Lords Sitting of 2 July 1996

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Oxford.): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
The Earl of Carlisle The Earl of Carlisle—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, before the commencement of business, I take the opportunity to inform the House that some time ago I accepted an invitation to receive an honorary degree at the University of Leicester on Friday 5th July 1996. Accordingly, I trust that the House will grant me leave of absence on Friday 5th July 1996.

Burma: Human Rights
2.32 p.m.
Baroness Cox Baroness Cox asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their response to continuing violations of human rights against ethnic minorities by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in Burma (Myanmar).
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, we remain deeply concerned about the human rights situation in Burma, including violations against ethnic minorities. Together with our EU partners, we have taken action both bilaterally and in international fora to put pressure on the State Law and Order Restoration Council, known as SLORC, in Burma to implement human rights reforms. We shall continue to take this action.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer, which will give encouragement to those who are suffering at the hands of the SLORC regime. Is my noble friend aware that the human rights organisation with which I work, Christian Solidarity International, and other aid organisations are obtaining continuing evidence of gross violations of human rights perpetrated by the SLORC regime against ethnic minorities, such as the Karen, the Karenni and the Mon peoples, including murder, rape, torture, pillage and slave labour, which has forced tens of thousands of survivors to flee to refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border? Can my noble friend say what contribution Britain is making to the efforts of the international community to try to alleviate the suffering of those people?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, we share entirely the concern expressed by my noble friend. We have been providing help for the Karen, Karenni and Mon peoples for some time along Burma's borders in terms of support for relief work in refugee camps, health and schooling facilities and teacher training. In the past four years we have also provided about £630,000 in humanitarian aid for Burmese refugees in neighbouring countries. We continue to support the Burma Border Consortium's work on the Thai-Burmese border. We are deeply concerned about the situation and continue to raise our concern both bilaterally and in every international forum in which we can do so.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I understand that the European Commission has considered, or is considering, the withdrawal of trade benefits to Burma. Can the Minister tell us anything more about that?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, at this moment I cannot say any more on that specific issue, but I can assure the noble Lord that together with our partners in the European Union we have made a démarche to the SLORC administration in Rangoon. We have made sure that no instance when such comments should be made to that regime is forgone.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, given the brutality of that regime, will the Government consider raising the question of international economic sanctions against Burma both with our European Union partners and in the United Nations?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, it is an attractive thought that some form of sanctions might do some good, but I am afraid that it would be a dialogue of the deaf. We know that the United States is considering sanctions. The Danes have asked us and other European partners to consider an export ban for Burma, but there really is no evidence of international support. It is critically important to continue to try to influence SLORC. We shall continue to do that.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, we all know that the Minister needs no encouragement to defend human rights, but may I suggest that we have a special duty to the Karen, who fought against the Japanese by our side during the war, and that we should perhaps take up the question of the Anglo-Burmese who recently died in prison who was a respected member of the community? I understand that it is alleged that he was imprisoned (although he was an honorary consul of several countries) only because he afforded the use of his fax and his telephone to the democracy movement. Does the Minister agree that there are limits to the extent to which one can rely on quiet words behind the scenes—although I know that they are important?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, perhaps I may take my noble friend's last point first. Of course, there are limits to the extent to which we can rely on words alone. We were deeply sorry to hear the news of Leo Nichols' death on 22nd June. The Danish,

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Norwegian, Finnish and Swiss representatives for whom he was the de facto honorary consul will ask the authorities for a full explanation, with the backing of EU partners.
To answer my noble friend's earlier question, the United Kingdom will, of course, always be grateful for the loyalty of the ethnic minorities in World War II, and was particularly mindful of their interests in preparing for Burma's independence. The terms of association that we agreed between the minority peoples and the Burmese in a united Burma was one of the good things that were left behind. What has happened now is a tragedy for Burma and for South-East Asia. I hope that the ASEAN countries will join the rest of us in other places in bringing more pressure to bear on the SLORC regime which is doing such desperate harm to the Burmese people.
Lord Rea: My Lords, does the Minister really believe that talking to the SLORC regime and applying diplomatic pressure will make any difference at all to its behaviour in terms of human rights? A regime which refused to recognise a president elected by an 85 per cent. majority of the electorate and took over power itself is hardly likely to listen to persuasion. Surely sanctions are the only way, as my noble friend suggested. Should not Britain join those countries that are taking a lead in that respect?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, as I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, I know that sanctions appear to be an easy option for bringing pressure to bear, but I simply do not believe that it is the only way, or necessarily the quickest way, to bring about change. We are highly critical of that regime. We have been the co-sponsors of resolutions in the United Nations. We are looking at all ways of bringing pressure to bear, but until other ASEAN countries also take action I do not believe that we shall quickly see a change. But it must be both European countries, who have a great interest and owe a great debt to Burmese people, and ASEAN countries who join with us in the action that we take.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, can my noble friend confirm on behalf of the Government that the situation has recently deteriorated further in Burma? In light of that fact, is it true that we are sponsoring two high-profile trade missions to Burma? If so, should we be doing so?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the situation has worsened. There was a trade mission which received some financial support last February, but since then there has been no further assistance for such trade missions. One can bring about improvements in people's attitudes when working alongside them, but at the moment there is no intention to support further trade missions. If British companies decide to go to Burma on a private basis we cannot stop them. However, many companies are well aware of just how bad the situation is in that country. The Government have withheld help from the BEAMA mission which is going this month. That mission will go without Government support.

Britain and Singapore: Air Services
2.41 p.m.
Lord McNally Lord McNally asked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress has been made in discussions between Britain and Singapore with the intention of liberalising air services between the two countries.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Viscount Goschen): My Lords, a first round of talks was held in Singapore in March, and a second round of talks is currently taking place at the Department of Transport.
Lord McNally: My Lords, does the Minister agree that these negotiations are dragging on for a long time? Can he assure the House that the interests of Manchester International Airport are not being subordinated to the interests of Heathrow or British Airways? At the same time, will he promise to visit the magnificent exhibition on the Committee Corridor which commemorates the success of Manchester International Airport over the past 50 years?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, from a glance at my diary I understand that I am to visit that exhibition this evening. The air services agreement involves complex negotiations and a number of factors are involved. Certainly, Manchester has been involved in determining our negotiating position with regard to Singapore. But one must also take into account the interests of British airlines and British consumers.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that a number of years ago there was a direct daily Concorde flight between Singapore and Heathrow and that that service was interrupted only by the refusal of the Iranians to allow the aircraft to overfly Iran? Will my noble friend consider securing consent from Iran so that the daily Concorde flight can be reinstated?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for bringing that historical fact to the attention of the House. I will endeavour to find out whether or not there is any restriction on Concorde operating that route. But, restrictions aside, it would be for British Airways to determine whether or not it wished to operate that service.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that this issue is important to the Singaporeans? Following his welcome reply this afternoon, will there be further discussions so that we keep in touch with the Singaporeans and pursue this endeavour in which they have so much faith?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, it is important to both Singapore and the United Kingdom. Discussions are taking place at this very moment within the department.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords,I recognise the need to ensure that progress continues in the development of an open skies policy and fairer competition throughout and recognise the desirability of maximising the role of airports outside the London region, but does the Minister accept from me that we do not feel we should probe his negotiating position? That cannot be helpful. We wish him well in securing a good deal for Britain, our airlines and consumers and, it is to be hoped, for the Singaporeans.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for making that point. We are in the middle of detailed negotiations and do not wish to expose our position. The noble Lord is quite right when he says that we must put the interests of UK consumers, airlines and airports at the front of our minds and pursue a liberalising policy on that basis.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, will the Minister explain the latter half of his reply to the Question put by the noble Lord, Lord McNally? It has been said that at present Manchester Airport is at a disadvantage compared with the other two major airports in this country. If that is so, will the Minister ensure that that position is rectified as soon as possible?
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, we understand the needs of regional airports and the importance of services operating to those airports. That is a matter which we take fully into account in determining our negotiating position. No doubt that is one of the issues that is being discussed as we speak.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there are other sections of the British population who are concerned about this; namely, those who live under the flight path at Heathrow? Those people wish Manchester well.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I recognise that. Some may say that the feeling is mutual as far as concerns Mancunians. We understand the environmental difficulties in the field of air transport and seek to put in place a regime that minimises them.

Aid Distribution: Criteria
2.45 p.m.
Lord Judd Lord Judd asked Her Majesty's Government:
On what criteria they decide the proportion of the total aid programme to be spent in east Europe and on what criteria they decide the proportion to be spent in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, a number of factors are taken into account in allocating our aid resources to particular countries. These include traditional ties to Britain, the recipient country's political and economic policies, respect for human rights
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and the rule of law. The other prime factor, however, is the need for aid and the effectiveness with which it is used.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the Minister agree that while aid to the former communist countries of Europe increased by some 773 per cent., from £15 million to £131 million, in the three years to 1994–95, aid to sub-Saharan Africa—the world's poorest region—declined by 5.5 per cent., from £418 million to £395 million? While it is important to assist transition in the former communist countries, how can this ever be, even in part, at the expense of aid to the poorest people in the world? Does the Minister have any plans under her own fundamental expenditure review to enable communist countries to graduate from aid so that assistance can be concentrated on those in the world in the greatest need?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, in answer to the last part of the noble Lord's question, yes, we do. In particular, the countries of central Europe are moving faster than many others towards free markets and greater growth.
To return to the original premise of the question, 8 per cent. of our bilateral budget was spent on Europe, eastern Europe and central Asia—the former Soviet Union—compared with about 75 per cent. on sub-Saharan Africa and Asian countries where the greatest poverty exists. We have sought to concentrate our assistance in sub-Saharan and Asian countries where it can do most good. I understand the anxiety that has been expressed, but it must be right to help countries that are moving quickly away from an old demand system and, at the same time, to concentrate assistance on those most in need.
Lord Eden of Winton: My Lords, in the initial response to the Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, my noble friend referred to the need to ensure that aid was effectively spent. Can my noble friend assure the House that one of the criteria that she wants to establish is that countries which are recipients of aid take effective action against corruption, particularly that which is sponsored or promoted by governments themselves?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I assure my noble friend that one of the main criteria for the effective use of aid is that development assistance goes to projects for which it is intended. For that reason, I shall continue to be critical where any aid money, whether bilateral contributions or through any channel, may be siphoned off by those who seek to make irresponsible use of it. I can give my noble friend the assurance that our evaluation and monitoring system of the British aid programme prevents that. The same is not yet the case for all multilateral programmes. We hope that it will become so.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, as Members on these Benches support the aid given to eastern Europe, especially through the know-how fund, which deals

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extremely effectively with projects in former eastern Europe, will the Minister consider increasing rather than decreasing the amount of aid available to the Asian bloc countries, and in so doing think about increasing the aid budget as a whole rather than shifting the funds from one place to another?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I hope that we may soon be able to increase the aid budget as a whole. That is something upon which I am working. However, I am conscious that the know-how funds are doing an enormous amount of valuable work, just as the resources we concentrate on the poorest countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are similarly doing valuable work. One of the most effective areas in which the know-how funds are operating in the former Soviet Union is the work they are doing on nuclear safety, some of which I was privileged to hear about at AEA Technology this morning. That work is for the good of all mankind, not just the countries concerned.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, is the Minister aware that no one in the House, I am sure, objects to help for eastern Europe? Most people would support what the Government are doing, but not at the expense of the other people. The figures the Minister quoted are not relevant. What is relevant is the trend, and the increase to eastern Europe at the expense of other poorer countries. Cannot that be taken into account?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, indeed, it is taken into account. The fastest increase in assistance to central and eastern European countries, central Asia and the former Soviet Union comes from EU moneys, about one-sixth of which we contribute. It is not all falling upon us. The important point I was making to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, is that it is vitally important to cure some of the problems of pollution that are just sitting waiting to emerge upon the world and not those countries alone. Preventing such pollution problems in the future is vital. The know-how funds are valuable, not just for the countries where they are deployed but for a much wider area. I understand the point that the noble Lord makes. He knows that we shall do all that we can for the poorest countries in the world. I am committed to doing so, so is the department, and so are the Government.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I thank the Minister for sending me a copy of the annual review of her department for 1995–96 which I found interesting reading. Will she confirm that her department now spends 25 per cent. of its total budget (£620 million) through the EU? Is she satisfied that she has as good control over that money being spent through the EU as she could get if it were paid directly to the countries involved, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, we are going wide of the Question, not surprisingly, I think. Because the ODA has a first-class record in monitoring and evaluating our own research, it has been asked by
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the EU to help put in place similar systems not only involving our funds but also those of other people. That will allow us to concentrate resources where they are most needed and where they can be most effectively used.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, did not the Government give an undertaking two or three years ago that any aid for eastern Europe would not be at the expense of aid to the poorer countries? What has happened to that undertaking?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I think the noble Lord's memory is slightly off course, but I shall not debate that with him. The work we are doing in the countries of central Europe and the former Soviet Union is important world-wide. Those countries were formerly putting money, for all the wrong reasons, into some of the poorest countries. In this global world there is an evening out. We intend to concentrate British aid funds on the most needy and those who can use them most effectively. I shall continue to see that that happens.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the Minister accept that we are all heartened by her undertaking in answering questions that she is fighting for an increased aid programme? I am certain that she has nothing but good will from the whole House in that effort. Will the Minister forgive me for returning to an old theme of mine? With the pressure on the aid programme, is there not a real difficulty? She keeps telling us that the aid programme is about poverty alleviation and yet it is constantly diverted for other purposes. Is this not the time to bring a strategic statement about the aid programme to the House so that we can all examine it, debate it, and, as far as possible, put ourselves wholeheartedly behind what she is trying to do?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the noble Lord is always very tempting on this issue, but I am not one who gives into temptation very easily, as he knows. Four years ago we were concentrating about 62 per cent. of our resources on the poorest. That has now increased to over 70 per cent. of our resources. I believe it is right to concentrate the aid on helping those most in need. That was a recommendation by the fundamental expenditure review, which we accepted as Ministers. That is being implemented.
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, is the Minister giving priority to the poorest countries within the former Soviet Union? The image of what is meant is sometimes distorted. I am thinking in particular of Kyrgyzstan and the countries in central Asia.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, we go back to what I said at the beginning. We must give aid where it can be used effectively. It is not yet particularly easy to target some of those countries. Where we do, it is frequently achieved through the excellent NGOs, thereby alleviating pockets of poverty in those countries.

Research Councils: Director General
2.57 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant Lord Walton of Detchant asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are satisfied with the present terms of reference of the Director General of the Research Councils and with the way in which the post has been functioning, and whether they propose to appoint an advisory expert group, as envisaged in the 1993 science White Paper.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie): My Lords, yes, very satisfied. With the benefit of experience, we do not propose to appoint a standing group of independent experts as envisaged in the 1993 White Paper, Realising our potential.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, but does he agree that, under the long-hallowed Haldane principle, policy decisions of research councils and the definition of priorities within their spending allocations are intended to be free of any political consideration and independent of government? Is it therefore appropriate that the post of director general should be as a civil servant within the Department of Trade and Industry? The former advisory board for the research councils was capable of giving advice upwards to government and downwards to the research councils. In the absence of such an advisory group of experts, is there not a serious risk that, as Sir Mark Richmond recently wrote:
"The Director General's appointment is likely to become dangerously monocular"?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I do not accept that. I do not accept in any way that the present director general has done anything other than offer the best of independent advice to my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade and my honourable friend the Minister for Science and Technology. His role is to advise. He is a valued and respected adviser. He has to be an adviser. It is right that the power and responsibility for this matter should rest with the President of the Board of Trade. It is important to note that, where decisions have been taken on the basis of the advice that he has tendered to government, that information has been made known through the annual booklets and allocations of the science budget, the director general's own review of the science budget portfolio and the research councils' responses to the technology foresight initiative. It is clear to those interested in this field what advice is being given and the Government's response to it.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware that there is some real anxiety that the research councils might drift into becoming mere satellites of the DTI? Perhaps he could go a little further in explaining why what seemed a good idea in 1993
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(to set up an advisory group of experts) has now lost its attractions. I believe that the Government could benefit from the existence of such a body.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, it is not a case of the Government changing their mind now. As the noble Lord, Lord Walton, may recall, when my right honourable friend Mr. William Waldegrave appeared before a Select Committee of this House as far back as July 1993, he indicated that his thinking had moved away from the establishment of such a body. The balance is between whether there should be this small expert group or whether it should be left to the director general himself to determine what advice he should receive and from what sources. It is interesting to note that, when he was preparing that review of research councils' portfolios dealing with just such matters which are of concern to my noble friend, he consulted no fewer than 300 people across the sciences of our country. The advice he received has benefited from his own membership of the Technology Foresight Steering Group.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that I was privileged to be a member of your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology and heard Mr. Waldegrave give evidence? Is he further aware that it became clear that, by comparison with our competitors in the international field, we were doing poorly? Is that still the position and, if so, when will it be reversed?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, we debated the matter in May when I set out a number of figures and details which seemed to me to indicate that we were doing well in research. However, the noble Lord's question is some way away from the issue of whether the director general should be advised by a small closed group or whether, as this director general has determined, he should take his advice from a broader range of sources. I believe that, if that is what he has chosen to do, he should be encouraged to do what is most appropriate as he sees it. He is certainly acting independently and is publishing the basis of his advice.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, is this not typical of the muddle that arises when moving the directorship away from the Cabinet Office to the Board of Trade? What has the Board of Trade got to do with medical research?
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, as I indicated, the decision was not taken recently. It was taken by Mr. William Waldegrave in 1993 when he had responsibility for the matter. It is not a decision which flows from the move to the Department of Trade and Industry. I have no doubt that the responsibility is appropriately placed within that department. I do not wish to rake over cold ashes, but I am sure that the noble Earl will recall that Bill Stewart, who was then Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, made it clear in an extended article to the press that he saw nothing disadvantageous about the move.
Lord Peston: My Lords, is the Minister aware that some of us believe that the mere fact that his right honourable friend took a view in 1993 does not make that correct either then or now? However, we may reflect on that.
We are puzzled by one issue and would like the Minister to clarify it. Why are the two possibilities regarded as incompatible? Why cannot the director general ask questions of whomever he wishes while at the same time having an advisory group, independent of government, not paid a salary by government, but simply giving objective advice? I believe that the Government originally thought that proposal to be sensible. Is it not the case that the two are compatible? I understand that the scientific community would very much welcome the existence of a small independent body and I am not at all clear about the reason for setting one's face against it.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: My Lords, I am not trying to indicate that, because my right honourable friend Mr. Waldegrave took that view almost three years ago, it is the only basis for it. We have looked to see how the director general has proceeded and in our view he has done extremely well. As Mr. Waldegrave's successor said:
"He has created not an inner circle but an open circle into which people from right across industry and the science base have been able to feed their views".
Our view in 1996 is that that is a valid assessment of the way in which the director general has taken up and followed through his responsibilities.

Railway Heritage Bill
3.4 p.m.
Lord Finsberg: My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Moved, That the order of commitment be discharged.—(Lord Finsberg.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Sexual Offences (Conspiracy and Incitement) Bill
Read a third time, and passed.

Deregulation (Wireless Telegraphy) Order 1996
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of National Heritage (Lord Inglewood)The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of National Heritage (Lord Inglewood) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 4th June be approved [25th Report from the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this order is the first to be made by my department under the powers provided in the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. It makes two changes to existing legislation. It abolishes the requirements for television dealers to register with the BBC and for them to hold and pay a fee for a dealer demonstration licence. Necessary protection for the television licensing system is maintained by retaining the requirement for dealers to notify all sales and rentals to the BBC. The Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee has reported that the order meets the requirements of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 4th June be approved [25th Report from the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee].—(Lord Inglewood.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Asylum and Immigration Bill
3.6 p.m.
Proceedings after Third Reading resumed.
Clause 9 [Entitlement to housing accommodation and assistance]:
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Boston of Faversham): My Lords, I should inform the House that if Amendment No. 1 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 2.
Earl Russell Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 7, line 14, leave out subsection (1).
The noble Earl said: My Lords, Amendment No. 1 seeks to leave out subsection (1) from Clause 9. The effect of that subsection, as amended by the Government yesterday, is to provide that anyone in the UK who is subject to immigration control shall not be eligible for any local authority tenancy. We deal here with local authority tenancies, not with the more general homelessness responsibilities on which the House has already voted.
A person is not allowed local authority housing unless he is of a class specified by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has not yet specified any classes. We do not know when the Secretary of State will specify any classes or, indeed, whether he is going to do so. Therefore, it becomes vital to ask what the commencement date of the clause will be. If it has a commencement date before the statutory instrument is published, we shall have a much wider restriction than the House at earlier stages of the Bill believed to be the case. If the provision does not come into effect until after the publication of the statutory instrument specifying which classes the Secretary of State intends to exclude, the Bill will come near to leap-frogging the Housing Bill, which repeals this clause altogether and is about to begin its Report stage in your Lordships' House.
It is rather unusual to have a clause in a Bill repealed by another Bill that is already progressing through the second House. I believe the reason for that was to

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provide help as regards the anomalous situation in which local authorities find themselves, created by the rather unplanned nature of the Government's timing. By stopping housing benefit without stopping local authority obligations to house, the Government place a considerable and unforeseen financial burden on local authorities. That is not a particularly well-planned piece of legislative timing.
There have been negotiations between the Government and local authority associations for government help to local authorities, but that appears to have been going wrong. I wish to ask the Minister, first, whether any progress has been made on those negotiations and, secondly, whether any local authority has yet received one penny under those arrangements. Of course, the burden of handling asylum seekers who are homeless falls particularly on a very limited number of London local authorities and the burden on them is very severe.
In this Chamber I have referred already to a letter which I have received from the Director of Housing and Social Services for the London Borough of Sutton. He tells me that the 5 per cent. threshold which local authority spending must cross before it becomes eligible for any help is 5 per cent. of the total standard spending assessment for social services as a whole. That is not a fence; it is a Himalaya which no local authority can jump.
He tells me also that help under the Children Act is not being allowed to be extended to the families in order to keep them together. In other words, it will lead to children being taken into care, which will of course immensely multiply the cost to taxpayers, of whom I remind the Minister I am one.
Also, when families break up, as they sadly do under stress, the obligation to help is extended to only the one member of the family who has made the claim. That falls particularly severely on women who have been victims of domestic violence who leave their violent partners and find that they are deprived of any help whatever. Those are the technical points.
But the issues in this clause go a great deal wider than that. Under Article 21 of the UN convention on refugees it is provided that, as regards housing, the contracting states shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory treatment as favourable as possible and, in any event, not less favourable than that accorded to aliens generally in the same circumstances. I cannot see how the Government's action can in any way be brought within the scope of that article. In passing, I must once again remind the House that that convention is incorporated by Section 2 of the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993 so that that is something of which British law may take notice.
I believe that this is yet another case in which the Government are in breach of their international obligations. It is also another instance in which we have a recent Court of Appeal judgment. That Court of Appeal judgment would be plainly repealed by the passage of this clause. Therefore, the first legal point which arises is that it seems that local authorities anticipated the commencement of this Act.
This is becoming a sadly familiar story. I believe that it is part of the increasing ignorance of parliamentary form which is sadly common in the country as a whole. Will the Government issue guidance to make it plain that Acts of Parliament do not come into force until they have had three Readings in both Houses and have received Royal Assent? I hope that that is at least one matter on which we all agree.
Again in relation to the case heard in the Court of Appeal on 25th June, the issue was in effect one of destitution. The Department of the Environment commenting on the case in the Guardian misled the Guardian reporter, no doubt inadvertently. The Department of the Environment complained that financial need by itself had been found to be a criterion of vulnerability. It has not. Lord Justice Neill spelt that out in words of one syllable. At page 22 of the judgment—and this is the one judge in the other case who judged with the Government—he said:
"I can take the circumstances of Miss Araya as an example. She has no capital. She has no income. She is prohibited from obtaining employment and therefore has no opportunity of earning any money. She has no family or friends in this country … she has no knowledge of the English language. Apart from any emergency accommodation which has been made available to her, she is homeless".
Therefore, the priority need consists not merely of a lack of money but of a combination of a lack of money with the sheer impossibility of rectifying that situation. If that is not priority need, I do not know what is.
That situation has been putting a great burden on innumerable voluntary organisations of many kinds which have been struggling to cope with the chaos that has been created. In that context, I must join with what my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby said yesterday about how much we owe to the role of the churches. They have been taking in people in church halls and keeping them out of the rain and frost when perhaps otherwise they would have died. It is a matter of profound gratitude that the Church has not passed by on the other side.
But the overcrowding has been gross. There have been cases of five people having to share one blanket. The churches need their halls, especially at weekends. We cannot expect the churches to do without them for ever. Families and communities again have been trying to take their share of the burden. In one case, a Sudanese women gave refuge to 20 people in her small flat. You cannot go on with that for ever.
I can think of no category of people to whom I have less sense of obligation than I have to convicted terrorists. But we would not treat convicted terrorists like that. We feed them and give them shelter. I do not think that any noble Lord would propose to change that.
I do not see how we can continue to treat people in that way. I believe that it is something that no civilised country should tolerate. Even if the claimants were bogus, no civilised country should tolerate that treatment; but many of them are not bogus. What must they think of this country? I beg to move.
3.15 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): My Lords, I certainly had a feeling of déjà vu when I saw this amendment on the Marshalled List because it has been considered already in Committee and on Report. I do not have a great deal that is new to say although I congratulate the noble Earl on finding something new to say by the simple expedient of not actually speaking directly to the amendment. The amendment removes a subsection of the clause which says that long-term council housing will not be available for asylum seekers, but the noble Earl strayed into the rest of the clause and discussed points on homelessness. However, in a spirit of good humour and good relations, I shall attempt to answer the points which he raised, but I shall not do so at great length because I should then be going very wide of the amendment.
As regards the amendment itself, social housing, council housing and so on is a very valuable asset. As I have told your Lordships before, when people acquire the tenancy of a council house, they gain housing for life. They can stay in it for as long as they wish and they acquire succession rights whereby they can pass on the tenancy to a close relative. They obtain certain rights of assignment. They can exchange that property for a property acquired by another tenant elsewhere and, of course, they acquire the right to buy.
We are concerned that such housing should go to those with a clearly establishe long-term need—people who have the right to remain indefinitely in this country. Those are the groups of people to whom we propose to give entitlement under the homelessness legislation. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that those are the classes of persons who will be eligible to be considered on the housing list along with all the other British citizens.
Such groups will be refugees; in other words, those who have been granted refugee status. I should point out to the House that seven out of 100 applicants for asylum actually fall into that category. Persons granted exceptional leave to remain will also be in those groups and, similarly, the figure in that respect is 16 out of every 100. Finally, the other group of persons, quite aside from asylum seekers, are those with indefinite leave to remain. Under the Immigration Rules, those people will actually be allowed to apply for and obtain long-term council housing.
I am sure that all noble Lords are in complete agreement that those people ought to be treated in the way that I have just suggested. However, the question remains: should people whose needs are at present quite clearly only temporary be given access to long-term social housing? I do not believe that they should until their claim has been established. I should remind your Lordships that only a tiny minority of such claims are established. I do not believe that they should be given access to council housing, which is what the noble Earl's amendment would do. It would give people whose right to be here is still very much in question that entitlement. Indeed, if one looks at the statistics, one certainly sees that the majority will eventually be found to have no right to be here. The noble Earl's amendment would give all those people the right to join the list for long-term housing.
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We do not believe that housing created with taxpayers' money ought to be used in that way. There are plenty of people, especially in those areas of the country where asylum seekers turn up in large numbers, who are looking for long-term social housing—British citizens and indeed the other categories of immigrants that I have mentioned. Therefore, we believe that social housing ought to be kept for those groups of people; namely, British citizens and the immigrants who have been recognised as refugees or given exceptional leave to remain. That is my defence for the subsection. The noble Earl seeks to strike it out of the legislation but, to be honest, he did not really argue on that basis. He talked about other parts of the clause which deal with homelessness.
I turn now the noble Earl's questions. He said that he did not know when the Secretary of State would specify the classes of people. I should point out to the noble Earl that we shall certainly not commence the provisions in the clause until the order is in place, which will be about three weeks later. The Bill will not leap-frog the Housing Bill, which will not be commenced until well into the autumn; whereas, as long as Parliament is willing and the other place does whatever it has to do as regards the amendments which your Lordships have proposed to the Bill, we hope to put the legislation now before the House into effect as soon as possible. As I said, there will be no leap-frogging.
As far as concerns negotiations with local authorities, with the Court of Appeal decision there is no need for grant on homelessness costs because, as I indicated previously, those people who were denied benefit from February, and those who did not apply but can show that they would have done so if the rules had not been changed by this House and the other place, will be eligible for housing benefit again. Therefore, the question of homelessness costs would not arise. However, we still intend to pay grant in respect of costs under the Children Act. We shall be laying a special grant report about that in the autumn.
I turn now to the matter of the threshold. I believe that I have answered the question before. Such thresholds are normal in many grant regimes. Indeed, this grant follows many of the principles of the Bellwin formula grant regime. It seems to me that it is only right and proper for there to be some incentive for local authorities to be prudent with public money. If they received a 100 per cent. grant, there would be no real incentive for them to be careful with public money. Therefore, we believe that it is important to have thresholds in this respect, as we do with many other grants.
As regards the duty to take children into care, I should point out to the House that there is no duty as such. However, a local authority has the option of supporting a whole family in a house. It is within the local authority's discretion to do so, if it feels that that is the best way to honour its obligations under the Children Act.
There is also the question of local authorities not knowing how Parliament works. Perhaps professors of history—dare I say it?—should spend a little more time with their students trying to explain to them how Parliament works so that those who eventually become journalists, for example, will at least have a working

1311
knowledge of it and will therefore be able to inform the public. I do not believe that local authorities anticipating parliamentary decisions is an issue that falls under housing allocation. The Department of the Environment is currently considering whether the definition of "priority need" should be reviewed in the light of the second Appeal Court decision. I refer to the decision made last week rather than the one of Friday 21st June. However, I do not wish to say anything further in that respect because I understand that the authorities are still considering whether to appeal to the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House.
I return now to the amendment before us. I believe that I have made my case on a number of occasions. Long-term social housing should go to people with a long-term and established right to remain in this country. With that explanation, and bearing in mind that I have answered some of his questions which do not actually relate to the amendment, I hope that the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. I am sorry that he has a sense of déjà vu: so do we. I believe that the Minister failed to appreciate one of the logical links in my argument which I did not spell out because I thought that it would be generally understood. When I see large numbers of people who are homeless, I see only one effective route out of that situation; but I see that route being blocked up. I want to open the block. That is why evidence of homelessness is relevant to need for local authority housing. I do not see the logical flaw in that. I grant that the purpose of the amendment has been debated before, but it has not been debated in the light of the present state of the Bill, which has become a great deal tighter as a result of amendments passed yesterday.
As for local authority housing going to asylum seekers, as I understand it, their chances in that respect are a great deal less than their chances of obtaining asylum status. In his comparison, the Minister was trying to draw too firm a series of absolute antitheses. Any ordinary person obtaining local authority housing may lose his job, get on his bike, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and go to look for work at the other end of the country. That has happened and people have occasionally had to do so. That person may move in consequence of a bereavement or a family tragedy. One must not assume that people always stay in the same place. The permanence is a lot less absolute than has been suggested by the Minister.
I do not see why the Minister is quite so worried about housing being given to people who might not be allowed to remain in this country. I say that because, if their claim is finally found after appeal to be without foundation, the Government have the right to deport them. The Minister sounded as if he were telling me that the Government are incapable of exercising that right efficiently. That may be a misapprehension; but, in that case, it is a misapprehension that the Minister risked creating.
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There is also the question of priorities. The Minister makes a point which I hear. But I make a point about gross physical hardship, both to asylum seekers and to those who are helping to support them, which I believe to have priority. I cannot see why the Minister does not recognise my point. The Minister is unwise to invoke the Bellwin scheme. When I first arrived in this House, I was enlisted by people from my local authority to help obtain assistance under that scheme for storm damage caused in the great gales of 1987. It was practically impossible to find any damage severe enough to come under the Bellwin scheme.
As this is the last time that we can argue the point, and as I seem to have entirely failed to persuade the Minister by any other means, I must test the opinion of the House.
3.29 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 1) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 82; Not-Contents, 159.

