Lords Sitting of 9 March 1994

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

Sex Guide Publications
Lord Stallard: My Lords, in the absence of the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, and with the permission of the House, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, if the noble Lord the Leader of the House will excuse my intervention, the rule of the House is that unless one has the permission of the person who put the Question down, one is not entitled to ask the Question.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Wakeham): My Lords, my understanding of the position is this. The Companion to the Standing Orders states:
"If a Lord is absent when a Motion or Question standing in his name is due to be called and has not authorised another Lord to act on his behalf, the Motion or Question … may not be proceeded with that day",
unless the unanimous leave of the House is granted. I believe that the noble Lord would be in order to ask the Question if the House unanimously agrees to it. For my part, I would agree.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Stallard Lord Stallard asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are supporting the circulation of The Best Sex Guide, published by the Health Education Authority, to young people, particularly at pop concerts; and whether they have sanctioned the proposed publication of a further booklet entitled Your Pocket Guide to Sex.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, the Government did not initiate The Best Sex Guide magazine. It was produced by the Health Education Authority in collaboration with BBC Radio 1 and was aimed at young people of 16 and over. The further booklet, Your Pocket Guide to Sex, is being produced by the Health Education Authority's own publishing company for retail distribution. The Department of Health has no part in its production or marketing.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that reply. I assume that she has read the document. Does she agree that the document promotes promiscuity, and is certainly an insult to women? Perhaps I may quote two short sentences which state:
"The number of people you have sex with is much less important than how you have sex. If it's safer sex and you use a condom, you could screw hundreds of people and never come in contact with HIV".
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I consider that insulting, to say the least, to women. We understand that the Government provide funds for the Health Education Authority. If the Government fund such stuff as this magazine, will they consider funding other material which encourages youngsters, particularly teenage girls, to say no to early sexual activity as a positive choice? I give one example. A video was recently produced and publicised in this House called "Make Love Last". Will the noble Baroness be prepared to consider recommending funding that video if it is in the same category?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, certainly we would consider funding any project that an organisation wanted to put to us. We are anxious to meet the targets that we have set in The Health of the Nation in order to reduce teenage pregnancies. If that were a way of doing so, we would wish to consider it.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the magazine is a glossy but degrading incitement to anti-family behaviour?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I accept that the language used causes offence to many people. It is not a production that I would wish to have in my home. However, I believe that it is a magazine specifically targeted at young people who are already sexually active. It puts over the message very strongly that safer sex should be practised.
The magazine also mentions that sex is about affection, emotion and warmth. It also states that if you say yes to sex, it is not something to be done casually, or under pressure or to impress another person. Of course, sex is illegal for those under 16 years of age.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that it is the rather difficult duty of the HEA to promote safer sex in accordance with government policy expressed in The Health of the Nation to reduce teenage pregnancies and to limit HIV infection? Is it not the case that the leaflet—I have it in my hand—is targeted at youth and student groups with whom it has been thoroughly researched? As the noble Baroness stated, it explicitly points out that sex under 16 years is illegal.
Baroness Cumberlege: Yes, my Lords, I believe that a lot of research was undertaken before the magazine was produced. However, I should like to say that the Government did not initiate this particular production, and I believe that if it had been shown to Ministers before it was produced, Ministers would have had some stringent comments to make.
Baroness Brigstocke: My Lords, I speak as a member of the Health Education Authority. Will the Minister agree that much as we, as an older generation well represented in your Lordships' House, may be shocked by the explicit language and direct approach of The Best Sex Guide, it is not written for us? It is directed and targeted towards a very vulnerable group in our society: teenage girls and boys who are already sexually active or determined to be so. Will the Minister further agree that the magazine uses the format and language

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which are based on serious research and which we know will appeal to the youngsters and get them to understand the importance of safer sex, including saying no?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I agree. I think that the publication was not written for the generation of people who predominate in this House. Certainly, when I showed it to my husband he just said that it made him feel "so very old". But I believe that it will have an impact on some young people. If it leads to the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and young people not ruining their lives and those of others by contracting HIV, it will have served a purpose.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one word which does not appear in the pamphlet is no?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I believe that my noble friend is right; it does not say no, in terms of total abstinence. It says that if you say yes when you mean no or "I'm not sure", you run the risk of having sex when you are not ready for it. However, the Health Education Authority puts out other pamphlets which promote abstinence as a way of preventing unwanted pregnancies or HIV infection.
Baroness Elles: My Lords, can my noble friend give any indication as to the number of unwanted teenage pregnancies over the past two or three years? Will the Department of Health closely monitor the number of teenage pregnancies following the kind of publication which the Government now support?
Baroness Cumberlege: Yes, my Lords, we shall monitor them. As noble Lords will be aware from other debates that we have had in your Lordships' House, this country has a high rate of teenage pregnancies. Recent surveys show that 48 per cent. of 16 year-olds are sexually active, and 31 per cent of 16 year-olds claim that they have had a full sexual experience.
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, will the noble Baroness also confirm that the rate of HIV and AIDS infection in the country is rising most rapidly among young heterosexuals in precisely the age group that the magazine seeks to reach? As I understand it, about half the new HIV infections in the country are in people below the age of 26.
Baroness Cumberlege: Yes, my Lords, those figures are correct, and it is something that we must combat. In terms of HIV infection, this country has a good record in preventing it; but we have to keep changing the target areas. The noble Baroness is right, it is the younger generation we now need to target.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, I fully accept what my noble friend says about unwanted pregnancies and other such matters. However, will she accept that some of us whose profession has brought them into close contact with the seamier side of life would say that sexual promiscuity was the high road to unhappiness? Should it not be part of the Government's responsibility to put that truth before the young?
Baroness Cumberlege: Yes, my Lords; but to some extent the Government have to take the world as it really is. The world is changing very fast. When one looks at what is on television and in the newspapers, very little is now left to the imagination. Because of that, some of the literature now published is much more explicit than your Lordships or, indeed, I would want. But that is the way in which one has to communicate with young people today.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, finally, despite what has been said, it has been estimated in other surveys that slightly more than half the population of 16 year-olds look for something different from this booklet. They do not accept the politically correct angle that you have to go with the crowd because that is how life is. They do not accept that everyone has to indulge in filthy language because it is in the booklet. That is not what they want. They want something far more positive to support them in their attempts to tidy up the filth that is being peddled around now on the subject of sex and children.
Baroness Cumberlege: Yes, my Lords, I accept much of what the noble Lord said. However, just telling teenagers, however sternly, what they should or should not do is not effective. They need to be convinced and there are many ways of convincing them that promiscuity only leads to tragedy.

The Tax System
2.47 p.m.
Lord Ezra Lord Ezra asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they consider that the tax system has become too complex.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Employment (Lord Henley): My Lords, the complexity of the tax system reflects the underlying complexity of the modern world. Nevertheless, the Government remain committed to making the system simpler and more understandable wherever possible.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the present Finance Bill is probably longer and more complex than any of its predecessors and that both business organisations and the accountancy profession have complained about its complexity and frequent obscurities? In those circumstances, how can ordinary taxpayers—for example, represented by your Lordships —be expected to understand how they are likely to be affected by the Bill? Will the noble Lord explain how the Government reconcile their avowed intention of removing burdens from industry and making life easier for citizens, if they make the tax system ever more obscure?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I accept that the present Finance Bill is a fairly bulky document, or rather I should say two bulky documents. However, it introduces fairly major reforms, for example, self-assessment, which will obviously be a complex task

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requiring fairly lengthy legislation, which takes up 75 of the approximately 400 pages. It also introduces two new taxes, the details of which take up a further 50 or so pages. There are a further 40 pages on anti-avoidance and revenue protection, which we estimate should bring in another £2 billion over the next two years.
Much of the Bill was subject as well to extensive consultation with experts and representative bodies from all appropriate fields. Over one-third of the clauses were made available in draft. Further, we issued Notes on Clauses for the first time, which we believe will help with the understanding of the Bill. As regards deregulation and the burdens on business, the Budget itself introduced further deregulatory measures. But obviously we believe that there should be on-going consideration as to the burden of tax legislation on business, and that will continue as part of the Government's deregulation approach.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, does my noble friend understand how agreeably surprised we all were to hear that the Government have established the target of making tax law simpler and easier to understand? Does he agree that they have a terribly long and painful journey to travel?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I think I could agree with my noble friend that it is what might be termed a Sisyphean task. Regrettably, taxation is a regrettable feature of modern life. Governments have to raise money to fund the various services that modern societies demand; and, regrettably, any tax system that is to be fair, equitable and efficient will of necessity be complex. But, as I believe I made clear to my noble friend, we will strive to make the system as efficient and simple as we possibly can, while also accepting that it must be both fair and equitable.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, I declare an interest as one who over the years, probably more than most, has introduced complex finance Bills. The Minister said that the Government's intention is to simplify the tax system. Is that why they have introduced this 417-page Bill—to simplify the tax system? Does the Minister agree that much more important than simplifying the tax system is to make it more fair? Given what the Chancellor said last week about the excessively high salaries that are paid to some, will he further agree that, while it is not necessarily too complex a system (inevitably it is complex), it is unfair between the very highest paid and the very lowest paid in the community?
Lord Henley: My Lords, that has nothing to do with the Question. But I believe that the system is totally and utterly fair; rich people pay proportionately more in taxes, as is quite rig-it. They pay more than they ever did under governments of which the noble Lord was a member. As regards efficiency and simplicity, I said that we are committed to making the system as simple as possible. One of the changes introduced in what I said was, regrettably, a very long Bill was a degree of self-assessment. That matter takes up a very large amount of the Bill; obviously to bring in some form of self-assessment is fairly complicated in drafting terms.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I am a little taken aback that the noble Lord believes that the tax system is progressive. As I understand it, the system is regressive at the bottom end and at best proportionate from then on. Perhaps he can enlighten us on that matter. The Question on the Order Paper is about complexity and simplicity. Will the noble Lord consider that perhaps we ought to do things the other way round; namely, that if a tax cannot be introduced that can be understood by the taxpayer, it should simply not be introduced? Is it not an alarming state of affairs, especially in a democracy, that, as I would guess, virtually none of us in this House can get from where we started (our gross income) down to the tax that we end up paying? It seems to me that that is not a good state of affairs. I spend quite a hit of time trying to do it. I always get near, but I never get to the precise number that the Inland Revenue wants.
Lord Henley: My Lords, again, the noble Lord's opening remarks were nothing to do with the Question. But I repeat our belief that the tax system is fair. As regards simplicity, one can have a degree of simplicity; and we will bring in as much simplicity as is possible. But I think the noble Lord will have to accept that if you want to raise taxes in the complex modern society in which we live, of necessity those taxes will be fairly complex and difficult to understand. But we will try to make them as simple as is possible, while maintaining that they should be fair, equitable and efficient.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, could not the fiscal code be greatly simplified if, instead of the very complicated provisions against individual sorts of tax avoidance, we adopted the American and Australian general rule that any transaction the dominant purpose of which is tax avoidance should be invalid for that purpose but valid for any other purpose?
Lord Henley: My Lords, from his great experience the noble and learned Lord makes a very interesting suggestion, upon which I should not like to comment in detail at the Dispatch Box at this moment. I shall certainly pass on to my right honourable friend the Chancellor the suggestion that the noble and learned Lord made.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, if the noble Lord agrees that the tax system has become more complex, does he not think it unfair that individual taxpayers now have to submit their returns in a shorter time and that larger penalties are imposed upon them for lateness?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I said that the system had necessarily become more complex, just as society has become more complex, but that we are committed to making it as simple as we possibly can. That is why self-assessment was brought in as one of the simplifications in this year's Finance Bill.
Noble Lords: Next question !
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, I think we ought to move on.

Bosnia: Peace Prospects
2.55 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What are the present prospects of the armed conflicts in Bosnia being brought to an end.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, talks continue between the Bosnian Government, the Croatian Republic and representatives of the Bosnian Croats to build on the framework agreement initialled in Washington on 1st March. This represents a useful step towards a political settlement. The ceasefires in Sarajevo and central Bosnia are also encouraging developments. The United Kingdom is working actively with other countries to build on the momentum generated.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her reply. In the new situation of the Croat-Moslem agreement in central Bosnia and the truce around Sarajevo, does she agree that a special effort should now be made to keep and extend this welcome pacification, before the opportunity passes, using more UN troops, as recommended by the general on the spot, including forces offered by Turkey, if needed?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, we indeed wish to extend the peace-making that has already occurred. We pay tribute to General Rose and the UN troops for the excellent work that they have carried out. I believe that the agreements are placing considerable extra demands on UNPROFOR, and that is why we have said that we are prepared to make a substantial extra contribution as part of the wider international effort. I can tell my noble friend that discussions are going on in New York at this very time with potential troop contributors to see how we can move forward as quickly as possible. There is obviously a complication about neighbouring countries and where troops, if offered, might be deployed within the region. I believe that there may be a way of working that out. We have a unique opportunity at this time to build on the peace agreements that have been achieved; and we intend to do so.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the Minister accept that from all parts of this House there will be a warm welcome for the role that Her Majesty's Government have apparently been playing in trying to bring together an effective response to the UN request? Can she say a little more as to when she thinks an agreement can be reached? Does she share my view that it is very urgent that the troops be quickly on the ground in order to substantiate the negotiations so effectively carried out by the United Nations, including General Rose?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I understand the noble Lord's anxiety on this matter. I cannot give him a definite time. All I can tell him is that our representative at the United Nations is meeting with
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his fellow representatives there. We believe that it is important that other countries respond positively to the UNPROFOR request. We have a really important opportunity to secure progress on the ground. Noble Lords may like to know that yesterday the first trams for 23 months ran in Sarajevo as a result of work by engineers and others supplied by this country. They and the Americans are already working on the restoration of water, power and sanitation in Sarajevo. We want to see that kind of work right across Bosnia.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, do I understand that the noble Baroness is saying that the Government have not yet made up their mind to send troops; that it is conditional upon other countries sending troops; and that they are not going to respond to the request of General Rose?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, it would be fair to say that there is no final decision. Being the second largest contributor, I believe it right that others should contribute too. That is why our efforts have been to make sure that General Rose gets the kind of numbers that he needs. We certainly could not supply those kind of numbers ourselves.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House whether the Russians continue to be co-operative and helpful in influencing the Serbs, who do not respond very well to being bullied?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, yes, indeed the Russians are being helpful. We need their help very much because the Krajina Serb problem needs solving just as much as all the other problems.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the sad features of the situation has been the inability of the European Union to play a positive part in these proceedings? Will she confirm that the matter is now reaching settlement between the large powers to the exclusion of Europe, which has the problem on its doorstep? Can she now tell us the status of the European peace effort and particularly the status of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, who has been responsible for those negotiations?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Owen, as the European Union's representative, continues to work alongside all the other efforts that are taking place; and, of course, individual European nations have contributed very largely to the success of UNPROFOR.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, would the Minister confirm that some 19 countries are today discussing in New York sending further UN troops to Bosnia? If that report is right, could she be a little more forthcoming as to what the British contribution to that extra force will be?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: I regret, my Lords, no, not at present.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that this is a classic case of willing the ends and not the means? Does she agree that it is intolerable that

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the commander that we appointed, who has asked for positive help for a purpose with which we all agree, should not be given the means to carry out his job?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the commander is appointed by the United Nations. We shall play our role, but it is not right that Britain alone should bear an increasing amount. We must bear it with others including the French and the Dutch as well as many nations who have not yet put in any troops.

Mountain Rescue
3.2 p.m.
Viscount Addison Viscount Addison asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will now license emergency position indication radio beacons (EPIRB) for land use in order to help reduce the cost of search and rescue.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Strathclyde): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government do not allow the use of EPIRBs on land, so as to maintain the integrity of the EPIRB system for maritime and aeronautical purposes.
Viscount Addison: My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that reply. Can he say what steps are being taken by the Government to deal with the ever growing problem of loss of life on mountains?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, I am glad to say that my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir Hector Monro, recently announced the funding of a study by the Mountain Rescue Committee into incidents in which the mountain rescue teams have been involved during the past 10 years. That will provide vital information on the main contributing factors.
The Viscount of Oxfuird: My Lords, can the Minister advise whether any consideration has been given to devices such as transponders as a means of tracing people who are lost? I understand that the transponder is used by the Tracker system for finding lost motor cars. Can the same principle be applied to lost human beings?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the answer to my noble friend is yes, they could be so used. But the difficulty is that many false alarms are set off at sea. Some 90 per cent. of all alerts turn out to be false alarms. That would put a great burden on our rescue services. The Radiocommunications Agency is open to suggestions from people who are concerned about those who are lost in mountains.
Lord Peston: My Lords, would the Minister clarify his answer to his noble friend? Is he saying that he does not recommend that we all acquire transponders? Many of us are in the habit of getting lost from time to time, but is he implying that if we acquire those items it will not help much anyway because they frequently do not work?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, no, they work very well indeed. The trouble is that many people let them off inadvertently and that creates a great burden for the rescue service.

Decision-Making: Student Education
3.5 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth Viscount Hanworth rose to call attention to the case for teaching students the importance of reaching decisions on political and other issues on grounds of logic rather than emotion; and to move for Papers.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, for many years I have wondered whether I might take the risk of suggesting how, to a minor extent, academics could help students to disentangle emotional viewpoints from common sense. If one agrees that, even here in England, to a great extent un-thought out reaction is the governing factor in people's views, anything that could be done to help them analyse their emotions and thought processes so as to arrive at logical conclusions would be useful. The problem is that people's outlooks are very largely determined by their own experiences in life—which are sometimes traumatic, remote or unusual and often influenced by the press.
There follows another aspect to the matter. If one knows why people think as they do, illogical though it may appear to be, it can help toward a better understanding of others' standpoints on controversial issues. There are clearly the counter-claims of the bias in religious convictions. However, bearing in mind that there are at least five major faiths, all of which seem to believe that they alone are right, there must even here be some common ground.
The purpose of the Motion is to suggest just one possible approach; namely, that under some university discipline students should have to consider dramatic situations of the past and analyse their own points of view about them, both emotionally and logically. That sort of exercise could lead to modern problems being given the same approach and one hopes that thereby to some extent people could separate their emotions from their logic.
Unfortunately, whatever we do in this small way, few persons are capable of analysing the several—I say again, several —complicated sentiments which affect their decisions. It seems part of human nature. I end by saying that teachers have hoped in the past that education would provide a magic formula for those problems. That has not yet been shown.
While I am speaking, I must say that nowadays there is a tendency to believe that events in political and public life are always motivated by a single factor and that can be very unfair, except perhaps when the major motive is just personal or party gain. In the latter area, party political ambitions seem to have ousted the old ethic: to serve one's country's best interests first.
Putting that aside, I shall digress and illustrate my theme from a personal and lighter example. As a young man I owned an MG sports car. I decided to visit an aged aunt. On analysis, there were three motivations. First, I hoped that she would enjoy my visit. Secondly, I wanted

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a run in the car. Thirdly, she might leave me something in her will. That is a rather old fashioned and silly example perhaps, but all three motives come from common sense. It is important to realise that people's motives are mixed and are not all the same. For example, a politician may do something because he is motivated by several different reasons, both for and against an argument. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.10 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I rise with some diffidence to reply to the noble Viscount because I am not exactly clear as to what one is meant to reply. If he tells us that people's motives are mixed, I am sure that no one in your Lordships' House has ever thought the contrary. If he says that much could be done to improve our understanding of the major political issues of our time, to some extent he is criticising what currently takes place in institutions of higher education. And I find that curious in that, so far as I know—the noble Viscount will correct me if I am wrong—he himself has had no experience since his undergraduate days (some time back though not as far back as my own) of what actually does happen.
Fortunately for the House and the noble Viscount, the next speaker in the debate will be the noble Earl, Lord Longford. When I first knew him in the mid-1930s he held the appointment of tutor in politics at Christ Church, Oxford. He actually had experience, which he will no doubt share with us, of what it was like to inculcate logic in the consideration of issues of public policy. He will need to be a little careful when he does so because his recollections cover a number of years. As I remember, when appointed he was a supporter of the Conservative Party. Whether his tutorials were affected by that chance collocation, I do not know. At some point in the 1930s his interests and sentiments led him to attend, as an observer, a meeting in Oxford Town Hall addressed by Sir Oswald Mosley. At that meeting there was, as probably nobody here but me recollects, and perhaps my noble friend Lord Blake—
Lord Blake: My Lords, I do. I was there.
Lord Beloff: —a certain amount of disturbance in the course of which the noble Earl, Lord Longford, was hit over the head, to put it bluntly. Subsequently he joined the Labour Party. I am not suggesting cause and effect, but it means that he is doubly capable of answering the noble Viscount because he will have taught politics under both flags.
It was suggested that that could be done best not by tackling immediately the themes, issues and problems of our own day, but by the teaching of events in the ancient or medieval world and thereby enabling people to see how specific decisions were reached. That seems to me to be admirable. It is of course not novel in the sense that in the mid-19th century, when we were the leading country in the world economically as well as in other respects, the basic instruction of our then rulers was in the classics. They were no doubt deeply familiar with what was in Caesar's mind when he crossed the
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Rubicon or what made Nero prefer his musical practice to serving in the fire brigade. It has therefore been done before, and I think successfully. The decline of classical studies and the rise of so-called modern studies is one of the reasons that this country finds it so difficult to modernise. But that may be an argument for another occasion.
What is at the root of the noble Viscount's perplexity is the question of what we mean by "logic" in this respect. There are two kinds of problem which are covered by that. Normally, by "logic" one would mean showing people—I imagine that in both his incarnations that was done by the noble Earl, Lord Longford—that if they believe one thing, they must also believe the other. It used to be said that if one believed in reducing a country's armed forces, one must also believe in reducing its external commitments. If one believed that the state should spend more money on worthy causes, one must also believe that it should increase taxes or increase borrowing. Those are examples of logic which do not need us to go too far back to illustrate them.
As was hinted by the noble Viscount when he spoke of the diversity of religious opinion, the difficulty is that the logic normally works for most people for most of the time within a specific commitment. That is to say, one begins with a commitment to equality or to hierarchy; to a belief in a revealed religion or a belief in the unaided capacities of human understanding. I am not certain—I shall look forward to hearing other noble Lords with teaching experience—that it is the business of the teacher to try to shift those fundamental beliefs. That is going beyond the explaining of the use of logic to something which comes closer to proselytisation.
In that regard the noble Viscount was perfectly right. Most people believe and act in politics, as in life generally, on the basis of fundamental beliefs, acquired, no doubt in part, from school and from parents. The society in which they are brought up also plays a part. No doubt it could be traced biographically in the case of any individual. But it is what makes people act. If they did not have a set of fundamental beliefs, why should they do anything at all? Those beliefs may, and often do, produce events which we regard as catastrophic. In today's Question Time we again went back to Bosnia. What is the source of the problem? It is the belief on the part of the Serbs that they are entitled to hold any territory which the medieval Serbian kingdom may at one time or another have claimed; the views of the Croats which are a mirror image of that; and the views of the unfortunate Moslems that, having been there for centuries, they are entitled to continue to live a peaceful life with their neighbours.
All those beliefs are held; they are held to the extent, as we have seen, that people are willing not merely to fight but to commit atrocities on their behalf. We must take it for granted that it will take a lot to get rid of anything of that kind and that the best service that those of us who teach can render our students is at least to make them aware that the world is full of people who hold views which they may find odious or inexplicable, but which are part of the world with which, in their adult lives, they will have to deal. That is as true of groups as it is of individuals.

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I shall conclude with an individual point about logic. While your Lordships yesterday were devoting yourselves to the no doubt important debate on Sunday opening, I took the opportunity of going to see the opera Katya Kabanová at the Royal Opera House. Always choose art against politics if the possibility arises! Now the plot of that opera which is based upon a Russian play is very simple. Young lady marries middle-aged husband; middle-aged husband goes off on business; young lady succumbs to the blandishments of another man; husband returns; young lady confesses, is miserable, is torn in her emotions and ends her life by jumping into the Volga. That was a perfectly logical action as far as she was concerned. If you believe, as she did, that she had committed an unutterable sin against the religion to which she adhered—the Russian Orthodox Church —ending one's life is very logical. But if this were generalised, if everyone who committed a marital infidelity were to find it necessary to jump into the Volga, to say the least of it, the Volga boatmen would be much incommoded. So one has to take a great deal of care before assuming that what we can accept in the individual is equally acceptable in the collective.
There are no doubt plenty of things that can be brought to the notice of young people which will help them, including, I repeat, the way in which such problems have been treated in great works of art. It is a humble task. Those of us who have been doing it, as in my case, for nearly 60 years know that the rewards are not great in any sense and we do not mind defending what we are doing. No doubt that will be the case as regards those speaking later in the debate.
3.22 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, on raising a subject which at least has the merit of making us think for ourselves. We cannot go to our party Whips and say, "What's the party line here?", because presumably there is not one, so the noble Viscount needs to be very much praised. I am also happy to follow someone who is widely regarded as the most entertaining and thought-provoking orator in the House. He lived up to his reputation just now. He made references to my change of party allegiance in the 1930s. I cannot quite remember where he stood in the old days when I supported Randolph Churchill in 1933 in the "King and Country" motion debate. I do not know which party the noble Lord belonged to. Perhaps he can tell us.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I have changed my opinions frequently through the force of circumstance and the external arguments. But never, I think, after a brawl.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, at any rate the noble Lord is well qualified to discuss change of allegiance.
If we have been involved in the academic world or have been student; of these subjects we know that there are various kinds of logic—deductive and inductive logic to start with—and all kinds of logicians. When I was a young man, the father of the noble Earl, Lord Russell—I do not know whether the noble Earl is
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present today—was the most distinguished mathematical logician of the day. My tutor in philosophy at Oxford was the terrifying H. W. Joseph. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, if he were here, would subscribe to that description. Joseph poured total scorn on Lord Russell. He regarded him, to put it bluntly, with disdain. He used to titter at the very mention of Lord Russell's name. In those days logicians certainly did not see eye to eye with each other.
Joseph himself came in for some rough treatment. On one occasion I remember going to some kind of philosophical gathering; I cannot think why I was admitted. I was tutor in some subject or other at Christ Church, as the noble Lord mentioned, and I went along with Professor Lindemann, who later became Lord Cherwell. He delivered an address and Joseph got up in his usual style and said, "What does the noble Lord mean by that last phrase?" Lindemann knew the answer to that one. He said, "What does Mr. Joseph mean by 'mean'?" That flummoxed Joseph and he was silenced. These logicians knew the way to pull each other to pieces in the old days.
Then there was my colleague at Christ Church, Freddie, as we called him; Sir Alfred Ayer. He wrote a famous book, very popular with the students, called Language, Truth and Logic, which proved that all these moral concepts were nonsense and that "duty" was an emotive phrase. I remember being in a discussion with Freddie Ayer, later Professor of Logic at London and Oxford. Freddie Ayer was pouring scorn on duty, to the delight of the undergraduates who were at his seminar. I said to him, "I am sure that when the war comes you will do your duty better than I do", which proved to be the case. He joined the Welsh Guards and lasted quite a time there, which is more than I did in the Ox and Bucks. Freddie Ayer knew his duty when the time came. I remember writing a poem about him:
"He mocked his duty with indignant voice That trembles with a passion for the good".
In other words, his logic had nothing to do with his life. That is fair comment on someone and he was quite pleased with the poem.
Later I worked with Sir William Beveridge for three years. He had first-class degrees in Classical Mods. and Mathematics Mods. and Greats at Oxford. He was about as well qualified as anyone could be in the academic world. I remember when I was working for Beveridge someone saying to him, "Would you say that you are the cleverest man in England, Sir William, or would you say that that is true of Maynard Keynes?" He paused, stroked his chin, and said, "Well, inductively it might be me, but deductively Maynard has it". That was one way of looking at logic and that is what we are discussing this afternoon.
This seems to be a time unlimited debate so I shall bring in just one reference to Maynard Keynes. When I was a young man I hoped to be an economist, rather like a poor man's version of the noble Lord, Lord Peston. With that in mind I was working in a stockbroker's office in which Maynard Keynes was some kind of sleeping partner. He was produced one day. I was sat opposite him and he was told that here was a young man who wanted to come and work with him at Cambridge.

