but as the previous president we are part of the troika of the presidency. I therefore hope that my noble friend will be able to confirm to me that it is the presidency's intention to consult the European Parliament fully in all respects before reaching decisions upon it, including one on Europol. I also hope that he will be able to confirm to me that the presidency and the British Government have no objection to occasional informal contacts between parliamentarians, whether European or national, and officials or police officers working from Europol. That will be a possibility if the Europol team remains in Strasbourg because of its proximity to the established seat of the European Parliament.
However, I should point out that there is a fair difference of view on the whole question of Europol being outside the European treaties. My noble friend may not yet have had the opportunity of taking on board the European Parliament's report on the matter which was passed unanimously by the assembly on 22nd January—last Friday. The report was by my Belgian colleague, Mr. Van Outrive, and it puts forward the idea that questions of home affairs should only be dealt with by member states within the context

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of the EC institutions. It invites the European Commission to take action to bring that about immediately under Article 235.
The report talks about an eventual transfer or improvement in the possibilities for operational duties on the part of Europol's employees. It deals with the need to control the transfer of data from one country to another and from one country to the central pool where the information will be held. It talks of the need to protect the individual and possibly of some kind of ombudsman who could intervene if an individual had reason to believe that there was inaccurate information about him on the central computer.
The report mentions the site of Europol. On that subject more than any other, I think it would be appropriate to consult the European Parliament in accordance with paragraph K.6 of the Maastricht Treaty. It mentions interestingly other areas to which Europol's activities might be extended. I wish to bring up one area in this connection which would be very appropriate—subsidy fraud. The matter has been frequently debated in your Lordships' House, and we have been frustrated from time to time by the large frauds committed by various organisations or even governments, on the basis of European Community subsidies. It may have been cattle moved across the Irish border or imaginary tobacco farms in Greece.
Perhaps my noble friend would give his view on whether it would be a good idea if that kind of offence could be put under the authority of Europol. We have been told in the past that the Commission does not have the resources to investigate subsidy frauds. Very well, let the resources be created under the Europol umbrella.
I shall be grateful if my noble friend will answer some of those points. Can he confirm that it is the Government's intention to keep your Lordships and Members of another place fully informed about developments? I do not believe that it is sufficient simply from time to time to provide a Written Answer to a planted Question on the subject. There should be the opportunity for debate both in the Home Affairs Committee and on the floor of another place and in your Lordships' House.
Will the noble Earl also indicate how he sees the timing for bringing about a convention on Europol, without which the system will not be able to operate properly? That is of course assuming that the Maastricht agreement is ratified. Perhaps he would care to comment on the—I agree highly unlikely—possibility that the Maastricht agreement should not be ratified. Would he care to speculate that in that event the Government would wish to go ahead with Article K with the home affairs pillar as a treaty between the 12 member states?
I hope that the noble Earl will have something to say about the conflict which will inevitably arise over the need to protect the individual against erroneous material appearing on a computer entry. As I mentioned, that seems to be a matter of the deepest worry in certain Continental countries; but it has not yet caught the deep concern of public opinion here. Nevertheless, I predict that it will arise once people
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realise what is happening and what I believe needs to happen if we are to maximise our efforts in the fight against crime.
Finally, for many decades it has seemed quite normal for British soldiers and British officers of our Armed Forces to work and fight in close alliance with soldiers from allied countries. It has seemed quite normal for British officers and British soldiers to take orders from foreign officers. Provided that the aim is the same and that the alliance is clearly defined, no one seems to mind. However, up to now that has never happened with police work, in the fight against terrorism, organised crime, drugs, organised murder and assassinations and where criminals cross frontiers—often with impunity—and where co-operation by the police is needed in order to oppose co-operation between the criminals.
I am grateful for the chance to put those questions to my noble friend, and I look forward with keen anticipation to his reply.
8.47 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, I speak personally on this matter but I am sure that the whole House is most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, for giving us the opportunity to discuss the question of European policing. My only regret is that his experience and knowledge of police matters over so many years have not stimulated more of your Lordships to contribute to the debate.