Division No. 1

CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Lockwood, B.

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Longford, E.

Avebury, L.

McCarthy, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Berkeley, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Blackstone, B.

McNair, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

McNally, L.

Carlisle, E.

Mar.C.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Mason of Bamsley, L.

Carter, L.

Mayhew, L.

Castle of Blackburn, B.

Merlyn-Rees, L.

Clancarty, E.

Melhuen. L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Monkswell, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Newcastle, Bp.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Nicol, B.

Donoughue, L.

Plant of Highfield.L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Dubs, L.

Rea,L.

Ewing of Kirkford, L.

Redesdale, L.

Ezra,L.

Richard, L.

Gallacher, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Gladwin of Clee, L. [Teller.]

Rodgers of Quarry Bank, L

Glenamara, L.

Russell, E. [Teller.]

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Grenfell, L.

Sandwich, E.

Grey.E.

Scanlon, L.

Habgood, L.

Sefton of Garston. L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Serota, B.

Hayman, B.

Sewel, L.

Hollis of Heigham,B.

Shepherd, L.

Hooson, L.

Stallard, L.

Howell, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Jay of Paddington, B.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Tordoff, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Judd, L.

Varley, L.

Kennet, L.

Williams of Crosby, B.

Kirkhill, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

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NOT-CONTENTS

Addison. V.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Ailesbury, M.

Henley, L.

Aldington, L.

Hertford, M,

Alexander of Tunis, E.

HolmPatrick, L.

Allen of Abbeydale, L.

Hothfield, L.

Ashboume, L.

Howe, E.

Astor of Hever, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Attlee, E.

Ilchester, E.

Balfour. E.

Inglewood, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Ironside, L.

Birdwood, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Blaker. L.

Kimball, L.

Blatch. B.

Kintore,E.

Boardman, L.

Knollys, V.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Lane of Horsell, L.

Bradford. E.

Lauderdale, E.

Brentford, V.

Lindsay, E.

Bridgeman, V.

Liverpool, E.

Bridges. L.

Lucas, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

McConnell.L.

Broughshane, L.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Bruntisfield, L.

Mackay of Clashfem, L. [Lord Chancellor.]

Butterworth. L.

Cadman, L.

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Caldecote, V.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Macpherson of Drumochter, L

Campbell of Croy, L.

Manton, L.

Carnarvon, E.

Marlesford, L.

Camcgy of Lour, B.

Merrivale, L.

Carrington, L.

Mersey, V.

Cayzer. L.

Middleton, L.

Chalker of Wallasey,B.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Chelmsford, V.

Milverton. L.

Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Chorlcy, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Clanwilliam, E.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Clark of Kempston. L.

Mottistone, L.

Coleraine, L.

Mountevans, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Courtown. E.

Moyne, L.

Cranborne, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Munster, E.

Crathome, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Crickhowell. L.

O'Cathain, B.

Cromer, E.

Palmer. L.

Cuckney, L.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Pender, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Davidson, V.

Pilkington of Oxenford, L.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Denham. L.

Rawlings. B.

Demton of Wakefield, B.

Rees, L.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, L.

Donaldson of Lymington, L.

Renton, L.

Downshire. M.

Renwick, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Rodney, L.

Ellenborough, L.

St. Davids, V.

Elliott of Morpeth.L.

Saint Oswald, L.

Elton, L.

Saltoun of Abemethy, Ly.

Ferrers. E.

Seccombe, B.

Finsberg. L.

Sharples, B.

Flather,.

Shaughnessy, L.

Forbes. L.

Shaw of Northstead, L.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Gainford, L.

Slim, V.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Strafford, E.

Geddes. L.

Strange. B.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Strathclyde L.

Gilmour of Craigmillar, L.

Sudeley. L.

Glentoran, L.

Swinfen, L.

Goschen, V.

Swinton, E.

Gray of Contin, L.

Tebbit, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Terrington, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Teynham, L.

Halsbury, E.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Harding of Petherton, L.

Tonypandy, V.

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Trumpington, B. [Teller.]

Weatherill, L.

Ullswater, V.

Wharton, B.

Vivian, L.

Wyatt of Weeford, L.

Wade of Chorlton,L.

Wynford, L.

Walton of Detchant, L.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
3.39 p.m.
[Amendments Nos. 2 to 4 not moved.]
Earl Russell Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 7, line 31, at end insert—
("( ) Nothing in this section shall apply to any person who has applied to a housing authority as a homeless person either—

(a) before the date of commencement of an order made under this section; or

(b) before becoming an immigrant of a class specified by the Secretary of State by an order made under this section.").

The noble Earl said: My Lords, Amendment No. 5 concerns the issue of retroactivity. It is, I think, common ground that this House does not like retroactive legislation. It passes it in extreme circumstances but the case for retroactivity on each occasion has to be made out with considerable care. The point of the amendment is to deal with people who had already claimed asylum before the legislation came into effect; or, at the material time of commencement were not immigrants of a class specified by the Secretary of State.
We cannot spell out what that means until we have some idea what classes the Secretary of State will specify. However, I understand that the vires will allow the Secretary of State to specify any classes he might choose. Therefore, in both those cases we think that people should not be affected by the clause unless they came into the country and claimed asylum after the commencement of the Act.
We have had an argument about the deterrent effect of the withdrawal of benefits and housing assistance. The Minister advanced the argument again yesterday. However, if deterrence is to have any logical meaning, it can apply only to deter acts committed after the commencement of the legislation; otherwise it is a complete nonsense. I hope to hear a reassuring answer. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, this surely is not retrospective legislation as ordinarily understood. Clause 9(1) does not confer any right to a priority for long-term housing. It confers merely a facility. That facility does not square with the amendment. The amendment does not bite on a facility; it bites merely on an entitlement which does not exist.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, in the amendment we are considering again what happens to people who are subject to immigration control as regards homelessness legislation. We are being asked to consider two cases. First, there are people who sought assistance under the homelessness legislation before Clause 9(2) of the Bill had effect, and who then find that they are outside the scope of an order continuing

1315
their entitlement under the homelessness legislation. We are also asked to consider the case of people who initially have entitlement under the homelessness legislation but who subsequently lose that entitlement when their immigration status changes.
I wish to make the Government's position absolutely clear on these points. We intend to align entitlement under the homelessness legislation with entitlement to housing benefit. For so long as someone is entitled to housing benefit by virtue of his immigration status—for example, by being a person who sought asylum at the time he arrived in this country—or, if he retains an entitlement to benefit as part of the transitional package associated with the benefit changes that will flow from what is now Clause 11 of the Bill, he will retain entitlement to assistance under the homelessness legislation. That is what an order under Clause 9(2) will provide for.
If your Lordships agree to Amendment No. 5, it will mean that persons from abroad who are here on limited leave—such as visitors and overseas students, who have not been entitled to social security benefits since 1994—would continue to be entitled to assistance under the homelessness legislation, and the entire cost of meeting that obligation would fall on the housing authority.
Your Lordships will be aware of the immense burden that this could impose on the few housing authorities which would receive most of those cases. It was in recognition of just that problem that we have been proposing to make a special grant available to local authorities to meet a substantial part of the cost to them that would have followed from the early withdrawal of housing benefit in February. That is no longer necessary. But it remains important that we are able to make the scope of the homelessness legislation consistent with the rules on housing benefit.
At Report stage the noble Earl argued that the provision was retrospective and would unduly affect people who entered the country before these provisions were in force and with no expectation that they would be introduced. In other words, they were relying on the safety net of the homelessness legislation. The Government have for many years had a clear policy that visitors and other persons who are given limited leave to remain enter the country on the basis that they will have no recourse to public funds. We are back to this difficult problem—it appears difficult for some people to grasp. People who apply in country have said when they enter this country that they are coming here for business reasons, to visit, study, or whatever it may be, and that they will have no recourse to public funds. That is the condition on which they are granted entry.
What the noble Earl says confirms what I have been telling your Lordships all along during discussion of the Bill; namely, that those people are saying one thing to the immigration authorities but mean something entirely different. They come here because they see the availability of these benefits. One of the benefits they see is that if they come into a category that falls within the homelessness legislation the local authority will help them to gain housing—albeit short term—in this country. Therefore we are doing no more than ensuring
1316
that the conditions of entry to which such people agreed when they walked into this country are observed in practice.
The noble Earl also raised the question of what happens to someone being accommodated under the homelessness legislation when his entitlement ceases as a result of an adverse decision on his application for asylum. The answer is that his entitlement under the homelessness legislation, as I have said before, will match his entitlement under social security benefits. They will cease at the same time. If that person wishes to remain in this country pending the outcome of an appeal—I need not remind your Lordships that only three out of every 100 appeals actually succeeds—it is for him to make his own arrangements for his continuing financial support; or, as many of them do, he may look to his own ethnic community for assistance.
The policy here has two related strands. It is not just a matter of ensuring that those people who enter this country on the basis that they will have no recourse to public funds do not receive benefit. It is equally to ensure that local housing authorities are not faced with further additional costs.
I am not sure whether the noble Earl wishes to pursue the matter to a vote. I hope that he will not, but will withdraw the amendment. However, if he does not do so, I hope that my noble friends will support me in the Lobby.
Earl Russell: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, will he clarify one vital point on which I hope that I have understood him accurately? Am I to understand that the alignment with housing benefit means that those who have entered the country and claimed asylum before 5th February will not be subject to this clause?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, those who entered this country and claimed asylum before 5th February are protected by the transitional arrangements which we agreed. If they claimed asylum properly, until the next decision is made they will continue to receive housing benefit and to be subject to the homelessness legislation.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister. That was the principal point that I wished to elicit from him. I am extremely glad to hear him say it.
Perhaps I may say cursorily to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, that one can have an entitlement to a facility. I am sorry that the noble Lord is not in his place to hear me say it, but if he wishes to apply for a facility to which he is not entitled he will soon discover the distinction.
On the point which the Minister has made repeatedly about public funds, one must see an asylum seeker entering the country as being in a position which is very much analogous to being under duress. I have already drawn the parallel and I make no apology for reiterating it, since the Minister repeated the point to which it was a reply. If one were to have a severe climbing accident and were asked, before being rescued, to undertake to

1317
pay the six-figure cost of the rescue, one might legitimately argue that the promise had been extracted under duress.
I shall not again quote Article 31.1 of the UN Convention. I believe that the Government are in breach of it, but I shall not pursue the point now and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 10 [Entitlement to child benefit]:
[Amendment No. 6 not moved.]
Clause 11 [Saving for social security regulations]:
[Amendment No. 7 not moved.]
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 8, line 28, at end insert—
("( ) This section does not apply to a person whose claim for asylum has not been determined by the Secretary of State within three months of the date on which it was made.").
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the amendment stands in the names of myself and my noble friend Lord McIntosh of Haringey. It proposes that if a claim for asylum status is not determined within three months, the claimant should be entitled to benefit. That would locate responsibility firmly where it should lie: that is, with the Government for having failed to determine the claim within three months. At the moment, there is a financial incentive for the Government to be inefficient, to delay determination in order to avoid paying benefit. That is bad public policy. What is worse is that it means that some of the most vulnerable and destitute people are starved out of their right to pursue their claim because they have no means of subsistence. Why should those seeking asylum be penalised because our systems are inefficient?
At the moment, it takes 19 months from the initial receipt of a claim to its determination. We still have unresolved claims going back to 1991. I believe that the figures are: 15 per cent. in 1991, 15 per cent. in 1992, 25 per cent. in 1993 and 25 per cent. in 1994. Over 10,000 asylum seekers, as at last February, have been waiting since 1991 for their claims to be determined. The current backlog which was 46,000 in 1993 is now nearly 68,000 and is rising by 2,000 a month.
The Government will presumably say what they said last night; that is, that many extra staff are being employed but that they are "being swamped by a rising tide" and such suitable metaphors. What one normally does with a moored boat on a rising tide is to loosen and lengthen the rope. The Government are failing to do that. As I understand it, the Government have appointed 500 additional caseworkers who heard just under 44,000 applications last year. That is a rate of 1.7 cases determined per week per caseworker. It means either that the decisions are difficult and time consuming because the claimants may well be genuine or that the competence of the staff and the Government is less than satisfactory. Such is not the case in other countries where they deal with asylum claims much more expeditiously than us.
The amendment therefore firmly locates responsibility for delays and the refusal of benefit where it belongs: with the Home Office. Asylum seekers should not be put into a prolonged state of limbo because the Government have not got round to determining their claims. Just because the Home Office cannot get its act together, that is no reason for the DSS to deprive people seeking asylum the benefit on which to survive in the meantime. It is deeply unfair to make asylum seekers the victims of Home Office dilatoriness. I beg to move.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I find this an interesting and intriguing amendment. The noble Baroness wishes to impose a time limit of three months on the Home Office to reach a conclusion about applications. She suggests that the Home Office has a deliberate policy of delaying because, of course, it delays the payment of benefit. That is not true because—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, will the Minister give way? I did not say that the Home Office had a deliberate policy of delay. The words I used were that at the moment there is a financial incentive for the Government to be inefficient. Those are the words I used.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the noble Baroness has put her argument the wrong way round. There is no financial incentive for the Government to be dilatory at the moment but there may well be potential for that accusation once my changes have been brought in because people will lose benefit after the first Home Office decision. However, at the moment the longer the decision is spun out, the longer people remain on benefit.
I do not know whether the noble Baroness is a ballroom dancer; if so, she may know that it takes two to tango. The delays currently in the system are put into the system by the applicants, both in their first request for asylum to be considered in the Home Office and then in subsequent appeals. The more they delay—especially the appeal stage—the longer they stay on benefit in this country. That is one of the problems which I brought to your Lordships' attention. It seems to me that the noble Baroness has gone a fair part of the way in agreeing with me, without saying so, that it is one of the major problems in the system.
The situation is made even worse and more difficult for the Home Office, as I explained yesterday, when one considers the increasing numbers of asylum applications we have seen in this country. I do not wish to go over the figures in great detail again but remind your Lordships that a decade ago the figures ran at 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000 applicants per year; last year they reached a total of 55,000. That is a fair tide. The seafaring example that I gave the noble Baroness was of rowing against that tide: the harder one rows, the less chance one has of succeeding if the tide is flowing ever faster. That is what is wrong here.
We have made considerable improvements in the asylum system which I explained to your Lordships yesterday. We made 21,000 decisions in 1994, 27,000

1319
in 1995 and we are on course to make 37,000 decisions in the current year. There have also been unfortunate delays with appeal determinations largely because of the terrific increase in applicants. If we still only had 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000 people applying for asylum, I might well be able to accept the noble Baroness's amendment, so long as the applicants did not stall, delay and ask for adjournments and reconsiderations. However, the position is that we have managed to increase appeal determinations from 2,400 in 1994 to a projected 19,000 this year.
What I find most intriguing about the noble Baroness's amendment is that she wants the whole process to be speeded up, yet her party opposed the short procedures which the Home Office and the Government introduced and are introducing in order to carry out the speeding-up process. We introduced the short procedures so that people entering the country are interviewed quickly and their cases dealt with quickly. It is intriguing that the noble Baroness's party opposed the speeding up that would have come from the short procedure.
It is all very well to say that if a decision is not made within three months—and I presume that is for in-country applicants—then those applicants should be allowed benefit. But at the same time the noble Baroness says, "By the way, we don't like you using a short procedure and we voted against it when you tried to introduce it". We introduced the short procedure which I believe will greatly help. Of course, we are at one and agree that it is important that we make decisions quickly. It is important for the British taxpayer who, I remind noble Lords, pays out £200 million every year to people who turn out not to be justified in their claims. But it is also important for the genuine asylum seekers.
I should have thought we would all want decisions to be made as quickly as possible so that the uncertainty is removed as quickly as possible. I should like to have heard yesterday and today some positive measures which would help us to deal with the increasing numbers and to prevent that increase so that we could deal with the genuine cases quickly and not have them sitting for months wondering whether they will receive asylum.
That is not the right way to proceed. The right way is the direction that we are taking. The figures I gave yesterday, when noble Lords were kind enough to ask me what had happened since we made the changes in February, indicated that by May there had been a reduction of 50 per cent. in the number of asylum seekers. If that kind of trend continues and we can bring the figures down so that they are much more in line with the numbers seeking asylum from our fellow Europeans, we shall be able to do what the noble Baroness wants us to do and deal with asylum applications very quickly. The measures I have proposed will do that. I really do not need an amendment from the noble Baroness stipulating three months when I have had her opposition to every other part of my department's policy and the policy of the department of my noble friend Lady Blatch in order to deal with the increasing number of asylum applicants in this country.
4 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am very disappointed with the Minister's reply. This is the usual process that we see throughout Tory social security legislation: when in doubt, finger the victims; it is all their fault for seeking benefits; if only they were clued in enough conveniently not to seek benefits, we should not have to deal with them and there would not be delays. That is a pretty story. We get it in relation to JSA, child support, child benefit issues, and now in relation to asylum seekers. It is their fault for seeking benefit; that is the reason for delays at the Home Office and why we cannot get money for them. They cannot have benefits because they are being foolish enough to ask for them. The very act of asking for benefits disqualifies them.
It is a classic Tory government argument. We have heard it time and again in relation to social security. If people are unemployed, it is their fault for not finding a job; if people are destitute, it is their fault for not being self-supporting; if people are not receiving support from a partner, it is their fault for not naming him, even though they may be frightened of doing so. It represents a constant fingering of the victim. That is all we have heard from the Minister today.
If the Government were right, if they were so overwhelmed by delays that have grown in the past 18 months, as they have tried to suggest with all the images of poor little rowing boats against enormous tides that we are getting yet again—you would think the speechwriters could find new metaphors, having used boats and tides for the last three sessions running; there are other metaphors in the repertoire, I assure the Minister—if the Minister were right in his argument that these problems have occurred only recently and there are huge increases in the figures, why then are 10,000 people still waiting from 1991? Why then are similar numbers still waiting from 1992? Why are similar numbers still waiting from 1993, if the tide of immigrants that is swamping us has come so recently and so rapidly that only now we cannot cope?
I have the figures in front of me. Applications in 1990 were 26,000; in 1991, 44,000; in 1992, 24,000; in 1993, 22,000; in 1994, 32,000; and the figure as of February for the number of applications still outstanding was 15 per cent. for the first three years and 25 per cent. for the past two. I give way to the Minister.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I never said that it was only in 1995 that the increase occurred. Perhaps the noble Baroness will look at Table 2.5 in what I suspect is the book she is looking at. She will see that the 4,000, 5,000 and 6,000 I cited in the mid-1980s and the second part of the 1980s began to increase quite sharply in 1989 and 1990, reaching 73,000 in 1991. That is the problem. It is not just that the numbers of applications increased in a jump to 1995; the increase started in 1989 and took off in a very big

1321
way in 1991. Thankfully, the numbers fell back a little, but they have begun to increase again. I commend Table 2.5 relating to applications.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, in that case the Government have had five years to deal with this rising tide and have failed to do so. In other words, instead of what we were told yesterday about extra case workers and so on, as though this were a recent phenomenon, and since other countries tightened up we have been swamped, the Minister now concedes that it is a situation to which we have been trying to respond for the past five years. The problem continues to worsen and the Government have failed, not over one or two years, but over five years to deal with a problem in which the number of applications outpaces the resources that the Government are willing to apply to resolve it. Therefore, the Government are simply seeking to deny people benefit in order to deny them the ability to sustain their claim. That is the consequence.
We cannot have it both ways. Either this is a recent tide, in which case why were the earlier applications taking so long to resolve; or it has been a longstanding tide, in which case why have the Government been so inefficient in responding to it? Which of those two situations do the Government prefer as an accurate description? Either way, the asylum seeker is the victim, either of the Government's dilatoriness or incompetence or of their refusal to take the need seriously.
The Minister made a point about the Opposition Benches voting against the short procedure. As I understand it, although I was not personally involved in that debate, we voted against the short procedure because it was unjust. We did not, I understand, vote against the whole clause. Therefore the Minister is wrong to attribute to these Benches opposition or hostility to speeding up procedures. Speeding up those procedures cannot and must not be at the expense of the fair assessment of claims.
At the end of the day we see the Government doing what they always do—blaming the asylum seeker for seeking benefit and seeing that as the source of the problem. There are other amendments that we shall wish to explore at even greater length. Were that not the case, I should seek the opinion of the House. However, at this stage I shall not do so.
Earl Russell: Perhaps I might assist the noble Baroness. I have obtained some figures on applications for asylum per million of population in 1995. The source is the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, in a Written Answer: the United Kingdom, 1,000; France, 400; the Netherlands, 1,900; and Germany, 2,100. Does the noble Baroness agree that those figures call for the Minister to think again?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am very grateful for that contribution. I encourage the Minister to comment on those figures.
So not only are we tardy, dilatory and ineffient, but we are far more so on all three counts than are our European neighbours, for which the noble Earl, Lord
1322
Russell, contributed the figures. I hope that the Minister is not as complacent about such dilatoriness when it costs people their basic means of subsistence as he is in other areas of social security where fraud, error, over-payment and under-payment continue to mount. However, as I said, there are other issues that we shall wish to explore. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 9:
Page 8, line 28, at end insert—
("( ) This section does not apply to a person who has made a claim for asylum where the evidence adduced in support of the claim establishes a reasonable likelihood that the appellant has been tortured in the country or territory to which he would be sent.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am grateful for the last few minutes of debate on the previous amendment. It showed, as we have attempted to show all through our consideration of the Bill, that the fundamental objection to the short procedure, the certification provided for in Clause 1 of the Bill, is not that it is wrong to speed up applications or appeals—of course it is desirable to speed up applications and appeals; it is desirable to have enough people to do that—but that it is unjust. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said:
"the more accelerated a procedure, the higher the risk that an erroneous decision will be made".
The research project that was commissioned by the Refugee Council on these procedures confirmed that,
"Many genuine refugees will not be identifiable as a result".
These are the dangers of injustice to which we have pointed at all stages of the Bill.
Amendment No. 9 uses the wording that the Government themselves, under pressure, inserted in Clause 1 to seek to extend the protection provided by subsection (5) of Clause 1 to victims of torture to those who would now be denied benefits under Clause 11, the new clause introduced yesterday.
Those noble Lords who voted by such a large majority to protect the victims of torture from the risks of an accelerated procedure under Clause I should, I suggest, be even more keen to ensure that those victims of torture are not put in a position of destitution as a result of the provisions of Clause 11 of the Bill, ruled so recently by the Court of Appeal to be illegal.
The Government cannot object to the wording of the amendment because it is their wording; it is the wording they persuaded the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool and his colleagues was an appropriate alternative to the wording which had been carried by a large majority in Committee on the Bill. We are not entirely happy with the wording. We still think that the risk of torture in a country or territory to which a person would be sent misses the point we were seeking to achieve which is torture in the country he came from, which may not always be the same. But we have, I think the House will agree, played safe and made sure that we are free of criticism by using the wording which the Government themselves have devised.
The principle, however, is very clear. The principle must surely be that if we are concerned with victims of torture, since we have agreed, as the Government have now agreed, that they should be protected from the risks of an accelerated procedure under Clause 1, how much more so do we need to be satisfied that they are not punished under Clause 11 of the Bill by the denial of benefits and by the threat of destitution? I beg to move.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, all sides of the House agree that torture is utterly repugnant. My noble friend Lady Blatch acknowledged that the will of the House expressed in Committee was that there should be a safeguard on the face of the Bill to exempt genuine victims of torture from the special appeals procedure. My noble friend brought forward amendments at Report stage to give effect to the will of the House but to reduce the scope for exploitation of the asylum system by people who would seek to circumvent our procedures by claiming to be victims of torture.
I accept that the amendment now before the House in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, uses a similar form of words to the torture exemption in Clause 1. But it does not follow that what is appropriate in the context of Clause 1 is appropriate in the context of benefit entitlement. The amendment cannot and does not purport to apply to torture victims until a decision is made on their asylum application. It is not possible to establish whether there is a reasonable likelihood that someone has suffered torture until their claim has been assessed. The amendment is therefore only concerned with torture victims who have been refused asylum and are appealing against that decision.
If the Home Office, in assessing an asylum claim, finds there is a reasonable likelihood that the applicant has been tortured, then in the great majority of cases it will, of course, grant asylum or exceptional leave to remain. It may be that an applicant has been tortured on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. In that case he would almost certainly be recognised as a refugee. A person who has been tortured but does not have a well-founded fear of persecution for a reason specified in the 1951 convention would normally be granted exceptional leave to remain.
If the applicant is granted asylum or exceptional leave, he will from that point on be entitled to benefits on the same basis as a British national. So if an applicant can demonstrate at the initial decision stage that there is a reasonable likelihood that he has been tortured, then in the great majority of cases he will receive benefit. The amendment, of course, does nothing to help this particular group.
If the applicant cannot adduce evidence which establishes a reasonable likelihood that he has been tortured, the amendment does not assist him. It would not confer benefit entitlement on an appellant unless he had succeeded in demonstrating there was a reasonable likelihood that he had been tortured. So the amendment would genuinely assist only the small group of people who can demonstrate at the initial decision stage that
1324
there is a reasonable likelihood that they have been tortured but who are nevertheless refused asylum and exceptional leave.
4.15 p.m.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I shall only detain him for a moment. Last night one of the issues we discussed at some length with his noble friend Lady Blatch was how one established that one had been tortured and whether there would be time, for example, to obtain adequate medical evidence to show one way or the other. Part of the purpose of the amendment, which I strongly support, is to try to ensure that such an applicant, in what might be a period extending to a couple of weeks—beyond the original three days—would be sustained while he was obtaining the evidence to show his case one way or the other. The noble Lord will appreciate that obtaining evidence in three days is almost impossible.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I am not entirely sure what that intervention means. If someone applies at the port of entry for asylum and the grounds are that they have been tortured, then, as noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, told us in the last amendment, it will be some months before their case comes to be decided. I would have thought that there is more than enough time for them to obtain any necessary medical evidence in order to substantiate the claim they made on arrival. Without prejudging what I shall do about it, even if someone applies for asylum within the three days that your Lordships imposed on my amendment yesterday, then that person will be eligible for benefit up until the point at which the Home Office makes a decision. So I do not understand the noble Baroness's problem. I do not understand it in the context of what I would like the law to be, namely, on arrival, and I do not even understand it in the context of the change made by the Opposition that it is on arrival or plus three days. I do not agree with the noble Baroness that such a person will only have three days to find the medical evidence. Once they apply for asylum they will have that amount of time between that day and the time that their case is examined to put together the medical evidence.
There may be some people, as I was saying, who are refused asylum or exceptional leave, but there will always be good reason for that. It may be, for example, that there are changed circumstances in their country of origin and that, indeed, the party they support has come to power. Now, if you have come to this country and said, "I am being persecuted because 'x' party is in power and they don't like my party" and subsequently 'x' party loses power and your party wins, it does not seem to me that you can actually continue to pursue your asylum application.
I have to let the House into what I was going to say is a small secret but it is not actually a secret. Perhaps I can tell your Lordships there are some applicants from Pakistan who find themselves in exactly that position. I find it interesting to know how you can continue to say that you may be persecuted for your political beliefs