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I do not know if any noble Lords knew Keynes but he had very penetrating eyes. He bored into me across the table and said, "The trouble is I can't see into your mind". The trouble was that I thought he could see into it a great deal too clearly and did not really approve of what he saw. He said, "I don't know whether you can keep up with us. We claim in Cambridge to be maybe 10, 20 or 50 years ahead. Could you go our pace?" I reached the same conclusion as he did—that I could not go his pace—and so I abandoned that idea of being a professional economist. Noble Lords might ask what was at work there: logic, emotion or a bit of both perhaps? These decisions are very complicated.
When I worked with Beveridge there he was examining hundreds of people and trying to arrive at social truth and to reach conclusions and help humanity. No one would deny that Beveridge helped humanity as much as anyone in this country this century. He had a tremendous passion for the public good. Whatever one likes to call it, that was what motivated Beveridge. Beveridge, as I knew him, lacked one thing. He lacked religion. He used to say to me, first rather proudly and then rather regretfully, that he was brought up without any religion. At the time of his marriage, which was very happy, I was his bottle-washer or acolyte and made some of the arrangements for the marriage. Beveridge was hoping that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Temple, an old friend from Balliol, would perform the ceremony. But Temple pointed out that Beveridge had not been baptised so he could not be married by Temple. Nevertheless Temple said that he would perform a service of blessing. Beveridge tried to persuade himself that that amounted to the same thing. However, I think the thought worried him and as time went on I think that he regretted his loss of religion.
Finally, we had a debate in the House in 1961 initiated by the father of the noble Earl, Lord Arran. It was based on Christian unity and Beveridge took part. I was delighted of course, but I was a little surprised that he was joining in this great Christian discussion. I said to him after tea,"Master"—I always called him by that title—"which part of the Christian church do you belong to these days?" He paused, so I then said, "When I was at Eton, if you could not get your boy's name down for a house, you could get him put down on the general list". Beveridge liked that idea and said, "All right, put me down on the general list". So at the end of his life Beveridge was on the general list of Christians. He was a wonderful man.
Everybody here has his own experience and has reached conclusions in which that experience is bound to have played a great part. When I was a boy and still at Eton, I went a lot to the Eton Manor Club in Hackney Wick, over which my uncle presided. So I was in contact with the working class in that well-meaning Etonian way. I played rugger. I used to go to camp at Cookham Weir and all the rest of it. That was the kind of thing which a great many Old Etonians in my time were inspired to do by the wonderful sermons which we used to listen to.
Later I taught for the Workers' Educational Association and there I did get some feeling for the
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working class movement. That was autonomous and sprung from those who had been deprived of any real opportunities in life. Even so, I was then still able to work for the Conservative research department. That was true when I first became an Oxford don. The noble Lord is entitled to refer to the Mosley meeting. I would much rather he did that than say it was because I got concussion having fallen off a horse in a point-to-point, which is the other explanation for my becoming a Labour supporter. As I have said elsewhere, I became a socialist through reading the Gospels under the influence of my wife with all the logic, passion or whatever word one likes to use.
When one comes to philosophers and their decisions, there was only one Prime Minister who was a philosopher with professional qualifications; namely, A. J. Balfour. It has been said that when he stayed in a famous house he got stuck on the first landing because the staircase then divided; one set of stairs went down to the right and the other to the left. This philosophy king, A. J. Balfour, used to stay there transfixed because the argument for going down the right hand side of the staircase was exactly balanced by the argument for going down the left. He stayed there indefinitely until someone dragged him down. That is the trouble with academic thinkers; of itself, logic does not suffice.
By my late 20s I knew all the economic arguments. For a short while I was a lecturer, but my standing was not comparable to that of people like my noble friend Lord Peston. For a short time I was a lecturer at the LSE. I knew all the economic arguments—Conservative, Labour, Liberal and all the rest of them. Then other factors arose which I have already mentioned.
Therefore, when we come to the crucial decisions in life which affect everybody in this Chamber and beyond, in the end and if we are fortunate, some higher influence helps us. That is something which is higher than logic or what is ordinarily called emotion. As a result it may be that, if we are lucky, we can make a little difference to the world.
3.34 p.m.
Lord Annan: My Lords, I confess to being slightly puzzled when I read the Motion for today's debate because I have always thought that most teachers in universities did try to teach students to study the evidence and not justify their opinions by repeating, however sincerely, slogans.
Anyone who has studied British history at a university in the past 50 years or more could hardly have failed to do what the noble Viscount wants. He wants universities to take an historical event and see how men and women long ago regarded the issues of their times. Now nearly all history students will have had to study the Civil War in the 17th century and consider the evidence. Indeed, we have in this House two of the foremost experts on the Civil War who have been teaching students to do this very thing; namely, the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell. They have done what the noble Viscount wants.
The trouble is that there are a lot of other things that a university teacher ought to promote. He should somehow teach his students how to acquire knowledge

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and how to express themselves in clear, eloquent English. He should teach them to learn from criticism of their own efforts where they could do better and also, if they can, to rebut the criticism of their teacher and to articulate their dissent decently and without venom. Good manners in argument are the hallmark of a scholar, even if w can all think of great scholars who were famed for their bad manners and their talent for lacerating their adversaries in argument. These are things which dons should do. I am afraid that very few of us consciously teach our students all these things.
Of course, there are indeed remarkable teachers who inspire their students not by their devotion to scrupulous dissection of the evidence but by the strength of their emotion. E. P. Thompson, who died the other day, was just such a one. He campaigned against the Cold War and for nuclear disarmament. He satirised with equal vehemence Stalinism and Thatcherism. He savaged the Establishment and received wisdom. His book The Making of the English Working Class is regarded by many as a classic in social history. But no one ever thought of praising E. P. Thompson for being dispassionate.
Nor did that word spring to mind when one thought of his exact opposite, the ultra-conservative don at Peterhouse, Maurice Cowling, who pulverised liberalism and socialism. Indeed, he preferred to criticise his own side. For Cowling, the conservative philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, was guilty for not endorsing Christianity and he thought that his own mentor, the Christian historian Herbert Butterfield, was far too polite to his adversaries. Yet Cowling influenced a generation of Conservative students at Cambridge.
Both Thompson and Cowling no doubt regarded themselves as being on the side of clear cool thinking, however much some of us regarded them as being carried away by gusts of emotion and failing to understand the nature of politics itself. Still, it could well be argued that university discourse in the past 25 years would have been the poorer without their voices.
It is precisely because I distrust teachers who are dedicated to a cause that I am wary of courses to make students more politically aware, if only because those who want to teach such courses may well be keener to indoctrinate than to analyse. I am also sceptical of courses on western civilisation, or great books, or introductions to contemporary culture. Wisdom cannot be taught. Wisdom is something that is hidden in the folds of a subject. Some manage to acquire it and some do not.
I doubt whether we ought to go overboard for subjects that are suddenly declared to be specially relevant to today's problems. When the League of Nations was founded after the First World War, chairs and departments of public international law were created: for was it not self-evident that what had happened in 1914 had been the breakdown of international law? Similarly, after 1945 when the atom bomb was dropped, high-minded people argued that we need to understand more about the nature of science and the problems that it raises, so departments of the history and philosophy of science were established in astonishing numbers at universities. Very few of those
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chairs in public international law exist today. They have been turned into chairs in other branches of the law. I wonder how many of the departments of the history and philosophy of science will be found to be flourishing in the year 2010.
But I am not entirely negative about the Motion. I do believe that universities can train their students to consider evidence dispassionately. I do believe in slightly less specialisation. I think that scientists should be introduced to the ethical problems that they will encounter as scientists. I want economists to be introduced to sociology. I want sociologists to be introduced to old fashioned political theory, and I want modern linguists to study the institutions of the country whose language they are studying.
I remember a course which the philosopher the late Susan Stebbing used to give on "Straight and Crooked Thinking". A course on the straight and crooked use of statistics would be especially welcome today to expose the answers that civil servants give to their Ministers for answering Parliamentary Questions.
The noble Viscount wants universities to make their students understand why people are swayed by emotion as well as by reason. One of Britain's internationally most famous intellectuals, Sir Isaiah Berlin, has devoted his life to doing that. He has reminded us in a series of books and lectures that the German and Russian thinkers of the 19th century wrote in defiance of the rationalism of Locke and Hume and the 18th century French philosophes of the Enlightenment. Those German thinkers, said Berlin, said that human beings are moved more by their culture than by reason—by the language they spoke, their laws, their religion, their sense of belonging to a community or nation. Marx, said Berlin, was wrong: national self-consciousness was more powerful than class solidarity. And can we not see: today that that is true all over the world?
I agree with the noble Viscount that all university teachers ought to offer up the prayer that Aristophanes put into the mouth of Euripides in The Frogs:
"When ranged in argument may I reason aright".
At the end of last year I made a somewhat astringent speech in the House criticising the over-bureaucratic method of monitoring teaching in universities, but I do not question the need to monitor university teaching. Last summer I attended a vast international conference in Jerusalem about the need to promote democracy in a multi-racial society. I was appalled by the incoherent mutterings and mumblings of some of the British contingent from our newest universities. I was appalled also when one professor began by denouncing as a capitalist ploy the need to make pupils at school or students at university more fit to get jobs.
So I thank the noble Viscount for tabling this Motion, but I think that there is a danger in thinking that one can empty political problems of emotion. As was said by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, the name of Bertrand Russell—the late father of the noble Earl, Lord Russell —will be for ever immortal as the man who changed logic and the thinking about logic at the turn of the last century. But when he turned to politics, his views were less convincing. What stands in the way, he asked, of stopping war, controlling the birth rate, and improving

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living standards? "Only the evil passions of human minds", he answered. Or again, he advocated that whenever disputes between nations occurred, we should substitute for the names of those nations the symbols x, y and z. That algebraic formula would remove, he thought, the vulgar emotional prejudices in the dispute in question. I wish we could do that. I wish it was as easy as that. But we can't and it isn't.
3.45 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I participate in this afternoon's debate with a good deal of trepidation. A number of extremely distinguished academics are taking part in the debate. We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, my noble friend Lord Longford and the noble Lord, Lord Annan. I am bound to say that I was extremely nervous about the whole project until I learnt that the noble Lord, Lord Annan, had only recently read the work of E. P. Thompson on the poverty of theory, in which I became immersed some three weeks ago and to the effectiveness of which I should like to pay some small testimony.
I would not wish to approach the Motion solely from the aspect of university teachers and university students. There is a good reason for that: if I am to draw on my personal experience—and I am encouraged to do so to a modest degree by my noble friend Lord Longford—I never went to a university; I went to a grammar school. Indeed, many of your Lordships have not had the advantage of going to university, so, if I may, I prefer to use the words "teacher" and "student" in their widest sense.
The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, ventured to make a judgment between logic and emotion. I think that it is a little dangerous to set one against the other because ultimately each is part of the other if only in terms of memory and the impact of human experience upon the human mind.
I am a bit discouraged about the use of logic. Your Lordships will recall that during the course of a debate on the Maastricht Treaty, to which I shall not refer again, I endeavoured in a series of lengthy arguments, using the most impeccable logic that I could command, to get your Lordships to reject the concept that had been advanced by both Front Benches. I failed in that, except perhaps in the case of one noble Lord (whose name I shall not isolate for fear of embarrassing him) who was converted by the argument.
I discuss logic on its own and for good reason. There is a story said to be recounted by Chesterton which your Lordships will immediately recall. It is of three learned gentlemen, all academics, who met to see whether they could find the causes of drunkenness. On the first night they drank whisky and water and they got drunk. On the second night they drank gin and water and they got dunk. On the third night they drank vodka and water and they got drunk. They came to the logical conclusions that, as water was the only common factor in all three instances, water caused drunkenness. So logic in that sense can be a little deceptive.
Perhaps I may also refer your Lordships to the holocaust. Once the Nazi leadership during the war
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came to the conclusion—for good or ill, for whatever reason, as a result of whatever instinct and for whatever sense of values it possessed—that the Jews were the basic cause of all the evils which were apparently inflicted on the Aryan race and on Nazi Germany, the steps to the holocaust were completely logical. If one believed that the Jews should not exist, the holocaust and the extermination camps were a logical consequence.
Finally, in the field of economics, in which my noble friends Lord Peston and Lord Desai are prominent, a computer on the basis of data fed into it will produce a completely logical response. That is inevitable because if one feeds the same data into a computer it will come out with the inevitable logic. That somewhat depresses me. The results of computerised economics in the shape of computer models, all reasoning logically have, to say the least, been slightly depressing during the past 10 years. Instinct has often proved to be a far better guide to what is likely to happen to the economy.
I turn now to the role of the senses. We all have seven senses and we all suffer pain and pleasure. Aside from the reasoning that we employ and the tuition that we are given, experiences affect us most profoundly. It is often said particularly by people of a Conservative philosophy: human nature being what it is, what can one expect? The inevitable assumption is that human nature is essentially weak and there is something slightly defective about it. Human nature being what it is, one can expect only whatever evil is already there. That is a fundamental misconception. Surely it is basic human nature to react to the environment and to change it and in the process of changing it to become changed oneself. That is the essence of the philosophy of E. P. Thompson, that we are all the product of an accumulated experience. We all judge on the basis of values that we have formed not only as a result of the introspection in which we from time to time engage when trying to reason things out but of the experiences to which our entire bodies have been subjected.
Once one considers that it becomes clear that one cannot isolate logic from emotion. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, was slightly autobiographical; perhaps your Lordships will forgive me if briefly I follow the same course. When I was at a grammar school in Lincolnshire I had a formidable history and literature teacher, a middle-aged lady. To this day I remember her describing the rise of the British Empire and the amount of the globe that it then occupied. She illustrated it graphically by reference to a map shown on a slide projector, with the areas highlighted in red. She spoke with pride and indeed passion. She was not going to make a mere academic exercise of teaching us how the Empire had grown; she was vibrant to the point where her hair almost shook. She was proud of the growth of the British Empire and the part that the British people had played in it.
Being an impressionable person I was most convinced by that. I thought, "Well, you are not merely a teacher by rote; you really believe in what you are saying". So I ventured to study the British Empire, as it was then called, and inevitably landed up in the Conservative Party in the Junior Imperial League in

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North Paddington. I regret to say that there a mixture of both logic and emotion finally caused me to leave that pleasant experience behind me and to take on almost the opposite philosophy. But one thing I am certain of: had it been left to logic alone—had no sense of values being involved—the result would have been very different.
From time to time we must wonder where we obtain a sense of values from. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, gave us a clue. We search back into our lives to discover where we obtained our concepts of justice, honour and integrity and a conviction of the necessity for compassion. Surely the answer is that we did not get them purely from logic; we acquired them from a combination of experiences in our lives which every day leave us different from what we were the previous day. In changing our environment—and I use "environment" in its widest sense as being everything external to oneself—the genius of the human race is that it becomes changed in the process.
That makes me believe that one should never insert in a Motion of this kind, "logic rather than emotion", because emotions are very important indeed. Emotions make us rethink and in the process of doing so we can once again become emotional. Who can doubt, for example, the history as it will emerge of the Balkan States? It would not have been quite the same had not the human senses been assailed visually by the television pictures of the misery in Sarajevo. If that had been conveyed to us merely in print, would the reaction of the population have been the same? Therefore, emotions must play their part.
Teachers have been referred to frequently in the debate. We need to regard teachers much more highly than we do at present. We should reflect on what we all owe to those who taught us, sometimes under conditions of great difficulty. Those of us who have had a modest degree of success, or otherwise, should ask ourselves where we would have been had not a sense of values been inculcated into us and had we not been taught systems of logic. If we reflect on that we must surely see that the teaching profession should be elevated to a far higher level than appears to be politically feasible or convenient at the present time.
Above all, the function of a teacher is to inculcate in students—whether university or grammar, secondary or primary school—a. love of learning. That is the vital factor for the teaching profession. In this country we should be extreme. y proud that our teaching profession generally has succeeded in that to a great degree.
4.1 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter: My Lords, a contribution from these Benches might have been expected on the Motion brought forward by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, although in this case it will not proceed out of any expertise or experience in teaching, but will be based on general principles.
In judging any issue, one starts to make a judgment at some point on a line. No doubt that is a different point for each of us, but it is on a line. At one end of that line logic is more predominant; at the other end, emotion is more predominant As with other speakers in the debate so far, I am bound to incline to the view that this matter
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must be a "both/and" rather than an "either/or". But that said, logic must in a sense be primary. Anybody who has been at a public meeting where there is a lack of accurate information, the lack of an ability to think clearly and the lack of ability by the leadership of the meeting to help people to think clearly, will know the utter frustration which results for everybody and for individuals. Therefore, in a sense, logic must be primary in the judging of issues.
One of the essential ingredients is the provision of information for decision making. That means that there is a great responsibility upon the suppliers of information so that they do not abuse that responsibility by partiality or by selectivity in their presentation of information. That applies whether it is the academic historian writing a work of history or whether it is those in the profession of journalism, through whatever medium.
Experience seems to show in our present times that through the medium of television, harrowing pictures can be shown of parts of the world where there is hunger and deprivation to an extreme degree. Those pictures bring forth a great response because of the emotions that are aroused. I make no valued judgment about that because it is surely not to be regarded as anything but good. But is prime time also given —I do not believe that it is in the same proportion—to presenting the historical and economic factors so that people may learn why those things are as they are? In that example, in our public life through public communications, emotion seems to have precedence over logical thinking.
On the other hand, in making decisions as a whole—the whole process rather than merely the start where logic must be primary—emotion has its proper place. Would William Wilberforce have committed his political life to the great cause which he did unless he was deeply moved by human suffering over a long period and would he have done so in the face of enormous difficulties and opposition? There is a proper place for emotion.
Nearly a decade ago in my present capacity as the visitor of one of the Oxford colleges, I was looking from the high table towards the undergraduates and l asked my neighbour, a fellow of the college, what they would be doing next in their lives. Now at that focal point, that place of history and culture, a place which for centuries has been a preparation for service, my neighbour named a certain occupation in which the financial rewards are very great. He said that 25 per cent. would he going into that occupation. Perhaps he exaggerated, but his feelings about it were very clear to me.
A young person of ability assessing how he will spend his life might, by logic, conclude that the amassing of personal fortune is by far the most logical way, given his ability, to spend that life. Surely the element of emotion is needed to play a part in that vital life decision which people of ability need to make for the benefit of everyone else. Other less self-regarding factors need to be taken into account in the making of such a decision.
Therefore, as other noble Lords have said, truth is many-sided. There needs to be room for the intuitive because the intuitive is built in as part of our human

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nature. It seems to me that the evidence from our life today is that managing personal relationships is being found, in the conditions of today, to be an extremely difficult matter, especially by young people, as we heard earlier today during Question Time. Therefore, in the teaching of students, I submit that there needs to be not only that essential emphasis on logical thinking, but also that to which, perhaps, not so much attention is being given in a formal sense; namely, training in how to handle the emotional side of our natures.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, I enter the debate with some trepidation. Quite the favourite Christmas card that my wife and I received last year showed that wonderful Christian concept of a lion and a lamb lying down together. It is a wonderful concept, but entirely illogical. Having fallen among academic lions, I am bound to say that I feel some sympathy this afternoon with that lamb, although I am encouraged while standing here because, be it academic, politician or churchman, it seems to me that we have a common purpose in life which is the carrying forward of society and, if possible, its improvement.
I once owned a black labrador dog who was an incurable romantic. Members of the House who have kept such a dog will recognise both the type and the impossibility of describing him within the bounds of language which is permitted in this Chamber. Despite all reasonable precautions, the dog succeeded one night in doing his vanishing dog act. It was a dark winter's evening and, unfortunately, he forgot his Highway Code: a passing car smashed his hind legs quite badly. Logic dictated that the sensible course of action was to have the dog put down. That would save the vet and myself much trouble and my family a deal of worry and agitation; and, indeed, would also save my neighbours considerable worry and agitation. Emotion suggested expensive surgery and treatment, immense trouble for the vet and great trouble for myself and my family, followed by a long convalescence. The outcome of that sorry tale does not matter here, but the dilemma that it illustrates is very relevant. Again, I am encouraged by the fact that Benjamin Disraeli, at the height of his authority, advanced the view that Britain is not governed by logic.
Coming to this House, as I do, without any parliamentary background and being unused to the practice of debating the most minute points, I must confess that it is still a great pleasure, as well as an honour, to sit in this Chamber and both watch and listen to the cut and thrust of debate. How often one hears a speech of sparkling clarity (and impeccable logic from the point of view of the speaker) only to find it followed by another speech of brilliant lucidity (and impeccable logic from the point of view of the responder) which is the reciprocal of the first speech and entirely refutes the position taken. There are rare occasions when there appears to be a third strand of logic at work, although that is not so easy to detect. Of course, there are the
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wonderful non-partisan debates, which do not happen quite so often, where the speeches glitter with as many facets as a sparkling diamond.
We sit here with a flourishing diversity of view and we are asked to consider,
"the case for teaching students the importance of reaching decisions on political and other issues on [the basis] of logic".
Where would this House or Parliament be if human affairs could be entirely regulated by cold logic? I have given limited thought to the question of whether a logical society exists, but my knowledge leads me to the conclusion that there is no such thing so far as concerns mankind. A hive of bees might, perhaps, be considered an entirely logical society, but I fear that we shall never see that Utopian state as long as mankind is around. I am thankful for that fact.
If I am correct—and experience teaches me that it is dangerous to hold any views too positively and too inflexibly—then, on the question of educating students, we are thrust back to the problem that we face here each day in rather a different way. How can students learn to undertake their business when there are often as many views present as there are people to express them? How do they learn to respect and take into account the views of the many who might disagree with them? How do they learn to consider wider perspectives and views other than those of their immediate circle? I know of only one sure route: learning from hard experience and, even more importantly, from one's own mistakes.
We were all students at one time. We need to remember that by far and away the greater number of students in this country do not attend universities, even if you consider the new classification which has brought the old polytechnic sector into universities. In many ways, I sometimes feel that I am still a student. How many of us can stand up and say that today we hold the same views as we held when we were young, and that harsh experience and hard knocks have not had their effect? I certainly cannot. I believe that students are exceedingly fortunate. We should not expect them to be brought together to conform with what we immediately think. Let them enjoy their freedom and their own ways. Harsh reality will catch up with them quite soon enough.
4.17 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, I should like, first, to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for giving us the opportunity to debate the matter. In the short time that I have been here—namely, about three years or so—I do not recall speaking on such a splendid and abstract subject. Having been an academic all my life, I prefer speaking on splendid and abstract subjects about which I know more than about practical affairs.
I believe that the noble Viscount wants us not merely to contrast logic with emotion. As the noble Lord, Lord Annan, said, when the late Bertrand Russell revolutionised logic at the end of the last century he reduced it to a very dry and axiomatic subject. That logic is not often of very much use to statesmen or philosophers. The noble Viscount would like us to rely more on reason than unreason. He would like people to be taught to come to decisions on the basis of reasoned arguments

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—that is, if I may put it this way, the balancing of costs and benefits rather than merely being driven by unreason or irrationalities.
I am sure that the noble Viscount would agree with my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington that, so far as concerns emotion, there is noble emotion which he would not want to exclude from anyone's upbringing or system of values. What the noble Viscount fears more than emotion is unreason. When unreason drives people to take certain decisions, he is probably quite right to worry that we may all go astray.
Economists have a very simple answer to such problems. We assume that people behave rationally and that that is the end of the matter. We assume that people behave as if they do not take into account irrational sentiments and emotions. However, if they do take irrational sentiments and emotions into account, we proceed to analyse their unreason in a rational way. If someone is a drug addict, we find out precisely what is irrational in his behaviour. When nations impose tariffs we claim that is an irrational thing to do, but we analyse it and say it is done because it gives one group an advantage against another group.
Of course this is a splendid way of arriving at conclusions if one can analyse matters in that way. There is a famous story of an economist named William Stanley Jevons who received a splendid and rather generous offer to go to Australia to teach. He was teaching in Manchester when he received the offer. He carefully analysed the costs and benefits of such a move and realised that he should go to Australia. He calculated all the costs and benefits of the move in great detail. He arrived at the conclusion that the ratio of benefits to costs was in favour of his going to Australia. However, he suddenly realised that he had failed to take one factor into account; namely, that he did not want to go to Australia. When he took that factor into account, the cost/benefit ratio favoured not going to Australia. Clearly, when making a decision one has to take into account one's irrational or primitive preferences and emotions and later proceed to a rational analysis.
I believe the noble Viscount has raised two issues in this debate. One is how we should be taught to reach decisions on the basis of reason and logic rather than unreason. The noble Viscount would like universities to go further down that road with their students. I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Annan, when he said that universities try to do exactly that. A student may hear cogent arguments from two, three or four people who, however, may be saying completely contradictory things. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, referred to that point. However, we hope that sooner or later students will learn what decision to arrive at having heard cogent but contradictory arguments. That is what we try to teach students to do. It is a mistake to believe that universities teach students anything useful or practical. Universities are not good places in which to learn anything useful or practical. Useful and practical subjects can be taught much quicker outside universities. However, universities teach people how to think for themselves and how to arrive at decisions by
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themselves. The ability to think for oneself is an extremely rare talent and one that is often lacking in people.
Rather than teaching students to arrive at the correct conclusion, I would rather teach my students scepticism. I should like to teach them not to accept any argument that is put before them at its face value but to think it out for themselves. If people can think for themselves they are much more likely to arrive at the correct conclusion, especially if they have been taught how to think for themselves rather than relying on authority or someone else's say-so. It would be a great mistake to reach a conclusion because it is a popular conclusion. It would also be wrong to reach a conclusion because it is what one has always believed in. One sometimes has to change one's ideas.
Secondly, the noble Viscount also wants us to be able to analyse why people commit irrational acts. That covers the much wider area of history and social sciences. Historians and social scientists try to analyse irrational actions night and day. Perhaps they do not do that very well, and perhaps they have not succeeded in arriving at answers to the deeper questions of life—for example, why there is conflict. People used to think rather crudely that somehow conflicts exist because of poverty. People used to assume there was a simple economic reason for conflict. People used to declare that if only there was less poverty and more prosperity, people would stop fighting each other.
People also used to think that with the growth of knowledge and enlightenment, belief in religion would decline and people would become more rational. I believe we have now reached the conclusion that we do not quite know why conflict exists despite the existence of prosperity. Why is there such trouble in Yugoslavia, for example? In the early 1980s we used to hold Yugoslavia up as a rare example of a society which had avoided both capitalism and Stalinism; as a society which had achieved co-operation among its workers and a good federal system, and had given tremendous autonomy to its regions. Yugoslavia was considered to be an ideal place and a prosperous and friendly country where multiculturalism was recognised. But suddenly it exploded into the grimmest picture of irrationality that has occurred, certainly in post-war Europe.
I do not believe we understand why people behave the way they do when one can perfectly reasonably' point out to them that it is not in their interest, and they will not achieve what they want to achieve, by behaving in that way. That remains a challenge because one thing we have learnt is that we no longer hold the faith the 19th century philosophers held that somehow people are rational or will become more and more rational as time passes. I believe we take the slightly broader intellectual view that somehow reason and unreason are strangely mixed in people's characters, and it is hard to disentangle them and analyse why people behave the way that they do.
My next remark may reveal a slightly partisan view. Society has devoted much money to splitting the atom or to developing accelerators which may cost £500 million or £700 million to enable atoms to collide with one other at great speed. Society has also spent much

