Lords Sitting of 18 January 1995

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

Lord Steyn
The Right Honourable Sir Johan van Zyl Steyn, Knight, a Lord Justice of Appeal, having been appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and thereby created a Baron for life, by the style and title of Baron Steyn, of Swafield in the County of Norfolk—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Roskill and the Lord Mustill.

Organophosphates: Post Dipping Exposure
2.49 p.m.
The Countess of Mar The Countess of Mar asked Her Majesty's Government:
Why they will not publish in full the final report entitled CVLS 50/93 DIAZINON: Post Dipping Exposure in Humans.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Howe): My Lords, the report referred to by the noble Countess was commissioned from the ministry's Central Veterinary Laboratory by the National Office of Animal Health as part of a commercial contract. The report is therefore its property and it is for the National Office of Animal Health to decide on publication and not the Government. I understand that copies are available from it on request and I have asked for one to be sent to the noble Countess.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that reply. But does he recall that on 26th May 1994, in a Written Answer to my Question asking for the definition of a freshly dipped sheep, he said that:
"A sheep is regarded as being freshly dipped for the short period which follows immediately after dipping, when the sheep is still wet from the dip bath"?—[Official Report, 26/5/94; col. WA 57.]
The paper to which I refer states that diazinon is still present in the sheep's fleece after 10 weeks. One of the problems we have had is in ascertaining for how long protective clothing should be worn when handling sheep. Should not this information have been put in the public domain in November 1993 when the report was formulated?
Earl Howe: My Lords, a preliminary paper was presented to the Veterinary Products Committee as part its review in October 1993. The final version of the report is currently being considered by the committee along with other papers on the subject. The Government are awaiting its expert advice.
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The leaflet issued to sheep farmers last year by the Health and Safety Executive and Veterinary Medicine Directorate called Sheep Dipping contains clear advice on post dipping procedures.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, the House and the agriculture industry generally should be grateful to the noble Countess for pursuing this important matter in the way she has done. Can the noble Earl give an assurance that the report now under consideration will be published?
Earl Howe: My Lords, publication is a matter for the National Office of Animal Health as it is the office's property, as I explained. However, we understand that copies are available from it on request and in essence the report is already in the public domain.
Lord Carter: My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether advice was sought from the Chief Medical Officer of Health before deciding whether there was a public interest element that required full publication of the report?
Earl Howe: My Lords, we have not yet reached that stage. Until Ministers receive a report from the Veterinary Products Committee, which they expect to do in the not too distant future, it is impossible to take a view of that kind. We shall certainly bear the noble Lord's suggestion in mind.
Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior: My Lords, in view of the range of medicaments which are now available for the treatment of sheep scab and which are much safer for humans than the organophosphorous compounds, will my noble friend the Minister consider the provision of an information document on alternative medicaments that can be used by owners of sheep when dipping them?
Earl Howe: My Lords, my noble friend raises a very important point. Advice is published by the Health and Safety Executive which draws attention to the products that are available apart from organophosphorous products. OP dips are, however, the only type of dip which in a single application can treat sheep scab and blow fly at the same time.

Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994: Costs
2.53 p.m.
Lord Hughes Lord Hughes asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their latest estimate of the cost of implementing the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie): My Lords, in his 1995 public expenditure plans my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland made provision for local government reorganisation costs of £41 million in 1995–96; net costs of £40 million in 1996–97; and net savings of £20 million in 1997–98.

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The costs of water reconstruction in 1995–96 are estimated to be £11.4 million.
Lord Hughes: My Lords, given that the figures for the estimated costs given by CoSLA range between £124 million and £199 million, does the Minister agree that the figure likely to arise will be at the very best somewhere between the £41 million that the Government are allowing and the minimum £124 million stated by CoSLA? If that is the position, what do the Government intend? Will they make an additional payment if it becomes obvious that £41 million is inadequate; or will they expect the shadow authority to go into business a year later on borrowed money?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I do not for a moment accept the figures that CoSLA has put forward. I shall explain very simply. For example, in Tayside, where there are to be three unitary authorities—Dundee, which the noble Lord once headed; Perthshire; and Angus—each of those unitary authorities estimate that they will be able to perform the task more cheaply than Tayside Region, covering the whole, can at present. I therefore do not accept CoSLA's figures. CoSLA allowed for a quite extraordinary number of redundancies and early retirements. It would be foolish and impractical if it were to follow that course.
I can tell the noble Lord, and I announce today, that the provision for the cost of local government reorganisation in 1995–96 includes £36 million for the funding of shadow councils. When my right honourable friend announced the provision on 13th December he said that he was still considering whether the funding would be provided by grant or by borrowing consent, as allowed for in Section 25 of the Act. I am glad to announce today that my right honourable friend has now decided that the shadow councils should be funded by grant—which was of course the option preferred by CoSLA.
Lord Hughes: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the last part of that Answer.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is it not a fact that the cost of the changes to local government in Scotland would be much greater if some of the amendments that were proposed on the other side of this House had been accepted? Is it not also a fact that, in the long run, the ratepayers of Scotland will have benefited from these changes?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I have no doubt that after the third year—that is to say 1997–98—the council tax payers of Scotland will find that there are net savings to be achieved. What we cannot predict accurately is just how responsibly local councils, left to their own independence, will react. There is absolutely no reason why they should not achieve that saving by the third year. About £500 million to £600 million should be saved over the next 15 years.
Lord Ewing of Kirkford: My Lords, if, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton, says, there will be tremendous savings to the Government and to taxpayers in Scotland as a result of local government reform in Scotland, can
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the Minister explain why, if all those savings are about to accrue, the Government have decided not to proceed with local government reorganisation in England?
Can the Minister also comment on the disappointment that was felt by people throughout Scotland today on reading the press headline in the Scotsman that Lang had entered the race for the presidency of France—only to discover that it was not Ian Lang but Jack Lang, the former socialist environment Minister?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I am bound to say that when I read that headline this morning it caused me a tremor of concern as well. However, I was pleased to see that it was Jack.
So far as Scotland is concerned, we are confident that if local authorities behave responsibly these very substantial savings will be achieved. A very real tremor of concern will have been felt throughout the business industry in Scotland at the announcement by the shadow Secretary of State, Mr. Frank Dobson, that if there were to be a Labour government he proposed to reintroduce business rates at local level. I cannot think that a single small business in Scotland will welcome that threat.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I am sure that everybody in Scotland will be delighted to hear that the cost of shadow councils' changeover period is to be met by central government grant rather than being added to the council tax.
Can my noble friend say whether local councils are now co-operating one with another in order to achieve a cost-effective and smooth hand-over from the old system to the new?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her welcome to my announcement. Since the Bill received Royal Assent there has been a sea change in attitude in Scotland and that is to be welcomed. Now that the councils know that £36 million is to come by way of grant rather than be imposed on them by way of borrowing, I hope that their enthusiasm for achieving a smooth transition will be that much greater.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, will the Minister accept that he made a very good announcement and we could not possibly cavil at it? Can he say whether there will be some kind of guarantee to local authorities that they will not inherit debts from other local authorities? If they do inherit such debts, will there be any likelihood of the Government rate-capping those local authorities who try to get out of the mess that the quite unnecessary Bill, whether or not he likes it, will land him with? He did not mention the cost of the joint committees that will be set up in order to make Scottish local government work, even with the terrible Bill that was passed a few months ago in this House.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for the welcome he gave to my announcement. Clearly there will be successor authorities taking on the liabilities of their predecessors; but I emphasise again that if they act responsibly in this

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matter the additional costs from the first two years will latterly be wholly overcome by the net savings that will be achieved in year three and thereafter.

Homeless Young People: Assistance
3 p.m.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal Baroness Fisher of Rednal asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will examine the operation of their programmes for the young homeless, including counselling and resettlement schemes, to ensure that assistance is given where it is most needed.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Viscount Ullswater): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have a number of programmes which provide assistance to young single homeless people. For example, the Government's £180 million Rough Sleepers Initiative in central London is focused on the largest concentration of people sleeping rough. Grants are also available to voluntary sector organisations across the country which offer direct, practical help to single people in housing need. The Department of the Environment will shortly consult relevant bodies about what will happen when the Rough Sleepers Initiative ends in March next year.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for that reply. Does he agree that the Rough Sleepers Initiative only operates in the London area and not in the rest of the country? Will he accept that last year there were approximately 3,000 young homeless people in Birmingham who had to be catered for? Can I inform him that the majority of them use the St. Basil's homeless organisation, which has been going for 22 years, and as part of its resettlement scheme has a resettlement centre to which people who have passed from them can return when they have not found a job or have other problems or difficulties? There is also a supported lodgings scheme. Can the noble Viscount tell the House whether any other part of the country has a supported lodgings scheme in operation? Will he accept that in Birmingham the scheme has made permanently available 65 beds in private homes for people from St. Basil's, the residents having taken those people into their families?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right. The Rough Sleepers Initiative is for central London. I know that she is a patron of St. Basil's centre and is obviously concerned with it. It is one of the centres funded by a Section 73 grant. I am afraid that I cannot tell her whether the innovative scheme of supported lodgings is repeated elsewhere in the country. I note that St. Basil's is one of some five projects funded in Birmingham to assist with the problem.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House how the figures compare in relation to rough sleepers in London and the accommodation available to provide them with sleeping accommodation if they want it?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the Rough Sleepers Initiative has been enormously successful. We have
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provided some 3,300 units of permanent accommodation, fund outreach work and resettlement support by voluntary organisations. The RSI has also significantly reduced the numbers of those sleeping rough in central London. The latest voluntary sector count in November 1994 found 288 people sleeping rough. That figure is down by more than three-quarters compared with similar estimates of over 1,000 before the RSI began. I am afraid that some people who sleep rough are very difficult to place.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, in his reply the Minister emphasised most the London problem. Will he accept that it is a core problem for young people who make their way to London? My noble friend and colleague Lady Fisher mentioned the good work that is being done in Birmingham through local initiatives. She mentioned that there were 3,000 homeless youngsters in that city. Can I tell the noble Viscount that in my own city of Manchester there is a similar problem, as there is in other conurbations outside London? Does he agree that we must help those youngsters, give guidance to them and not lose control over them, or they may drift towards the less desirable parts of society? In those circumstances, if people come forward with schemes to look after such youngsters, will they receive the fullest government encouragement, both in a material and financial sense? Will they also receive encouragement at ministerial level?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, we have undertaken a recent evaluation through York University of the effectiveness of the Section 73 programme, since it has been running in its present form unaltered since 1990–91. We sought recommendations on its possible future direction. We received the University of York's report only in October. Ministers are anxious that the implications of the report should be fully evaluated before decisions are made on the way forward. I might add that well over 100 projects around the country are likely to receive funding throughout 1995 and 1996. That is in addition to continuing support for the national homeless advice service.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that the former Westminster Hospital stands empty and that it is likely to be subject to long delays with regard to planning permission and redevelopment? Would not this hospital provide an excellent base for housing, counselling and resettling young homeless people?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the noble Lord raised a very interesting point. However, experience from the Government's winter shelter programme has shown that cellular office space is more suitable than hospital space for use as temporary accommodation for the homeless. This year we are funding over 330 places in seven shelters in central London from December until the end of March, with around 200 further bed spaces available in the event of severe weather.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, is the Minister satisfied that there is sufficient co-operation with police authorities throughout the country?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I do not believe that I should stand at this Dispatch Box and say that we are

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satisfied. It is a very difficult problem which, in some instances, throws up hard problems to solve. I have tried to indicate the initiatives that the Government are taking to try to alleviate the problem where it exists. Co-operation between the local authority and the police is a matter at which we need to look. I certainly could not say that we are satisfied.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, is the Minister aware that many young homeless people are still to be seen begging on London's Underground? Would he consider commissioning a study to find out the causes that drive young people to need to beg, so that passengers on London Underground and others who may be solicited by such beggars know whether or not they are worth helping?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, that is an interesting suggestion. It would appear from some newspaper reports—I do not believe everything that I read in the newspapers—that some of those who beg are not in fact in need of help.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, are the Government aware that some local authority housing departments go beyond their responsibility for housing homeless families and extend a useful service to young people who are homeless? The City Council in Manchester is an instance of that. Will the Government consider laying that as an obligation on all local authorities? If the Government are not prepared to lay such a responsibility on local authority housing departments, would they at least encourage them to engage in that useful work? I am thinking particularly in terms of the Westminster local authority, which has caused some concern around the country because of its housing policies.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the homelessness code of guidance issued by the Department of the Environment, to which local authorities must have regard, advises local authorities to consider whether young applicants may be vulnerable and at risk as a result of being homeless. Therefore the legislation provides an important safety net for those who are most vulnerable in our society and who are homeless through no fault of their own. But it does not and cannot provide a universal right to accommodation.

ECOFIN: Rules of Procedure
3.10 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington Lord Bruce of Donington asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the rules of procedure governing the functions and proceedings of the Economic and Financial Council of the European Communities (ECOFIN) contain, as regards the President of the Commission:

(a) his right to attend and participate in Council meetings;

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(b) his right to direct individual members (including the president for the time being) as to what it is proper for them to discuss.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Henley): My Lords, the rules of procedure for the work of the Council of Ministers are set out in Council Decision 93/662/EC of 6th December 1993. According to those rules the Commission may attend and participate in Council meetings unless the Council decides otherwise. The Commission has no voting powers in the Council. Under the rules, the President of the Commission has no powers to direct individual Council members, including the President of the Council, as to what it is proper for them to discuss.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that satisfactory Answer, which is exactly in accordance with the views that I have always held upon the subject. Is the noble Lord aware that the second part of my Question arises from the fact that during the British presidency of the Council, at which the former Chancellor of the Exchequer raised the question of fraud and irregularity within the Community, the President of the Commission—whose mandate expires in seven days' time—indicated that he was not in order in raising the matter because it was a political question? In view of the utterances of the new president, who takes up his duties on 26th January, will the Minister ensure that a copy of my Question and his Answer to it are forwarded with a kindly letter to the new president, in the spirit of the utmost friendship, together with a copy of the rules of procedure of the Council?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am sure that I can leave it to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, to draft his own letter and send a copy of Hansard to the new President of the Commission. The noble Lord said that the previous President of the Commission interfered and told the then President of the Council—my right honourable friend Mr. Lamont—that he was out of order. I am not sure that that is correct. The noble Lord makes that assertion, as he made it last week when we debated the European Communities Finance Bill. If he looks at what my right honourable friend said in the debate in the other place, he ended by saying,
"and then Mr. Delors attacked me for being political by introducing the subject of the Court of Auditors".—[Official Report, Commons, 24/11/94; col. 961.]
I am not sure that that goes as far as saying that my right honourable friend was out of order.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that it is important that the reply given to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, is well known? Though his Answer makes clear that they have no right under the procedures to assume these powers, in fact in the past they have given the impression of having these powers and to that extent have had influence outside their power of authority.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am sure that once the new President of the Commission receives the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, with a copy of

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today's Hansard, he will be in no doubt whatever about what rules apply in terms of the conduct of a Council of Ministers meeting.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that many of us believe that the President of the Commission should be a civil servant and act as such? The present President of the Commission—and the past one—is behaving like a dictatorial policy-maker in threatening the British Government that they must—his word was "must"—carry on and support further European political, economic and monetary integration. Does not the noble Lord agree that it is time that the British Government slapped the President of the Commission down and told him that policy is a matter for the Council of Ministers and, in so far as this country is concerned, for the properly elected British Government and Parliament?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I can agree more or less with most of what the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, says. However, the President of the Commission has his own role to play and it would be wrong to denigrate him merely to the position of a civil servant, as the noble Lord implies. He has the power to request a meeting of the Council, as does any member state, and the Commission has the same right as member states for a submission of items for inclusion in the agenda of the Council meetings. However, as the noble Lord rightly stresses, in the end it is a matter for the Council of Ministers as the final deciding body to make the appropriate decision.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, are the Government aware that the President of the Commission and the Commission have their own rights and duties under the treaty to which the Government are an adherent? In that sense the president is not simply a civil servant. Is the Minister aware also that the president elect, in his speech yesterday, was expressing the general view of the developments ahead of the Community and at the very heart of the Community? Would it not be better for the Government to get themselves there as well?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I believe that the Government are there. But this is not the time to enjoin in the discussion into which the noble Lord wishes to draw me. In answering the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, I said that the president and the Commission had their own roles to play, as set out in the treaty. I was not seeking to denigrate that. But in the end it is the Council of Ministers who makes decisions.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, is the Minister aware that he used the word "denigrate" when referring to a person who may be deemed to be a civil servant? Is he aware that he may have an uncomfortable time when he returns to his Ministry unless he rectifies what he said?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I shall look carefully at what I said. I am grateful to the noble Lord for drawing that point to my attention. I hope that that interpretation cannot be put on what I said and if such an interpretation
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can be placed on it by a wily lawyer like the noble Lord, I shall be the first to withdraw any intention that it should have such a meaning.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, does not the noble Lord repeat his denigration by referring to me as a "wily lawyer"?
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, is the Minister aware that Mr. Lamont's comments in another place are a rare insight for your Lordships' House into the workings of ECOFIN? Can the Minister tell us what is the current role of ECOFIN in the so-called surveillance of British economic policy? Does that surveillance extend to any attempt to co-ordinate economic policies within the Union?
Lord Henley: My Lords, the noble Lord describes my right honourable friend's remarks on that occasion as,
"a rare insight … into the workings of ECOFIN".
I can only say that that point was dealt with by my right honourable friend the Chancellor when he responded to his right honourable friend Mr. Lamont by saying that things have certainly moved on rather a lot since then, particularly in relation to the attitude of ECOFIN—if I can go slightly beyond the noble Lord's question—to matters of fraud which it takes more seriously than it appeared to do at the time to which my right honourable friend Mr. Lamont was referring.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, my question was particularly directed at the role of ECOFIN in its surveillance role in respect of British economic policy. Its role in commenting on and affecting the economic stance of the country in general was what I wanted to probe the Minister about.
Lord Henley: My Lords, if the noble Lord will bear with me, I believe that that is a different Question from the one we are debating today. I was dealing with the point he made in regard to how the workings of ECOFIN have changed since the time of Mr. Lamont.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord wise in delegating to me personally the task of writing to the new President of the Commission? Is he aware that if I do write to the new president, particularly after his remarks yesterday which were an indirect attack upon the British Prime Minister, I shall be bound to advise him, as an aged practitioner in politics myself, that it is most unwise to kick away the ladder by which you climb?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I would rather not be drawn on the wisdom of asking the noble Lord to write to the new President of the Commission. But I am sure that he will find a way of writing a letter in the same polite terms as he asks Her Majesty's Government to write it in. I am sure that he is quite a master at writing such a letter.

Local Authority Services
3.20 p.m.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbletonrose to call attention to problems faced by local authorities in providing the services their communities need; and to move for Papers.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to have the opportunity to move this Motion, which stresses the importance of local authorities having the resources to meet the needs of the people in the communities that they serve. There is no doubt that the quality and quantity of services provided by local authorities throughout Great Britain affect the quality of life of every single man, woman and child. I do not need to remind your Lordships that an adequate fire and public protection service, an adequately maintained road network, and street lighting together with social services and education are critically important to the lives we live.
In speaking to the Motion, I shall concentrate on three aspects of this issue. First, I wish to call attention to the financial problems facing local government on a national basis and to draw the attention of your Lordships to the fact that local government is faring badly in terms of the generality of government proposals for public expenditure next year. Whereas general government expenditure and the control total will rise by 3.3 per cent. and 2.4 per cent. respectively, local government will face a cash freeze. An example of this unequal treatment in funding is that the health programme will increase by 4.1 per cent., but personal social services budgets will increase by only 0.3 per cent. The implications of this cash freeze are likely to be severe, with authorities having no ability to respond to the increased demands placed upon them. The result of the reduction in the grant element of resources available to local authorities will be cuts in services and, with a reduction in central government grant, an increase in council tax.
The figures I shall use refer to local government expenditure proposals for next year and relate specifically to England; but I know that similar problems face colleagues in local government in Wales and Scotland. One problem is that the Government calculate and announce their increase in expenditure for the coming year basing it not on what local authorities currently spend to provide services to meet the needs of their communities but by comparison with the figure that the Government think they ought to have spent in the current year. That is not a fair comparison in terms of evaluating the quality and quantity of services local authorities will be able to provide in the coming year.
Next year's proposals for local authority expenditure across the country will allow authorities to increase their expenditure against this year by only 0.5 per cent. There are variations as that is an average figure; but I know that 28 out of 39 shire counties in England are faced with that prospect. That figure pays no regard to the fact that there will be 110,000 additional pupils in the schools provided by local education authorities. That figure pays no regard to the increase in the number of elderly people in the community and the pressures on
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local authorities that will be caused by the inevitable inflationary increase due to pay and price increases, neither of which has been reflected in the figures suggested by the Government for local authority expenditure next year.
That is in direct conflict with the fact that the Government themselves, through their own assessment, are assuming that there will be an increase in inflation next year. There will be assumptions in the figures that have been agreed and discussed between local authorities and the Secretary of State and his officials on the financial calculations for next year. Those include an acceptance by local authorities and local government as a whole that, in line with the audit figure suggestions that are made annually, there will be a £250 million saving through increased efficiency. That programme rolls on from year to year.
Perhaps it would be appropriate at this stage for me to refer (as one of the speakers who follows me may refer to it) to the Audit Commission report that was published on Wednesday of last week. The report claims that the commission had surveyed those it viewed as managers in local government. I am aware that the local authority associations have never failed to pay serious regard to such reports. The local authority associations have agreed with the Secretary of State to a meeting with the Audit Commission to look at the contents of that report. However, even at this early stage, it is quite apparent that the Audit Commission, in taking £18,000 and above as a salary cut-off point to determine who is a manager rather than a service provider, has failed to acknowledge that using that figure will bring in senior librarians, environmental health officers and a range of those who are direct service providers in local government. However, notwithstanding acknowledgement that there is a need to consider the report in detail, that does not negate the Motion standing before the House today.
The implications for services of such a level of expenditure and an increase limited to 0.5 per cent. in local authority budgets can be seen across a range of services. It is quite clear that there is not adequate funding to meet the needs of the 110,000 new pupils coming into our schools. This year saw a further worsening in the pupil-teacher ratio. Next year no money will be available to local authorities to meet the teachers' pay award and the increased costs, through inflation, of providing a similar level of education service for the children in our schools. The only thing that can happen, our school governors warned, is that class sizes across the country will worsen yet again.
Other speakers will no doubt refer to the increased pressures on local authorities as a direct result of new statutory duties placed on local government. One example can be cited in the field of education—namely, the special educational needs provisions—which are welcomed by all but which cannot be delivered without additional expenditure and for which adequate additional finance has not been provided. To review, assess and provide a statement of a child's special educational needs takes time and money. The process of statementing alone has meant the recruitment of

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additional educational psychologists, many of whom incidentally, because of their level of experience, will he in that group earning more than £18,000 per annum.
As your Lordships are aware—because I have heard the subject mentioned in many contributions to debates since I became a Member of your Lordships' House—one further example of the pressures on local authorities is the care in the community legislation. There is a tragic side to the increased pressure to try to meet the needs of the community in those areas where local authorities deal with statutory services. Those local government functions which are discretionary come under even greater pressure. I refer in particular to discretionary awards. A Question was asked in this House earlier this week about the 21-hour rule. The Minister who replied referred to the role of local authorities in paying awards to people who wish to seek vocational qualifications. For non-advanced vocational qualifications awards have to be met in full by the local education authority. However, if local education authorities are faced with ever larger classes in primary schools, they cannot then afford to meet the discretionary areas of activity and provide discretionary awards so that adults who are under-qualified and unemployed can play a full role in society.
There is also the problem of reductions in public expenditure on housing. I refer to the massive reduction in the amount of money that is available for social housing through housing corporations. I understand that originally it was the Government's intention that some local authority social housing needs could be met by money from the housing association sector. However, that money is to be reduced inexorably, year on year, by 25 per cent. I appeal to your Lordships that if we really want to uphold family life, we must accept the responsibility to make resources available so that families can live in civilized conditions and children can grow up in a household where families are not under pressure from overcrowding and multiple occupancy. Many examples could be given to illustrate the problems.
I shall conclude by referring to democracy. Central government has a responsibility to accept that the relationship between communities and the councils they elect is little short of sacrosanct in a genuinely democratic society. Any central government which arrogates to itself powers to appoint people to serve as placemen and women to replace those elected councillors do so at their peril. That erodes democratic accountability.
Local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales are responsible organisations, but they face an almost impossible task in providing the services that their communities need, rather than desire, in order to have a civilized quality of life. If care in the community cannot be properly funded to meet people's needs, the solution is not for those services to be carried out by somebody who is appointed rather than elected. We should respect
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the role of local government, and it should receive its fair share of national resources and national public expenditure. I beg to move for Papers.
3.34 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the noble Baroness for providing the opportunity to debate this important Motion today, and will have been very interested by the way in which she introduced the subject. The noble Baroness holds an office which I held formerly. Therefore, at one and the same time we are old friends, old colleagues and indeed, old antagonists. I hope that that explains our relationship sufficiently.
Of course local government has problems. But one only has to read the daily financial press to realise that every country in the world has its financial problems. One has only to look at any daily newspaper to realise that our own Government have their financial problems. Business and commerce constantly have problems. It could be argued that compared with business and commerce local government has done rather well in recent years. Many businesses have had to close altogether, a matter which we all regret. I know that in many businesses staff have received letters from management inviting them to take 5 per cent. salary cuts. Their opinion is sought, and they are invited to decline. If they are rash enough to do so the consequences are immediate.
That is a reasonable summation of the background environment. Therefore, while I accept that the revenue support grant settlement for local government for the coming financial year is hard and could be argued to be harsh in relation to the generality of government expenditure, in fact local government in general within the economy as a whole has not done too badly over the past few years. When I look back over the 28 years in which I served in local government the current regime seems particularly hard, because during that period expenditure rose by 12½ per cent. annually, year in and year out. That is an average figure. Obviously there were years when it was greater and years when it was less. However, that is the background environment. It is a problem which for a number of years central government—not exclusively under Conservative management—has had increasing difficulty in handling.
Despite the perceived attempt of the present Government to create a procrustean bed and squeeze local government into it, there is still immense diversity within local government, in a physical, cultural, economic, philosophical and political sense. Although I hesitate to bore the House with a few statistics it may be worth illustrating that diversity, taking as my source the CIPFA comparative statistics for local government for 1993.
Costs per head of population provide a reasonable indicator. Average amounts spent on education were: inner London, £484; outer London, £376; metropolitan districts, £385; shire counties, £338. The highest amount was £717 per head of population and the lowest was £280 per head of population. One was the borough of