1325
if your party has actually gained power over the opposition, and that in a free election too in the country I have just given as an example—not that I think there would be any examples of torture from Pakistan. However, I instance it as a case where people continue their asylum application after their own party has gained power.
There could be an increased incentive to make allegations of torture in an attempt to gain access to the benefit system. That is another build-in of delay that people can make. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, said yesterday, when describing asylum applications from in-country applicants, that it was the trump card in their back pocket that they played after they had been here for quite a time, had used up their money, and said, "I would quite like to stay here". This proposal would give them a second trump card. They could play the trump card for asylum; they could then play another trump card and say, "Ah, but I was tortured".
I do not think that we need to put this test into the benefit system. The principal test that should be applied to asylum seekers is the test applied by the Home Office. The Home Office makes a decision. The Home Office has to consider whether the application for asylum is justified. If it is justified, then in seven out of 100 cases it grants that asylum. If there are other circumstances—there are many and they do not just include torture—and we decide to give exceptional leave to remain, we give that. I do not believe that to put a kind of second tier arrangement on the benefit system is right or sensible. It is right and proper that we leave these issues to be determined by the principal question to be answered: does this person justify being granted asylum in this country or indeed exceptional leave to remain? If the answer to those two questions is yes, for whatever reason, they can obtain access to all the benefit systems in exactly the same way as British citizens. I do not believe that it is sensible to apply another, further test to the benefit system.
Earl Russell: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, perhaps he will allow me, on behalf of my noble friend and myself, to offer the warmest thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch. I discovered this morning that Mr. Igbinidu has been allowed to stay. When my noble friend rose just now, she had not yet received that information. Now that she has, she wishes to be associated with those thanks.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Minister's speech will teach me to seek the agreement of the Government Front Bench by using their own words. In effect, by saying that this amendment will not work because it will bite too late, the Minister is saying that his own words, which the Government persuaded the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool to accept at Report stage, will also bite too late for the accelerated procedure under Clause 1. If it applies to one, it applies to the other. He cannot have the argument both ways.
1326
With this amendment, we seek, in the Government's own words, to ensure that at whatever stage an applicant produces evidence which establishes reasonable likelihood that he has been tortured, that stage will trigger the restoration of benefits. It is not necessarily the case that the person established such a claim at the very beginning of his application, and it may well be that he has been denied benefits. But at the stage when he substantiates such a claim, it is not by any means clear to me that the Government will immediately grant asylum or exceptional leave to remain.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I wonder whether I may be helpful to the noble Lord. Perhaps I should say with regard to the evidence that the effect of the amendment differs from the torture exemption in Clause 1. Under Clause 1 it is open to the adjudicator to disagree with the Home Office and decide that there is a reasonable likelihood that the appellant has been tortured. That reinstates the right of appeal to the tribunal and provides the appellant with a further opportunity to put his case.
I am not sure if we are at cross purposes. Certainly, I should not like the noble Lord to think that my noble friend Lady Blatch had not acted totally honourably in respect of the amendment of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool to which she agreed.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I did not use the word "honour" and I do not use such words. I do not think I need respond to that part of the Minister's reply.
If there are consequential amendments which would follow to parallel the role of the adjudicator and the possibility of further consideration which exists under Clause 1, then it would be possible for the Government to introduce them as an amendment to a Lords amendment at the Commons reconsideration. We are necessarily at a very late stage of the consideration of the Bill—not because I chose to bring forward this matter late but because the Government chose to bring forward this clause late and at the very last possible minute.
I shall not apologise, given the time that we have had and at this late stage of consideration of the Bill, for overlooking the possibility that there might need to be consequential amendments. The fact of the matter is that applicants for asylum, asylum seekers, make claims of having been tortured at several possibly different stages in the course of their application. Some of those people, the more self-confident, perhaps those who have been less damaged by torture, can perfectly well make their claim of torture at a very early stage. I hope the Minister will agree that in such cases it would be grossly unjust to deny them benefit as soon as that claim had been reasonably established in the terms which the Government inserted into Clause 1(5).
But it is also not uncommon for an applicant to produce evidence of torture at later stages. Torture victims need time to talk; they need time to disclose and time to learn to live with their experience. They may not be able to think about it, let alone talk about it, before then. We know of a case dealt with by a London

1327
solicitor in which a lady did not disclose the fact that she had been raped in prison until the hearing in the Court of Appeal. Despite the allegation having been made at such a late stage, she won her appeal. So at whatever stage a well substantiated and well founded claim of torture is made, surely at that stage—it ought, of course, to be as early as possible—benefits should be restored.
Can the Minister give some indication of the protection which might exist for those who have established a claim of torture without having yet established a claim for asylum or exceptional leave to remain? Or is the Minister saying that there are no such cases?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, perhaps I may respond to that question, with the leave of your Lordships' House.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, I wonder whether the two Members of the Front Benches do not realise that the House is sitting and we are not in Committee.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Hear, hear!
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, with the leave of the House, perhaps I may respond very quickly. I tried to make it perfectly clear that a claim of torture is rightly and properly to be considered at the time of the asylum application claim. That is the right and proper place. As I indicated in my intervention—I tried to keep my speech as short as I could—the concession that we have made ought to allow people who have a claim a route to reconsideration if the adjudicator thinks that that is right and disagrees with the Home Office on the basis of the evidence that he has in front of him on the claim of torture.
But I do not believe that a claim of torture—just a claim—should be sufficient to reinstate entitlement to benefit. Where applicants adduce evidence of a reasonable likelihood that torture has taken place, then the pressure point, if I may so call it, is the pressure point of changing the decision and ensuring that he obtains status as a refugee or exceptional leave. Then he obtains both. He gets refugee status or exceptional leave and the benefit. I do not think I can go much further than that.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I certainly will not apologise to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham. We are dealing with this matter at this stage of the Bill, not through any wish of our own but because we are forced to do so.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, I was not asking for an apology. I was only asking the noble Lord to obey the rules of the House.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, in my closing speech on an amendment it is perfectly legitimate for me at any stage of the Bill to seek clarification from the Minister. It is for the benefit of
1328
this House and the consideration of any individual amendment to have the facts clearly before us if they have not been established before. This is the first time that the amendment has been debated. It was not possible to debate it in Committee because of the time available yesterday. I do not in any way acknowledge that there is anything improper about the way in which I, or indeed the Minister, have conducted the debate on this amendment. The Minister has not told me, as I asked him to do, that there are no cases where somebody who, to use the words in the amendment, has established a reasonable likelihood that he has been tortured will continue without benefit until the final decision as to his refugee status or exceptional leave to remain has been resolved. There are therefore people who, having made a reasonable claim of torture, not merely on the balance of probabilities of the case but which has been established, are still going to be deprived of benefit.
I do not see how, in a civilised country, we can force people who have been tortured into destitution in the way that is proposed by the Government's amendment. I do not believe that they intended it that way but that is the effect of their new clause, and I shall seek the opinion of the House on the amendment.
4.30 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 9) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 91; Not-Contents, 145.

Division No. 2

CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Haskel, L.

Ashley of Stoke, L.

Hollis of Heighain, B.

Avebury, L. [Teller.]

Ilchester, E.

Barnett, L.

Jay of Paddington, B.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Jeger, B.

Berkeley, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Blackstone, B.

Judd,L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Kennet, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Carlisle, E.

Lockwood, B.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Longford, E.

Carter, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Clancarty, E.

McCarthy, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

McNair, L.

Dahrendorf, L.

McNally, L.

Dean of Beswick,L.

Mason of Bamsley, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Mayhew, L.

Donoughue, L.

Merlyn-Rees, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Methuen, L.

Dubs, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Ezra,L.

Monkswell, L.

Gallacher, L.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Geraint, L.

Nicol, B.

Gladwin of Clee.L.

Plant of Highfield,L.

Glenamara, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Redesdale, L.

Grenfell,L.

Richard, L.

Grey, E.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Halsbury, E.

Rodgers of Quarry Bank. L

1329

Russell, E.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Saltoun of Abemethy, Ly.

Straffonl, E.

Sandwich, E.

Taverne, L.

Seear.B.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Tordoff, L.

Serota,B.

Turner of Camden, B.

Sawel, L.

Wallace of Saltaire, L.

Shannon, E.

White, B.

Shepherd, L.

Williams of Crosby, B.

Southward, Bp.

Williams of Elvel,L.

Stallard.L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

NOT-CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Harris of Peckham, L.

Ailsa,M.

Henley, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Hertford, M.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Holderness, L.

Ashbourne, L.

HolmPatrick, L.

Astor of Hever, L.

Hothfield, L.

Balfour, E.

Howe, E.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Birdwood, L.

Inglewood, L.

Blaker, L.

Ironside, L.

Blatch, B.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Boardman, L.

Kenilworth, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Kimball, L.

Bradford, E.

Kintore, E.

Braine of Wheatley, L.

Knollys, V.

Brentford, V.

Lane of Horsell, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Lauderdale, E.

Brigstocke, B.

Leigh, L.

Bruntisfield, L.

Lindsay, E.

Butterworth, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Cadman, L.

Lucas, L.

Caldecote, V.

McConnell, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Manton, L.

Chelmsford, V.

Marlesford, L.

Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Merrivale, L.

Chorley, L.

Mersey, V.

Clanwilliam, E.

Middleton, L.

Clark of Kempston, L.

Miller of Hendon,B.

Coleraine, L.

Milverton, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Courtown, E.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Cranborne, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Mottistone, L.

Cuckney, L.

Mountevans, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Davidson, V.

Moyne, L.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Munster, E.

Denham, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Newall, L.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Norrie, L.

Downshire, M.

Northesk, E.

Eccles of Moulton, B.

O'Cathain, B.

Ellenborough, L.

Onslow, E.

Elliott of Morpeth,L.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Elton, L.

Pender, L.

Ferrers, E.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Finsberg, L.

Pilkington of Oxenford, L.

Forbes, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Rankeillour, L.

Geddes,L.

Rawlings, B.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Reay, L.

Glentoran, L.

Rees, L.

Goschen, V.

Renfrew of Kaimsthom, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Renton, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Renwick, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Rodney, L.

Harding of Petherton, L.

St. John of Fawsley, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Saint Oswald, L.

1330

Seccombe, B.

Swinton, E.

Sharpies, B.

Tebbit, L.

Shaw of Northstead, L.

Teviot, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L

Slim,V.

Trumpington, B.

Stewartby, L.

Ullswater, V.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Vivian, L.

Strange, B.

Wade of Chorlton,L.

Strathcarron, L.

Wedgwood, L.

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Wilcox, B.

Sudeley, L.

Wynford, L.

Swinfen, L.

Young, B.

[*See col. 1364.]
Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
4.39 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 8, line 31, at end insert ("or is given exceptional leave to remain in the United Kingdom").
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this is probably a probing amendment, but it may not be—
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: You cannot probe on Third Reading.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I hear a comment from a sedentary position about Third Reading. We would not be in this position if the Government had not produced the clause that we are now debating fractionally over 24 hours ago. I think that this side is occasionally entitled to ask for the indulgence of the House when we are coping with what should have been a gap of four weeks between the Committee and Third Reading stages in just 24 hours. If that means that we have to ask for the indulgence of the House, I hope and expect that it will be extended to us.
I am seeking to discover the intent behind the clause and whether we are reading it correctly. As I understand it, under subsection (1) any asylum seeker of a prescribed description may be excluded from benefits. Subsection (2) then allows those asylum seekers whose claims succeed and who are then recorded as being refugees to have their benefits backdated for the period during which their claims were being determined. What is the position of those who are not awarded refugee status but who are nonetheless granted exceptional leave to remain? I take it that the Government intend that they also should receive backdated benefit. If not, will the Government explain to the House why not?
I should like to make a couple of points. First, the Minister has admitted—he has done so again today—that there is very little in practice to distinguish between the two groups: those called refugees and those who are granted exceptional leave to remain. The Minister's own description earlier was that those granted ELR had bullets flying around them whereas those granted refugee status had a bullet with their name on it. However, the Minister admitted that life was equally dangerous for both groups; that their lives were equally

1331
at risk; that they were equally entitled to asylum, and that it would be equally inhumane to return them to their country of origin.
As the Minister said just five or 10 minutes ago on the previous amendment, those granted ELR may very well have been victims of torture, but not of "torture" as defined under the convention, which would technically classify them as a refugee. The Minister made much of the point that he well accepted that victims of torture could be granted exceptional leave to remain—in other words, the distinction that is made between those granted refugee status and those granted ELR does not hold up to argument. The Minister accepted that many people might fall into one category rather than another according to whether they came from, say, Bosnia, or Somalia.
Secondly—this is a different point, I hope—at the moment anyone who is granted exceptional leave to remain is treated under the benefits system in exactly the same way as if they had been granted refugee status. Both are entitled to full benefits. I am not sure whether the Minister is listening to the argument so I repeat that at the moment anyone who is granted ELR is treated under the benefits system in exactly the same way as someone granted refugee status. Both get full benefit entitlement. Once a claim is determined and the claimant is granted either ELR or refugee status, both go on to be treated for benefit in the same way. As far as I am aware it is only in this clause, which we saw for the first time 24 hours ago, that for the first time the Government are seeking to treat those with ELR differently under the benefits system from those granted refugee status. They will grant backdated benefit to those with refugee status, but not to those with ELR, although in all other respects the two groups of applicants are treated identically. Why? It seems utterly mean and unnecessary.
We are not talking about very large sums. After all, if somebody seeking exceptional leave to remain applies at the port of entry, he will get benefit. Once a person is awarded ELR, he will get benefit. All that we are talking about is the backdating of benefit for the period during which the claim was being determined. Why draw a distinction between ELR and refugee status only in relation to backdating and nowhere else in the entire benefits system, especially when the Minister has conceded, as he did a few moments ago, that there may be very little to distinguish between the two groups of people on issues such as torture?
Thirdly, when the Government made the concession about the backdating of benefit in the light of the Court of Appeal judgment, the Minister made much of the fact that churches and charities which supported asylum seekers in the meanwhile would get their financial costs reimbursed when the benefit was backdated. The Minister said that that would encourage churches and charities to be discriminating as to whom to support. It was an invitation more or less for them to back strong cases.
The Government have subsequently accepted that ELR is a strong case. Why then are the Government willing to backdate and to refund when a bid for refugee
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status has succeeded, but not for ELR? If that omission is not accidental and I suspect that it is not—presumably because three times as many people come in under ELR as come with refugee status—what we have is a grudging, mean, arbitrary and unreasonable distinction on one slender point in the entire benefits system, the backdating of benefit. The Government have made a grudging concession in the light of the Court of Appeal judgment, but in this clause they are rowing back even from that concession. I beg to move.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I strongly support the noble Baroness in this amendment, which corresponds to one that I tabled as a manuscript amendment yesterday but did not move because I felt that it was not fair to the House in the circumstances. I had attempted to table the amendment at 10.48 p.m. on Sunday evening by faxing it to the House. Although it had been taken off the fax machine, it did not reach the Public Bill Office until I came in at 2.30 p.m. on Monday and asked where it was. The amendment was still sitting in an in-tray in the Minute Room. It was then taken to the Public Bill Office and distributed, but it did not become available to your Lordships as Amendment No. 10A until halfway through our proceedings.
That is an illustration of the dangers of foreshortening proceedings as the Government have chosen to do. It was not simply a case of the documents relating to the government amendments not being in the Library or the Printed Paper Office when the Leader of the House said that they were, as was mentioned yesterday. The point is that the period of time within which one could study the documents and then formulate amendments was impossibly short, particularly for Back-Benchers who did not have the advantage of receiving the documents prior to their being laid in the Library and the Printed Paper Office, as did the two Front Benches.
The amendment deals with an important point. I share the opinion which has been expressed by the noble Baroness that, in practice, there is hardly anything to choose between refugee status and exceptional leave to remain. I think I am right in saying—the Minister has all the figures so perhaps he can remind us of the facts—that in the past 10 years, a period during which the Minister says that there has not been any change in the countries of origin—a matter on which we had a dispute at an earlier stage—there has been a marked shift from the awarding of refugee status towards the granting of exceptional leave to remain when there can be no possible reason in the countries of origin for that division of the asylum-seeking community into the sheep and the goats, with that large increase in the goats compared to the sheep over the 10 years that we are considering.
I am interested in certain countries, one of which is Turkey. The number of people from Turkey being successful in applications for asylum has plummeted over the past 10 years, a period when by any objective test conditions in the south-east (where most of the refugees come from) have materially worsened. However, hardly anybody from Turkey is awarded refugee status. Those who succeed in their applications

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are normally granted exceptional leave to remain. I believe that the same is true of Bosnia and Somalia, which were mentioned by the noble Baroness. The conditions in both countries are appalling.
The noble Baroness rightly points out that under the convention a person has to demonstrate an individual fear of persecution, whereas in many of those countries the fear is endemic among large sections of the population. However, it must apply to particular groups within the community for them to be eligible either for refugee status or exceptional leave to remain. That distinction is an artificial one and there is no real difference between those in one category and those in another. It is impossible therefore to understand why the Government should deprive one group of eligibility to asylum and yet backdate benefits in full to the date of the passing of the Act for those in the other group. The division of asylum seekers into two groups is incomprehensible, illogical and immoral. I hope that your Lordships will not accept it.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I am not entirely sure where the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, leads us. I believe that it would widen the criteria for refugee status. He contends that we ought to allow more people to have refugee status than the seven out of 100 that we do. I do not know how he comes to that conclusion. We apply the UN Convention test of whether or not the person before us ought to be declared a refugee. That is the test we have signed up to in the international agreement.
However, we have decided that it is too harsh simply to divide people into those who pass the test and become refugees and those who fail it. Therefore, although we are under no international obligation to do so, we have introduced exceptional leave to remain. By and large, ELR operates in respect of those countries where there is serious trouble. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, accepts that. If one has regard to the figures relating to Somalia—where I am sure all noble Lords will accept there is serious trouble—in 1995 a very large number of people were given exceptional leave to remain. They may not pass the test under the UN Convention, which is an individual fear of persecution, but there is no doubt that there is such bedlam going on in such countries that it is humane and decent for us to give them exceptional leave to remain. Somalia is one such country; former Yugoslavia has been another. However, people are beginning to return to Bosnia. They have been given exceptional leave to remain in this country. We hope that the situation has changed sufficiently for them to be able to return, if not to their own villages, certainly to their homeland. The other country in that category last year was Afghanistan. Those three countries accounted for the great majority of the exceptional leave to remain category. That category is quite different from refugees.
We do not believe that we are under an obligation to treat both categories in the same way. Refugees are accorded specific rights under the UN Convention and we ensure, as we should, that those rights can be exercised. For that reason, refugees automatically
1334
receive benefits. Having read the judgment of the Court of Appeal, we concluded that we should backdate refugees' benefits to the point when they first claimed, if they were in-country applicants and did not initially receive benefits.
The granting of exceptional leave to remain is quite different from the grant of refugee status. It is a discretionary concession made by the United Kingdom Government over and above our obligations under the UN Convention. It is intended to address circumstances not covered by the convention in respect of which some discretion ought to be exercised. The right to remain, which exceptional leave gives, is not identical to that given to refugees. ELR is granted for one year in the first instance. It may then be renewed for a further two periods of three years. That provides a total of seven years on three renewals before settlement is considered.
An individual must pass three reviews at one year, four years and seven years before he or she can be considered for settlement. Refugee status is awarded for four years. At the end of that period settlement can be applied for. I do not believe that the two can be equated. The award of exceptional leave is made at the point when the person is refused asylum. When the individual has been refused asylum we then look at the case. It is established, first, that the individual does not meet the criteria set out in the UN Convention and therefore is not, as claimed, a refugee. Consideration is then given to whether or not the individual should return to his or her own country.
I have explained why we decided that refugees who appeal should be treated in the same way as our own citizens and benefit should be backdated for those who succeed. But when individuals who have been given exceptional leave to remain appeal—as some do because they want refugee status—or those who have been denied both ELR and refugee status appeal, they do so against the decision not to grant refugee status, not against the decision to refuse ELR. The critical matter is the refugee test. If at the end of the appeal system they are not found to be refugees, as happens in 97 cases out of 100, we do not see any case for retrospective payment of benefit. If the case is then sent back to the Home Office because the adjudicator believes that perhaps the department ought to look at the matter again, the Home Office may decide to exercise its powers and grant ELR. Grant of exceptional leave to remain ensures that a person can stay in the UK. We give them access to benefit at the same rate that applies to UK citizens, but it does not make them refugees.
I believe that this amendment pushes the concession that I have made a bit too far. The amendment would equate refugee status with exceptional leave to remain. I do not believe that the two can be equated. The consideration by the Home Office and the appeal process are based on the test of refugee status or not. In that regard, we fulfil both our humanitarian and United Nations obligations. When someone is found not

1335
to have refugee status we are prepared—as it were, off our own bats—to consider whether the individual ought to be given exceptional leave to remain.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the noble Lord has dealt with the distinction between refugee status and exceptional leave to remain. Has the Minister taken any legal advice?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, in this field there is plenty of legal advice. It may be that one takes the legal advice which suits one. That is the same in every field. We are certain—this has stood the test of time—that there is a distinction between refugee status and exceptional leave to remain. I am not sure whether the noble Earl suggests that there is no distinction. There is a very big distinction, and I have tried to explain it clearly. It certainly exists in view of the way that the whole procedure has been run and is set out. Refugee status is the critical test to be applied and that fulfils our international obligations.
We have decided as a country—in my view quite rightly and, I am sure, in the view of all noble Lords—that there are some people who, while they cannot prove that they are refugees according to the international criteria, have a call on our humanity. In that regard we give them exceptional leave to remain and allow them access to the benefit system immediately. I do not believe that we should go one step further and give them the same rights as refugees and backdate the benefits. I hope that with that explanation the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
5 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I do not know, but I do not think that the Minister was persuaded by his own case as he was making it.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: Always!
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, the Minister was almost persuaded by it.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: Always.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, by the time it reached here, I can assure the Minister that it was "almost". I have to say that I thought the case pretty weak. The Minister for Social Security was trying to argue as though he were a Minister in the Home Office. He went to considerable trouble to explain that there was a difference in why an individual may end up being labelled—if I may use that phrase—a refugee, or being labelled as someone granted exceptional leave to remain. He showed us that there was a difference between the different periods of settlement: four years as opposed to seven years. That has nothing to do with it. It is irrelevant. It is a Home Office consideration as to how someone is designated. It is not concerned with social security legislation as to whether, first, that person is necessitous, and, secondly, whether the person has disqualified himself, even though necessitous, by some inappropriate behaviour. That is a social security test.
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That is what we are talking about in the amendment. We are not talking about the Home Office test, or what is the label. We are talking about social security tests, are they necessitous? Answer, yes. Have they disqualified themselves?
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Blatch): Give them everything!
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, the Minister says, "Give them everything". It makes me realise, despite the courtesies, and so on, of the House, which we all respect and usually enjoy, how wide is the gulf between the two Benches. Despite the conciliatory language we seek normally to employ to persuade, the remark made by the Minister from the Home Office, "Give them everything", as though this was some sort of game show with the arrow going around, as on some cheap television commercial, suggests a lack of seriousness and concern and empathic imagination of what people who are fleeing from torture experience when they enter this country.
Earl Russell: My Lords, will the noble Baroness add that the Minister made that intervention from a sedentary position, but may the record show it?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I accept what the noble Earl says. I return to the substantive point. The Minister was making the case, which I do not doubt is a valid Home Office case, as to the distinction between someone here as a refugee who has an individual fear of persecution and someone here for exceptional leave to remain because he or she is part of a generalised group of people who may therefore be at risk.
In both cases the social security issue is that both cases are necessitous and have not disqualified themselves. We have established that they are necessitous. That is the whole point about the means test for income support and income-related benefits. They have not disqualified themselves. Indeed, the Government have accepted, by giving them exceptional leave to remain, that they come within the same need for humanitarian treatment. So what is the difference?
All the considerations that the Minister has offered us are irrelevant. He has accepted that if both apply at the port of entry they will receive benefit; if they are both granted their status, they will receive benefit. All the Minister has done at the very last moment, having made a concession to those who are granted refugee status to have back-dated benefits, is to row back. For the first time in the benefit system he is putting a wedge between two categories of claimant. With the leave of the House, I invite the Minister—I realise that this is Third Reading—to tell me where at any previous point in the benefit system a distinction has been drawn between those who are claiming and obtain refugee status and those who obtain exceptional leave to remain.
I invite the Minister to tell me where previously any difference has been drawn. I accept the Home Office case, but this is a social security case. We have had the reply from him today speaking as Minister for

1337
Social Security. Will he tell us? He is silent. In other words, the Minister cannot tell us that at any time until now any distinction has been drawn in the social security system between those granted refugee status and those granted exceptional leave to remain. That is, until yesterday, for the first time. Why?
It is not the sums of money, because they will not be that large. It will be only for a short back-dated period for those who are subsequently granted exceptional leave to remain. It is not numbers. We are not talking about great numbers. We are not talking about a high cost. What are we talking about? Is it that the Government cannot bear the thought, having been overruled by the Court of Appeal and having therefore had to make concessions, of a loss of grace. I can think of nothing else but a desire to be grudging and mean. There is no other reason in the social security system. There is none at all, except to be grudging for its own sake. It is unbelievably petty-minded, mean and indecent of the Government. The fact that the Minister has not challenged my remarks at any point to contest anything I have alleged against the Government makes my argument for me. However, I shall not push the amendment to the vote. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Williams of Crosby Baroness Williams of Crosby moved Amendment No. 11:
Page 8, line 42, at end insert—
("( ) Nothing in regulations shall authorise the exclusion from benefit under subsection (1) above of any person—

(a) who has made a claim for asylum within the period specified in that subsection, or

(b) who has appealed against a refusal of asylum and either—

(i) the appeal has not been certified as being without foundation, or

(ii) a special adjudicator has disagreed with such certification.").

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I could understand if the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, were to use the phrase déjà vu about the amendment. I am well aware that the House is by now weary of the Bill. The number of empty seats in the Chamber, the clear loss of interest since yesterday, indicate that the House has had enough of the Bill. Therefore, those of us on the Front Benches, the Bishops' Benches and elsewhere who continue to press amendment after amendment are obliged to explain why we are doing so, and why we feel so strongly that we are pushing Members, especially on the Government Benches, to the limit of their patience.
In that category, perhaps I may say that I respect the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and the noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, for the patience and resilience they have shown, although the gulf between us is extremely deep. It would be less than generous not to recognise that they have both handled a whole set of repeated demands made upon them, not just from these Benches but from elsewhere in the House, with considerable grace, patience and determination.
Having said that, it stands to reason that we on the Opposition Benches in these last few amendments on Third Reading are obliged to explain why we regard the matter as being of such great significance that we have been prepared to bore Members of the House—some of them out of the Chamber.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, has advanced the argument—I believe that noble Lords in all parts of the House will recognise this—over, over and over again that the proportion of those determined to be genuine asylum seekers—he has given figures of 4 per cent. and 7 per cent., including all forms of extended leave, to reach about 25 per cent. of the total, and a little less in 1995—shows that the great majority of those attempting to enter this country are, to use his words, "bogus asylum seekers".
We on this side of the House are ready to admit that there are bogus asylum seekers. We have said, and we should like to repeat, that we believe such people have no right to stay in the UK, or indeed to make life much harder for those who are genuine asylum seekers. However, the problem is that taking the argument that those who are successful appellants or successful first claimants tells us exactly how many genuine asylum seekers there are is not a convincing argument.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, referred in his very last answer to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham. He said, "We apply the UN test. Successful applicants satisfy the UN convention". But the UNHCR in a recent memorandum about exactly that said:
"A country's recognition rate of refugees may more often reflect the narrowness or liberalness of that state's application of the refugee definition rather than the legitimacy or otherwise of individual claims. The lower figures are then tendentiously used as evidence that bogus claims are increasing, thereby justifying further restrictive measures".
They are its words, not mine. We have heard that tendentious argument repeated over and over and over again in the proceedings on the Bill.
I repeat, those are not my words but they are the words of the very organisation which the Minister called in his support. I refer to the UNHCR speaking about the United Nations Convention. The change in the climate of belief and disbelief has had a great deal to do with the sharp drop in the number of asylum seekers found to be genuine.
I wish to make only one further remark about that. We should be very careful about using the word "bogus" with the words "asylum seekers", as though they were married together and were one concept. There are bogus asylum seekers and there are many genuine asylum seekers. When we see, as on Monday the Independent so tragically indicated, a young man beaten up to the point of losing an eye because a group of thugs in the street regarded him as a bogus asylum seeker we can see the extreme dangers that this House will run if it stereotypes asylum seekers as though all or almost all were bogus.
We have pressed these matters because once in a while a Bill comes before the two Houses of Parliament on which there is such anxiety and concern that it flows well beyond the confines of this House or another place.