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money on sending people into space and on researching the general theory of matter. In comparison, we spend little money on finding out why people behave irrationally or why societies are in such difficulties. I am not referring to any particular government. I believe that by and large as regards the more important and bloodier questions of life, society devotes far too few resources to finding out why we behave the way we do.
We devote enormous resources to studying inanimate, controllable matter, or even animate matter as that can sometimes be controlled as in the field of biology. However, we always obtain good results from that. We do not devote enormous resources to the social sciences because we tend to question whether we will discover anything at all from that research. However, I believe that in many ways, if we are to minimise further bloodshed in the future—I do not know how successful we will be in that—we need to think through the matter that the noble Viscount has raised much more seriously. Why is it that despite knowing that reason is better than unreason, or that logic is definitely better than base emotion, people continue behaving not only unreasonably but often, unfortunately, they find that only unreason succeeds in obtaining for them what they want? If they are reasonable, they do not achieve what they want.
The noble Viscount has pointed out a paradox. I can think about this matter as hard as I can, but I still do not know why people behave as they do. I hope that I teach my students to behave if not reasonably at least to be able to think straight and to arrive at conclusions by balancing costs and benefits. However, it is hard to predict what they will do in the future and how they will develop in the future. After all, we must recall that the majority of post-war Prime Ministers were Oxford graduates.
4.29 p.m.
Lord Peston: My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for introducing this debate. I am bound to say that it has turned out to be rather more interesting than I expected. I must tell my noble friend Lord Longford that he was entirely correct to say that there is no party line on these matters. Indeed, I would go further and say I am not even sure that I shall agree with my own speech by the time I reach the end of it.
I can say about the debate in general that if all that is being asserted is that it is desirable for young people to be taught to think logically and even to have some acquaintance with formal logic, none of us would disagree. I would go further and support the view of my noble friend Lord Glenamara, who argued some years ago that the earlier that happens, the better. For example, it was one of the many merits of what was then called the "new maths" that it tried to teach children the concepts of elementary logic rather than the rote learning of tables, the significance of which was beyond them.
More specifically on the subject before us, the point that I must make is that most of the students I have taught over the years have had little or no interest in
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politics. This may seem surprising, given that most of them have specialised in one or other of the social sciences. But, surprising or not, I cannot say that I regard it as a bad thing. Indeed I must confess that when I was a student I had virtually no interest in politics, in the sense of current affairs. I knew I was a Labour supporter and certainly not a Tory, but that was that. There were much better things to do as an undergraduate than to get involved with the students' union or the main political societies. I think that is still the case, even though 18 year-olds now have the vote. Incidentally, I was most interested in hearing several noble Lords say over time they have changed their political views. I have stuck steadfastly to two views. No matter how black the day or how bad the score, I support Labour and I support the Arsenal Football Club.
My attitude as an undergraduate is, I think, germane to the present debate. I am sympathetic to the cause of rationality; but I have to say that I do not believe that what side one is on or one's moral beliefs are determined in quite such a cold-blooded way. It is more a matter of emotion and of gut feeling; and in my judgment it is none the worse for that. To give an obvious example, it is clear to me that it is wrong to pursue policies which make the poor poorer. I may try to persuade you of that, my Lords, but if you cannot see it clear, so to speak, I do not see how logic can help.
More generally, although I was brought up in the utilitarian tradition, I find utilitarianism a most unattractive philosophy. To put it at its mildest, to justify doing what is right on the grounds that it is useful or that it generates a net positive social or economic benefit perverts what is meant by doing right. It is wrong to behave badly towards others, because behaving badly is wrong, not because behaving well is useful. The same goes for other precepts of good behaviour.
This does not mean that rational analysis does not matter. The investigation of the probable consequences of one's actions is important, but rational analysis is not all that matters. In my opinion, the rational or utilitarian life is both personally boring and destructive of our finest values. Of course there are practical difficulties, and we have all studied them as students. Killing people is wrong; but there are countless works of philosophy and theology which set out, frequently in terms of the greater good, when it is perfectly permissible to kill the enemy in wartime. Bribery is wrong, but should British industry oil the wheels of commerce when others are doing it and there is no other way of landing a contract?
In teaching, my view has been above all that one has a loyalty to the subject. There is an academic discipline to be understood and one's job is to help the student to understand it. It has always seemed to me—I think other noble Lords would agree—that one wishes to help the student to learn rather than to teach him or her per se. I would go further. I have always said that I can teach macro-economics in about one term, or two at the most; but that does not lead to the conclusion that degree courses are too long: quite the contrary, because understanding takes much longer than gaining the ability to produce a decent set of exam answers. Education is there to facilitate understanding, and that takes time. I, for one, still find myself suddenly

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appreciating the significance of what I was taught 40 years ago, not least in the fields of political theory and philosophy. The great philosopher Karl Popper taught us that what was most important was the critical attitude, the sceptism that my noble friend Lord Desai referred to.
As to my interpretation of the present debate, I wish my students to ask questions and to query what they are reading. But that too leads to a paradox, because they have to master enough of their subject before criticism is worthwhile. I do not believe in what may be called the "democracy of the intellect". Criticism which is based on ignorance is tedious and unhelpful. Your Lordships know how much I enjoy being a Member of your Lordships' House When the time comes, of course, I shall have to vote for reform or even abolition; but in the meantime I make the most of it. When I am asked what I most like about your Lordships' House, I say what the noble Lord, Lord Annan, has said: that good manners in argument are primary. That is what your Lordships' House excels at.
On a more technical matter, I should like to refer to a particular problem encountered in economics. There is a wide tendency to misunderstand the nature of correlation. That two variables are closely correlated —for example, the change in MO and in GDP at current prices—does not tell you which of them causes the other or even whether there is a causal relationship between them. Furthermore, if two variables appear to be uncorrelated that does not imply a lack of causation. I sometimes think that if I were allowed one wish to improve rational discourse it would be that everybody would understand this simple proposition that I have just enunciated.
It is important to recognise that there are many forms of discourse. Academic disciplines have their own styles, and we ought to show some sympathy for the way our colleagues approach problems, no matter how much their way may differ from our own. Many years ago, as a young lecturer I taught simple economics to scientists and engineers at Imperial College, London. I hasten to add that I did that not out of a sense of public responsibility but strictly for the money. They had been instructed in what I may call "Newtonian mechanics", and they believed there was a method which could be applied to solve e very problem. It was all a matter of knowing what the method was and then applying it. They were extremely irritated by a subject—my own —in which for many questions there were no answers while for others there were too many answers. They found it difficult to cope with an alleged academic discipline in which it was quite usual to say "I do not know" or "I am not sure".
I must add, to my regret, that although a few of them were interested in the arts, I could never persuade them to abandon the view that the study of literature was very much easier than the study of physics, and that to consider all this in terms of a hierarchy of difficulty was to show a profound misunderstanding of all things intellectual. I regret to say that there are still natural scientists who hold such opinions. This is germane to today's debate, because there is a danger of going from the desirabiliity of being logical to the error of assuming
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that all problems are solvable and that all ignorance is wilful or could be removed by more logical effort. There is also the danger of under-valuing all sorts of human discourse; the style of taste and of understanding. To put it bluntly—here I am following a point made by my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington—one may be logical, but starting from premises which are nonsensical one will arrive at conclusions which are at least equally so.
My conclusion is that I do not advocate irrationality, but I do believe that our emotions are central to our existence. They are not incompatible with logic but in a sense they define the universe to which logic may be applied. What I am opposed to is a narrow logicality which seeks to replace good sense. Here I echo some remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. All of us in your Lordships' House hear our colleagues make some excellent logical arguments but deep down we know they are mistaken, even though at the time we are not sure why. I hope we continue to use our judgment and can convey to young people how important that is.
4.40 p.m.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for the opportunity to debate such a fascinating and challenging Motion. It has taken us into areas of philosophical abstraction where, if the Government had an interest, they have no domain. I hope that that allows me to make some personal observations without placing my occupation in your Lordships' House in jeopardy.
The Motion in the name of the noble Viscount has an air of pessimism; I believe that most of the debate this afternoon has had an opposite expression: one of optimism. What we are talking about is the teaching and education of young people, and in that we must be always optimistic—for what else can we be?
The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, reminded us that hooliganism in political debate was no new occurrence, and he related an instance with himself, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and my noble friend Lord Blake. However, he makes the serious point that logic is exercised within a commitment of values and beliefs. If teachers can indeed bring their students to understand how others can feel deep commitment, they will have performed an invaluable and important service. I envy my noble friend in that he was with Janá č ek last night while we were in the Chamber debating Sunday trading. But, unfortunately, the story of Katya Kabanova would have changed had she lived today. She would have had a raft of services provided by local authorities; she would have divorced her appalling husband; she would have moved out of the house of her equally appalling mother-in-law; and she would have remarried and lived happily ever after.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, produced another of his most enjoyable speeches. I believe that at some stage we have to cease believing in Father Christmas. We have to cease believing in a golden age. However, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, certainly had a golden age, an Arcadia, in his youth. He taught us that with logic and emotion other matters have to be taken into

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consideration. There is humanity and there is also faith and religion. To those I add insight and vision. I would hope that any generation would take pains to ensure that the next generation was well equipped with those qualities.
The noble Lord, Lord Annan, reminded us that some of the best teachers have combined logic with emotion to put across the need for analysis in a passionate and committed way. He also reminded us that teachers should also help to nurture wisdom if it cannot be directly taught.
I never thought that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, would admit to coming to speak in your Lordships' House with any feelings of insecurity. I was most interested to hear his discourse on the limitations of logic used on its own. He convincingly argued that human beings must surely bring into play many other aspects of human nature when reaching conclusions and decisions. He also sensibly reminded us that we are not only concerned with higher education but also with schools.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter reminded us that we need both logic and emotion, but he stressed the primacy of logic. At a very young age I became fascinated by natural history. I was a compulsive collector, whether with the butterfly net, the moth trap or wandering on the beach collecting birds' eggs as one was allowed to do in those golden days. It soon came to me that the existence of God was self-evident; and it is a view which I have held ever since. But is that a matter of logic or did I need to believe in a being superior to myself? The right reverend Prelate also reminded us that truth is many sided.
The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, reminded us that we have a rich diversity of human experience and that many individuals can use impeccable logic yet reach very different conclusions. I am sure we all agree that our students should not be too constrained when young into fixed ways of thinking.
The noble Lord, Lord Desai, made a most useful contribution by suggesting that we should look at decision-making in terms of reason and unreason; and that the greatest service our teachers can render to students is to teach them to think for themselves. He also posed a vital question which it is difficult to answer: why is it that most people behave with unreason when it is all too clear that it will not bring them their desires?
The noble Lord, Lord Peston, and I share one factor in common. We have remained with a single political party. Most of my friends, and certainly all my enemies, believe that I may have had a liberal view at some stage when I entered my teen years. It soon disappeared and I have remained a member of the Conservative Party ever since. But the noble Lord also expressed more important views on the precepts of morality. It is an important subject.
When we read today of financial frauds which have been perpetrated, we should look back to the morality of a generation or so ago and ask ourselves what has gone wrong. My private view is that we have moved away
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from partnerships and firms which ran themselves in a partnership mould in which there was individual moral responsibility. The worth of the firm was its integrity and those who gained the fees and made the income and those who ran the management had an interest in common. I do not claim that they were all totally moral by nature but they were certainly moral by interest. When we have broken that mould up into other forms of organisation, with the fee earners and commission earners at one end, with their annual salaries depending on what they produce, and management at the other, I believe that we have a vacuum in the middle. It is a matter that at some stage we shall have to address.
This Motion goes right to the heart of how we educate our young people, and indeed adults, for the opportunities and challenges they will face throughout their lives. This includes all aspects of their lives—social, cultural, domestic, leisure and work-related.
What are we trying to achieve in providing a sound education? I have no wish to become too philosophical. We have heard much philosophy today. But I would describe the basic objectives as enabling people to develop knowledge, understanding and skills in a wide range of subjects and at a depth appropriate to the type and level of education which they are pursuing, to encourage and stimulate them to learn more about those and other subjects and to develop the skills of literacy, numeracy and so on which they will need for such further study and in order to make an effective contribution as citizens and as workers; and as they move up the educational ladder to develop a constructively critical approach to the world at large.
What this means is that we should help our students, of whatever age, to learn and to think for themselves. We should help them to develop inquiring minds which are prepared to seek out and consider the facts of a situation before coming to conclusions; and those conclusions should follow from a rational appraisal rather than from chance or prejudice. It is also important to recognise that different people may legitimately draw different conclusions from the same situation—a valuable point made by a number of noble Lords.
We must not only encourage our students to think; we must also encourage tolerance of the views of others should they not be in line with their own. What a government must aim to do is to put in place an education system that actively promotes the desirable views of rational thought and assists students to develop into balanced citizens. I believe that our education reforms over the past years have been very much in this direction.
In the schools we have, of course, introduced the national curriculum. We have identified 10 foundation subjects which schools must teach. Of those 10, three subjects—English, mathematics and science (and of course in Wales, Welsh)—are designated as core subjects. The other foundation subjects are art, geography, history, music, physical education, technology and a modern foreign language. Those subjects provide a sound basis for a broad general education which will prepare young people for their future lives and careers.

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The Education Reform Act also seeks to ensure that the whole of the curriculum promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at school and of society generally and prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life.
In the Motion put by the noble Viscount there was mention of politics and political thought. My grandfather sat in your Lordships' House on the Liberal Benches. My father for the greater part of his time sat as a member of the Labour Party before moving to the Cross-Benches. I sit on the Conservative Benches, as did my grandmother. My late kinsman Lord Milford was the only Communist Member of your Lordships' House and last week his son took his place on the Cross-Benches. We all come from a common socio-economic background, as sociologists would tell us; we all come from a common thread of family life. Yet we have all made very different value judgments.
There are societies in this world who believe that the only logical course of politics is to have a single political party, because how logically can you argue that two should exist? However, we believe in a plural system and therefore I would find it difficult to visualise an education system in which political thought could be made. How to make political judgments is one thing, but political thought is another. The Government are, of course, very much opposed to political bias or indoctrination of my kind in schools.
We have 'taken powers to forbid the promotion of partisan political views in teaching and to require a balanced presentation of opposing views when political issues are dealt with in the classroom. Anyone who has grounds for believing that a school has acted otherwise has formal machinery through which to pursue a complaint, with ultimate recourse to the Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State has no power to forbid the use of particular teaching materials. That is a matter for the professional judgment of teachers. Neither have the Government powers to impose particular teaching methods in schools.
We are aiming to improve the quality and professionalism of teaching by reforming teacher training. Our reforms should help to ensure that new teachers can teach difficult and sensitive subjects in an appropriate and well-informed way.
Nobody should be admitted to a teacher training course unless they have the necessary personal and intellectual qualities for teaching young people. Courses are now expected to focus on the knowledge and practical skills necessary for effective classroom teaching. By the end of their training, we expect teachers to have the subject knowledge they need, and to use a range of teaching techniques and judge when and how to deploy them.
The policies we have adopted for schools have led to more pupils being motivated towards and qualified for higher education. In 1979, the participation rate was one in eight. It is now almost one in three, the target we set for ourselves by the end of this decade. But alongside the growth in numbers of the traditional 18 year-old with GCE A-levels, the university population is
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growing in other ways. Nowadays more mature students than young people start HE courses; and there has been a marked increase in the number of applicants accepted with qualifications other than A-levels.
Many noble Lords will be familiar with this description of increased and wider participation in higher education, but I remind the House of it to emphasise the diversity of provision that now exists. Academic staff need to adapt their teaching methods to accommodate to a broader range of students and backgrounds.
It is even truer in higher education than at other levels that the Government have no role in determining what shall be taught and how it shall be taught. Your Lordships have argued long and eloquently in this House to protect academic freedom whenever it appeared to you that it might be under the slightest threat. Your Lordships will recall that in connection with the exercise of the functions of the university commissioners in relation to academic tenure, Section 202(2) of the Education Reform Act 1988 provides that the commissioners shall have regard,
"to the need … to ensure that academic staff have freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at their institutions".
Nevertheless, it is just as important in higher education as it is elsewhere that teaching is of high quality, that it promotes rational thought and that it does not pander to prejudice and political bias.
The safeguards in higher education are the diversity of provision and the informed consumer. Naturally, I include as consumers the students themselves, but also employers and society generally. The good name and reputation of a higher education institution as a seat of learning and creative thought are vital to an institution of higher education. Those institutions, I am glad to say, are creating ever closer links with employers and with the wider community. As they do so, there is greater recognition that the community needs to know more about how these institutions discharge their responsibilities.
The Government recognise that with increased participation and greater diversity in higher education comes a need to ensure that satisfactory quality assurance systems are in place. Following the policies outlined in our May 1991 White Paper, we have encouraged the representative bodies of the higher education institutions to establish the Higher Education Quality Council, and the higher education funding councils have established quality assessment committees.
The HEQC undertakes academic audits of an institution's quality assurance systems. The funding councils undertake assessments of the quality of the actual teaching and learning that takes place i n institutions.
I am, of course, aware that some noble Lords—and this was a valuable point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Annan—are of the view that the combination of audit and assessment imposes too great a burden on the institutions. The Government have no wish to see an undue burden on institutions, and have encouraged both

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the HEQC and the funding councils to consider how this can be minimised, while meeting the objectives of audit and assessment. Those bodies are now co-operating closely and have commissioned reviews of their activities to date.
Higher education institutions also need to satisfy other constituencies about the quality of their courses —the professional bodies and employers. There is close engagement between those bodies and institutions on the nature of courses and the value to employers of graduates.
British higher education is renowned for its high quality and academic standards. The Government are determined to see that reputation maintained and enhanced. I am heartened by reports that the process of addressing the issues raised by audit and assessment has been helpful to institutions in ensuring that they remain institutions of the highest quality whose standards remain at the highest levels.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, gave me notice that he wished me to say a word on how I made a success of my personal life in business. I have no idea what this will add to the value of the debate, but as he asked for it, I shall continue. I have to say that logic had little to do with it, or at least at the start. I can only believe that some divine hand ordered my life, for how else does a man find a wife—a wife who is always as supportive as mine? I was working for an organisation through nepotism, which was not a success. The firm was a success, but I was not. I chose, or rather my wife advised me, to start afresh on my own. From then on, fortune smiled. While I cannot confess to the use of logic in the matter, I put forward the theory that the exchange of nepotism for self-sufficiency released an energy that carried success with it.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, first I must thank all noble Lords who have spoken. As I said at the start of my speech, I had some doubts about putting forward the Motion at all. Thanks to your Lordships, I am now satisfied that I was right in doing so. The debate has been useful. There is one thing that I regret; namely, that I never said that emotion should not form part of a decision. What I was trying to say is that if one can persuade people, one should ask them what that emotion is. To say that logic governs everything is nonsense. That was really my message. It is very, very difficult for people to analyse their motives. But there it is. I am sorry that I could not make that clear. I did send round about 15 papers on what I was trying to say. But in a way I blame this House. It would clearly have been simple for me to alter the Motion to explain just that. But no, the Clerks cut it out; and in the end I was not strong enough, this time, to insist. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Social Security (Incapacity for Work) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Transport Research Laboratory
5.2 p.m.
Baroness Castle of Blackburn Baroness Castle of Blackburn rose to call attention to the future of the Transport Research Laboratory and other similar research agencies; and to move for Papers.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. It is very appropriate that this debate should follow the previous one. The Government have shown more emotion than logic in their proposal to privatise the Transport Research Laboratory, which everyone, including the consultants whom the Government appointed as advisers, has declared to be an outstanding centre of research excellence. This is a very important debate on an important issue, and one that is potentially disastrous for the good government of this country. I am sure that we would all agree that the stable supply of expert independent research advice is vital to good government. In no field is that more true than in the field of transport—as I had good reason to know at first hand when I was Minister of Transport, and used to draw heavily on the work of the Road Research Laboratory, as the laboratory was then called. I was in constant, daily touch with it as I evolved my transport policy. I was able to get from the laboratory the proceeds of research into, for example, road construction; the safety of bridges; the design of vehicles, so as to make them less hazardous for those who drove in them; and the specifications of seat belts, which I was then just starting to introduce. As I was about to pass legislation making the fitting of seat belts in new cars compulsory, it was essential to be sure that one could get advice as to which designs of seat belt would do more good than harm to the occupants. I remember the dramatic occasions when I watched the crash tests on vehicles that enabled me to study the effect of particular designs of seat belt on the passengers inside. The Transport Research Laboratory has, as it then had, unique facilities for testing and carrying out research in that transport field. It has a supply of test tracks, simulators and pavement test beds which are unrivalled in any other research agency. It is the future of that complex that we are discussing here this afternoon.
I am afraid that the Government have not approached this question with the objective scientific mind that they should bring to bear. Unfortunately, the Government have an obsession. They have a privatisation mania. According to the Government it is a natural law that anything that is in private hands must be superior to the same thing in the public sector. I do not want to be rude to Mr. MacGregor, the Transport Minister, but he really does remind me of one of the Ugly Sisters in "Cinderella". Noble Lords will remember that when they found that the dainty glass slipper would not fit their feet, they were willing to cut off their toes to make it fit. That is the way in which Mr. MacGregor has approached this matter—not examining first what are

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our needs in the research field and then making the machinery fit; he has declared first what the machinery must broadly be.
I should like to remind the House of the history of this matter. In April 1992, the Government announced that they were to turn the Transport Research Laboratory into an executive agency. The Minister responsible for transport at that time was Mr. Malcolm Rifkind. In his document launching the change, which I invite Members 3f this House to read, he paid the following tribute 10 the Transport Research Laboratory:
"The scale of its research, the facilities available and the high calibre of its staff have earned the Laboratory a deserved international reputation as a major centre of road and transport research".
It was not in any desire to destroy the TRL that Mr. Rifkind announced that it was to become an agency; rather, he said, it was to strengthen it. As an agency, he declared, it would have greater freedom and flexibility to meet the needs of all its customers. And he paid the following tribute to TRL staff:
"A noticeable feature of the Laboratory over the years has been the remarkable way in which its staff have adapted themselves to meet the challenges arising from different requirements and new fields of research. I am confident that the same level of commitment and adaptability will be shown in the years ahead".
The Minister was right. There were some advantages in turning TRL from a government department into an executive agency. The staff seized the opportunities that that change brought them. They proceeded to import a "business culture". That is the phrase that most people are fond of. They agreed to voluntary redundancies to trim down the size of the laboratory. They introduced market testing and new forms of accountancy, which overcame any of the obstacles to progress which the existence of the government department brought about, no doubt because of the restraints imposed by Government, and above all by Treasury, policy.
Staff were told that they would have three years to show how the executive agency could work. But exactly one year later Mr. MacGregor, who had succeeded Mr. Rifkind, answered a Question for Written Answer in another place. He announced that he intended to privatise that effective executive agency and would appoint consultants to advise him on how it could be done. That is the starting point from which Members of this House should consider this issue. He was putting the cart before the horse.
The retention of the executive agency was never an option in the consideration of the needs of our research policy. We now have the consultants' report and I should like every Member of this House to read it. The report of KPMG shows that their terms of reference were to devise an appropriate means of privatising and fixed timetables. They were to examine the likely costs and proceeds and to identify possible purchasers. That is a very unscientific way to approach one's responsibilities. The likely costs and proceeds ought to have been one of the issues in the question of whether it was privatised at all. What are we coming to except to a miasma of emotion in which the Government throw logic out of the window.
The result of those terms of reference is a most curious report. First of all it lists the different aims and
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objectives. It stated the needs of the Department of Transport in the following order: first, the need for an impartial source of resource; secondly, the need for a clean break with the public sector. If a clean break with the public sector did not give the looked for impartial advice, that was just too bad. A clean break with the public sector was this Government's overriding priority.
That also took precedence over the other needs of the Department of Transport set out by the consultants: a stable source of research supply and the creation of a centre or centres of excellence. If privatisation meant fragmenting the structure, that was just too bad. Where then were the centres of excellence? There was a centre of excellence as Mr. Rifkind himself admitted.
The consultants KPMG are a reputable firm. They took their job seriously. They therefore gave what I think was a pretty honest analysis of how these things could be achieved under different regimes. The trouble is that the conclusions of the report do not fit the analysis because, as I said, the Government put the cart before the horse. For instance, in the terms of the consultants' report, it seems that the executive agency is the best way to obtain impartiality of advice. That is obvious, is it not? Let me go back to my example of the seat belts. If that piece of research had been in the hands of someone who was involved even indirectly in the manufacture of seat belts, what value would that advice have been to me as a Minister? People's lives would have been put at risk.
So the executive agency wins on one of the major objectives; namely, to have a steady and stable system of research. But one can go further than that. One of the arguments for privatising it is that the laboratory will get a more businesslike discipline. Again I quote the report:
"In response to the increasingly market tested environment in which it operates, TRL is taking a number of measures to reduce costs and increase its competitiveness. In particular, TRL is in the process of running a voluntary early retirement programme arid updating its management systems to a more commercial basis'".
So it is doing what the Government said that privatisation would do. It has not been proved—nor has the report proved it—that the only way to achieve the reforms is by privatising that efficient executive agency. So we are in danger of throwing away the great commercial value of TRL's impartiality for changes in business practice which would take place anyhow.
The report also points out that TRL is the best way of having research linked to transport policy. It is not done in a vacuum but as part of the policy decisions of government. Again I quote Mr. Rifkind from the document that he issued when he launched the executive agency:
"It is essential for the safe and efficient operation of the UK transport systems that there is a close link between scientific research and transport policy. TRL currently plays a crucial role in achieving this as the primary source of impartial and authoritative research and scientific advice to the Department of Transport".
One cannot have a better testimonial than that. But in the Government's mind it does not count. So much for Mr. Rifkind, and he has been moved on elsewhere.
The report is full of tributes to TRL by the different divisions of the government department for the quality of the work that TRL has done for them. I should like to endorse that from my earlier memories.