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Tower Hamlets and the other the county of East Sussex. One can immediately perceive the immense differences, which one would expect.
Social services have received a strong mention. Again, the figures are instructive. In inner London, the average cost per head of population for such services is £241.67. The amount goes down to £124 in outer London. The figure for the metropolitan districts is £109 while it is £74 for the shire counties. The highest expenditure is £507 per head of population—that is in Newham—and the lowest such expenditure is £58 in Surrey. Again, the cultural differences do not need explanation.
I turn now to the figures for refuse collection and disposal. It is a basic service, but it is one of the most important. Again, there is a similar range of figures, varying from £33 per head of population which, as one might expect, is the average figure for inner London, down to £4.45 in the shire counties. The highest figure is over £40 in Merton and the lowest is £1.24 in the county of Cambridgeshire.
One might have expected there to be greater homogeneity in the cost per secondary school pupil. However, there is again great diversity. The cost is greatest in inner London with an average of £2,635 per pupil, with the shire counties coming at the bottom end of the range with expenditure of just over £2,000 per pupil. The highest figure in the country was £3,207 in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea while the lowest was £1,698 in Suffolk.
I could go on in that vein, but I think the point is made. Despite all that is done, local government is still flourishing; it is still local and, wherever you go in the country, it is still different. The consequences of those differences and of the philosophical, structural and economic problems that arise mean that each authority will have its own particular difficulties and its own particular problems. They will be different.
I listened to the opening speech of the noble Baroness with considerable interest. It would have been immediately familiar to any chairman of a local authority finance committee who was meeting any one of his service committee chairmen during the construction of the council's budget for the coming year. Despite the increase in expenditure over my career in local government, which I have retailed, the point that I did not make at that time was that for the whole of that period we were supposedly cutting expenditure. Listening to the chairmen of the service committees as they appeared before me as a member of the finance committee, I heard that each of those reductions severally was potentially disastrous and that the services would break down. They have not done so.
Equally, anybody who has an experience of the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance, which is the consultative organisation in which local government meets Ministers from the Department of the Environment and elsewhere to discuss the coming year's finance, would also recognise that argument. Since I have done it myself, I know exactly what the arguments are. The old ploy of local government at this time of the year is to compare outturns and actual expenditure with
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estimates. Local government consistently goes to the consultative council with comparisons of year-on-year expenditure. The Government quite properly go to the council every year where they compare their original estimate for that year with their original estimate for the previous year. The sadness is that ne'er the twain shall meet. Both sides are essentially correct. Local government has not broken down—so to that extent the Government are right—yet if one compares the original estimates with the outturns, one sees that they are different. That is not surprising. In the end, it is with the delivery of service and the quality of that service that we should be concerned.
Many of the problems relate to political philosophy and money. I find it slightly ironical to go back to my former local authority and to talk to my former colleagues who, despite the description of the overall situation of local government finance, now regard that authority as being awash with money. There is a certain delicious irony in the fact that after I was kicked out of office the council was given for whatever reason—and probably for a very good reason—an enhanced cash flow by the Government. I find that interesting. In fact, the council now holds a great deal of money in balances, which was not formerly the case. It holds those balances as an authority; and because it now gives its departments devolved budgets—a new departure to make them more financially responsible—the departments hold cash balances. Schools with devolved budgets also hold cash balances. Aside from everything else, that raises the question of how best those sums of money should be used.
Particular mention has been made of personal social services and funding. On a strict year-on-year comparison there is almost no enhancement of funding for the coming financial year, but the special transitional grant is continuing next year at the rate of £647.6 million and personal social services departments will have a total of about 11 per cent. in additional funds to dispose of in relation to care in the community and the provision of personal social services.
The Audit Commission report to which I should like to refer is not that which the noble Baroness called into account. I refer to the report Taking Stock, Progress with Community Care of December 1994, which assesses progress in the development of community care. The report contains two chilling statements. Paragraph 31 states:
"It is particularly worrying that some Authorities audited were unable to assemble the sort of information needed to check the financial implications of placements already made, let alone explore possible options for tackling projected overspending. These Authorities could be heading for difficulty without a clear idea of what is going wrong or why!"
I could go on, but time prevents me, so I shall say simply that local government is strong and healthy. Its situation is not as bad as the noble Baroness portrayed it to be.
3.47 p.m.
Lord Tope: My Lords, as a mere London borough council leader I find it a little daunting to follow two such distinguished Chairs of the Association of County

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Councils, but I shall do my best. I start by joining the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, in paying tribute to and thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, for initiating today's debate. We have served together on a number of local authority bodies both in this country and in Europe. The noble Baroness is always a passionate advocate for local government, so it comes as no surprise to me that she has chosen this subject for what I believe is the first debate that she has initiated in this House. I welcome that.
Now is a particularly opportune time to be having such a debate. The Government are currently consulting (in their customary manner) on the settlement, and local authorities throughout the land are wrestling with ever-more difficult and severe budget cuts. As I have said, this is a particularly good time for the debate. I am sure that reference will be made to a number of the tangible effects of what has been happening year after year in local government. Indeed, that has already been mentioned.
I should like to start, however, by referring to some of the less tangible effects. They may be more difficult to measure, but they are nonetheless very real. Local government in this country is facing a period of enormous change. Some of that change is for the good and the better and is generally welcomed by everybody; some of it is not. Nevertheless, change is always unsettling. People are never quite sure whether the risk of losing what they have is worth the rather less obvious benefits of what they might get. So it is always difficult and a challenge to go through change. We are also in a period of ever-increasing public expectations, especially of local authorities—public expectations encouraged by central government, but often rightly so. Yet, at the same time, almost every local authority faces a period of ever-diminishing resources with which to meet the challenge of change and all those increased public expectations.
I want to pay tribute to local government staff who, on the whole, do their best to meet that challenge, and try still to be creative in doing so; but my impression is that their morale is at rock bottom. People are worrying increasingly not just about their jobs but about the services of which they feel so proud. They are faced with making ever more difficult decisions. Local councillors wonder increasingly why they volunteer to inflict such pain upon themselves and upon others when their powers are constantly being diminished. Those are not tangible effects which are easy to measure, but they are real and dangerous to the health of our democracy and the fabric of our society.
In my few minutes, I want to dwell on just one particular aspect of the subject. As a council leader there are many upon which I would wish to dwell, but I shall talk about one only, and that is education. For those local authorities that are LEAs, it is usually the largest part of their budget. It is usually stated to be the priority, or certainly one of them, for most people and all political parties. In Sutton (my own council) the schools budget alone represents 40 per cent. of the total council budget. Our small London borough is now looking at cuts of £8 million for the fifth year running. It is difficult
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to make cuts of that magnitude for the fifth year running without affecting that 40 per cent. of the budget that relates to schools.
Nevertheless, education has been a stated priority for all parties, and one would like to think that it has been relatively protected in the round of cuts, and to some extent that is true: it has been relatively protected because local authorities, including mine, have sought to make their cuts elsewhere than in schools. They have cut the central departments of the education department considerably. Reference has been made to cuts in discretionary funding, and that is serious. They have tried to protect schools. Yet we need to look at what has happened with our schools budgets.
The Government like to talk in global figures, and in global figures to show an actual increase in funding for schools, but that is masked by the rise in the number of pupils. A rather better measure about which the Government are singularly reluctant to speak, is the standard spending assessment per pupil. There we find that next year, as compared with this year, for primary schools there will be an actual cut on average of 2.5 per cent. per pupil; in secondary schools there will be a cut of nearly 7 per cent. per pupil. There will be a £194 per pupil cut in funding for secondary schools. Those are average figures. As with any average, they disguise figures which are very much worse.
I wish to illustrate that point with some figures from my own authority. That is not to use the House for special pleading, but because it happens to be the authority that I know best. Sutton's SSA for secondary education this year is £2,916 per pupil. Next year—assuming the settlement goes ahead—it will be £2,727 per pupil. That is a cut of £189 per pupil before we have taken any account of inflation, teachers' pay awards, increased demands, and so on. That is a strange way of showing a priority for education.
Recoupment is ending next year. That will have almost disastrous effects on boroughs such as mine, which is a substantial importer of children. That may be because my authority seems always to come near the top of the much disputed examination league tables. We import 2,400 pupils to our schools from outside the borough; 1,100 of those are secondary school children from the next door borough of Croydon. Yet Croydon will be allowed to spend £129 more per pupil on educating those children if they remain in Croydon than if they cross the borough boundary and come to Sutton.
When we met the Secretary of State last week at the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance (the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, was also there) he said that he was anxious to put right all the "technical errors, quirks and stupidities"—those were his words—in the settlement. That is one stupidity that I hope he will put right this year rather than next year.
We all know that it has been a tough settlement for local government this year. One might perhaps say that this year is a one-off, so we need to look at the cumulative effect on the per pupil SSA over the years. Comparing 1992–93 with 1995–96, funding per pupil has fallen in real terms by 2.5 per cent. in primary schools and nearly 11 per cent. in secondary schools—again, a strange way to show priority for education. That is not

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the end of it. We are already told that for the next three years the local government settlement will be even worse. There will be 3 per cent. cuts in real terms. The Audit Commission has calculated that if community care is taken out of that, the cuts will be 6 per cent. in real terms. As education forms such a substantial part of local government expenditure, it cannot be immune from the effects of such severe cuts.
I said earlier that local authorities have done their best to avoid hitting schools with these cuts by making cuts elsewhere in the budget; but, even so, if we look at class sizes and compare what has happened—the most recent figures available are to January 1994—with the position in January 1992, just two years previously, we see that the number of primary school classes of over 30 has risen by 19 per cent. There are 173,676 more children now in primary school classes of over 30. That number has now reached over 1 million for the first time.
In those two years secondary school classes of over 25 have increased by 15 per cent.; 44 per cent. of all secondary school children are now in classes of over 25. If you ask any teacher—I happen to be married to a teacher—what is most important, they will always say that it is class size. There has been some questioning of that, but I have yet to meet a teacher, or anyone who has been a teacher, who says that class size is unimportant. With smaller classes pupils can be given the individual attention that is so necessary, and yet our classes are becoming larger and larger by the year.
Shortly before Christmas the Minister of State for Education said:
"The plea from LEAs that they do not have enough money will not wash".—[Official Report, Commons, 19/12/94; col. 1514.]
It is the Minister of State's statement that just will not wash. The figures deny it, wherever one looks and however one interprets them.
I wish to conclude in the same way as did the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, with a plea for democracy. My plea, first, is to say to Ministers, "Please stop pretending that everything is all right when everyone knows that everything is not all right. But above all"—this is a plea that will fall on deaf ears—"set local government free" because we must return to the position where local councillors have their fundamental democratic right restored; that is, the right to determine the priorities that meet the needs of local communities, balanced by the level of tax and charges that they have to levy to meet those needs, and to be properly and effectively accountable to their local communities for their decisions. There will always be difficult decisions to take, but it is high time that local government again was allowed to take its own decisions.
4 p.m.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton: My Lords, I too thank and express appreciation to my noble friend Lady Farrington for initiating the debate. I wish to concentrate my remarks on the emasculation of local authorities, which I believe makes it more difficult for them to provide the services that local government can and
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should provide. My noble friend clearly outlined in detail the financial restraints against which those services have to be provided.
In 1979, Michael Heseltine, then Secretary of State for the Environment, pledged to sweep away tiresome and excessive control over local government. But 15 years later, with the passage of more than 150 separate Acts of Parliament, power has been shifted from the town hall to Whitehall, creating the most centralised system in Western Europe. Local government has become a means of carrying out the wishes of central government instead of being the voice of local people.
This Government, despite their protestations, have centralised power in a deliberate way. Power has been transferred from people in the localities to non-elected, non-accountable quangos and boards appointed by various Secretaries of State. These government-appointed bodies now spend more than £30 billion that was previously under the influence or control of elected local authorities. These bodies go about their business in secret and in this era of so-called open government Whitehall is stuffed to the gills with more than 100,000 secret files. Compare that with the innovative, flexible way in which most local councils have themselves decentra-lised their administration and involved their electors.
It is quite plain that as the influence of local representatives has diminished people are not clear who is responsible for what. In the past, if people wanted to complain about any local service they could go to their local councillor. That is no longer the case. They are, for instance, no longer represented on the governing bodies of grant-maintained schools, further education and sixth-form colleges, school-funding councils, housing action trusts and urban development corporations or bodies responsible for local bus services. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, I must point out that these bodies may still be local but they certainly are not accountable.
Responsibility has been fragmented. Therefore, for instance, in order to reduce crime in the locality a local group will have to liaise not only with its local council but separately with a range of other bodies, including the local police, the health authority, the local TECs and so forth. However, it is significant to note that of those bodies only the council and the police are obliged even to listen to local demands.
Realising public expectations is best achieved by local people having the power to decide for themselves how they want to live, what services they require and to choose who represents them in the provision of those services. The views of users should be aggressively sought and thoroughly considered. As my noble friend Lady Farrington said, we are talking about the quality of life of the people of this country.
The Audit Commission, in its guide to the Citizens Charter indicators, Watching their Figures, states:
"Everyone has the right to know how their money is being spent".
It is unfortunate that that is not the reality.
To paraphrase Sir Karl Popper in his book, Poverty of Historicism, the greater the centralised power the greater the loss of knowledge. Ministers cannot know

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what the priorities should be in every community. Again I quote the Audit Commission document, Watching their Figures:
"No two councils are the same, there may be different reasons for the way services are provided in different authorities—differences between councils that are beyond their control".
We see again a further emasculation of local government by the imposition of the toughest financial settlement on local authorities since the 1970s.
Department of the Environment officials have made it clear that this reduction in aggregate external finance is a shift of the tax burden from centrally-raised taxation to council tax. If local councils follow the advice of government, and meet their standard spending guidelines, council tax bills for those in Bands C and D can expect an increase of more than £20. This is effectively a new tax on local communities. There was an opportunity to look at ways in which the tax could be made fairer. It might have been achieved by introducing new tax bands at the top end of the existing scale to differences in property values, introducing regional valuations to reflect regional differences in house prices and providing better arrangements for updating valuation lists and a better and speedier appeals machinery.
As has been said, no provision has been made in respect of the extra burden that will be placed on local government. The local government associations estimate that to be £1.6 billion. No provision has been made to cover inflation, pay rises or any further changes in local government responsibilities. No account has been taken of the extra demands on local authorities that will arise next year; that is, additional school pupils, nursery education and a rise in the number of elderly people requiring care. Nothing has been done relating to a previous debate on housing the homeless. However, it does include the cost of local government re-organisation and a 3 per cent. funding for police authorities, which is ring-fenced. As has been said, the net result is a virtual cash freeze.
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Mr. Gummer, told Members of the other place that the settlement was "tough" but that it was clear that many authorities had considerable scope to increase efficiency—a theme expanded by the Audit Commission. In the document entitled Paying the Piper, the Audit Commission asserts that during the past six years the cost of local authority non-manual staff has increased by 85 per cent. to £10 billion. It stipulates that if essential services are not to be curtailed there will need to be a cut of 10 per cent. in local authority wage bills. This is a direct result of the Government's three-year freeze on local authority running costs.
In reality, however, most local government salaries lag behind the median for the national pay market. The Audit Commission defines "senior posts" as anyone paid more than £18,000. Those in senior posts are not all managers; they include necessary front-line staff, housing officers, social workers, consumer protection and other officers. If local government is to reach the standard set by government it must have reasonably-paid, well-trained and motivated staff. The
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Audit Commission needs to adopt some caution, in particular as, in its own words, it justifies at least some of that increase in staff when it states:
"There are very few services in local government which cannot justify more staff—the demands on services seem almost infinite".
So it is not argued that the growth in staff is not needed. The Controller of the Audit Commission stated:
"Councils have done well to cope with a formidable agenda of change".
But local authorities should not dismiss this report. They are responsible bodies and I am sure that they will not do so. It is necessary for them to deal constructively and efficiently with the increased pressures arising from new statutory duties and to continue the process that many councils have begun in streamlining structures, sharpening performance and finding ways of getting closer to the public.
In debating the finances of local government, one must look at the impact made by compulsory competitive tendering. The Association of District Councils, in its response to the consultation paper Competing for Quality, expressed the view that CCT is not always the most cost-effective way of ensuring service delivery. If the Government really want to assist local authorities they could adopt the ADC proposal that local authorities are allowed to draw up their own communal targets for exposing new areas of activity to competitive tendering.
The study carried out by the London Business School, which looked at the long-term effects of CCT, showed that after an initial saving of 20 per cent. in the first two years, the cost at the end of five years was up by 11 per cent., even though average staff members went down by 20 per cent. The reason for that was that a number of private sector contractors introduced loss leaders in the early stages of the contract. They will now disappear. It is useful to note that that study took examples of councils which put out contracts to tender in the early 1980s, before there was a compulsory element.
Despite many attacks on local government over the years and the starving of resources by central government, local authorities and the public whom they are there to serve have begun a debate on the quality of the services and the way in which local authorities react to community and individual needs.
In that context, finally, I wish to refer to the role of the Citizen's Charter. The Citizen's Charter is a useful contribution to a long-standing commitment to public service by most of those who are in local government. In the 1980s the Labour Party issued two policy documents on the potential use of charters and the introduction of a quality commission responsible for ensuring that local government provides value for people as well as for value for money.
For example, Sheffield was pushing for clean air laws long before they became fashionable. Leeds decentralised its housing service in the 1960s. York and Lewisham were pioneers of service guarantees and Lancashire and Derbyshire were acting to save local jobs and attract new ones.

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The whole question of the charters and charter marks should not be seen as a substitute for the services which local authorities should be providing. We need to ensure that those services are well funded. I echo the joint statement of the three local authority associations by saying that vital services could be lost during this difficult year for local authorities.
While central government should set standards and have a responsibility for macro-economic management, they should cease their detailed interference in the day-to-day affairs of local councils. They cannot know better than local people and local councillors about the depth, degree and urgency of the needs of each and every local community and its capacity to pay for what it needs. That cannot be right—in principle or in practice. That interference does not make for responsible government; quite the reverse. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, let us set local government free.
4.12 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I join with others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, for initiating the debate.
I wish to approach the debate from a very grass-roots practical point of view. Last week I visited Greenwich. A mental hospital there had been emptied completely and community care had been given to all the patients who had been in the hospital. I attended a party with those patients and they told me how they felt about being in a community rather than in the mental hospital, which has since closed down. I support entirely the Government's policy with regard to community care. I believe that that is the right policy for this country at this time.
This morning I visited the Royal Free Hospital. I talked to doctors, managers and social workers about the community care which is being provided jointly by the hospital and the social workers. In fact, it was a celebration of the health-related social service which was started 100 years ago. That service has been developed jointly by the Royal Free Hospital and Camden council. It has been a great success.
We should do all that we can to support community care. However, I should point out that I have travelled to many authorities and many shire counties have had their expenditure cut to such an extent that they have had to declare redundant social workers in their services. It cannot be right to have and support a very good policy on the one hand but at the same time to have the local authorities in a position where they are unable to carry it out through a lack of good staff.
It is very difficult to be a social worker. As regards the implementation of the Mental Health Act, one may be called out at night in order to help patients and to be with doctors if patients are being admitted to hospital. One has to deal with handicapped children, children in care and children who have been sexually abused. It is a very difficult role to play. Nevertheless, if the community is to be happy and balanced, there must be an adequate number of well qualified social workers.
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I have great sympathy with city treasurers. They have to reduce their expenditure and very often incur feelings of animosity in doing so. Unfortunately I do not have the figures with me, but I am a vice-president of the Association of County Councils and I understand that there has been a serious reduction in the number of social workers in the country at the moment.
I turn now to the question of special needs under the Education Act 1993. That legislation was introduced by the Government and I believe that it was a very good Act. In particular, Part III which deals with special educational needs is excellent. I am sure your Lordships will understand that I could not get away without speaking about the needs of children. Many children in this country could have been helped and prevented from becoming delinquent and disturbed had we used the facilities which we now have.
I pay tribute to the many voluntary homes in this country which provide services for difficult and emotionally disturbed children who come from families which have disintegrated and which, therefore, are not able to give them support. But what has happened? If those voluntary homes are to provide a good service, it is expensive. I do not wish to say in any way that it is not expensive. There are vacancies in many homes in this country because the treasurers have said that the local authorities do not have the money to pay for children to go to those homes. Therefore, I regret to say that there is a rise in the delinquency rate; there are more disturbed children in this country due to the breakdown of families; and there is a rise in the crime rate among young children.
One or two years ago, I approached several people and begged them to set up secure local authority units. But the response that I received from someone who is well-known to your Lordships and who is a leading county councillor was that local authorities could not afford to set up secure training units within local authorities and under their jurisdiction. So what has happened? We have now passed an Act of Parliament which provides that secure training units are to be set up for children. The estimated cost is £30 million per year for the next five years for only 200 children aged 12 to 14.
I contend that if the local authorities had had enough money to set up secure training units over the past five years, it would have been unnecessary to spend that £30 million per year for the next five years. That would have been a more cost-effective way in which to proceed rather than waiting until matters became so serious that the Home Office felt it necessary to set up those expensive centres.
We should really look to see whether or not measures are cost-effective. I believe that by depriving local authorities of the money to spend on those children this country has had in the end to spend much more. I would suggest that we look seriously at our social services, at our community care and at our care for children taking into account the whole spectrum. We should also think about a five-year plan and not just a one-year plan. While resources for local government are being cut back, I believe we will find that at the end of the day we will spend more. That will not be in the interests of

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the country. I believe that community care and the special needs mentioned in Part III of the Education Act 1993 are both valid and excellent policies. Let us interpret them and administer them in a cost-effective way over a long period.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, as she started off by making some interesting remarks about her grass-roots experience at Greenwich, and as she has a few minutes left of her quota, I wonder whether she would be so good as to elaborate a little on the feelings and comments of those whom she met at Greenwich—the mental health patients now in community care.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his question. I have three minutes left in which to speak. I met all the mental patients and had a party with them. In turn they were allowed to tell me how they had benefited from going into the community. The mother of one of the 17 year-olds said that her son had completely altered since he went into the community and into a house with only eight patients and a manager. She said that her son was now quite different from the person he had been when he was in hospital and living under a hospital regime.
4.22 p.m.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Farrington on initiating this debate in a competent manner. I shall speak primarily about what is called the single regeneration budget. It is one of the cutbacks in government that has a special connotation. The single regeneration budget effectively abolished 57 urban area programmes and brought them under one umbrella. Those urban areas are the most deprived local authority areas.
Not only has the amount of money in the budget been reduced but deprivation as a criterion for funding decisions has been downgraded. The urban area programmes benefited not only the community but also the area concerned. They helped to abolish deprivation. The hidden reductions within the single regeneration budget mean that the problems of socially excluded groups in urban areas must worsen. That is obvious.
I remind the House that after the 1991 population census the Department of the Environment commissioned a team from the University of Manchester to consider relative levels of deprivation in England. The work indicated that Birmingham was the fifth most deprived local authority in England and the most deprived authority outside London. Birmingham is a city I know well. I have lived there all my life. I am an honorary alderman of the city. If one interprets the figures, one can see that 52 per cent. of its citizens live in, or on the margins of, poverty.
If one studies the figures for the single regeneration budget, one can see that compared with Birmingham's funding of £28 million over five years, Coventry and Warwickshire will receive £23 million. Stoke on Trent will receive £27 million and Cannock £20 million. I remind the House that Birmingham will receive £28 million. I am sure that all the places I have mentioned need the funding and I say, "Good luck to them".
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However, not one of those places has a population which is a third the size of Birmingham's. Nor do they have the level of deprivation of Birmingham, resulting from the Government's cutbacks. Therefore it would appear that the city of Birmingham is not receiving its fair share of the new resource. Those of us who live in Birmingham know that it is this Government's most hated local authority. At the previous municipal elections, on the night before the poll, a programme was transmitted about Birmingham. That programme was scandalous. The Birmingham newspapers denounced it as scandalous, as did the population of Birmingham. The programme was completely misleading. However, I shall not go into that now.
At those municipal elections two Tory seats on the local council were captured by the opposition. They were the safest Tory seats in Birmingham. Therefore the programme that was shown did not do any good as it was composed of lies. If my assumption that Birmingham is not receiving its fair share of the resource is wrong, I hope that the Minister will give me the figures to prove it. We, in Birmingham, believe that we are not receiving our fair share.
As regards the quality of overall improvements in the environment, the net impact of the introduction of the single regeneration budget has been to introduce a competitive rather than a needs-led regime. As far as I understand the position, the city of Birmingham is therefore not only bidding for funds for housing investment but is also bidding for those funds from a much reduced pool in which such investment is not seen as a high priority. Housing investment has suffered more cuts than any other public service. The new figures reveal at what great cost that has been done in terms of misery, ill health and homelessness. Local authorities used to have the power to build in their own name, or at least to a certain extent, but that power has been taken away from them. Local councillors see their responsibility on their doorsteps. They meet it day after day and week after week. The people who sit in Whitehall advising the Government do not see the problems and neither do the Government themselves. The Government would not know what those problems were about—this applies in many cases—even if they were hit on the head with them.
Housing investment is suffering as a result of these measures. The Housing Corporation's figures show that the number of dwellings built by housing associations will fall from 60,700 this year to 41,500 next year. An article on housing appeared in the Guardian about 10 days ago. It quoted the comments of Sir Michael Latham. I understand that he is the leading adviser to the Government on the construction industry. The Minister is nodding his head, so the Guardian must have got that right. The article stated:
"Latham is concerned about the proposed 25 per cent. reduction in social housing grants".
I repeat that he is the Government's adviser. Sir Michael said:
"The decline has gone far enough and the Government should consider an increase in funding".