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This Bill falls into that category. I have spent 10 years of my life in government—four as a junior Minister and nearly six as a Cabinet Minister—and I have seen such Bills. They do not arise often but perhaps once in three or four years a Bill which in a sense is about the conscience of a nation comes before Parliament for consideration and decision. I believe that this is such a Bill. It is such a Bill because far beyond ourselves those groups in what is sometimes called civic society—the many democratic organisations beyond Parliament—have almost all given voice to their grave anxieties and concerns about the Bill.
I do not wish to detain the House more than briefly but perhaps I may remind your Lordships of what those organisations—they are not constituents but organised voices of concern—have said about the Bill. The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux said, about the decision to remove all benefits from asylum seekers, which is what we have been debating:
"The CAB Service believes that the fundamental principles of justice are undermined by the introduction of the regulations designed to remove … benefits from asylum seekers".
The CAB is not a political organisation. The courts share that concern. There have been many quotations of Lord Justice Simon Brown and I shall not repeat them. However, at page 21 of his judgment he makes the point that those seeking to appeal against the refusal of asylum will now have no access to funds or benefits of any kind once they have gone through their original claim; that they will have no accommodation and, being ineligible for housing benefit, no prospect of ever securing any; that they are forbidden to be employed and cannot find alternative means of keeping themselves alive; that they are unlikely to have many families or friends to fall back on; and that their claims take up to four years to proceed.
They are in a uniquely terrible position. Of those five situations laid down by the Appeal Court, four apply only to asylum seekers and do not apply to our own people. However, I fully accept the parallel with regard to the first of those conditions; that is, the withdrawal of benefit. The other four conditions—no prospect of obtaining accommodation, no right to be employed, no likelihood of being supported by family and friends and the length of their appeal—are not on all fours with the two cases.
Even the Government's own Social Security Advisory Council, which is appointed by the Secretary of State for Social Services, stated:
"The reality of the proposals is that thousands of men, women and children will be left with no means of providing themselves with food or shelter".
They are its words, not mine. It went on to state,
"Health professionals have warned that, given their vulnerability, they may be in such precarious physical or mental health that some may die".
Those issues go well beyond what is normally at stake in legislation. They are issues in respect of which the country is passing a milestone towards, I believe, a less generous, a less conscience-led, a less liberal—and I mean that in the broad sense of the word—and in many ways a less moral position. That is why we have gone on and on and on about this Bill.
I do not want to sit down without making one further comment. The noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, said in his marvellous forensic style—he would have had a great career in another profession had he not had a great career in his own—that it was time that the many critics of the Bill gave positive indications of what might be done. Perhaps I may mention three. Will the noble Lord consider making available through all diplomatic posts clear information about the terms upon which anyone seeking asylum may receive it in this country? Will he consider making sure that those landing on our shores and going through a port will have access to telephones and to the numbers of advisory council bodies to enable them to discover the grounds on which they can make their claims for asylum? Will he consider providing leaflets in many languages which will tell them as they arrive that they need to make an immediate claim if they are not to lose their chance of making out a case for asylum? Will he agree that those leaflets should make a specific case for those who claim that they have suffered torture? Such actions will make many of us feel a great deal better because they will enable the genuine cases to pass through what is now a very narrow and indeed narrowing door.
I do not wish to detain the House longer except to say that this morning, by some irony, being a Member of sub-committee A of your Lordships' Select Committee on the European Communities, I looked at a document on how the British Government could define and determine those countries within the Lomé Convention, mostly African and Caribbean countries, which in the committee's view had such a terrible record of human rights that their membership of the Lomé Convention should be suspended. I repeat that Her Majesty's Government were scrutinising the steps they would take to bring about the suspension of a country on the grounds of human rights.
If we can do that within the terms of the European Union, cannot we do that within the terms of this Bill? Cannot we say that countries of that kind are exactly those to which people should not be sent back? That is what Peers on many sides of the House have argued at many points in the Bill. Yet in relation to another matter we are told by the Government that it is perfectly possible to do so.
I believe that we are passing a milestone. I wish that it was a milestone on a road of ascent but I fear that it is a milestone on a road of descent. I say to all Members of the House that we extend our apologies for keeping the House sitting for so long, but it is the only legitimate constitutional and parliamentary answer that we have in trying to draw the attention of this House to what we regard as an immoral and very bad Bill. I beg to move.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, it is a feature of every system of administration of justice that there should be rights of appeal. In our system, unlike many continental systems, we have both absolute rights of appeal and discretionary rights of appeal. The discretionary right of appeal usually makes provision for some filter system in order to ensure that the right of appeal is not abused. Leave is required from the trial judge or, if he fails to

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give it, leave is then required from the Court of Appeal. A point of law must be raised, a point of law of public importance when it reaches the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House. That is a normal feature of any administration of justice. You condition the right of appeal, you filter it, by reference to the merits of the right of appeal, by reference to the merits of the case to be the subject matter of the appeal.
That is not what is happening in regard to the right of appeal in asylum cases. An entirely arbitrary approach is adopted in order to limit the appeal. If you have access to funds which enable you to survive, you can continue with your appeal. But if you cannot raise money, first because you are not allowed to work and secondly, because there are no charitable sources to support you, then in practice you will lose your right of appeal.
As a lawyer and a former member of the Bench, I find it very distasteful that the state should give with one hand a right of appeal and then remove it on the basis that you will be starved of your opportunity to exercise that right of appeal because you are not allowed to work if you seek to exercise your right of appeal and you are not allowed any social security support.
I return to where I started. If the right of appeal is to be restricted—and I fully understand that there are many circumstances in which it should be restricted—it should be restricted by reference to the potential merits or demerits of the appeal. It should not be restricted by something quite ulterior; that is, the ability to survive for long enough to enter and argue your appeal. Accordingly, I strongly support the amendment.
Earl Russell: My Lords, my noble friend has spoken for me entirely, as has indeed the noble and learned Lord, whose intervention I very much appreciated. I wish to add two pieces of evidence on the narrow point and one on the wider point. The first concerns a survey of 722 appeal cases between July and December 1995, cases heard by special adjudicators. Even of those cases dismissed, only 16 per cent. were seen as totally incredible. Only a small number of the unsuccessful cases are manifestly unfounded.
The second quotation should be familiar to the Minister because he spoke the words himself as recently as 19th June on the Housing Bill. I asked him whether he was able to predict whose appeals would succeed. The Minister said:
"I was beginning to wonder whether the lateness of the hour was affecting the noble Earl when he asked how I could tell who was going to be successful and who was not. I then realised that he asked the question in order to answer it himself; the answer being, of course, that I could not tell. That is true. If we could tell, we should have been able to make a much finer judgment on the whole question of asylum seekers and their continuing right after they had been turned down by the Home Office for the first time"— [Official Report, 19/6/96; cols. 426–427.]
I could not have expressed the matter better myself.
The Minister is admitting that when somebody appeals we do not know whether he will succeed. Therefore, in denying benefit to all those who appeal, we are denying benefit to some genuine refugees as well as to some who are not. The Minster is using a very blunt instrument.
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We have dealt with the general effect of the Bill. I warned the noble Baroness privately as long ago as last December, when the Bill was still in another place, after I had spoken at a protest meeting in Central Hall, that I was alarmed by the damage that the Bill was doing to race relations. I do not seem to have convinced people.
I have a very recent report from the Commission for Racial Equality. Mr. Herman Ouseley in his introduction said:
"Throughout 1995, stories were trailed in the tabloid newspapers about 'asylum seekers', 'illegal immigrants' and 'benefit fraudsters'. The notion of 'bogus' arrivals at British airports has taken root in our folklore and every message reinforces the damaging and false stereotype of immigrants as people who only know a few words of English: 'benefits', 'asylum' and 'lottery handouts'. Combine this with the fact that virtually all the images projected of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers—and these terms now seem to be used interchangeably—are of people with origins in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia and it is little wonder that race relations are sometimes on a knife edge".
The noble Baroness shakes her head. I really do not think that she knows.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, perhaps I should first say to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that I am grateful to her for her remarks to my noble friend and myself about our patience. I hope that by showing that I am demonstrating that I appreciate the seriousness of the issues which we are discussing and, indeed, the seriousness with which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, and other noble Lords opposite address this issue. Therefore, I accept that plaudit with courtesy and I return it. I understand how deeply she feels about this issue.
In fact, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, told me yesterday in the clearest possible terms that her party would repeal the whole of this Bill and therefore would be quite happy to accept the expenditure of £200 million for this year and next year, perhaps rising to £300 million in the following year. I accept that there is a difference between us. As a Minister for social security and as a Treasury spokesman, I must try to contain the amount of money which my department spends and therefore which must be taken from the British taxpayer.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, would it not be quicker to say New Liberal, new dangers?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I think it sounds more like old Labour.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, that has been continuing Liberal policy. It is neither new nor old. We are not given to changing our practice.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I do not think that I should become involved in a discussion about that. But certainly the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has made her position quite clear and I am quite clear as to where she stands. I must say that the position is not quite as clear in relation to the party

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directly opposite me in this regard because I have not heard any indication that they would repeal this legislation and face the expenditure that I have mentioned, rising to perhaps £300 million in the next three years. That would be extra expenditure and if I understand all the discussions which have been taking place during the past few weeks about what is described as "on the road to the manifesto", it seems to me that if you suggest any increases in spending you must also suggest some savings elsewhere in your budget. I wonder which benefits for British citizens will have to be reduced or removed to cover the £300 million more that the party opposite wishes to spend on those people whose right to asylum turns out to be unfounded. Perhaps I shall hear an answer later on.
The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, admitted that there are bogus asylum seekers. She could not do otherwise. If that were not so, it would be suggested that all 55,000 people who came in this year should be granted asylum. I suppose that it would save the Home Office quite a lot of money in administrative costs if that were so but I fear that it would cost my department and the taxpayer a great deal of money into the future. Therefore, I am happy to hear that.
There was a suggestion that we apply the convention more narrowly than other countries. Perhaps I may just tell the noble Baroness that it is the courts and the adjudicators who ultimately determine whether we have properly applied the UN convention in each case; in other words, either the court or the adjudicator decides. There have been many challenges to our decisions on appeal and by way of judicial review, but, while we lose the occasional case, we succeed and win the vast majority of those challenges. That leads me to draw the conclusion that we are obeying and applying the terms of the convention in the way intended. It is not just a judgment of us; it is a judgment of the courts and of the adjudicators. I give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, will the Minister agree that, as in the case he mentioned earlier where the adjudicator referred the matter back to the Secretary of State who then granted exceptional leave to remain, it is the Secretary of State and not the courts who determines the application?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the point is that the adjudicator will have decided that the applicant does not fulfil the criteria for refugee status. If the noble Lord wishes to close the door at that point, so be it. However, I do not believe that he does, and neither do I. In those circumstances the adjudicator can suggest that the Secretary of State ought further to consider the case before a final conclusion is reached. At that point the Secretary of State may decide, in a very few cases after the appeals circuit has been gone through, that exceptional leave to remain should be granted. The majority of cases for ELR are decided by the Home Office in the initial decision-making process when it is decided that a person does not qualify as a refugee. Then, as I said during the last debate, the second question is asked; namely, "Can this person go back to his own country?". In the case of somewhere
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like Somalia, Afghanistan or even the former Yugoslavia, it might be unreasonable to expect him to do so and, therefore, the person would be granted exceptional leave to remain. That is the way the system works.
I turn now to the amendment before us. It has two effects. The first would allow benefit to be paid to those people who claim refugee status at the port of entry or within three days of arrival. I suspect that that part of the amendment is redundant; indeed, the noble Baroness did not mention it. In fact, the noble Baroness spoke to the second part of the amendment which would restore benefit entitlement to all those asylum seekers who appeal against an initial adverse decision, except for those whose claims have been certified as being without foundation.
I must reject the amendment for the following reasons. All those asylum seekers who would gain access to benefit during the appeals process would already have received a full substantive decision on their asylum claims. That is to say, their cases will have been assessed against the criteria set out in the UN convention. I see no grounds for requiring UK taxpayers to support people who have been found not to be refugees.
When I listened to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, I was not sure whether he was suggesting some serious filter, just as we have in the civil courts and especially in the criminal courts where guilt or innocence is established and where people have the right to appeal. However, not every case can actually go to appeal; indeed, as I understand it, each case has to be filtered before that procedure can be followed. Of course we do not do that. In an asylum case, anyone who wishes to do so can start off the appeal process. Then, in the first instance, it is up to the adjudicator to look at the case and decide whether a correct decision was made at the lower level. I see that the noble and learned Lord wishes to respond. I give way.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, I apologise to the House if I did not make my point clear. My suggestion was that, if the appeal is to be controlled in some special way, it should be done by reference to the potential merits or absence of merits of the appeal. One does not do it by an indirect reference to the ability to survive, having removed from that person the right to work and the right to any social security benefits.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I understand what the noble and learned Lord is saying. However, I must point out to him that, as almost everyone appeals, I believe it would be quite difficult and time consuming for us to set up a system which would introduce a first sift of all the appeals submitted in order to sort out the very small number that may be justified. It must be remembered that only three in 100 applications turn out to be based on fact and, therefore, entitled to refugee status. I am not entirely sure what percentage we might have to sift out—perhaps, 90 per cent. to leave 10 per cent. in which the 3 per cent. would still be a comfortable minority—but it would involve a pretty big sift.

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If my noble friend Lady Blatch came to the House with a proposal to introduce such a sift system and it was pretty rough and ready, I suspect, having listened to arguments on the issue, that the people who take the opposite view to the Government on the matter would oppose us. However, perhaps I am not seeking a very easy way out of that dilemma; indeed, I do not believe that there is one. Most people on the Opposition Benches would demand that anyone who wished to appeal on being denied refugee status should have his or her case properly considered. I believe that that conflicts with some kind of initial sift to decide whether or not an appeal was justified.
The benefits system is there for a variety of reasons. The problem is—I have tried to prove it but, obviously, I have not convinced some noble Lords opposite—that the present system acts as an attraction to people to keep their claim going as long as they possibly can because, in that way, they can continue to receive benefit. I am not complaining about that. It seems to me to be a sound behavioural reaction from the individuals concerned. However, I do not believe that the Government, who are responsible to taxpayers for the spending of public money, can allow such a situation to continue. We must do something to try to inhibit what has been happening and what has grown into a very expensive commitment on behalf of British taxpayers.
I have already suggested that in the benefits system British citizens do not generally receive benefit while appealing against a refusal decision. If they did, they would all have an incentive to appeal against a decision not to award benefit. Every time a British citizen was refused benefit, he or she would have every reason to appeal because the benefit that they had been refused would continue to be paid. I do not believe that anyone has suggested that we incorporate such a provision in the benefits system; yet we incorporate it in the appeals system so far as concerns asylum. Interestingly enough, nearly half of those who appeal in the British benefits system—to be honest, there are not too many in number compared with the number of decisions which are made by the Benefits Agency—win their appeals. Last year only three out of 100 asylum seekers won their appeals.
As I have said many times, it is wrong to treat asylum seekers more generously than British citizens. Moreover, it is certainly wrong for British taxpayers to be asked to pay benefit to those people for months when 97 out of 100 of those involved in such cases will actually turn out to be, as I described yesterday, not the right people to receive the benefit. I do not believe that the British public would consider that to be a reasonable and sensible way to proceed. In fact, if members of the public knew in detail what was happening, I believe that they would be outraged. When I say, "what was happening", I mean the number of people who apply for asylum while receiving benefit for months and whose applications then turn out to be unjustified.
The more incentive that there is to appeal, the more appeals will be forthcoming and the longer it will take to process them. The longer benefits remain in payment to the vast majority of appellants whose claims for asylum are unfounded, the higher will be the cost to
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British taypayers. The longer the very few genuine refugees or asylum seekers have to wait for a decision, the longer they will be left in a state of insecurity, worry and concern. I do not believe that the current situation can be justified.
Apart from the noble Baroness and the Liberal Democrats, who have made it quite clear that they would just live with the situation as a consequence of their general policy towards asylum seekers, I have not heard any real suggestion as to how we can manage to stop this very considerable expenditure of public money. With that explanation, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment. However, if she does not do so, I hope that my noble friends will join me in the Division Lobby yet again.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I wish to respond to three points that the noble Lord made. I do not often say this to him, but as regards my first point I do not think he can have listened at all to what I said. I drew, in considerable detail, on the parallel that he often makes between those denied benefit who are United Kingdom citizens and those denied the right to appeal who are asylum seekers. The position does not stand on all fours, as the noble Lord knows well. It is possible for someone in this country who has been refused benefit and is appealing against it to continue to be on a housing list. It is possible for that person to do casual work and it is possible for him to fall back on a network of family and friends. In all three respects there is no parallel with an asylum seeker who often knows no one here. If I may say so, the argument the noble Lord made does not do him credit. We tried to address exactly that argument in some detail, leaning—if I may say so—on the words of the Court of Appeal judgment which directly addressed this subject. The noble Lord will be aware that page 21 of the judgment lays out in detail the difference between a UK citizen and an asylum seeker in this regard.
Secondly, it is interesting that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, attempted to respond to something that the noble Lord asked for earlier; namely, to make constructive suggestions. I am no lawyer but I understand that the granting of legal aid depends to some extent on the likelihood of the success of a case which is being put forward for legal aid. As I understand it, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, was suggesting something rather similar; namely, that one would consider the basis on which an appeal would be brought. We on this side of the House would certainly consider that, just as we would consider closely the expenditure on officials, as distinct from the cost of keeping people on benefit for months and months on end.
It must be possible to deal with procedures more rapidly. That does not mean a period of three days, but it certainly need not mean four years. The noble Lord talks as if four years and three days respectively constitute the same length of time. It must be possible to deal seriously with an appeal in a period far shorter than four years. Perhaps the Home Office may take four years to deal with these cases. That seems to me an extraordinary length of time.

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Thirdly, I feel that the Minister is straining at a relatively small element of expenditure while being prepared to swallow a large one. As the Minister knows, the sum of £300 million is a large sum of money. We believe that that sum could be substantially reduced in the ways that I have hinted at. But the Government have never yet denied the estimate publicly made that the poll tax cost taxpayers £10 billion. They never seem to be willing to consider the ways in which huge sums of money are wasted in this country by noble Lords and Members of the Government opposite. They always point to some small expenditure and hope that none of us will notice the great gaps that have opened up as a result of the irresponsible use of taxpayers' money. We are not prepared to be blamed for that as if it happens only as regards one side of the House. That is not the case. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.45 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Baroness Hollis of Heigham moved Amendment No. 12:
Page 9, line 8, at end insert—
("( ) Regulations may provide that this section shall not apply to a person who is considered by the Secretary of State to be a vulnerable person.").
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 12 which stands in my name and those of my noble friends Lord McIntosh and Lord Dubs, I wish to speak—I have given notice of this—to Amendments Nos. 13 and 16, and to group Amendment No. 16 with Amendments Nos. 12 and 13.
The provision I am discussing picks up a point we have been making throughout these debates on social security. As regards all our housing and social security legislation, however grievous the behaviour of the individual may seem in that he appears to have made himself deliberately homeless, or he has refused to be available for, or to be actively seeking work, or the individual has failed to co-operate with the CSA to divulge the name of an absent parent—whatever the sin, if I may use that phrase, and however threatening the penalties—we have always made a distinction between those who are not vulnerable and those who are. However badly the Government may feel someone has behaved, and however severe may be the sanctions imposed on that person; some proportion of benefit has always been restored within two weeks or so to those who are vulnerable. In other words the issue of basic subsistence for those who are vulnerable overrules a judgment of what is wrong or inappropriate in their behaviour. It is a basic principle of our welfare state that those who are vulnerable and who cannot reasonably be expected to look after themselves should not be denied by society the basic means on which to live.
However, in this Bill—as we know to our cost—the Government are proposing to scrap benefit for all asylum seekers who apply in country—however strong their case turns out to be—and to take 19 months to determine a case, however severe the need. Yet these asylum seekers—unlike some people within the British social security system—who are subject to sanctions
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have committed no sin or been guilty of bad behaviour. They simply made a mistake of applying in country rather than at the port of entry. They made a bureaucratic mistake, whether through ignorance, illiteracy, intimidation, fear or whatever. For that they lose 19 months or more of benefit. What is even worse is that within that group of asylum seekers who have made a bureaucratic mistake and have lost benefit are some of the most traumatised and vulnerable people any of us are likely to encounter.
What would this amendment do? It would not give basic means of support to the single, fit and healthy and those who have some capacity to support themselves—particularly after six months—and who perhaps will find work. Even though I believe those people should continue to receive benefit, that is not what this amendment achieves. The amendment refers to those who are defined as vulnerable. That is a well-established term in social security legislation and it is at the heart of the Housing Bill which is currently going through your Lordships' House. Therefore we know whom we mean by vulnerable people; that is, those who have dependent children, those who may be poorly fed, in poor health and traumatised (there are 3,000 or 4,000 of them a year coming through) together with the sick and disabled, the frail elderly and the terminally ill. Those people should be regarded as vulnerable and eligible for basic benefit.
Whom are we talking about? I give an example which I have received today from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. The source of this information is a nurse practitioner based in Southwark who is part of a three-boroughs' primary healthcare team. She describes several cases that she has dealt with this morning. One of them concerns a man in his fifties with TB. He has nil income. He will spend two weeks in hospital—that is the infectious period only—and upon discharge, if the nurse cannot get him into Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity hostel, which has limited places but which is rent free and provides care, he will be back on the streets. The nurse states that that will inevitably re-activate his TB and require him to be re-hospitalised. In the interim he will infect others. The nurse states that TB is a disease of poverty and is on the increase, especially among ethnic minorities, who more often than not contract it after arrival in the UK because a UK strain of TB is usually diagnosed.
This morning that same nurse dealt with another refugee asylum seeker—a 72 year-old who currently receives no benefits and was hospitalised following an assault while sleeping on a park bench. After a couple of days in hospital he may be back on the park bench. The nurse points out that the homeless are sitting targets for such assaults. The nurse is dealing with those who are vulnerable through disability, ill-health, frailty, old age or terminal illness. They have nowhere to keep their medication if they live on the streets. Where do they keep their insulin if they do not have a fridge? What happens if their crutches are nicked? That has happened to one person the nurse has dealt with. How do they replace the crutches? Incontinence is common among traumatised people. How do they maintain personal hygiene when they have no money to buy food or to

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find accommodation? What happens when their immune systems are compromised through poor nutrition, exposure and poor diet? Are we really willing to see such people live, sleep and perhaps die on the pavements? Are we really willing to see some of our streets become like the streets of Calcutta when the refuges, shelters and church halls are full?
Apart possibly from Greece, no other country in Europe of which I am aware offers no means of support whatsoever to in country applicants for asylum. We are the meanest and worst in Europe apart possibly from Greece. According to the information that I have from reputable organisations, all other countries offer at least hostel accommodation and food. Perhaps noble lords will forgive a literary allusion. Thomas Carlyle said that a widow showed her sense of sisterhood by infecting people with cholera because those who were well off did not clean up the water supply. That man with TB will reinfect others with TB in terms of a new notion of brotherhood.
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden make some basic provision for the needy and vulnerable. It may be a reception centre. They may offer modest subsistence support. Germany has three times the asylum seekers that we have but it offers accommodation, food and modest benefits. Greece has some element of discretion. We alone in Europe offer nothing to those who apply after they enter this country even though they are the most vulnerable, are terminally ill, have dependent children, or are pregnant, disabled, frail and elderly. They will live on our streets, and they may die on our streets. I exaggerate not at all.
In practice, local authorities cannot walk away from responsibility for children under the Children Act 1989. The Government will face significant costs for reimbursing those local authorities for bed and breakfast accommodation or for taking the children into care. Equally, those who are vulnerable are likely to come within the community care and National Health Service provisions. However, hospitals are now beginning to refuse to discharge patients such as that man with TB and will keep them in hospital at £250 a day because we will not offer them £50 a week in income support.
Will the Government think again even at this late hour? We are talking about people who are vulnerable, destitute and innocent. They are here. We should surely be doing something other than turning our back and walking away. No other country would be as flinty as we are in the face of such destitution. I beg to move.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I speak to Amendment No. 16, a relevant amendment, so that we keep the issue to a single debate. I hope that that is acceptable.
Amendment No. 16 takes up the point made so eloquently by the noble Baroness, but with a difference. It states that Clause 11 and the schedule should not come into force until such time as the Minister is able to ascertain and assure the House that there is provision
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for this basic subsistence—the means of keeping alive. At the most basic level that means food vouchers, and some kind of shelter—the level that simply keeps body and soul together. It is the bottom level that any civilised country can possibly accept.
Amendment No. 16 proposes that the provisions of the Bill should not be finally introduced until the Government can say to Parliament and the people that that minimal provision has been made. We heard some eloquent and moving testimony from the right reverend Prelates in this House about the terrible pressure being brought to bear within church halls, voluntary halls and churches in a desperate effort to shelter people who have nowhere else to go. There is a limit to how much the churches, and men and women of good will, can carry. The Minister should not allow these draconian provisions to go ahead until he or she can be sure that there is provision so that people do not die on the streets.
I do not wish to detain the House. The amendment is the bottom line; there is nowhere to go. Below the level proposed in the amendment one is beginning to deal with people who are starving or dying of the cold, and those who cannot protect themselves from the rain and the snow. Even in the 1805 Eastbourne judgment this country was not prepared to leave such people simply to fight on their own for survival on the streets.
I conclude my brief remarks by reading a letter sent to me by one of the most distinguished Members of your Lordships' House who happens also to have been a refugee in his time—a man who has brought great lustre to our country. The noble Lord sent me the letter and asked me to read it out on his behalf; I did not ask him for the letter. He says:
"Anybody on British soil cannot be left helpless in terms of dignified survival, family ties, health, housing, clothing and an opportunity to become acquainted with the culture of this land".
He concludes by saying that he is unable to attend because he is on tour in Germany, and signs the letter, "Yehudi Menuhin". I leave his words to say more eloquently than I can why the amendment should be approved by this House.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I heard yesterday from an asylum seeker who contracted muscular dystrophy after arriving in this country. Will a person with a serious disease which everyone knows is not susceptible to cure be left to fend for himself? Will that person nevertheless be left with a nil income? Will a person who is seriously ill be ineligible for free prescriptions? What happens when that person needs medication and goes to the chemist? Are such people to be denied all kinds of medication because they failed to apply for asylum at the port of entry? If we are going to treat people who are seriously ill in such an inhuman way, we have come to a pretty pass. However, I understand that that is the meaning of the new clause tabled by the Government which, if we are not careful, your Lordships will allow to go through.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, in these three amendments, and certainly in the speeches that we have just heard, we are going right back to the basic principle. The divide between this side and the other

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side of the Chamber is perfectly clear. Members on the other side are quite content with the current situation and do not feel that we owe it to the British taxpayer, or indeed to the genuine refugees themselves, to try to contain the problems that we have in dealing with the very considerable number of people who come here and apply for asylum.
We are invited to consider streets full of people who are destitute and traumatised. I hear those two words from the noble Baroness week after week across this Dispatch Box about every single group in the country. I find it odd to square that with the fact that I am responsible for payment of something like £90 billion worth of benefits in one shape or form. Speaking on behalf of the British taxpayer, which is the pressure group I like to think I represent, it does not seem to me that we are mean minded or mean spirited when spending that kind of money on the social security system.
However, be that as it may, we have once again heard this picture painted about asylum seekers. There is one simple way that asylum seekers can obtain benefit when they arrive in this country: it is to be honest when they arrive here, and to say, "I have come seeking asylum". That is the way that they will gain entry into the benefit system until the first decision is made.
6 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, has the Minister read the judgment in the Kihara case? Is he aware that Mr. Kihara attempted to claim asylum at the port and was dissuaded from doing so by the customs authorities?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I shall not trade special cases because I do not know the details of any. However, I have enough experience at the Dispatch Box to know that noble Lords—not deliberately—will perhaps report what they read in newspapers. However, cases are not always totally exposed by the people who wish to make a point and therefore I shall not deal with specific cases. If someone applies to a customs officer instead of the immigration officer, it could be proved and an adjudicator would be likely to accept that it was an application on arrival. I am clear that that would be the case relating to arrival.
People who come here seeking asylum can have access to the benefit system. However, noble Lords opposite wish to give access to the benefit system to people who come here illegally. That is one group. The other group are those who come here and say at the point of entry: "I have come here on business, as a visitor; I shall be no burden on the British taxpayer". On that basis, we let them in for a limited period of six months.
If people are so traumatised and if they have selected this country to come to; if they have decided that it is a safe country in which they will not be persecuted, I fail to understand, despite all the special pleading I have heard over many hours, why it is unreasonable to expect them to say at the moment of entry: "I am being persecuted in my country of origin and seek asylum". That seems to me a logical position. To depict it
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otherwise, as we have just heard, is false, as is the picture of the streets of Britain being full of refugees, traumatised and sleeping rough. All the work under the rough sleepers initiative in London shows that there has been a considerable decline, thanks to the Government's initiatives and a considerable amount of money spent on people sleeping rough in London. There is little, if any, evidence that those who are still sleeping rough are refugees. I am not persuaded by the arguments that have just been put.
It has also been suggested that we run a mean system here, meaner than a list of countries about which your Lordships heard. In that case, I ask: why do some asylum seekers come here from those countries seeking asylum? The applicant in the cause célèbre of the Court of Appeal's judgment of 21st June came from Belgium. I ask and hope for an answer—
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I ask the Minister to consider this fact. So far, the Bill has not passed. We are talking about the situation when the Bill has passed.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, since February we have had in place the same proposals and principles that I am defending at the Dispatch Box. I have explained the result: there has been a decline. I notice that the noble Baroness did not answer my question: why should someone come from Belgium? I consider it to be as safe as this country. Why should they come from Belgium to seek asylum here? There must be some reason. If Belgium or France are so generous in benefits—and some asylum seekers came from France—why do not people ask for asylum there? I am puzzled. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will explain.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I did explain, if the Minister had listened to the case I gave. It related to someone who came here from France. The French had sent an Iraqi asylum seeker back to his country of origin where he was tortured. Therefore, when he escaped again from Iraq he did not wish to remain in France and came here.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, presumably he came directly here. I am looking at cases of people who went to France, Charles de Gaulle Airport. They were not being persecuted in France. I am interested to know that the noble Lord thinks that France is not a safe country. I would not take that view of the French, I consider France to be a civilised and humane country. Anyone coming from abroad would be as likely to gain refugee status and be as safe there or in Belgium as in this country.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, would it be so dreadful if we were known in the world, as we have been in the past, as a most liberal country for refugees and if our reputation were greater than Belgium's?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, nothing we do will diminish our reputation for accepting