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The only reason for the sale that the consultants can advance is that it is not very sure what will be the future revenues of the TRL because it is dependent for 85 per cent. of its income on government contracts. But what is going to happen? Are not the Government going to do any more transport research in future years? They have certainly cut it back in the past two years and anything can happen under this Government. So long as the Government have a research programme, TRL has its contracts. But in any case, the report points out that if it is privatised, the people to whom it is sold will want a guarantee of government contracts before they will buy. So once again we are throwing away an asset on a purely dogmatic basis.
There is therefore a sorry tale at the end of the report about the position of a possible sale. I feel that it is important to read it to the House because this is what the Government are selling off. Paragraph 1.4.2 states:
"Of the principal privatisation options, privatisation through a public offer has been ruled out due to TRL's small size and lack of a suitable track record. A management/employee buy-out is not regarded as a feasible privatisation option on its own (although a degree of management and employee participation is desirable) due to difficulties in attracting funding for such a buy-out given the lack of a credible exit route and the lack of significant earnings growth in the medium-term. A trade sale is a possibility although a number of potential trade purchasers would probably be unacceptable [Why?] due to concerns over potential vested interests affecting the perceived impartiality of TRL's research".
Privatisation therefore threatens to take away one of the saleable commercial assets of TRL—its overseas reputation, because it does a lot of work for overseas developing governments.
The report concludes that there must be a non-profit distributing company. It is left with nothing else. It says that that is the only way in which the reputation for impartiality can be preserved and therefore the viability of the whole enterprise. But there is a drawback in that. The Government would receive less revenue from the sale, and is it not revenue that the Government are after? They want to sell all the family silver, including the family's intellectual property.
I hope Members of the House will read the report and form their own judgments as to whether the case for privatisation has been made out. The Government commissioned the report. They will not like its conclusion. Are they prepared to set up a non-profit distributing company as KPMG suggest? If not, what is the alternative? There are rumours that Mr. MacGregor is still clinging to the hope of a trade sale. If he does so, he will ruin one of Britain's great centres of excellence. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.23 p.m.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: My Lords, the whole House should be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Castle of Blackburn, for raising this important subject. I am very much in her debt. I was familiar with the laboratory from my own days as Secretary of State. But I confess that I have not kept up with its development in recent times nor, does it seem, have I kept up with the evolving mind of the Government. I even missed the Secretary of State's Statement of May
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1993 in regard to privatisation. As the noble Baroness said, it is not long since the laboratory became an executive agency. The Government certainly moved on with great speed, having made that change, to propose another.
I confess—this is a political weakness in me—that I continue to underestimate the ideological prejudice with which the Government approach issues of this kind, particularly their ideological prejudice in favour of privatisation. The noble Baroness referred to logic rather than emotion being the proper way of determining the future of the laboratory. She referred to a government mania for privatisation. I never believed in doctrinaire nationalisation and perhaps in that respect I sometimes differed from the noble Baroness, Lady Castle. But I do not believe in doctrinaire privatisation either. What might have been good for steel, telecommunications, gas or electricity is not necessarily good for the Transport Research Laboratory. Certainly on the evidence available to us—we wait to hear what is said to us later this evening —it would be against the public interest to privatise the laboratory; there is nothing to be said for that on the merits of the case.
Many years ago I recall the appearance before the estimates committee of the House of Commons of a distinguished Permanent Secretary to the Department of Transport—Sir Gilmour Jenkins. It was a Select Committee of 1952– 53,40 years ago. He was asked a question and replied,
"The best kind of research is experience on the job".
That was a rather original but odd definition of "research". When asked whether his department had ever urged the Treasury to make funds available for research he said,"No, certainly not". It may be that the wheel now comes full circle. If the laboratory is privatised it will certainly be true that within a reasonable period of time there will not be the facilities available to governments and others which have been available in the laboratory with all the qualities that it brought to its work.
The noble Baroness referred to the KPMG report as, "most curious". I should like to see the full report. At the moment I believe we are merely seeing an edited version. I hope in that respect that the Government are not being economical with the truth; while that may win the approval of Mr. William Waldegrave, I doubt that it will be acceptable to this House. It would be interesting to see the full report because I believe it contains some working of the figures which would enable us more clearly to judge what the outcome would be.
KPMG were not asked "whether" the TRL should be privatised, but "how". In any case, like all consultants, they would bear in mind what was expected of them by their clients. Despite that—and this is the important point, and a point made by the noble Baroness—the report is far from a resounding endorsement of privatisation. I confess that, given some simple editing, reversing of sentences and putting "however" in a different place, we may obtain a different result. Perhaps I may explain to the House what I mean by that.
Paragraph 2.3.6 of the report says,
"It is clear that no single consultancy company even approaches TRL's breadth of expertise in a very broad spectrum

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of transport research. However, consultancies could, and increasingly do, compete successfully for DoT transport research and consultancy services in virtually all areas".
If I turned that round it would say,
"consultancies could, and increasingly do, compete successfully for DoT transport research and consultancy services in virtually all areas. However, it is clear that no single consultancy company even approaches TRL's breadth of expertise in a very broad spectrum of transport research".
Indeed, if noble Lords look at other sentences and paragraphs they will notice that reversing the order of paragraphs 2.2.3 and 2.2.4 makes the report read in a very different way from the way it does at present. As I say, it is a long way from a simple endorsement of what the Government want to do.
The report is interesting when it talks of risks, and I hope that I shall be forgiven for quoting from it again. Paragraph 1.4.1 states,
"In our view, retention of TRL in the public sector would risk it being unable to respond adequately to changes in its market and runs the considerable risk of TRL going into a cycle of cumulative decline".
The key word there is "risk". Paragraph 5.8.2 states,
"Our judgement is that retention of TRL in the public sector may be unsustainable beyond the short term".
I thought that "risk" was what all businesses lived with; that it was the nature of competitive enterprise. I do not see why the fact that there is a risk that TRL may be unable to respond adequately, should of itself be a reason why it should be privatised. The question the Government should be asking themselves is whether that risk is worth taking. My provisional conclusion is that it is.
There is a reference to TRL being,
"unsustainable beyond the short term".
Let us accept that warning. Let us take it for what it says. It may be,
"unsustainable beyond the short term".
But that is a warning to us to set about preparing to survive; it should not be an excuse for deciding to privatise.
The report sets out very clearly the key strengths of the laboratory: impartiality, quality of staff, knowledge of customers, continuity and flexibility. The first two —impartiality and quality of staff—show most clearly where the public interest lies and so I shall refer very briefly to them. I have been looking at the Government's response to the report of the Select Committee on Science and Technology of this House in December 1987. The report was entitled Innovation in Surface Transport. Paragraph 7 of the Government's response states:
"The Government shares the Committee's view that TRRL commands esteem both at home and abroad by the excellence of its work, and is; resolved to maintain this".
We have to ask whether it is still the Government's policy to maintain the excellence of its work. Given the dangers as a result of privatisation, can it be said firmly and clearly and without reservation that the Government are satisfied that the undertaking given to this House in 1987 will be fulfilled if privatisation goes ahead?
As for the quality of staff, which is the second most important point made in the report, the report itself makes clear that privatisation will mean the loss of quality staff from the laboratory. So on the face of it, judging by the Government's previous commitment and by the report itself, privatisation will not result in better
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research facilities for the Department of Transport and others who want to use its facilities. It will be impossible to maintain something which we have been able to take for granted for very many years.
The noble Baroness, Lady Castle, has made a plea for the acceptance of one of the alternative recommendations of the KPMG report. I would not go as far as she has gone. The right course—and here I make a constructive proposal—is a very simple one. The laboratory has existed as an agency for only two years. I suggest that three steps should be taken. First, the full KPMG report should be taken as a starting point for the laboratory looking at how far it can meet the standards, in so far as it falls short, particularly commercially, of what KPMG has recommended. Secondly, the Government should give the agency up to 1st January 1995 to produce a three-year business plan for the laboratory with it still within the public sector. Thirdly, the Government should ensure a level playing field for competition for the laboratory and for the private sector with which it might compete. If the Government were to give the agency a chance on that basis we should see what it could achieve and I might be prepared to be persuaded in three years' time, if it has failed, that privatisation is the only course. But that chance must be given to the laboratory because there is nothing available to us today in the evidence of the report that justifies privatisation.
5.33 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, it is interesting to see the noble Baroness, Lady Castle of Blackburn, back on the transport trail, if I may put it that way, with as much vigour as she displayed when she was Minister. Her taking up the point this afternoon clearly demonstrates that element of consistency of hers which made such a significant contribution in the time that she was Minister.
It is difficult to disagree with the noble Baroness on some of the facts. But I totally disagree with her with regard to the philosophy which she espoused as being the reason for the Government's decision to take this course of action. Equally, I cannot recall the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, during his time as Secretary of State extolling the virtues of what was then the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, which was always short of funds and which, always had great difficulty in meeting the commitment that was demanded of it. I cannot go along with the noble Lord on his suggestions that we should try this for a couple of years and have another review later on. We have to make up our minds.
I do not like the way the mind has been made up but I suspect that that is because I am fairly sentimental about the laboratory. It started life in 1933. It has had three changes of name. I have great affection for the old familiar one, the TRRL, but so that no one is confused this afternoon, I shall merely refer to it as the laboratory. We all know the significant contribution that that laboratory has made in recent years and over all this time in a number of areas. It has an international reputation, more particularly for long-term research on a variety of topics.

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The noble Baroness mentioned seat belts. If ever there was a crying need for a piece of long-term research, it is into the area of seat belts in buses and coaches, notably brought to our attention by the tragic accidents of recent times. I know of no one who will take this up. It means a fundamental look at the design of coaches themselves. How many coach-builders are there across Europe putting their bodies on different frames? Is it in their commercial interests, one against the other? Has the Bus and Coach Council the resources? The answer to that must be no. Where is that resource to be found? In the universities? Again, the answer is no, because it is a long-term project. The problem of seat belts in coaches and buses will not be solved in two or three years. It is probably a 10 or 12-year project and it can only be funded by an organisation set up to deal with long-term research.
The laboratory has an international reputation in the field of traffic management. It was the laboratory which designed, researched and developed the traffic management system which we know by the name SCOOT. What would London's traffic be like and what would the centres of major conurbations be like if that work had not taken place? Perhaps my noble friend the Minister will say that that kind of traffic management research is taking place in direction-finding techniques with Siemens. But those are companies doing a piece of research wholly and solely for gain. There is not the wider impact that a governmental research laboratory would undertake.
The success of the laboratory at Crowthorne, where it has been since about the mid-1960s, has been in large measure because there was in place a secure piece of funding by the Government. I shall not argue this afternoon whether that funding was large enough or right or proper, but its success was that that piece of funding was in place. Its return to an agency will enable it to secure competitively other contracts. I firmly believe that without that funding which the Department of Transport now controls, there will be a major loss in two particular areas. The first is road safety, about which we are pre-occupied daily. We are exhorted about not drinking and driving, going slower for children and so forth, and those policies are all quite properly promoted by the Government. The other area is the environment in so far as transport and the roads are concerned. All those provisions are promoted by government. It is simple logic to say, "If that is what you want, government, then you must put your twopennyworth in".
It is no good saying that as a privatised laboratory it can compete for the contracts which are to be let. It will not compete for the long-term contracts because they are too insecure. The commercial research laboratories compete for the short-term contracts and what I believe are called the near market research projects. That is what we shall lose if the research laboratory goes that way.
I have had a look at a summary of the report. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, will forgive me if I say that I did not have the wit to use his rather amusing ability in turning the words around to make something different, although I understand what he means. As I
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read the summary of the report, I have some doubts. It does not to my satisfaction identify a buyer who will have the long-term interest at heart, and that is fundamental. If that team were to be broken up in any way at all—the members may very well go to university-based research laboratories which are very good, and the Government support those research endeavours—that fundamental unit would be lost.
I do not believe that the laboratory is unique in the world, although it is certainly unique in this country. There is another in Germany and one in America and they look at these matters through similar eyes, although the problems may be somewhat different. It cannot be claimed that here is something which is so unique that it must not be destroyed. It is not like a work of art. The laboratory could be put together again somewhere else by somebody else, but what a waste of effort and of 50 or 60 years of endeavour. How much would such a delay cost?
If the laboratory at Crowthorne is hived off, I do not believe that a great deal of the more valuable but less exotic work will continue anywhere else. I cannot identify any laboratory or commercial operation with the capability of doing that kind of work. Therefore, I should like to see it retained in some form or other. I am quite happy for the department to control costs and to direct the area in which research and further development should be undertaken. I have given just one example—that is to say, bus and coach seat belts. There are others such as traffic calming methods, new road surfaces and so on.
All those aspects have had a pre-eminence in the work of the laboratory. They are internationally accepted. The reports were used frequently by myself, by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, and by other noble Lords and Baronesses in this House over many years as a source of original and good information. I would not like to see that destroyed and put aside. I believe that there is life left for the laboratory, but it may be that I am just a little sentimental about it.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, that was a most remarkable speech by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. I hope that the Minister for Transport takes time to read it. The House should also be grateful to my noble friend Lady Castle for initiating this debate not just because it is important that the future of TRL should be discussed, but because she is probably the best person to raise this matter. She was a very senior Cabinet Minister and a most innovative Secretary of State for Transport.
She mentioned her work with seat belts. They are very important. She may remember me as a very junior minister in her department, but from the Back-Benches later on I managed to get a Bill through the other place concerning seat belts which was ultimately brought to this House and which was passed. The most important single thing which my noble friend did was the introduction of breath tests. She took me with her to a meeting on the South Bank where she introduced this appalling, new restriction on freedom. I cannot remember whether it was in The Times, but a sketch

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appeared on the people who were there in force including butch motorists in duffel coats screaming at my noble friend. The complaint was that the new measure would totally ruin country life because no one would ever go again to a country pub. The important factor was that she had the courage to see ahead and the problems involved. Now, the whole climate has changed and people are very conscious about travelling in a car having had too much to drink.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that we have to continue to look at the question of coaches. There was an investigation concerning recorders in coaches because of a number of accidents. I do not know how far that has progressed. I am sure that we shall get around to seat belts for coaches, which is a big job. We should be grateful to my noble friend for raising these issues.
Everyone says that the TRL gives absolutely independent information to the Minister when required and to the depart rent generally. The reliance on the important work of the laboratory by the Ministry of Transport is very great. The laboratory has a genuine world reputation. I am not saying that there are not other good laboratories in the world, but ours is one which has gained certain respect. The sad thing is that the Government are searching for ways to privatise it. The consultation report of KPMG Peat Marwick looks at many combinations and permutations about the way to privatisation. It was not an easy report to read if one does not have a strong financial background. I gained the clear impression that the consultants found it hard to make up their minds about what should be done. They felt that this was yet another privatisation too far. It is true that the report uses the phrase that the laboratory needs a "clean break" from the Department of Transport.
I must also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, on recognising the way in which reports can be written. The skill that is involved in writing a report is almost as important as carrying out the research. That has been well illustrated. When one reads that the report states that a complete break is needed, one begins to wonder whether that was the view of the consultants or whether they had been told that it would make life easier if a break was established because it would then be easier to go ahead with the privatisation.
For commercial reasons, the report contains no financial details, but surely there must be some figure in the Government's mind for the transfer from the public to the private sector. They must have some idea of what they will gain from it.
If I have read the report correctly, one option, which I am happy to see has not been pushed with any enthusiasm by the consultants, is the idea of breaking up the department. I think that the disciplines that make it up are too important to be split. An organisation such as the TRL has taken a long time to build and separating the units would reduce the true effectiveness of the whole. The consultants' report strongly suggests that potential purchasers are most likely to prefer the option of a single entity rather than a number of smaller, independent laboratories even if they were located on the same site. I do not know whether it would be
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possible to achieve complete independence with a number of purely commercial organisations operating on the same site unless they went to extra expense. There is the question of whether they would use the same or different canteens or other such facilities on what is a relatively small site.
I have visited the TRL a number of times and it is remarkable for the cross-fertilisation of ideas. A wide variety of people work there. Those who have the privilege of visiting it learn that there is a great deal more to motoring than they ever thought possible. Knowing some of the work that is carried out there, I hope that its multi-disciplinary atmosphere will be preserved.
The KPMG Peat Marwick report is really a financial appraisal with little real reference to transport. Its purpose is obviously to find some other way of funding such research other than with government money. From the Government's point of view, it is a combination of raising finance and satisfying political dogma. The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank—perhaps it was my noble friend Lady Castle—referred to the "family silver". Remembering the wonderful maiden speech of the late Lord Stockton, I think that we have now gone past the stage of selling the family silver and are now taking the Canalettos out of their frames and selling them abroad. I am sure that the noble Lord would have agreed with me on that.
The TRL has been innovative in safety research, vehicle design, safety testing, environmental quality analysis and in almost every other facet of transport, including road design, computerised traffic systems and road surfaces, which is now a subject coming very much to the fore. Transport costs are notoriously difficult to assess, but I have no doubt that during the years of its existence, the work of the TRL has been of such a nature as to far exceed (by its savings to road transport) its running costs to the department.
However, we must not overlook the intangibles. Reference has been made to the TRL's international reputation. I had the privilege of serving for many years as a member of the Select Committee on Transport in another place. One of our investigations related to road repairs because of the difficulty that we always seem to have with repairs being carried out over holiday periods. We travelled to Italy, Austria and Germany where I heard a great deal of praise for the TRL from road engineers and police. Considering our national hobby of moaning—this topic comes up every year —I was amused to find that road engineers in those countries greatly appreciated the advice that the TRL had given them on the use of coning the roads for repairs. They had sent people over here to examine our road coning and were grateful to us when they saw how complicated it can be when one wants to keep the traffic moving. Whenever people in this country see cones, they say that no one is working on the road and that leads to all kinds of arguments. So, even on what appear to be relatively small matters, such as the coning of roads, experts in other countries think that the techniques that they learnt from the TRL greatly speeded up their repairs and resurfacing. That should make motorists think that at least some system is involved.

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We shall hear speeches today from noble Lords who have much more expertise in business and finance than I have. I am sure that they will show how the national asset of the TRL can be retained and improved. I submit that the sentiments and observations of the unique group of employees in the TRL should be heard. I shall quote from one of the submissions from one of the unions that is represented there. It stated:
"We believe there is an approach which could provide the benefits of greater freedom to compete for non-government work while retaining the benefits of remaining in the public sector for our main work for the DoT. TRL would remain in the public sector, its staff would remain civil servants, but with its non-government work separately accounted for in a commercial subsidiary. If our ability to compete commercially really is an important reason for the proposal to privatise us, our proposal would allow this freedom without jeopardising the benefits to the public of our current status".
I hope that the Government will keep that highly skilled group of men and women fully informed of the final proposals before we have a Bill foisted on us.
5.57 p.m.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, I know that the whole House is very grateful to my noble friend Lady Castle for initiating this debate. My noble friend was an outstanding Secretary of State for Transport, among other things, and has proved today that she has lost none of her remarkable qualities. When my noble friend was Secretary of State for Transport her innovations were unpopular at the time among a number of people. I remember a passionate and vehement argument with someone who said that her proposals were idiotic. In fact, they have saved thousands of lives. That is a marvellous achievement for any individual. My noble friend can be very proud of her work in this area. I endorse the points that she made in her admirable speech.
Today's debate affects millions of people because the work of the Transport Research Laboratory has tremendous influence on practically everyone: on travellers, on pedestrians and on the economy. I know that the unions concerned are very anxious about some of the Secretary of State's proposals. As a consultant to the federation which includes the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists, I know that the unions have consistently and persistently expressed their deep concern. They are naturally anxious for their members, but they are remarkably well informed about the TRL. The evidence shows that mutilating the TRL would damage us all. This is a matter of which the House must take grave and serious note. Apparently, despite the evidence presented by the unions and many other people, the Secretary of State intends to press on regardless. That is remarkable. I believe that the Secretary of State is very short sighted indeed.
Like everyone else, I am only too well aware of the Government's obsession with a market economy and their fanatical determination to privatise anything and everything. They wield privatisation rather like a berserk killer uses a shotgun. They fire in all kinds of directions regardless of who is affected. But the difference between someone splaying a gun and the Government is that the Government appear to believe
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that privatisation always revives and never kills. They cannot admit the truth that the public interest can be damaged and sometimes destroyed by privatisation.
The Transport Research Laboratory is an example. One of the most deplorable aspects is that the Government have been warned of the dangers by their own consultants. The report of KPMG Peat Marwick was much quoted by my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, whom I still call my noble friend despite his unfortunate disaffiliation from my party. The consultants in their report were obviously anxious about the demand for profit superseding the public interest. They recommended privatisation by means of a non-profit distributing company. That was an ingenious proposition. Having been debarred by its terms of reference from rejecting privatisation for the TRL, the consultants hit upon the idea of privatisation without private profit. That is a pretty good idea really.
KPMG Peat Marwick produced closely reasoned arguments to reach their conclusion. Yet the Government are pressing on, displaying a fanatical dogma rather than reasoned argument. They are incredibly damaging a research laboratory which for 60 years—60 years—has provided a world-renowned, independent, impartial centre for transport research. Its outstanding work has improved safety, environmental quality and efficiency, which are all in the public interest. It is a centre of excellence of which this country can be rightly proud.
What is remarkable about the present situation is that the consultants commissioned by the Government to produce recommendations on privatisation came up with very important points which endorsed the unions' opposition to private profit privatisation. The poacher and the gamekeeper are united.
The independent consultants, working to the Government's privatisation brief, indicate that privatisation will destroy the TRL's reputation for impartial advice and research and its ability to retain long-term expertise. They say that it would restrict the public availability of information, reduce industry-wide co-operative research, reduce staff morale and cause many key staff to seek other work. That from the Government's own consultants is pretty strong meat and I look forward to hearing the Minister's response. It is a devastating catalogue of the consequences, on which the unions and the consultants are in agreement. It is hard to understand why the Government should persist with such a wrong-headed policy.
There has been some speculation of a hidden agenda. It is speculated that the Government may be considering cutting money for safety, economy and environmental quality in transport to finance the development of motorway tolling technology. We do not know and if it is secret we cannot know. However, we can and do suspect. I welcome the Minister's observations. If he wishes to keep secrets, Members of this House will be anxious to probe them as soon as possible.
A distinguished Member of this House, the noble Lord, Lord Weatherill, speaking of attempts to reform this House, quoted the saying: "If it ain't broke, why try

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to fix it?". Precisely! That is exactly the point that we must press on the Government and I hope that they will listen and respond.
6.5 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the House will be grateful to my noble friend Lady Castle for introducing this Motion today. She is one of the most distinguished Ministers of Transport that this country has ever had. She did not have to obtain the opinions of outside consultants before she acted. Naturally, she consulted the best advice available to her; but on her own volition and with the support of her colleagues she carried out the policies in which she believed. The country will be indebted to her.
I have a particular debt to her; from 1945 to 1950 I had the honour to be her colleague in the House of Commons. She rapidly became known as one of the leading theoreticians of my party, responsible to a large degree for the policies that were so successfully pursued in those years.
The proposed privatisation of the Transport Research Laboratory will be seen as one of the most squalid steps that even the present Government have contemplated. It is four years almost to the day—notably 8th March 1990 —since the Government introduced in this House the Government Trading Bill. On the basis of a pamphlet introduced by the Government entitled Next Steps it introduced into our organisation in the United Kingdom the executive agencies. I would not normally weary your Lordships by quoting from a speech, but I shall quote what was said on that occasion by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. He stated:
"The Next Steps initiative seeks to build on the strengths of our Civil Service. It has a well deserved reputation for impartiality, fairness integrity and propriety. Those attributes will continue to be an essential part of public service. People are the service's important asset. By delegating real managerial responsibility for achieving results along with the right tools for the job, Next Steps aims to provide an incentive for people to give their best; a recipe, I hope, for turning the good into the excellent. Next Steps indicate. the Government's genuine intention to improve the quality of the services it offers to the public within the resources available. All of us at some time or other have cause to use those services, and it is right that we should expect to receive a high standard of service.
One of the most important benchmarks of whether this initiative has succeeded will be whether it leads to significant improvements in the standards of service.
The measure which we have been debating this afternoon adds to the range of tools available to help us in this task. For those agents for which it is suitable it will, without any loss of accountability to Parliament, be the key to considerable improvements in value for money. I commend it warmly to the House". —[Official Report, 8/3/90; col.1294.]
In due course the Transport Research Laboratory was added to the list of executive agencies in fulfilment of the Government's statement of their intentions. I should add that that statement was welcomed in all quarters of the House although there was, as your Lordships will gather, even in those days, a note of slight dissent from me. At that time I was speaking from the Front Bench on behalf of the Opposition in relation to that Bill.
As your Lordships will know, I am sometimes a suspicious character and I asked the noble Earl whether
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the proposal was a backdoor attempt at privatisation. I was assured to the contrary. In reply to that the noble Earl said:
"The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, spoke earlier about privatisation and will mention the matter in detail at a later stage. Before agencies are set up all other options, including abolition and privatisation, are examined. In most cases, the examination leads to the conclusion that the nature of the service provided by the agencies does not make privatisation a feasible or realistic option. That is not to say that some activities might not be contracted out, but generally our expectation is that most mainstream activities of Next Steps agencies will continue to remain within central government in the foreseeable future".—[col.1292.]
In the later stages of the debate, after the Bill went to another place and returned, we had a firm assurance from the Government that the Next Steps provisions were not to be used as a prelude to privatisation.
Following what the noble Earl said, all I have to do this afternoon is to refer to the testimonies riot only of my noble friend Lady Castle but also of the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, and my noble friends Lord Ashley and Lord Carmichael. I shall not repeat what they said but those noble Lords have explained what a success the laboratory has been and how indispensable it is within the original context that the Government stated in commending the Next Steps programme to your Lordships.
Why is there that repudiation? There is not a word in favour of privatisation in your Lordships' House this afternoon; there is not even a muted word. Why is there to be privatisation? The answer is remarkably simple. The Government are stuck for money so they propose to flog off yet another of their assets. They will probably offer a sweetener, forgiving all liabilities. In respect of their privatisation programme, they have already written off £7 billion of private sector liabilities, aside from the sweeteners that they have given to the industries that have been privatised. This is yet another sordid chapter in this Government's wretched history in that regard.
What is really at stake is the desire to take some pressure off the public sector borrowing requirement which their own mismanagement has inflicted on the nation as a whole. That is what it is all about. It is about creating another quango which other companies, possibly—probably—subscribers to Tory Party funds can get on the cheap. That is what it is all about. That is the miserable state to which the Government have brought politics in the United Kingdom at present.
When the matter goes to another place for further consideration and returns here, I hope that noble Lords and Members of another place will treat the whole proposal with the contempt which it deserves.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, today the European Parliament is voting on car exhaust rules. Although those rules prepared by the Commission have already been accepted by Ministers, it is not certain whether the standards will be accepted by the European Parliament. It is thought that it wants even higher standards. That is but one indication that we are on the verge of great changes in the transport industry. We are approaching a bend in the road, so to speak. Therefore, I should like to

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congratulate my noble friend Lady Castle of Blackburn on her excellent timing in calling our attention to the future of the Transport Research Laboratory and to say how much I welcome and admire her fighting spirit.
I should like to demonstrate that the future of the TRL should not lie in the private sector and that some government Ministers agree with me. I would like to show also that some rather old-fashioned accountancy is an unsuitable way of assessing the value of the TRL to the country and that there are wider considerations and other models. I should like to show that privatising the TRL would strain the partnership between government and industry.
The signs of change in transport are all about us: dissatisfaction with the new roads policy to accommodate more cars; the uncontrolled growth of heavy goods traffic and all the associated environmental considerations; and our commitment to the Earth Summit. The legal requirements in California for the electric car are another sign. The overproduction in the European car and truck industry means that not only will there be changes in the technology of those companies but also that there are implications for their size and for their sub-contractors.
Part of the task of the TRL is to help manage that change by independently researching those products and processes which are less polluting; to find better forms of transport which are in keeping with today's ideas of sustainable development; and to interpret for our transport industry why the Swiss are prepared to build the equivalent of two Channel Tunnels under the Alps to force goods from road to rail.
Perhaps the Secretary of State feels as his predecessor did at the turn of the century, when he was concerned about the overwhelming number of horses and their requirements and the pollution which they deposited on the roads. Change came to him in the form of the motor car. We do not know what will rescue the current Secretary of State.
How fortunate, therefore, we are at this time to have in our science base the Transport Research Laboratory to do longer term impartial, basic and social research into the costs of congestion and pollution and environmental considerations; to research technological change and transport alternatives. The Secretary of State has described the TRL as:
"the primary source of impartial and authoritative research and scientific advice to the department".
The TRL will be a source of knowledge and information for the entire industry: cometh the hour, cometh the institution.
In those circumstances it would seem sensible to nurture and build the TRL. We want to strengthen it and ensure that it can better carry out its work. What do the Government propose? Amazingly, they propose to privatise it. I say "amazingly" because only last Thursday, when your Lordships debated the report of the Science and Technology Committee, a continuous thread through that debate was an underlying feeling of exasperation at the private sector's failure to spend money on basic research.
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When replying to that debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, made clear the Government's position and commitment to basic research. She said:
"It is industry's job to support short-term research with immediate application; the focus of the science base should be on the long term and on excellence in basic and strategic research". —[Official Report, 3/3/94; col.1164.]
That exactly describes the work of the TRL. Yet the right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State for Transport wants the transport industry's basic and strategic research to be carried out in the private sector. Perhaps the noble noble Lord can perform a useful service to us all by getting his colleagues to talk to one another. That mixed message only causes confusion and helps destroy the credibility of government.
I now turn to the consultants' report. For obvious reasons, many consultants' reports set out to tell the client what they want to hear. As previous speakers have pointed out, this report is no exception. The consultants are specialists in corporate finance, and their concern is how best to put the TRL in the private sector at least cost and maximum return. That may well be the objective of the Treasury. The broader concern should be how the TRL may best serve the Government, the local authorities, the transport industry and its other customers in this time of change while maintaining the highest of standards. It is an accountancy-driven report applied to a people-driven organisation. Best business practice today tries to avoid that sort of thing.
If ever there was a people-driven organisation, the TRL is one. If the consultants are to come to a balanced conclusion, they must also look at the morale and ethos in the organisation. Are the staff involved, and will the atmosphere attract the best scientists? Is there enough critical mass to ensure that nothing is forgotten, and is there enough variety for cross-fertilisation? Is there the right atmosphere for people to engage in that very important scientific exercise of having a "hunch"? The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, referred to that in the debate last Thursday. The consultants considered those aspects only in relation to the financial restructuring, not as ends in themselves. Now that we have a new bench-marking centre in the country—welcomed by the DTI but possibly still unnoticed by the Department of Transport —we have a new tool to carry out that work.
That broader approach of dealing with research institutes is not new. A good example is the Oceanographic Institute in Southampton. A committee of your Lordships' House recently examined the problems of the Marine Institute. The solution was to transfer it to the University of Southampton, which has an excellent marine engineering department and a school of oceanography. All these entities are being combined in a new building, currently under construction, which is a joint venture between the Marine Institute, the university and the National Environmental Research Council. Incidentally, your Lordships may be interested to learn that that building is only three feet above sea level, which says something about the institute's views on global warming. The plan has the advantage of not only creating a centre of excellence and adding to our science base but will also provide good graduates to the marine industry for many years to come. Can the Minister consider that as a