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The article added:
"Efforts by the Housing Corporation to work with the private sector have been superb, but now the going will get harder and harder. Falling levels of grants and reductions in housing benefit are squeezing the system too hard".
I hope that on this occasion the Government will accept the advice of one of their advisers. We do not consider only social housing at that level; we must consider owner occupation. A report was published last week which indicated an increase in the number of home owners with negative equity. It is a hopeless problem.
Does the Minister agree that housing is central to what the Government refer to as the "feel good" factor"? When government cut local authority spending, as other speakers have stated, it generally means cuts for people, children, the disabled, the elderly, ethnic minorities and individuals who depend on services. In many cases, local councillors can do nothing about it. They cannot provide the services because the money is not there, although they are elected to do so.
What a pity that the Government have no trust in the people elected at local democratic level. For some reason, central government find it hard to believe that local authorities can do things well. Public opinion polls show clearly that most people are satisfied with the provision of local services when the money is available and that the services provided are good. The only difficulty is that the authorities cannot provide more.
The Government appear to do all they can to control local government either with an iron fist or with handcuffs. They treat local government as some financial problem rather than an organisation in what we call a democratic state.
I conclude by saying, very sincerely, that even the Greater London Council—I supported that body so I use the phrase in context—at its worst could not have managed the government financial fiasco of the Welsh Development Agency, Canary Wharf, the never-to-be-completed British Library or the international hospital. Although that hospital was built in Scotland by a private developer, it is now being flogged on the market at half the price it cost the taxpayer. No local authority could be as bankrupt in ideas as this Government.
4.33 p.m.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, I, too, wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, for the debate today. I begin by endorsing a point made by many noble Lords who have spoken, including the noble Baroness Lady Gould. Although not all local authorities have identical problems, we are all limited by capping and capping constraints. When I joined my local authority some 10 years ago it was still possible to take a decision to recommend to local people that by paying X amount more in rates they would receive X amount more in services. Even if we wished to do so—Surrey is notoriously careful with its money—it is not now possible to do so. There is no connection between the willingness, if any, or desire of local people to obtain better services and the ability of local authorities to
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deliver those services. That is the democratic deficit which Government must address one of these days—if not this Government then another.
I wish to concentrate on two areas: highways and social services. Surrey has something like three times the national average of traffic on the roads, a fact that is only partly reflected in the allocation of SSA or borrowing permissions to the highway and transport part of our work. For example, while I much welcome the additional sum allocated for minor works in the settlement for 1995–96—that is to say, highway schemes costing less than £2 million—the £3 million or so available from the national Government combined with the gradual exhaustion of our own ability to provide large sums for highways improvements means that next year we shall still be spending on those schemes less than we did three or four years ago. All those schemes are dedicated to the Government aim of reducing accidents by one third by the end of the decade.
On another aspect of highways, we have set ourselves a target of reducing the percentage of carriageway with a residual life of less than five years to 15 per cent. That is the national average. However, by reason of the constraints upon our capital availability, next year we may not even be able to put into the structural maintenance of minor roads even that amount which will prevent further deterioration of those roads. Our success in achieving our objective—it is a rational objective—will be delayed even further. In Surrey it is generally recognised that the minor roads will receive the greater increase of traffic over the next few years since many of our major roads are already taking as much traffic as they can bear.
I enter into the subject of social services with some trepidation. Indeed, I would not have done so had not our difficulties in coping with our new responsibilities under community care been dealt with in the press and by the junior Minister for Health, Mr. John Bowis, in a most unfortunate, if not in some cases a misleading, way. Like several other local authorities, Surrey County Council has a crisis in its delivery of care in the community. I do not need to rehearse before your Lordships the number of counties which have had problems in that respect. That overspend reflects a sudden surge in clients presenting for assessment under the care in the community programme in the autumn of last year. That occurred to such an extent that there has been a 58 per cent. increase in the number of such clients over the projected number for this current year. It is worth noting that in the first year of care in the community, 1993–94, the inflow of new clients was also unpredictably erratic. It would be of great value if such surges of demand could be analysed and explained. We should then be able to manage our budgets better. The Government would do better to turn their attention to those issues rather than hurling insults at local authorities in the way in which that has been done.
Our director of social services has made great efforts to bring the budget back into balance while satisfying his legal obligations to purchase care. At least one of those methods has been controversial. I could go into detail but I am conscious that the debate may continue longer than it ought so I shall leave the detail. Suffice it

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to say, when Mr Bowis was tackled on Radio 5 Live about that initiative on the part of our director of social services, he took the opportunity to suggest that all Surrey's problems stemmed from its failure to spend up to the SSA for social services. In fact some years ago there was a large gap between Surrey's SSA and its spend on social services. However, under all party agreement that differential has been gradually reduced and will be eliminated next year. Therefore in that respect Mr. Bowis' remarks were quite out of line.
Mr. Bowis also claimed—the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has repeated the suggestion to some extent—that next year the social services' SSA would be increased by 11 per cent. However, what both the Minister and the noble Lord omitted to mention is that the 11 per cent. increase in social services budgets reflects an increase in the responsibilities which the local authorities are taking on and which will not be incorporated into our SSA until next year. Next year we shall receive a further additional amount of money in order to take on new clients. So it is misleading to compare our spend plus the special transitional grant against our SSA and say that we are not spending up to what we should be spending. We have been spending what we were given.
Interestingly enough, in 1993–94 we served 2,362 new clients and in 1994–95 an additional 1,788 new clients. Most of them were people in high need because, like others, our budgets will only cover services to people who are in high need.
The annual underlying increase in SSA for Surrey, properly put forward, was 2.4 per cent. from 1993–94 to 1994–95 and only 1.3 per cent. from 1994–95 to 1995–96. Surrey has reduced the unit cost of its support for social services clients. The Audit Commission has commended our system of needs assessment as a model for other authorities and it has also commended the relationship which we have established with local health authorities in order to facilitate the transfer of patients and funds from hospitals to local authority care. In those circumstances, I do not think it is helpful that we should be criticised in the way that we have been.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, I support the policy for care in the community. I should, however, point out that early supporters of the approach, such as my own party, never thought that it would be a cheap option. Some of the clients to whom the noble Baroness referred—especially children—require extremely expensive care, whether or not they are in the community. The number of clients is rising faster than expected, as people understand that they may have an entitlement to care under the programme of care in the community. There is a high growth, particularly of the frail elderly in high need. There is also, sadly, a growth in people who are in need of mental health services.
What has happened is that the Government, faced with a high growth in their old demand-led budget to satisfy the needs of those categories of clients, have transferred all new clients from those groups to the care of local authorities, but have cash-limited the budget. It cannot be too often stated that that is the case. I hope that the Minister will pass on to his colleagues in the Department of Health the grave worries that have been
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caused by his response to our difficulties, and, for that matter, the difficulties of other social services departments in other counties. I think that all county councils and county councillors, as well as people who deal with social services in other levels of local government—such as the London boroughs and so on—all of us, of all political parties, take our responsibilities seriously. We want to provide a service which is good value for money. I wish that the Government would recognise that that is the case.
4.43 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lady Farrington for giving us such a clear overall picture of the position in which local authorities find themselves, which is, to put it bluntly, less money available for more duties and responsibilities thrust upon them. How often from the Dispatch Box opposite have we heard, when we point out some problem or inadequacy, that that is a local government responsibility, that that is for local authorities to decide. The local authorities would like to shoulder their responsibilities, but often they just cannot.
I wish to concentrate on education. The local authorities have faced a series of settlements that seemed designed to reduce education spending in real terms. The Government standing spending figure for education in England of £17,204 million for 1995–96 is 3.87 per cent. below the local authority education budgets for the current year 1994–95. The Government claim that it represents a 1.1 per cent. increase, but in reality it means that the standing spending figure for 1994–95—which itself was inadequate—is not being allowed to increase in line with inflation or rising pupil numbers. Those numbers are rising by 1.5 per cent. a year. So the gap between the Government's assumptions for education spending and the real need to spend will continue to grow. Capping rules will limit increases in the majority of LEAs to a maximum of 0.5 per cent.
We are tired of hearing that the answer to this is in efficiency savings. These have long been used up. Efficiency savings—and I have read the Audit Commission report—of the order sought by the Government in practice mean not only the erosion of important though discretionary local education services, but also a continuing deterioration in the pupil-teacher ratio, leading to over-large classes in schools, probably with less experienced teachers. That is because less experienced teachers are cheaper. Over a quarter of primary school children are now taught in classes of over 30.
I intend to look at some of the effects on my own county of Cambridgeshire. The policy committee has done what it can to help the education committee. For instance, it has handed over £2.5 million for rising pupil numbers. It has given protection for Section 11 work through additional funding to replace the £300,000 withdrawn from the government grant and a further allocation of £0.5 million to address the growing problems of children at risk, especially those who are out of school. In spite of all that, there is no new money

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to fund the teachers' pay settlement or the cost implications of the rapidly rising number of new statements for children with special educational needs.
The rising cost of providing for pupils out of school—a statutory requirement, your Lordships will remember—is something which we should be aware of. If the present trend goes on, the need will be £1 million not the £0.5 million allocated. This could only come from school budgets, meaning larger classes and making it even more difficult to retain children with behavioural difficulties. I hope that the Department for Education is fully aware of the problem that these children create in financial, educational and social terms.
Far from being able to improve the quality of home to school transport, there will have to be charges where there were none before. In September 1995, £25 per term will have to be paid by all new students at post-16 establishments more than five miles from home. A similar contribution will be paid for September 1996 in respect of all new pupils at denominational schools where transport is provided by the LEA beyond the usual two and three-mile limits. Admissions policy will be changed. From September 1996, all autumn-born children will start school in September of the academic year in which they are five, but spring and summer-born children will start in January.
I am particularly upset by what is bound to happen to community education and the youth service. As the Chief Education Officer said to me, there will be misery all round and the real prospect of community education as we know it coming rapidly to an end. As the county where Henry Morris was chief education officer creating community education in the village college, this is very hard to bear. Two million pounds will be left out of a £5 million programme. The effect on the youth service will be vast. At a time of concern about drug abuse and youth crime, we ought to be investing more in the social education which the youth service can offer. I understand that Cambridgeshire will be giving priority to the youth service out of the funds that remain. That is right, but it is devastating for adult education. The budgetary pressures on LEA provision were exacerbated by the transfer of funds to the Further Education Funding Council and the loss of the LEA infrastructure which had supported both adult and further education. I am now speaking generally, not just about Cambridgeshire.
The provision of liberal non-vocational courses has already been vastly reduced as the quantities of letters which I have received from irate, disappointed people over the past few months bear witness. There is outrage that the classes which have given them so much pleasure and made such a difference to their lives have gone or, if they are there, it is at a fee which many, as pensioners, simply cannot afford. Mental health costs may well accelerate.
I mentioned earlier the cost of providing for increased numbers of children with statements, and indeed the cost of providing for rapidly rising numbers of new statements. All who are involved with special needs welcome the recent code of practice. The new arrangements will be challenging, and rightly so. But to
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rise to that challenge will require partnership between schools, LEAs, parents and central government—and adequate financial support. There is plenty of evidence of the former but the Government have failed to address the latter, arguing that the code of practice will be cost neutral. It will not. Without that support there is a danger that we might repeat the mistakes that followed the 1981 Act, which created many desirable duties but never recognised the scale of the costs that were attached to them. Parental expectations will not be fulfilled and disadvantaged children will not receive the support that they need.
DFE figures indicate a gradual increase in the proportion of children with statements to 2.53 per cent. in 1993. Evidence from the ACC suggests that the number now touches 3 per cent. In some authorities it is as high as 4 per cent. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, suggested, we need a thoroughgoing review of the relevant Acts.
Very important is what happens at 16-plus to children with special needs. There is a grey area of responsibility between the LEAs and the FEFC. The FEFC is responsible for funding courses to teach people with learning difficulties independent living and communication skills which prepare them for entry to other courses. But it looks for evidence of progress to justify its funding. Many are unlikely to be able to demonstrate such progress, and that leaves the LEA to pick up the bill. How are they to do that, considering the spending restraints that are placed on them and the transfer of the bulk of the money to the FEFC?
Another difficulty occurs when those young people transfer to the independent or voluntary sector. Funding responsibility can become complex. LEAs can be left with a bill for which they believe the funds have been transferred to the FEFC. The Tomlinson Committee, in looking at these problems, will have a lot to consider. There is no doubt that the provisions of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act for students with disabilities or learning difficulties have not, in practice, created a clear entitlement for the student or a clear demarcation of responsibility between the FEFC and LEAs.
Finally, I turn to nursery education. The Prime Minister, the National Commission, the Social Justice Commission, Sir Christopher Ball et al have all made the case for good quality nursery education as underpinning the work of schools and of continuing education post-school. It helps reduce the incidence of pupils with special needs. Local authorities, despite tight spending settlements, have been increasing the availability of places for three and four year-olds. Government rhetoric encourages hopes for further expansion. But the spending settlement must dash these hopes.
The Government appear to be agonising not simply on how to find the resources but also on how to reconcile any development with their doctrine of choice and diversity. The simple answer is to allocate to LEAs whatever resources can be found, with the discretion to develop local solutions in the light of their knowledge of local circumstances. The wrong approach, with this

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as with everything else, is to run round creating expectations while cutting resources so that the reality is less or worse, rather than more or better.
4.53 p.m.
Lord Harmsworth: My Lords, I, too, would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, for introducing this debate. On 15th December the local government commissioners for England made their final recommendations for Dorset. I believe that Dorset local authorities would face many problems in providing the services that Dorset communities need if the county were to become four unitary authorities. I hope that noble Lords will not mind my dipping a little into the future for the county, narrowing the focus of the debate for the time being.
After 33 years of travelling down to Dorset, I still regard myself as a foreigner there. I was born within earshot of Bow Bells. Although the war almost instantly resulted in my becoming an evacuee for most of the next five years, I suppose that in reality I am a true Londoner. I am certainly neither tired of London nor tired of life. If the famous saying of Dr. Johnson in 1777 needs any adjustment, it is probably to the extent that London no longer offers exclusively all that life can afford. I still find it odd that in the past six years of having my principal residence in rural West Dorset, I have possibly watched less television and have gone to more concerts, theatres, pantomimes and events, and visited more places than I did in the previous six years while I was in London, or in the six years prior to that.
I am strongly in favour of retaining the status quo for Dorset. I am no local government expert, but I am a passionate advocate of what I believe to be in the best interests of a beautiful and successful county. I speak very much as a layman. Not to put too fine a point on it, I really do believe that the recommendations that were made for the county of Dorset by the commissioners, through no fault of their own, represent a dreadful mistake. The commissioners had an almost impossible remit. But the splitting of a small to medium-sized county into four will make it hopelessly cost-ineffective and will result in a "them and us" position (rural and urban; east and west) which is wholly unwelcome—not to mention the higher cost of important county-wide services and the loss of, and difficulties for, some of the specialist services that are presently enjoyed, and to which my noble friend Lady Faithfull referred, as did the last speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady David.
The story is well known. The commissioners' draft submission recommended three unitary authorities, roughly comprising Bournemouth, Poole and rural Dorset, in what is a fairly narrow and long county. At the time the commissioners expressed reservations about a four-authority option, about basing the east-west split of rural Dorset on general arguments about orientation rather than on geography or identity. Concern was expressed about the fragmentation of this small county, where the transitional costs might never be recovered. The commissioners also took into account the view of the business community; namely, that one county-wide
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authority, or one unitary authority, representing the integrity of the eastern conurbation and another serving the remainder of Dorset, would be best.
In the county council response to the draft recommendations, it is stated that a large number of residents and some local organisations expressed disappointment that the commissioners' household leaflet did not include the existing structure as a specific option.
The commission then undertook to ascertain the level of public support for its preferred structure of three unitary authorities, and also for an alternative structure of four unitary authorities, and to assess the wishes of the people of Christchurch and the parishes around Poole. They did so. MORI was commissioned to undertake a survey of 2,518 residents. That survey indicated that in all districts except for Bournemouth there was a higher support for no change than for either (the three or four) unitary options. It is interesting that in an exercise that has induced on the whole little but apathy on the part of those responding to inquiries as to wishes, the only significant figures relate to the plumping for the status quo, the highest percentage seeing no need for change being Christchurch at 43 per cent.
Last week I visited the headmaster of Colfox School in Bridport, in West Dorset. The school, one of the first comprehensives, is at last at the front of the queue for capital funding. It is in a dreadful state. It was built for 600 pupils. There are 900. Twenty per cent. of the classrooms are temporary huts held up against the wind by braces and warmed by headache-making paraffin heaters. It is a television producer's joy. When the winds blow at 50 to 55 miles an hour, or when the temperature drops below 65 degrees Fahrenheit, these huts must be evacuated. At last the county council has placed the £7 million rebuilding cost for the school at the top of the list. The children will get a new building which will cost the same as trying to put the present one right. The Government's annual capital guideline for the whole of Dorset local education authority in 1995–96 is £3,340,000.
If the county becomes four unitary authorities it is almost certain that Colfox school will lose this funding, as may such projects as the Weymouth relief road costing nearly £30 million—and that in one of the two counties of England with no external debt. Your Lordships will know that without external debt the council can apply all of the proceeds of its sales of surplus land and buildings to new capital projects rather than have to set aside half the proceeds to pay off debt. Furthermore, the council's capital programme is not constrained by government guidelines or the issue of permission to 'borrow from central government, all of which make a dramatic difference to the size of the council's school-building programme.
All of my children started their education in state primary schools, the youngest at an excellent one in the small rural village of Broadwindsor in West Dorset which had about 70 pupils. Rural primary schoolchildren cost roughly twice as much to educate as their urban counterparts. What will happen if Dorset's rural area is split into two of the four unitary authorities?

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In my view, it is a racing certainty that rural primary schools will close and that, dotted about the countryside in small communities, the commotion—not least in the reorganisation of school transport already referred to—will be all-pervasive. If I may make a political point, this will come at a time that may be thoroughly inconvenient to the Government.
In my opinion, reorganisation of any long-standing and complex organisation in which many important personal relationships have been carefully nurtured over many years should he done only in cases of clear need for change. Already the exercise has put many of these relationships into difficulty. No very obvious upheavals in the county merit the disruption of a time-tested, adaptive mechanism to deal with local, supra-county and inter-county problems. Perhaps your Lordships' House provides an example of an institution that has adapted over time to need and, by any yardstick, represents a supreme piece of legislative and judicial machinery. So is the current set up in Dorset. It is not perfect. It is not so old. But it is quite clear from the consultation documents issued in this exercise that whatever option my right honourable friend the Secretary of State takes there are advantages and disadvantages in each. The present system works and the people canvassed by MORI want no change. My view is that the status quo provides a good answer to the different management requirements of the county and will preserve the delicate balances in and the delightful character of a precious part of rural England.
Even if there are examples of major changes that have taken place in Dorset since 1974 perhaps they illustrate the benefits of the status quo. Since the publication the commission's draft recommendations the Government have announced the closure of the Royal Naval Air Station at Portland in addition to the naval base. The commission has stated that Weymouth, Portland and the surrounding areas are suffering from the decline of the defence industry and that the area's future prosperity and economic development are likely to depend upon reducing its isolation. The maintenance of the status quo will allow the strategic application of capital funding for the area in a way that fragmentation into four small unitary authorities can never do.
Another major change that has taken place in Dorset in recent years is the success of the harbour facilities at Poole. The roads to the north of the harbour will be much better planned under the status quo where competing priorities for funding play less part. There are other areas where disruption and disadvantages are plain: waste disposal, minerals, library facilities, archives and wildlife matters. All are candidates for disruption, duplication, overlap and avoidable extra bureaucracy.
Generally, I am not as gloomy as noble Lords opposite, but for a combination of reasons and accidents the county of Dorset has landed up with the worst of all possible worlds. I hope that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will opt for the status quo. I am
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sure that the local authorities there will be more cost-effective and better able to provide the services that the Dorset communities need.
5.5 p.m.
Lord Varley: My Lords, I am indebted to my noble friend Lady Farrington for initiating this debate. She made an extremely powerful case, and I support wholeheartedly what she said. Local authorities are indeed facing immense problems in providing services for their communities.
On 1st December last year I had the opportunity to promote a short debate on the standard spending assessment and area cost adjustment and the way that it is applied unfairly to the counties that form the East Midlands: Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire. In that debate, I was supported by the noble Lords, Lord Boardman and Lord Kimball, from the Conservative Benches, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln. If anything, they were more strong in their criticism of how the standard spending assessment applied to the East Midlands than I was. But in reply to that debate, the noble Viscount, who will also reply to this debate, said:
"I hope that your Lordships will understand that the Government and my department have not closed their ears to the development of the area cost adjustment. If we see that there is a reason for it to be changed there is no reason for it not to be considered." [Official Report, 1/12/94; col. 785.]
On 3rd January of this year a deputation from the East Midlands was received by his fellow Minister, the Minister of State for Local Government, Mr. David Curry. I am pleased to hear that as a result of that deputation, a review is to be carried out about the area cost adjustment methodology and that that review will be for discussion with the local authority associations.
The evidence that money is being disproportionately allocated to the South-East and at the expense of the East Midlands has become extremely clear. I hope that the review to which the Minister has agreed will be undertaken speedily. Therefore, at least a little progress has been made on that subject.
I wish to concentrate the rest of the time at my disposal on the impact that government policies have had and will have on the services of Derbyshire County Council, and in particular the effect of the provisional grant settlement if no changes are made. Local government financial arrangements over recent years mean that in the main councils are now dependent on the Government for their funding. Some 70 per cent. of Derbyshire County Council's budget comes from government grant and the nationally distributed business rate. Only 20 per cent. comes from the local council tax, and the balance is made up from fees and charges.
The power of the Government to cap councils' budgets prevents local authorities from rescuing services by raising council tax levels beyond the limit laid down by the Government. Therefore, if the Government grant level is inadequate, or the Government make a mistake, or fail to rectify a mistake, councils cannot continue to provide good services and services will deteriorate.

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The Government have recently announced provisional grant settlements for local councils, as referred to by my noble friend Lady Farrington, together with new capping rules. The impact on Derbyshire's budget next year is devastating. It means an increase of only one half of 1 per cent. on the existing budget, as has already been said. After taking into account inflation and other factors, it means for Derbyshire a shortfall of £28 million if it is to try to maintain services at the current level. Some may say that the majority of county councils are also limited to a 0.5 per cent. increase. But the consequences for Derbyshire are much more serious because of the previously enforced clamp down—or cut back—on services.
The Derbyshire County Council has had to cut £152 million from its budget over the past five years. Nor can it be said that Derbyshire is over-staffed or over-administered. Over the past five years, 2,360 council jobs have been shed through redundancy or early retirement. The sum of £43 million has been taken from reserves, which are now exhausted. The Derbyshire County Council employs 24 people full time per 1,000 of the population. The comparable figure for England is 30 per 1,000, so that six fewer people per 1,000 are employed by Derbyshire. Derbyshire spends 11 per cent. less on administration and support services than the average for all county councils. It is the fifth cheapest out of 34 councils which compile this kind of statistic. The average council tax paid by Derbyshire residents this year is £471, which is equal to the average for the country as a whole. As I understand it, the provisional grant settlement does not take into account the pay awards for teachers and fire fighters, which are negotiated nationally.
So to put in perspective the budget shortfall of £28 million, it is equivalent to the annual pay bill for the entire operational and support staff at County Hall; or is equivalent to the closure of 15 medium sized secondary schools.
All the services in Derbyshire have been cut back over the past five years from the vital social services to the fire and rescue services. But the real hammer blows have been on education in the county. Education accounts for 60 per cent. of the county council's overall expenditure. Over the past five years £15 million have been cut from school budgets. If the Education Committee has to take its share of the £28 million funding shortfall, another £17 million will be cut from the education budget.
It is easy to see what that would mean. It would mean a further loss of teachers, significantly higher classes, as has already been said, and a lack of maintenance on school buildings as well possibly as other economies. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, smiles at what I say. I do not think that there is anything to smile about so far as Derbyshire is concerned. I thought that in his speech he was extremely complacent and did not take into account all the other difficulties suffered by other councils throughout the country. I do not believe that his apologia for the Government was all that effective. What I find unfathomable—it is a question that the Government have not tried to answer even though they have been asked—is why Derbyshire
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receives £248 less in grant support for every secondary school pupil compared with Hertfordshire and £274 less per pupil than Surrey. Perhaps the noble Viscount will attempt to answer that question when he comes to reply. I know that he will have a lot of points and a limited time in which to answer them but perhaps he could at least start to address himself to that particular question.
Between 1984–1985 and 1989–1990, under the grant related expenditure assessment system, Derbyshire was treated as an average county. Derbyshire had a 38 per cent. increase over that period; Hertfordshire had a 34 per cent. increase; and the county average for the country was 39 per cent. Hertfordshire is used as a comparison because in the 1980s it had a population similar to that of Derbyshire.
Following the introduction of the standard spending assessment there has been a marked deterioration in Derbyshire's grant settlement. Over the five years since the standard spending assessment arrangement was brought in, Derbyshire has received a 21 per cent. increase; Hertfordshire has received twice as much, at 42 per cent.; and the county average is about 27 per cent. Over those five years, Derbyshire's population has increased by 3.5 per cent., whereas Hertford's population has increased by only 1.3 per cent.
I hope that the noble Viscount, if he cannot answer those points today, will at least arrange for someone in his department to look at them as a matter of extreme urgency. Two weeks ago, the Minister of State for Local Government, Mr. David Curry, met a delegation from the Derbyshire County Council which was led by the Leader of the Council, Councillor Martin Doughty and the Conservative Leader of the Opposition, Councillor John Morgan-Owen. They were accompanied by representatives of business interests, chambers of commerce and the Diocesan Council for Social Responsibility in Derbyshire. I emphasise the composition of the delegation to show that it was not special pleading from the Labour Party but a genuine and sincere attempt to look again at some of the fearsome problems with which the county council is faced. Mr. Curry acknowledged that they were in a financially "tight" situation. That is perhaps the understatement of the year.
So if Derbyshire's standard spending assessment was at the average for the country, it would receive an additional £34 million in grant. Even if it were at the East Midlands' average, it would get an additional £21 million. I see that the noble Duke the Duke of Devonshire is in his place. I know that he does a tremendous amount of work for Derbyshire and Derbyshire's voluntary organisations from Chatsworth. I am sure that he knows at first hand what is taking place in the county.
This is a serious problem. I only hope that the Minister can answer some of the questions. Derbyshire has been badly treated and I hope that sooner or later those injustices will be put right.
5.17 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, this is indeed a fascinating debate. I share with other noble Lords the

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gratitude that we must express to the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, for having initiated it in such an effective way.
We have heard that for this year there is an inadequate revenue support grant and major reductions in housing support. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said that local government is not broken. If local government is not broken, what are the Government doing trying to fix it?
It may be useful if, as the tail-end Charlie at this stage of the debate, I take a broad historical overview of the situation and consider how we might change things. The period from 1976 to 1979 was the aftermath of worldwide major economic dislocation caused by the increase in oil prices imposed by OPEC. A senior member of the then government said that the party was over. But there was at that time genuine partnership between local and national government to try to ensure that the British nation resolved the difficulties with which it was faced.
From 1979 to 1985 there was a major increase in VAT, a reduction in income tax for rich people, reductions in revenue support grant and major reductions in the provision for council housing. There was also a mass explosion of unemployment and riots in the streets. We need to look at the business of partnership. We should not just think of local government in isolation but in terms of what it does for the nation as a whole. Local government has to struggle with the problems of our society, as they directly affect it.
One way in which local government attempted to meet the difficulties was to increase the rates. In practice that was fairly logical. The rates were effectively p wealth tax. While rich people were seeing a reduction in income tax, poorer people were seeing an increase in VAT. It was logical that the extra demands on local government services engendered by economic policy should be mitigated by increases in wealth tax. It is sad, looking back on that period, that even some senior Labour politicians did not appreciate what was going on and castigated some local authorities.
In the period from 1985 to 1989 the economic situation was not so bad because we had the Lawson boom and unemployment was coming down. But local government was under attack. We had the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties. It is interesting that whenever a tier of local government votes in opposition to this Government, it seems to be sounding its death knell. We saw it with the metropolitan counties and the GLC. We are seeing it now with the shire counties which had the temerity to vote in parties in opposition to the Government.
From 1989 to 1991 we saw the end of the Lawson boom and the beginning of the second Tory recession. We saw the poll tax and again there were riots in the streets. It was not a happy period for local authorities. The period between 1991 to 1994 saw the end of the poll tax and somewhat improved revenue support grants. But there were major attacks by the Government on education. To come up to date, this year we have seen a reduction in the revenue support grant. As the noble
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Baroness, Lady Farrington, pointed out, the revenue support grant that appears to be coming through will not provide adequately the resources needed to maintain services at their present level. The inevitable result will be reductions in service levels.
More disturbing nationally are the reductions, particularly for the elderly, in services and care in the community, and for the youngest and most vulnerable members of society through cuts in education provision. We need to be aware of the implications. One factor that enabled this country to avoid totally succumbing to the recession but to bobble along the bottom (if I can put it that way)—each year the Government talk of green shoots but they never come to fruition and we are still virtually at the bottom of the recession—was local government capital expenditure. The recession has been mitigated also by central government capital expenditure. However, we must recognise that, following the last Budget, we are seeing not only a reduction in capital expenditure on the national account—for example, the roads programme has been cut back drastically—but also a major cutback in the capital budgets for local authorities. That will produce inevitable knock-on effects in the economy. We need to recognise that those economic effects will lead to increased unemployment, the inevitable social stresses that go with it and the extra burdens consequently placed on local authorities in the provision of services. When one has a fixed level of services, an increase in the demand for those services inevitably means that the level of service goes down.
I should like to talk a little of how we should think in terms of the future and how we might develop a partnership involving central government and local government. We can work together and respect each other's ability to improve our society. The first thing we need to think about is revenue raising. We need to introduce fair rates. It is totally iniquitous to have a council tax which effectively caps the tax paid by wealthy members of our community. Their taxation is capped but there is no similar cap on the taxation burden of ordinary members of our society.
Another problem with which we have had to deal over the past few years is the schism, the dislocation, the separation, of the local community through its local authorities and the business community because of the nationalisation of the business rate. We need to recognise that there must be institutional mechanisms to link the local business community with the local population through their local authorities. The business rate levied by local authorities was a useful mechanism for ensuring that local authorities got something out of local business and in return recognised that local business was valuable to the local authorities. One of the problems at the moment is the divergence between local people represented by councillors on local authorities and the local business community. I hope that over the next few years we shall see the denationalisation of the business rate.
Finally, we need to end capping; not only capping of local revenue raising, but also of local capital expenditure. In a democracy we must trust people to elect representatives to take decisions on their behalf. If