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refugees when they have proved their refugee status or for granting people exceptional leave to remain when they have not justified their refugee status. They may have come from countries in a fair degree of turmoil, such as I mentioned. Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia are four of the key countries from where at the moment the majority come of those who are given exceptional leave to remain.
My point is that we give such people access to the benefit system as long as they apply on arrival. Many do—one out of three applies already on arrival. Last month that had increased to one in two. The idea that everyone who comes is traumatised to the extent that they cannot apply on arrival does not hold up. Last year's statistics show that the vast majority of the people who came from Afghanistan—one place in awful turmoil—who were quite traumatised applied at the port of entry on arrival. I do not believe that the Opposition can put that argument; logic is not on their side.
The amendments wish to draw a distinction between the vulnerable and the non-vulnerable. It is not an easy line to draw, as the noble Baroness knows. We wish to make regulations under which we seek to restore benefit. That is done on the basis of a clear distinction between those who claim on arrival and those who do not. As concerns vulnerable people—children or the elderly—the noble Baroness asks your Lordships to believe a false picture. They would be catered for under the Children Act and the care in the community legislation. Those duties remain. The picture which she painted in order to advance her case for the first amendment is totally false.
No one spoke to Amendment No. 13 but it is in the group and was included in some of the noble Baroness's remarks. The amendment takes us into the territory of some of the other benefits in the system. The Court of Appeal ruled on income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit. It left those regulations which exclude asylum seekers from other non-contributory benefits unaffected. DLA and SDA are two of them. Those benefits have residence and presence conditions in any case which are designed to limit entitlement to those people whom the taxpayers would wish to support. Until February, if they were able to satisfy the residence and presence tests, there was no further restriction on them claiming non-contributory benefits. We do not believe that taxpayers should be asked to support everyone who chooses to come to this country, regardless of where they come from, how long they have been here and the basis on which they have come here. The February regulations did not change the residence and presence conditions; they introduced a barrier to those who quite wilfully manouevre themselves round the benefit system in this country. The amendment therefore has no justification at all.
The third amendment, Amendment No. 16, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, spoke, is clearly intended to undermine the restoration of the February regulations. It will leave in place the benefits incentive for those economic migrants who come here and abuse the asylum process. The Court of Appeal spoke in dramatic terms about total destitution and so on.
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However, I have already explained that there is a simple way for people who wish to come here and claim asylum to obtain benefit. It is to apply at the port of entry.
I hate to keep saying that as it harks back to my days as a schoolmaster. But occasionally you have to keep saying things because the class does not quite seem to be paying sufficient attention no matter how many times you say them. People who apply at the port of entry can receive benefits. That message is loud and clear. The British taxpayer will help in that regard. So I really do not see any justification for us to go any further, as this amendment would have us do. It would require the Secretary of State to ensure that any arrangements he makes under the terms of the amendment will either not give rise to any extra cost for local authorities, or make provision by special grant if they do incur extra cost.
As the House knows, we made arrangements for a special grant to help local authorities with unavoidable extra costs arising as a result of benefit changes. If new arrangements of any sort are made, we will consider what sort of provision may be needed. As I indicated yesterday, their responsibilities under the Children Act, unaffected by this legislation, would be considered. However, it is not appropriate to specify a particular form of help for this one area and suggest expenditure on asylum seekers via the local authorities. I am sure the local authorities are very grateful to noble Lords and the noble Baroness for their concern about their expenditure. I am not entirely sure that the ordinary taxpayer would be so grateful. It is the ordinary taxpayer who would pick up the tab for any help that we were to give were we to replace the fundamental point, that people who come here illegally or under false pretences and say at the port of entry that they are coming for a limited period to visit or for business will not have any recourse to public funds. I do not believe that those people should be able to gain access to the benefits system a week, a month, six months, or more than a year in many cases, after they have entered the country on that principle. If they are genuine asylum seekers and are genuinely traumatised, the message from the parties opposite, along with mine, ought to be that they should apply at the port of entry, when they will be properly considered for benefit and properly helped.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, we return to the basic point. The Minister has only one argument, and he repeated it endlessly. It is that the way through the problems for those who are vulnerable, traumatised, illiterate or unable to speak English is to apply at the port of entry. That is his only response, and he took quite a lot of time to repeat it.
Amendment No. 12, which deals with the vulnerable, refers to frail, elderly, disabled, sick and terminally ill people. They are the people the Minister expects to have the confidence, fitness and health to apply literally at the port of entry.
If the Minister cannot understand that if people are vulnerable, by definition that starts to incapacitate them from meeting our bureaucratic requirements, he shows

1355
a lack of imaginative understanding of the feelings of an asylum seeker when he confronts an immigration officer. It is a time of acute stress for him.
The Minister made the point that, if they do not do that, they are coming here illegally. They are coming "illegally" only in the sense that the law is what the Government, and therefore Parliament, have defined it to be. It is a distinction that no other country in Europe draws. No other country in Europe says that if you apply at the port of entry the application is legal, but if you apply in-country it is illegal. It is an act of government to make such an application illegal. It does not make it immoral or wrong. It simply says: if you do that, we shall not give you benefit. That is the whole point of it. That is the only reason for it. There is no moral or ethical basis for it. It happens to be an administratively convenient way for the Government, as they believe, to deter benefit applicants.
The UNHCR says that many genuine asylum seekers will need to lie and that, far from subverting their case, it is evidence of their case, because of the degree of their trauma. That is not my statement. The UNHCR have more experience in this area than, I suspect, do most noble Lords in this Chamber.
The Minister went on to say that we have belaboured him for being mean. He asked, if our benefits were so mean, why were people coming to this country? He said that showed that the benefits must be generous and therefore we must check them. On the contrary, the Minister makes my point for me. If our benefits are mean and people continue to come here, it shows that they come because they have a well-founded fear of persecution, not that they come to exploit a benefits system which even the Minister admits is less generous than that of most of our European neighbours.
The figures support that. Before last February I believe 67 per cent. of asylum seekers claimed asylum in-country. If the Minister is right and they sought to receive benefit, that was their reason for coming here and they were manipulating the system because they knew how to do it, as the Minister seems to suggest, since February we should have seen a sharp change in behaviour. We should have seen only 20 per cent. or 30 per cent. applying in-country because they knew that they would not get benefit and instead they would have applied at the port of entry. That is what would have happened if these manipulative, clever, cunning asylum seekers were operating in the way that the Minister suggests.
On the contrary, 67 per cent. of those seeking asylum applied in-country before February; and after February—when they should have changed their behaviour if the model of rationality that the Minister offered was valid—what was the figure, 50 per cent., 40 per cent., 30 per cent.? No, it was 64 per cent. In other words, even though they know that they will receive no money by so doing, they still seek asylum in-country in almost the same proportion as before, when they could receive money. Their motivation was very clearly not money as such because this country was more generous than elsewhere, but because they feared persecution and for well-founded reasons did not wish to return to their country of origin.
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I repeat: this amendment is not an open door. It is about people who are vulnerable. The notion of vulnerability, contrary to what the Minister said, is well understood in social security law. It is the basis on which those who are sanctioned and lose JSA payment will receive the payment back after two weeks if they are vulnerable. The Minister and his department have to apply that test day in, day out through every benefit office in the country. It is also at the core of the Housing Bill, as the Minister will know, because he has also been handling that Bill. Far from "vulnerable" being a nebulous term and opening floodgates, on the contrary, it is a well-established, well-defined, well judged and well tested criterion by which we accept that those who are necessitous are entitled under the basic laws of humanity to bare subsistence.
The Minister knows that. We know that. I shall not press Amendment No. 12, nor move Amendment No. 13. However, if the House agrees, I hope that we shall immediately go on to discuss Amendment No. 16. I encourage the noble Baroness to press her amendment at that stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 13 not moved.]
6.15 p.m.
Clause 13 [Short title, interpretation, commencement and extent]:
[Amendments Nos. 14 and 15 not moved.]
Baroness Williams of Crosby Baroness Williams of Crosby moved Amendment No. 16:
Page 9, line 45, at end insert—
("(3A) No day shall be named for section 11 and Schedule 1 to come into force until the Secretary of State has reported to both Houses of Parliament that he has put in place arrangements to secure that no person to whom that section and Schedule apply, nor any dependant of such a person, is left without the basic means of subsistence while pursuing his claim for asylum or while appealing against a refusal of asylum.
(3B) In putting into place arrangements under subsection (3A) above the Secretary of State must satisfy himself that either—

(a) no substantial extra costs will he incurred by any local authority in England, Scotland or Wales as a result of the arrangements; or

(b) if any extra costs will be incurred by any local authority in England, Scotland or Wales, they will be met by means of a special grant.").

The noble Baroness said: I shall seek the view of the House on this amendment, which I shall address very briefly.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I understand that Amendment No. 16 has been spoken to.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I believe I have the right to respond, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, responded. I raised the issue at the beginning regarding the leave of the House to bring the matter forward. It is not a grouped amendment.

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I understand that it is quite clear that I am entitled to speak to it again if I wish to do so. I am simply responding to a debate in the House.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. My understanding was that the noble Baroness stood up and said that she would like to group her amendment with the amendments spoken to a moment ago. They were spoken to and wound up on. My understanding now is that Amendment No. 16 has been debated by the House and that the noble Baroness, if she wishes, should put it to the House.
Earl Russell: My Lords, it is my understanding that when somebody wants to divide on one of the later amendments in a group, they retain the right of reply to the debate. I have exercised that myself in the past.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, may I add as a point of order that my understanding is that I did use the terminology that it might be for the convenience of the House if I spoke to my amendment. I did not move it. I am now moving it. It was entirely to save the time of the House. I apologise if I was in any sense out of order, but I understood that far from being out of order I was actually being helpful to the House. That was my intention. In any case, my remarks will be extremely brief.
Let me first draw the attention of the House to the extraordinarily minimal nature of the amendment that I am moving. It is an amendment—and I repeat the wording of it—about the basic means of subsistence. It is not an amendment about benefit. It is well below the level of benefit and it is that which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, addressed when she gave example after example after example of how other countries were providing this kind of basic subsistence benefit—the lowest level possible to maintain life.
Secondly, we have heard in this House the eloquent testimony of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford repeating his own first-hand experience of visiting church hostels and giving us case after case after case of people that he had met who were in exactly the condition that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has described. He gave us examples. He spoke to them at first-hand. He had met them. He had visited the church. Therefore, it cannot be argued that what we are suggesting here is simply a fantasy. There is a great deal of evidence.
Thirdly, I find the point that the Minister made about the local authorities a strange one because my understanding is that, at least so far, the local authorities have received no money at all to enable them to sustain those people who have been dependent on them since February. I must ask the Minister to tell us, at least in correspondence after this debate, what steps are being taken to ensure that the local authorities are reimbursed. That is one reason for the wording of my amendment.
Finally, I simply want to say that again and again the noble Lord has referred to the British taxpayer. I have, I must say, a much more generous view of the British
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taxpayer than he has. I believe the British taxpayer does care about other people and has compassion that can be reached. I do not believe the British taxpayer thinks about nothing at all except the last halfpenny that he has to expend to help people much less well off than himself. Anybody who has worked on this Bill as we have done can attest to thousands upon thousands of ordinary British people—most of them, I assume, taxpayers—who have pleaded with us to fight this Bill with every power we have, and they are entitled to have their voice heard in this House also. I beg to move.
6.22 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 16) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 77; Not-Contents, 128.

Division No. 3

CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Judd, L.

Avebury, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Barnett,L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Berkeley, L.

Lockwood, B.

Blackstone, B.

Longford, E.

Blease, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Bridges, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

McNair, L.

Carlisle, E.

McNally, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Mayhew, L.

Carter, L.

Meston, L.

Castle of Blackburn, B.

Methuen, L.

Clancarty, E.

Mishcon, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Monkswell, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Dahrendorf, L.

Nicol, B.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Ogmore, L.

Desai, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Rea, L.

Donoughue, L.

Redesdale, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Richard, L.

Dubs, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Eatwell, L.

Rodgers of Quarry Bank, L.

Ewing of Kirkford, L.

Russell, E. [Teller.]

Falkland, V.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Fitt, L.

Seear, B.

Gallacher, L.

Sewel, L.

Geraint, L

Shepherd, L.

Smith of Gilmorehill, B.

Gladwin of Clee, L.

Southwark, Bp.

Glenamara, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Grey, E.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Wigoder, L.

Holme of Cheltenham, L.

Williams of Crosby, B.

Jay of Paddington, B.

Williams of Elvel.L.

Jeger, B.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

NOT-CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Blaker, L.

Ailsa, M.

Blatch, B.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Brentford, V.

Arran, E.

Bridgeman, V.

Ashboume, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Balfour, E.

Bruntisfield, L.

Biddulph, L.

Bumham, L.

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Cadman, L.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

McConnell, L.

Campbell of Cray, L.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B. Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Mackay of Clashrern, L. [Lord Chancellor.]

Clark of Kempston, L.

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Colwyn, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Manton, L.

Courtown, E.

Marlesford, L.

Cranborne, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Crathorne, L.

Merrivale, L.

Cross, V.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Cuckney, L.

Milverton, L.

Cumberlege, B.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Dean of Harptree. L.

Mountevans, L.

Denham, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Munster, E.

Dilhorne, V.

Northesk, E.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Norton, L.

Downshire, M.

O'Cathain, B.

Dudley, E.

Orkney, E.

Dundonald, E.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Eccles of Moulton, B.

Pender, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Elton, L.

Pilkington of Oxenford, L.

Erroll, E.

Plummer of St Marylebone, L

Feldman, L.

Prior, L.

Ferrers, E.

Pym, L.

Finsberg, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Rather, B.

Rawlings, B.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Reay, L.

Geddes, L.

Renton, L.

Gisborough, L.

Renwick, L.

Glentoran, L.

Rodney, L.

Goschen, V.

Saint Oswald, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Seccombe, B.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Sharpies, B.

Harmsworth, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Harris of Peckham, L.

Stewartby, L.

Strange, B.

Harrowby, E.

Strathcarron, L.

Henley, L.

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Holderness, L.

Sudeley, L.

HolmPatrick, L.

Swansea, L.

Howe, E.

Swinfen, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Swinton, E.

Inglewood, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Kimball. L.

Trumpington, B.

Kingsland, L.

Ullswater, V.

Kinnoull, E.

Vivian, L.

Lane of Horsell, L.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Wakeham, L.

Leigh, L.

Wedgwood, L.

Lindsay, E.

Westbury, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Wilcox, B.

Liverpool, E.

Wise, L.

Lucas, L.

Wynford, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
6.30 p.m.
Schedule 1 [Modifications of social security regulations]:
[Amendment No. 17 not moved.]
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass. The Bill streamlines asylum procedures, strengthens immigration enforcement and restricts the social security and housing entitlement of those who have not established a long-term right to live in this country.
1360
Clauses 1 to 3 extend the existing accelerated appeal procedure to a wider range of cases, enable the Home Secretary to designate countries where there is in general no serious risk of persecution, and make the right of asylum seekers to appeal against removal to a European Union member state exercisable only after removal. These are sensible, balanced and fair measures which many of our neighbours have already introduced with beneficial results. They involve no departure from accepted asylum principles. Nor do they conflict with our international obligations. We shall not return asylum seekers to the country where they claim to fear persecution without giving them an opportunity to explain their fears fully and, if asylum is refused, to appeal to an independent adjudicator.
I find it extraordinary that so many of the Bill's opponents continue to reject the evidence of widespread abuse of the asylum procedures. If the Home Office were refusing large numbers of genuine refugees, we would be losing large numbers of appeals. But only 3 per cent. of appeals were repealed last year. I remind the House that adjudicators are qualified and experienced members of the legal profession and are appointed by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. Over three-quarters of applicants are refused both asylum and exceptional leave after full consideration by both the Home Office and the adjudicator. And yet our opponents continue to refer to asylum seekers and refugees as if they were equivalent terms.
Noble Lords opposite have suggested we should improve the performance of the asylum system rather than introduce stricter procedures. The truth is that we need to do both, and that is what we are doing.
I remind the House that we are investing £37 million over three years in additional caseworkers and adjudicators. We have increased asylum staff eightfold since 1988 from 100 to 800. We have increased productivity by 240 per cent. since the period immediately following the 1993 Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act. Last year we introduced a short decision procedure which enables straightforward cases to be decided in weeks rather than months, despite strong opposition from some of those who complain most loudly about 'processing delays. We are embarking on a major computerisation programme which will further improve efficiency.
The number of decisions and appeals has increased dramatically. Appeal determinations have risen from 2,400 in 1994 to 7,000 last year to a projected 19,000 this year. Initial decisions by the Home Office have risen from 21,000 in 1994 to 27,000 last year and we expect to take over 37,000 this year. But by last year the number of claims had already reached 44,000. That figure represents no less than a tenfold increase on the level of claims in 1988 and a doubling since as recently as 1993. That massive increase has come at a time when the level of claims across western Europe has actually halved. It is nonsense to suggest that application levels here reflect growing persecution around the world. What they do reflect is this country's relative generosity and therefore greater vulnerability to abusive asylum claims.

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As my noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish said yesterday, we cannot go on swimming against the tide. Resources are not enough. We need to reduce the incentives which make it attractive to exploit the asylum system. That is why your Lordships were right to give approval to new Clause 11 which restores the power to impose strict benefit restrictions on asylum seekers. The previous benefit regulations, now reinstated by the Court of Appeal, are an open invitation to people from abroad to exploit the asylum system as a way of gaining access to benefit. The restoration of the restrictions will help to bring down backlogs and delays in the asylum system. That will be good news for genuine refugees. The House has inserted a three-day period of grace for those who fail to apply on arrival. We do not believe any leeway should be given to those who gain entry by deceiving the immigration authorities about their intentions. We shall therefore consider how to respond to the amendment when the Bill returns.
I should just like to put a thought in the minds of noble Lords about the three-day period of grace. Many of those entering this country do so by deception, some secreted away in vehicles. How is one to resolve disputes over from what time the three days' grace count, especially for those who continue the deception by claiming, following apprehension, to have entered the country within the previous three days? Where does the burden of proof lie? What does one say to someone who may have been here one month, two months, six months or a year, but on being apprehended claims to have arrived only in the past two or three days? That, I suggest, provides a considerable loophole for abuse. But it is not and never has been a concern of noble Lords opposite or those who supported the amendment.
Clauses 9 and 10 will enable entitlement to council housing, temporary accommodation and child benefit to be brought into line with equivalent social security entitlements. The case for alignment is very strong. It cannot be right that local authorities should continue to have a duty to accommodate people from abroad who are ineligible for income support and ineligible for housing benefit. The Bill is therefore good news also for housing authorities and council tax payers.
Clauses 4 to 7 introduce new offences, higher fines and additional powers of search and entry to combat the growing problem of immigration racketeering. Again, noble Lords opposite, who purport to support the Government's objective of clamping down on this evil, have tabled amendments to render our proposals ineffective or remove them altogether. On no occasion have they offered a proposal to deal with such racketeering.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams, has not been present in the Chamber throughout this Bill. In fact he has hardly been present throughout the dealings in this Chamber. Noble Lords have tabled amendments to eliminate the clause altogether. They have opposed the two offences that we created for racketeering in the Bill. They have not proposed any amendment for dealing with racketeering.
1362
On Clauses 4 and 5, for example, there have been attempts to remove the essential new offences of illegal entry by deception, facilitating the entry of an asylum claimant and obtaining leave to remain by deception. I am very glad that your Lordships resisted those amendments. But, again, I must put the question to noble Lords opposite: whose side are they on in these matters? Maybe we shall see the repeal of this Act in The Road to the Manifesto, I do not know—maybe not.
Illegal working takes away jobs which would otherwise be available to people with a right to work here, whatever community they come from. Most of our European neighbours already have measures in place. This country will remain vulnerable if we do not take comparable steps. But, again, noble Lords opposite throughout the Bill have not supported the Government. Indeed, they fought against the Government in seeking to address the growing problem of illegal working in this country. Over 10,000 people last year were found to be working illegally in this country—10,000 jobs which could have gone to those with a legal right both to live and work here. To continue to tolerate illegal working is, in our view, likely to damage good race relations. Our proposals in Clause 8 will be easy for employers to comply with. The Commission for Racial Equality has undertaken to help in preparing the guidance for employers; we are very grateful for that.
Whatever the difference of view between the Government and the Bill's critics, no one can deny that the Bill has received very close scrutiny during its passage though this House. I am most grateful to all your Lordships who have contributed to that process. It has been a productive process. We have listened to arguments and we have responded to concerns. Some significant changes have been made. We have made drafting changes to Clause 1 for greater clarity. We have accepted the recommendations of the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee that the initial lists and designated countries of origin and designated safe third countries should require the affirmative approval of Parliament. We have agreed to retain an in-country right of appeal for asylum seekers whom we remove to a third country outside the European Union unless it has been designated by affirmative order. The Government have accepted your Lordships' wish to introduce a special safeguard for victims of torture, and I am especially grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool and his colleagues, and others, for helping me to express that intention in a workable form in the Bill.
We have strengthened the safeguards in Clause 5 against prosecution of those providing bona fide legal advice on immigration matters, and we have changed the terminology in Clauses 8 to 12 to make it absolutely clear that they are not aimed at those who, although still subject to immigration control, have been settled in this country for many years. I should also like to thank noble Lords opposite, including my long-standing sparring partner, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh; my noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish and his long-standing sparring partner, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis; the noble Earl, Lord Russell; and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, for their courtesy. I recognise

1363
fully the assiduous and painstaking way in which they have pursued their case. I recognise also how strongly they hold to their views.
I particularly want to thank again my noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, who has done sterling work on this Bill, covering a very sensitive area. I believe he has handled it sensitively but with that realism that only people in government have to face and not those who are armchair critics from a distance.—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Wait!
Baroness Blatch: It is looking a bit dicey for you at the moment. I thank also my noble friend Lord Courtown, a marvellous Whip who has given great assistance and without whom I think my sanity might well have departed at times. I thank too my noble friends Lord Campbell of Alloway and Lord Renton. My noble friend not only speaks with great knowledge of these matters but of course he is somewhat of a mentor for me; indeed, he stood in my shoes some years ago. I think he may well have experienced some sense of déjà vu about many of the matters we have discussed. I would also mention my noble friends Lady Rawlings, Lady Seccombe and Lady Gardner of Parkes. They, like me, saw the merits of the Bill and accepted the genuine attempt by the Government to address very real problems, some of which certainly impact very greatly on the taxpayer.
The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, cited the Bill as one that impacts way beyond the confines of this House. I hope I never claim that any one Bill does that. I joined this House in 1987. I have not known a single Bill that does not resonate beyond the confines of this House. I sometimes think that we become rather too cosy in this place, without realising the impact of what we do here. I mention recent Bills. We had the Criminal Appeals Bill, which affects very important people outside this House. We have had education Bills, health Bills, the Family Law Bill, the Defamation Bill. There is not a single piece of legislation which is destined to impact only upon people within these hallowed walls.
The only other point I wish to mention in detail at this moment is addressed to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, who described race relations in this country as being on a knife edge. I believe that statement does a disservice to the many people in our communities—
Earl Russell: My Lords—
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the noble Earl will have a proper opportunity to reply to what I am saying later. I am proposing that this Bill do now pass. I have no doubt that the noble Earl will have the opportunity to speak in due course. I think such statements do a disservice to the many people in the community who have worked assiduously for good race relations, underpinned, I might say, by an extremely effective piece of legislation, the 1976 Race Relations Act. Perhaps I may also say—because the noble Earl was rather selective in his comments about the CRE—that the Commission for Racial Equality made clear in its
1364
report that it thought race relations in this country compared favourably set against the levels of xenophobia in many neighbouring European countries.
The noble Lord, Lord Jakobovits, is not in his place at the moment, but I promised that I would refer to what might be described as his "Bill do now pass" speech made yesterday. I was grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. He reminded us that many established and valued communities arrived here as refugees and that this country has an honourable tradition of harbouring those at risk of persecution. We attach great importance to preserving that tradition. He reminded us also that this is an exceptionally densely populated country and that many plead persecution when what draws them here is economic advantage. All that I welcome. I agree with the noble Lord even though I naturally regret that he did not feel able to support us on benefit proposals. Nevertheless, I appreciate his contribution to our debate.
The Bill reflects this Government's long-standing view that firm immigration control is a necessary condition for preserving this country's good record on race relations. The Government remain wholly committed to fair asylum procedures and fair immigration procedures. We intend to continue to comply with our international obligations, and in particular with the 1951 convention on refugees. Indeed, we fully intend to preserve this country's long and honourable tradition of providing refuge to those genuinely at risk of persecution. The Bill is not only consistent with all those objectives; it is essential if the United Kingdom is to continue to achieve them. That is why I commend the measure to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Baroness Blatch.)
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Nicol): My Lords, I have to inform the House that in the second Division the total for the Not-Contents should have been 144 and not 145, as was announced earlier.
6.45 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Minister in the speech she has just made, sought to give the impression that this is somehow a coherent and principled response to the problems, which all acknowledge, of how to deal with asylum and asylum claimants and how to deal with immigration. Of course it is no such thing. This Bill is a ragbag of hurried, mostly ill-thought-out attempts to deal with the deficiencies of the legislation which the Government themselves passed in 1993 in the Asylum and Immigrations Appeals Act. Some of these attempts are trivial and will have very little effect. Some of them are more important and more dangerous; but all of them are objectionable in some way or another. This is a bad series of small measures put together to form what is inevitably a bad Bill.
The Minister referred to changes which have taken place in this House. There have indeed been quite a number of them. Changes on Divisions have seen to it that there will be no "fast tracking" of victims of torture from the so-called white list countries. Changes made

1365
yesterday will make sure that there is a three-day period of grace for asylum seekers in which to claim asylum after they have entered the country, without losing benefits. A further change made yesterday on a Division provides protection for abused domestic workers.
In addition to that, it is only right to acknowledge that a number of changes have taken place by concessions on the part of the Government rather than in Divisions and also through assurances which have been given in the course of debate. The thoroughly objectionable word "immigrant" has been removed from the face of the Bill, although the intention of what we objected to is still there in the phrase:
"a person subject to immigration control".
There have been minor improvements in relation to advisers, who could run a risk of prosecution for giving advice to asylum seekers. An assurance has been given that persecution other than by the state or agents of the state in other countries will be recognised as persecution within the terms of the legislation, as is already the case in the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees. There is now a provision that the adjudicator can direct the Secretary of State to assist the return of a successful appellant who had been removed. There have also been changes with regard to affirmative resolution procedures.
However, there are still many grave defects in the Bill. It is still the case that what are called "fast-track procedures" will mean that some cases—inevitably, a substantial number of genuine cases—will not receive proper consideration and that appellants will not be present for their own appeals. It is widely agreed by those with experience of appeals that that reduces the likelihood of their appeals being properly heard or resulting in a proper conclusion.
As a result of the amendments introduced yesterday—I shall have to return briefly to this issue—many people will be left destitute and homeless, and inevitably, as even the Government admit, they will include genuine asylum seekers. Because of the provisions (not so much on immigration but particularly on employment) it will still be the case that black and Asian British citizens will have to prove their immigration status when they apply for jobs, housing, child benefit or any of the other benefits which are dealt with in Clause 11. I believe that there will inevitably be an increase in discrimination against black and Asian citizens, many of whom have been properly in this country for many years and who may be the descendants of those who came to this country over the centuries.
I am sorry to say that it is still the case that immigration offences will be ranked alongside murder, rape and armed robbery in seriousness and that powers of warrant will still apply to immigration offences as if they were as serious as the offences which I have just mentioned. The Government have failed to address the true level of the seriousness of immigration offences. They have also failed to address the issue of the registration of immigration advisers. I deny the Minister's allegation that we were somehow being lax on racketeering. On the contrary, we believe that the
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Government's proposals on racketeering are thoroughly inadequate. A number of our amendments were intended to improve the situation.
I have to say something about the new clause, now Clause 11, which was introduced yesterday. It was introduced in a very great hurry at the end of the proceedings in both Houses. It seeks to deal with the dilemma that was recognised by the Court of Appeal on 21st June when it said that legally the Government were in error in introducing changes to primary legislation by means of the regulations which came into force on 5th February. However, the judgment went very much further in its description of the effects of those regulations—now primary legislation. Let us acknowledge that the Government have rectified the legal problem identified by the Court of Appeal, but they have not recognised the true horror of having in this country significant numbers of people who are asylum claimants, who are here in order to be asylum claimants, who are recognised as asylum claimants but who are being left without any means of support and, as the Court of Appeal said, in a state of destitution. That cannot be a civilised way to treat people who are, if not our fellow citizens, at least our fellow inhabitants of the British Isles. This hasty attempt to overturn the decision of the Court of Appeal will redound to the discredit of this Government as a government of a civilised country.
The way in which the Government have dealt with Parliament will also redound to their discredit. The time available to us for consideration of the new government amendments, which were not available until late on Thursday afternoon, was quite inadequate for proper consideration. Indeed, it was in the middle of that debate yesterday afternoon that we learned that further government amendments were being tabled to their own amendment—even as we were debating it. We now know that those government amendments were withdrawn. Were they justified or not? If they were justified, the Government should have persisted in them. If they were not justified, we can presume that the new government amendment is defective in ways that we do not know.
It is difficult to understand what the Minister said about the Government's reaction to the defeat that they suffered yesterday. I took down what the noble Baroness said. She said that the Government would consider how to respond to the amendment "when the Bill returns". What does that mean? Is the amendment to be accepted in the Commons or is it to be changed there? What does "returns" mean? Does it mean when the Bill "returns to this House" or when it "returns to the Commons"—
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, we have to return the Bill to the House of Commons.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Their views will be given in the Commons.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Okay, but common language would assume that when one talks about "returns", one means when the Bill returns here. I suggest that the Minister could have said what she meant rather more clearly than was the case.