European policing is as complex as it is important and its concerns range from the Lockerbie disaster to the smuggling of works of art across national boundaries. Police and Customs officers must now, since the beginning of this year, be able to recognise a Picasso when they see it in a suitcase. They must know a Braque from a brick better than the Tate Gallery; yet the public throughout Europe is sublimely unaware of the huge new burdens that their police forces must now assume. I suspect that the average British citizen, if asked, "What is Europol?", would probably tell us that Europol is some kind of French parrot!
The difficulty of ensuring democratic scrutiny is not eased by the historical accident that international police co-operation has been started more than once. Indeed, there are currently no fewer than four major organisations in competition trying to secure business. They are TREVI, Interpol, Schengen and Europol.
The start of the century saw the beginnings of international police co-operation in the inception in 1914 of what is now called Interpol. That has grown into a large international organisation with 169 member countries and splendid new headquarters in Lyons in France. Eighty seven per cent. of the workload of Interpol is initiated within Europe and its working languages are now limited for the sake of simplicity to the four languages: English, French, Spanish and Arabic.
Despite its long and honourable history, Interpol has clearly not met every recent perceived need. By the mid-1970s it seems that new solutions had to be proposed for new problems. So, in December 1975, in response initially to increasing Irish terrorism on the

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UK mainland, the Council of Ministers set up an organisation subsequently named TREVI to develop European police co-operation. TREVI developed by 1985 into four groups, each with specific responsibilities. TREVI 1 dealt with terrorism; TREVI 2 with communication, police training, public order and forensic science; TREVI 3 with international crime and drug trafficking; and TREVI 4 with the exchange of information relating to the fire service.
In the field of international police information systems the TREVI group has sponsored the EIS or European information system, which is very similar in design and intent to the Schengen information system.
The particular characteristic of the TREVI group seems to have been achieved by its consideration of individual subject areas rather than broad policy. Yet it should be noted that the TREVI groups meet in camera, they publish no minutes of meetings, they have no permanent secretariat or budget. TREVI itself has no permanent headquarters and it meets only twice a year. Noble Lords may feel that democratic accountability is not at the very front of its agenda.
In 1984, the French and German Governments decided to force the pace of Europe, remove internal border controls between the two countries and rely upon each other's external checks. That agreement—known as the Saarbrucken Accord—was extended in 1985 at the town of Schengen to include the Benelux countries. While it was primarily concerned with the early removal of internal borders, it included a large section on police co-operation, constructing quite complex rules on cross-border chases and the like.
The agreement also arranged for the Schengen information system to be set up to enhance the exchange of information between member countries. The SIS (Schengen information system), based in Strasbourg, has not yet become fully operational because, among other factors, of what it calls "technical problems", which I understand include particularly difficulties in co-ordinating data protection legislation—one of the principal problems behind the whole of European policing.
While the idea of a European police force has been discussed over the past 20 years or so, the notion was not officially launched until it was launched by Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, in 1990. The TREVI group of Ministers was given the task of developing concrete proposals for discussion at the Maastricht Summit in 1991. At Maastricht the scheme was given official approval, and TREVI was told to develop Europol "as soon as practicable". Some people hope that Europol will develop into a European FBI. It is possible that the newly released headquarters of Holland's CRI in the Hague may be used to house the organisation. But there seems to be a certain amount of difficulty in deciding between the various places in which it could have its headquarters.
I hope your Lordships will pardon this brief history lecture—it is what I am made and programmed to do—but it seemed to me important to establish that Europol is not a simple and single concept and there are tensions, rivalries and vested interests which must be kept in mind in any consideration of democratic scrutiny of its as yet embryonic activities.
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The problems are created by the fact that Europol itself was never really created; it evolved. It evolved from different sources; and it evolved leaving anomalous residues still active behind it. At the moment Europol is only present in a skeleton form, partly because of differences between EC member states on the whole business of policing policy.