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those decisions are not in accord with the wishes of the people who elected the representatives, then the local people should have the right to elect other people who will do things differently.
One of the problems created by central government effectively putting caps on local government is that it takes away the freedom of the local community to make decisions on its own behalf. In seeking to improve or restore the partnership that should exist between national and local government, we must respect local government and give it the freedom to provide the services that people need locally.
5.29 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, it is inevitable at this stage of a debate that one repeats points that have already been made. I hope that that will not be a frustration to the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton. One matter which I must repeat is to thank her not only for introducing this important topic, but also for giving all of us who are currently serving councillors, as well as eminent previous councillors and council officers, the opportunity to voice some of our anxieties.
I too will take a slightly broad-brush approach and echo comments that have already been made that perhaps the greatest long-term problem for local government is that the current constraints mean that good staff and good councillors—and good potential staff and councillors—are lost to local government. The centralisation of decision making means that no real local choice is left in more and more areas. Most recently, another area of education spending has gone to a new quango, and we see more money being given by way of specific grant, which means that the local choice in those areas is limited.
The result is that local people and local representatives cannot balance priorities. To have local representatives on quangos is better than not having them there, but it is by no means sufficient. They have a very narrow area of discretion. Good government is about balance and prioritisation. There has to be an integrated service. Decisions should not be fragmented. I cannot be the only local councillor who feels that the Government have stumbled upon, or perhaps deliberately found, a regime of dividing and ruling in their relationship with local government. However, it is the inability to take overall decisions and the constraints on innovation which trouble me most.
Reference has been made to capping in the area of revenue expenditure. One of the effects of such capping is that it is impossible for the electorate to tell whether its authority is high spending or low spending. My point also applies to capital restrictions, including restrictions on borrowing. I do not condone the schemes that we saw in the 1980s for the sale and lease-back of parking meters in order to circumvent the capital constraints but it is hardly surprising that energy went into such schemes. These capital restrictions and the failure to support infrastructure have been a tragedy. Decisions are taken on an annual basis and one is always tempted to feel that spending on one part of the infrastructure is a decision that perhaps could be deferred until the
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following year when the position might be easier. Those decisions mean that the infrastructure in the medium and longer term is bound to fail and is bound to cost more in the long run. The noble Lord, Lord Harmsworth, referred to school buildings and my noble friend Lady Thomas referred to highways. Those are two areas among many.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, referred to the single regeneration budget. I share some of her concerns with regard to the issue of accountability. Regional officers do not have regeneration as a framework within which documents are publicly available and the public can understand what the strategy is. The bidding process is relatively informal so opportunities for patronage, or at any rate a lack of transparency, are being experienced. The noble Baroness also referred to issues of social equity such as the abolition of urban programme areas for the most deprived areas and the down grading of deprivation as a criterion for funding decisions. There are criteria which are understood and are listed. Indeed, the recent announcements have spelt out the general basis on which decisions have been taken. But they overemphasise economic development and the need to achieve the input of private sector investment. That is important. We all know the value of partnership, but leverage of private sector moneys discriminates against projects which do not appeal to their sponsors. We are aware, too, of the increasing public confusion. The noble Lord, Lord Varley, drew the attention of the House to that problem in his debate on area cost adjustment in the East Midlands two or three months ago. I had intended to say that I was not proposing to whinge about the recent settlement for my own local authority, Richmond-upon-Thames. Perhaps I will indulge myself a little, although I decided to use it in rather the same way as the noble Lord, Lord Tope. My authority is an exemplar and, after all, it is the one I know best.
I am in a similar position to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas. What do I tell residents in my borough? How do I explain to them that decisions will be taken about council tax because we have a high tax base and that there is a national banding system, not a regional banding system? Those who live in band D houses in Richmond are compared with those who live in band D houses in other parts of the country where house prices have a different relationship to incomes. How do I tell them about the low standard spending assessment and about the effects of the last census, which is generally recognised as having omitted elderly people, particularly very elderly people, in disproportionate numbers? In my area, where there is considerable need, we have a very elderly population. These factors have a huge effect.
How do I tell them about changes in methodology which penalise "low need" councils? The changes over merely one year are, as was said to me by my chief executive, implausible. This year we are 101st out of 109 LEAs on the additional needs index for education. Last year we were 63rd. How can we have dropped so fast? It defies belief. How do I tell them about the economic index which means that because my borough, happily, has low unemployment we are automatically

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heavily penalised, although our real needs have not changed so much over the year? How do I tell them about the relationship between the SSA and pupils who come into our borough to be educated because their parents prefer our borough to a neighbouring borough? In our case a pupil from the next door borough who attends a Richmond school received £400 more SSA for that neighbouring borough last year than the same pupil will get for my borough this year. In Richmond's case we have more than 1,000 such pupils.
How do I talk to them about the support grant settlement per head and tell them that it has reduced by 40 per cent. over two years? The figure in my borough is £152 per head. The next lowest of all the London and metropolitan boroughs is £237 per head. The amount in most other outer London boroughs is at least two or three times as high. Finally, how do I tell them that, in order to spend at capping limits, Richmond must raise 45 per cent. of its budget locally? There is a lot to be said for being the most accountable authority in the country. But it is a little odd when, against 45 per cent. of budget, the next highest amount is 33 per cent.
In the context of what we know about the Government's attitude to local government it is not surprising that central government are so resistant to our having a power of general competence. So much of what is happening today adds up to a plea for local government to be able to take its own decisions and to do its best for its own communities. Is it not shameful that the financial constraints, the low level of tax raised locally and the inability to take our own decisions mean that the UK is probably ineligible to sign up to the charter for local self-government?
We have heard about the effect on services—on education (from the noble Baroness, Lady David, and my noble friend Lord Tope), on social services and on community care. I wish it were possible to spend a little longer on the subject of housing.
Finally, I believe that many Conservative councillors would say to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, that they fear for the future. They see it as a tragedy that potential councillors and candidates question why they should do the job and wonder why they should work to central government rules. They want at least a level of job satisfaction.
The Minister was quoted on the front of the briefing by the Local Government Chronicle at the time of the announcement of the settlement as saying:
"We've all been stuffed by the Treasury".
That is an unparliamentary term, but I quote it deliberately. I hope that the Minister can convince us today that it is only the Treasury which favours local administration over local government.
5.40 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest as President of the Federation of Economic Development Authorities, which is a federation of local authorities that have economic
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development departments. That interest is, of course, much inferior to the interest of my noble friend Lady Farrington, who is chair of the ACC.
Secondly, I thank my noble friend for moving the Motion. To respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I am not a serving councillor and I have no axe to grind for any particular council.
As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, the debate comes at an opportune time. It is some time since we had a debate on the general role of local government. It comes also at the time when the revenue support grant is being finalised. Perhaps even more importantly, it comes when the Banham commission has more or less completed its report on its recommendations. The work of the Banham commission has raised a great many interesting ideas. I do not agree with everything that the commission has proposed; nevertheless —and this is an important theme which has run through much of the debate—it raised the idea that there is something called the community and that it is important that whatever local authority is in place it should have a close relationship with the community. That is why I welcome the words of my noble friend's Motion that local authorities have problems in providing the services which their communities need. It is important that we should pay attention to the wording of the Motion.
It is clear that local authorities have problems. Those problems can be stated quite simply. Local authorities have been loaded with duties without adequate resources. The communities that they serve need the services, but there is a question as to whether the authorities are in a position to render those services in a sensible manner.
One means of solving that particular problem, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, is to establish a series of quangos. One simply ignores local authorities altogether and provides services by appointing—mainly—the wives of Conservative Members of Parliament to quangos, and pays them certain sums of money to render the services for which local authorities would otherwise be responsible. I come from Wales, and that has happened repeatedly in Wales. The Secretary of State for Wales has some 1,600 appointments in his gift. Most of them seem to go to the wives not of Welsh Conservative Members of Parliament, because there are not many, but of English Conservative Members of Parliament.
Leaving aside the democratic problem, that creates difficulties for local authorities. If the burdens on local authorities were thereby reduced one might accept that that was one way of dealing with the problem, although not necessarily a good way of dealing with it. However, I can give three examples to show that the burdens on local authorities have not been reduced.
The first example relates to housing, which was mentioned briefly by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. Local authorities are responsible for housing the homeless. However, local authorities have no right and no funds to build houses. Therefore, how are local authorities, which have a responsibility for housing the homeless but no power to build houses, to fulfil that service for their communities?

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The second example relates to education. My noble friends Lord Varley and Lady David put the problem in much starker terms than I ever could. In my noble friend's area of Derbyshire the situation is quite extraordinary. The educational needs of the community cannot be served by the local authority because, although the local authority still has responsibility, some quangos have taken certain matters out of the power of the local authority.
The third example, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Fisher, concerns the single regeneration budget. If it had been the case that local authorities were given the task of regenerating urban areas and inner cities, properly without fear or favour as they were in the past, instead of having to spend millions of pounds competing for the single regeneration budget, we would have accepted that local authorities were given the resources to do what they had to do. They have not. That is the problem.
My noble friend Lady Farrington, the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, and my noble friend Lord Varley, referred to the problems faced by the local authorities next year in terms of the standard spending assessment and the revenue support grant which we have in front of us. Like my noble friend Lord Monkswell, I should like to stand back and consider the trend that has developed over the past few years.
Many burdens have been laid on local authorities. Almost every Bill that I have dealt with in this House—whether it was a trade and industry Bill or an environment Bill—has in some way placed a burden on local authorities. It may have specified that trading standards officers shall do this that and thus; or the local authorities will handle certain matters. Mr. Michael Howard spoke to the annual conference of the ACC in Winchester on 10th November. Under the heading "Procedure for dealing with new burdens", he said:
"I know, of course, that it is a frequent complaint in local government that whilst we in central Government are always ready to lecture you on the need to cut back expenditure and rationalise your activities, we also slip in from time to time new policies which have a real impact on local government, and which you feel have not been the subject of proper or adequate consultation. I am sympathetic to that complaint. And I want to do something about it".
What he did was to move to a more distinguished office than he held at that time—and he has done something about that! What Mr. Howard did at the time was to ensure that the amount that was made available to local authorities for the "new burdens"—the phrase used—was insufficient.
The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, referred to care in the community. We are not arguing about the policy. The Government used the mechanism of a ring-fenced special transitional grant to pass community care funding to the local authorities. That was in keeping with what Mr. Howard said in November 1992. The problem is that in recent weeks a number of local authorities—the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, referred to yet another which I had not heard cited previously—including Devonshire, Gloucestershire, Lancashire and the Isle of Wight, have all declared problems over the resourcing of community care. Gloucestershire has withdrawn services and, as a result, is being challenged through judicial review. In those circumstances, nobody
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can say that Mr. Howard and the Government have lived up to their words in the assurance that was given to local authorities.
I shall not go through the list of the new commitments that have been given to local authorities since 1979, but it is a fairly long list. It includes important core work such as fulfilling seat belt requirements in school transport; providing additional local authority accommodation for young offenders under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994; the implementation of the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994; additional checks on street lighting; continued collection of the poll tax; enforcement of the new Sunday trading rules and providing protection against counterfeiting by unscrupulous traders. All those burdens have been laid on local authorities. Although it is not possible to say that that has not been covered in the revenue support grant, from what noble Lords from all sides of the House have been saying there must be serious doubt about whether the Government have lived up to their commitment to grant sufficient resources to meet the burdens that have been placed on local authorities.
The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, gave what my noble friend Lord Varley described as an inadequate "apologia" for the Government in which he said that local government has not broken down. Local government may not have broken down but, as my noble friend Lady Gould and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, it is getting more and more difficult to find good people to serve as councillors and officials in local government. If you cannot get good councillors and good officials, local government will break down. So the question that the Government have to answer is quite simple: do the Government want healthy local government or not? I would understand it if the Government said that they do not want healthy local government.
The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said that he was "kicked out" of local government. The democratic process unfortunately worked, so we are happy to see the noble Lord among us, possibly as a result of that unfortunate electoral event. If the Government do want healthy local government, they must recognise that local authorities may well be controlled by their political opponents. They must recognise that the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats may well control local authorities and that the control of some local authorities will be divided. It cannot be the case that because many local authorities are not controlled by the Conservative Party, the Government can say that they will claw back everything into Westminster. Subsidiarity, like charity, begins at home. That is what the argument is really about and that is the problem that the Government must face. Until they recognise that their opponents may be able to exercise positions of responsibility sensibly and constructively—in other words, until they recognise that democracy should work at all levels and not just in the House of Commons—we will never have healthy local government.
My noble friend Lady Farrington said that the relationship between local authorities and the communities that they serve is "sacrosanct". That is the word that she used—rightly, I think. Until the

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Government recognise that very simple truth, local government (whatever its form) will never (in any understandable sense of the word) have the freedom that it really needs.
5.55 p.m.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I have listened carefully to all the concerns eloquently expressed this afternoon and I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, for giving us the opportunity to discuss these very important issues.
The Secretary of State for the Environment announced his proposals for the local authority finance settlement for England 1995–96 on 1st December. The Secretaries of State for Wales and for Scotland announced their proposals for spending in Wales and in Scotland on 29th November.
I think it would be helpful if I set out the key facts about what we are proposing in order to have healthy local government, which is what the noble Lord, Lord Williams, also wants. Total standard spending (TSS) is the amount that the Government consider that local authorities need to spend in aggregate to carry out their functions. TSS will rise 2 per cent. in cash terms from 1994 to 1995. Adjusting for function changes, the increase is 2.2 per cent. The TSS figure for England for 1995–96 will be £43.511 billion.
Adjusted to remove the figures for community care, as regards which the transfer of responsibilities to local government is taking place over several years—and I am glad to hear the very good report that my noble friend Lady Faithful] brings from those who have left that mental hospital in Greenwich—and the figure of £50 million allowed for local government reorganisation, the TSS for all other services is £41.623 billion, an increase over this year of 0.8 per cent.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, noted that responsibility for the provision of care in the community is being transferred to local authorities. As I have indicated, additional provision to reflect those responsibilities has been provided. It is now up to local authorities to manage those resources and to decide what priority to give to spending on those services. I shall ensure that Ministers in the Department of Health are aware of the points that the noble Baroness made.
In allocating the total sum between services, we have decided to give priority to the police and education. The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, was right when she said that the standard spending assessment is the Government's view of what revenue local authorities need to spend in order to provide a level of service which is consistent across all authorities. The system of SSAs is a fair and relatively simple means of distributing resources between authorities. This is not just the Government's view, but it is the view of the Audit Commission. In a study of the SSA system entitled Passing the Bucks published in 1993 the Audit Commission commented that the SSA system is:
"a more sophisticated system of equalising needs than any overseas system examined in this study and it is an improvement on its predecessor in many respects".
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The methodology for calculating SSAs is the subject of much informed debate and each year we consult local authorities on the system for the coming year. We are currently considering what local authorities have told us during this year's consultation. Some 90 delegations, including a delegation from Derbyshire, came to put their views to Ministers in my department and I know that Ministers in the Home Office had separate meetings with representatives of police authorities. I had the pleasure of meeting six delegations to discuss the proposed settlement.
The noble Lord, Lord Varley, went into bat again on behalf of Derbyshire. I commend him for his tenacity. The effect of the proposals on total SSA is that two of the five authorities in the East Midlands—I told him this on a previous occasion—are at the average for all shire counties, or do better, and three are slightly below average. As I have said, the SSA system is formula-based, objective, and wholly open to scrutiny. We do not look at the system from the standpoint of what it delivers for X or Y authority; we look, in conjunction with local government, for formulae which fairly represent need. We are always ready to consider objective needs-based improvements to the system. One element of the system is the area cost adjustment about which I know the noble Lord, Lord Varley, has comments. In so far as that applies to Hertfordshire and not to Derbyshire, that of course affects the relative SSA levels of the two authorities.
The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, and the noble Lord, Lord Tope, gave my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment the benefit of their views on our proposals at the Consultative Council for Local Government Finance last Thursday. In addition, we received several hundred letters on the proposed settlement. All of those representations will be taken into account when the Secretary of State takes his final decisions on the settlement for 1995–96.
In its report on the system of SSAs the Audit Commission recognised that openness. The report said:
"The determination of SSAs, being wholly formula based is explicit and open to scrutiny. Overall SSAs might be classified as transparent, but not simple".
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, sounded decidedly suspicious. She pointed to a significant change in the relative score on the educational needs index for the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames. We have no proposals to change that element of the SSA methodology for 1995–96. That suggests that conditions in Richmond-upon-Thames must have changed between the years, and that has been reflected in the SSA. I shall write to the noble Baroness on that point.
We recognise the need to keep the system of SSAs under review. We do that in consultation with the local authority associations. We have a well-established system for involving local government itself in the development of all SSAs. This year we have kept the SSA system relatively stable, except in the area of police where the creation of new police authorities and the move away from agreed establishments have

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necessitated a new formula (and hence SSA) -driven approach to allocating resources. Substantially more work is needed on the police SSA for 1996–97.
An important assumption which we are required to make every year is what improvements in efficiency local authorities can be expected to make. Often we are told by particular authorities that they have no further scope for improved efficiency and will be forced to make cuts in services.
My noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith gave us some interesting statistics, and from his long experience has indicated that the proposed cuts often do not take place, and somehow efficiency gains are found.
Last week, the Audit Commission published two reports Paying the Piper and Calling the Tune which call for better use of resources, better management of paybills, and the use of performance-based management at all levels in local authorities. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, quoted from Paying the Piper. I should like to quote further from the first of those reports because the commission concludes:
"Using the techniques in this report has helped many councils to achieve savings of five to ten per cent. of staff budgets without damaging services. If all councils saved five per cent of paybill, national savings of £500 million would be available".
The commission also notes that it is not for central government to impose such changes. It is for local authorities themselves to define the framework and meet the challenges of getting better use from limited resources.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams, said that local authorities of course have problems; they have duties, but not enough resources. It is up to them to decide how they spend their resources. They may be limited resources but that presents them with a challenge to spend them in the best possible way.
I am pleased to be able to tell the House that the Government's position has been vindicated by an independent and responsible body like the Audit Commission at a time when local authorities themselves have been very critical of our determination that they can and must improve their performance.
The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, and the noble Lord, Lord Tope, with his experience as leader of the London Borough of Sutton, and, perhaps more particularly, the noble Baroness, Lady David, drew attention to the problems of education. The settlement includes an increase of 1.1 per cent., as the noble Baroness said, in resources available for education services. Of course each education authority has discretion to decide how much of its total budget to spend on education and how much on other services. In education, as in other areas, authorities have scope for savings. They cannot merely roll forward past spending without scrutiny.
My noble friend Lady Faithfull also drew our attention to the difficulties of funding special educational needs. I do not try to hide the fact that there are difficulties there, as other noble Baronesses have also said. I am well aware about authorities' concerns about the threat to educational standards. The Government are committed to improving our children's
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standard of education. The extra resources we are giving authorities will enable schools to continue to improve standards.
The noble Lord, Lord Tope, indicated the problem that the Borough of Sutton was having with recoupment. The ending of recoupment has been generally welcomed by local government. I can assure the noble Lord that we shall try to remove any anomalies caused by errors in data this year. The ending of recoupment avoids the complications for authorities of collecting payments from other authorities.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, made a number of remarks about adult education. The Government are fully committed to the notion of lifelong learning. The new further education sector has clear responsibilities towards adults. At the national level we have ensured that LEAs have the resources to carry out their duties. Noble Lords have suggested that schools have suffered a history of government under-investment. That is just not true. Spending per pupil rose 52 per cent. in real terms between 1970–80 and 1992–93, and 22 per cent. on repairs and maintenance. Pupil/teacher ratios have fallen from 18.9:1 in 1979 to 17.8:1 in 1993.
We have made it clear that public sector pay increases must be met from productivity or efficiency gains. The pay review body must take account of available resources in making its recommendations. Local government has threatened large-scale redundancies among teachers for several years. It has not happened. I do not expect this year to be any worse than others.
The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, drew our attention to the housing investment programme. I must, first, tell the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who was also interested in housing, that local authorities have housing debt of more than £37 billion. The requirement therefore to set aside 75 per cent. of housing receipts represents the Government's financial judgment of how much of that should go towards reducing that debt and how much should fund new spending. Any relaxation in the set-aside rules would add to pressure on public expenditure and lead to a higher PSBR. However, HIP allocations for 1995–96 total almost £1.3 billion, despite the tough PES round. In addition, local authority housing will benefit in 1995–96 from £313 million for estate action schemes; £90 million for housing action trusts; £60 million for the cash incentive scheme to help tenants move to owner-occupation; and £30 million for the housing partnership fund, concentrating particularly on bringing empty properties back into use. Local authorities estimate that they will have available about £830 million of usable capital receipts at the beginning of the 1995–96 financial year.
The noble Lords, Lord Varley and Lord Monkswell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, complained about the imposition of capping on councils. As regards the principle of capping, we are serious about controlling public expenditure. We therefore need a system that ensures that all authorities play their part in restraint. The capping system achieves that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, made a spirited speech defending Birmingham and its regeneration projects. Birmingham bid for £5.9 million from the single regeneration budget for 1995–96; £48.9 million

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over five years. It received approval for £3.6 million in 1995–96, coming up to the figure of £28.3 million that she quoted for the five-year period. That represented three of five parts of its project. The highest priorities were approved. The approved bids represent the highest amount for any authority in the West Midlands and the fifth highest nationally. Only projects in London, Sheffield and Bradford received more. I shall read carefully in Hansard what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Williams. He indicated that somehow the Government should give a blank cheque to local authorities in order to help them to cope with regeneration—give them the task, give them money.
My noble friend Lady Faithfull was anxious about the provision of secure training units. The Government believe that the public should be protected from young offenders and that less secure facilities provided by local authorities would not be adequate. As my noble friend indicated, the Government have taken steps to provide new secure training units, which will be fully funded by central government.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, was anxious about local accountability. Of course, the Citizen's Charter and the charter mark scheme aim to encourage local authorities and other public bodies to put the customer first. The noble Baroness was right in saying that decisions on local services are best taken locally. Local authorities have the discretion to decide their own spending priorities in the light of local circumstances.
My noble friend Lord Harmsworth drew our attention to the commission's finding on Dorset. The commission's final report on Dorset was published on 15th December. We have stated that we shall not announce our decision until the representation period finishes on 9th February. Before taking any decisions, we shall of course take into account all representations made.
We know and understand that this is a tough set of proposals. We proposed it only after a great deal of discussion about the services that authorities have to provide and about what the country can afford. Demographic pressures, such as the pressure on education services of rising numbers of schoolchildren, and on social services and community care of the increasing number of the very elderly, were taken fully into account. We also took into account the costs of local government reorganisation and the costs of establishing the new police authorities.
But the public sector as much as the private sector cannot just add up all new pressures and expect to have that much extra to spend. It must reassess its baseline. It must ask: can we do anything differently? Is our current way of tackling a problem still the best way? All authorities must look for efficiency savings and must be prepared to re-order priorities in line with changes in local needs.
We are now taking stock of all the representations made to us during the consultation period on the provisional RSG settlement for England. We will also, of course, take into account the views expressed here
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today. Our aim remains to achieve a rigorous settlement which will enable local government to provide the services people need if the resources are used prudently.
6.15 p.m.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, in rising to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate, I first thank the Minister for his reply. I shall resist the temptation to respond to his separate question of whether there is a way in which the Government could do things differently. The conventions do not allow me to respond to that.
I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. The debate has demonstrated the wealth of experience and knowledge in this House about local government. That factor is important in securing future support for local democracy. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Sport
6.16 p.m.
Lord Howellrose to call attention to the state of sport in the United Kingdom and facilities for sport in the regions; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the good health of British sport is a matter of considerable importance, which is why I believe the debate is timely and relevant. It is a privilege to propose the Motion today. The recent cries of anguish, such as those arising in football and cricket, may be understandable when we lose test matches or fail to qualify for the World Cup but they are devoid of a fundamental purpose. Until we understand and address that purpose we shall not escape from the malaise.
The fundamental purpose of sport is to enable every citizen to find pleasure and challenge in their personal lives through voluntary participation in sport and recreation. A secondary purpose—the social purpose of sport—is to enable sport to make its enormous contribution to the good health and personal relationships that are so necessary in our community life.
Governments and the governing bodies of sport must be judged against those criteria. There is much cause for concern. Success at top club level, or at national and international level, is important and morale boosting but it is not fundamental. Unless we secure the foundations of sport in schools and in the communities through clubs and local authorities we undermine our performance in international sport.
Today, far too many people who should know better are looking for panaceas to solve the problems in sport. The Prime Minister has encouraged us all by his desire to get sport back into the school curriculum. However, he has yet to address the question—publicly, anyway—of how we are to achieve that. Why are there so few qualified PE teachers and almost none coming out of the colleges?
Nor do the Government understand that their attack on local authorities and their desire to starve them of funds involves them in an attack upon the grassroots of

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sport. Local authorities are the great providers of community and educational sports facilities. We have the Minister for Sport putting his faith in cricket academies—such as in Australia—or in centres of excellence. That is a commendable objective which can be helpful, although a cricket academy should be seen for what it is: a finishing school.
However, academies and centres of excellence are stifled at birth unless the broad base of sport is wide enough to supply a sufficient amount of talent to be taken up and developed. Most lamentably, lain Sproat, the Minister, told the Sports Council that it,
"should withdraw from the promotion of mass participation in informal recreation because these laudable aims are secondary to the pursuit of high standards of sporting achievements".
That is inexcusable heresy. Mass participation in sport and recreation should be the essence of what the Minister and the Government are about. They should concentrate upon the foundation of a sport programme and a first priority should be creating a healthy and involved citizenship.
Sir John Hall of Newcastle United believes that professionalism solves all and that his club should be divorced from any responsibility for amateurs. Ninety-nine per cent. of all footballers are amateurs. It is from their ranks that professionals emerge. No governing body of sport anywhere in the world can allow its authority to be so divided and destroyed.
The truth is that, as elsewhere in life, there are no panaceas to solve the fundamental problems which must be addressed and on which I wish to comment. However, before I do so, I should like to make one further general observation. The greatest problem for sport in this country is that no one accepts responsibility for its ethos. The spirit of sport, indeed I would suggest its very soul, is being sacrificed on the altar of commercialism. Sponsorship and television income dominate every consideration for the major sports. The minor sports are sidelined as though they have no place in the sun.
Some years ago an inquiry which I chaired produced a wide-ranging report on sports sponsorship. On page after page of that report we repeated a first principle: governing bodies of sport must govern. They must take a more fundamental view of the interests of their sport than the purely financial. Greed must not be allowed to dominate sport as it is doing because, as sport will find out, if it does not control those excesses they will be destructive.
I have consulted widely about the state of sport in our schools. The advice I have received is unanimous. All the organisations welcome, as I do, the personal interest of the Prime Minister and the involvement of Sir Ron Dearing. But they all ask the same question: where is the initiative to come from to make it all work and to provide the resources to bring it about? Is the Department for Education working to the same agenda as the Department of National Heritage? Where is the input from the organisations involved in sports —the Central Council for Physical Education, the Physical Education Association of Great Britain and Northern
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Ireland, the English Schools Sports Association, the Sports Council and so on? We need to have that spelt out. I hope that the Minister can do so.
The Prime Minister must lay down his policy guidelines and appoint a senior Minister with the power to transcend departmental prejudices. He must also ensure the provision of adequate funding. There are matters which need addressing urgently. PE teachers, especially in primary schools, are almost non-existent. Specialist advisers, who have disappeared from our schools, must be reintroduced. In-service training is essential. The two-hour allocation for sport in the national curriculum is hopelessly inadequate. Children in inner city schools cannot even get to their playing fields and back to the school within the two hours allocated. Playing field maintenance is a must. So many pitches, particularly for cricket but also for football, are being prepared by the gang mower, which is a hazardous and dangerous procedure for schoolchildren. The voluntary involvement of school teachers must be reinforced; in many areas, it has largely been reduced. That should be done by paying expenses and by making tax concessions for travel, uniform and so on. The English Schools Sports Association must be encouraged to continue to monitor who is doing what in schools in terms of PE and sport. Partnerships must be created involving local authorities, clubs and regional sports councils.
The second foundation stone for sport is the local authorities. They provide the front-line services. Every region in the country reports massive cutbacks both in capital works and revenue expenditure. The consequence is that services are reduced. People are being priced out of sports centres, swimming baths, sports grounds and the like; and the costs of vandalism and delinquency in our society are increased. That is not a very intelligent economic prognosis.
National lottery funding will help on the capital side but already the regions are looking desperately for partners who can provide the matching funds to unlock the lottery money. Thirty five per cent. as a minimum, is a lot of money to find. Facilities have to be managed, maintained and revenue funded. Why, oh why, have the Government rejected every single piece of advice they have received in refusing to allow lottery funds to be used for suitable revenue purposes? We welcome the small concessions made in that respect for new projects but I would urge the Minister to carry out a review to discover where sport desperately needs revenue money to make sense of its facilities.
That leads me to consider the role of the regional councils of sport, so seriously misjudged by the Minister for Sport. I am sorry to say that he insulted them when he declared that,
"there should be clear sky between regional officers of the Sports Council and the local authorities who may—as a group—contain members who may themselves be applicants for lottery funds".
That is resented throughout local government. Local authority members of every political hue are among the most dedicated of public servants. They are men and women of integrity. They are just as much to be trusted with regard to making decisions about lottery funds as are the two Secretaries of State who will decide the