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I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Mackay, referred to the need for the Bill to commence as soon as possible and said that the Government would seek the agreement of the Commons to the Bill. Let us hope that the Minister does that. Let us hope that he seeks the agreement of the Commons to that aspect of the Bill as it is sent there from this House.
Before I close, I must thank the many organisations, expert in this area, which have helped to brief us. I thank the Refugee Legal Centre; the Refugee Council; the Commission for Racial Equality; the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants; the Immigration Law Practitioners Association; the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture; the Child Poverty Action Group; the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux; Shelter and various Church organisations. I apologise if I have missed any. I thank particularly Clare Cozens, our researcher, who has been indefatigable in bringing together views and in helping us to decide how to approach the Bill in this House. I am also enormously grateful to my colleagues on the Front Bench, my noble friends Lady Hollis and Lord Dubs. I hope that they will agree that we have been a happy and united team and that we have divided the work between us effectively. I acknowledge with thanks the usual courtesy and forbearance, sometimes, of the two Ministers and the Whip on the Government Front Bench. These would have been extremely unpleasant proceedings without that courtesy and forbearance—and we are grateful for it.
I am not happy that this Bill should pass but, of course, we shall not oppose the Motion in the Lobbies. I believe that this will be a Bill of short duration—not because anybody wants to say before an election that they will repeal this or that piece of legislation—politics does not work that way—but because the remedies which are sought to the problems which have often been wrongly identified in the Bill are inadequate, scrappy, hastily thought-out and are often very damaging indeed. It is a bad Bill.
7 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, "at least they are still talking!" There are some contexts—this is one of them—in which that is an encouraging thing to say. I apologise to those concerned with the next business that that is so. We have been attempting to talk across a gulf so wide that parliamentary debate is almost impossible. In those circumstances, I warmly thank the professionalism and courtesy of the two Ministers involved in this Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and the noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.
The first lesson I learned when I arrived here was that how much I liked people had nothing whatever to do with what I felt about their opinions. I have relearned that lesson during this Bill.
I should like to thank colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench—the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—whose experience of this subject is so long. As to my own Bench, I offer the warmest thanks to my noble friend Lady Williams of
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Crosby. I can think of no one I would rather have beside me in a scrap late at night. I can think of no one who can combine replies in a scrap late at night with the highest statesmanship in the way she can. I have been proud to work with her.
I also offer thanks to Carolyn Rampton in our Whips' Office who, not at an easy time, has coped with this Bill with apparently total calm. I am sure she will tell me that appearances are deceptive, but they deceived me. I also join in the thanks expressed by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, to all those from the organisations which have advised us. They have done it with the greatest distinction. I have looked up many of their references and followed them up. It is the strongest academic test of advice, which they have passed with flying colours.
I believe that the noble Baroness misunderstood my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby when she said that the Bill had stirred the conscience of the country. We were not suggesting for a moment that other Bills do not interest the country. But the sense of shock which this Bill has created—I know many hundreds of people personally who share this view—is something that I have not experienced for a very long time. It exceeds that which we felt in relation to the poll tax—and by a very long way.
My father once said that love of England was very nearly the strongest emotion that one could possess. I agree with that. But this Bill has torn away one of the landmarks by which I have identified my Englishness. I grew up during the War in a house full of Germans, many but by no means all of whom were Jewish. There I gained the opinion, which I still hold, that Germans could be very nice people. I grew up in pride at the country's tradition of hospitality to the persecuted from abroad. That is not just a tradition of this century. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, has referred to Huguenot influence in the 16th century. I was reminded of the reply of Queen Elizabeth I when she was faced with protests about their numbers. She said:
"They are all welcome. I at least will never fail them".
Perhaps that was why a proclamation drafted in 1601 to withdraw all parish support from what was described as blackamoors never saw the light of day. That was a more civilised time than this. The sense of shock which is felt is one that must be accepted on the other side of the House, just as we must accept on this side of the House that it is not shared there. It does not make debate easy. It does credit to Parliament as an institution that, however great the difficulty, we have risen to it.
I shall not be tempted into answering in detail all the arguments the Minister has just put forward. She can guess what my answers would be. But it is not often that 158 Members of this Chamber vote in favour of an opposition amendment. That indicated a stirring and movement of opinion going far beyond the ranks of those who normally oppose Government business. That welling up of opinion is something that any politically prudent government may be unwise to ignore.
What the noble Baroness has said about treating "asylum seekers" and "refugees" as if they are equivalent terms is plainly legally wrong. I have

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checked the point further since the debate yesterday and found that what I then said was correct. She can look it up. I will not take it any further now. The noble Baroness does not assist debate by taking me to task for expressing a view on race relations which quotes verbatim Mr. Herman Ouseley in the introduction to the annual report of the Commission on Racial Equality. Mr. Ouseley may or may not be mistaken, but he knows more about race relations than either the noble Baroness or myself. I quote him without apology. I think that the noble Baroness is most unwise to reproach me for doing so.
I was deeply distressed, since we had had exchanges about Clause 8, that the noble Baroness once again suggested that we on these Benches were doing anything whatever to support racketeers. It is difficult enough to conduct civilised debate on a Bill of this kind without inferences of that type. My noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby has made a number of practical suggestions on the point, which I am sure she will be happy to repeat if the Minister does not remember them. We believe that the clause will do far more harm to race relations than to racketeers. The noble Baroness may not believe that opinion to be correct or even rational, but however misguided we may be in holding it I ask her to withdraw the remarks that she has just made. I will be very happy to give way if she rises to do so. If she does not, I regret that I must take the matter further.
It is also my belief—which I know is not shared by the noble Baroness—that the bulk of this Bill contradicts our international legal obligations. I believe that Clause 1 infringes Article 3 of the UN convention. I believe Clauses 2 and 3 infringe Article 33, and possibly Article 32. I believe that Clauses 4 and 5 infringe Article 31(1). I ask the House to be wary of Government attempts to redefine the word "lawful" to try to argue that those who enter to claim asylum are entering unlawfully. That would have the effect of attempting to disapply the UN convention for the majority of asylum seekers. I believe that such an attempt is prohibited by Article 31(1). I hope that the case will be argued in some judicial forum. I believe that Clause 6 does not infringe any legal obligation whatever, which is not to say that I like it. I believe that Clauses 7 and 8 will lead to many breaches of the Race Relations Act. I believe that Clause 9 infringes Articles 21 and 23 of the UN convention and Article 27(3) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I believe that Clause 10 infringes Article 24 of the UN convention and Articles 27(1), 27(3) and 26 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. I do not expect the noble Baroness to agree with that, but the record of the Home Office in predicting the reaction of the courts should not encourage it to have confidence.
7.10 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, first, I say how much I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, in the tributes which he paid to my noble friends Lady Blatch and Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, did so too. I, in turn, should like to give credit to those Members of the Opposition Front Benches who, although with a great
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deal of opposition, have with sincerity and determination put forward their views on the Bill. My noble friends have defended what I believe to be a necessary Bill. They have done so with clarity, courtesy and determination.
Having sat all through yesterday and today without saying a word, but having taken a small part in some of the earlier stages of the Bill, perhaps I may say that the Bill seems to me to be a piece of history vividly repeating itself. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, this country was invaded by thousands of British overseas subjects who had a right to come here. We were proud of what was then the ancient tradition of allowing British subjects of all kinds, of all races, from all over the world, to come to live in this country if they wanted. They were of course mainly economic migrants. Many of them were sad people.
At that time, I had for three years responsibility for the Immigration Department of the Home Office. Just to give one example, I remember in 1961 that I went to Southampton to see the arrival of a large ship containing over 1,000 immigrants from the Caribbean. It was cold, and they were ill-clad. They were obviously sad people. They were people of both sexes and all ages. I was sorry for them. I wondered what we should be doing about that, but the problem was that in that year 100,000 such people came to this country. The government of the day could not let that go on. So we had to have the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 which I had some part in piloting through another place.
That Act was as passionately opposed as this Bill has been, both by the Socialist Party and by the Liberal Party of the day. The Socialist Party voted against the Bill 42 times and threatened that if it were returned to power it would repeal it. But of course it did not and could not repeal it. Indeed, it strengthened it, because while it was in power there was a large incursion of East African Asians. It felt quite rightly that something had to be done about that.
I say that in order to put the Bill into its proper context. I find this a somewhat nostalgic occasion. Of course we feel sorry for those millions of people in Africa, Asia, the Balkans and elsewhere who are being oppressed and even tortured in their own countries. Of course if vast numbers of them came here, we would have to change our honourable and humane principle of granting asylum to all such people. But the Bill does not do that. What it does is to ensure that the very considerable numbers who do come here and claim asylum are entitled to it—that, in sum, is what the Bill does—and do not use it merely as an excuse to stay here.
Of course we feel sorry in many cases, not just for the genuine asylum seekers but for the many others. The right reverend Prelates and both main opposition parties have a perfect right to pursue what they consider to be a very good cause. But they have no responsibility for the outcome of the various proposals that they make for changing the Bill.
Governments—I use the word particularly in the plural, because it would apply to any government of any party—have such broad and complete responsibilities in

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fairness to our own people that they just have to be selective about all the good causes which are put before them. Perhaps I may say in passing that for four years I was chairman of one of our biggest pressure groups (MENCAP); first, when there was a Labour Government and then for two years when there was a Conservative Government. I pressed its case as hard as I could, but I realised that the government of the day (first Labour and then Conservative) had the responsibility for taking decisions on the various proposals that we put forward. That is how a democracy must work.
I heard recently on the radio that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, for whom I have great respect and find so friendly, was making a plea to relieve child poverty, of which, by the way, we have much less than we had some years ago.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: What!
Lord Renton: My Lords, we have much less than when I was young between the wars, and much less than in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But besides dealing with child poverty, governments have to deal with education problems, the health service, housing problems, drugs, terrorism, and unemployment. They have to find money—the people's money—by direct and indirect taxation for those and many other matters. It is taxpayers at all levels of society from whom the money has to be obtained to deal with those problems.
Governments have to have priorities. They cannot pour out money on every good cause, as I have said. I do not know whether any noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench can correct me, but I read in one of the Sunday newspapers that the Leader of the Opposition in another place is reported as saying that he would not, if there were a Labour Government, increase government expenditure. Let him tell that to those who want to cause the Government to increase the large sums already being spent on asylum seekers and other people trying to get in here, of whom, as has been said, there were 55,000 last year of whom only 5 per cent. were granted asylum on arrival. Of the many more who appealed, only 3 per cent. of the appeals were successful.
There has been a far greater increase in the number of people trying to come in and settle in this country than in any other European country. That is so, despite what the noble Baroness was saying earlier. The millions of pounds which the Government have been spending hearing the cases of those who want to come here and in maintaining them is something we have to bear in mind. The problems must be dealt with. Thank goodness we have a government who had the courage and determination to introduce the Bill and, I hope, get it through both Houses of Parliament in order to deal with these problems.
7.20 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, the noble Lord said that he wanted to put the Bill in its proper context. He did that by prefacing that section of his speech with a reference to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. We are concerned not with the people who are being
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tortured or extrajudicially executed, or who want to escape from such regimes and come to this country; we are talking about a device which the Government are using to limit immigration by the back door. By imposing serious financial penalties on people who may well have a perfectly legitimate claim to asylum, they are seeking to make it impossible for them to pursue a claim by starving them into submission.
The way in which the Bill has been handled is utterly unacceptable. To chop it up and then reconstitute it like a kedgeree, bringing it back in different sections, has been very confusing and created enormous difficulties for noble Lords who have attempted to take part in the proceedings. I am afraid that the Bill will leave this House with serious defects which no one has yet been able to identify; that those will lead to serious confusion and error in the administration of the Bill and defeats for the Government in the courts. I certainly hope that that will be the case because I believe that the Government have brought that on their own heads by rushing through this legislation in a totally unnecessary manner. The House could well have sat for another week in order to have given your Lordships adequate time to consider all the amendments that were tabled at a late stage on Thursday afternoon.
My principal reason for wanting to speak at this stage is that while your Lordships have been proceeding on the assumption that, as my noble friend Lord Russell said, the Bill must be judged in the light of its compatibility with our international obligations, the Foreign Secretary has been talking about material alterations in the convention in, of all places, Jeddah. The Foreign Secretary goes to a country which is renowned for indulging in public executions, endemic torture, detentions without trial and all the other evils which cause people to go into asylum and chooses that place of all places in the world to talk about amendments to the United Nations Convention on Refugees. Admittedly, he was speaking in the context of the world attack on terrorism following the Sharm el Sheikh summit and the G7 meeting at which President Clinton said that a new confrontation with terrorism was necessary. I do not disagree with that. I believe that the world must face up to terrorism which is instigated in certain countries. In that connection I speak particularly of Iran because we all know that that is the hotbed of world terrorism. It is no good concealing that fact from ourselves.
As an international community we need to take every possible measure to confront terrorism. However, if the Foreign Secretary is saying that we have to do that by limiting the rights which people have hitherto enjoyed under the United Nations convention it is an extremely sad day for this country. It is sad that Britain of all countries should be taking the lead in whittling down those rights, although it is of a piece with the remarks which the right honourable gentleman made on other occasions, in particular the interview he gave to the Arabic newspaper Al Hayyat immediately after he took office. He then made a blanket condemnation of Arab and Moslem dissidents coming to this country. If we are in the process of making radical alterations to the United Nations convention it would have been better if the

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Foreign Secretary had made a Statement in another place rather than doing so in Jeddah where human rights are violated on such an enormous scale—
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, we must be extremely careful about how we address the affairs of a sovereign state, especially a state which has a culture which it upholds.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, that is the opinion of the noble Viscount but I am entitled to express my opinion about the nature of the punishments which are inflicted on people in Saudi Arabia and the incongruity of the Foreign Secretary talking about amending the United Nations Convention on Refugees in such a location. If he had done so in Washington in response to an initiative of President Clinton I should have said that that was a suitable environment in which to discuss the action of the international community against terrorism and the possibility that changes might be effected in the United Nations Convention on Refugees with a particular view to combatting terrorism.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I do not believe that the noble Lord's speech is in the tradition of this House where, on Third Reading, we speak about the Bill. It seems to me to have ranged rather wide. Those of us who would like to say something about the Bill would be very grateful if he could limit those remarks.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I believe that what I am saying is appropriate to the Bill because we are talking about a measure which, as my noble friend Lord Russell remarked, may be considered to be in violation of some of the provisions of the United Nations convention. If we are talking about a convention which is likely to be altered by action prompted by the Foreign Secretary we are entitled to know what he has in mind and what effect that may have on the implications of this legislation. For him to go off to Jeddah and talk about these matters just at the moment when the Bill is before your Lordships in the last stages of its proceedings is highly incongruous and unacceptable.
We have come to the end of these proceedings. It would have been better had we been able to complete the Question that the Bill do now pass without the slur which the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, inflicted on the so-called armchair critics. During its passage through this House we have done our best to try to amend the Bill as we see fit. Perhaps I may say to the noble Baroness that if your Lordships are to work in amity and friendship across the Floor of the House, that kind of remark is best avoided. I believe that if we can maintain civilities between the two Front Benches that will help to smooth the passage of legislation which, as my noble friend remarked, is very difficult indeed.
The noble Baroness challenged us on this side of the House to say what alternatives we have to the proposals in the Bill. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, made what some of us consider to be a very sensible proposal for limiting the rights of asylum
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of people who have been here for some length of time. That would have to be defined but he was referring particularly to those who have been commented upon by the noble Baroness; those who first enter as visitors or in some other capacity, remain here for six months, get an extension for six months and then suddenly wake up to the fact that it is possible to apply for asylum. They then remain for a further period while the appeal is being considered.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, also said that the right way to proceed was by having a sieve which limited access to the appeals system, although he did not go into the same kind of detail as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson. I should have thought that with advice from two such distinguished experts in the law, at some point in the proceedings the noble Baroness would have responded to those initiatives.
The fact is that there are plenty of alternatives and they are not limited to the acceleration of the procedures about which my noble friend Lady Williams rightly commented at earlier stages of the Bill. There is plenty that could have been done to limit the amount of money that is being spent on benefits to asylum seekers. I believe that the provisions which we are now allowing to pass will have a very damaging effect on the most vulnerable sections in our community, including many who have a genuine claim for asylum.
7.30 p.m.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I welcome the Third Reading of this Bill. I believe that the debate has been very intense on all sides because views are very sincerely held on all sides. The House must have a degree of understanding of that.
My noble friend Lord Renton referred to the invasion of people before the 1962 Act. I am one of the invaders. I was very sorry that my family and friends were excluded in the way in which many others have been since. But I understand the need for that in a country of this size. Therefore, I believe that the Government have done their best to try to be fair. That is why I support the Bill.
Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on her measured handling of this most emotive of Bills during several late nights, or should I say early mornings?
The Bill has made me realise just how fortunate we are to live here. Like my noble friend Lady Gardner, I was not born here. But this is a country to which so many people aspire. They wish to come to live here. Perhaps we should remember that when we succumb to the temptation of criticising everything about the United Kingdom. Of course we should like to be the good Samaritans to all but, as my noble friend Lord Renton said, we must be selective in order to hold faith with the taxpayers.
My noble friend dealt with a great many complex issues centred on the asylum part of the Bill, but she still found time to listen to representations on the equally important but less emotionally charged immigration element of the Bill; and I thank her for that. I am very

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grateful for the sympathetic hearing that I received and for the concession which my noble friend made in accepting that, while ferry companies and airlines must understand their obligations to ensure that they bring to this country the people who have the right to be here, the Government share that responsibility.
The government amendment to restrict responsibility for detention costs to 14 days has been warmly welcomed by the transport industry. I hope that that sense of fair play and partnership will continue and that my noble friend will ensure that penalties are imposed equitably. There are anomalies in the law and I know that my noble friend is well aware of that. Ferry companies and airlines accept that they must do the right thing but believe that it is time that the anomalies should be removed and the law applied equally to all.
My noble friend has indicated a willingness to discuss further ways in which to develop the partnership between government and those in the transport industry who take their responsibilities seriously. I am sure that the industry will be most grateful for that.
Having said that, I agree with previous speakers that the courtesy and forbearance shown has been exemplary. It is that which makes this House so civilised and so markedly a beacon of the highest standards of behaviour.
7.35 p.m.
Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, I join with my noble friend Lord Renton and others in congratulating the Minister on the Bill. Many points have been covered many times during many hours of debate on the Bill and I shall not repeat the arguments.
However, I have been most dismayed by the amendments tabled by the two parties opposite, many of which sought to withdraw entire clauses from the Bill. One can only conclude from that they do not agree with the principle of the Bill and that they would demolish the Bill and render it ineffective. They have produced wrecking and delaying procedures throughout.
We have heard from the Liberal Democrats that they will repeal the Bill, but when I posed the question yesterday to the party opposite, answer came there none. Therefore, I can only assume that it too would include the repeal of the Bill in its manifesto.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness was here to hear me say that you do not threaten to repeal Bills. Politics is not like that. You move on.
Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, I wonder whether the party opposite has costed the three extra days provision and has taken into account the more than £200 million of benefit which is needed to pay illegal asylum seekers. Have they cleared that with the Shadow Chancellor in the other place?
Earl Russell: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Baroness could possibly withdraw the words "illegal", which was otiose to her argument.
Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, the savings planned in this Bill will then not be made and all costs would
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fall on the taxpayers. I am sure that taxpayers in this country really wish to see genuine asylum seekers attain legitimate refugee status as quickly as possible and do not want thousands of illegal applicants clogging the system. I support the new procedures in Clause 1 and the rest of the Bill.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, I wish to dissociate myself from some of the rather more extreme partisan views which have just been expressed. Instead, I should like to concentrate on some practical measures which could be taken.
We understand that the number of people working within the Home Office and dealing with asylum seekers has increased from about 100 to 800. I am glad to hear that. But so far they have succeeded in making very little impression on the backlog of cases still outstanding, some of which date back to 1991. Therefore, I believe that there is scope both for increasing the numbers of staff and for improving their training and productivity.
While I am on that subject, perhaps I may point to the very great importance of having interpreters in a wide variety of languages to deal with asylum cases. In that regard also there is some scope for improving the understanding and sympathy with which interpreters deal with individual applicants.
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, this Bill has dealt with delicate and complex matters. In some ways, I am sad about how acrimonious some aspects have become but I recognise that there are emotive issues before us.
In my view the Government are to be commended for addressing the current situation. But it is clear that more needs to be done to reach the root cause of the problem. We have heard strong arguments on all sides. Procedures need to be overhauled but how do we devise a system which will stand the test of time and which does not abuse the United Kingdom's good intentions with early identification of genuine claims? I believe that we must find a just system which dispenses with the need—and I repeat the word "need"—for the right of appeal in the vast majority of cases.
I shall briefly flag the following for consideration in a spirit of "where do we go from here?" Thought might be given to introducing a system for countries other than the likes of Iran, Iraq and the Sudan, the claims being considered by a three-member adjudicating panel trained to handle regional specific claims. The panels might include one independent member, perhaps from UNHCR.
If the panel decided unanimously that the individual's case had no merit, there should be no right of appeal and immediate removal. On the other hand, there could be a right of appeal in most cases where there was a dissenting opinion. Similarly, where the panel considered unanimously that the applicant was a refugee, he would be granted status with no right of appeal by the Home Office. Applicants originating from a list of countries such as Iran, Iraq and the Sudan, drawn up by the Home Secretary in consultation with specialist bodies and Parliament, would have their

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applications handled using the fast-track procedure by one Home Office official only. That would take out of the system individuals most likely to have their claims accepted.
Marry all that with the three-day grace period decided on yesterday and we should have eliminated potentially two tiers of appeals process and the cause of so much uncertainty, cost and bureaucratic delay. Indeed, we might even find solutions in one shot and negate the problems surrounding benefits, leaving a system which is manifestly effective and fair.
7.40 p.m.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, it was not my intention to intervene in the debate, but I feel obliged to do so in response to some of the remarks that have been made. I shall be brief. I repeat: I had no intention whatever of taking part in this discussion; indeed, I thought that we had had enough discussion. Nevertheless, I must respond to some of the things that have been said as I regard them as being quite unacceptable.
Perhaps I may, first, congratulate the noble Lords who put forward such constructive suggestions. I have in mind the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, together with other Members on the Opposition Benches who, during the earlier stages, tried to put forward serious proposals for dealing with some of the problems. I should like to make reference to just one of those proposals; namely, the proposal for registering those who act as representatives for immigrants and who give them advice.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, proposed such a register. However, that was not acceptable to the other side. We were then accused of supporting racketeering. I regard that as an utterly disgraceful remark, and I am still waiting for the Minister to withdraw it because I believe that that is not a remark that anyone can be expected to accept in the light of the amendments that we moved.
I am disgusted by the way in which there has been an attempt to pave the way for what I can only describe as an election-type atmosphere. Quite apart from being accused of supporting racketeering, we have also been accused of wishing to introduce methods of immigration by deception. We have been accused of supporting those who are involved in assisting illegal immigrants knowing them to be illegal; and, in addition, we have been told many times that our proposals would waste taxpayers' money.
We restrain ourselves; indeed, we could go through a long litany from British Rail to building unnecessary ministries. I shall not do so. I understood that the atmosphere of this House was rather different from that. I find it extremely sad and disappointing that, during the last few minutes of the proceedings on this Bill where considerable restraint has been shown, we should see such an extraordinary deterioration to a level of electoral language that I, for one, did not expect to hear.
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I say again, I would not have intervened at this stage but I have been driven to do so by outrage. I simply had to make my position absolutely plain.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, I appreciate that, normally, there would not be two speeches from the Labour Front Bench on this Motion. However, I have one particular reason for breaking with that convention. I came to this country as a refugee when a small child. I did not mention that fact during earlier debates because I thought that it would be seen as special pleading. Therefore, I left it alone. Nevertheless, I have some experiences which, clearly, have influenced me because I have memories of my childhood.
I should like to make a few brief comments. Having virtually got their Bill through, it is not clear to me whether the Government want every asylum seeker to claim asylum at the point of entry, thereby making no savings in the social security or any other budget, or whether they expect, for reasons that have been amply debated, that many asylum seekers will not make the claim at the point of entry, in which case there will be some savings but also some consequences.
According to the latest statistics, there are at present some 70,000 asylum cases waiting to be resolved. If, on average, an asylum case costs the public purse roughly £100 a week in income support, and so on, I calculate that that will cost about £350 million a year. I know that the Government have said—and, indeed, the Minister said it only a few minutes ago—that there are certain costs which they are trying to cut, and that they have increased the number of staff to deal with such matters. Nevertheless, we are still left with the cost of £350 million a year.
Bearing in mind the fact that it takes 18 months to two years to make an asylum claim—although, two days ago, I met a Ugandan woman who has been waiting for five years for her claim to be resolved—if we speeded up the process to, say, six months, we would probably save about £250 million to £270 million a year. That is where there could be a real saving—a real saving to the Exchequer, provided that we still operated a decent and fair system. I give way to the Minister.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. It is important for me to repeat the figures that I gave earlier. The number of determinations rose from 2,400 in 1994 to 7,000 last year; but the projected figure for this year is 19,000. That is an enormous improvement. Initial decisions by the Home Office rose from 21,000 in 1994 to 27,000 last year. We expect that figure to rise to 37,000 this year. Therefore, the increases that the noble Lord, Lord is looking for—and, indeed, more—are well on the way to being achieved.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, perhaps I should not have embarked on the question of figures because this is not a stage of the Bill where one should be debating issues that have already been addressed and which are perhaps inappropriate now. I simply wanted to make this point. If there was a will, which the Government have not been showing over the years, I still believe there would be