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model? Perhaps I may also ask the Minister to compare the cost to the taxpayer of the consultants' report on the TRL with the cost of the report prepared by your Lordships regarding the Marine Institute.
The Motion on the Order Paper refers to "other similar research agencies". Undoubtedly that refers to the four scientific laboratories currently under review; namely, the Laboratory of the Government Chemist, the National Physical Laboratory, the National Weights and Measures Laboratory and the National Engineering Laboratory. Many fine words have been spoken by the Prime Minister and other members of the Government about the Government's support for basic research and the partnership between government and industry in science and technology. I quoted the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, earlier. Indeed, one of the very few areas where government can assist industry under the rules of the European Union is in the field of science and technology. That makes the partnership particularly important and sensitive. Sentencing those laboratories to the private sector means that those institutions will in future work on short-term, fairly narrow based projects and will, thereby, render meaningless some of those fine words.
I believe that many people in industry will interpret such actions as the Government reneging on their part of the partnership. The place for those laboratories is in the science base—not in the private sector. Therefore, before reaching a decision, will the Minister reflect on the contradictions that I have tried to point out? Is the private sector a suitable home for the TRL and other laboratories, despite words from his colleagues to the contrary? Would it not be a more coherent approach if he used the model of the Oceanographic Institute? Does his decision reflect the stated aims of the Department of Trade and Industry to support the science base to help Britain be more competitive in the 1990s?
6.26 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, the House will be grateful to my noble friend Lady Castle for introducing the Motion. Indeed, many noble Lords have, justifiably, paid tribute to her reputation when she was a Minister. Today, my noble friend has shown us that she has lost none of her enthusiasm for supporting proper and just causes. We are grateful to her for both introducing the Motion and for speaking to it in such an enthusiastic and impressive way.
I am afraid that the Minister will find himself in something of a lonely position because all speakers in the debate thus far have agreed that the proposals to privatise the Transport Research Laboratory are, by their very nature, absurd. I say "absurd" because the points that have been made by speakers from all sides of the House lead to that conclusion. First, there has been a certain amount of criticism of the consultants' report. It is, perhaps. unfair, but my experience of consultants —and I have a certain amount of experience with them —is that if you give them something that you want them to say, they will, generally speaking, say it. However, in this case, the consultants did not say what they were told to say; indeed, they produced a somewhat ambiguous report which was, I imagine, certainly far from what the
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Government had expected. As the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, quite rightly pointed out, if you turn round certain sentences you come to completely different conclusions. So, the consultants were themselves doubtful about the project.
Secondly, the consultants concluded—and, indeed, I would conclude—that no one is really going to buy the Transport Research Laboratory unless there is some form of government guarantee either in terms of a Treasury guarantee as to its financial stability or in terms of business from the Department of Transport, which, after all, provides something like 85 per cent. of the existing business of the laboratory. Therefore, no one will rush in and buy it unless those concerned are satisfied that they will get that business. The only solution under those circumstances would be to break up the laboratory. If we are talking about a consortium buying the laboratory and each taking out of it the individual expertise that it wishes, whether it is for bridges, roads or whatever, then we would be almost completely destroying a centre of excellence.
Finally—and this is all that I have to say about the TRL, because I wish to pass on to other matters—the Government now seem to have decided that they will pay no attention to the impartiality which can only be guaranteed by an operation in the public sector. I have much experience of consultancy work, as I am sure does the Minister and I firmly believe that if the Government wish to have research carried out which will provide results without fear or favour, that work should and can only be carried out in the public sector. For that reason, and for that reason alone, I maintain that what the Minister is proposing is absurd.
My noble friend Lord Ashley asked whether there was a hidden agenda and I believe there is. My noble friend Lord Haskel mentioned some of the other laboratories and research establishments that are at present under threat of privatisation such as the National Physical Laboratory, the National Weights and Measures Laboratory, the National Engineering Laboratory and the Laboratory of the Government Chemist. I would add to that list the Warren Spring Laboratory at Stevenage, which is an executive agency of the Department of Trade and Industry set up under the legislation to which my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington referred. The Warren Spring Laboratory has an international reputation as an impartial centre of excellence in the fields of process technology and environmental pollution—work which is a vital element in the sustainable development programme to which the United Kingdom subscribed at the Earth Summit at Rio. What is to happen to this essential laboratory? It is to be shut down and the staff will be pushed into part of the Atomic Energy Authority, AEA Technology, and, by the end of March, into something called the New National Environmental Technology Centre, which will then (what a surprise !) be privatised. That is privatisation by stealth. Non-profitable, public interest research—the kind of long-term research that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, mentioned—which is by nature uncommercial and high risk as one does not

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know what the results of it will be, if there are any results at all, will not be carried out by a commercial enterprise. It is as simple as that.
So far I have referred to the Transport Research Laboratory, Warren Spring Laboratory and the other laboratories mentioned by my noble friend Lord Haskel. However, the matter is even more serious. I refer again to the hidden agenda mentioned by my noble friend Lord Ashley. On 2nd February the Government embarked on an exercise to draw up proposals for privatising, contracting out or cutting back at any or all of 49 public sector research establishments. The Government's view, set out in their specification, was that many services currently provided by their research establishments could be carried out in the private sector. The Government's study covers some 49 public sector research establishments employing as many as 30,000 scientists. Will this be a two-year or three-year study, as these are complicated establishments? No, conclu-sions will be drawn from this exercise in 90 days. In 90 days, proposals will be put before the Government to privatise, contract out or cut back on any or all of 49 research establishments. The members of the official team conducting the exercise are in such haste that they have told unions representing staff that they have no time to consult the unions at local level. Therefore they will go ahead and write proposals for the Government without talking to the unions at local level. That, again, is absurd.
What conclusions do we draw from what we have heard this afternoon? I draw three conclusions. First, the Government have abandoned any interest in impartiality of research, which can only be guaranteed if the establishment which is conducting the research is free from commercial pressures. The Government have also abandoned the idea of non-commercial, long-term research. Secondly, the Government do not care about pure public interest research, which is by definition unprofitable and indeed uncommercial. Thirdly, the Government are not bothered about the fate of their own employees. They are only bothered—as many noble Lords have said—with the short-term cash flow of the Treasury. Worst of all, they appear to be locked in a mental time warp. They are not prepared even to entertain the thought that privatisation has run whatever course it had. It is simply no sort of policy just to scrape together whatever is available and sell it off for the sake of a dogma that is becoming increasingly anachronistic.
6.35 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): My Lords, as other noble Lords have already said, the House is, I am sure, grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Castle of Blackburn, for the opportunity to discuss the important issue of the future of the Transport Research Laboratory. Indeed we have had two preliminary canters round the course at Question Time thanks to the noble Baroness. I am not entirely sure whether, when I replied to the noble Baroness at Question Time on the subject of the
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Transport Research Laboratory, that was my maiden appearance for the Department of Transport, but it must have been close to it.
This debate, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out, is particularly timely because my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport has recently announced his provisional conclusions on the future status of the laboratory. I know that he will wish to be informed by your Lordships' view in coming to a final decision. One of your Lordships—I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Williams, —said that I must be feeling pretty lonely as regards my defence of this privatisation. I can recall that on the occasion of almost every previous privatisation I have been surrounded by the serried ranks of Socialists and I have also felt pretty lonely. However, I have noted with interest that as privatisations have occurred over the past 15 years, each one was described in disparaging terms. For example the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, used the term "a privatisation too far". On hearing those words, I noted down,"Wasn't every one a privatisation too far?"
It is interesting to note that the Labour Party opposes and complains about privatisations but then says afterwards,"Oh well. We will live with it". The word "renationalisation" no longer crosses the lips of Labour Party members. There was a good example of that just the other day when the party opposite launched its programme to encourage private capital to fund projects such as roads, hospitals and schools. The Leader of the Labour Party suggested—I have the quote before me to ensure that my memory serves me right—
"Old dogmas and battle lines should be swept aside to attract cash"—
from the private sector of course
"for vital improvements to roads, schools and hospitals".
It was not that long ago when that policy was anathema to the Labour Party which considered it to be part of the evil conspiracy of this Conservative Government. Therefore I shall treat with a little scepticism some of the over-the-top statements that have been made about the privatisation of the laboratory that we are discussing.
Most noble Lords know the laboratory a good deal better than I. Indeed not only do we have the laboratory's original parent here this afternoon, but also a number of its foster parents down the years. Just occasionally, as I was subjected to verbal attacks from those foster parents, and the parent in the person of the noble Baroness, Lady Castle, I felt that I was about to be accused of being the abortionist of this healthy child which is so dear to the hearts of the various noble Lords through whose hands it has passed.
The laboratory is based at Crowthorne in Berkshire. It has a small satellite unit—I do not think anyone mentioned this—at Livingston near Edinburgh, and it has indeed been responsible for a wide range of significant transport research and development. The noble Baroness can rightly feel proud of her role in establishing the laboratory at its current site. Indeed noble Lords have mentioned some of the other projects which the noble Baroness started and of which she should rightly feel proud, such as the introduction of breath tests and progress over the matter of seat belts. I did not notice the Humber Bridge coming into this

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eulogy: nor indeed In place of strife, which I suspect formed a very major roadblock, if I may so describe it, in the noble Baroness's career in the party opposite.
The TRL was launched in April 1992 as an executive agency, operating on Next Step principles. I will come back to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, later on. At the same time—this is important—a proper client-contractor relationship was established between the policy divisions in the Department of Transport which are responsible for buying the great bulk of TRL's output and the laboratory. Responsibility for managing research budgets passed to the customers, who now identify and manage the research they need. Examples range from research into new and improved road materials, construction techniques, through to driver behavioural research, including novice drivers. The driving seat changed from TRL, who devised the research programmes on the basis of what it thought was needed, and came to the Ministry where a budget was suggested. The situation has changed to one in which the policy divisions of the department decide what research they require. Of course that leaves TRL free to concentrate on the specialised research work which is its hallmark. Indeed a number of your Lordships—for example, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel—were concerned about long-term research work. My noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth raised the question specifically of research into safely in coaches and seat belts in coaches. Of course we all accept those are very important.
I point out to my noble friend that TRL is not at the moment working an this issue for the department, but in the future the department's bus safety programme will require some long-term and some short-term research on the subject. It will then go out for bids. It is not guaranteed that it will go to the TRL, but the important thing to remember is that long-term research does not exist in a vacuum: it exists because the customer—in the case of road and transport research, the department —wants it done. Therefore if the department put out contracts for long-term research it is there for this laboratory or any other laboratory or institute to bid for that contract. That will give, whoever wins it—and it is to be hoped that in many cases it will be the TRL—the long-term security of which noble Lords seem to think they are going to be deprived. The customers in the Department of Transport are not suddenly going to want only short-term research. They, like many customers who seek research projects over the whole field, will want many long-term projects as well. Therefore the mix will not be any different from the mix at the moment demanded by the department and so I do not see that this argument that somehow or other long-term research will be sacrificed by TRL being privatised stands up to any logical examination.
The key feature of the role of the customer—in this case the department—is the choice of supplier. Departmental' policy customers were therefore allowed to seek competitive tenders for their projects. My right honourable friend recognised that it would take a little time for the laboratory to adjust to a competitive environment, and so he provided for a transitional period of three years. In the first year,1992– 93,
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departmental customers could put up to 40 per cent. of new projects out to competitive tender. The remaining 60 per cent. went as before to TRL by direct commission. In the following year,1993– 94, the proportion of new projects which could he put out to tender rose to 50 per cent., and we had planned for the proportion to rise to 60 per cent. in the coming financial year.
Of course TRL could still bid for Department of Transport work for which competitive tenders were sought. It quickly became clear that TRL, could not compete effectively. It was constrained by its place in the public sector. For instance, like any government agency, TRL is required to cover its costs in full through charges. It would not be permissible to run loss leaders, for instance, in order to attract business. That could end up with taxpayers having to fund any deficits and that would be wrong. It would be wrong for taxpayers' money to be used to market services against private sector competitors.
In the light of the difficulties which TRL faced, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport considered whether TRL would be able to secure its future more effectively in the private sector, freed from public sector constraints. He concluded in May of last year that in principle TRL should be privatised. Shortly afterwards he appointed KPMG to advise him on options for privatisation and their feasibility. My right honourable friend has been very open with the trade unions about the consultancy study. Their views were invited on the terms of reference arid their suggestions were taken on board. He readily gave a commitment that once the consultants had completed their work he would consult the unions on his provisional conclusions before reaching any final decision. He has also made available to them, as indeed I said he would in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Castle, as much as possible of the consultants' work.
KPMG completed its work towards the end of last year and copies of the report are in the Library. The report is complete, save for information which is commercially confidential: for example, information given in confidence by outside bodies or material which would be prejudicial to any sale. My right honourable friend has given the KPMG report very careful consideration. His provisional view is that the laboratory should be transferred to the private sector; but I should emphasise that no final decision has been taken. I can repeat the assurance that I gave to the noble Baroness in January, when we last discussed this matter, that we will not take any final decision until my right honourable friend has discussed his view with the trade unions. That said, he is keen to make as early an announcement as he can, as he does not want to extend the period of uncertainty for the staff. Officials in my department have been in contact with the TRL unions in order to arrange a date as soon as possible for a meeting.
Before I comment on the report from the consultants and their conclusions, I want to make it perfectly clear to your Lordships that I join them in their warm tributes paid to the work of TRL. The Government fully recognise the quality of the work there and the important contribution it has made to road safety, the avoidance of

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road congestion, traffic management and a range of related areas. The quality of its work, together with the facilities available and the high calibre of its staff, have earned the laboratory a deserved reputation as a major centre for road and transport research. It is rightly held in high regard by industry both here and abroad.
However, I can see no reason why the quality of its output should change were TRL to be transferred to the private sector. What is important is the reputation of the organisation and the quality of the staff, not whether ownership resides in the public sector or the private sector. That is, I think, in the words of Mr. Robin Cook,
"a Maginot Line we can do without".
Before I turn to the report and refer to one of its paragraphs, I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, who asked whether the consultants were instructed to consider the retention of TRL in the public sector, that they were appointed to examine the option for privatisation. Their judgment of feasibility was against that background. That is the background against which they produced their report. They looked at the status quo option and came to the view that the retention of TRL in the public sector ran the real risk of the laboratory going into a cycle of cumulative decline. The terms of reference were to examine the long-term commercial viability of privatising TRL. Perhaps I may now turn to paragraph 1.4.1 in the consultants' report. Here they say:
"We have considered the principal ownership issues of whether it is feasible and sensible to privatise TRL and, if so, which privatisation option should be pursued. Retention of TRL in the public sector as an Executive Agency has been considered as a default option and compared with a range of privatisation options. Invariably, however, retention of the status quo has not proved favourable by comparison to privatisation options. In our view, retention of TRL in the public sector would risk it being unable to respond adequately to changes in its market and runs the considerable risk of TRL going into a cycle of cumulative decline. Privatisation, by removing some of the public sector constraints on its operation, enabling TRL to exploit fully its intellectual property and to develop a more commercial approach will make it better able to respond to its changing environment".
I have read out the words carefully. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, I have not changed them around. I have read them in the order in which they are in the report.
The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, was concerned about critical mass. I fully appreciate that concern with regard to any research laboratory. On the basis of what the consultants say, if allowed to continue research would suffer a spiral of decline. That would certainly cause it to slip below the critical mass position. As the noble Lord rightly pointed out to the House, it is an important factor.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, has the noble Lord considered the possibility that when considering the prospect of TRL remaining in the public sector, the consultants probably had in mind the disastrous consequences that might occur were the existing Government to remain in office?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I am not entirely sure what the noble Lord is getting at. If he means, as I suspect he does, that KPMG would not receive any more work from the Government, I
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absolutely refute that suggestion. The KPMG consultants were employed for this task and, whatever the result, it would not alter the Government's position on their future role. I am sure that the noble Lord makes the point in jest. But I find it an insulting suggestion both from the Government's point of view and from the point of view of KPMG. I do not believe that they would take that point into consideration when giving their considered view on such an important subject.
As I have just quoted, it is clear that retaining TRL in the public sector is not a viable option. It would risk the laboratory being unable to respond adequately to changes in the market and would lead to a cycle of cumulative decline. That confirms the view that TRL is constrained as a government agency in competition with other research suppliers. KPMG concluded that privatisation would make TRL better able to respond to the changing environment. That must be right. Privatisation would free the laboratory from the restraints it currently faces and enable it to market its services to public and private sector clients alike without any of the red tape of covering each cost pound by pound and penny for penny. It would allow TRL to compete more effectively across a wider market than is currently available to it. The skills and facilities which TRL has to offer mean that it would be in a strong market position in certain areas. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, that that is the definition of a level playing field, not one in which TRL is still in the public sector.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, made certain remarks about government promises to keep executive agencies inside the Civil Service. No such promises were made. It is true that we have decided to keep the Driving Standards Agency, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the Vehicle Certification Agency and the enforcement functions of the Vehicle Inspectorate in the public sector. What we have done is to review agencies. We are quite prepared to keep them in the public sector where that is appropriate and sensible for their continued long-term health and for the quality of the service they supply to customers. We are equally prepared to move them into the private sector if we think that that is the better option.
In confirming that privatisation was feasible, KPMG examined a number of sales options. They included a trade sale to a single buyer, purchase by a consortium of trade buyers and sale as a non-profit distributing company. Their preferred options were sale to a consortium and a non-profit distributing company. Many noble Lords made the point that perhaps we should have taken their advice entirely and gone for the option of a non-profit distributing company. However, KPMG also made the point that prospective bidders may have been hindered by a lack of knowledge of TRL's business and in such circumstances it would seem sensible to keep all possible options open at this stage.
We are therefore minded towards a competitive sale process in which bids would be invited from as wide a range of possible interests as we can find. But that does not mean —and I was asked this specifically by the

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noble Baroness, Lady Castle of Blackburn—that we have taken a final view on the non-profit distributing company idea.
In coming to that final view we shall wish to be satisfied that there are good prospects for a successful privatisation—successful both in terms of transition to the private sector and in terms of my right honourable friend's continuing requirement for high quality transport research and development. Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Ashley, that we continue to fund an extensive research programme, costing about £100 million over the next three years. Therefore there is no question of privatisation leading to a reduction in the level of government-sponsored research.
Neither can I see any reason why privatisation should lead to important long-term research being abandoned, as I have already explained, in favour of more short-term commercial work. Policy units within the Department of Transport responsible on Ministers' behalf for specifying research requirements to be met by both TRL and other suppliers will be looking at both long-term research needs and short-term. Privatisation, as I explained earlier, would not affect the nature of the research we require.
It has been suggested that privatising TRL would risk undermining its reputation for independent and impartial research Obviously we place particular value on TRL's independence and the impartial advice that it offers. If privatisation is confirmed, prospective purchasers would need to demonstrate that they were able to meet those requirements of independence and integrity. I do not for one moment prescribe to the philosophy that one only has independence and integrity in the public sector. I also believe that most of the Labour Party has moved away from that point of view, at least so far as concerns its story to the electorate.
Considerations of independence and integrity are important, but they are not the only factors. We also wish to create a competitive supply market for transport research. We would look to prospective buyers to demonstrate an ability to meet obligations to staff transferring to the new organisation. Finally, we would wish to ensure that proceeds from the sale maximised the return to the taxpayer.
As I said when I started, the debate could hardly have come at a more opportune moment. Your Lordships' comments have been, as ever, illuminating and informative. I know that my right honourable friend is keen to know your Lordships' thinking and will be hurrying back from Dresden overnight from a meeting of fellow European Transport Ministers in order to receive my report on your Lordships' thinking in the morning. However, leaving aside that slightly jesting remark, my right honourable friend will indeed be keen to read reports in Hansard of the debate in order to help him to arrive at a firm conclusion on the future of this important facility.
Baroness Castle of Blackburn: I am grateful to my colleagues on this side of the House for their contributions to the debate and to the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Rodgers, for joining in. We have had a succession of telling speeches which culminated in the
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brilliant summing-up by the noble Lord, Lord Williams. He widened the debate to the whole prospect of research in this country. I cannot congratulate the Minister on his reply. Of course he is in a difficulty. He seeks to defend a totally illogical case. The barrenness of his argument was reinforced by two factors: first, the total lack of support from the Benches behind him; and, secondly, his compulsion to draw in In Place of Strife as a distraction from his lack of transport argument.
I was particularly touched by the picture of Mr. MacGregor dashing home to receive our comments, and to hear that he would stay up all night to consider them. I am sorry, but I do not find it convincing. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion. But we do not withdraw from the fight.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Treasure Bill [H.L.]
7 p.m.
The Earl of Perth: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Where do I start? With hesitation and humbly, since, after all, I aim to amend a law which has been unchanged for nearly 1,000 years. But its original purpose as a source of revenue for the Crown has gone long ago. Today, it aims to preserve portable antiquities if they are of gold or silver. At least as important, it seeks to record where they are found, which may in its turn tell us something about our past history. If it is not reported, then again and again, alas, our history is irrevocably lost. I beg those who find something in the future to report it.
The law of treasure trove as it now stands is inadequate to cover the various antiquities, especially with the growth of the metal "detectorists"—if there is such a word. However, perhaps I may say at once that the Bill is not directed against them in any way. What they do is welcome, if they behave properly. I shall come back to that in more detail later.
I am not the first to try to reform the Bill. Lord Abinger, as far back as 1981, introduced a Bill a little less all-embracing than mine which passed through your Lordships' House. Sadly, it got lost in the Commons and my hope and wish and, I am sure, that of anyone who supports the Bill, is that the same will not happen if this Bill is given a Second Reading and is passed. I think your Lordships know that it will all depend on the Government's support. I know that they are not entirely happy with it as it stands today; but there is no good reason why, over the next six weeks, we do not have time to change the Bill so that it has the wholehearted support and backing of the Government. Then when it goes to the Commons, in one way or another they will see it through. My aim in this has been to listen particularly to them and to enlist their help. I do not think of it in terms of "we" and "they", I think of it in terms of all of us together trying to get the law changed.
Thirteen years have gone by since the Abinger Bill. Again and again, especially in the last few years, many of us have urged the Government to bring in a Bill; but to no avail. There has, however, been one good event in

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the past year. Now there is one department—the Department of National Heritage—which is responsible for the Bill. That makes it much easier. Earlier, when I was trying to get something into shape, I used to tackle various departments which in those days had some responsibility; but they clearly did not take the matter on board. The kind of answer I received was: "We are considering the whole issue" or, "We have in mind to consult all concerned". But nothing has ever come from those words. During that time, we have lost a considerable number of valuable objects and, more important or at least as important, a record of where they were found and the implications for our history.
How did I come into this? The Surrey Archaeological Society who had seen the tragedy of the pillage of their great find at Wanborough, and a little later the British Museum and all the archaeological and other societies concerned with the Bill, became desperate. They approached me, knowing that I had an interest in the subject and asked whether I would help. The result is the Bill. But it has taken five years to hatch, and that is too long. There have been endless consultations, not only with government departments but with great numbers of those associations and others who are interested in the subject. I shall return to that in a moment.
First, I wish to say thank you to all those who, over the past five years, have patiently worked on the Bill —the lawyers and everyone else—and advised us so that we have a Bill which, while it may not be entirely right, is real progress and something we can discuss and change as appropriate.
In earlier times I wanted to make it simpler in the sense that we would say "Trespassers will be prosecuted". But the Home Office would have none of it. I do not blame them; I understand the reasons, but I ask your Lordships and those concerned to realise that we had to get around such difficulties. I like to think that we have succeeded.
We have consulted endless people. For example, the Country Landowners' Association and the National Farmers Union have both shown goodwill and support. They have suggested an amendment which I shall not quote now but which is wholly acceptable for the Committee stage and will do a good deal to remove worries about the rights of landowners and others and will do something to ensure that those who misbehave will suffer accordingly.
We consulted many people. I have a list which I shall not read in full. We consulted something like 30 bodies: the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, the Society of Antiquaries, the British Antique Dealers Association, the British Archaeological Trust. They all say they are wholly behind the Bill. Then we come to another group of bodies who, while they have not been specifically asked their opinion on the Bill, have given us their support in general. For example, magistrates, coroners, the police, the county councils and district associations. They have all indicated their support in one way or another; and if they wish to make amendments, I can only say that they are welcome. I
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have listed those bodies to show how widespread is the general wish that something be done. As it stands today, the treasure trove legislation is inadequate.
Earlier, I said that the Bill was not directed against those who operate metal detectors. I wish to quote from the leaflet of the National Council for Metal Detecting. It lists a code of conduct in which the first item states:
"Do not trespass. Ask permission before venturing on to any private land".
The sixth item is:
"Report all unusual historical finds to the landowner".
The seventh item is:
"Familiarise yourself with the law relating to archaeological sites".
Nothing could be more acceptable than all of this—if it happened. But alas, while there are many very responsible metal detectorists, there are others who do not care and who ignore the code of conduct. Part of the purpose of this Bill is to give teeth by means of a clause that will ensure that if they do not behave—if they steal, I was going to say, which is right—then they face punishment. Clause 4(3) makes it a summary offence not to report a find of treasure. The offence is punishable by up to three months' imprisonment or a fine. That sort of deterrent is essential against the cowboys, the plunderers, the thieves—for that is what they are. They damage for ever the history of our country.
I want to touch on just one other matter before I go very quickly through the various clauses of the Bill as it stands. I have been astonished and heartened, as I am sure have many other noble Lords, by the great interest and support for this Bill among the media. The press, television and radio have all shown their interest and support. I want to thank them. I say to the Government: the people want this measure and you must help us to make the necessary changes and achieve our aim. It is a non-party matter. Not only is the Bill supported by the various Parties, but its aim, which is to save treasure and record our history, is one that is recognised by the people as being of real importance. It is for the common good. It is essential that the Bill, in amended form, should go through this House with Government support and does not suffer the fate of the Abinger Bill, but becomes law.
I should like very briefly to go over the various clauses in the Bill. The explanatory memorandum which accompanies it, in broad, tells us all that we need to know. The one point that is left out of the general paragraphs is that the Bill provides teeth for those who do not follow what they are told to do.
Clause 1 vests treasure in the Crown. It is a complicated matter that it refers just to "treasure", and not "treasure trove". I shall not go into it in detail. It was done in this way because we were advised that, otherwise, there would be problems with the Royal Prerogative. (I am no lawyer, and I do not altogether believe what I am told—or anyway, I think that there is probably a way round it.)
Clause 2 defines what is "treasure" and widens the definition. Importantly, it covers not only gold and silver but objects which are associated with the find. For example, if there is a huge hoard of coins, the copper cannot be separated from the gold and silver, as has happened to date.