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Millennium Fund applications. It is resented by local authority members of all political persuasions that they are not to be trusted while the Secretaries of State take such a prime role in making decisions as to the allocation of the £150 million for the Millennium Fund.
The regional councils for sport have been the most successful of all the initiatives taken in sport since I first became the Minister in 1964. All the progress we have made in developing regional strategies, in creating partnerships between the local authorities, sport and government has come through them. Now the Minister says they are not necessary and he will not even fund their secretariat if they wish to continue as a voluntary forum. That is civil service or ministerial thinking gone mad, probably both.
The Minister consulted widely on these plans. The noble Viscount who is replying to the debate has no personal responsibility in this affair, which is a relief to us as well as to him. However, I challenge the Government to produce a single outside authority which supports the proposal to abolish the regional councils. Every voice is against them—the regional chairmen, the local authorities and all of sport. It is a special sort of arrogance for the Minister and his civil servants who have no experience of regional sport to decide that they know better than every single body which was consulted.
It is good to know that the new chairman of the Sports Council, Mr. Rodney Walker, who does know the value of regional sports councils and has served upon them, has many misgivings about this policy. I hope that he will be listened to. Many of us believe that the appointment of Mr. Walker is good news for sport. We wish him well and congratulate the Government upon his appointment. However, it has to be said in the strongest possible terms that Ministers have to get off his back and allow him to operate as someone who knows sport and who needs as much independence as possible.
In that respect the letter sent to him by Stephen Dowell, the Secretary of State, giving him his marching orders could not be more misconceived. It gives Mr. Walker instructions to investigate at least 12 specific areas of work upon which he has to report by the end of the year. If the Sports Council undertakes that programme, it will have no time at all to direct the course of British sport.
It is eight years and four Ministers ago since Colin Moynihan announced his intention to reorganise British sport in 1987. We still do not have a permanent director of the English Sports Council nor a chairman or director for the UK Sports Council. If British sport matched the dynamism of the Department of National Heritage we should lose every contest in sight. That is the case for telling Rodney Walker to get on with it, and to keep out of his way while he does so.
What concerns me about the proposed UK Sports Council is that we also have four national sports councils. There will be an added layer of bureaucracy. Will the policy of the UK Sports Council transcend the national councils where Great Britain and United Kingdom issues are concerned? Will the UK Sports
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Council be adequately funded or have powers to subvent from the national councils? World sport today is conducted upon the basis of British involvement. One has only to look at the work of the Olympic movement and the role of the British Olympic movement to see that. That is a reality of life. The Government have to ensure that nationalistic considerations do not frustrate British involvement in sport.
The Sports Council has to work closely with governing bodies of sport who must be seen to be the essential voluntary government of sport, and must be encouraged in their role. For example, as I indicated, in my own sport of football it is totally misdirected to believe that its professional interests can be divorced from its overall responsibilities. The Premier League clubs can very properly manage their own affairs but they have to work in partnership with the Football Association over a whole range of interests such as the development of grounds, the development of coaching, the development of talent, work with the Professional Footballers Association, and so on.
There is one other consideration that every governing body should regard as paramount, and that is to maintain the integrity of their sport and its ethos against all invasions of commercial interest and of sports agents and against the massive funds available through incentives such as European and television opportunities. These have to be seen as serving the interests of sport, not as being masters of sport as is so often the case today.
Another anxiety is the effect of the National Lottery upon the football pools and therefore upon their massive investment in improving every ground in the country through the Football Trust which I had the privilege to help inaugurate. The trust has now allocated more than £120 million in new grounds and stands. All this is in danger, and even more so is the Foundation for Sport and the Arts which also does excellent work for both sport and the arts. The Chancellor did not listen to us at the time of his previous Budget. He must do so now. I know that the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Brabazon, hope to expand upon this matter in their speeches and they will certainly have my full support if they do so.
Sport and recreation and the arts, the leisure pursuits of millions of our citizens, should be a proper concern of government. The average citizen does not ask for too much from life—a job in order to maintain his family, a decent home, education for his children, and health care and social care throughout life. But every citizen also needs the opportunity to enjoy life to the full; and for millions of them that means through sport. That is why I believe this debate to be timely. I hope it can be repeated at regular intervals. I beg to move for Papers.
6.33 p.m.
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for introducing this debate and I hope that my voice stands out as clearly as his did. I wish him iechyd da! However, I shall confine myself—as the noble Lord rather suggested—to the affairs of the Football Trust.

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I start by declaring an interest. I have been chairman of the Football Trust since its inception in 1979 and I am paid a salary for that position. The trust was started by the pools companies—Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters—and we are indebted to them for providing the resources which have enabled us to make what I believe is a valuable contribution to the health and welfare of football at all levels. I am particularly proud to be chairman of an organisation that has excellent and most efficient staff and where the cost of administration is only 2 per cent. of our income.
Our traditional source of income (from what is now Littlewoods' Spot-the-Ball competition) has been running at about £14 million a year and is mainly devoted to the vital matter of ground safety. Obviously, nothing is more important at sporting events than ensuring that spectators can enjoy themselves in safety and comfort.
I believe that it was largely our generous grants for the installation of closed-circuit television that have resulted in an almost complete absence of hooliganism now inside the football grounds of this country. Our income from Spot-the-Ball is also used to help the grassroots of football, providing anything from kit for junior teams of boys and girls up to improved facilities at our senior non-league clubs. I must say I often find that giving £150 to a small local YMCA or boys' club in a depressed area gives a great deal more pleasure than giving £1 million to a Premier League club.
Since 1990, following the Hillsborough disaster and the report of Lord Justice Taylor, we have also been in receipt of government money. This, I believe, is a good example of co-operation between the public and private sectors. The Government reduced the pool betting duty by 2.5 per cent., provided that the pools passed on that saving to the Football Trust. The Football Trust undertook to allocate the resulting income to implement the recommendations of the Taylor Report and also agreed to make available three-quarters of our income from Spot-the-Ball for ground safety. So far, as the noble Lord mentioned, we have allocated some £120 million to projects all round the country totalling almost £400 million. Progress at our top clubs has been very impressive and we now have the kind of first-class football stadia which allow us to look forward with confidence to hosting the European championships in 1996. I hope that when we come to look back in the year 2000 we will be able to say that Taylor truly transformed the game and that we have a wealth of excellent grounds, the envy of Europe.
However, we are only halfway through the implementation of the Taylor timetable. An enormous amount remains to be done at the clubs in the lower divisions. This is now where the needs are greatest, but where the local resources are lowest. It is essential that all this work—help for the grassroots, safety of spectators and rebuilding the grounds in line with Taylor—is allowed to continue. We must not neglect vital safety requirements through lack of resources.
However, as I hope noble Lords will realise from what I have said, our income is totally dependent on the pools, either directly from Littlewoods' Spot-the-Ball, or indirectly via the reduction in pool betting duty.
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Unfortunately, since the start of the National Lottery our income from Littlewoods' Spot-the-Ball has declined dramatically and our income from the reduction in pool betting duty has fallen significantly week by week. If this trend continues, the future of the trust is at risk. The pools companies will naturally wish to protect the interests of their core business and their staff and they may be forced to review their commitment to the Football Trust, and indeed, as I am sure my noble friend Lord Brabazon will say later, to the Foundation for Sports and the Arts.
I have always understood the pressure on Ministers to ensure the success of the lottery. I fully appreciated the reasoning behind their decision to give the lottery an initial advantage with the exclusive right to advertise on television and radio. However, things are different now. The lottery is a runaway success. As the National Heritage Secretary said,
"No one can dispute that the National Lottery has been a huge success".
Camelot has plans to install an average of 1,000 new terminals a month. Surely it is time now to allow fair competition and to permit the pools to advertise on television and radio.
Perhaps I may suggest to the Minister that he might find support for the proposal from the Treasury. It receives only 8 per cent. in tax from the lottery, while it stands to lose 37.5 per cent. in tax from a reduction in pools betting. That might tempt the Treasury to help in this matter. In the past, in my experience Ministers at the Department of National Heritage have been kind enough to praise the efforts of the Football Trust. We have greatly appreciated their support. Surely now it is in everyone's interest to allow the pools to compete on equal terms with the lottery and to allow the Football Trust to continue to serve football.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Bramall: My Lords, in the context of this timely debate, initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, I wondered whether it might be useful and of some interest, as a past president of the MCC and one time chairman of the International Cricket Conference, if I were to say something about what the authorities of our national game of cricket were doing about seeking to improve what have been rather mediocre performances by our national side.
First, I wish to say this. Although there has been, I know, much disappointment at having selected about as good a touring side as we could from those available, we have not been able to regain the Ashes and indeed have experienced one or two rather humiliating defeats by what should have been inferior sides. However, despite that, I am not as despondent about our performance potential and the state of cricket generally as might be supposed.
These things have a habit of going in cycles and although the sceptic could say that the dip in this cycle seems to be lasting rather a long time, our performance in the Third Test at Sydney against Australia in the World Series showed that we could play good cricket; and given an element of good fortune, which has so far manifestly eluded us, we are not that far behind others

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in what is increasingly a very competitive and high performance field. In fact, over a number of Test series our national sides have taken part in some memorable, highly interesting and high class Test matches and provided their share of magnificent and entertaining cricket for the spectators. That must certainly not be forgotten.
Nor must it be forgotten that even in what might now be thought to have been a golden age in our fortunes, we have not infrequently lost matches. Indeed, historically our record against Australia has not been all that good. So the idea that we always won in the past and seldom do now would be a considerable travesty of the facts.
Having said that, we are clearly at the moment not good enough to shine and stand out in the intense competition which exists in international cricket in all the continents of the world. Our self-esteem and national pride, in a country from which, after all, the game of cricket emanated, demand that there should be no complacency whatsoever and we should do all we can to improve the situation.
To do so, the authorities have to look at the higher organisation and structure of the game throughout the country, the bringing on of young players of real talent, and the general attitude and application of those players who are prepared to make the considerable sacrifice and commitment that the modern game now demands and for which our rather comfortable and indulgent society may not be the best breeding ground. It is those factors in cricket, rather than the resources and facilities, which are the key. Resources, of course, are invaluable for capital projects. But it is the question of attitude and the bringing on of young players which are the key. It will be hard work but I believe that it can be done; and the cricket authorities have a definite plan for doing so.
Organisation itself, of course, can only do so much. But a useful study and report by my noble friend Lord Griffiths, on behalf of the MCC, has pointed the way as to how the higher organisation of the game might be streamlined and approved which would bring the professional and amateur game into closer partnership. It seems likely that the report will be accepted and implemented by the board in the near future.
Then it is the intention of the board to set up centres of excellence run by first class counties to bring on young players through talent scouts, coaching, ground staffs and youth cricket; and in that the MCC clearly has a useful supporting role with its own comprehensive coaching courses and their outmatches against a wide variety and range of schools.
Somehow we have to bring on more young home talent like Darren Gough and John Crawley. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, the Australians have their cricket academy, their finishing school, at which the attitudes and approach so formed will undoubtedly be very competitive indeed—perhaps excessively so. Our cricket authorities believe that similar excellence can be obtained in the more relaxed and local atmosphere of the county grounds with every encouragement from the board and from the MCC,
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which to some extent represents the soul of the game and which still has a role to play. I hope that we are right.
Of course, it would be helpful if more cricket, as well as other team games, could be played in state schools—as we all know that aspect has fallen off alarmingly—so that children can gain the feel and flavour of team work and competition under pressure. I do not decry the greater range of more individual sporting activities now available to children which helps overcome the misery suffered by some in the past who were forced to take part in organised games for which they had absolutely no aptitude. Nor do I ignore the fact that some of the sporting functions previously carried out by schools have now been taken over by local clubs with higher standards of coaching.
However, I can remember from my old school days (far distant though they are) how much preparation for life and the challenges ahead I gained from the sports field and various sporting encounters—in my case quite as much as I ever did from my academic studies. And it is at school, perhaps particularly at primary school level, that real talent can first be spotted and allowed to flourish, and earlier enthusiasm for a particular team sport developed. It was through a large spectrum of schools that cricketers such as Denis Compton, Bill Edrich, Peter May, Colin Cowdrey and, more recently, Graham Gooch, Mike Gatting and Mike Atherton have come to the fore. Therefore, I hope that we can see more of that kind of activity without too many spurious excuses that we would somehow be encouraging elitism. However, in those schools we shall need more qualified teachers to supervise and coach.
Finally, the board has already introduced the four-day county game designed to wean players away from the bad habits of the shorter, limited-over games and to prepare them for the greater application and determination required to construct a long innings and actively to take wickets, as they would need to do in Test cricket. I share the board's confidence that that approach will soon begin to pay dividends, which will be seen in our Test performance.
There is no easy solution. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, was quite right to say that there are no panaceas. Certainly there are no general panaceas. Everyone—players, counties, schools and authorities—will have to think and work hard. No one wants to take the fun out of cricket which heroes like Denis Compton, Keith Miller, Gary Sobers and many others have given to the game. Indeed, coming right up to date, young Darren Gough has shown how refreshing it is when effective cricket can be played with joie de vivre and enjoyment.
But let us be under no illusions. International sport is a hard school and those who are spotted and brought on early will need a lot of dedication and commitment if they are to prove good enough in that company. They will also need the encouragement of us all, not least the press who so frequently take delight in putting the boot in at any lapse of form or absence of success and who can do so much to destroy morale when it is most needed. We are having our successes in the fields of golf, motor racing, athletics and rugby football, among

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others, so the picture overall is not all that gloomy. But cricket is our national game. It would certainly be nice if the large amount of cricket which is played, I am glad to say, at village, club, league and county level could be reflected in our international success. I assure the House that the cricket authorities will take every possible step to see that it is, without, I hope, ever forgetting that at the end of the day this is a game to be enjoyed by as many people as possible and watched with enjoyment by as many people as possible.
6.51 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for giving us the opportunity today to have this important debate on sport. I have two interests in the matter: I am a keen participant myself, my own sports being sailing, golf and tobogganing. But more to the point for today's debate, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, invited me to do, I should like to say a little about the work of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts and about the problems which face it at present. I should, of course, declare an interest. I am deputy chairman of the foundation, and that is a paid interest. I hope that I have done everything I should in this House about declaring that interest.
It is a pride and a pleasure to be associated with the foundation which, as many noble Lords may know, has over the past three-and-a-half years assisted innumerable sports and arts facilities, clubs and individuals to the tune of some £218 million. That is a not an inconsiderable amount of money. I should like to congratulate the pools companies—Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters—on their wisdom and collective foresight in establishing the foundation. I congratulate the Government on what they did to allow that to happen.
The foundation is, of course, entirely financed by donations from the stake money of pools clients. It was facilitated by an agreement between the Government, under which they reduced the rate of pool betting duty by 2.5 per cent., on condition that, for every penny so released, the pools companies added a further 2p, the resulting sums being used to establish the fund which the Foundation for Sport and the Arts enjoys. So those noble Lords who do the football pools —and I hope some are present today—will be pleased to know that for every £1.05 that they stake, 7½ goes to the Foundation for Sport and the Arts. All those 7½ps have historically added up to something more than £63 million a year, of which two-thirds goes to sport. Noble Lords should also be pleased to know that the vast majority of that reaches applicants and is not used on administration.
Despite dealing currently with some 400 applications per week—at one stage it was 700 a week—and always ensuring that qualified people verify that the work being funded has been carried out before issuing the cheque, the foundation's administrative budget is held at 2.2 per cent. of turnover. I know a certain number of organisations connected with sport which would be very envious of that ratio.
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I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate the secretary to the trustees, Grattan Endicott—some noble Lords may have met him—and his very efficient and effective team in Liverpool on running such a tight and efficient ship. I must also pay tribute to the work, dedication and commitment of my fellow trustees who take the decisions on the applications which the foundation receives. Sir Tim Rice is our resourceful and energetic captain, as much in the committee room as he is on the cricket field. Other household names such as Christopher Chataway, Clive Lloyd and Rebecca Stephens on the sports side also give freely of their time, love and knowledge of sport and the arts.
I have visited a number of schemes which the foundation has supported. Two things have become apparent to me from this. The first is that there is a tremendous wealth of talent, enthusiasm and commitment for sport—and, of course, the arts—in our communities up and down the land. From a new pavilion for a village cricket team in Yorkshire, through the refurbishment of a yacht on the south coast used by young people at risk, to a boys' boxing club in the centre of London, the common factor is that the foundation supported the work of others. I am pleased to be able to tell the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, that a substantial part of our funds goes towards cricket and I hope that that will continue. It may possibly be something to do with the chairman of our trustees.
My colleagues and I have met the most amazing people who dedicate their lives to helping others. We have seen local clubs whose members work ceaselessly to raise money to improve their facilities. They do the work they can themselves, often to make way for new teams of young people taking part in sport. We have met people who have played their sport until they are too old to continue to do so and now commit themselves to helping others gain the enjoyment from the sport that they did.
Let me tell the House that, as ever was the case, the Jeremiahs who say that things are not what they were, that our children do not have the commitment of our parents, are wrong. They might need a little help every now and then and the foundation has been pleased to give that help. But the spirit is there, just as it always was.
That brings me to the second conclusion that I have drawn. The way in which the foundation operates as a discretionary trust is at the core of its success. My fellow trustees and I do not need to set policies or objectives for those whom we support. We respond to need. We take advice from bodies such as the Central Council of Physical Recreation, the governing bodies of sport and the Sports Council, particularly the regional sports councils. I am disturbed to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, had to say about them just now. We are grateful for their help which is invaluable to us. But, at the end of the day, the trustees —who are beholden to no one—take their own decisions, based on the advice that they receive; but, more importantly, on their own judgment of what is deserving and not on the basis of what fits some theoretical strategy drawn up by someone far removed from the activity itself.

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I do not mean to imply criticism of others when I say that. I accept that other funding organisations are more than just that and have broader responsibilities. My point is that, because the foundation has no broader responsibilities, it funds organisations for which other funding mechanisms do not exist, or which would be inappropriate. We do not recoil from fringe or unusual activities. We do not need to be wary of precedent.
If schemes are worthy, if the people involved with them show their own commitment and effort, we will help if we can. If we believe it is right to be radical, we can be radical. This means that the foundation's money is not just new money and additional money but also money which is irreplaceable for a number of our beneficiaries.
That brings me to a matter of crucial importance to which my noble friend Lord Aberdare has already referred in terms of the Football Trust. It is the risk of the impact of the National Lottery on the turnover of the pools companies. Because the foundation's income is wholly dependent on the football pools' turnover, any reduction in that turnover results in us having less money to distribute to sport.
I can confirm what my noble friend said, that since the National Lottery began the pools' turnover has dropped steadily week after week. There has not been the sudden large drop in income that one might have expected, but there has been a steady decline which potentially is of greater concern. If this decline continues, the pools companies will be forced to reduce their costs. They will not want to reduce their jackpots, and they will wish to protect their workforce. They will be forced therefore to consider their contribution to good causes—principally the Foundation for Sport and the Arts and the Football Trust, to which my noble friend Lord Aberdare has already referred.
There are a number of steps that the Government could take to help with this problem. The pools companies clearly need to compete with the National Lottery. During the passage of the legislation to set up the lottery the Government made a number of concessions in order to allow competition, and to allow fair competition. Many noble Lords and many Members of another place argued strongly for that. But there are a number of areas where the dice are still loaded against the pools. The first of these, as has been referred to, is the prohibition on advertising on television and radio. The lottery company has spent a fortune on television and radio up to now—and not only that; it gets the benefit of some pretty good advertising from the BBC in terms of promoting the weekly draw.
I am encouraged to see an article in today's Times which states:
"TV ban on pools firms may be lifted".
Apparently, Michael Howard, the Home Secretary has won backing from Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Michael Portillo and other Ministers for a proposal to end the prohibition, which, the pools firms say, gives an unfair promotion advantage to the lottery. I am, however, most disappointed that it appears from the article—of course I do not expect my noble friend who
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will answer the debate to comment on this—that it is Stephen Dorrell, the National Heritage Secretary, who is, after all, responsible for sport, who is battling on behalf of the lottery to keep the ban in force. I hope that we can have an early lifting of the ban.
My time is coming to an end. There are a number of other areas where the Government could help the pools companies. One advantage is that there is very little need for any primary legislation to achieve these aims. I hope that the Government can see their way clear to acting sooner rather than later. I believe that all of us who have taken part in the debate today recognise the importance of sport and of funding for sport. If the funding of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts is to continue, it would be of great advantage to sport in this country.
7.2 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Howell for initiating this particular debate. It is almost a re-run of a debate last year which I was lucky enough to initiate on a document that had been presented by the Central Council for Physical Recreation, titled A Charter for School Sport. There is no need to go over old ground. In his opening remarks, my noble friend Lord Howell hit on the main point in that particular report and of what was said in that debate as regards some of the things that need to be done.
I also compliment the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, not only on his contribution but on the role that he has played as chairman of the Football Trust. Owing to his action and that of the members in the offices concerned, the face of football in this country has been restored to what it should be. It has again become a family game—although a very expensive one if the clubs are in the premier divisions. At least people can watch professional football matches in a greater degree of comfort.
I thought that someone might have mentioned the astronomical transfer fees that are paid in football. This debate is not particularly about that, and fees may well be the private business of the clubs involved, but in the final outcome I wonder if it is for the good of the game. I heard a former distinguished international player who is now the director of a club say that because Manchester United had paid £7 million for a young centre forward, that was the value of the player. But that is to stand the argument on its head. If you put a price on your house when you come to sell it, that is not necessarily the value of the house. The value is what somebody is prepared to pay. In some respects, some of the clubs may be contributing to a false valuation at the top of the scale in football. I do not believe that in the long run that will be for the good of the game.
I was interested to hear the detailed speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall. I was, however, saddened that he mentioned only one famous batsman from the north but a galaxy of talent from the south. He mentioned the captain of Lancashire, Michael Atherton. I was weaned during the war on people such as Eddie

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Paynter of Lancashire, Maurice Leyland, and Len Hutton. They were the people who took on the Australians and beat them.
Also, I am not so pessimistic as the noble and gallant Lord about what has happened in Australia. Without being accused of whingeing, if one or two care to look at the re-runs of some of the decisions—Atherton was given out twice, as was Gooch—it can be seen that three or four batsmen certainly got the worst end of some very poor umpiring decisions. The whole innings collapsed as a result. What did me more good than anything was to see that in the Third Test the Australians were the ones who were struggling. So the picture is not all that gloomy.
While I am still talking about cricket, the noble and gallant Lord mentioned Michael Atherton and the other Lancashire player. I have here a report that was printed in the Daily Telegraph on 3rd January by the headmaster of Manchester Grammar School under the headline,
"Atherton and Crawley prove the value of cricket in schools".
The article begins:
"Manchester Grammar School headmaster Martin Stephen says there is no need for a specialist academy to make Test players".
Such players are made early on. There is a case for having a sense of excellence at the end of the process to deal with the absolutely top players. But I have no doubt that Manchester Grammar School will produce more. I hope it will, and I certainly believe that it can. That distinguished school has the facilities: it uses them well; and it obviously has someone there who is very interested in training such boys.
Let us look at what the headmaster says. He states that there are,
"a number of other schools which do exactly the same thing".
He goes on to say that all schools ought to be training that type of youngster. Such training needs to start when they are young. The money has to be put in, the facilities have to be provided, and teachers must be found who are interested enough. To repeat what I said in the debate last year, we must begin—dare I say it?—to look at whether we are prepared to pay the teachers something extra to put an effort into sport. The days are gone when people can afford to give their own time for no particular reward.
My noble friend Lord Howell used the word "ethos". One of the most debilitating aspects of sport now is that it is awash—it is absolutely saturated—with money. Professional football is an example. The tennis players at Wimbledon gain a fortune if they win a title. Snooker players now become millionaires before they are 25. It is even spilling over to affect darts players. There is plenty of money available.
I am not particularly interested in players at that stage. They have made the grade; they are all right. I am interested in the future of youngsters in the United Kingdom. Wherever they live, they should have the facilities to develop their talents. In that way I believe that we can return to the standards that we had before. Money is not necessarily the answer. Professional football in this country is richer than it has ever been. But in terms of being an international team, Britain is
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now in the second division. We are no threat to teams such as Germany in international competition. We struggle just to keep our head above water. So money at the top end is not necessarily the answer.
I was a little saddened when I realised that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, was saying that the future of the Football Trust may be in jeopardy—that point was echoed to some degree by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon—by the onset of the National Lottery. Some people warned that that might happen. It would be a retrograde step when people have given so much of their time. As two noble Lords have already said, the jobs are paid in a way, but I know that people have given a tremendous amount of time to this issue. After all the good work that they have done, the football scene has been transformed. As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said, there has been a move down to the lower divisions and people can go to these matches in good surroundings. I believe that to put that process in jeopardy because of the lottery must be looked at as a matter of urgency. I believe that in this case the well-known expression "a level playing field" should be particularly applied.
Earlier I read a quotation in regard to the question whether in this country youngsters could perform. I was a Member of Parliament for an area where rugby league was the prime sport. It was no secret that the kids in one of the 11 to 13-year schools near where I lived year after year won the rugby league championship of West Yorkshire for that age group. They did it because right next to that school, which was in a reasonable area, was a rugby pitch. The teachers started them on rugby league early on. I recall a case in Manchester during the period during the two world wars. A small school in a very bad slum area had the good fortune to be built next to the local swimming baths. Year after year that school won the schoolboys' swimming championship of Great Britain.
We have the kids but we need the coaches. The Central Council for Physical Recreation and everybody else say that we need to train coaches. We have to pay teachers who are prepared to do part-time coaching. I think that if we do that we shall start to move up again. But we are not giving our children the best of facilities to develop their talents as they ought to be able to do. I hope that the debate that has been triggered off by my noble friend Lord Howell will help in that way. Huge sums of money are involved. I hope that in view of all of the money that is available to be distributed in a purposeful or charitable way, the bottom of the pyramid of sport will attract the lion's share and not the top which at present is very well catered for.
7.12 p.m.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I have very great pleasure in rising to support the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I believe that he was the first Minister, and indeed the first person, in the other place to focus people's attention on the broader aspects of sport to which he himself added the expression "recreation". In a form of reverse nepotism, I should also like to thank him because he, together with his right honourable friend Peter Shore, was responsible for appointing me chairman of the