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much greater savings. It is in that area that savings could be made which would be consistent with this country's tradition of being fair to people who seek asylum; indeed, a tradition from which I benefited. We could do so without going through some of the procedures that we have before us.
Having said that, I should like to thank my colleagues on the Labour Front Bench. I have not taken part in a debate before in this House that has reached such a stage. I should also like to thank those from the Liberal Democrat Party for the part that they played in the proceedings; and, indeed, I should like to thank the government Ministers for their unfailing courtesy.
On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Community Service by Offenders (Hours of Work) (Scotland) Order 1996
7.45 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Scottish Office (The Earl of Lindsay): rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 11th June be approved [23rd Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Earl said: My Lords, community service by offenders was introduced in Scotland by the Community Service by Offenders (Scotland) Act 1978, which was consolidated into the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. At the moment, community service can be given for between 40 and 240 hours. The Government believe that now is the time to revise both the minimum and the maximum hours for which a community service order can be made. That is in order to reinforce the message to offenders, to sentencers and to the public that community service is a properly demanding sentence of the court.
In the White Paper Firm and Fair issued in June 1994 the Government set out their proposals for changes in the community service maximum number of hours and invited comments from interested parties. No contrary comments were received and the proposal to increase the maximum received strong support from those responding.
Since then, the Government have also reviewed the minimum, and our intention to change the provision was announced last autumn. Again, there have been no contrary representations.
The proposed changes in the number of hours contribute to our overall objective. In addition, a circular has recently been issued by the Scottish Office to local authorities requiring them to ensure that a sufficient number of physically challenging and demanding tasks are made available for community service offenders; and that the nature of the work and its product are brought much more to the attention of the public. That includes the marking of protective clothing where worn by those involved in a community service scheme.
A national community service environmental initiative has been launched which focuses on major projects, such as graffiti removal, footpath building,
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renovating public open spaces and waterway clearance. They are major projects of clear benefit to the community, but demanding of the offender. We are determined that there should be no misconception that community service participation is a soft option holiday camp; it is not. It is hard and useful work.
I believe that the changes we are making to community service hours are positive. They will assist in the disposal of its objectives and they deserve our shared support. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 11th June be approved [23rd Report from the Joint Committee].—(The Earl of Lindsay.)
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, I believe that there is general agreement in the community that the whole question of community service for offenders has been a success. I was slightly concerned about the increase from 40 to 80 hours, but I am informed by people who are involved and those who are sympathetic to it that it will produce a better balance and a sharper understanding for those concerned.
However, I have a slight worry upon which I hope the Minister will be able to assist me. I do not like the idea of someone being specially dressed to indicate to the public that he is an offender. Do offenders turn up in the morning and change into these clothes and return to their communities at night in their own clothes? I hope that the Minister will clarify that small but I think psychologically important point. While we want to make someone aware that he has broken the law, has been a nuisance and has done things that are not socially acceptable, we do not want him to be constantly marked out. We are talking about community service. We want to enable people who have offended to be able to break out of that cycle as quickly as possible. The Minister may prefer to write to me on that point rather than reply now. I repeat that I think that is an important point.
The Earl of Lindsay: My Lords, I am grateful for the welcome the noble Lord has given to the order. I can reassure him about the clothing he asked about. It is protective clothing; it is not a uniform as such. Each authority will make its own arrangements for marking protective clothing clearly and visibly. The clothing will not be worn on the way to and from work. It will be labelled quite clearly "Community Service Scheme". My right honourable friend the Secretary of State is keen to raise the profile of community service orders in the public domain. I can also reassure the noble Lord that the wearing of protective clothing will be guided by health and safety requirements. There will obviously be instances, such as working within residential care homes, where health and safety requirements will not require the wearing of protective clothing. This is not a universal obligation placed on all offenders, as the noble Lord may fear. If there is anything I can add by way of a letter to the noble Lord, I shall do so. I beg to move.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Armed Forces Bill
7.52 p.m.
Report received.
Clause 2 [Enlistment or entry for local service]:
Lord Judd Lord Judd moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 2, line 13, at end insert—
("(3) Within 6 months of the coming into force of this section the Secretary of State shall, before proceeding to any further replacement of Ministry of Defence police, lay before both Houses of Parliament a report relating to the outcome of any pilot projects for alternative arrangements under subsection (1) for duties which have been undertaken by Ministry of Defence police.
(4) No proposal for alternative arrangements under subsection (1) for duties which have been undertaken by Ministry of Defence police shall have effect unless it is confirmed by order made by statutory instrument and subject to approval by resolution of both Houses of Parliament.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, Amendment No. 1 stands in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. Perhaps I could be forgiven for saying at the outset that I for one am a little concerned that the defence of the realm should be pushed down the agenda in this way and treated in such a cavalier fashion as it has been treated this evening.
This amendment concerns Clause 2, which is the enabling clause for the proposed military local service engagements and the military provost guard service. Its purpose is to make sure that pilot projects are pilot projects and that they are properly evaluated before Parliament decides whether or not to endorse the scheme for implementation. The Government tell us that before going fully ahead the pilot projects to which I have just referred will be evaluated. However, the suspicion remains that the pilot projects are in fact a formality, or even a ratchet to lock policy into what will become an irreversible change.
There are doubts about the real motivation and purpose. Questions have been raised about the design and cost-effectiveness of the pilot projects, if they are genuinely pilot projects at all. Has the Minister yet seen a paper prepared by members of the Defence Police Federation setting out, as they see it, a more cost-effective option for the pilot projects? What is his conclusion on what they recommend? If he has not seen the paper, will he undertake this evening to acquire it and study it before finally deciding to go ahead?
We debated all this fairly fully in Committee in the Moses Room. However, anxieties remain on which the Government have so far failed to reassure us. For example, on costs of the scheme, is it not true that the forecast pay bill has already escalated by as much as a third? Will the level of remuneration not have to be very attractive indeed if it is to bring in personnel of the right calibre to such monotonous and mostly boring work—guarding and guarding alone? What of the recruitment and training costs? Have the estimates fully taken into account the costs of recruiting and training sufficient civilians if, as many anticipate, the number of Army recruits proves low?
The Government say the intention is to replace the Ministry of Defence Police personnel on a one-to-one basis, but few outside government believe that will be a viable ratio. Indeed, in this context, what of the disturbing events at Chilwell which I raised in Committee, and about which we still have to have a satisfactory explanation? I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I briefly refer again to what I said in Committee when I drew on an interesting letter which was written by experienced and committed members of the Ministry of Defence Police at Chilwell. They wrote:
"As you know, the MPGS scheme proposes that Ministry of Defence policemen are to be replaced on a one-for-one basis by infantry-trained non-regular soldiers; where those policemen are employed solely on armed guarding duties. This is what the scheme's protagonists within the MoD and Government have been telling Parliament, but it is far from the truth. Hardly any MDP on stations without a nuclear association are employed solely as armed guards. At the three MDP manned stations chosen to pilot the scheme, Chilwell, Donnington and Wilton, the MDP complements are and have for years been employed on primary policing duties, with the added capability to provide an armed response if necessary".
As I pointed out to the Committee, the letter continues, significantly,
"On my own station, Chilwell, a complementing review scheduled for September 1996 was rushed forward to mid-April. This resulted in our being retrospectively relegated on paper only to the required status of armed guards; although our actual employment has not changed at all. This review also increased our complement, again on paper only, from our current total of 20 men to the 26 men which the MPGS would require. This represents a hidden increase in manning by the MPGS over our current true MDP numbers".
That is hardly a convincing start to a genuine experiment by a pilot project.
When will this scheme break even? Will it be this century or next century? If it has been properly costed the Minister must surely give us a firm estimated date. He will know that many informed people doubt whether it will ever break even. As regards the public purse as a whole, what of the cost which will fall on other budgets outside the Ministry of Defence as the civil, non-Ministry of Defence police are compelled to take on more of the duties which in the past were undertaken by MoD police?
This brings us to wider issues. MoD police are civilian police constables and police officers trained in the use of firearms. The firearms fall into the whole discipline, skill and professionalism of police work. That is a vital safeguard. The MoD police are subject to the Police Complaints Authority. None of this will be true of the MPGS. Do we see here, quite frankly, a potentially sinister—I do not use the word lightly—erosion (yet another under this Government) of civil society as we value it in a free democracy? What of the calibre of the weapons to be used by the MPGS, often in close proximity to civilian communities? How certain can we be that the MPGS will remain deployed exclusively on guarding duties as now described? What happens if and when they are drawn into other activities? Sooner or later will they not inevitably be expected to give assistance to the civil police in the same way as the MoD police have not infrequently been called upon in the past?
As we understand it, while Army personnel recruited to MPGS may not have had formal, dedicated training in guarding, civilian recruits will be required to take an MoD guard service foundation course in addition to their other training. Why is there that distinction? I gather the Government have said that they aim to have as the minimum standard of training for the MPGS the national vocational qualification guarding level 2. That indeed sounds wise. But if that objective is to be fulfilled, will it not be essential for recruits from the Army to receive the same quality of training as civilian recruits? Does not the Minister agree that just to have been allocated guard duties from time to time during an Army career does not begin to amount to such systematic training? If all MPGS personnel were to receive the necessary training, would it not significantly increase the cost of the scheme?
What of reserve commitments? We understand the intention is that the Army regulars joining the MPGS will not acquire any further additional reserve commitments. We also understand that it is proposed that any existing reserve commitments will run concurrently with MPGS service. Will the Minister confirm that? If that is to be the case, and if the Government manage to recruit, for example, 500 MPGS from former regular service personnel, and their reserve commitments are discharged concurrently with their MPGS service, what effect will that have on the reserve capability of the Armed Forces? And, incidentally, will civilians recruited to MPGS themselves acquire reserve commitments after their full-time service?
We learn that MPGS personnel will be members of the Armed Forces pensions schemes. I understand that those pensions are calculated on the basis of the highest pay in the last three years of service. If a serviceman leaves the regular services on, say, £16,000 a year and serves with MPGS on £11,000 a year, will his pension be calculated on the lower or the higher rate? We need to be clear about that. It obviously has big implications for recruitment.
Finally, how local can local service with MPGS be guaranteed to be? The Government appear to indicate that it is intended that MPGS personnel will not be required to serve overseas in peacetime. But will all potential recruits be informed before joining MPGS that they may be required to serve elsewhere including overseas for longer than normally required in regulations; and will they be told in exactly what circumstances that would happen?
With great respect, the Minister has a lot of convincing still to do. There is much anxiety about the genuine nature of the pilot projects. There is much anxiety about the scheme as a whole. We shall listen carefully to what he says tonight. I beg to move.
8 p.m.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I support the amendment which stands in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and myself. As regards the seriousness of the issue, I spoke to one of the Ministry of Defence policemen and was shocked to hear him say, "The writing's on the wall, isn't it?". That is very much the
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view within the Ministry of Defence Police: that whatever happens as regards the pilot schemes, it is the end of the Ministry of Defence's police commitments.
I wish to ask a number of questions. We have been given the impression that the main reason for the change between the MDP and the MPGS is cost. In the changeover period the cost expenditure is, I believe, £20 million. The break-even point given by the Minister during Committee stage of the Bill was 2002 to 2003. However, a number of items may have changed since that cost analysis. First, the cost of wages seems to have increased. I believe that the wage originally envisaged was unrealistic. I do not believe that recruitment will be possible at that level of remuneration. Will the Minister indicate the level of wages per year which will be acceptable for a member of the MPGS? Will the figure be under £10,000 or closer to £14,000?
The noble Lord referred to membership of the MPGS. If the numbers increase, that will significantly increase the expenditure. We are not talking about a small number of men. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that the number to be recruited for the MPGS is 700. That figure is the size of a battalion; it is not a small figure. As regards replacement of the MoD police, the Minister assured us that it will be on a one-to-one basis. The Minister assured us at Committee stage that involuntary redundancy was unlikely. That might be so in the pilot schemes. Ministry of Defence police may be moved sideways to other postings. But will that be the case once the pilot schemes have concluded and other schemes are initiated? Will there be a redundancy cost that has not been calculated in the figures?
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, raised an issue close to my heart. The Ministry of Defence Police have a role outside the base that they defend. They are not just armed policemen on guard service. They take a large role in activities outside the base. Perhaps the Minister will give some indication as to whether that costing has been taken into account. Will the Home Office police seek remuneration for the added commitment that they will give to areas formerly covered by the Ministry of Defence Police? The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but if local chief constables have an added commitment they will have to obtain the money from somewhere. Will any of that money be sought from the Ministry of Defence? Or has the cost to the Home Office police been taken into account? That figure might easily have been omitted.
We are not happy about this issue. We cannot take the matter further at present. However, I ask the Minister for firm figures in order to put the minds of the members of the Ministry of Defence Police and ourselves at rest. Otherwise we shall have to return to the matter at a later stage.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I support the amendment. The noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Redesdale, raised some interesting points. I look forward to the Minister's reply.
However, the scheme is an experiment and it might work. But there is unnecessary concern about large numbers of redundant MoD policemen. The majority

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should be able to move to the Home Office police forces. But, again, the scheme might not work. The noble Lords have drawn attention to difficulties. One aspect that concerns me is the difficulty of arrest procedure. Servicemen have very limited powers of arrest even within MoD property, whereas an MoD policeman has extensive powers of arrest, in particular outside the base. The scheme is an interesting experiment. It might work. It might give us cost savings. However, again it might not, and it might be appropriate quietly to drop the proposal.
As regards the amendment, it might be better to adopt the negative procedure. If we find that the scheme is working well, we need not take action. However, if we find that it is not working well and we experience one or two disasters, we can bring the issue up at the appropriate time. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.
8.15 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe): My Lords, first I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Redesdale, and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on their gallant persistence in pursuing matters. However, I am disappointed that the reassurances that I gave in Committee have apparently not met their concerns. A number of points have been made this evening on behalf of the Defence Police Federation and I shall be glad to cover as many as I can. Those which I do not manage to cover I shall respond to in writing, if that is acceptable.
I start with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that in some way the writing is on the wall for the Ministry of Defence Police. I emphatically state that that is not the case. On current assumptions, the size of the MDP is expected to fall to between 2,500 and 3,000 personnel by the early years of the next century, probably stabilising closer to the upper than the lower end of the range. It is the Government's intention that the MDP will remain a substantial force, able to provide a civil policing service where that is required throughout the department. Ministers and the Chief Constable are confident that a force of 2,500 to 3,000, properly structured and resourced, will remain able to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked whether I had seen the Defence Police Federation paper on the pilot project. I have not seen it but shall be happy to take it into account before going ahead with our proposals. I shall ensure that I see a copy before Third Reading. The noble Lord made the point that in his view MDP officers never function wholly and solely as armed guards. It would therefore be wrong to replace civilian police officers who might come into contact with ordinary members of the public with an armed military guard. The posts at the pilot scheme sites, where it is proposed to replace MDP by the MPGS, are complemented for guarding and general security duties. It is precisely because MDP officers are not just armed guards that it makes sense in those cases to replace them with military guards. There is no reason why service personnel should not undertake those tasks; they already do so at many service
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establishments throughout the United Kingdom. Where a civil policing requirement has been identified at the pilot scheme sites, the MDP will either be retained at the site for that purpose or, if the requirement is insufficient to warrant a permanent MDP presence, it will be met by MDP officers from a nearby establishment or by an MDP area policing team.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, remarked that at the base ordnance depot in Donnington, which is one of the pilot sites, the civilian population outweighs the service population and that the MDP at Donnington do not carry out static armed guard duties. An armed guarding presence at Donnington is required to meet the threat to military personnel there. It is perfectly reasonable for MPGS soldiers to undertake the task. Civil policing requirements at Donnington will continue to be met by MDP officers complemented for those duties.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, also mentioned Chilwell, where he felt that the complementing review had been rushed forward. The complementing reviews at the pilot scheme sites were brought forward to provide the Defence Police Federation with details of the numbers of posts which it is proposed should be filled by MPGS soldiers rather than MDP officers. However, there is no question of the reviews having been rushed. They have been conducted in a fully professional manner by the MoD's directorate of management and consultancy services, in consultation with the Army and the MDP and have included on-site reviews where necessary, including one of Chilwell. Using agreed complementing criteria, it has been possible to distinguish between guarding and policing tasks. I stress again that only armed guarding posts have been recommended for conversion to MPGS.
As for the suggestion that the Chilwell review increased the complement to cover a greater number of MPGS needed in comparison with the MDP—I believe the noble Lord mentioned the figure of 20 being increased to 26—it is simply untrue. The recommended complement at Chilwell is based on the identified guarding and general security requirements. All proposals for the replacement of MDP by MPGS are on a one-for-one basis. I stress that again.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, asked about pay rates. No changes to pay rates have been assumed, subject to the Armed Forces Pay Review body agreement. An MLSE private would be paid £11,350, including 5 per cent. X factor, when the 1996–97 Armed Forces Pay Review award takes full effect in December this year. One more AFPRB award is expected before April 1997.
As regards costs which have been a concern on the Benches opposite, there have been some enhancements; for example, provision of accommodation where it is available, subject to normal payments. Recruiting and training costs have also been fully taken into account in the investment appraisal. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked about pensions. Work is continuing to ensure that full engagement regulars re-engaging as MPGS guards will not be disadvantaged in their pension entitlements.

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On the suggestion that the Home Department police might bear the cost of replacing MoD police with the MPGS, the MDP will be replaced on guarding duties only. So there is no question of any extra burden on the Home Department police.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, asked about training. A soldier who had had six years' service would normally have had considerable experience of guarding. There would, however, be exceptions to that, particularly as the MPGS would be open to personnel from all three services. But, like all soldiers, MPGS personnel would be required to re-qualify once a year in firearms training. That continuation training would be the responsibility of commanding officers. It is anticipated that MPGS soldiers would be required to fire their weapons as a matter of routine on a monthly basis.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked about reserve liability. For civilians recruited to the MPGS, the question of reserve liability has yet to be decided. It will be a matter for regulations. I hope that that has covered most of the points, but I shall be glad to deal with the remainder in writing.
I turn briefly to the text of the amendment. In my view, there is no need for the proposed new subsection (3). My honourable friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces has already undertaken to submit a report in 1999 to the Defence Select Committee in another place. It will report on the outcome of the pilot scheme and on the department's proposals for any further replacement of Ministry of Defence Police by military provost guard service soldiers. When we discussed the matter in Committee, I undertook to make a similar report to your Lordships' House. I repeat that undertaking today.
There are real practical objections to the amendment. It seeks to require the Secretary of State to lay a report on the outcome of the pilot scheme within six months of the coming into force of subsection (1). That would not make any kind of sense. I imagine that the clause as a whole will come into force around two months after Royal Assent. That is the way with such things. About six months after the clause comes into effect, the pilot scheme will get under way in April 1997. With the greatest respect to noble Lords, there would not, within the six-month period, have been any opportunity to conduct a pilot scheme, even less to assess its success or to give Parliament a report on it. As I indicated, the timescale envisaged for the report is much later than that, in 1999, not out of any recalcitrance on the part of the Government but because we need that amount of time to assess definitively whether the scheme will work.
Nor do we see what useful purpose would be served by the proposed subsection (4). I am not sure that I fully understand what is intended, but if it is to require regulations enabling local service engagements to be approved by affirmative resolution it will simply lead to further debate in the autumn and further uncertainty for MDP officers over their future, as well as further delay before the pilot scheme and, if approved, the main scheme can be introduced.
We believe that the principle of using military local service engagements for guarding is sound, but this proposition needs to be tested by means of the pilot
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scheme. I sensed from the debates in Committee that it seems to be common ground that there should be a pilot scheme and that the results should be reported to Parliament. We do not need this amendment to achieve that objective. Indeed, however helpfully it is intended, it will serve to frustrate the objective because it is unworkable.
Lord Judd: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, as ever, for his courteous and full reply. Might I just say, in the best possible spirit, that he is rather over-egging it if he says that there is a consensus on the need for the pilot projects. There is a consensus that the pilot projects are going to take place. I am not at all sure that anyone on this side of the House would have begun to go down this road at all. The Minister must not make an assumption, much as I dislike having to deny him any joy from having built bridges across the Floor of the House.
I noted the Minister's remark about the practicality of our amendments. As I said in Committee, I am not one to die in a ditch on wording. I believe that the whole point of having a discussion of this kind is to listen reasonably to each other and, if I take the point that the Minister makes, I am prepared to look at how we might put forward an amendment to make our point in a more reasonable way that meets his own observations. That is something that we want to take seriously.
As I am sure the Minister will realise, our concern is simply that if the "pilot projects" genuinely are pilot projects and are to be evaluated, it is essential that this House and the other place should have an opportunity to carry out that evaluation before deciding to go down this road. With all due candour—the polite way, I believe, of putting it these days—it will not wash to say that it is frustrating for those who want to do it. We are talking about the responsibility of Parliament, and we must have sounder and more full information on which to base our decisions.
I noted some of the Minister's remarks. He is always very open with us, and we appreciate that. I am sure, therefore, that he will take the point when I try to emphasise some of the doubts that he has raised tonight. He said, for example, in relation to pensions that "work is continuing." I should have thought that if one was entering into a pilot project on a scheme, pensions and what was to be done about them would have been fully tied up and would be known before the project started.
Earl Howe: My Lords, perhaps I may assist the noble Lord. I apologise if I did not make that clear. MLSE soldiers will also benefit from the Armed Forces pension scheme which, as the noble Lord knows, is non-contributory; but work is continuing on how precisely that will be implemented.
Lord Judd: My Lords, I am sure it is very reassuring to know that they will benefit. But how long is a piece of string? The Minister has given no indication whatever as to how they will benefit. That must underline anxieties about how much detailed thinking and proper forecasting took place as to the basis for a sensible pilot project.

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The Minister also referred to the fact that the reserve liability of civilians recruited for the MPGS has yet to be decided. That again rather emphasises the uncertainties that surround the whole scheme.
I do not wish to detain the House at this time of night. However, another major issue is that, in reference to Chilwell, the MPGS will be brought in on a one-for-one basis. If the Minister accepts, as he appears to, that Ministry of Defence Police seldom do guarding duties exclusively, we need to know what is the formula by which it is decided what is one-for-one. How many part-times does it take to make a one of Ministry of Defence police? We need to see the detail to be certain.
I hope the Minister will forgive my remaining unconvinced, but for all those reasons we still are unconvinced. However, We are fair minded people. We shall go away and look very carefully at what he said tonight. But I must say that the more he discusses this issue with us, the more worried, frankly, we become about what seems to be a rather half-baked initiative. It is quite probable that we shall want to return to this matter at Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Redesdale Lord Redesdale moved Amendment No. 2:
Leave out Clause 2.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is not my intention to push for Clause 2 to be deleted. My reason for tabling this amendment is to put forward the case that we are dealing with primary legislation. I understand that the Minister has found himself in a Catch-22 situation and without primary legislation he cannot initiate a pilot project. Nevertheless, we find ourselves in the Catch-22 situation that, without a pilot project, we cannot really understand what we are dealing with. I therefore wish to put the case that, although this is the right Bill in which to bring this measure forward, if it could have been introduced in a different way it would have been more helpful. I am not sure whether that would have been possible.
One issue concerns me. We have to look far ahead into the future because we have not had the results yet and a number of issues are still unresolved. What will happen to those bases if the pilot projects—so much money being involved—turn out not to be the success that the Minister and other Members of the House would wish. As the Minister said previously, members of the new force will simply not have their contracts renewed. Does that then mean that the Ministry of Defence police will be reinstated in their former positions? Exactly what will happen? Will primary legislation be required? Or will it simply be a case of, "Right, it hasn't been a success. Thank you very much. You can now go home?" How does the Minister see events taking place? That is the purpose of putting forward this amendment. I beg to move.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, referred to the "Catch-22 situation" that the Minister was in. I am not sure that that is
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completely correct. As I understand it, the Minister could have abused the Reserve Forces Bill by calling the MPGS volunteer reserves carrying out an additional voluntary duties commitment. I think we would have been rather disappointed had he done so. Some credit should go to the Minister for taking the primary legislation route.
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who spoke and in particular to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for the remark he has just made. If one reflects on the role of the Territorial Army, it is undoubtedly the case that the TA is there to deploy as formed units to augment the regular Army in times of crisis and to bring the regular Army up to full strength for deployment. So to use the Territorial Army for guarding would very much detract from that. I do not believe that is a route we should go down. I do not believe it would be attractive to members of the TA, nor do I think it would be appropriate for other reasons.
I am disappointed, of course, that noble Lords opposite have yet to be convinced that the Government's proposals are worth pursuing. I am indeed disappointed that they have reservations about the pilot scheme because useful lessons will be learnt from that scheme. It is a genuine attempt to find out whether this will work. That is why we propose that it should be employed on a limited basis and why we want to take our time in looking at it. I acknowledge nevertheless that this is new ground and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, would not be doing his job if he did not express some hesitation about something as novel as this. But we have given it a good deal of thought. The planning is at an advanced stage and I do not have any worries that loose ends will not be tied up once we embark upon the pilot scheme.
What Clause 2 essentially does is to give the Armed Forces the flexibility to recruit this new category of personnel in a specified locality rather than worldwide. That flexibility in itself is worth having. It is worth including it in primary legislation. It is an appropriate place for it to be. So for those broad reasons alone I urge noble Lords opposite to give the clause a welcome in general terms even if they cannot enthuse about the guarding proposal.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Judd: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way but would he not agree that in his last words he underlined one of the strategic—if I can use that word—anxieties about this whole initiative.
He openly said that it gives the Government and the armed services greater flexibility to recruit those people. That is exactly what the anxiety is. This is not primarily about guarding establishments at all; this is about getting by the back door a cheap kind of "Dad's Army" which will be available to assist in a whole range of activities at a later stage.
Earl Howe: My Lords, that really is not fair, with all respect to the noble Lord. The services will only consider introducing local service where it makes sense to them to do so but it would be odd to have no statutory provision allowing them to do so. As it happens, there

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are no plans or proposals for the general introduction of local service schemes other than for guarding. Indeed, more than that, it is difficult to see where there is much scope for introducing local service simply because there is a requirement to be able to call on the bulk of men and women in the Armed Forces to serve wherever in the world they may be required.
The reasons for considering the use of local service personnel could vary according to the circumstances of the case, as could the specific conditions applying to any particular local service scheme. But, as I have already mentioned, your Lordships can take comfort from the fact that the services are most unlikely to promote the introduction of local service in any particular case unless it makes sense to them in operational, management and financial terms.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, asked me again what would happen if the pilot scheme were to fail. I do not believe that I can usefully add anything to the comments I made in Committee. Quite clearly we would have to go back to the drawing board. We do not expect the scheme to fail. We believe that we have done our planning properly and that it is a sensible pilot scheme. But clearly the Ministry of Defence police would still be there to assist us and I have no doubt would be ready and willing to do so if that proved to be a cost-effective option in all the circumstances.
I say to the House that the powers under Clause 2 will be used sensibly and selectively. Our assessment is that there is little scope for local service in any Armed Forces which have the range of commitments of the British services. But to deny ourselves the option to recruit on a local service basis, even in a limited way, would be improvident.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, the Minister has gone further than he has before in saying that if the pilot scheme should fail for any reason, he would seek the services of the MDP again which was really my question from the outset. I think it will give some comfort because that option hopefully will still be open. The difficulty we have is that we do not wish the scheme to fail. Indeed, if it is cost-effective and produces the results that the Minster outlined, there would be a good deal of support for some of the objectives—as long as the benefits outweighed the disadvantages that we foresee could take place.
That being the case, and also realising that the Minister is of the view that there will not be any failure and that that might colour his judgment of the results of the pilot scheme, I shall not press the amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 21 [Sex discrimination: Great Britain]:
Lord Judd Lord Judd moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 15, leave out lines 30 to 45 and insert—
("(9B) A complaint to which subsection (9A) applies may be presented to an industrial tribunal under section 63(1).
(9C) Notwithstanding subsection (9B) of this section, a complaint to which subsection (9A) applies may be made to an officer under the service redress procedure applicable to the complainant.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 3 standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Williams, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 4 to 18. The purpose of these amendments is to ensure a right to pursue a complaint either internally or straight to a tribunal and to ensure that the right to go to a tribunal is not dependent on first pursuing a complaint internally.
We recognise that in Clauses 21 to 27 the Government are endeavouring to achieve consistency. Indeed we applaud that. All our amendments are designed to fulfil that same purpose. It may be useful to outline the present position and the areas of agreement which exist between ourselves and the Government.
Perhaps we could concentrate on sex discrimination and race relations. It is our case that the other amendments dealing with equal pay, employment, industrial relations and Northern Ireland all seek to establish the same principles in each of those spheres. At the present time under the Race Relations Act there is a right only to complain through the internal procedures, and under the Sex Discrimination Act there is a right to complain to an industrial tribunal but the Act does not provide for complaints to he made under the internal procedures.
The Government's proposal is that any complaint under the Race Relations or the Sex Discrimination Acts must first be made through the internal procedures and, following that—I underline the word following—complaint may be made to an industrial tribunal. In other words, the internal procedure is a statutory precondition for application to an industrial tribunal.
As I have said, under our proposed amendments any complaint may in future be made direct to an industrial tribunal and may also be made through the internal procedures. I believe that we have a consensus in the House that servicemen and women should not be denied access to the industrial tribunal. We also have a consensus that servicemen and women should be able and indeed encouraged to make a complaint through the internal procedure. The issue at stake is solely whether it should be a mandatory pre-condition that for all discrimination complaints the internal procedure must first be utilised.
The Government hold that Clause 21 does not represent a diminution of rights under the Sex Discrimination Act. It is the case that the Sex Discrimination Act does not currently include reference to the separate service redress procedures under the Army Act 1955, the Air Force Act 1955 and the Naval Discipline Act 1957. Since those are statutory procedures, it may well be that primary legislation is required in order that the defence counsel can have jurisdiction to deal with sex discrimination complaints.
To the extent that Clause 21 provides an additional right, it is clearly to be welcomed. However, the clause also proposes to remove the existing right to complain directly to an industrial tribunal and that, I suggest, unquestionably constitutes a loss. Further, if at present a serviceman or woman can complain directly to an industrial tribunal, then to require that person to undergo

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the internal procedure, whether or not he (or she) would choose to do so, does restrict his (or her) right of access to an industrial tribunal.
As the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission both have argued, to go through any procedure on a complaint of discrimination can be extremely stressful. Where service personnel are either intimidated by or lack confidence in the internal procedure, to require that procedure as a pre-condition may obviously deter them from seeking redress altogether.
I suggest that there is no dispute between the Government and us concerning all the very positive arguments for use of an internal procedure in the Armed Forces, whether for the benefit of the complainants, whether to receive quick resolution of grievances or whether for the chain of command to be made aware of problems at an early date. We on these Benches certainly favour it as an indispensable means of internalising real commitment to the objectives that the Armed Forces themselves now commendably endorse. It is important to note that the CRE and the EOC strongly believe that the use of internal procedures should be encouraged.
What is not agreed between us is that the only effect of making the internal procedure a statutory pre-condition is a short delay. That is, if the Minister will allow me to use his own word from a previous debate, a "disappointingly" blinkered attitude by the Government. There are the effects on the complainant and on any other parties in an internal investigation, including fear of victimisation, further harassment or discrimination. There are also potential disadvantages to the complainant in terms of an ultimate complaint to the industrial tribunal, if that complainant has had to present and argue the case up through the chain of command when some of those involved will be witnesses for the service when the case is eventually heard by the industrial tribunal.
The Government have expressed concern about undermining loyalty or taking steps to lessen the effectiveness of internal procedures. For the debate in Committee on whether Clause 21 should stand part of the Bill, that may have been relevant. But in the amendments that we now propose, which would remove the compulsory nature of internal procedures and instead make them available on a voluntary basis, neither loyalty nor the effectiveness of internal procedures need be at risk. The task for the services will be to take whatever action is needed to ensure that servicemen and women feel confident that their complaints will be dealt with effectively and fairly under the internal procedures.
The government response in Committee to our arguments about a lack of right to an oral hearing in the internal procedure entirely missed the point. It is not that a complainant may want the opportunity to communicate orally but that that complainant should be entitled to hear the evidence against the case and to cross-examine witnesses. Many cases in the courts and tribunals are decided on the basis of which witnesses are most credible, particularly when any
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conflict in evidence is challenged by cross-examination. Without the right to request an oral hearing, the complainant is at a disadvantage in the internal procedure. In contrast the industrial tribunal hearings are always oral.
Perhaps I may be permitted one general observation. In Committee, the noble Earl spoke at some length about the value and importance of the internal complaints machinery, which he saw as threatened by our amendments. But the amendments positively seek to preserve the internal procedure—the importance of which we cannot over-emphasise—alongside the right to go to a tribunal.
Before concluding, I add a brief word on the amendments dealing with time limits. The relevant clauses as drafted establish a six-month time limit for applications to an industrial tribunal for serving members of the Armed Forces, because they are required to complain internally first. There is to be a three-month time limit for internal complaints. For service personnel and all other employees, who under the relevant sections can now complain to an industrial tribunal, the time limit is three months, although the tribunal has the discretion to accept a late application:
"if, in all the circumstances of the case, it considers that it is just and equitable to do so".
It has been argued that time limits for service personnel to file claims should be longer than those for civilians, because they might be unable to meet the three-month deadline if, for example, they were on active duty in a ship or submarine. But we believe that there is merit in treating equally all persons who may file proceedings and that situations such as those mentioned would very likely be grounds for a tribunal to allow an application to be filed out of time. In these matters, not least for reasons of service morale and effectiveness, unnecessary delay will never be helpful. These amendments therefore delete the subsections which give the longer time for serving members of the Armed Forces. The effect is that the same time limits will apply to service personnel as to all other employees. I beg to move.
8.45 p.m.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I rise to support briefly the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. There seems to be a common consensus in these amendments that there should be the ability for service personnel to take a complaint outside the chain of command. That could be very important in certain cases, considering that someone might not trust the viewpoint of the commanding officer. The noble Lord explained the matter in detail and I leave it at that.
Earl Howe: My Lords, Clause 21 continues servicemen and women's existing access to industrial tribunals in sex discrimination cases, but introduces a requirement for them first to use the services' internal redress of complaint procedures. As a corollary of this, the clause extends the three-month time limit for making complaints to industrial tribunals to six months, in recognition of the requirement to use the internal procedures first.