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I need not go into all the details on the subsections of Clause 3. The clause is very important because it extends the responsibilities of the coroners; and they do not have to try to decide, with or without a jury, whether the object was buried with the intention of recovery or whether it was lost. That has caused endless difficulties and there have been endless court cases. The distinction is out of date, and the Bill simplifies that matter. Quite simply, the treasure stands on its own.
Clause 4 is very important. It is perhaps the most important clause of all. It lays down the duty of the finder of the treasure; namely, to tell the coroner. From that duty, many matters flow. Without it, anything can happen. People can simply find an object and go away with it in their pocket. But if we look at subsection (3), we see, as I have already stated, that it will be a summary offence not to report a find to the coroner.
Clause 5 lays down the duty of the coroner, who has obligation to the occupier of the land. We shall amend that clause. It is the wish of the Country Landowners' Association and the National Farmers Union to include, in one way or another, the landowner. Clause 6 states that there is no need for a jury.
The Bill come; into force three months after its passage in both Houses. It covers only England and Wales. Perhaps it is rather strange that I, a Scot, should be introducing this, Bill. But in Scotland I like to think that our system or treasure trove works. I shall not go into it. I have talked for long enough. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(The Earl of Perth.)
7.17 p.m.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for bringing this timely Bill before the House. It is a matter of great importance nationally. It affects what we know about our country's history and it affects our understanding of our national heritage. It is a very much needed piece of legislation which effectively enjoys the support of all heritage and archaeological bodies in this country. Perhaps that is, a sweeping statement. I shall rephrase it: I know of no heritage or archaeological body in this country that does riot recognise the Bill as a significant step forward.
As I shall indicate, the Bill goes only so far. In some ways it is less than ideal. At first sight I find the distinction between "treasure trove" and "other treasure" infelicitous. But on closer study I do not have any serious objection; it is simply a matter that requires explanation when one speaks about the Bill.
A more serious objection is that there is perhaps a need for more wide-ranging legislation to protect our archaeological heritage. However, I do not think that is to be used as an objection against the present Bill. It is simply a matter of which we should be aware.
The most important aspect is that this Bill at a serious level is not about gold, silver or treasure. In fact, I and many archaeologists are always rather unhappy at the prominence given to the concept of treasure. What it is about is our shared history in Britain and our understanding of the past, our heritage and who we are, which come from what has been discovered. The
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process of archaeology is to make sense out of the past through the material finds. Many of the material finds are chance finds and are portable antiquities of the kinds dealt with in the Bill.
It is the case that this country falls far behind most civilised lands in lacking an adequate antiquities legislation. We have no all-embracing antiquities legislation. One can find a Greek marble statue in one's back garden or on somebody else's land and certainly it is not treasure trove. Nor is it likely to be if this Bill is carried. We do have ancient monuments Acts which protect ancient sites and monuments. That is one area which, by the system of scheduling, listing and guardianship, is in general rather well organised through the Department of National Heritage and through English Heritage. There is also a measure of protection for sites and monuments under planning legislation.
But at present the only protection in this country for archaeological finds (objects and materials) other than those coming specifically from scheduled monuments is through the treasure trove legislation. We have no portable antiquities legislation. However, it is the case that much of what we know in this country about our ancient past—that is in fact the past before the medieval period because we have only limited documents from Anglo-Saxon and Roman times and no written documents whatever from earlier times—comes from chance discoveries of important finds, which may be gold or silver but just as often are bronze, pottery, stone or other material. It is because of the importance of those materials that the treasure trove legislation and to some extent the proposed change to the legislation are somewhat inadequate.
I remind your Lordships that one of the greatest finds, perhaps the greatest single find in the archaeology of Britain, was the Sutton Hoo ship burial, found in 1939. That has added a whole chapter to our understanding of Britain in the early Anglo-Saxon period. But that find was not treasure trove because it was clearly buried as a burial and not with the intention of recovery. Very fortunately the landowner of the day, Mrs. Pretty, behaved in the most generous manner and donated that find to the British Museum, where it remains the most important single collection of objects from our soil in the national possession. But that was not treasure trove under the existing legislation. Happily, under the proposed legislation of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, it would be classed as treasure and fall within the purview of what he proposes.
Moreover, circumstances are changing. The inadequacies in the treasure trove law become ever more pressing and ever more tiresome. That is partly because of the increasing pace of recovery, not least through the use of metal detectors. The noble Earl, Lord Perth, dealt with that matter in some detail. It is indeed the case that those persons who use metal detectors and then report the find promptly are perhaps doing a service. The very happy circumstance of the recent find of the Hoxne treasure, which was a stunning find, is a very happy case in point. Noble Lords may know the story. A person with a metal detector was hunting for a hammer which the farmer had lost. The farmer invited him onto the land

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and he began to find gold coins. He reported them at once to the competent authorities and a proper excavation followed.
That is the point that I want to make more than any other in my comments. It is not the objects themselves and certainly not the ownership of the objects, be they gold, silver or whatever, that matter. What matters is the information that those objects can give us about our past. In my view what truly matters is not the ultimate ownership of the materials but that those materials are reported at once and then published, so that the find becomes part of the information available to us, and in a serious sense in terms of information it becomes part of our archaeological and cultural heritage. That is what happened in the case of the Hoxne treasure, thanks to the very efficient, prompt and responsible action of the finder.
As a result of the existing legislation, we have absurd inadequacies. Your Lordships will be well aware that at present when a treasure is found it is necessary to hold a coroner's inquest on the intentions of the persons who deposited that treasure as they might have been 2,300 years ago. Did they intend to recover it or did they leave it there as a votive offering or as a burial? It is self-evident that in many cases it is not feasible to ascertain the intentions of persons who died 2000 years ago without any written indication as to what their intentions might have been. So there are coroner's inquests with little more point than determining how many angels might dance on the point of a needle. There are many unsatisfactory, time-wasting circumstances.
Secondly and equally damaging is that, at the moment when important finds are made, only those objects which are of gold or damage to our understanding of the past. Fortunately silver are declared to be treasure. The law as it stands brings about the splitting up and destruction of contexts and the loss of information through the separation of one part of the find from another. That is of great, in some cases that is avoided, for instance, in the case of the most important recent find, the Snettisham Iron Age find. Most of that find was declared to be treasure trove because most of it was of gold or silver. The bronze objects, through the generosity of the landowner, also found their way to the British Museum with the gold and silver, but it could have been otherwise.
A third consequence is that many important coin finds of great significance to our understanding of the history and past economy of the nation are not treasure trove. Most of them will be so if this Bill is enacted. It is also relevant to point to the pace of looting, as I did a moment ago. There have been some very serious incidents, such as that of the Icklingham bronzes, where an important collection of Roman bronzes was looted from a site without the knowledge of the landowner and ended up in New York in very murky circumstances. It is a very sad story. It is said that the owner intends to bequeath those objects ultimately to the British Museum. In any case, the point that I make is that the information which would come from a proper assessment of those objects has in large part been lost.
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As I said, it is information and not ownership which is of the greatest importance. That has recently been recognised by the Council for British Archaeology, the Museums Association and the Society of Antiquaries of London, which last year produced a statement of principles on portable antiquities. I should like to draw the attention of your Lordships to that statement of principles because it illustrates how much more is needed than the present Bill, though happily the Bill conforms with those principles and will be a step in the right direction. Those leading and eminent authorities pointed out that:
"In Britain today there is no coherent statutory provision for the management of our archaeological inheritance. Britain's archaeological inheritance is a unique resource for the study and understanding of human history … In England and Wales, only Treasure Trove, limited to certain gold and silver finds, provides any requirement for finds to be recorded or studied. There is no other legislation relating specifically to portable antiquities. This omission is illogical. It is contrary to the public interest: an interest which rests in opportunity for public knowledge of our national history".
The five principles are then set out:
"1. The archaeological inheritance is an entity. Archaeological structures and objects form an essential part of the archaeological heritage. Therefore portable elements of our heritage should be accorded a status in law which is commensurate with their importance".
I may add that in most other countries of Europe they are indeed accorded such a status. It continues,
"2. The archaeological inheritance is irreplaceable. The nation should seek to ensure that all aspects of its inheritance are subject to appropriate stewardship.
3. All archaeological material has a potential to contribute information which will help to retrace Britain's history. There is thus a valid public interest in the reporting by a finder of items which are found by chance.
4. The purpose of such reporting is to allow competent recording of information. Such reporting should be made a legal obligation upon the finder (as is currently the case with Treasure Trove), and failure to report should be an offence".
It goes on to suggest that,
"The Crown should wish to retain material of national or regional significance in museums, for purposes of study and public display. Where the Crown retains material, a financial award may be made to the finder and/or landowner".
Of course that is the practice with treasure trove today; that is, that financial rewards to the full commercial value of the finds are made to the finders if the Crown retains those finds. It also states that,
"In the case of material which it is not in the public interest to retain, the Crown would normally wish to reassign title to the finder or landowner".
That is the ideal. But it would present some difficulties. It would require staffing in the sense of who the finder would report the materials to. For that reason the Council for British Archaeology, the Society of Antiquaries and the Museums Association have not sought to bring forward legislation to change the position, though I hope that that day will not be far off.
However, as the noble Earl, Lord Perth, showed, this legislation brings a number of benefits with it. First, we would be saved the absurd squabbling as to whether the person burying the treasure intended to recover it. That is something that in general we simply cannot know. Secondly, it would avoid the splitting of finds. If there is a treasure which contains gold and silver then the entire treasure—including the pottery, the bronze, the bones; the whole enterprise—would be part of the ensemble, and that is the only reasonable way of

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proceeding. There are other merits, but I shall not take up too much of your Lordships' time by going through them. It seems to me that those are the two principal merits of the Bill.
I had hoped that the Government would support the Bill outright. The noble Earl, Lord Perth, was extremely modest when he indicated the wide range of authorities whom he had consulted. He certainly alerted the Department of National Heritage at its inception on 1st April last year. I was sorry to learn from him the likelihood that the department, in the presence of my noble friend who will speak in a moment, may not feel able to embrace the Bill as it stands. I should of course be delighted if my Ahnungen, my uneasiness, in this matter were refuted by my noble friend Lady Trumpington standing up and saying that the Government are delighted to support the Bill in every way. But I suspect that I shall be disappointed in that regard.
However, in my view the Department of National Heritage ought to support the Bill because it is very much the business of that department to be concerned with the issues that I have raised. Moreover, there was hope—I trust that I am in order in quoting the words of a Minister of the Crown in another place on 27th October 1993—when the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for National Heritage, Mr. Iain Sproat, in summing-up in response to a question, said,
"But treasure trove has severe shortcomings in its present form. It relates only to objects with a substantial gold or silver content, reflecting its origins as a means of raising revenue for the Crown rather than furthering archaeological research. Even when objects of base metal are found closely associated with gold and silver objects, they cannot be declared treasure trove, whatever their potential archaeological importance, and even gold and silver objects ale treasure trove only if they were deliberately hidden with the intention of later recovery—a point that may be virtually impossible to decide after 2,000 years or more.
We recognise these inadequacies and are considering proposals for a private Member's Bill to reform the present law … put forward by Lord Perth and the Surrey Archaeological Society, with support from the British museum. As my right hon. Friend made clear to the sponsors of the Bill earlier this year, we felt unable to support some of their original proposals, but detailed discussions are now under way and I certainly hope that it will be possible for us to give our support to a modified package before long". —[0ffic, a1 Report, Commons,27/10/93; col.951.]
If the Government are not able to give that support, I should like to know the reason why. The noble Earl, Lord Perth, has been assiduous in his attempts to meet every point raised, not only by the Department of National Heritage but by the Home Office, the Treasury, the Treasury Solicitor and even by the Foreign Office. It is my view that the Department of National Heritage should have been sorting out those problems for the noble Earl. But though he spoke with the greatest mildness and generosity, he did not say that the Department of National Heritage had sorted out the problems and I fear that that may indeed be the case.
I look forward therefore with the greatest interest to what my noble friend Lady Trumpington will say. I have spoken for too long, but I should like to mention two more points. First, I should like to quote from a letter written by Professor Cunliffe, a professor of archaeology in Oxford, to the Independent last week. More significantly, he is president of the Society of Antiquaries. He said,
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"Lord Perth's Bill may not go as far as many may want, but it will be a dramatic improvement on our present medieval laws and will move antiquities in England and Wales a little closer to the state they enjoy in most of the rest of the civilised world".
Finally, I was formally asked by the Trustees of the British Museum—I am one of their number—to inform your Lordships that this Bill has their unequivocal support.
7.36 p.m.
Lord Templeman: My Lords, your Lordships will deduce from my high place in the order of speakers, for which I am grateful, and also from my semi-funereal uniform, that I have a long-standing and official engagement which will prevent me from being here until the end of the debate. I tender my humble apologies and beg to be forgiven. I am also authorised to say that my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham approves the principles and present details of the Bill and hopes, as do we all, that it will be given Government backing.
The law of treasure trove is notoriously uncertain and eccentric. The Bill does not replace the law of treasure trove; it supplements it in a way which will get rid of some of the very oddities which now cause anxiety. For example, treasure trove is limited to gold and silver articles which are hidden in the earth or "other secret place", the authorities say, with the intention of their being recovered. Therefore if articles have been lost, abandoned or, as the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, said, found in a grave from where there was no intention that they should be recovered, then nothing can be done about them and they can be destroyed, sold or reposed in bank vaults by some misanthropic millionaire.
The Bill applies, by Clause 2, to coins, which are precious metal; to plate or jewellery which have at least 5 per cent. by weight of precious metal—precious metal being defined as gold and silver—provided that they are or appear to be,
"at least 200 years old when found".
There is one important addition; that is, it applies also to objects at least 200 years old where the Secretary of State has by statutory instrument designated its being a. class of object which he considers to be of,
"outstanding historical or archaeological importance".
The whole thrust of the Bill therefore is to preserve the national heritage and articles which really belong to the nation. It will only apply to some articles which have been lost for 200 years. In that sense no finder who stumbles upon them can really claim ownership and no farmer who bought his farm and paid a price for the agricultural content of it can really claim that he is an owner and is entitled to all the benefit of all the articles found on his soil. This is a preservation of the national heritage for our posterity.
I am not myself aware of any defects in the Bill. I understand that some nervousness has been expressed on two grounds; first, what is said to be an extension of the prerogative of the Crown; and secondly, what is said to be some possibility of ownership. So far as concerns ownership, your Lordships will see that under Clause 2(3):
"An object is not treasure … if its owner at the time immediately before it came to be in the place where it is found, or his successor in title, establishes his title to the object".

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So the Bill is really confined to articles which for 200 years or more have given up the ghost so far as concerns ownership.
As regards the Crown, the prerogative of the Crown is rightly preserved in relation to treasure trove by Clause 2(2). I apprehend that what is meant by the extension of the prerogative is the fact that Clause 1 vests treasure in the Crown. I do not consider that to be an extension of prerogative. It is Parliament saying to the Crown, "Will you please take over these objects?" The House should not be nervous about giving this title to the Crown because it is quite clear that the Crown takes it on only as trustee. The Crown will, as with treasure trove, consider the merits of persons who find and will make ex gratia payments, as they now are, in relation to treasure trove. The whole object is that the Crown, through Ministers and through the Heritage Department, will be able to ensure that these objects, having been lost by our ancestors, are preserved for our posterity.
That is the whole object of the Bill. If there are any defects in it, as my noble friend Lord Perth said, they can be corrected in Committee. With the massive support that has been obtained from all quarters and with the present unsatisfactory state of the law, I very much hope that the Bill will be given a fair wind and that we shall get some results after what have been years now of endeavour.
7.42 p.m.
Lord Broadbridge: My Lords, like others before me, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Perth, on bringing forward this highly important Bill; indeed, one might almost say this precious Bill. When considering a subject I find it a good discipline to proceed from the general to the specific. So, first, I ask myself why is treasure important? I believe there are two principal reasons. First, but rarely most importantly, for its intrinsic value in its content of precious metal or metals. But, secondly and most importantly, for the information which scholars and others working in the field in museums, galleries, institutions, universities and members of the dealing profession can obtain about our island's history, principally its people, their customs and skills and their distribution of population.
Then I ask myself why this Bill is so important. It is important because it is estimated that some 2 million "portable antiquities" are found each year in Britain by some of the 20,000 users of metal detectors, quite apart from structured, methodical and fully reported architectural excavation. One of two things happens; the finds are reported or—as happens in the majority of cases—they go unreported and are sold on. I should like to deal first with what now happens if they are reported.
The relevant law is that of treasure trove, under which we have laboured since mediaeval times: I was going to say "since time out of mind" but find as a non-lawyer that this means on or before 1189, the commencement of the reign of Richard I. I am not aware of the precise date of the treasure trove law, if indeed there is one, but its purpose was to fill the royal coffers. For reasons which seem opaque to me, any item
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substantially of gold or silver left with the intention of retrieving it later became the property of the Crown, while that deemed "abandoned", including burials, went to the finder. The Daily Telegraph, in a substantial article on 2nd March last, quoted Dr. Ian Longworth, the British Museum Keeper of Prehistoric and Roman British Antiquities, as saying:
"It is absurd to think that we can today understand the motives that led their owners to bury objects such as gold torcs several thousand years ago".
This Bill will greatly assist coroners' inquests by deeming all items clearly specified in Clause 2 as treasure without dereliction of designation as treasure trove or of the Royal Prerogative over such items. Therefore, if I dig up something, it may be treasure trove as mediaevally defined, but if it falls within Clause 2 it is treasure and all the strictures of the Bill and powers of the law protect it. Some who have given the Bill a cursory reading only have commented that a weakness lies in the fact that precious metal content is required. But that is not so, for subsection (5) of Clause 2 empowers the Secretary of State by order made by statutory instrument—this, I understand, to be an affirmative resolution of Parliament—to designate as treasure any class of objects at least 200 years old which he considers to be of outstanding historical or archaeological importance. I further understand that this is not a Henry VIII clause.
I am very glad that the noble Earl has specified a time as recent as 200 years ago in his Bill. It is, I believe, a common misconception that the older something is, then, more or less automatically, the greater is its importance. I, my Lords, am an amateur silversmith and now show you a ring I made containing a William the Conqueror silver penny. At their auction Christie's did not give it away, but there was much coinage in the Conqueror's reign, whereas I believe coins of subsequent and sometimes much later reigns are far rarer and consequently more important and, for that matter, expensive. It is said that Spencer Churchill, the great collector of antiquities, on being introduced to another collector used to ask, "Are you a BC or an AD man? I'm a BC man". Perhaps he thought himself rather superior in being a BC man, but I think it is very important that we should not lose sight of AD, and particularly more recent AD, in terms of our island history. There is much treasure in AD, not least in comparatively recent AD.
I earlier asked the rhetorical question as to what happens when a detector operator discovers something, and have just now endeavoured to answer what happens when the find is reported. However, in what is believed to be the majority of cases, the find is unreported and the object is sold on. There are perhaps two reasons for this. First, the finder is aware that he or she is trespassing under the potential penalties of the law of trespass. This is in itself an offence, and it means that the finder will never gain title to the find. Secondly, the finder has a muddled appreciation even of the law as it stands at present; that is, the law of treasure trove alone. Under this, if declared treasure trove, he will get the market value of the item, or its return with legal title to keep or sell if not wanted by any museum or comparable

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institution, and its return and legal title if not. The finder can expect a far better price on sale with legal title than will result from sale to shadowy dealers where both sides are aware of its illegal possession.
The great sadness of a treasure being unreported and smuggled out of the country is that it is important to us here for our understanding of our island's history. Its relevance and likely scholarly study once it leaves our shores for another country is greatly diminished. After all, the find is probably not part of their history and, if studied at all, will be with a rather detached intellectual interest largely divorced from the additional emotional adrenalin that significantly butters our own scholars' bread. This Bill will, I hope, be a great deterrent to such illegal export.
A key element of the Bill is that the definition of treasure supplements and greatly enlarges the category of property falling within the protection to scholars of treasure trove by defining a new property of treasure, combined with the: legal reporting strictures of Clause 4 which, in paraphrase, are first: to report it, and, secondly, to do so within four weeks, failing which up to three months in prison is risked or a fine of up to level 5—that is, £5,000—or both. Thus this excellent Bill puts teeth into the law of treasure by greatly widening the property under protection and requiring almost immediate reporting. Additionally, Clause 5(1) of the Bill requires that the coroner shall:
"within a reasonable time inform the person whom he reasonably believes to be the occupier of the land that the property has been found on the land",
and, in subsection (2) (b) of that clause, the latter has to be given,
"a reasonable opportunity to appear at the inquest",
which, as per Clause 6, may be without a jury. Also, for the avoidance, of doubt, if the circumstances of the find indicate the possibility that the find might be treasure, it will be assumed to be such until an inquest determines otherwise or the legal owner comes forward. Thus, this Bill seeks to remove the grey area of doubt rather along the familiar lines of the declaration of income to the Inland Revenue that if you are in any doubt you should declare it.
Importantly, the Secretary of State may publish a code of practice for the guidance of finders, museums and other relevant parties. By doing this the Secretary of State would both shed public light on a dim and confused area and greatly increase awareness of this legislation. I certainly hope that this would be done.
In conclusion, I wish to emphasise the support given to this Bill by leading bodies. That the Bill is being backed by the British Museum speaks volumes. Additionally, as other speakers have mentioned, it is supported by the Council for British Archaeology, the Museums Association, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Royal Numismatic Society and the Country Landowners' Association. Many antique dealers are said to support it and the National Farmers' Union, when last contacted 18 months ago, were behind it. The Magistrates' Association and the chief police officers' and coroners' bodies support it. I feel rather humble in saying that I too support it. Although the weather in another place may be stormier, I hope that your Lordships will give this Bill a fair wind. I wish it well.
7.52 p.m.
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I must first apologise for batting out of order. There seem to be two different lists in circulation this evening and I must have got hold of the wrong one. But I am grateful to those who have allowed me to speak at this point.
I am certainly not an amateur silversmith like the noble Lord, Lord Broadbridge, but for many years I have had an interest in this subject. If I mention one or two of the capacities in which that arises it is purely to demonstrate that, coming from all the different directions that one can to this complicated subject, I have come clearly to the conclusion that this is a Bill which ought to be supported. I have the honour to be chairman of the British Academy Committee for Sylloge of Coins of British Isles. I am also an advisor to the National Art Collections Fund which frequently assists museums in acquiring objects which come forward as treasure trove.
But, from a different angle, since childhood I have been a collector of coins and have written about them. Also during many years in another place, because of these interests, I have found myself the recipient of views on the subject from all kinds of people outside the archaeological establishment. One of the strongest views which was expressed some years ago was that it was not right for the British Museum to be the arbiter of value in respect of objects of treasure trove which the museum itself wanted to acquire. That seemed to me to be a reasonable position. I am glad to say that almost 20 years ago I was able to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, who was then Chief Secretary to the Treasury and responsible for these things, that it would be sensible to set up an independent body to deal with valuations.
The Treasure Trove Reviewing Committee which has fulfilled that role ever since has, I believe, completely removed from debate some of the more contentious aspects which had arisen hitherto when there was questioning as to whether the valuation of objects had been correctly carried out. Whether or not that was true, if the perception was that rewards (ex gratia payments) were not adequately reflecting market value, then that would be an incentive to some not to declare their fines. I want to take this opportunity of expressing my own appreciation of those who have served on the Treasure Trove Reviewing Committee in recent years because I believe that they have removed that area of contention from the scene.
I congratulate the noble Earl for bringing forward this Bill and thank him for the enormous amount of work and effort which he has put in in bringing it to this state. It is an exceedingly complicated subject. I hope that he will not be embarrassed, but I greatly admire his ingenuity in bringing forward the definition of "treasure" alongside that of "treasure trove". The practical problems of altering the definition of treasure trove itself in legal terms are considerable. It may be that we shall now have a Bill which will achieve the right result without having to open the very complicated issue of the definition of "treasure trove" itself.

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Of course, the definition of "treasure" will frequently overlap that of "treasure trove" and that is well understood. But it is very important to bring within the ambit of the law those anomalous cases where, for example, a hoard of coins consists partly of coins containing precious metals and partly not—associated objects and so on; or there is some doubt as to whether the coins had a sufficient element of precious metals in them to justify them as treasure trove at all. I believe that the noble Earl's solution to that by setting up a definition of "treasure" alongside that of "treasure trove" is extremely ingenious. I hope that it will commend itself not only to your Lordships' House, but also to another place.
There are one or two practical questions which I would like to raise and to which I hope that my noble friend will respond when she winds up at the end of this debate. I have had it said to me in the past week or two that there is a possible danger that this definition is too all-embracing and that it might cause too large a number of individual objects to be defined as treasure and therefore bring them into the full processes of the proposed legislation with penalties, reporting and many other things. I have no idea whether or not such comments are justified, but since the Government have clearly paid careful attention to the proposals put forward by the noble Earl, I hope that they may have made some assessment of whether there would be a problem in the sheer number of objects.
The noble Earl mentioned that there is a different system of treasure trove in Scotland. I remember some years ago discussing this with, sadly, the now deceased Robert Stevenson, who was a very distinguished Keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland for many years. I asked him how the Scottish law worked in relation to the very large range of objects to which it potentially could be applied. His answer was that in Scotland they took a pragmatic view about the implementation of the law. He thought that it did not really matter whether they tacitly waived rights over a whole range of objects so long as they had the ability to apply the law to those objects which came to their knowledge and which were of historical, archaeological or cultural importance. I do not know whether the same would apply in the case of the noble Earl's Bill if it were implemented in England. Clearly, the size of England and the amount of activity in the South East of England would be very different from that in the Scottish context. But it is a question which I hope that my noble friend can help us on a little later on.
The other matter that I should like to ask about is whether it is the Government's view that the proposals would require an increase in staff at the British Museum. I am very sympathetic to the members of staff of the British Museum's coin department because under the existing treasure trove arrangements, they receive enormous quantities of coins and have the prime responsibility for recording them. They take the opportunity to make acquisitions, but only of a very small fraction of those which pass through their hands.
I should like at this stage to pay a compliment to Dr. Andrew Burnett, the Keeper of Coins and Medals at the
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British Museum, who is making strenuous efforts for his department to catch up in its work on the publication of hordes. It is a sad fact that some very important hordes that were found some 20 or more years ago have still not received adequate publication. Students of those series are seriously handicapped if such information (although retrieved under the present treasure trove arrangements) is not disseminated and published within a reasonable period.
I mention that not because I want to cause serious embarrassment to the British Museum, but merely because it is one of the more serious complaints which over the years that I was a Member of another place I used to receive from many people outside. As I have said, I know that the museum is now making great efforts to catch up, but the question then arises of whether widening the definition of treasure trove will increase the amount of work that has to be carried out there. If that is likely to be the case, I hope that the Government will look sympathetically at strengthening the numbers of those required to do it.
As my noble friend Lord Renfrew said, some of the main problems with metal detecting arise when finds are not reported, particularly in the case of scheduled sites. The other great mischief is trespass, when those who find objects are reluctant to reveal the provenance of their finds because they should not have been at the place of discovery. I was encouraged by the noble Earl's comment that his Bill would make it much more difficult for the cowboys in the metal detecting fraternity. I hope that it will serve to track down not only the objects, but also information about where they were found and in what context. The context is enormously important. Perhaps I might illustrate that by saying that in my own area of interest, which is the first century of English coinage (the second half of the seventh century and the first half of the eighth), almost the only clues that we have about in which of the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms the coins were produced is where the coins are found. The find spots of the objects are enormously important. If they are not preserved at the time of discovery, they can rarely be discovered afterwards.
The other point about the importance of context is that the value of hordes lies not only in the fact that they contain rather larger numbers of antiquities than those found singly, but also hordes provide vital information for the relative dating of objects because, on the whole, hordes (particularly of coins, but also of jewellery and other items, not to mention pottery and other associated objects) tend to be of similar date. A picture of the chronology, which can then be used for dating archaeological sites more generally, can often be built up as a result of the accurate recording of coin hordes. Therefore, I strongly support the intention behind the Bill to encourage greater reporting and recording of discoveries.
There have been times—I do not know whether this still applies—when those who use metal detectors have got something of a bad name for themselves in archaeological circles. That is not surprising if they have been engaged in looting, because in those circumstances they deserve it. But many of those who use metal detectors do not deserve such censure—in fact, they