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Greater London and South-East Council for Sport and Recreation in 1978. His successors and my right honourable friend Michael Heseltine appointed me for a further three years. I had the privilege of seeing perhaps at sixth or seventh hand the policies and attitudes of governments.
I have come to the conclusion that governments are really irrelevant, or they should be, in terms of sport. They are relevant only when things are not working properly. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, "What a good idea it is to create regional recreational strategies. You will, in effect, be responsible for the central planning of all sport and recreation in Greater London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent, so help you God." I had an executive committee of 153 and a full committee of 252 composed of the Army, Navy, the Air Force, and every planning officer and interested person throughout the land. If they were too young we had to have some old people as well. We had the most monumental bureaucracy that had ever been seen. The meetings would begin by somebody getting up and saying, "My Lord Chairman (or Mr. Chairman), on a point of order", and somebody else would get up and say, "My Lord Chairman (or Chair)". The arguments were like many that we were familiar with at local authority level.
There were two schools of thought. First, there was what might be termed the socialist thought, that the state should pay for everything. Secondly, there was the Conservative thought, that the state should pay for nothing. I hasten to add that I was not paid and I did not claim any expenses but had the privilege of going to see all kinds of sporting events that I would otherwise not have been able to see had I tried to buy my way in. It was a very interesting time. I had two mentors: Clive Jenkins and his friend Mr. Sherman. They wrote two books entitled The Collapse of Work and The Leisure Shock. They were good socialists who pointed out that there would be shorter working hours and people would have more spare time. Then a group of people said, "Look, whatever we are, we are in charge of whatever people do when they are not working or sleeping." Then people in the north east said, "We are responsible for a third of people's time." Gradually, one said that it was not a thing to be done from the centre; one had to create a new attitude. One needed co-financing and the role of government and local authorities, often in terms of such simple things as planning permission—things that did not cost anything. What does one have as a strategy? Should people go out and be forced to play games? Should they have to play games at school?
We found ourselves returning to one simple thought: everything worked well if there was a good chap doing it. I believe that we have more active sports than almost the rest of the world put together. At my last count we had about 85 with various governing bodies. We all accepted that it was a good idea to encourage people to get out and take physical exercise. However, one could not plan it.
I will give a number of examples of what caused us concern. I say "us" because there were hundreds involved in it. Why were we not any good at tennis? We went to see the people at Wimbledon. They wore
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their ties and were very polite to us. They said, "My dear chap, it is the weather. You see, the Australians and the Americans are good at it because they have good weather and can play out of doors all the time." We asked, "But what about the Swedes?" They replied, "They have indoor facilities. It is very dark over there and they have to play indoors." Then we asked, "Why do we not have indoor facilities?" They replied, "They would not work; they would not be economic."
A few things were set up. Some indoor tennis courts were partially funded in London and went bust. Then David Lloyd started his activities and they began to work. We also wanted to know why we were not any good at cricket. We were told that nobody wanted to play cricket any more because there were too many other sports, or there was no training. Then the MCC, a cricket school and £50,000 got something going and a lot of people, who would otherwise probably not have been any good at cricket at all, had great fun.
We wanted to know why we were no good at golf. We were told that there were not enough golf courses. Somebody produced a report saying that we needed hundreds of golf courses and that most golf courses built in recent times had practically gone under. Finally, we said that perhaps there was no need to have sport and recreation. We did a few studies about the impact that success had upon an event. I had an extremely good bunch of officials from the Sports Council who were very dedicated people. They were not necessarily politically motivated. They recognised that there were limited resources because with reduced disposable income it was difficult for government and local authorities to allocate more. But when people began to close things and get rid of the playing fields of ILEA and others one started to ask why. Many property developments, which themselves went bust, took place on land which could easily have been used for recreational purposes.
Some amusing events took place. We opened the South Down Way and the Archbishop of Canterbury walked along it. But to try to persuade the ramblers to allow one to put together two footpaths and to give up something else was a major bureaucratic problem. All in all, it always came down to the individual or to the parent with a small child who was handicapped but was a jolly good swimmer. He would change his job to get up early in the morning to drive the child to a place where proper training could be given. For example, it was said that skating was finished, but then people suddenly won Olympic medals. Then Mecca and others were forced to rethink the closure of skating rinks. When we are good at something people want to do it. It is not a question of the weather. We have almost the best water skiers in the world and yet we have awful weather.
We are not bad at all sorts of activities to do with motor cars. About 80 per cent. of all racing cars today are designed or built here. When the Ryder Cup became international everybody suddenly wanted to play golf and it became economic. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that I believe a certain form of elitism is the best way to encourage people to participate. I also

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believe that the morale-boosting effect in terms of productivity, as was shown when we won the World Cup, is very considerable.
These things are more far reaching than one realises. I treasure a few international moments when I had forgotten that we created almost every sport in the world. If it meant a pain like skiing, we made it into a pleasure. I remember sitting quietly in Jamaica when I was economic adviser to the government—I had better not say which one it was—when Mr. Bush arrived to "soften them up" because of Grenada. He wanted to talk about boycotting Cuba. The prime minister turned to me and said, "Malcolm, is it true that Boycott is going to play cricket in South Africa?"
I was trying to do something with the Indians in Calcutta. I was taken out to a cricket club for lunch. It was said to me, "England, you know, has never been the same since they got in a muddle over Gentlemen and Players. We would never have had this problem with umpires if Gentlemen were still captains. After all, when the cup was here—" (I had to think for a moment which cup he was talking about) "—you know, it was over there". I had forgotten that I was in the home of the Calcutta Cup. Outside were a cricket pitch and a rugby pitch side by side.
When I meet people in the Middle East, as I did recently in a country which should not be mentioned, they are far more concerned to know of the welfare of Manchester United and Manchester City, because that is where they were trained as engineers. People say that South Africa is back applying to be a member of the Commonwealth because of the Gleneagles Agreement.
Those are issues about which one forgets. But, all in all, the six years that I was overseas were tremendously amusing. I came back with certain conclusions: people are going to live longer and retire earlier. There is going to be a gap. You have to teach people how to look after themselves in their leisure time. That was something I had not thought about. Because I went to a private school, where we were taught to play games, I forgot that many people are too nervous to start a sport because there is no training. So we concentrated upon training. We looked at the problems of women—those who have given up a job and middle-aged women who needed activities. The work that went into all that was good and sound. But at the end of the day one cannot beat the individual enthusiast, whether he is within a local authority, the secretary of a club, a retired sportsman, or someone, like Duncan Goodhew, who used to say, "If I had another second in my best year, I would have won every championship". When you get up to the elite, you are down to microseconds.
There were people who said that facilities are required. My good friend Rod Pickering used to say, "Where there are no pole-vault pits, there will be no pole-vaulters." The Amateur Athletic Association said, "We must have indoor running facilities. We only have the old RAF hangar. We almost run out at the back and run in again at Nottingham." But, without those facilities we still held every middle distance running record for about two years. That is a strange situation. Basically,
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we are people who respond to success and wish to emulate it. All children have their sports heroes. We need a few more local heroes.
7.23 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, with other noble Lords, I am indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Howell. His enthusiasm is infectious and his knowledge is of great value in this House. He certainly took me back many light-years when I was able-bodied. I did not play football but I played almost every other game, including cricket of course. I have listened tonight to people who know more than I do about all those games. They have taken me back a long way.
Those who are interested in sports for youth are frequently told that there is no money, no leaders, no premises and very little enthusiasm. But from my inquiries I have found that all those obstacles—those "ninepins"—are incorrect. Money is available. There is a government grant of £50 million to the Sports Council and there are many other methods of raising funds. Now, also, we have the lottery.
The second of those ninepins is leadership. We are indeed fortunate to have Mr. Rodney Walker as the new chairman of the Sports Council. I am sure that he can call on a great number of leaders who will help him with their expertise. We wish him well.
Premises is the third ninepin. Premises have always been a problem, especially in inner London and inner city schools. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, referred to that point. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister realises some of the present problems and referred to them at last year's Conservative Party Conference. On 14th October he said
"While we are about it, I do not want councils selling off school playing fields they may need. I want those playing fields kept and I want them used".
I wish that more adult clubs would extend the hand of friendship and invite young people to share their facilities. Unfortunately, it seems that some local authorities charge very high fees for juniors who want to take part in sport. That must be discouraged.
The fourth ninepin is enthusiasm, which is growing and taking hold at the grass roots with enormous speed (thank goodness) and enthusiasm throughout the country. The new Youth Sports Trust is full of ideas which will be put into practice in the near future. As your Lordships will know, Mr. John Beckwith is chairman of the trustees. The trust will work with the appropriate national, regional and local organisations, including the national Sports Council and the National Coaching Foundation which the trust hopes to help. We wish them all well.
The night for me is late. If, through sports of all sorts we can encourage future generations to enjoy competition, to mix as friends, to be good losers and to be potential leaders, then all the work that so many people are undertaking on their behalf will not be in vain.
7.27 p.m.
Lord Addington: My Lords, first I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for giving us this

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opportunity to discuss the state of sport in the United Kingdom. I listened to noble Lords who have spoken and find myself in agreement with much of what has been said. But over and above what has been said, it is clear that everyone in this Chamber appreciates that sport is beneficial for all who take part in it. It also was clear that people take part in sport for a great variety of reasons.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, talked about cricket and about choice and opportunity in cricket. The noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, spoke about the success achieved by those taking part in sports. There are many ways to enjoy sport. It fulfils a basic desire in many people to compete and to test their strength and skill in various ways, while at certain levels enjoying themselves. It is a matter not only of choice and opportunity, or a matter of fashion. It is a matter of personal taste and intention. If someone has a taste for a particular sport, ultimately he will be good at it.
The noble Lord spoke about people wanting to try certain sports. That is true but, ultimately, if they do not have the right temperament for a certain sport they will not succeed at it, no matter how fashionable it may be. I know that because when I was at primary school the only sport played was soccer. I would be the world's worst soccer player, no matter who coached me. It was not until I discovered that there was a game which allowed larger and slower people to participate—namely, rugby—that I found my own sport. The sport must be one that you find congenial. The physical ability to participate must also be considered as well as the desire to take part. Certain people are culturally geared into taking up sport. We must provide a range of opportunities for people.
That brings me to the one structure that will allow sport to flourish in this country; namely, a wide enough range of choice and opportunity which allows people to find out what they are geared toward. Only when that happens can we guarantee that we will get the best out of our sporting activities. Once that happens leisure time is used creatively and positively. It cuts down on other social problems. For instance, it is a fact that young people who become involved in sport are less likely to commit certain types of juvenile crime. There are many other benefits. A sense of community is created and certain communities relate to certain sporting activities more than others. It is not a panacea for all problems but it will help. And most importantly, provided people are correctly coached, there will be great health benefits.
When we heard the announcement of the reorganisation of the Sports Council, many people were a little worried. The "Sport for All" programme, developed with the idea of involving everybody in a sport, is vital if we are to offer choice. It may well have been, as the Sports Council informed me, that that was a declining part of their activities; but it is still important. Local authorities are supposed to pick up that particular baton and run with it. But as we heard in the last debate, local authorities are under considerable pressure from other areas. I should not like to be the
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one who says "We will keep our sports development programme but cut down on home visits for the elderly". That is probably a very genuine case of shroud waving.
We must ensure that the Government are prepared to take on and give assistance in the field of sport. Individual sports organisations are not that well placed to do it; they cannot give overall general assistance because of their interest in their own sport. It may be said that they should invest in long-term facilities. But they must deal with what is in front of them. It is no use saying to a hockey club, a football club or a rugby club, "Invest in all these activities and you will eventually benefit the players". We are talking of a 10, 20 or 30-year programme. For instance, many people who want to run a third side on a Saturday will invest their facilities in that rather than in something for which the benefits take so long to come through that their club may not even exist when they do. The Government must think more about assisting this area and provide some funds centrally.
That brings me on to a subject raised by the noble Lord, Lord Howell; that is, providing funds from, for example, the National Lottery, and similar sources for running sports projects as opposed to merely providing capital investment. By itself capital investment is not the answer, for the simple reason that when one creates a building one rapidly finds that maintenance costs occur. It does not matter how well it is built, repairs will be needed. Anybody who has ever visited a gymnasium will have seen on at least one exercise machine a sticker which says, "Out of Use". When one thinks of the amount of equipment and so forth, one can imagine the running costs.
One aspect that comes into this area and upon which the Government are to be congratulated is the introduction of national vocational qualifications for coaching sports. They are a good idea, at least in principle. The NVQs have not had a particularly smooth passage. They have come under fire from various angles; but the idea is sound. One thing that will add to initial choice, which will provide a pool of players which can feed off into various sports, will be the availability of correct coaching. People will develop good habits and good training techniques. Many people will transfer from sport to sport. For instance, it is quite common for people to try a junior sport and transfer to another when they acquire experience.
If we can persuade the Government to more firmly back that type of activity we shall be able to continue the process of educating our population to play more sport. Also, there is no reason why people who participate in sport on a recreational basis should not receive adequate training in several types of sport. When looking at the top levels of sport we forget that many people do not concentrate on one sport. For instance, it was traditional—before winter sports expanded into the summer months and training programmes expanded into the time left over when teams were not playing preparation games—to play a summer and a winter sport. That is the price we pay for living in a temperate climate. We can play football 12 months of the year, as

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was said earlier, whereas Sweden cannot. Possibly the rest does the players some good but perhaps I am digressing.
I conclude by making a few comments on the equality of opportunity. We have made considerable strides recently to achieve equality and indeed certain things, such as fashion, have helped. For instance, women have been allowed to partake of exercise because it has been fashionable over the past decade-and-a-half. It is a comparatively new idea. It was rare only 20 years ago. The odd keep fit class does not compare to the incredibly tough step aerobics classes that are advertised on every corner. We have increased the levels of female participation in sport. Women are trying new sports and making tremendous achievements. I am afraid that they will always be at a disadvantage when it comes to levels of performance for the simple reason that most sports were designed by men for men and most women are smaller and slower than most men.
Sport is surely about competition. Women should be given the opportunity to compete at the highest level. Records are irrelevant; it is the level of competition between two bodies which is important. Sport is about competing on a level playing field. If the Government want to look at an area where they can enhance the level of sport choice, sport for women is one important area.
Unfortunately, I have not left myself sufficient time to go into my next area, which concerns sport for the disabled. I am the vice-president of the UK Sports Association, which deals with sport for people with what used to be called mental handicaps but are now called learning disabilities. Everything that we hear about sport helping the able-bodied person is true to a much greater extent for somebody with a disability. They have often been cut off from much human experience by accident. They now have a chance to compete and feel fulfilled. They can compete on even terms with their peers, which means that they can achieve. That type of activity should be enhanced and I hope that the Government will give us a firm assurance that they will be prepared to support the British Paralympics Association and also help the teams who will be entering the Atlanta paralympics.
7.37 p.m.
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, this excellent debate inspired some looking back and some nostalgia, especially the excellent speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, and the recollections of my noble friend Lord Dean of the great days when the England cricket team was prepared to look north of Surrey and Essex for its great players.
I did some looking back when listening to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, especially in what he said about disability. I agree with him. I must say that he also caused me to look back on my rugby union days without nostalgia, as I looked at his shape and realised that it was the specific kind of shape I remember with pain that I have run into on the rugby field. I offer my condolences to all those that he plays against.
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I should seriously thank my noble friend Lord Howell for providing the opportunity for this debate and, I may add, for offering this House a most powerful speech based on his unequalled knowledge and experience of sport and also his passionate concern for sport's best interests.
There are many depressing headlines in British sport today. There are all the failures in cricket at Test level, although I notice that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, was most enlightening, and my noble friend Lord Dean was almost encouraging, on the future. I hope they are right. In football, there is less encouragement—nationally in the World Cup and at club level in the European Cup. There is financial misbehaviour in soccer and rugger and personal misbehaviour, especially in relation to drugs. There is the whole seedy commercialisation, which was referred to so strongly by my noble friends Lord Howell and Lord Dean. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Howell that those are not the aspects of our sport which should most concern us today. If we get the heart of sport right, those aspects can be remedied.
As my noble friend Lord Howell said, our national sporting life is not fundamentally measured in Olympic medals and European cups, even allowing for the interesting points made by the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, about success, with many of which I agree. Our national sporting life is determined at the grass roots of Britain, in local school sports, in local club sports, in the local authorities which provide facilities for those schools and clubs and in the governing bodies which organise those sports. So I should like to begin firmly, like my noble friend, with the philosophical base to our sporting policy.
There has evolved in recent years a clear division between the Government and ourselves. The Government are now preaching a very elitist approach. The Minister in another place has told the Sports Council that it should not be concerned with what he called mass participation but should concentrate on what is thought to be some three dozen core elite sports. That is a direct and explicit reversal of decades, including the six years during which I sat on the Sports Council, when the philosophy was basically sport for all and an expansion of the facilities, the access and the participation to the maximum number of people in the maximum number of sporting activities. I still stand by that philosophy; but that is now rejected. We now have a philosophy of the elite few sports for a few successful participants.
The Sports Council itself, following the Minister's lead, has stated that, apart from lottery distribution, it has only two priorities: young people in sport and excellence in those few core sports. We certainly do not oppose the focus on youth sports or the pursuit of excellence. But what a narrow vision; and how much is omitted from that vision! The Minister's apparent attempt at mass participation is simply not acceptable. The mass is not some low class mob. It is the body of British citizens who pay the taxes for sports facilities and constitute the whole community, including the whole sporting community. I reject the narrow spirit of

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current government sports policy and believe that the Sports Council, in its new form when that is finally shown to us, should reject it as well.
I wish to ask a few questions in relation to the specific points raised in the debate. On school sports, which my noble friend rightly stressed, we welcome the Prime Minister's interest but we must ask what in the end will actually happen. I support entirely the six-point agenda of my noble friend Lord Howell to improve sport in schools. I ask the Minister to treat that seriously and I look forward to his response. He might also tell us when the Government's promised statement on sport in schools will emerge.
On local authorities, does the Minister recognise, as has been pointed out, that the squeeze on local authority expenditure is probably the single greatest blow currently being suffered by British sport and that it is probably bigger than the lottery distribution can hope to compensate for? Is he aware that the Sports Council recently estimated that it costs more than £100 million simply to maintain existing sports facilities at their present, not always adequate, standards? Where is the money coming from for the revenue needs of existing sports facilities and the new lottery-inspired sports facilities?
On the Sports Council itself, we have suffered at least three years of dithering and endless revision. We now welcome the prospect that we may be at the end of that long period of uncertainty. We also welcome the appointment that has been referred to and we do not oppose the broad lines on which the Government's thinking appears to be taking shape. We welcome the UK Sports Council, which is an idea we have supported for many years. I ask the Minister to tell us on what basis the elite three dozen core sports will be chosen. Does he not recognise that some of the most valuable sporting developments—"sporting" in the broadest sense but a genuine description—are outside that narrow core of conventional organised games? I have in mind the less formal sports and physical pursuits—gymnastics, dance, and areas such as that.
I must also refer to the recent report of the Public Accounts Committee on the financial management, or perhaps mismanagement, of the Sports Council. It is the most devastating denunciation I have ever read of a public body. It accuses the Sports Council of improprieties and financial misdeeds which put at risk millions of pounds of taxpayers' money. I should like to have the Minister's comments on that report.
On the crucial regional dimension, is the Minister aware of the massive outcry against the attack of his ministerial colleague in another place on the regional councils for sport and recreation? Have the Government had any second—better—thoughts on that? There have been rumblings that the Government will revise their approach to the regional councils. Will the Minister tell us whether he proposes ways to re-establish and redefine the relationship—we agree with the Government that there was some wooliness and confusion in the relationship—and to re-establish the links between the
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regional sports councils and the regional councils for sport and recreation? The present Sports Council is asking for that.
On the lottery—I refer to it in passing—why have not the Government been more flexible in relation to the revenue needs of sport? What on earth is the point of the lottery providing a new swimming pool if there is no revenue to heat it or to provide the staff to open it?
On sports facilities more generally, I was very impressed and disturbed by what the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Brabazon, said about the damage inflicted by the lottery on the Football Trust and on the Foundation for Sport and Arts. With my wider remit, I am concerned for the arts as well and know what excellent work the foundation has done in the whole area of sports and the arts. I shall listen with great interest to the Minister's comments on that.
As my noble friend Lord Howell said in his opening speech, sport is important not only and not mainly because it provides the excitement of the peaks of professional competition. Sport matters because it provides a more healthy society and can enhance the individual citizen's quality of life, increasing his pleasure in exercise and helping his personal character development through learning to succeed and how to handle success and failure, and improving his capacity to relate to fellow citizens, even in the ways which the noble Lord, Lord Addington, might relate to members of the opposition, and to integrate with society. That is why we care about sport. That is why the debate has been important. That is why we hope that the Minister has some positive answers to our many questions today.
7.50 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of National Heritage (Viscount Astor): My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for the opportunity he has given us today to consider sport in this country. We can all declare an interest in sport. When I went to school my idea of sport was trying to spend half an hour in the local bookmakers. However, I found other sports which I enjoyed, and I still enjoy them, whether I am playing or watching.
Some noble Lords have focused on cricket. Therefore, I must remember when replying that it is often dangerous to swipe at the rising ball on the off stump, some of which may have been bowled at me this evening.
The noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, paid more attention to football and to the transfer fees paid by clubs. Clubs need to be competitive. Otherwise good players will migrate and play for European clubs instead. I know that the leader of his party is pro-European but the logic of what the noble Lord said would mean that European clubs had a better chance of beating us game after game.
I must emphasise the absolute commitment on the part of the Government to the importance of sport. Sport can contribute significantly to the well-being of the nation and its citizens. The success of sportsmen and women at the national or local level can do much to generate national or local pride. We all remember the

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notable successes. Who can forget the performance of Sally Gunnell, Linford Christie and Colin Jackson on the track, Damon Hill's heroic attempts on the grand prix circuit, or Chris Boardman's Olympic achievement in Barcelona and his triumphant wearing of the yellow jersey during last year's Tour de France?
We also remember the many long faces when England failed to qualify for last year's World Cup. The news from Australia in recent weeks has not been encouraging, although it has not stopped many of us staying up into the small hours to watch the live transmissions. That goes to show that sport has a binding and cohesive effect which it is hard to better.
What are the Government doing to ensure that sport retains a vigorous presence in our midst? First, there are our reforms of the Sports Council. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, was concerned about the regional aspects of our proposals for the reform of the Sports Council in terms of overall planning for sporting provision and in particular the distribution of the proceeds from the National Lottery. Perhaps I may therefore explain briefly why we have decided to reform the regional arrangements. Before doing so I shall briefly explain the present arrangements, which are sometimes misunderstood.
The Sports Council is a national body wholly funded by my department. It has 10 regional offices in England whose task is to deliver council policy at a regional level. There are also 10 coterminous regional councils for sport and recreation. Those bodies, set up administratively in 1976, bring together regional sport and recreation interests. Local authorities are in a guaranteed majority, but the membership includes a wide range of other interests, for example, regional governing bodies of sport. The broad task of those regional councils is to draw up strategies for regional sporting provision. The Sports Council's regional offices provide the secretariat for the regional councils. The regional councils effectively determine how the Sports Council's regional funds should be spent.
As my honourable friend the Minister for Sport explained in another place on 8th July last year, the present structural relationship between the Sports Council's regional offices and the regional councils for sport and recreation gives rise to confusion as to roles and responsibilities and to concern on grounds of financial accountability, bureaucracy and duplication. The Government have therefore announced that they intend to end the present formal linkage. There are two main reasons for doing so. The first is to clarify the respective roles of players at regional level and to ensure that the Sport Council's regional offices understand that their primary responsibility is the regional delivery of national policy.
The second reason flows from the introduction of the National Lottery. The regional offices of the Sports Council will have an important role to play in advising the Sports Council on lottery applications from the regions. Many of those applications will come forward from current partners on the regional councils for sport and recreation, including local authorities, very much in accordance with the regional strategies to which the Sports Council is currently a party.
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In order to ensure that such applications are eligible for funding there needs to be a clear gap between the Sports Council in the regions and the regional constituency from which lottery applications will come. The Sports Council cannot be directly associated with bringing forward an application and then proceed to sit in judgment upon it. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that it is not a question of trust or lack of trust, as he suggested. The need for close working links between the Sports Council and its regional partners is not at issue, simply their manifestation. The Sports Council will continue to work closely with local authorities and other regional partners in developing its own future policies. Equally, the Sports Council will want to keep abreast of developments by the local authority sector in pursuit of its own aims and priorities.
It would not, of course, be appropriate for the Government to dictate to local authorities what arrangements might succeed the present regional councils for sport and recreation. However, I am aware of the excellent and positive lead taken by local authorities in the West Midlands in developing future arrangements. There is no reason why the reform of the regional arrangements should have any adverse impact on the quality and quantity of projects which may come forward for support from the National Lottery.
I have referred to the importance of sport as a source of national pride. The performance of our national teams is important, but we must also be well represented on the international scene. That is one of the reasons why we propose to establish a United Kingdom Sports Council alongside the English Sports Council. Both bodies will start work during the course of the next financial year.
The UK Sports Council will have among its members the chairmen of the four home country sports councils and the chairman of the British Olympic Association, together with representatives of those who must count most, the sportsmen themselves. For the first time professional sport will be represented on both the UK and the English sports councils. That reflects the crucial role which professional sportsmen have to play in representing the nation and acting as our sporting ambassadors.
The UK body will represent us on the international scene. It will seek to increase the influence of the UK in international sport and it will co-ordinate policy to bring international events to the United Kingdom. The UK council will also oversee work carried out by the home country sports councils which is of UK-wide significance. We have in mind particularly doping control, sports science, sports medicine and coaching. It will be an early task of the council to identify other possible areas of sports policy which may have application across the UK as a whole as well as areas of possible duplication and overlap which could be dealt with more effectively.
We look forward very much to making an early announcement about membership of the UK Sports Council.
The newly refocused Sports Council for England will have as one of its key roles a concern for young people and sport. For the future, Sports Council grants to

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governing bodies will require them to prepare clear plans with specific targets for the development of their sports, from grassroots to the highest competitive levels, and including programmes for strong and effective links with schools and youth organisations. We need to make the most of the talent of our young people.
But we are doing far more to ensure that school sport is put back where it belongs, at the heart of school life. School sport, and particularly team games, are essential for many reasons. They can teach young people, as can no other activity which they experience while at school, the value of discipline, team work and team spirit. Where else do young people learn to operate within a framework of rules, to understand the concepts of sportsmanship, fair play and the lessons that can be learnt from losing as well as winning? Sport has a potential for character-building which will stand young people in good stead for the rest of their lives.
I do not wish to suggest that sport should be given to young people because, like vitamin C or castor oil, it is good for them. It is also highly enjoyable, at least for most children, and provides a source of healthy enjoyment as well as a channel for youthful high spirits, energy and aggression which can have huge benefits. It is a fact that young people today are very much less fit than their predecessors. Our culture has become increasingly sedentary, and there are many more temptations to lure young people away from the sports field or the gym.
A vital step in the process of reinvigorating the place of sport in school has already been taken. The Government have recently announced their final proposals for changing the national curriculum in physical education. In future, all 14 to 16 year-olds will play a competitive game. Team games will also be a specific requirement for younger pupils and there will be a much clearer emphasis on the importance of mini-games—that is, short versions of traditional games aimed specifically at children below the age of 11. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has also made clear that he wishes to see schools offering at least two hours of curriculum PE every week. His hope is that many schools will offer more. But even if this can be achieved, much work remains to be done.
Crucially, we want to reach the position where it is a second nature for young people to participate in some form of extra-curricular sport. The school curriculum, as we know, is heavily loaded and we cannot expect schools and our teachers to provide all the benefits we seek for our young people. I pay credit here to the thousands of teachers who give their time to ensure that pupils have these opportunities. I should like to think that we can reach a point where all teachers will do so.
However, as I said, that is not a position we can reach overnight. That is why we are asking the Sports Council to look very carefully at ways in which governing bodies can link sport in schools with wider sporting activities outside. Governing bodies, and clubs, and individuals who are already well apprised of the value of sport should look to ways to encourage young people to participate. It is in their own best interests since young people must form the seedcorn for the future and
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it is with young people that loyalties to particular sports or teams or clubs are forged. No governing body or club with an eye to its future revenues can afford to ignore the benefits of a junior section, proper coaching and a genuinely welcoming atmosphere for younger members.
Young people grow up and leave school and it is no less important that we should continue to encourage and stimulate opportunities for participation at the grassroots end of sport. That is why this Government introduced in November 1992 the Sportsmatch sponsorship scheme which was set up to attract new commercial sponsorship and match it pound for pound. In England, Sportsmatch has approved a total of 752 applications to a value of over £6.5 million. Together with commercial sponsorship, this means that Sportsmatch has generated over £13 million of new money for grassroots sport since its inception in November 1992.
The Foundation for Sport and the Arts provides £48 million each year for sport, partly financed from a reduction in pool betting duty. The Government are very appreciative of the contribution that the pools companies have made to sport —and the arts, of course—through their support of the foundation. We have recognised the valuable addition that the foundation's work provides by agreeing to extend the reduction in pool betting duty for a further five years from this April. We hope very much that the pools companies will continue to support this important partnership venture which has done so much.
I commend the contribution of the pools companies to what is probably seen by most as our national sport, football, through their sponsorship of the Football Trust, which is chaired by my noble friend Lord Aberdare. The trust provides £35 million grant per annum for safety improvements at football clubs, with, again, a significant proportion of the funds coming from a reduction in pool betting duty. It is no small thanks to the work of the trust in disbursing grants that clubs in the Premier League and First Division of the Football League met the requirement to go all-seated by the 1994 August deadline. We look forward to continuing work in helping clubs in the lower divisions of the Football League to go all-seated or to improve the safety of their terracing by 1999.
There have been a number of references to the National Lottery which, we should remember, has now been in operation for some nine weeks. Over £129 million has been raised for good causes during that time with charities, the arts, sports, the heritage and the Millennium Fund each benefiting by £25.8 million as a result. Organisations are only now starting to submit their proposals for schemes to be funded by the lottery.
The Government are well aware of the concerns expressed by the pools companies and echoed today by my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara that their business will be adversely affected by the impact of the National Lottery and that this will have inevitable consequences for their existing generous level of support both for the Foundation for Sport and the Arts and for the Football Trust. The Government believe that spending on the National Lottery will on the whole be diverted from general expenditure, rather than from other forms of gambling. There is no evidence to show that the National Lottery has so far had a significant