The skeleton of the force is operating, as we have heard, in a suburb of Strasbourg. Europol's first aim is to co-operate on drug traffickers and it may be extended, we are told, to attack the Mafia. Informal co-operation has already grown up among Europe's police forces through the 1990 Schengen group, though the Schengen group is unaccountable either to the sovereign parliaments, I understand, or to the EC itself. Europol's provisional headquarters is at Strasbourg because the Schengen information centre is already there, and it is inconvenient. That is pragmatism in exercises, and it makes the establishment of checks and balances and democratic accountability very difficult indeed.
Let us be quite clear about one thing. No one would want to argue against the facilitation of police work to catch criminals who exploit European borders. But Europol, as it stands at the moment, raises certain civil liberty questions and problems of democratic accountability. That was demonstrated most recently when the Schengen group met behind closed doors and made European-wide asylum policy without having to account for its actions either to the EC or the parliaments of the countries involved.
Both the European Parliament and civil liberties groups are concerned about the democratic deficit when policies on asylum, police co-operation and the like are made by inter-governmental agreement rather than by EC law. The British Government made no great efforts during the Maastricht negotiations to make sure that democratic accountability on such matters was increased. No representatives of citizens or of consumers are involved at any level in these negotiations, although they directly concern their individual rights.
It is widely believed at the moment that Europol will model itself to some extent on Interpol. Yet Interpol has managed to persuade its resident country, France, to waive data protection laws. It has also encouraged a police culture in which exchange of data takes place without too many legal controls and in what can best be described as an informal manner. That raises certain worries about the way Europol will operate.
However, the British police, so far as I can understand, seem generally in favour of Europol, but they have some reservations because of the Ulster border with Ireland. For that reason they are not so keen on the role proposed for Europol in preventing terrorism. They think that their own secure systems already suffice. Presumably they also fear leaks, and who can blame them for that?
There are some other problems with the structure of Europol. There is definitely a debate going on inside different national police forces as to whether Europol should be an intelligence agency or also have operational duties, such as investigative powers. The

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German view seems to veer towards allowing investigative responsibilities, such as investigating a tragedy like the Lockerbie disaster. British officials, on the other hand, seem to favour Europol modelling itself on the National Criminal Intelligence Service, which gathers information for local police to use and has no powers to investigate or arrest. One senior British source is quoted as saying:
"Europol would never have got off the ground if there was any suggestion that it would be anything other than an intelligence agency".
Yet other countries favour it developing into a body which can carry out arrests in conjunction with local police and according to local judicial regulations.
For those reasons the activities of Europol must be set in a context of proper democratic scrutiny. As the tree is bent, so will it grow. And just as politics is far too pervasive in human life to be left to politicians, so policing is far too important to be left to the police.
9 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the House will be grateful to my noble friend Lord Bethell for providing the opportunity for this debate. Although he is concerned primarily about the important question of the accountability of Europol, I hope that he will forgive me if I describe a little of the background to these matters before I answer the matters that have been raised. It is a complicated subject. This approach may be helpful to those noble Lords who do not have my noble friend's depth of experience in these matters. The noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, said that as a teacher he was giving us a history lesson. I may run down that track a little and I have no doubt that the history as perceived by both of us will be the same.
The idea of Europol is, I think, a typical European concept—and I bow to my noble friend's great expertise in the intricacies of European political life. I think though that it is also fair to say that Europol is a much-abused word, and I should like to be as precise as possible in setting out the Government's position.
A German proposal to establish a central European criminal investigation office was first adopted at the European Council in Luxembourg in June 1991, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris. That has now come to be known as Europol. The European Council at Maastricht in December 1991 asked for Europol to be brought into existence as quickly as possible. An ad hoc working group on Europol was, therefore, formed to do that. That group of officials meets under the auspices of the TREVI Group and it is always chaired by the United Kingdom. Very good progress has so far been made and, indeed, the United Kingdom has received considerable acclaim for its work in preparing the groundwork for that organisation.