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have added greatly to our knowledge. They have added to the repertoire of material on which we work. The information that they have provided about find spots and associations of objects and coins has been exceedingly valuable. I should like to think that this Bill, if it becomes an Act, will encourage still greater co-operation between archaeologists and what I think one should call "meta: detectorists". The two should not be frightened of each other.
I was astonished to read last week, in one of the newspapers which covered this subject, about the Surrey Archaeological Society which had carried out an excavation at Wanborough and published information on it. Somebody with a metal detector had then come along and found the largest-ever horde of Iron Age coins two feet from where the society had been digging. Does nobody in the Surrey Archaeological Society have access to a metal detector? Should not archaeologists themselves take the trouble, if not before they excavate —although that might be very helpful—at least before they make known the location of a site, to apply such techniques to see whether areas of the site should have been given more mention in the first place?
I hope that the Bill will proceed. I hope that it will get through your Lore ships' House and another place. If by any chance it does not, either through lack of time or for any other reason, I very much hope that the Government will recognise that the support which the Bill has attracted represents a strong wish that legislation along these lines, if not exactly that in the noble Earl's Bill, is urgently needed and that they might then come forward with legislation themselves.
8.7 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, other speakers have already stressed tie limitations of the law of treasure trove which is centuries old and was designed only for the purpose of lining the king's pocket where possible. For that reason, I should like briefly to relate the story of Wanborough which is a known Romano-British site just outside Guildford, lying north of the Hog's Back. Here in 1983 some responsible metal detectorists found that there were Iron Age and early Roman coins and they correctly reported that fact.
If I may digress, I would remind your Lordships that many, indeed the majority of metal detector users are highly responsible people who record their finds and report them. They can be invaluable members of an official excavation; for example, by scanning spoil heaps for small finis which could otherwise slip through the net. In very many localities nowadays there is active co-operation between metal detectorists and archaeologists to their mutt al benefit.
However, sad to say, in the Wanborough case the Surrey police soon became aware of people who were battening onto this with more sinister intentions. Unfortunately, when a coroner's inquest was held in 1985 the coroner inadvertently gave out in open court the exact location where the treasure had been found. From then on the site was raided by a new breed of treasure hunters who descended on it in droves, to the great distress of the landowner and local residents. They called themselves 'night-hawks" and it was evident that
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some of them had been hired to do the job. They went on digging through the summer and autumn nights despite creditable police vigilance and even while a controlled excavation with electronic wiring was set up.
Something in the order of £2 million-worth of gold and silver coins were removed and dispersed across Europe and into America. The site turned out to be a Romano/Celtic temple; the coins were earlier than the temple by over a hundred years. They seem to have come from outside it; from ground which had been so thoroughly churned up that it was impossible to decide for sure what, if any, the relationship had been. The coroner's inquest decided on the balance of probabilities that they were treasure trove. In the subsequent rescue excavation rare and elaborate bronze priestly regalia, some of it quite unique, was recovered from inside the temple; more may have been lost. Since it was made of bronze it would not have counted as treasure trove, so the finds could have been split up. Treasure trove may be only gold or silver; the requisite precious metal content has been debated very often. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, once laid down that it should be as high as 50 per cent, which is not practical in many cases.
Splitting a hoard into what is precious metal and what is not is only one of the many anomalies of the present system. One of the most necessary reforms is the proper recording of all finds. If relevant facts are placed on permanent record scholars can build up realistic accounts about the past. But if things are dug up in secret and disposed of equally secretly the loss to knowledge cannot be calculated. The irony is that the individual metal detectorist is often unaware of the true value of the object he finds.
It was in 1989 that the Surrey Archaeological Society became convinced of the need for further action. In July of that year one of the Wanborough convictions was quashed on appeal on the grounds that the trial judge had failed to make clear to the jury that in a criminal trial the standard of proof required in a civil court was insufficient. Therefore, any presumption available in the coroner's court as to treasure trove or as to the Crown's entitlement did not apply in criminal cases. That decision would leave only the option of a prosecution for theft from the landowner under the Theft Act. But this is fraught with difficulties; at Wanborough part of the site was private farmland and part was a county council footpath. Formerly it was an offence to conceal treasure trove but this was abolished by Section 32(1) (a) of the Theft Act 1968. In theory, such cases would still constitute theft but in practice doubts concerning ownership and establishing mens rea have meant that prosecutions have either failed or not been attempted, even in the most extreme cases.
In October 1989 a letter to The Times was written by the then president of the Surrey Archaeological Society suggesting that, although earlier attempts at reform had not succeeded, it might be time to try again. Among the replies that came back was one from a judge who had been involved as counsel in one of the Wanborough cases at Kingston Crown Court. While agreeing the correctness of the appeal decision, he wrote:

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"This does not mean that I and other members of my profession do not support your point of view; on the contrary, we do. The law of Treasure Trove seems just as arbitrary and absurd to us as it does to you. There is no doubt now what the law is, and how totally inadequate it is for the protection of our heritage. You should use this case as a goad to prod our rulers out of their disgraceful inertia, and good luck to you".
The point remains that if the Bill is not passed there will be a delay, which almost certainly will be three years. During that time a great deal of our heritage will be lost permanently.
8.15 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I shall deal in a moment with the interesting comments made by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, on metal detectors. I too warmly support the Bill and congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Perth, on the trouble that he has taken to get it into print, and to present it today in such an interesting way.
I express my main reason for supporting the Bill slightly differently from noble Lords who have spoken. The ancient law of treasure trove is not only artificial but has only one main original and continuing purpose; that is, theoretically, to enable the Crown to acquire gold and silver. Its purpose was decided upon in the reign of King Richard I—Coeur de Lion—because at that time and until 1914 we were on the Gold Standard. Gold was the foundation of our currency and of our economic credibility and it was helpful for the Crown to obtain gold.
Of course, silver and copper were also part of the coinage. However, over the years, experience has shown that to say merely that the Crown shall have the right to gold and silver when it is found in certain circumstances is an artificial and narrow way of protecting the heritage.
Much else besides gold and silver which has been buried in the earth of England and Wales during the past 5,000 years is of historic, archaeological and even artistic value. One does not want to be legalistic in this matter because that will get us nowhere; but the items should be regarded as Crown property or public property which should be put on view in museums to which the public have access. Displaying such items in museums for the benefit of the public is especially important for the understanding of our past by future generations.
The fact that metal detectors have been used increasingly during the past 30 years is incidental. The Bill would be necessary whether or not metal detectors had been discovered. Let us consider the part that metal detectors can play, as did the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, with a vivid illustration. They can play a most valuable part or they can play a part which has the opposite effect. I am glad to say that today the All-Party Arts and Heritage Group, of which I am an officer and which supports the Bill, visited the Museum of London. The people who run the museum told us that they have a good understanding with people who use metal detectors in the Inner London area. I assume that includes those who are working on the banks of the Thames. The Bill could help those who use metal detectors, because Clause 8(3) (c) deals with the opportunity for the finders to receive rewards.
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I turn to the treasure trove law, which is artificial and unsatisfactory. The Crown has no right to the property unless it was hidden in the earth with the intention of recovering it. As was said by my noble friend Lord Renfrew in his most telling speech, it is generally impossible to say what was the intention of the original owner who may have been dead for 2,000 years. Coroners have overcome that difficulty in many cases when in doubt and have applied the principle of a prima facie presumption that the treasure was indeed originally hidden with a view to being dug up at some later stage. Of course, in those circumstances, the finder is frequently unable to rebut that presumption.
The artificial distinction which applies to treasure trove will not apply to the new concept of treasure as described by the noble Earl because Clause 1 provides that the property which is in treasure would vest in the Crown irrespective of where it was found and the circumstances in which it came to be there. Therefore, that would overcome a great difficulty which has existed in connection with gold and silver.
We shall have to consider Clause 2 very carefully in Committee. It provides a definition of treasure. One might have hoped that all objects of outstanding archaeological, historical or artistic importance would be treated automatically as treasure. But in Clause 2(5) and (6) we find that such objects will need to be described in an order to be made by the Secretary of State and approved by affirmative resolution of each House. We are placing that important definition into secondary legislation. My opinion is that it would be much better to write as much as possible of that definition into the Bill.
Clause 5 provides that the coroner must inform the occupier of the land that the property has been found there. But the Country Landowners' Association and the National Farmers Union have suggested wisely that the owner of the land should also be informed of the find. I suggest that that should be the responsibility either of the coroner, as has already been suggested, or when the coroner has told the occupier, the occupier might have responsibility for telling the owner; or it may be that we could even give the finder a responsibility in that matter. That is a point which we may wish to consider in Committee.
The National Farmers Union has made another good point by suggesting that no ex gratia payment should be made to any finder who is a trespasser. That is fair enough. I suggest that could be written into the Bill instead of being included eventually in a code of practice which the Bill envisages at present.
I most earnestly hope, as do other noble Lords, that the Government will support the Bill although I concede that Ministers may well wish to table amendments in the light of advice given to them. I have studied some of the advice given by eminent Civil Service lawyers, but I find the arguments somewhat legalistic and unhelpful and in one or two cases, I do not believe that the law has been stated correctly.
This Bill is in the public interest which the Government have a duty to protect. The fact that it is so widely supported by every speaker so far in your Lordships' House, by the British Museum and the

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Museums Association, by the CLA and the NFU, by the Council of British Archaeology, the Society of Antiquaries, and the Royal Numismatic Society must carry weight. It will be interesting to hear what my noble friend Lady Trumpington has to say in answer to the arguments put forward this evening in favour of the Bill.
I ask my noble friend what is the point of having a Department of National Heritage unless it does something to protect those parts of our heritage which are at risk of vanishing. This Bill or something like it would protect our heritage in vital respects.
8.25 p.m.
The Earl of Lytton: My Lords, I warmly support the Bill and I am extremely grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for giving us an opportunity to discuss it this evening.
First, I must declare an interest as a landowner. On the land that I own there are several ancient monuments and I am also a member of the Country Landowners' Association. I live in a 300 year-old house which has been in my family for 237 years. I am not sure whether that makes some of the odd bits and pieces that I find in it subject to the provisions of the Bill regardless of how they come to be there. But I support the Bill because it gives us an opportunity to knock some sense into a situation which is manifestly unsatisfactory. Grave-robbers and bounty-hunters, like loose cannon, having no obligations or co-responsibility, have been with us for centuries and the present day has merely added a technological dimension to that.
As always. it must be said that it is the few who prejudice the interests of a larger number of responsible members of the public who pursue their pleasure by using metal detectors. It is an opportunity also for the House to consider which artefacts may be considered to be treasure arid, therefore, rightly belong to the nation and perhaps also those which do not necessarily belong to the nation but which may belong to individuals.
I was not quite sure that I understood correctly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Templeman, but I believe that he was referring to items which had been lost for 200 years. As I read the Bill—and no doubt noble Lords will correct me if I am wrong—it is if the item is 200 years old when it was found, regardless of when it came to be lost, which could be much more recent.
There are several personalities in this situation. First, there is the finder whose direct labours result in the discovery of artefacts. I make no comment on the motives which may have led to that. Secondly, there is the state, which ha; a legitimate interest in ensuring that important artefacts are kept so far as possible—and I put in that qualification—within the country and, more particularly, that their locational relevance is established and categorised. Thirdly, there is the property owner on whose land the find is made. We should not forget him, and noble Lords will forgive me for flying that flag. He is the one enduring personality and it is often through that personality that the relevance of a find may be validated, authorised or otherwise put in context from a standpoint of local knowledge; and that should not be forgotten.
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The finder has no locus standi unless he has asked the permission of the person on whose land—and I include buildings in that—he is carrying out a search. Otherwise, quite honestly, he is a trespasser and a thief. The Bill goes some way towards covering my anxieties about that and I support in particular the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, in that regard.
The state has very little governance over that of which it has no knowledge. I have some anxiety about a blanket declaration of ownership and the degree to which that has effect where it is circumscribed by what amounts to its own ignorance. Also, if it cannot engender the necessary respect for authority in terms of its controlling powers, it does not carry with it the necessary measure of practical expediency.
The landowner is the person with the longest standing enduring economic, managerial and legal interest and I do not believe that he can be eliminated from the calculation. He is the fixed object of legal and managerial relevance in all this. It follows that if good practice is to follow the law, the legislation must ally itself with the person or body which has the long-term, on-site commitment.
We were given earlier the example of the circumstances near Guildford, which I must say fill me with great concern. That is a typical example of where no one is in overall control of the site. However, who other than the landowner can give access, provide that essential additional information and have possible access to estate records which can throw light on the relevance of the find and, apart from anything else, validate the claim as to where the artefact might have been found? Archaeologists, on their own admission, are not omniscient: they can be misled by the information that is given to them. There are great gaps in our knowledge generally on archaeological matters, including the extent or even the existence of sites and their relevance. I must say that the idea of putting everything in a museum is really not an answer: it is a collectivist approach which I for one—bearing in mind the fact that I am a proud custodian of all sorts of things from family papers to individual artefacts—cannot accept.
Who takes responsibility for the consequences of a find? Well, perhaps it came from a previously unrecorded site. In terms of land management and maintenance, what will happen in the future? Who will make the investment in the land management to procure the security of the site and ensure that it is properly investigated for the future? The site itself may be a great deal more important than the odd item that is actually dug out of it. To create a dislocation of the find from the actual site and from the stewardship which comes with the long-term ownership (together with the obligations that that carries) is an important point which should not be missed. If the artefact is not in the event related to the site, it must be looked at on its own merits as to whether it is something that should be retained for the nation or whether it should rightfully be the property of an individual and so on. Good voluntary endeavour in the public spirit does not come from a process of legislative exclusion. That point cannot be underscored too heavily.

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The Bill seeks to control what is currently something of a free for all. That is very welcome. If I have any criticism at all, it is that the Bill does not reflect the essential interest of the property owner. I was especially glad to note the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, on the points raised by the CLA with him and on the views of the NFU, which I also support. Both can be dealt with during the later stages of the Bill's proceedings.
In terms of the Bill as expressed in Clause 1, I have some difficulty about the circumstances in which items might be found, especially where they relate to domestic property—for example, a house or a garden, especially an old one such as the one in which I live. I believe that it may be wrong in principle and that it may be unenforceable in practice if the law seeks to make the property of the Crown that which comes within the domain of the private residential occupier. It is a different situation if it occurs in open countryside. There should perhaps be a distinction in that respect. However, that would not be fatal to the Bill. The circumstances of a find are important. I do not think they can be dealt with by a catch-all provision.
Clause 2(3) appears to me to reverse the onus of proof. It seems to make clear that the item will become the property of the Crown unless some other person can show title to it. There may be a great deal of circumstantial evidence, but I am not clear how that particular test will be made. I should just like to flag that point because, if it is not possible to deal with it in a satisfactory manner, we may return to the situation where there is deliberate non-disclosure rather than the converse. Perish the thought that as a result of the Bill that situation should continue or increase.
I admit that I would like to see unauthorised entry on land with metal detectors subject to much more severe penalties. I certainly do not favour the disposal of treasures abroad, although I have difficulty in seeing how that can be prevented with any absolute certainty, especially if the nation puts a lower value on its heritage than is placed on it by overseas buyers. For reasons that I explained earlier, I do not think museums are always the right place to house hordes of artefacts which cannot reasonably be displayed or which may see the light of day only once in every 20 years. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, wishes to intervene. I give way.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: My Lords, I am much obliged. I do not believe it to be the Bill's intention that all hordes should necessarily end up in museums, any more than that is the current practice of the present treasure trove legislation. It is the case that, only if the museum wishes to secure the objects and is in a position to put up the money to do so, will those objects go to the museum at a market price. Otherwise, the ex gratia provision is in practice not maintained and the objects are returned to the finder. We need not envisage the museums of the country being filled with undesired treasure objects.
The Earl of Lytton: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for clarifying that point. In the context of the Bill, I would prefer to see a provision actually
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stating that fact. I speak from a point of view of some experience in that my family has portraits which are on loan to museums and such places and they see the light of day only very infrequently. For the rest of the time they remain locked in vaults. I would not like to see that happen in this case. I would be much happier if the items concerned sat on Mrs. Jones's mantelshelf to be appreciated by her and her friends when they come to tea. Perhaps the misanthropic millionaire of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Templeman, would please take note of that point.
It is the denial of the knowledge and circumstances of an artefact which is the important feature that we need to deal with under new legislation rather than the principle of who actually owns the goods in question. I speak as a depositor of important documents with learned institutions. More particularly, in terms of the object-specific nature of any study in the matter, there is also a site-specific element which must not be overlooked. I have in mind the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, on that general point.
There are aspects of the Bill which obviously I should like to see amended. It is to be hoped that at a later stage we shall have the opportunity to deal with such matters. To the extent that there is a black market in portable antiquities, I should like to ensure that that is stopped as far as possible. There must be some question of the general responsibility and general consciousness of the need to keep items within the country—not every item but the more important ones.
I warmly support the Bill. I have no objections to it in principle. I certainly think that it should be given a Second Reading. I wish it a very good passage, subject to necessary amendment, through to its final stage.
8.37 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, there appears to be complete unanimity that this should be a government Bill. As someone who spent most of today either on this Bench during the course of the present debate or in a Committee Room talking about the National Parks Bill (which also is to come before your Lordships' House and which also should be a government Bill) I begin to wonder about the Government's priorities. They fill the House with Bills which get totally wrecked. Half of them have to be withdrawn. They have not been thought through, consultations have not been taken upon them and your Lordships' time is spent on something which has a very small output. However, the Bills which are admitted by everyone to be necessary and which have been worked through cannot find time, or, if they find time, they merely find it in the hands of unselfish Peers such as the noble Earl, Lord Perth, who are then placed in an almost impossible position from time to time, particularly with regard to what happens to the Bill when it goes to another place.
I should be interested to learn from the noble Baroness, and possibly from the noble Earl, Lord Perth —although this may be a slightly delicate question—what are the prospects of this Bill in another place. As I understand it, not least from talking about the National Parks Bill, there is in another place a situation where, if

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the Government take over the Bill, they may not be allowed, or be able, to proceed with it satisfactorily. I believe that the matter should be clarified so that we know where we stand. I was reassured when the noble Earl, Lord Perth, said we would have the chance to amend the Bill because one of the real problems with Private Members' Bills, as your Lordships know, is that they proceed in an enormous rush and we are all told that we may not amend them. I very much welcome the fact that we have the opportunity of amending this Bill and I look forward to that.
I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, whose speech was, I thought, very clear. He told us exactly what this Bill is all about and what should be done. Not that the noble Earl, Lord Perth, did not explain his Bill, but the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, gave us a crystal clear portrait which I believe many of us will return to when we are trying to get to the heart of the Bill. Clearly there is a need for wider legislation and for antiquities legislation, and indeed there is a need for a policy on this subject. I join with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, when he asked what the new department is doing about this matter and why it is not behind this Bill.
I do not myself have any expertise in this particular field. In the field or conservation in general I have some knowledge but I cannot hold a torch to the personal experience of my noble friend Lord Hanworth, who made a notable contribution to your Lordships' debate this evening. However, I greatly look forward to seeing this Bill go through. I believe the principle behind it is that of stewardship. We acknowledge that we have the stewardship of properties from the past. I believe the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, tonight, as on other occasions, was slightly too apt to talk about ownership when I believe the correct position is that we are stewards of what we have been left from the past. We are stewards of the objects themselves and stewards particularly of knowledge, arid that is something that we must ensure is preserved at all cost and is able to be used. It is in that area that I feel I am for once wholeheartedly able to join in any effort to try to keep the kind of artefacts or the kind of finds we are talking about in this country. I run a mile when appeals are made to keep some wonderful picture in this country which was painted in Italy 300 years ago and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with our heritage. But the things we are discussing have something to do with our heritage. They are part of our history, our heritage and our information from the past and we should preserve them.
The noble Lord, Lord Broadbridge, mentioned the difficulty that could be posed by any additional burden on the British Museum, given its understaffing. I have a question about coroners' courts. I ask my question of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, because no doubt the Government have considered this matter, and of the noble Earl, Lord Perth. If this Bill goes through—we all hope it will—how many finds are we likely to be talking about in the course of a year and how much greater is that number than the number of finds which come before coroners' courts under the present restricted legislation? Will coroners' courts be able to cope with this number?
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I understand that, as this is a Private Member's Bill. the noble Earl, Lord Perth, has not been able to suggest an alternative machinery. He is rather limited to sticking with coroners' courts and it may be his opinion that we should stick with coroners' courts. However, if there is to be a much greater burden on coroners' courts, that is something we will have to consider in the course of this Bill. That is the piece of information which I would most like to find. As I have said, I wish the Bill well. We on these Benches will do our best to see that we can help conserve that part of our country's heritage which is most useful to the present and to the future.
8.46 p.m.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, we also wish to commend the noble Earl, Lord Perth, and his associates outside the House for devoting so much time and effort to attempting to tackle this long-standing problem. As I believe every Peer who has spoken has said, the present situation is highly unsatisfactory. The development of sophisticated metal detectors has led to a massive increase in the pillaging of our archaeological heritage. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said, reform would have been needed anyway.
Under our "finders keepers" tradition, I have seen it estimated that some 20,000 people now regularly use metal detectors and find anything between half-a-million and 2 million portable antiquities a year, although the estimates vary. Not all of those are of great value, and almost certainly not the majority. But it is certain that of those which are of archaeological or financial value, a large number are not reported; and many are sold on, often abroad. Therefore we suffer a cultural haemorrhage. The legal protection for portable antiquities is probably weaker in Britain than in any other European country.
Hitherto, a few of these finds were covered by the ancient treasure trove law. That procedure is deficient, as many noble Lords have pointed out. Therefore there is no need for me to repeat those deficiencies. For that reason the Opposition welcomes any attempt to reform the law. We note the widespread support from outside the House and, so far, the universal support from within it on this matter. That leads me to question whether this Bill is entirely satisfactory as regards remedying the situation. I believe that the noble Earl, in introducing the Bill, was honest in saying that the Bill may not be perfect, and that this House can help to improve it.
I trust the drafting of the Bill is all right. I note we have had various problems recently, even as regards official drafting. The lotteries Act was under attack from the noble Lord, Lord Renton, for alleged defective drafting. I noted what he said about certain clauses in that legislation. I thought on the whole however his comments were encouraging. Perhaps the Minister will assure us that various departments have scrutinised this drafting, have co-operated positively and are reasonably content with the result. If that is not the case, we would welcome amendments from those quarters at the earliest possible stage. However, I should point out that we would welcome positive amendments and not wrecking amendments. We certainly would not approve of any department—however, this is an unthinkable thought

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—opposing this drafting simply on the basis of the "not made here" principle. I am sure none of us have ever come across that in Whitehall. Particularly, we would not welcome it when they have palpably failed to come forward with their own Bill so far.
On points of detail, noble Lords have raised many of the points I had in mind, and I will not detain the House by repeating them. One particular point which concerned me has not arisen: that is, compensation. It is not clear how that is dealt with in the Bill, and I look forward to the Minister's help over this in due course.
Another aspect is that in reading the Bill I felt that the principles of the ancient treasure trove and the new treasure are in compass together within the Bill. I hope that has been done satisfactorily. I can see the problem faced by the drafters, but it just seemed to me an uncomfortable mix. I suspect there is no way round it, but I wish there had been. Compared to the scale of the problem we face, the Bill struck me as being very modest in scope, and that may help it to make progress in Parliament.
However, there is a good case for a much more radical approach and a much more radical law on portable antiquities, sweeping away totally the medieval concept of treasure trove and, for instance, making it compulsory to report all archaeological finds to local museums for registration. We on this side would look upon such a Bill with interest, but it would need government action and I should like to hear what the Government's view is on a more radical approach. After all, I am told that even were this Bill to pass, some 90 per cent. of all finds are likely to be unreported.
In conclusion, I stress that we on this side welcome any attempt to deal with the problem of archaeological theft and the serious deficiencies of treasure trove. As I have said, I have one or two reservations about particular aspects of the drafting. If the Bill progresses, there will need to be some clarification, particularly on compensation. We shall look with interest at constructive amendments in these areas at any later stage. We shall listen most carefully to what the Minister has to say about the Government's attitude tonight. If the Government have doubts about particular aspects, I should like to ask whether it is their intention to come forward with some suggestions for position improvement, or will they aim to kill the Bill? If they kill this attempt, will the Government say something specific about their own intentions to protect our historical, cultural and archaeological heritage? That is needed most urgently.
Whatever may be our particular reservations about this Bill, we all surely must agree that it confronts a most serious issue. It would be little short of scandalous if the department does not have its own ideas already drafted for dealing with such a long-standing problem. Simply to criticise the drafting of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, without suggesting positive amendments would be unforgivable. If that were to happen, it would be Whitehall bureaucracy at its most negative. The authors of "Yes Minister", with whom I once proudly worked very closely, identifying various Whitehall "Spanish practices", would have something amusing to say about
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that. The Government should either co-operate to iron out the wrinkles in this Bill or they should come forward with their own proposals. Such proposals could profitably be much more radical than the modest ones which are before us tonight.
8.54 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I should like first of all to join with other noble Lords in paying tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, for his promotion of this Bill. Archaeology is fortunate to have such a persuasive champion in this House: perhaps I should say "two champions" because of the support of my noble friend Lord Renfrew. I should like to express my great admiration for the energy and determination which the noble Earl and his colleagues have shown in preparing the Bill, which I know is the result of several years' hard work. Without any doubt it has taken everyone's thinking much further forward on a complex issue. This evening's debate will be a further contribution to that process.
Having said that, I think it is only fair to make clear straightaway that the Government are unable to give their support to the Bill. I am sorry to have to say that because I know it will be a disappointment to the noble Earl and his team—though I know it does not come as a total surprise to them. I should like to take a few moments to explain the reasons for our decision.
The Department of National Heritage took over policy responsibility for treasure trove less than a year ago, in April 1993. Last August we made a special part-time appointment to enable an official with knowledge of the subject to work exclusively on treasure trove and to liaise with the Bill team and the British Museum, who have a major interest in all this. I hope the noble Earl would agree that the arrangement has worked well. I mention these points to assure the House that we understand the importance of this issue for archaeology and we are determined to address it.
My noble friend Lord Renfrew was correct when he quoted my honourable friend in another place, and indeed we approached the task hoping that a Bill would emerge which we could support. Over the last few months there have been extensive discussions between the Bill team and officials of my department and the Home Office. Many problems have been ironed out, particularly on the Bill's implications for the criminal law and for the role of coroners.
On a number of points the Bill team's aims are ones which I imagine practically everyone with an interest in this subject would support. For instance, I think we would all agree that it is time to remove the test that an object is treasure trove only if it was deliberately hidden with the intention of later recovery; and that treasure trove procedures should embrace artefacts, of whatever material, which are found in close association with gold or silver objects. So far so good.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, specifically asked me what increase there would be in the workload of the coroners' courts. Of course it is difficult to make a precise estimate of the likely increase in reported finds, partly because not all of them come to