723
impact on participation in the football pools. However, the Home Office is monitoring the pools industry and other parts of the gaming industry, but it is too early to tell what effect, if any, the lottery will have on other parts of the gaming market.
Another issue raised has been that of advertising for the National Lottery compared with the pools. As with all forms of commercial gambling, pools companies are not allowed to advertise on television and radio. The National Lottery, in line with existing regulations on broadcast advertising for lotteries, is able to advertise using these media because its primary purpose is to raise money for good causes. Pools companies are able to sponsor television programmes, and they derive great benefit from the results service on the main television and radio channels. That whole service is formatted for pools players. However, I recognise the strength of feeling of my noble friends and I shall ensure that the Secretary of State understands the concerns they have raised.
The noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, asked about the PAC report on the Sports Council. It relates to activities in the commercial subsidiaries of the Sports Council trust company. Steps have been taken by the council and the department to address the weaknesses that have been identified. We shall be responding fully to the PAC's report in the normal way. We welcome the report.
The Government are not complacent about the state of sport in our country. In the manner of all good school reports, we feel that it "could do better". But we do not feel that this is necessarily a time for lamentation and wringing of hands. There is much to be proud of in our sporting heritage and many fine examples of young sportsmen who are doing their country credit today. We intend to build on this solid base by reintroducing sport to the lives of all our young people; by providing a better focus, through a restructured Sports Council, for sports administration; by providing, via the National Lottery, for the facilities that will see us and the rising generation of sportsmen and women well into the next century; and, finally, by ensuring that this country becomes again a magnet for international sporting events with facilities, sportsmanship and sporting heroes to rival the best in the world.
8.10 p.m.
Lord Howell: My Lords, perhaps I may thank everyone who has taken part in what has been an excellent debate, which has been well received by the House and long overdue. The general attitude of noble Lords has been nostalgic as well as practical. I congratulate especially the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, on her contribution, not least because she was the only noble Baroness to speak. That was the one disappointment to me. Since more than half the nation is made up of that sex, they should be well represented in debates of this kind, so we are especially grateful to her.
The noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, properly reminded us of the importance of heroes. There is nothing wrong with people worshipping heroes so long as they are the right kind of heroes. He and other noble Lords, especially the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall,
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drew our attention to some of our heroes of yester-year. I wonder whether it is in order —I am sure I carry the whole House with me—if I mention the name of Mr. Peter May, a friend of mine, who welded his great skills over the years to a basic integrity, an example we should do well to further in all our sports at the present time. He provided pleasure and is an inspiration for all of us.
The Minister talked about the National Lottery. I am glad that the matter is to be monitored by the Home Office. There is no room for complacency. There is evidence. The Treasury must know how much tax is coming into its coffers each week from the pools, and that this is a matter of great concern to many of us. We hope that the Minister will be able to persuade his colleagues to take early action, otherwise we shall have to return to the matter.
The debate has been well balanced. It has matched philosophy with practicality: school sport and club sport on the one hand against the importance of international sport on the other. As I say, I am most appreciative of the spirit in which the debate has taken place, and beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

National Health Patient Accommodation Bill [H.L.]
8.13 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
First, I thank the noble Viscount the Leader of the House for finding the time for the Bill, those who intend to take part in the debate, and those who have assured me of their support, although they are unable to speak. I should take the opportunity also to thank the great many members of the public who have written and telephoned me supporting the Bill. They come from all parts of the country. They have all given accounts of the great distress they, their relatives and friends have suffered as a result of mixed-sex wards. Every letter has been in favour of the Bill. I have them here. There are well over 200 of them.
I have been in this place (the House of Commons or the House of Lords) for 25 years, and that is the largest number of individual letters—they are all individually written— that I have ever received, even during the abortion debates of the 1970s. I imagine that the Department of Health has also received a great many letters. I cannot possibly reply to them individually, but I acknowledge their receipt, and say how pleased I am and how useful they are.
The Bill is a simple one. It is designed to give patients throughout the UK a statutory right to be treated in single-sex wards. One would have thought that that was an unexceptional right. In addition, one would have thought that the only surprise is that the right does not already exist. The timing of the Bill's Second Reading is, coincidently of the best, coming as it does on the very day of the revised Patient's Charter. Unfortunately we were unable to see it until today so we have been unable to assimilate its import completely. However, we

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know that it incorporates the aim of single-sex wards, but unfortunately it does not give the patients the right to be treated in such wards. The Bill seeks to do just that.
Perhaps I may quote briefly from the Patient's Charter. It says:
"Except in emergencies, you have the right to be told before you go into a hospital whether it is planned to care for you in a ward for men and women. In all cases you can expect single-sex"—
not demand—
"washing and toilet facilities. If you would prefer to be cared for in single-sex accommodation (either a single-sex ward or a `bay' area within a larger ward which offers equal privacy), your wishes will be respected wherever possible".
No right is given in today's Patient's Charter for a person to be treated in single-sex accommodation.
My interest in the subject was aroused by our late dear colleague Lady Phillips who was treated in a mixed-sex ward following an accident. She was most upset at the experience, but did not complain publicly in case any complaint was construed as a criticism of the health service or of the nursing or medical staff. That is the tone which goes right through the letters that I have received.
Fortunately, there have been people and organisations prepared to campaign for single-sex wards and to restore choice and dignity to patients in the NHS. The Royal College of Nursing has been especially concerned about mixed-sex wards, and their extension and growth. It has done marvellous work in raising public awareness and highlighting the problems attaching to them for patients and nurses.
Many of the letters that I have received have come from qualified nurses with first-hand experience of the indignity, distress, stress, suffering, and, I fear, danger which arise from the mixed-ward system. As well as the RCN, the Patients' Association, especially Dr. Patricia Wilkie, has done extensive research on mixed-sex wards, which has shown conclusively that they are not satisfactory nursing units and that the majority of patients is opposed to such wards. The College of Health has also done work on this. Again, it is in favour of the Bill. The National Federation of Women's Institutes has received many complaints, and has recorded its opposition to mixed-sex wards. I have had letters from individual women's institutes. Those organisations, working, as they have, so hard, have been fighting a hard and difficult battle, apparently without too much help until some elements of the national media decided to lend a hand. We should be grateful to them for that.
BBC "Woman's Hour", for example, has put on at least two serious programmes about mixed-sex wards, and the public's reaction was positively against them. The Daily Mail also is to be congratulated on devoting a good deal of time, energy and space to the problem. Glaring banner headlines are not always relevant to serious issues, but the headline in the Daily Mail, "Shut the wards of shame", was spot on. So, in fact, was the material that backed it up, including the host of letters from its readers opposing mixed-sex wards. The public reaction was against mixed-sex wards. It was immediate
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and angry, as it was following the publication of another article on the subject in last week's issue of Woman's Weekly.
Without such hard campaigning, we should not have had any action by government, nor would the Bill have been before the House tonight. I wish to pay tribute to all those organisations to whom the credit is due for following the matter up.
We should ask when and why mixed-sex wards were allowed to develop. After all, before the war, when health and hospitals were meagrely financed compared with today, mixed-sex wards would have been unthinkable. Imagine any matron of a hospital allowing mixed-sex wards. I am sure that no one here tonight can imagine that. Apparently, the wards were allowed to be introduced in the 1960s and 1970s in order to make the best use of new high technology equipment. I find that reasoning quite unacceptable. There is more to nursing and medical treatment than high-tech equipment. The state of mind of the patient must be considered and an anxious patient can have his or her recovery seriously retarded by that anxiety.
Furthermore, many people who have never shared a house let alone a bedroom with a person of the opposite sex suddenly find themselves sharing bedroom accommodation in mixed-sex wards and sharing toilet and lavatory facilities without locks on doors. People of the opposite sex wander around half naked, having embarrassing treatments if not in sight certainly within sound.
The Nursing Times in a survey last year revealed some disturbing information. Perhaps I may quote one or two of its findings. I do not wish to bore the House, but the survey was so good that your Lordships should hear about it. It stated:
"Nurses who had themselves become patients found the experience of being nursed in a mixed-sex ward 'unbearable'. One nurse who had become a patient summed up the feelings of several by stating that while 'not considering herself a prude' she found the whole experience 'totally degrading"'.
It continued:
"One nurse, three weeks after having undergone a mastectomy, was readmitted as an emergency with a pulmonary embolism and found she was the only female in a six-bedded male bay. She was upset and embarrassed by these circumstances. As she states, had it not been for the fact that she was acutely aware of her need for heparinisation, she would have discharged herself".
The study stated:
"With regard to toilet facilities, 44 per cent. of wards surveyed did not designate the toilets for males or females. Patients found privacy problems also arose when they could not close toilet doors while in a wheelchair…
"Also, many patients do not appear to be informed before admission that they may be nursed on a mixed-sex ward.
"Half the nurses surveyed had received complaints about the mixed-sex setting from patients, and almost as many from relatives or friends of patients. Often, patients would talk to relatives about their misgivings over arrangements of the sexes, not wanting to cause a fuss or appear critical of the nurses".
People do not complain because they are pleased with the nursing facilities but not with the accommodation. The study continued:
"As a result of this, most complaints were informal, being verbally passed on to staff. Patients rarely wished to make their complaints formal … Arguments in favour of mixed-sex wards

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include the fact that they reflect the normal pattern of life as the majority of the population live in this type of environment. However, as several staff in the survey stated, individuals in `normal' life choose with whom to share their bedroom and bathroom. It is particularly distressing for those who have remained single, those from religious orders or some ethnic groups, for example, to be placed in this situation".
Finally, the RCN writes:
"A single-sex environment during a period of illness and vulnerability can be restful and supportive … To find an 85 year-old woman lying in her nightdress near a man she does not know cannot be acceptable".
That survey was based upon the shoal of horror stories that I have received and I shall quote from one or two. One lady wrote:
"Some years ago, I was in hospital after an operation. The ward consisted of three females and a man in a bed by the door. He was slightly 'simple' and kept coming over to my bed, which he was convinced was his. I told him to go away but when I was talking to another patient he came over and got into my bed!".
Another lady writes:
"I would be horrified to have to be treated amongst men. I am a pensioner and have been single all my life and the thought of having my privacy violated in such a way appalls me".
I have a letter from a retired consultant who stated that, as a university lecturer in clinical medicine, he spent his professional life working for peanuts to prop up the NHS. He continues:
"My wife was a midwife, health visitor and nurse instructor. Now we are in need of care ourselves we resent the ultimate indignity of being treated like animals. Even in the old NHS, with all its shortcomings, this did not happen".
Finally, I have a letter from someone who went to the local hospital for fairly major abdominal surgery. She states:
"I received excellent medical care and extremely good food. The ward was a mixed-sex ward however which caused me both embarrassment and stress. Most of the men were recovering from prostate operations and they frequently wandered around the ward, naked from the waist down. On one occasion I was naked in the bathroom (no lock!) when a man barged in and yet another one followed me into the toilet".
Those are one or two of the hundreds of horror stories that I received about mixed-sex wards. They show exactly the flavour of what is happening in our hospitals.
It is clear that NHS patients are not being treated with the respect and consideration to which they are entitled. I fear that they are too often treated as though they are the recipients of charitable services rather than as part owners of their National Health Service. We must always remember that. We must understand that the NHS belongs to the people and that when they are patients in hospital they are entitled to have their dignity and choices respected as well as first-class nursing and medical treatment. This cannot be done unless people are given the right to be treated in single-sex wards. That is fundamental to the maintenance of patients' dignity and choice.
The new standards in the Patient's Charter will go some way towards alleviating the problem. But as the RCN points out in its briefing paper, the new standards are not legally enforceable and it therefore urges support for this Bill.
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Indeed, at present, perhaps as many as 40 per cent. of patients are being treated in mixed-sex wards. That figure is increasing in spite of the present provisions of the Patient's Charter, which provides that there should be respect for privacy, dignity and religious and cultural beliefs.
Indeed, I received a fax this afternoon from the College of Health after it had read the new Patient's Charter. It supports my Bill and says that the new Patient's Charter does not go far enough. The fax states:
"While the new Patient's Charter… goes a long way towards accommodating patient choice, it does not go far enough".
Therefore, I believe that we need this Bill. It has become very clear indeed that the public support it. I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading this evening and that following that, it will be given a smooth passage during its remaining stages in this House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—
(Lard Stoddart of Swindon.)
8.31 p.m.
Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, I feel that I am the first on what some may call a "women only" list. That in itself is an interesting fact and shows how strongly women feel about this matter.
I wish to speak briefly and to give my whole hearted support for the spirit of the Bill introduced so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. I understand fully the aims of the Bill; namely, to promote the dignity, privacy and choices of patients. As the noble Lord said, it is fortuitous that the Bill is being debated today as those principles are also a central feature of the new expanded Patient's Charter which has been published only today and which contains new standards in relation to the issue of mixed wards. It stresses the importance of patients' own preferences.
I have felt uneasy ever since I heard about the practice of mixed wards in hospitals. I am sure that some young people, and perhaps some older people, accept and may even welcome such a practice. But the majority of those in our hospitals are probably older and have been brought up in a different era. Mixed wards are anathema to many of them and the thought of being an in-patient in such circumstances could possibly make them miserable and, indeed, could be detrimental to their health and recovery. Some may feel that their dignity is being compromised and may long for privacy.
Colleagues have approached me on this subject and I know that that is the experience of other noble Lords too. But the one point which concerns me is that although I applaud people having choice in this matter, whenever possible, I feel that the legislative approach may be too rigid. There may be occasions, for example where people need intensive care when, because of the nature of the condition, it is essential to have a bed immediately. Even for patients admitted from the waiting lists, other factors such as the length of the wait may be extremely important. I am aware that long-established practices cannot be changed overnight. But the NHS has achieved so much in recent years, with

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management becoming much more responsive to the wishes of patients so the public debate on this issue will no doubt be taken on board.
Therefore, although I am extremely sympathetic to the aims of the Bill and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, on bringing the matter before the House, it is important to retain some flexibility. The measures outlined in the Patient's Charter, which are the result of the Government having listened to patients' views, are the best way forward. At this stage, I do not believe that there is a need for legislation to deal with this matter.
8.35 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, for bringing this Bill before your Lordships. I hope that the noble Lord enjoys being a one-man band and I hope also that all noble Baronesses will support the Bill.
Looking back over the years since the practice of mixed wards emerged, I am now surprised that this legislation was not introduced at that time.
Some years ago, before the new National Spine Unit was built at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and the wards for paralysed people were Nightingale wards, I went to visit a Roman Catholic nun who wished to discuss with me some problems that she had. I found her in a mixed ward placed between two footballers. The two young men shouted across her. It may have been the idea of the nursing staff to put her in that position so that the two young men would behave better. She was a quiet, uncomplaining person who no doubt believed that that was yet another cross which she had to bear.
I hope that this legislation will make the nursing staff more sensitive to the needs of patients. Wherever possible, patients should be given a choice. Hospitals can be extremely intimidating and hospital staff, when overworked and frustrated, may ignore patients' wishes and put their own wishes first.
The Government have brought out charters, including the Patient's Charter, the updated version of which has been published today. But charters are words which may or may not be adhered to Legislation is more likely to make people act on the contents.
Last year an aunt of mine in Scotland fractured her femur. The pin slipped and she was in great discomfort. She is in her nineties. One night, when there were very few night staff on duty in the hospital, a man got into her bed. She was most upset, as were her family.
I hope that the Minister will take very seriously the Bill which is before us. Hospital security is almost non-existent compared with that in many other organisations. Patients and visitors wander all over the place with no questions being asked. Some people feel most embarrassed and uneasy when placed in a hospital situation among the opposite sex, particularly when they have to share lavatories and washing facilities which are often rather inadequate. Members of both sexes may feel equally uncomfortable. It is not advisable to lock the lavatory door when patients are ill in case they become even more ill or get stuck. Therefore, any kind of privacy is a problem.
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On Monday I told two young Australian girls who are in their twenties and visiting Britain about this Bill. They told me that they did not realise that there could be mixed wards. They were shocked and said "We hope we do not become ill in Britain".
As has been said, there is very strong support for this legislation. I did not realise how strongly people felt about this matter until I asked around. I believe that one should exclude from the legislation accident and emergency departments, intensive care units and even day wards. That could be achieved by amendment in your Lordships' House. I hope that that will satisfy the anxieties of the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe. In such instances it would be neither practical nor necessary. But for other wards, I believe that a choice is essential if there is to be peace of mind and contentment for patients.
The Royal College of Nursing has brought to our notice how upsetting it may be for someone who has been sexually abused to be placed in a mixed ward. I am glad that the Royal College of Nursing is supporting this Bill. With such a shortage of hospital beds and the really horrific stories of people not getting into hospital when seriously ill—I know the Minister knows about some of those cases—there is immense pressure on hospital staff. That is why this legislation is so important now.
If Parliament passes this Bill it will cost little in money terms but it will please many people. To move a bed around is not difficult although to provide some more lavatories and washing facilities may cost something. I can see no reason why the Government would not want to have this Bill. I hope that it goes through Parliament quickly, but that enough time will be given for hospitals to get themselves organised. Hospitals can become very factory-like with almost a conveyor belt approach. We should not forget that patients are people and personal wishes should be met whenever possible. We are only asking for human dignity to be given to very vulnerable people.
8.41 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing this Bill because something like it is certainly needed—although, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, says, we may have to look at possible amendments later—because the distress which is caused to patients and to their relatives by the present system is considerable. As far as I could discover there is nothing in the existing legislation, past or present, which prevented the practice we are discussing from happening, but it seems to have grown up very much in the 1980s. No one has ever explained, to my satisfaction, why it has happened. I wonder whether, in her summing up this evening, the noble Baroness could explain the rationale behind it. I cannot believe that this just happened; there must be some reason for it. However, this practice has been unpopular right from the beginning.
I have been unfortunate enough to have had a number of fairly lengthy stays in hospital in earlier years. The lack of privacy in a hospital ward is always the greatest problem. It is always a difficulty for some patients.

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Perhaps there are others who do not mind it, but I believe the majority of patients mind it very much. Sharing wards with members of the opposite sex—this applies to the male point of view and the female point of view—adds to the stress at a time when the patient is most vulnerable. I would ask the Minister not to think that because most of the speakers in tonight's debate are female it is the females who object solely to this matter. I have talked to a number of men about this matter. If one talks to them in a group they feel obliged to take a macho view and say that they do not mind one way or the other. However, if one speaks to them privately, it is quite a different story. They do not like mixed sex wards. They find that just as embarrassing and as difficult as do females.
Objections to the practice go across all age groups. The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, suggested that it was mostly older women who objected to mixed wards but that is not so. Often young women feel vulnerable when they are put into a mixed ward, especially one which contains many older men. Objections to the practice of mixed wards go across both sexes and all age groups. As the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, has made clear to us, the objections are shared by many people in the profession.
I have made a point of talking to everyone I could reach on this matter since this Bill was conceived. I have found a unanimous opinion in favour of the Bill and against the idea of mixed sex wards. The growth in the practice seems to me to be symptomatic of the trend towards treating patients as units of work to be counted, rather than as people. I think that is something we should seek to reverse from this moment on. The Patient's Charter is not an answer to this problem. However, I accept that it draws attention to the problem. Like the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, I wish to quote from the Patient's Charter. It ends:
"you have the choice of accepting immediate admission or waiting for single-sex accommodation to become available".
But what choice is that? If one is in discomfort or in pain or if one has a job and one needs to return to it, that is no choice at all. One may well take the option of mixed sex wards and regret it within 24 hours. I applaud the fact that the Patient's Charter has taken this matter on board but that is not enough. Legislation may not be the answer. Perhaps there are other ways of tackling this matter. I agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Seccombe and Lady Masham, that in certain circumstances, such as in intensive care units and perhaps in casualty wards, one may not have a choice. But why cannot one have a choice in the vast majority of wards where admissions are planned and where patients tend to be grouped according to their complaint, whatever it is? There is no reason at all why the choice which existed before 1980 should not continue to exist. I wish this Bill well and I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading.
8.45 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord for bringing this Bill forward. I am sure other noble Lords as well as noble Baronesses are with us in spirit at least. I welcome the new
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provisions in the Patient's Charter which require prospective patients to be warned—as they already are in some hospitals—that they may have to go to a mixed ward, so that they have some choice in principle. I welcome the Secretary of State's expressed preference for a patient-led rather than a cost-led regime. Nevertheless, I would argue strongly for a statutory right to be enshrined in legislation. It will be said that this limits the flexibility and the choice of the managers, but I think that can and should be solved by better planning—if the French can do it, why cannot we?—and that patients need choice more than the managers do.
It will also be said that they have that choice now, but do they? Many of them are old and confused and some are young and uncertain of themselves. All are under stress and are very vulnerable. It is only too easy for such people to be daunted when told that if they choose not to go into a mixed ward, they may have to wait for some unpredictable time. They will be anxious and fear waiting. They will be afraid to "make a fuss" or be "difficult".
We are told that mixed wards are necessary, first, because they are the only economical way to use scarce high technology and, secondly, because they create therapeutic conditions aimed at providing a "normal" environment. The first argument is, of course, valid for intensive care units with their special teams of doctors and nurses and their high-tech equipment. There is no other way to care properly for desperately ill patients needing such care. But I find the second argument amazing, except in so far as it relates to day rooms where convalescent patients may spend some time each day. But for patients needing nursing and who are ill in bed and at their most vulnerable, with their resources and resistance at their lowest ebb, I can think of nothing more terrible than to be obliged to undergo clinical procedures, examination, and answer intimate questions where they can be overheard, if not seen, by a number of strangers who may be of the other sex. No one would want this to happen in sight or hearing of members of their own family. Curtains or screens do little to achieve privacy in such situations. Beds are often very close to one another and using bedpans or commodes in such conditions is deeply embarrassing for patients whatever their sex.
There are other major factors to be considered. Misery and embarrassment, especially for people already weakened by illness, must, it seems to me, cause severe clinical stress. It must be very difficult indeed for the nurses to nurse people in this condition, and it must in turn create stress for them. It is said that many people do not complain: it is their families who do so on their behalf. I can believe it. There are many people who would be thankful to have had their operation or treatment and feel obscurely that it was not right to complain, especially with those nice nurses doing their best. But such people, according to the Patients Association—to whom I am indebted for the examples I propose to quote—only too often discharge themselves prematurely as their only way of getting home and achieving the privacy and dignity they should have been able to enjoy in hospital. That cannot be good.