The United Kingdom Government see Europol as a body for co-ordinating intelligence on serious crime which poses a threat to two or more member states of the European Community. That view is now shared by other member states. The original German proposal, which continues to arise from time to time in public perception, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord
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Morris of Castle Morris, envisaged giving Europol operational powers as well. But that has always been rejected. And it is not the intention to give operational powers to Europol now. A development of that nature would be a considerable departure from present policing arrangements which we have not only in this country but also in other member states.
Europol itself has though not yet been established. That will require a legally binding convention, and that will involve a lengthy and complex set of negotiations among member states. It would, however, be folly to hold back on the development of an important organisation such as this until the convention has been agreed as it could help us considerably in tackling crime, especially international crime.
My noble friend Lord Bethell said that he envisaged that a British person could be arrested in Belgium by a Belgian policeman as a result of information given by Spanish police on a computer. I am bound to say that the use of information provided by Europol remains to be decided. Europol will not have operational powers. However, in the example my noble friend gave it will be open to the Belgian police to arrest anyone on their territory in line with their own national law, irrespective of from where the information came—whether or not from Spain—or indeed how it came, whether by word of mouth or by computer.
The European Council has, therefore, agreed that the establishment of Europol should proceed in stages. The first stage will begin with the creation of a drugs intelligence unit. That will be known as the Europol Drugs Unit. A full-time project team to develop the Europol Drugs Unit was established on 1st September 1992 to undertake the detailed work which will be needed to set it up. In doing that the project team is also helping to develop Europol in the longer term. As my noble friend Lord Bethell knows only too well, the project team is based in Strasbourg.
The purpose of the Europol Drugs Unit will be to act as a non-operational team for the exchange and analysis of intelligence about illicit drug trafficking and the associated criminal activities which affect member states collectively. The unit's objective will be to help the police and other law enforcement agencies both within member states and between them to combat crime more effectively.
The urgent problems which are posed by international illicit drug trafficking—and the money laundering and organised crime which is associated with it—led Ministers to call for the Europol Drugs Unit to be established as quickly as possible—and, indeed, by 1st January 1993 if that could be achieved. I regret to say that that target has not been achieved. The stumbling block has been the need for a decision on the location of the Europol Drugs Unit and on the permanent headquarters of Europol. The pressures both of time and content at the European Council at Edinburgh meant that the Council was unable to take this particular decision and as a result we will now have to wait for the outcome of the European Council meeting at Copenhagen in June.

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The Europol Drugs Unit can be established soon after a location has been decided. The prospect of establishing the Europol Drugs Unit raises, of course, the question of its accountability. The utmost care and attention is being given to that. It is covered in the draft ministerial agreement, and a more detailed paper is under consideration by the ad hoc working group on Europol.
The Europol Drugs Unit will operate under the authority of a ministerial agreement. Under the terms of the agreement the unit will be accountable to TREVI Ministers of the European Community member states. In this country that is my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. In practice though Ministers will delegate the responsibility for the day-to-day running of the unit to officials. That is likely to require the creation of an executive committee with representatives from each member state which will monitor the activities and the management of the Europol Drugs Unit.
The precise arrangements about the frequency of the committee's meetings and its detailed functions have yet to be worked out, but the co-ordinator—that is the name which is given to the person who will head the Europol Drugs Unit—will report via the committee to TREVI Ministers.
While we are working in that informal way, and before we have a legally binding convention, there will be considerable limitations on the extent to which information from one member state may be passed to and used by other member states. My noble friend Lord Bethell asked when the convention was likely to appear. It is difficult to speculate, but my guess is that it will be at least two years away.
The ministerial agreement, which will establish the Europol Drugs Unit, lays down strict guidelines on how information should be treated, and it makes it very clear that the exchange of information may only he carried out within the limits of national legislation, legal rules and any instructions which may be given by, or on behalf of, the competent Ministers in the various member states.