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public notice at present: but it is certainly not likely to cause an enormous, increase in the current workload. That is not our objection to the Bill.
A number of key questions remain to be addressed. The most important is whether the basic approach adopted by this Bill would result in a satisfactory reform of the present law. I have to say that we do not think it would. As the noble Earl, Lord Perth, said, the law of treasure trove is an astonishing archaic survival, going back perhaps a thousand years, with its origins in matters far removed from archaeology. Because of its long history, the law is complicated in ways which have really nothing to do with the present-day needs of archaeology. Our view is that the Bill would not actually remove these anomalies. It would have the effect of creating a new concept of treasure, alongside the existing concept of treasure trove. All the existing rules and procedures would continue to apply to objects which fall within the current definition of treasure trove. I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Stewartby, that far from simplifying the arcane complexities of the present law, this Bill would leave them in place and would in some respects add to them.
Alas, the original aim of achieving a simplification of the law has not been realised. For instance, the Bill does not address in any comprehensive way the issue of compensation. There may well be owners or occupiers of land whose property would in future vest in the Crown as treasure. Should they be compensated? If so, should they be compensated as well as finders or instead of finders? If the later, what would be the effect on the main object of these provisions, which is to encourage finders to report their finds?
I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Templeman, has had to leave. I wish to comment on his remark that the Royal Prerogative is no problem. I would, of course, defer to the noble and learned Lord on the question of the prerogative. That was a technical point and not one which would prevent reform. However, other difficult legal issues remain to be resolved. For instance, we cannot assume that objects found in the ground are ownerless goods. If someone owns them now, the effect of the Bill would be to vest them in the Crown. The issue of compensation must arise. The Bill does not address that issue.
Our view is that it is most unlikely that those issues can be tackled properly by amendment during the passage of the Bill They raise fundamental issues about the Bill's whole approach, and about the need for more far-reaching reform of the existing law which require fuller scrutiny. I am supported in that view by the Law Commission which studied treasure trove in 1987.
Lord Renton: My Lords, will my noble friend allow me to intervene? I am reluctant to interrupt her, but I believe that the point is important. My noble friend states that the Bill provides nothing about compensa-tion. However, in Clause 8(4) (b) the Bill states:
"The Secretary of State may publish information about the making of ex gratia rewards in respect of finds of treasure".
That does not meat necessarily that the provision must be confined to ex gratia payments towards the finder. In Committee we could make it quite clear that it could be compensation for the owner too.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the way in which my noble friend puts the point makes it sound very simple. However, I do not believe that it is quite as simple as he states. Perhaps I may go back to what I was saying. I was supported in that view by the Law Commission which studied treasure trove in 1987. It concluded that the objectives sought by those advocating a change in the law were fundamentally different from those for which the law of treasure trove was originally designed; and that it would not be appropriate to seek to achieve those objectives merely by altering or enlarging the law of treasure trove.
The Government accept the case for reform of the present law. We want to build on the work that has gone into the Bill, but we also want to step back from it and —if I may use a dangerous phrase—go back to basics. What are we trying to achieve? Could it be clone more simply and directly than it is at present? Do we really need all the complications of the Crown interest in finds, the jurisdiction of coroners' courts, and so on? Do practices in other European countries offer pointers to a simpler approach which we might usefully follow?
My noble friend Lord Renfrew made the interesting point that it is not ownership of finds which matters, but reporting and information. However, if that should be the basic objective of the system, do we really need all the complexities of the present law which the Bill would preserve? My noble friend's point suggests to me that we need a more fundamental look at what we seek to achieve. The Government's view is that it would be. better to look more closely at such issues before: deciding how best to amend the law. We shall therefore publish a consultation paper later this year which will set out those issues fully and will identify what we see as the main options for reform. That paper will look al: all types of portable find, not just those falling within the present definition of treasure trove. We expect that the responses to the consultation will confirm our present view: that comprehensive legislation to reshape the present treasure trove arrangements is needed.
The noble Earl, Lord Perth, commented on the extent of consultation already undertaken. The noble Earl's list of consultees was very impressive, but I do not believe that it was entirely comprehensive. For instance, there is a wide range of museum interests to be taken into account. Nor is it clear to me that the detail of the Bill has either the full support of all those who have been consulted or could be amended into satisfactory shape.
I hope that the undertaking I have made to consult will lessen the disappointment which the noble Earl and his colleagues are bound to feel that the Government cannot offer support for the present Bill. Even if it is not destined for the statute book, the work that has gone into the Bill will be a valuable contribution to the wider review we now have in mind, and in that sense will certainly not be wasted. Indeed, we look forward to future collaboration.
Perhaps I may end by assuring noble Lords again that my department fully understands that it is an important issue for archaeology, and one of some urgency. We are not trying to kick the issue into the long grass. One of the stated aims of the Department of National Heritage is to preserve ancient sites and monuments and to

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maintain and increase our national collection of records and artefacts of the past. Treasure trove is directly relevant to that aim and my department feels a more direct responsibility for that issue than was perhaps felt by some of its predecessors. I hope that we have demonstrated that already. I hope that that answers the rather cruel criticisms that I thought were levelled at my undeserving department. We shall wish to make progress just as fast as proper consultation and legislative constraints permit, but we also want to get the matter right.
I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Perth, will feel that he has achieved a great deal of what he set out to achieve by securing from the Government a firm commitment to address the issue without delay.
9.7 p.m.
The Earl of Perth: My Lords, I shall come to the Minister's statement at the end of my remarks. Although it is late, I begin by saying how grateful I am for the splendid and powerful speeches that have been made by all noble Lords. It would be invidious of me to name one or other of your Lordships because all gave us food for thought and full support. Having said that, I shall make an exception by mentioning the legal opinion outlined by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Templeman and Lord Hailsham, although he is not here. It is important to have the legal opinions because in a degree they may contradict what has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington.
Under those conditions, I feel it would also be inappropriate to answer the questions that have been put to me but I shall ensure that in one way or another—I hope with the help of the Department of National Heritage—they will be answered. That is not an unreasonable expectation. I look on the problem as belonging not solely to those who produced the Bill and support it: it is also the duty of the DNH to help us at this stage.
I shall touch on one point: that the Bill is rather restricted. I point out that we can—and we have every intention of doing so if the Bill goes through and the Government play—widen its scope. Subsections (5) and (6) of Clause 2 lay down that the Secretary of State can list other things as objects of treasure and can accordingly cover such items as bronzes, iron objects, sculpture and what you will. However, that should be at stage two. I have a motto: "Gang warily", which I think noble Lords will all understand. My belief is that to do it in two stages is probably right.
We were told bluntly by the Minister that the Government are unable to give their support to the Bill. However, a little later she used the words "the present Bill" and, being eternally optimistic, I shall take that seriously. If the Bill cannot have the Government's support, it is the present Bill which cannot and my hope is that at the various stages of the Bill we shall reach a point where the Government will change their mind, recognising that the good is enough and the best can come later.
I shall now turn to the attitude of the Government. We heard undertakings that they would study the matter
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carefully and suggestions that perhaps we had not consulted enough people. The only reason that I did not go further on those whom we had consulted was because of time. I could have read out another 10 or 15 groups which we consulted and which have all given us their backing. I should like the noble Baroness to realise that we have consulted every single group that has a worthwhile opinion on the subject.
I must confess that on hearing some of the Minister's words I felt: "Here we go again". It is the same kind of thing as we have had before—undertakings to consult, to start radical thought and so forth, as has been going on for five years. I beg the Government to consider this: the Bill may not be perfect but it could be much better with their help. If we could get through the stages, if the Bill could go through Parliament, what is to stop the Government bringing in their own Bill in two or three years? I say that in all sincerity because during those two or three years, without legislation much more of our history will have been lost. That is not good enough. Please take this Bill, get it to a further stage and let us go forward together.
I can say no more, but I refuse to be downhearted. Rather do I look to consultation such as we have had recently with the Department of National Heritage. It is in the Government's interests and all our interests. Just consider what the media and the public will think of that kind of commitment. Without it they will not only be disappointed: they will not understand. I therefore beg the Government to think again. I shall co-operate in every way I can with them and I invite all noble Lords to tell me what they would like to change. We can do that at Committee stage, and then we must go forward together. I do not believe that the public will understand talk on the lines of: "Oh well, we must look at these matters very seriously". I have heard it all before. I wish to proceed with the Bill and I conclude by asking the House to give it a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order 1994
9.15 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Baroness Denton of Wakefield)The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Baroness Denton of Wakefield) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 15th February be approved.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move. This is one in a series of financial orders covering Northern Ireland departments which come before the House each year. The draft order before us today authorises expenditure of £195.9 million for Northern Ireland departments for the current financial year. This is in addition to the £5,492 million voted by the House last July. The order also authorises the Vote-on-account of £2,533 million for 1994– 95 to enable the services of Northern Ireland departments to continue until the 1994– 95 main Estimates are brought before your Lordships later this year.

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Before turning to the details of the Estimates, I should like to set them in the context of the recent performance of e Northern Ireland economy. It is widely accepted that the local economy has held up well in the face of adverse national and global economic conditions. Over the past five years the output of Northern Ireland's production industries grew by 18 per cent. The local economy as a whole continues to perform well. That is reflected in the figures for those in employment and those out of work. The number of people in employment over the two-year period to September 1993 increased slightly. Seasonally adjusted unemployment in January 1994 fell to its lowest level for two-and-a-half years. That is encouraging, as is the marked upturn in business confidence and the high levels of planned investment revealed in recent surveys of Northern Ireland business. While it is welcome news, we cannot afford to be complacent. Government will continue to assist local industry to improve its competitiveness and to maximise the opportunities offered by the eccnomic recovery now under way.
I now turn to the main items in the Estimates, starting with the Department of Agriculture. In Vote 1, a token increase of £1,000 is required to reflect changes in the Vote; some £7 million is required for milk quota compensation payments and £0.8 million for a number of capital schemes; £0.4 million is for expenditure under the 1992 crop potato support arrangements. The increases are offset by savings elsewhere in the Vote and by EC receipts.
In Vote 2, covering local support measures, some £5.3 million is sought. This includes £3.2 million to enhance the disease eradication programme and £2 million for the agricultural development operational programme, where uptake has been higher than predicted. A sum of £0.6 million will enable the department to develop its information technology programme. These increases are partially offset by reduced requirements in other areas of the Vote.
I turn now to the Department of Economic Development, where some £14 million is required, in Vote 1, for the provision of new factories for recent inward investment projects. That reflects the continuing success of the Industrial Development Board in attracting internationally competitive companies to Northern Ireland. Also in this Vote, £2.4 million is for assistance to the shipbuilding industry. The increases are offset by increased receipts and reduced requirements elsewhere.
A net increase of £3 million is sought in Vote 2. This includes £4.1 million for the Industrial Research and Technology Unit. That will enable the unit to increase its efforts to improve the competitiveness of local industry through increased industrial research and development, in innovation and technology transfer. Savings have been found elsewhere in the Vote.
In Vote 3, covering the Training and Employment Agency, some £0.7 million is sought. The sum of £1.6 million is to meet increased expenditure under the youth training programme, as a greater number of young people are pursuing higher level qualifications. One million pounds is for the job training programme, where an increasing number of trainees are undertaking
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programmes leading to a national vocational qualification at level 2 or above. Offsetting savings have been found elsewhere.
Vote 4 covers the expenses incurred in the privatisation of the electricity supply industry in Northern Ireland. These costs have been met from the proceeds of the sale.
I now turn to the Department of the Environment. Some £6.2 million is sought in Vote 1, covering expenditure on roads, transport and ports. That includes £2.5 million for maintenance of the road network and new road schemes. For street lighting £0.5 million is required and £1.7 million is for capital works in the Driver and Vehicle Testing Agency.
In Vote 2, covering housing, a token increase is sought. There are various reallocations within the Vote, resulting in a net increase of £3.6 million for the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, mainly for maintenance. Gross housing expenditure in Northern Ireland this year is now expected to be about £552 million, some £17 million more than in 1992– 93. Much has already been achieved in improving housing standards in Northern Ireland and this will enable further progress to be made.
Vote 3, which covers water and sewerage services, also shows a token increase. There are various adjustments in expenditure within the Vote, including an additional £4 million for capital expenditure on sewerage services.
In Vote 4, covering environmental and other services, an additional £2.2 million is for the Belfast action teams. There are nine teams based in areas of multiple deprivation, working with local people to improve employment prospects and promote community development. One million pounds is for urban regeneration grants, to stimulate private enterprise and investment activities in inner city areas of 13elfast and Londonderry. Our urban regeneration policy aims to achieve an overall public to private sector investment ratio of one to three. Those increases are offset by savings within the Vote and by increased receipts.
Turning now to the Department of Education, where a net increase of £9.2 million is sought in Vote 1, some £7 million is for grants to education and library boards, mainly for school transport, maintenance and equipment. A sum of £1.1 million is for voluntary schools and £1 million for grant maintained integrated schools. I know that this House takes a keen interest in the development of integrated education in Northern Ireland. There are now 21 integrated schools in operation, with over 4,000 pupils in attendance. It is planned to open three new such schools this year, while the additional expenditure in the Vote will enable the purchase of sites for two new grant maintained integrated schools. These are encouraging developments.
In Vote 2, an additional £8.5 million is sought. Some £8 million is for mandatory awards and student loans, reflecting increased demand. Some £0.6 million is for universities and £0.4 million for arts and museums. Increases are also required for the youth services and for departmental administration. There are reduced requirements elsewhere in the Vote.

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I turn now to the Department of Health and Social Services, which seeks a net increase of £18 million in Vote 1. The main increase of £14.2 million is for expenditure on hospital, community health and personal social services; £3.4 million is for health and social services boards' capital expenditure. Net increases of £1.7 million are required for health and social services trusts and £6.1 million for family health services.
Moving to Vote 3, additional net provision of £4.3 million is required. That includes £7.9 million for the Social Security Agency. Increases are offset by reductions elsewhere, including an increase in receipts of £1.8 million from the National Insurance Fund.
In Vote 4, which covers social security, £121.1 million is sought. Demand for income support and disability benefits, in particular disability living allowance, has been greater than anticipated. That is offset by lower than anticipated claims in other areas.
Finally, £100,000 is sought in the Department of Finance and Personnel Vote 3 for increased expenditure on grants to community relations and reconciliation bodies. Together with expenditure by the Department of Education, that brings total spending on the community relations programme this year to £7.2 million.
I hope that that summary of the main components of the order has been helpful. I commend the order to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 15th February be approved. —(Baroness Denton of Wakefield.)
9.26 p.m.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, first, I thank the noble Baroness for her extremely clear and helpful exposition of the appropriation order. We should start by recognising that we are talking of massive sums of money and therefore, even though it is late at night and there are few noble Lords present, we should give the order the attention it deserves.
It is worthwhile reminding ourselves that we are discussing a subsidy of £200 a year from every household in mainland Britain to Northern Ireland. We should not begrudge that; we all know why it is needed. However, it means that we should look with some care at how the money is spent. As the noble Baroness said, we should begin by reminding ourselves of the economic realities of Northern Ireland.
It is true that Northern Ireland has coped relatively well with the recession compared with some other parts of the United Kingdom. But at the same time, we should remember the underlying structure of the Northern Ireland economy. We are looking at an area of the United Kingdom where private sector output per head is only 64 per cent. of that in Great Britain, whereas consumption is 82 per cent. That is why there has to be this level of subsidy of economic activity.
There is a fragile and faltering recovery beginning. But the Government may agree that we could see some damage to that due to the tax rises of approximately £10 per family per week that are in the pipeline. Meanwhile, of course,52 per cent. of the unemployed in Northern Ireland are long-term unemployed. That is higher than
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the proportion of long-term unemployed in Britain. A deep structural problem exists and I fear that many 17 and 18 year-olds who are currently in the second year of a youth training programme may leave when they find their benefits cut from £35 to £25 a week.
It is also worth reminding ourselves that the Northern Ireland economy is a fragmented one with only 20 firms with more than 1,000 employees. The noble Baroness spoke of inward investment. We on these Benches would support the efforts of the Government and all those concerned with attracting inward investment and there have been some successes. However, I am sure that the noble Baroness agrees that the Northern Ireland economy desperately needs a greater critical mass of economic activity and more larger employers. The most likely route to that is by inward investment as well as by organic growth.
I have one other observation to make on the economy as a whole and the trends in spending. In 1987– 88 social security amounted to 31 per cent. of the spend. It must be a matter of some dismay to the Government that, as a result of unemployment,33 per cent. of the total is now devoted to social security—I am talking here of the 1995 projections—whereas the proportion devoted to energy, industry, trade, employment initiatives, housing and spending has dropped dramatically over the same period. If we look at the total amount of subvention, more is going on social security and less is going on the areas which are crucial to the future of the Northern Ireland economy and society as a whole. Those are some general observations. Perhaps I may now ask the noble Baroness one or two specific questions on the order.
In another place on 7th March Mr. Peter Robinson said that he understood that there was now a moratorium on capital expenditure on schools. Would it be possible for the noble Baroness to let us know whether that is the case? It is of great importance that we should know that there is adequate investment in education in Northern Ireland since the high educational levels and the high skills of Northern Ireland are some of the great assets of the Province.
On page 4 of the order Vote 4 deals with the funds devoted to electricity privatisation. We understand that it was a manifesto commitment of the Government to privatise electricity. But if the point of electricity privatisation is economies, why was there a £228 million increase in appropriations in aid in order to privatise the industry? It seems perverse that in order to achieve long-term economy the Government should have to spend so much money making the industry attractive to private investors.
The noble Baroness referred in her introduction to the Department of Finance and Personnel. Within this vote an increasing amount of the overall budget appears to be devoted to financial administration and bureaucracy. What is to be £29 million in 1994–95 was only £10 million in 1987– 88. I would welcome her explanation of why the costs of administration have gone up so much in relation to what is a smaller overall budget. However, as she said, within this area the aspect which may be of most interest to the House is Vote 3 which is concerned with community projects. I understand that a number of community projects, including Extern and Relate

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Northern Ireland, are now being evaluated by Price Waterhouse for their general efficiency. I would like to be assured that what I know from personal experience to be the rather high fees of Price Waterhouse will not end up being squeezed out of the funding of these important agencies.
I move on to the question of funding from the European Union structural fund. I should like a little guidance from the noble Baroness on how the money from the fund is being allocated in Northern Ireland. Are the Government involved through consultation or do they tend to reduce: their spending in areas to which the structural fund is targeted. Considerable concern has been expressed in another place that the Republic is getting a relatively better deal from the structural fund than Northern Ireland. Are the. Government satisfied that Northern Ireland is getting all the funds it is entitled to from the structural fund as well as the regional development fund. On the regional development fund, will the principle Behind the City Challenge initiative, as regards which the President of the Board of Trade has been so active, and which seems to put depressed areas in competition for funds, be applied in Northern Ireland?
Finally, I give a warm welcome for one piece of news which the noble Baroness gave; namely, the increase in the scope of integrated education in Northern Ireland. I believe that all of us who care about the future of Northern Ireland recognise that this is indeed an important way forward. It is only achieved in the face of what is often guile considerable opposition from one sect or another. So to get an increase is a great achievement. I hope that the Government will maintain the priority of funding to see that this welcome sign of a new approach to inter-communal life grows and continues to develop. With those words, and looking forward to the answers of the noble Baroness, in general we support this order.
9.35 p.m.
Lord William of Mostyn: My Lords, I too am grateful for the care with which this order was introduced. I endorse immediately the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, about integrated education.
A number of significant questions arise relating to expenditure of this magnitude. Unemployment in Northern Ireland is barely below 14 per cent. The questions which we ask are: what amelioration, if any, is looked for and on what timescale, arising out of the expenditure of these vast amounts of money? As the noble Lord, Lord Holme, rightly observed, more than half of the jobseekers in Northern Ireland have been out of work for more than a year. That is desperately gloomy news in financial and economic terms, but it has a far more corrosive effect in social terms.
What one does not find is any clear strategy designed to reduce either of those two gloomy figures. In particular, the industrial development budget has declined from £430 million in 1989– 90 to £141 million this year. It is further intended to decline to £115 million in 1995– 96.
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There is an extremely useful report from Coopers Lybrand Deloitte issued as recently as January of this year, which puts the point admirably as we see it:
"Many of the long-term structural problems remain. GDP per head is still only about 80 per cent. of the UK average, easily the lowest of all UK regions. The problems of local labour markets remain with unemployment at 14 per cent. still well above the next worst UK region".
Unfortunately, we see little evidence of a systematic tackling of these long-term problems. The same report states:
"Public expenditure is equivalent to two-thirds of GDP in Northern Ireland. The fiscal squeeze imposed in the two 1993 Budgets has potentially serious consequences for Northern Ireland".
There is nothing in the deployment of these expenditures which gives me any confidence that that gloomy prognosis will not be borne out. What is required is long-term planning for full-time secure work. I know of the recent modest increase in employment of 2,200, but unfortunately most of that is for female, low-paid, part-time work in service industries. That offers no long-term solution at all.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, has pointed out the figure which leaps from the page—that is to say, £228,658,000 for expenditure in connection with the privatisation of the electricity industry and one wonders what for. Was it simply the old story of fattening up for sale public utility assets which historically have been undervalued so that there will be ultimately substantial bonanzas for the subscribers and not least for those who dealt with the sale of public utilities? That seems an enormously large figure and one for which I have been unable to detect any satisfactory explanation.
The imposition of VAT on fuel will hit the poorest hardest. Is the figure of £10 per week for the average family in Northern Ireland accurate? That is the figure that was given by the noble Lord, Lord Holme. If it is not accurate, I should be interested to know the Government's estimate of the extra tax payable per year in the case of a married man on average Northern Ireland earnings who has two children at school and a wife not working. Our belief is that it will be a very severe blow to living standards which are lower than in the rest of the United Kingdom.
I should like to raise a final particular matter, of which I have given the Minister notice. What is the present or future intention of the Government with regard to the future of the equivalent of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board scheme in Northern Ireland? As is well known to your Lordships' House, the proposed amendments for the rest of the United Kingdom have recently been the subject of bitter and sustained criticism—minute and well-informed criticism, in my opinion. Is it suggested that part of the increased amounts by way of social security and other related payments is required to compensate those who are the victims of violent crime in Northern Ireland? Is part of the extra expenditure to make up for the loss of future earnings, the loss of damages for care arid attention?
I am pleased to be able to say that many who work in the public service in Northern Ireland have contacted me about this. Policemen and prison officers have

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expressed their deep anxieties about carrying out their public duties. Members of the public suffer extraordinary risks in their everyday lives. They are in fear of criminal attacks and their fears are often justified. Is the scheme in Northern Ireland for the victims of violent crime to be altered downwards in the same way as in the rest of the United Kingdom or is it to remain intact?
Those are very important questions which derive entirely from increased expenditure in other aspects of government spending. I hope that I shall not be faced with the reply that that does not derive from the draft appropriation order because, in my submission, it does. There is serious concern—I think that I could fairly describe it as bitter concern and serious anger—at the prospect that compensation for the victims of violent crime in Northern Ireland may be reduced. I should be grateful for reassurance and confirmation that that will not happen.
Those are fairly limited questions of which I have given notice. Generally, I adopt the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Holme; namely, that the expenditure is unfortunately necessary and is a part of the price that the rest of the United Kingdom must be willing to pay.
9.42 p.m.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Holme of Cheltenham and Lord Williams of Mostyn, for their continuing and informed interest in Northern Ireland. It is much appreciated in the Province. As the noble Lord, Lord Holme, said, this is an important order, whatever the hour and whatever the extent of the empty Benches. I am grateful to both noble Lords for, as always, asking pertinent and searching questions which I know are based on interest and concern. If I cannot answer them on any specific area immediately, I shall make certain that I do so later in writing.
Turning to some of the areas that have been raised, we have reason to feel that the resurgence in the economy, although fragile, is moving in the right direction, and that despite the inevitable movements, it will work towards continuing to reduce unemployment. Seasonally adjusted unemployment at January 1994 was 13.5 per cent. of the workforce, which was a decrease on the previous month. The underlying trend is firmly downwards.
Employment levels in Northern Ireland have remained relatively stable. The number of employees in employment increased marginally on the previous year. Noble Lords were critical of the spend in working towards increasing employment. It is very much an individual company and a one-to-one effort in ensuring that jobs become available, in particular working towards easing long-term unemployment in areas which experience special difficulty.
With my experience as Minister for small firms in mind, I see small firms as the creators of future employment. I have great confidence in the large number of small firms in Northern Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, quoted the Coopers & Lybrand report. That report also stated that almost 60 per cent. of local firms are committed to expansion in
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1994, and that industrial output is expected to grow by between 1 and 7 per cent. in 1994, with a growth of 4 per cent. reported as quite achievable.
The IDB work has targeted exceptionally well companies to invest in Northern Ireland. Previously it has targeted and identified in a specific manner. In working on the information that was obtained it will require less support. The noble Lord will appreciate that at this time less inward investment is available to the United Kingdom in general. Competition for that is extremely intensive. The skills that have been finely honed in the IDB will allow us to ensure that we are represented wherever the competition is keen.
The noble Lord asked about the criminal injuries compensation scheme. He was kind enough to notify me in advance that that was one of his anxieties. I join him in praising the work of the police and the security forces in Northern Ireland. I assure him that the Government recognise their high standards and complete commitment. The situation in Northern Ireland is that the Secretary of State has studied the Home Secretary's proposals for reform of the compensation scheme in Great Britain in order to see what that means for Northern Ireland. The consideration remains at a formative stage. Should my right honourable and learned friend decide to make changes to the compensation scheme in Northern Ireland, there would be a full public consultation exercise with all interested parties.
Noble Lords said that fuel bills being subject to VAT at 8 per cent. from April 1994 would be a hard burden for families in the Province. Resources have been extended to help not only people on benefit but pensioners. There is also input from the homes insulation and energy grant scheme. Individually, it depends on the nature of the house, and so forth; but much work is being done on that area to ensure that the people with needs are given the maximum assistance.
Anxiety was expressed about the cost of electricity privatisation. The total cost of the Northern Ireland Electricity privatisation, including trade sales of power stations and the flotation of NIE, will be announced in the next few weeks. That will give your Lordships much of the detail that is required. Privatised companies have been extremely successful in improving their services and the benefits which they provide to consumers. They have also protected jobs. Therefore, there can be no argument against the case for privatisation.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme, asked about EC structural funds. We believe that Northern Ireland has done well to retain its objective 1 status. Our 52 per cent. share of the UK allocation reflects the priority which Ministers attach to the very special needs of the Province. Overall, we should receive over £1 billion, and more is to come from Community initiatives such as a new cross-border interregnum programme. It is a constantly moving scene. I assure the noble Lord that all efforts are made to ensure that Northern Ireland's needs are represented and fought for in Brussels with the maximum effect.
It is not correct merely to make a comparison between how much the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland will receive from the structural fund

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for the next six years. Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, receives a considerable subvention each year from the Exchequer and the Republic of Ireland receives no equivalent subvention. The Commission obviously takes that into account in making its allocation.
The question of the growth of the Civil Service pay bill was raised. I should tell your Lordships that 80 per cent. of Civil I Service costs are pay related and much of that is due to pay inflation. The number of permanent staff in the Northern Ireland Civil Service has declined since 1988 and we are conscious that value for money must be obtained throughout. To be able to manage, it is necessary to be able to measure. We must make sure that the resources which we have, and which both noble Lords recognise that the Province needs, are well managed.
The matter of a moratorium on capital spending in education was raised. That point was answered in another place by my honourable friend responsible for education in Northern Ireland. He said that, given the nature of the block this year, he felt that it was important to concentrate available resources on classroom and teacher provision. The result is that a moratorium on capital spending was announced. It will not need to last long. It allows my honourable friend to match resources in terms of the budget which we set this year, but I hope that as a result of that we shall see only small delays rather than the stoppage of any particular project. I hope that that is reassuring.
The noble Lord asked also about the evaluation of community projects. Obviously we should expect to use the best available services to evaluate. Substantial sums are going into these areas and it is important that they are spent effectively for the benefit of the other voluntary activities in the Province. The audit is a key part of our programme. I assure the noble Lord that the programme remains a major part of our consideration.
I have been pleased to bring forward the order to the House this evening. It facilitates so much of the good and encouraging work which is taking place: more inward investment and more jobs, which are a key element of all that we wish to see improved; the improvement of kills at a high-tech level and among youngsters who are taking their first steps on the ladder; better housing standards, which are crucial for people's welfare; and a growth of committed local involvement in community health and social services.
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However, as I said in my introduction to the order, there is far to go. We have much to do in Northern Ireland. The approval of the order will allow us to continue our intent to work towards ensuring the provision of the quality of life which the people of Northern Ireland deserve. I commend the order to the House.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, perhaps I may simply ask for clarification so that I may understand perfectly her response to my question on the criminal injuries compensation scheme. First, as I understand it, it is the position that no decision has been made whether the Northern Ireland scheme will be altered; and, secondly, it follows from that that the scheme in Northern Ireland may or may not be altered and, if altered, it will not necessarily be the same as the proposed amended scheme as discussed only recently in your Lordships' House. Can the Minister confirm that that is correct?
Finally, the Minister spoke of formative stages and said that if there were a preliminary decision to change the Northern Ireland scheme, there would be extensive and full public consultation. Can the Minister give an indication of when that preliminary decision is likely to be made? I do not expect the noble Baroness to give an answer by the week; but perhaps she could say something in terms of months. That would be helpful to those of us in the House who are interested in the operation of the scheme, both in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the United Kingdom.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. However, on hearing the noble Lord's summary of what I said, I believe that he has accurately taken note of my response. The proposals of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary for Great Britain are being looked at in Northern Ireland to see whether there are any lessons to be learnt. However, that process is in its early stages. That means that I cannot at present give the noble Lord any guidance as to when the matter will be brought forward or an announcement made to the effect that there will be no changes. I can assure the noble Lord that any consideration will be full, and that, should there be any suggested changes, the same will apply to the consultations.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at three minutes before ten o'clock.