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Now let us consider the therapeutic advantage of a mixed ward as conducive to a normal environment. To quote some examples cited in letters to the Patients Association, how "normal" do noble Lords think it is for women, young or old, to be surrounded by men with catheters and colostomy bags often moving slowly and painfully the length of the ward to the lavatories, or, if they are confused, wandering about at night; or, for a man with advanced cancer to be the only man in a ward full of women; or for a shy young 17 year-old girl to be alone in a men's ward? Many people find nakedness distressing and even offensive, and we all long to be alone, private and unobserved when we are really ill. Illness is a very personal matter. It is just as embarrassing for the patients who are obliged to be privy to someone else's physical ills as for the patient himself or herself. I feel embarrassed when I stay with friends and have to go to the lavatory at night knowing that there is a loudly creaking board outside my host's bedroom door. That is bad enough. How much worse a night in a mixed ward of strangers must be.
I think that I may have said enough about the stress that this policy of mixed wards must cause—convenient though it obviously must be for managers trying to use accommodation sensibly. I know, too, that in at least some hospitals although the ward is open plan the bays afford a degree of privacy.
However, when it comes down to it, we are talking about two things: human dignity and common sense; and they go together on this occasion. The Patient's Charter states that people must be treated with sensitivity and dignity. Human dignity is one of the most important rights and it is compatible with common sense in the Bill. It does not make sense to add to stress for both patients and nurses; and it is nonsense to pretend that the conditions in a mixed ward of possibly confused patients have any connection with a "normal" environment.
To sum up, a real choice must be offered, with none of the element of subliminal blackmail: for example, "If you cannot agree to a mixed ward, it is difficult to say when you can be fitted in". I really believe that the only way to ensure that choice is to create a statutory right.
8.51 p.m.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton: My Lords, first, as other noble Lords have done, I thank my noble friend for introducing the Bill. It is long overdue. Like my noble friend Lady Nicol, I believe that we have allowed a situation to arise which should not have occurred. We should have been more aware of the problem some time earlier. It is also important to stress that the Bill is in no way a criticism of the nursing or hospital staff. We need to repeat that constantly.
I believe that it is easier to understand the logic underlying the introduction of mixed-sex hospital wards. It was expected to be more efficient, to make better use of staffing resources and to ensure the maximum use of expensive and specialist equipment by putting near each other patients with the same or similar complaints irrespective of sex. But when the practice started in the
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1960s and 1970s, it was not envisaged that men and women would find themselves in adjacent beds. That is now the situation in nearly half the wards.
As my noble friend Lord Stoddart and others have said, it is not difficult to appreciate, understand and sympathise with the elderly or not so elderly man or woman who has never experienced being in a state of undress in front of a member of the opposite sex, and the embarrassment that that causes. Recently I asked a man how he felt about the issue. He said that he had not really thought about it until he recently visited an aunt in hospital and realised that she was in a state of shock. She had woken up and discovered that there was a man in the next bed. That illustrated the position clearly to me.
I note and regret that, apart from my noble friend Lord Stoddart, all the speakers in the debate are women. As my noble friend Lady Nicol said, this is not a women-only issue. However, I wondered whether men regarded the issue in the same way that I did. I took some soundings. I asked a group of men of different ages how they would feel if they were to be placed in a mixed-sex ward. Without exception they expressed horror that they might find themselves in that situation. It was clear that privacy is as important to them as it is to women, and that to be in a mixed-sex ward would cause them great embarrassment.
It is regrettable that no noble Lords felt able to speak tonight in support of the Bill. It would be interesting to have another sounding to find out why they are not present. Perhaps their embarrassment is greater than ours in discussing the issue.
I wished also to find out the views of young women. I wondered whether I was becoming older, had not kept up with modern thinking and was somehow out of fashion. I found that young women were equally as concerned about having their privacy invaded. I spoke to my hairdresser on the subject last week. Her immediate reaction was that she really would not care if she were in a mixed-sex ward. About two or three minutes later, she returned and said, "I've thought about the matter now and I don't think I would be happy about it. It may depend what I had gone in for. Certainly if I had gone in for any condition which was sexually related in any way I would feel a great deal of embarrassment". It is when people think about the consequences of the policy that they realise the real difficulties.
The multi-racial nature of Britain means that for some such close contact with a stranger of the opposite sex is against their religion, culture and teachings. We have a responsibility to respect that view. The RCN states that in mental health wards female patients, in particular those who have been sexually abused in the past, may find the close proximity of disturbed males distressing.
I appreciate that unfortunately there is no provision to cover hospitals in the Sex Discrimination Act. I sought to find out why there was no such provision in the Act. I discovered that at the time no one had contemplated that such a situation would ever occur and therefore it was not necessary to include the provision. Nevertheless, the principles within the Act relating to communal accommodation are relevant, in particular with regard to decency in terms of washing and toilet

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facilities. Any circumstance which does not allow privacy, decency and dignity in those circumstances is in breach of the principles of the Sex Discrimination Act.
Noble Lords have referred to the revised Patient's Charter. The fact that there is reference to the issue in the charter means that the Government have acknowledged that it is a matter that has to be dealt with. However, welcome though the provisions of the Patient's Charter are, I agree with others that they do not go far enough. The provision that a patient receiving non-urgent treatment shall be informed in advance as to whether he will be accommodated in a mixed-sex ward does not assist patients in hospital for more urgent treatment. Hospitals are expected to respect the wishes wherever possible of those patients who prefer to be cared for in a single-sex ward or single-sex bay. How many unfortunate patients will be deprived of their wishes because of the phrase "wherever possible"?
I firmly believe that without legislation the Government are rightly identifying the problem but are not putting machinery in place to solve it. Although it may need amendment, the Bill should be enacted in order to satisfy the growing number of complaints and so protect the rights of the very sick and vulnerable.
8.59 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for introducing the Bill with such courage into what is virtually a single-sex debate—and that not his. He is outnumbered nine to one by the ladies. I am glad to see that there is some minimal male support in the Chamber for him.
The noble Lord referred to Lady Phillips. I remember often visiting her in Westminster Hospital, a shimmering vision in lilac, who muttered to me sotto voce, "Too many men in here, dear".
The Government's new Patient's Charter hopes to respect, wherever possible, the wishes of patients who prefer to be cared for in a single-sex ward, or single-sex bay. The noble Lord, by this very modest Bill, is seeking to enshrine the Government's thinking in legal tablets of stone so that it cannot blow away in the light winds of inconvenience.
I support the noble Lord, as does the Royal College of Nursing. It believes that patient choice and the right to privacy are both key to maintaining an environment conducive to the recovery of health. It is also very concerned about the rising number of complaints about mixed-sex wards. Half of all wards now accommodate both sexes. According to some estimates, there are no separate washing and toilet facilities in two-thirds of these wards. In Nightingale-type wards without alcoves, men may be on one side and women opposite. In some cases, male and female patients are even being placed in adjacent beds. As my noble friend Lady Park said most movingly, patients in hospital are already having to bear pain and illness, while at the same time having to adjust to a non-home environment. To have to face also the loss of personal privacy can be the last straw. Loss of privacy may be particularly upsetting to elderly people who are confused.
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Most of the people whose opinions I have canvassed on the matter and who are strongly in favour of privacy are ladies. However, I should say that my husband—who is neither elderly nor confused, and although he sits in the Peeresses' Box he is not a Lady—says that he would not feel comfortable in a hospital ward surrounded by a lot of strange ladies. Many noble Lords whom I have asked agree with my husband.
The original meaning of "hospital", which comes from old French or low Latin, was a place to entertain guests. Later it extended to mean a school for children or a place to house the sick or the elderly. Now, it usually means a place where people go to be cared for and to get well. To revert to the original meaning, the patients there are all guests, made welcome and tended by the dedicated staff of doctors and nurses. But even the most dedicated of healers cannot make someone well who turns his face to the wall. Personal choice and personal privacy are both vital factors for a patient's recovery.
9.3 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I also wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and to welcome his introduction of the Bill to provide a right to single-sex accommodation for National Health Service patients. His introduction was complete and covered all the aspects and speakers since then have added to the knowledge that we have all gained of what people feel on the subject. There is no doubt that the Government are also aware of it, or they would not have introduced a revised Patient's Charter. But a revised Patient's Charter is not enough, we are all agreed. It is not adequate because it does not give the patient any legal right not to be cared for in a mixed-sex ward. The standards set out in the charter—welcome though they are—are not legally binding.
It was long ago in the 1960s and 1970s that mixed-sex wards were first introduced into the National Health Service. It was done at that time for one reason: to make the best use of high technology equipment, particularly in intensive care units. However, even at that time the intention was to have separate alcoves for men and women. We have heard from all the speakers this evening that now almost half the wards accommodate both sexes without separate facilities for washing or separate toilet facilities for men and women.
We must put ourselves in the position of an ordinary person going into hospital and being put in a mixed-sex ward. We are vocal enough, if we do not like it, to create a rumpus until someone moved us to a ward in which we would like to stay. The majority of people who have to make use of the health service and who go to general practitioners have a fear of offending anyone to do with the health service. Even in discussing the problem with their own GP they are not vocal. They accept what is handed to them, but they suffer in the process. I believe that we need a Bill to give them a statutory right. Then perhaps patients will have the courage to ask for what they want. We in this House are vocal, the majority of people are not.

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As to the use of mixed-sex wards for mental health patients and the elderly, it is defended on the grounds that it helps to provide a more normal lifestyle. How many of us in normal life look forward to sharing our bedroom with a complete stranger? Is that normal life? Of course it is not. There is no excuse for introducing that system in mental health hospitals or in dealing with the elderly. As has already been mentioned by other speakers, many female patients particularly in mental health wards, may have suffered sexual abuse and are frightened of seeing disturbed males walking about, sharing their ward with them.
We realise that there are perhaps occasions, such as emergencies, when the mixed-sex ward has to be used. But it should be a purpose-built unit where there are proper divisions between the male and the female sexes. We accept that. Under the Bill that would be perfectly acceptable. Where a patient, perhaps through an emergency, has to be put into a mixed-sex ward, but subsequently feels uncomfortable, it is essential that the patient should be found a bed in a single-sex ward within 24 hours.
I do not think that anybody who has listened to this debate will have any doubts about the strong feeling that exists all round the country on this matter. I agree with all the former speakers who paid tribute to that gallant gentleman, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, who initiated this debate. It is rather interesting to note that the previous debate had only one noble Baroness speaking in it. Here we have only one noble Lord speaking. But that is not because the feeling is less strong among men. I know that from my own personal experience. When my husband was taken into hospital having fallen from his horse, he was immediately concerned about the fact that he was in a mixed-sex ward. But he was vocal, and within a few hours he had been moved to the right accommodation.
Whatever standards are advised in the revised Patient's Charter, they are welcomed. We approve of them. But they are no good unless they are backed by a statutory right. We welcome the Bill.
9.10 p.m.
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on introducing this Bill. With his customary clarity and great force, he has highlighted an issue which is clearly of great concern to many patients, to their relatives and to those who work in the health service. I am particularly pleased that my noble friend tonight deploys his formidable forensic skills to develop an argument with which I can strongly sympathise. As he knows, that has not always been the case when we have debated health policy in this House.
As everybody who has spoken this evening has recorded, the history of the development of mixed-sex wards is very unclear. What is clear is that at no stage, so far as I can discover, was a general NHS policy decision taken to extend the practice indiscriminately; and I could discover no one in the professional, medical or nursing organisations who seems officially to have encouraged and sanctioned the widespread use of mixed-sex accommodation. There were no national
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consultations and no discussions with professional bodies about this destruction on a rather casual basis of people's privacy. The only record that the RCN could find for me of the history of its attitude to the issue, going back several years, was that 15 years ago the Nursing Mirror had reported:
"There is little doubt that mixed wards have multiplied without a great deal of public awareness or official vigilance".
As we have heard, that situation has gone on and on. It has been exacerbated, I am sure, in the past few years by reductions in the overall number of beds and competition between trust managers to maximise so-called "patient throughput". Bed management has become an end in itself rather than good care for the patients in those beds.
I must say that I was very surprised to learn that now half of all wards accommodate both sexes, and I am particularly disturbed to learn that in two-thirds of these wards there are no separate toilet or washing facilities. I understand that in some large cities, and particularly in London, that percentage is even higher. In view of those facts it is not surprising that, as my noble friend Lord Stoddart recorded, in its recent survey the Nursing Times found that half the nurses who had worked in mixed-sex wards reported strong complaints about accommodation.
We have heard tonight from every speaker powerful evidence of how distressing many people—particularly, as has been said, elderly patients—find this situation. As my noble friend Lord Stoddart and others who have spoken described, people who are physically ill usually feel frightened and vulnerable as well. Personally, I agree with those who said that it applies to all age groups and not just to the elderly.
It must be obvious that anyone who is in hospital to be treated, to be made better, needs reassurance and a sense of security. They should not be asked to suffer from further assaults on what is already a fragile system. However skilful medical and nursing care may be, it can well be undermined if a patient is made anxious and upset by being in a mixed-sex ward. I am particularly alarmed by the accounts of people who have discharged themselves early because they just cannot stand another night on a ward. Such cases may well contribute to the serious growth in emergency readmissions to hospital in the past year.
As many noble Lords have described, there are a few circumstances—such as emergencies and intensive care units—where mixed-sex accommodation can be legitimate for therapeutic reasons. I agree with those who have said that as my noble friend's Bill progresses there may well need to be amendments to take account of those exceptions. But for most instances and for most patients there seems to be absolutely no clinical argument for continuing this system. We have certainly heard none tonight. Instead, we have heard that as well as being medically irrelevant, mixed-sex wards breach the fundamental NHS principle that patients must be treated with dignity and respect. In spite of all the recent policy emphasis on patient choice, hospitals are clearly not responding sympathetically to the wishes of

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individuals. As my noble friend Lady Nicol so graphically put it, patients are becoming units of work to be counted and are not being treated as people.
Many noble Lords have commented on the fact that the Government have today launched the revised Patient's Charter. It has been launched with great fanfare and no little expense. The revised charter includes references to information and choice about single-sex wards and, very importantly, sets better standards for washing and toilet facilities. It would be very foolish not to view the publication as a step forward. I see it as a considerable victory for those like my noble friend Lord Stoddart and others who have campaigned on this issue.
I am sure that when she comes to reply the Minister will say that the problem is now solved. But, as all the other contributors to this debate have said, with the notable exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, the question is whether the charter goes far enough and whether it will stick. The Secretary of State has already been reported as saying that she will not accept excuses from those local trusts that do not conform to the new guidelines. However, with nearly 500 independent hospital trusts and very little upward accountability under the new devolved health service, how can she possibly know? What sanctions can be applied when local chief executives, who are competing with their neighbours and facing resource pressures, simply do not implement national guidelines? It is these concerns that drive my noble friend's Bill for statutory rights.
I also hope that we can nurture an effective consumers' movement in the NHS. Several speakers tonight have explained precisely why patients have been inhibited, both by gratitude and fear, from insisting on their rights and complaining. Personally, I believe that that can change. I have been encouraged by my personal experience with two groups of patients: women who are using maternity services and people with HIV disease. Both groups of NHS users have been effective in influencing services, particularly in making them more humane and responsive to their individual needs. After all, we are constantly told that the new NHS is importing commercial methods and standards. Although I deplore a great deal of this, there is no reason why we cannot have the good as well as the bad of the commercial system. If patients can be persuaded to treat the health service like a service industry they will naturally expect and insist on high standards of personal care in all things, ranging from good food to single-sex accommodation. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Stoddart will not approve of this example, but it is precisely that kind of consumer pressure that I wish to encourage in the health service that has led to smoking being banned on airlines, to extended opening hours for banks and—dare I say it—to longer shopping hours.
We must all work to create a strong consumer voice in the NHS. Obviously, this will take time. I believe that in the short term practice can also be effectively influenced through the local contract system. Every health purchasing authority or commissioning agency—whatever you call it—has received a huge number of complaints about mixed-sex wards. Through their local
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contracting/purchasing plans they can change how their local providers, the hospitals, operate. For example, I draw your Lordships' attention to the recent prospectus of so-called commissioning intentions published by the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Health Authority in central London. It states:
"The Agency is aware of the long-standing unpopularity of mixed sex wards … The Agency wishes to work with its local hospitals to improve this situation over time but"—
and this is the immediate action to be taken—
"for 1995/96 [the agency] no longer wishes to contract for general medical services, for care of the elderly, or for acute and continuing care psychiatric services which do not have a single sex bay policy—with single rooms available on the ward to make this policy work well operationally".
In other words, it will not buy those services if patient single-sex accommodation is not offered. In the past few days I have spoken to purchasing directors and managers in other parts of the country. I understand that directing hospital management in that way through contractual conditions is becoming more and more common. It seems to me that it must lead fairly rapidly to widespread changes in practice.
In conclusion, I again congratulate most warmly my noble friend Lord Stoddart for introducing the Bill. As I said earlier, he has succeeded in focusing attention on a system which is generally unpopular and has often undermined the high standards of the health service. I do not believe that it is too fanciful to suggest that if my noble friend and other campaigners had not taken up this issue, we might well not have seen today's action by the Department of Health. But through today's U-turn on different sex wards, the Government have acknowledged that the situation deserves urgent national attention.
Like other noble Lords, I welcome the revised Patient's Charter, but I hope that, when the Minister replies, she will not insist that its publication alone is enough to protect the rights of vulnerable patients.
9.20 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, for bringing the Bill before the House and thank him for the opportunity he has given us to debate an issue which we recognise is causing much public concern. If noble Lords will allow a personal note, as a convent girl steeped in modesty, I have to say that I entirely agree with the aims of the noble Lord's Bill. I can assure him that the Government welcome this debate to improve further the quality of service offered in the National Health Service.
Noble Lords will know that mixed-sex accommodation is not a new idea. As the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said, it has been widely used for the past 30 years. The flexible use of beds has played a part in reducing waiting times for admission. In the past five years average waiting times have almost halved. The flexible use of beds has also enabled the establishment of specialised wards, such as for gastro-enterology and cardiology, which enhance the quality of clinical care given by concentrating specialist skills.

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Mixed accommodation has not been at the whim or fancy of the Government. In 1978, the Royal College of Nursing issued guidelines which recognised that in some circumstances mixed-sex wards could have a positive and therapeutic value. Two years ago, in 1992, the Audit Commission's report Lying in Wait advised that it was more important and more clinically effective for patients to be treated in single specialty wards than in single-sex wards.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, mentioned psychiatric wards which have mixed accommodation. I feel that the noble Baroness will agree that it is acceptable during the day and evening to have both sexes in the same ward and that it can benefit patients as part of their rehabilitation. But we agree with her that privacy at night must be respected. That is also true of wards for people with learning difficulties and for people whose home is in the hospital and where a more homely atmosphere is sought. But as long-stay wards for people with such conditions are being phased out it is less of an issue and, thankfully, more and more live in ordinary homes in ordinary streets in cities, towns and villages like the majority of the population. That is some of the rationale sought by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol.
The Royal College of Nursing revised its guidelines in 1993 because the previous guidelines were, in its words, "being too widely interpreted". It is clear from recent complaints that many patients, women in particular, as has been highlighted tonight, object to being placed without warning in a bed next to a patient of the opposite sex and having to share wash and bathroom facilities. Although clinical considerations are paramount, health authorities are already expected, as a general principle, to provide accommodation for men and women in such a way as to preserve the dignity of the individual patient, to prevent embarrassment and at all times to ensure acceptable standards of privacy.
The Government are at one with your Lordships' House in agreeing that acceptable standards of privacy must be maintained. But we have a problem in defining "a ward". There are many designs. For instance, there are Nightingale wards which were designed in Victorian times for different needs. People suffering from diseases such as TB at a time when there were no antibiotics languished in hospital for months or even years. Unadapted Nightingale wards, with no separate bathroom, toilets and washing facilities and with beds separated by flimsy curtains, do not give people the protection, the privacy and the dignity they can reasonably expect. I can reassure my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth that in our view such wards are only suitable for single-sex use and should not generally be used for both men and women. Fortunately, few remain and those that do have either been adapted or are simply being swept away and replaced by new hospital schemes. No Nightingale ward has been built since 1948 and once the remaining long-stay institutions close, only a handful will remain.
In many hospitals staff cherish old traditions and ward names are among them. But in modern wards—and here I do not mean Nightingale wards—there are no serried
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ranks of beds. There are bays, side rooms, places for one, two, four or six people. The name may be the same for this complex of accommodation but the lay-out provides for flexible use and gives the privacy and dignity we are determined to provide. There is opportunity to offer companionship or privacy, mixed-sex—as a few prefer—or single-sex. We should not be rigid or judgmental about people's preferences but should try to offer them what they want. Nor should we under-estimate the benefits of people requiring the same specialist treatment being grouped together. So, although this accommodation is defined as a mixed-sex ward, it achieves what your Lordships seek with discreet and private accommodation.
I hold in my hand the advice to the Secretary of State on health accommodation for mixed-sex use, produced by the NHS Estates. It shows ways of adapting all types of wards which allow for the separation of the sexes. If we were more sophisticated in this Chamber I should like an overhead projector to enable me to show what they look like. Unfortunately, that sophistication is not open to us and I have therefore placed the book in the Library.
As my noble friend Lady Seccombe and the noble Baronesses, Lady Masham and Lady Nicol, highlighted, there is other accommodation, such as that for intensive care, which it would be impractical to separate and where patients are too ill to be aware of their surroundings. There are children's wards. At what age should they be segregated? Some teenagers are gregarious and like to be together. Occasionally a husband and wife are in hospital together and would prefer to share a room rather than be separated—a situation which occurred when the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, the Bill would not take away that choice; it would give them a choice still.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, perhaps I can continue and then it will become clear. There are wards which, in extraordinary circumstances, such as when a major accident occurs, may have to be pressed into use for several days to cope with the disaster victims, requiring other patients to be moved. How could a hospital be forced to provide separate accommodation in those circumstances? In exceptional circumstances, through floods, fires and epidemics within the hospital, staff may have to move patients against their wishes. They are not fanciful situations but occur from time to time in hospitals throughout the land. If this Bill is enacted staff would be breaking the law and we would be placing them in an impossible situation.
The Bill would not only prove difficult to implement in emergencies; it would run counter to many positive developments in clinical care which are becoming routine; for example, the welcome trend towards day surgery where patients are admitted for hours rather than days. That is popular with both staff and patients and could be affected by applying the proposed rule rigidly to recovery areas. So could the use of observation wards and accident and emergency departments.

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As my noble friend Lady Seccombe clearly pointed out, to have a law with countless caveats to cope with seen and unforeseen circumstances would be wrong. My noble friend Lady Strange advocates legal tablets of stone. But there are severe disadvantages in rigidity and inflexibility. So, while the aims of the Bill are welcomed, the Government do not believe that legislation is the answer.
The Patient's Charter has always made clear that a patient's privacy, dignity, religious and cultural beliefs should be respected. Today, as has been said, the Secretary of State for Health launched a new charter for England. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that groups such as the Patients' Association, the College of Health, the Women's Institute, and others, played an important role in placing this issue on the agenda.
In the course of producing the new Patient's Charter we undertook extensive consultation with patients' groups and the new standard in the charter is concrete evidence of the Government's desire to listen and to act on the views put to us. In the new charter we are strengthening our original national standard on privacy and dignity by introducing a new right and a new national standard. The charter states:
"Except in emergencies, you have a right to be told before you go into hospital whether it is planned to care for you in a ward for men or women. In all cases, you can expect single-sex washing and toilet facilities".
That point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. The charter continues:
"If you would prefer to be cared for in single-sex accommodation (either a single-sex ward or 'bay' area within a larger ward which offers equal privacy) your wishes will be respected whenever possible. There may be some cases, particularly emergencies, where a hospital cannot provide single-sex accommodation. This is most likely to arise if you need to be looked after by a specialist nurse in an intensive care ward or in an observation unit. It is also possible that single-sex accommodation may not be available at the time proposed for your admission. If this is the case, you have the choice of accepting the immediate admission or of waiting for single-sex accommodation to become available".
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, should not under-estimate the Patient's Charter. It will make a real difference. First, it will make the NHS look at how well it communicates with its patients. Does the admission letter say whether people will be in mixed-sex accommodation? If so, does it explain how privacy and dignity will be safeguarded? Does it offer the patient the opportunity to talk over his or her concerns before admission? The new right to prior notification will ensure that all these issues are addressed. It will also make trusts examine the lay-out of their accommodation and consider what modifications are needed and how it can be better managed. Separate washing and toilet facilities will have to be provided. Health authorities through their contracts will ensure that the requirements of the charter are rigorously monitored and met and the NHS Executive will continue to keep a close eye on its implementation.
I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that many patients are very wary of criticising professional staff. But they should not feel hesitant in making their views known, in particular to the named
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nurse who is responsible for their care. The nurse should be in a position to offer reassurance and explain what will be done to protect their privacy. The charter is helping to create an NHS which is flexible and responsive to individual needs. Patients should not be afraid to put it to the test.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, and other Members of your Lordships' House, made the point that this is not just a women's issue. I agree with that. The issue is not just one in which women are interested. I should like to emphasise that the new right and standard in the charter applies to all patients, irrespective of gender and age.
Our experience of the original charter has shown that our aims can be implemented successfully without primary legislation. There has been no need for legislation to achieve goals on waiting times. Half of all admissions to hospital are immediate. But, since the original charter was launched, of those admitted from waiting lists almost half are now admitted within five weeks, and nearly three-quarters within three months. In September 1991, almost 44,000 patients were waiting over two years for treatment. Today there are virtually none. We have delivered on the 18-month waiting time guarantee for hip, knee and cataract operations. Nine out of 10 patients are now seen within 30 minutes of their appointment times. Nine out of 10 people are assessed in accident and emergency departments within five minutes.
Your Lordships will be aware that primary legislation does not always guarantee delivery of services. For example, for many years we have had legislation on the employment of disabled people, but its targets have never been achieved. The task of achieving change in the NHS often has to come through commitment of staff and better management. As a former regional chairman, I was involved in the original charter. I can assure your Lordships that it was embraced by the NHS. Huge strides have been made in every hospital and community trust to implement it, as our figures show.
Since my right honourable friend first raised this issue of mixed-sex wards in October last year, the debate has gathered momentum. Throughout we have listened, just as we did when people were most anxious about waiting times. We responded then, and we intend to respond now. We shall monitor the new charter standards very closely indeed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, endorsed the view that patients are being considered as units of work to be counted and not to be treated as people. I strongly refute that. Doctors, nurses and sensitive managers give a quality service, and a personal service, taking immense care to consider the individual needs of people who are

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at their most vulnerable. I am sure that as a member of a health authority the noble Baroness will ensure that her contracts will deliver a quality service.
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt briefly to say that that is precisely why I spoke in some detail about the contracts.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, then I am sure that the noble Baroness will recognise that the present system delivers the goods and that legislation is not necessary.
The noble Baroness was sceptical about the Patient's Charter, as was the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, who suggested that the charter will not be effective and that the words "wherever possible" will be used as an excuse. We have to be realistic about the implementation of the charter. The speed at which each NHS trust can act will depend on precise local circumstances. Some will be able to move faster than others. But there should be no doubt that the charter will give the green light to activity throughout the country to achieve the standard. Health authority purchasers will not accept "wherever possible" as an excuse for lack of action. Their response will be to press trusts to form plans and make headway.
The Government oppose the Bill on the grounds that it is unnecessary, but we share the anxieties which have prompted it. What the noble Lord's Bill highlights is as unacceptable to the Government as it is to him. We have to do even better. I have no doubt that we shall fulfil the demands of the Bill even more quickly than the noble Lord expects. But it would be wrong to saddle the service with a Bill which is unnecessary and which would impede the provision of quality clinical care, shackle management, introduce rigidity and work against the NHS as a whole.
This new Patient's Charter undertaking on single-sex wards will be fulfilled. It is important to this Government—and to a convent girl. I believe that, on all sides of the House, we are totally committed; and, without a law, we shall deliver.
9.37 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I should like to thank all those noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I am conscious that I am the only man to have taken part, but I have been content and honoured to share the debate with the noble Baronesses who have spoken. However, despite my respect and liking for them, I would not want to share a hospital ward with them!
It has been a good debate. The subject has been thoroughly aired, and I thank all those who contributed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, felt that this was an old person's issue. I can assure her that it is not. It is an issue which affects and troubles a complete cross-section of the population—young, old, male and female—as we have heard from so many other speakers this evening. Although the Bill may need tidying up, I believe that we need it and that we should allow it to proceed into Committee.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, spoke about the Roman Catholic nun who was placed between two male footballers. That example underlines the problems which face us and emphasises the need for something rather stronger than the Patient's Charter. The noble Baroness also made the very reasonable and true point that Britain is virtually unique in imposing this system on National Health Service patients. The Government need to consider that point and their attitude towards the Bill.
My noble friend Lady Nicol said that there was nothing in past or present legislation to prevent this state of affairs arising. That is an important point. Why has there not been any legislation on this? Why were patients not considered when the existing legislation was drawn up? My noble friend also made the relevant point that patients are being treated as units of work rather than as patients. We must ensure that people are again treated as people—as patients who require proper care and to be treated with dignity.
The noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, said that patients needed choice more than managers. That is absolutely right. The National Health Service is not for managers; it is for patients. Managers ought to be reminded of that, wherever they need reminding, and of the fact that their job is to provide for their patients. The noble Baroness also made the relevant point that what we want—and what we will get only under this Bill—is real choice, not "subliminal blackmail". I loved that phrase.
My noble friend Lady Gould emphasised the fact that the Bill constitutes no criticism of nursing and hospital staff. I want to echo that, because everybody who has written to me has referred in glowing terms to the nursing and medical staff who hold the nation's liking, love and respect. I am glad that my noble friend emphasised that. I am also glad that she referred to the multi-racial nature of our country. That is an important point. Indeed, a number of Jewish organisations have written to me to support the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Strange, succinctly stated that all that we are trying to do is to enshrine government thinking into legislation. That is precisely what we are trying to do. In fact, we are trying to help the Government to be more effective.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, emphasised the vulnerability of ordinary people and their fear of causing offence, particularly when they are in a weak position. If they have legislation to back them, they will feel better able and more confident about making complaints, where complaints are justified.
I am pleased that my noble friend Lady Jay and I are on the same side tonight. We are on the same side most of the time. It just so happens that we sometimes cross each other on matters relating to AIDS and Sunday opening. As I said, I am glad that we are on the same side tonight and I thank her for her contribution. I am glad that my noble friend raised the point that there seems to have been no national policy or consultation with professional or patient organisations about this matter. The practice seems to

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have grown up without anybody knowing about it or taking proper action to prevent what has become a national scandal.
Finally, the Minister, who is a convent girl and understands the issue even better than I do, says that we do not need legislation. I want to re-emphasise that despite the existing charter—presumably the one we had yesterday but not today—and the paragraphs contained in it requiring patients to be treated with dignity, mixed-sex wards are growing and not diminishing. That is why we need legislation. I am glad to hear that Nightingale wards are to be used as single-sex wards only—I hope that that will happen, because it is not happening at the moment—and that mixed-sex wards will be phased out gradually.
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Even where there are bays it is important that both sexes are enabled to have privacy. There can still be embarrassing situations when men and women are being nursed in adjacent bays. Again, that has to be treated carefully. There are of course—I understand this—situations where perhaps single-sex accommodation cannot be provided. Those will be few and far between, and can be dealt with. I am sorry that the Government oppose the Bill. Despite that, I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading and that we can go on to further stages.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes before ten o'clock.