National data protection authorities will play an active role in the oversight of the Europol Drugs Unit, over the handling and the protection of data which are received by it. The unit will not, though, certainly at this stage, hold a central database of personal information of any kind.
The arrangements for accountability which have been proposed for the Europol Drugs Unit are likely to be very similar under the convention when it comes into force. They will be capable of being adapted to fit in with the new systems for interior and justice co-operation which are being set up under the Maastricht Treaty. The third pillar of the Maastricht Treaty—that which covers interior and justice matters —provides for police co-operation between the governments of member states.
Although the proposals for accountability of the Europol Drugs Unit relate to the system as exists at present, we realise that there will have to be a role for national parliaments and for the European Parliament when the treaty comes into force. Europol, of course, is part of the third pillar.
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My noble friend Lord Bethel! was concerned about Article K6 of the Maastricht Treaty. He was quite right in saying that it states that the presidency will consult the European Parliament and that it must ensure that the views of the European Parliament are taken into account. I can confirm to my noble friend that the European Parliament will hold debates, and members may ask questions of the Council of Ministers, just in the same way as they may now ask questions—albeit in a less formal way—of the presidency of TREVI. I must make it clear to my noble friend that the presidency does intend to consult the European Parliament but the correct and proper route for this to be done is through the presidency. It might be considered not to be the correct route for members to have official contact with officials.
The Maastricht Treaty also has a declaration which encourages a greater involvement by national parliaments in the activities of the new European Union, including an increased exchange of information with the European Parliament. The Government have always thought that national parliaments have a very important role to play.
I can assure my noble friend Lord Bethell that all Ministers from all the member states of the Community are concerned about questions of democratic accountability—in the same way that they are concerned that all the member states should co-operate and should act rigorously against crime.
The Europol Drugs Unit will, therefore, not operate at all until the draft ministerial agreement has been signed by all 12 Ministers. There is no question of TREVI Ministers surreptitiously allowing the exchange of any information on the guidelines before that time. That agreement will be laid before Parliament.
Once the Europol Drugs Unit is established, it must abide by the arrangements for data protection, staffing, accountability and finance which are contained in the ministerial agreement. The unit's co-ordinator will be accountable to Ministers, who will each, in turn, be accountable to their own national parliaments.
It would be rash of me, particularly at this time when it is undergoing such close scrutiny in another place, to hazard a guess as to whether the Maastricht Treaty will be ratified before the Europol Drugs Unit is set up. Both events are hard to pin to an exact timetable. My noble friend asked me what will happen if Maastricht is not ratified. I would not wish to speculate on such hypothetical possibilities as that. The improved arrangements under a ratified Maastricht Treaty will, though, apply both to the Europol Drugs Unit and to Europol. In both cases, the involvement of national parliaments and of the European Parliament will be greater.
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary will also continue to have close oversight over the negotiation and the development of the work towards a convention which will establish Europol. Home Office officials chair the ad hoc working group which is working on the convention, and the ad hoc working group reports formally on its progress to the relevant Ministers.

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Your Lordships will, of course, also be involved in the process of the ratification of the intergovernmental conventions which will require to be agreed under the third pillar of the Maastricht Treaty. Parliamentary Questions, oral statements and debates will continue to be the means of keeping Parliament informed.
I am afraid that I cannot give your Lordships precise details of how Europol will operate. A complex negotiating process is at present under way. And the existing lines of parliamentary accountability will be likely to be further improved before Europol is fully operational.
I can assure your Lordships, and my noble friend Lord Bethell in particular, that the Government are
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fully aware of the need to ensure that Europol and the Europol Drugs Unit are fully and properly accountable to the parliaments of all the member states, including the Parliament of the United Kingdom. I hope that I have been able to reassure my noble friend Lord Bethell that that is the desire and the intention both of Her Majesty's Government and of the governments of other member states.

Clean Air Bill [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee with amendments and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at fourteen minutes past nine o'clock.