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The provisions of Clause 23 and Clauses 24 and 25 will introduce new rights for servicemen and women to take complaints covering, respectively, race discrimination and equal pay to an industrial tribunal, again, after first using the internal procedures and within a similar deadline. Clauses 26 and 27 make similar provision in respect of other matters on which servicemen and women may be able to make complaints to industrial tribunals. Thus, whatever the statutory basis for the complaint, the arrangements for access to tribunals will be on a consistent footing, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said.
The proposed amendments to Clauses 21 to 27 would maintain a consistency of footing but would remove the requirement for prior use of the internal service procedures.
At present, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, rightly said, cases of sex discrimination alone can be taken directly to industrial tribunals without use of internal redress procedures first. This direct access derived from the MoD's acceptance in 1991 that the EC equal treatment directive applied for most purposes to service personnel. The MoD's amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act 18 months ago brought the statute law up to date by removing from the Act the exemption for service personnel. As I made clear at Committee stage, it was always the intention that provisions in the Bill regarding the use of the internal procedures should be included in the Sex Discrimination Act. The Bill presents the first appropriate legislative opportunity to do so since the powers that were used last year to implement EU legislation, but removing the services exemption from the Sex Discrimination Act did not extend to making ancillary domestic changes.
The concept of the two-stage process is not entirely new. The requirement to use the service internal procedures was first set out in an amendment to the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978—now the Employment Rights Act of 1996—which was included in the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993. The 1993 amendment to the 1978 Act introduced a new section, Section 138A (now Section 192 of the 1996 Act), which required complaints by service personnel under that employment legislation to be submitted for consideration under the internal system before application could be made to an industrial tribunal. It also allowed a time limit for the submission of such complaints to industrial tribunals to be extended to six months, to allow for this. Although these provisions have not yet been brought into force, they serve to illustrate that the MoD's policy objective of requiring prior use of the internal redress system is of fairly longstanding.
I have reflected very carefully on the arguments put forward in Committee which questioned the need for service personnel to be treated differently from other employees in respect of access to industrial tribunals. However, I am sorry to tell the noble Lords opposite that I am unable to accept that it would be wise to bypass the services' own procedures for investigating complaints.
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I believe that we must acknowledge that service in the Armed Forces just cannot be compared with any other employment. There are therefore very valid reasons for having a slightly different system for dealing with employment matters. I use the word "slightly" deliberately, because I think the noble Lord, Lord Judd, with all respect to him, doth protest too much. Servicemen and women who believe they have been discriminated against on grounds of race or sex will have the same right as any other person to apply to an industrial tribunal for an independent adjudication on their complaint. The only difference in service cases will be the requirement, first, to submit the case for consideration under the internal procedures.
The practical effect of this will be a slight delay before referral to the tribunal: at the most three months. However, I do not accept that this will weaken in any way the benefit of the right to present a case to a tribunal. I have heard arguments that this two-stage process for dealing with service cases will cause unnecessary distress to complainants because of the strain of having to argue their case twice over. It is also claimed that complainants will be at a disadvantage when subsequently presenting their cases to a tribunal, because their cases will be fully known to the MoD and they will not have equivalent knowledge of the case against them.
However, I would say that both those concerns are misconceived. The services internal system is designed to ensure that complaints are dealt with quickly and in a non-confrontational way. Its objective is to establish the facts quickly and, where any fault lies, to take disciplinary action where necessary: that is to nip in the bud any manifestation of racism, sexism or any form of inequality or injustice. In other words, the services system is essentially an investigative procedure, in contrast to the more adversarial nature of proceedings at industrial tribunal hearings. It will investigate the complaint being made rather than adjudicate between the parties. I think the really telling point is that the service investigations can begin immediately the complaint is made and, importantly, when all the personnel involved are still in post. Dates for industrial tribunal hearings necessarily take time to be listed.
I do not want to detain the House for too long but I think I ought to make some rather important points, picking up some of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. These relate to the procedure itself. The noble Lord said that procedure can be stressful and difficult for certain individuals. It might help if I ran through this very briefly and that will, I hope, indicate why we favour it as we do. Under the service system, personnel are encouraged to make their complaints orally initially, but if it proves impossible to solve the problem right away and there is a need to involve higher authority, then they are asked to make a written submission. Unless the complainant voluntarily withdraws a complaint or redress is granted at the first level of consideration, it is passed on through the chain of command and ultimately to the appropriate service board of the Defence Council, if necessary. The complainant is keep informed either orally or in writing of the progress of the complaint at each level of consideration. Before a complaint is considered by the service board, if it is necessary to take it that far,

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complainants receive copies of all the material which the board will see relating to their complaint, including covering advice to the board from the service and any recommendations which might be made. The obvious exception to that is legal advice.
The board must in every instance decide whether or not to convene an oral hearing and any request for such a hearing from a complainant would naturally be given very careful consideration. If an oral hearing is held, the board must provide the opportunity for witnesses to be called and to be cross-examined. If there is to be no oral hearing, complainants are asked to submit their comments on the submission to the board in writing. The board's final decision, with reasons, is always conveyed to the complainant in writing. So if a complaint is subsequently referred to an industrial tribunal the complainant will be fully aware of all the evidence on which the board's decision had been reached. Against that background I would argue that the services internal system provides a more likely means of resolving complaints, particularly those on such sensitive issues as race or sex discrimination; and it will do so swiftly and in a non-confrontational manner—more so than does the industrial tribunal process. Those are the central reasons why I ask the House to reject the proposed amendments to Clauses 21 to 27.
Lord Judd: My Lords, once more I express my appreciation to the Minister for dealing very fully with the points I made. We are trading this word "disappointment" across the House. I think I understand why, because on the great matters of defence and the kind of services we want to see I am sure it would be impossible to find any significant difference between the Minister and myself. Therefore, we naturally feel disappointed when we enter areas in which we do not have the same degree of common understanding, and so what I say now is very much in that spirit.
In his courteous and full summing up the Minister did not in fact deal very convincingly with the issue. If a complainant in the armed services follows the internal procedure, he or she has to argue the case up through the chain of command in the knowledge that any of those people with whom that complainant may be confronted may at a later stage, if that complainant decides to go to a tribunal, come to the tribunal as witnesses. That is a difficult situation.
Secondly, I suggest that the Minister did not convincingly deal with the issue that, under the service procedure, it is not possible for a complainant to hear the evidence against a complaint and to cross-examine witnesses. That is a substantial difference in approach.
The other significant point which I have not deployed so far this evening but which I mentioned in Committee is that research being undertaken by a lieutenant-colonel in the Army and being financed, very much to its credit, by the Ministry of Defence, has convincingly established that the internal procedure is not working. The lieutenant-colonel himself observed that a significant number of people with complaints to make do not make them. Therefore, I suggest that the
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Minister—I hate to say this because I have a great deal of respect for the noble Earl—is showing an unusual degree of complacency in his response.
9 p.m.
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I have one brief comment on the study to which he has referred. I am aware that Lieutenant-Colonel Crawford, a defence fellow at Glasgow University, has recently completed his thesis on race, ethnicity and the Army. That paper has not yet been seen by Ministers. It is still being considered within the department and we are looking at it carefully. Obviously, we shall consider the recommendations with equal care.
Lord Judd: My Lords, it is very honest of the Minister to say that he has not yet seen the paper. Others have. I commend it to the noble Earl because it is absolutely uncompromising on the failure of the system and, as I think the Minister will agree when he has read it, rather takes the carpet from under his feet on the issue.
We commend the commitment of Ministers, the Ministry of Defence and the leaders of the armed services to this issue. We do not doubt that commitment at all. The Minister will recall that in Committee I quoted an admirable booklet produced by the Army, with its excellent uncompromising foreword by the Adjutant General, General Rose. We have no doubt that there is real endeavour to move forward in this area. Indeed, we hear that from the Commission for Racial Equality and from the Equal Opportunities Commission which want to help in every way. However, the view that remains—it is deeply held on this side of the House also—is that the Armed Forces are kicking into their own goal by resisting an opportunity of direct access to the outside tribunal. If the system were working really effectively but with that safety valve, people would be confident about using the internal system. They would know that such a system must be good because the external system was readily available as an alternative.
I urge the Minister to consider carefully what we have said tonight. I also encourage him to read Lieutenant-Colonel Crawford's report carefully. Having done so, I hope that he will be able to come back, albeit at the eleventh hour on Third Reading, with more helpful observations. Pending that moment, however, I think it sensible for me to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 4 and 5 not moved.]
Clause 22 [Sex discrimination: Northern Ireland]:
[Amendments Nos. 6 to 8 not moved.]
Clause 23 [Racial discrimination]:
[Amendments Nos. 9 to 11 not moved.]
Clause 24 [Equal treatment: Great Britain]:
[Amendments Nos. 12 to 14 not moved.]
Clause 25 [Equal treatment: Northern Ireland]:
[Amendments Nos. 15 and 16 not moved.]
Clause 26 [Other complaints: Great Britain]:
[Amendment No. 17 not moved.]
Clause 27 [Other complaints: Northern Ireland]:
[Amendment No. 18 not moved.]
Clause 30 [Greenwich Hospital]:
Lord Judd Lord Judd moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 25, line 28, at beginning insert—
("Where he is satisfied that the purposes set out in paragraphs (a) to (c) of subsection (2) will be fulfilled.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the Secretary of State—indeed, any Secretary of State way into the future—will have to take wider considerations than price alone into account in granting a lease of any of the land at the historic site of Greenwich.
Perhaps I may say at the outset that the latest developments with regard to Greenwich are breathtaking. We now understand that the Government are nominating Greenwich as a UNESCO world heritage site. I find a certain irony in that situation. The Government are nominating Greenwich to UNESCO as a world heritage site. Yet the Government refuse to be a member of UNESCO because of their reservations about its adequacy. I therefore find the remarks of the Secretary of State for National Heritage delightful when she says,
"The area we have nominated focuses on the outstanding buildings associated with the town's royal and maritime history. I believe Greenwich meets the stringent criteria laid down by UNESCO and fully merits the national and international prestige it would bring in time for the millennium".
Those are strong words of commendation for UNESCO's status. I hope that the Secretary of State's colleagues in the Foreign Office and the ODA have read them and that they will take the logical action in terms of rejoining UNESCO as soon as possible. However, that is another debate.
Tonight we are concerned with Clause 30 in which we find the encouraging commitment on the part of the Government that, in deciding on a lease, the Secretary of State shall have regard to,
"(a) the importance of preserving for the benefit of the nation the historic buildings and monuments on the land and of maintaining the architectural integrity of the Royal Naval College site;
(b) the desirability of securing reasonable public access to the land (and in particular to the historic buildings and monuments on the land); and
(c) the desirability of preventing any use of the land appearing to him to be out of keeping with its unique character and history.
(3) It shall be lawful for the Secretary of State to grant a lease of any of the land to which this section applies, with its appurtenances, to any person appearing to him to be suitable for a term not exceeding 150 years".
All of the ideals are spelt out but there is absolutely no obligation on the Secretary of State to act in accordance with those ideals. If anything was a load of rhetoric this drafting of the Bill would be exactly that.
The amendment is designed to help the Government by guaranteeing that the action which the Secretary of State takes fulfils the good intentions spelt out in the Bill. There have been arguments about the precise wording. The Minister took us to task in Committee by suggesting that the wording was not ideal. We said that we would not die in a ditch for wording and we wanted to get the mechanism right. We have tried to find wording which we hope moves nearer to meeting the anxieties of the Minister. No doubt he will tell us that it is still not perfect. If that is so we will look at it again. But we want to ensure that the action taken by the Secretary of State is based upon the good intentions spelt out in the preceding part of the Bill. I beg to move.
Earl Howe: My Lords, Clause 30 is designed to allow the Secretary of State to grant a lease in respect of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, to a non-government body. The House will be aware that Section 7 of the Greenwich Hospital Act 1869 restricts use of the college buildings to occupation by the Royal Navy, government departments or organisations associated with seafaring.
I stress that the Government always have been and remain committed to securing the best possible future for these historic buildings. Your Lordships will be aware that on 28th March my right honourable friend the Secretary of State announced that he had accepted the central recommendation of the advisory group set up to advise him on the future of the Royal Naval College that, in the event of non-defence occupancy, an independent trust should be established to manage the site for the nation.
As a result of concerns expressed in the other place, the Government sought to emphasise its commitment to the buildings by tabling extensive amendments to the clause, including what is now subsection (2). These amendments were designed to ensure that in choosing a future occupant due regard would be had to a wide range of heritage concerns. These heritage concerns included the architectural integrity of the site and the desire to prevent occupation out of keeping with the character and history of the site. The Government's clear commitment to preserve the heritage of this site is fully reflected by this clause.
I recognise that noble Lords opposite have revised the wording of the previous amendment to Clause 30. I acknowledge their constructive approach to these matters. I regret to say that the new form of words does not overcome the concerns that I highlighted at Committee stage; nor do I consider it to be necessary in view of the earlier extensive amendments moved by the Government.
The clause is currently designed to permit a proper balance to be struck between the "private" interests of the charity and wider public interests. The new form of words seeks to turn the public interest considerations in subsection (2) into conditions which the Defence Secretary as trustee of Greenwich Hospital would have to see fulfilled. This could have the effect of requiring him to make a decision which disregarded the "private"

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interests of the charity. It might require him, unintentionally no doubt, to exclude other factors which may be relevant now, or become so in the future.
In considering the most appropriate form of words—I can assure your Lordships that that was a long and very involved process—our object was to ensure that the wider interests of heritage and access were properly taken into account in decisions on the future of these magnificent buildings, and not improperly to circumscribe the trustee's powers and responsibilities. The wording of the clause reflects the objectives shared by all sides of the House. The absence of an amendment to subsection (3), as suggested by this amendment, does not isolate the subsection from the other considerations of the clause. As I said in Committee, the Defence Secretary must have regard to the matters in subsection (2) before exercising his powers to grant a lease under subsection (3), and he would be in breach of his statutory duties if he failed to do so.
The new form of the amendment remains technically incompatible with the present subsection (2). Subsection (2) identifies various matters to which the Secretary of State must have regard. It does not contain any "purposes" which could be fulfilled. From the clause as currently drafted, it is clear that the Secretary of State will be required to carry out a balancing exercise, as I have said. We are legislating for generations to come. In certain circumstances the various considerations specified in subsection (2) might not be wholly consistent. To seek, as the amendment does, to make these considerations "purposes", each of which is to be fulfilled, could mean that in such circumstances the clause was not in practice capable of being applied, and whatever decision may be reached by the Secretary of State would be vulnerable to challenge.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, rightly stressed in Committee that it was not the matter of drafting, but the objectives behind them which mattered. He made that point again today. He asked that the Government look at the matter further in that light. We have looked at his suggestions with care. We remain of the view that the amendment would tilt the balance away from Greenwich Hospital since it would risk a Defence Secretary being obliged to disregard the interests of the charity. Furthermore, the amendment would in practice be unworkable for the reasons I have already stated. For those reasons I hope the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Judd: My Lords, the Government cannot have it both ways on Clause 30. On the one hand, they argue that the way in which the Bill is drafted will mean that the Secretary of State has, in effect, to act in accordance with subsection (2). When we argue that that should be belt and braces underlined by appropriate wording in subsection (3), the Government argue that it is not an obligation in Clause 2, it is just something of which the Secretary of State has to take account. That does not add up, because the Government are arguing both ways at the same time. I suspect that the Minister, with his insight and objectivity and considerable intellect, which
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we all respect, knows that perfectly well. I am sure that the Government knew that perfectly well when they drafted the Bill.
If the Government are sincere that the Minister should act in accordance with the ideas—let us put it no more strongly than "the ideas"—expressed in subsection (2), I give this undertaking to the Minister. If between now and Third Reading the Government and the Opposition can get together and produce, for Clauses 2 and 3, some wording that makes it absolutely clear that the action has to be in line with ideas what would be the right thing to do—what is important, perhaps, in this situation—we on this side will fully co-operate with that process. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Energy Conservation Bill
9.17 p.m.
Baroness Wilcox: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Wilcox.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord Elliott of Morpeth) in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Amendment of Home Energy Conservation Act 1995]:
Lord Lucas Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 7, leave out ("1") and insert ("1(1)").
The noble Lord said: I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 2 to 4. Perhaps I may first apologise for the late tabling of these amendments. As a glance at the Marshalled List will suggest to the Committee, it is in fact Amendment No. 3 which is the substantive amendment of this group.
The Act requires local authorities to prepare, publish and submit an energy conservation report setting out measures which would lead to a significant improvement in the energy efficiency of residential accommodation in their area. It is the definition of residential accommodation that this Bill seeks to amend by widening it to include houses in multiple occupation and now, should these amendments be carried, houseboats.
Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 are purely drafting amendments. The wording of Amendment No. 3 ensures that pleasure boats are excluded; there will be no question of authorities being required to look at boats which regularly move, or the sort of canal boat which is let for holidays on the waterways. In addition, we have followed for England, Wales and Northern Ireland the pattern of the definition of mobile home in the Act by requiring that it should also be a dwelling for the purposes of council tax or the equivalent in Northern Ireland. The same linkage cannot be made in Scotland because of differences in its council tax legislation.
Amendment No. 4 is consequential to the transitional provisions in Clause 2 of the Bill. It recognises the fact that there may need to be special arrangements for reports on houseboats as well as for houses in multiple occupation. In England, the first energy conservation reports are due at the end of November. Should this Bill become law, as I hope it will, there would be very little time for authorities to take account of the wider definition of residential accommodation in those reports, and it will be sensible to make some different arrangement for houses in multiple occupation and houseboats. Clause 2, with this amendment, permits that.
Measures of the kind which the Bill envisages, to encourage changes in behaviour and the use of appliances which are energy efficient, are as relevant to people who live in houseboats as to those in other kinds of accommodation. It seems right in principle that attention should be paid to the energy efficiency of boats which are people's homes as well as to the energy efficiency of more conventional homes. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Lucas Lord Lucas moved Amendments Nos. 2 and 3:
Page 1, line 7, leave out ("paragraph") and insert ("paragraphs").
Page 1, line 18, at end insert—
("(ab) a house-boat, that is, a boat or other floating decked structure—

(i) designed or adapted for use solely as a place of permanent habitation, and

(ii) not having means of, or capable of being readily adapted for, self-propulsion,

which, in the case of a house-boat in England and Wales or Northern Ireland, is a dwelling for the purposes of Part I of the Local Government Finance Act 1992, or as the case may be, the purposes of the Rates (Northern Ireland) Order 1977, or".").
The noble Lord said: I have spoken to these amendments. I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2 [Citation and commencement]:
Lord Lucas Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 1, line 28, at end insert ("or house-boats").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with amendments.

Child Benefit, Child Support and Social Security (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 1996
9.22 p.m.
Earl Russell Earl Russell rose to move to resolve, That the draft Child Benefit, Child Support and Social Security (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 1996 be not proceeded with, and that this House calls on Her Majesty's Government to lay amended regulations
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which take account of the costs of lone parenthood and leave future changes in benefits more clearly subject to parliamentary control.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, last November there appeared in the Guardian, I know not by what means, a memorandum from the Secretary of State to the Treasury. In that memorandum he set out the view that if his changes designed for the public expenditure round are put forward through primary legislation, he might face a serious risk of defeat in votes. He therefore proposed to introduce them so far as possible by regulation.
The Minister will understand that, in saying that, the Secretary of State has led me into temptation. For most of today the Minister has been dealing with the consequences of one of those attempts to produce change by legislation and I really must say to him after so short a time that we cannot go on meeting like this! In the circumstances, I believe that the Secretary of State might have been wiser to deal with this by means of primary legislation.
We are also continuing a debate, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was joining not long ago, about what appears to many of us to be a process of victimisation; a picking, in the course of a search for expenditure savings, on those least able to defend themselves and from whom, for the very same reason, often the smallest savings can be expected.
The Minister tends to join argument with us on the question of whether there should be savings. We join argument with him on the question of whether he is looking for those savings sensibly or in the right place. That is an argument which I hope will continue and to which I shall return later in my speech.
The effect of the regulations before us, which are manifold and as usual extremely technical and complicated to follow, is an amalgamation of benefits; to amalgamate single parent premium and one-parent benefit with the overall structure of benefits and especially with child benefit. The Government, in paragraph 7 of their reply to the Social Security Advisory Committee, admit frankly that they are doing this because they believe in what they perhaps euphemistically call a narrowing of the differential between benefits for single parents and benefits for others.
Be that as it may—and I do not agree with it and shall return to it in a few moments—that raises the possibility of a constitutional issue because, of course, once the benefits have been merged with each other, we shall no longer be able to take in separate regulations or as a separate issue any attempt to narrow the differential between single parents and other parents. That is a policy issue on which the House is entitled to an opinion. The matter will come before us only on the social security uprating statement.
I imagine that the Minister is familiar with paragraph 12 of the Social Security Advisory Committee's Report. However, our primary concern in that report is with the legal consequences of implementing the proposals. It would provide the Secretary of State with much better flexibility to adjust differential benefit provision for one

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and two-parent families. The freezing of one-parent benefit and the lone-parent premium in the uprating order for 1996–97 demonstrates that some flexibility already exists and some respondents have suggested to us that that provides an adequate answer since, over time, the differential could be reduced.
Therefore, in effect the Secretary of State is taking power to let the benefit advantage existing for single parents wither on the vine. That is a pattern with which child benefit has made us familiar. While it may be argued in theory that some possibility of parliamentary control still exists, the Motion to resolve may be a very flexible instrument. However, it really is not practical to use that against the social security uprating statement. If the Motion to resolve is to have any teeth at all, it must be in the words that the regulations be not proceeded with and the Government lay amended regulations which specify the savings.
If we were to move that the social security uprating regulations be not proceeded with, we should be taking money out of so many people's pockets and food out of so many people's mouths that, in effect, it would be politically impossible. Therefore, the Secretary of State is taking any attempt at a further reduction of the differential between single and other parents out of the range of parliamentary control. It is that which I regard as a constitutional issue, and I make no apology for using that phrase.
I do not believe the facts of the Secretary of State's argument to be correct. I have a great sheaf of evidence here and the House may be relieved to hear that I shall not go through it all. I am sure that the noble Baroness will find plenty more. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently found, looking at the family expenditure survey, that the costs of a child aged 11 in a one-parent family are typically 30 per cent. of those of a single adult but, in a two-parent family, they are around 20 per cent. of those of a single adult. For children aged 11 to 18, it was found that the costs of a child for a lone parent are about 50 per cent. of those for a single adult compared with less than 30 per cent. for a two-parent family.
That seems to me to accord with common sense because many of the costs fall on one parent just as they would on two. For example, the costs of heating and electricity and much of the basic maintenance such as the replacing of a fridge, if one is lucky enough to be able to do that, are not doubled by the presence of the extra parent.
It is also the perennial problem of fox, goose and cabbage. While my wife was doing work for publication, I have taken charge of the children and attempted to do some juggling. People may say that I do not know very much but at least my ignorance is not total. I found that I always had to be in two places at once and therefore the travel costs were always higher than they would otherwise have been. That is a problem which many people face and it is a substantial part of why single parents are worse off than other parents.
The level on which that is happening is a very low one. If the Minister would look at Nutrition and Diet in Lone Parent Families in London by Elizabeth Fowler
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and Claire Calvert, he will find a good deal of support for that view. Indeed, he will find, for example, that 35 per cent. of lone parents on low income do not have adequate bedding for all the members of their household. He will also find that 31 per cent. of them lack hot water and that 38 per cent. have a problem with damp. Problems with damp tend to lead to illness. The Minister will talk about saving money. I shall suggest to him that he is simply exporting his costs and landing them on his noble friend Lady Cumberlege. It is not fair to her, to the Exchequer or, indeed, to lone parents.
I am sure that the Minister will run through all the arguments about the taxpayer that he has made before. I believe that the Minister's economies are false economies. I would advise him to look carefully at the research carried out by Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, and others, on The Employment of Lone Parents—A comparison of policies in 20 countries. It is the comparative evidence which really explains why we have so big a problem with paying benefits to lone parents. I will agree with the Minister in that there is a problem.
In the 1960s, only 10 per cent. of single parents were on national assistance. The figure is now nearly 70 per cent., whereas the figure in Germany is still very much what it was in the 1960s; namely, about 10 per cent. That differential must be addressed. I strongly support the right of parents, especially those with young children, to stay at home and not work. I make no suggestions as regards any change in the availability rules. However, when single parents want to work it is a wanton waste of public money to prevent them from so doing. It is cruel to them and it is often unfair to the children, because a happy parent is easier to live with than a frustrated one. Moreover, it deprives the Exchequer of a great deal of revenue.
Therefore, if the Minister starts invoking the interest of taxpayers I shall reply to him, "I am a taxpayer as well as you". There is more to it. A great deal of it seems to result from the cost of childcare. One of the key findings of the comparative study is that we have one of the lowest proportions of single parents working in any of the 20 countries studied. I believe that we come 19th out of 20. We also have one of the most striking differentials between the number of married parents working and the number of single parents at work. Indeed, in many countries there are actually more single parents who work than is the case with married parents. The situation is very much the reverse in this country.
One needs to look at what is actually going on. Professor Bradshaw found that the United Kingdom has the most expensive childcare of any of the countries in his study. The average figure that he found was £347 per month, or 28 per cent. of average earnings. The Minister knows that I have welcomed many times the disregard introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do so again tonight. However, it comes nowhere near that figure. Once again, the Minister will have to face the possibility that he might actually save money by spending a little. Indeed, that is something that every household has to face and perhaps the Minister will also be able to do so.
The next finding in the study was that disregards are much lower in all the other countries reviewed. It was found that housing benefit tapers, or the equivalent, are a great deal steeper in other countries. The rise in housing costs as people begin to work is exceptionally steep in this country, and the interaction between housing costs and childcare costs produces the poverty trap.
If the Minister wants to save money on lone parents—as I accept he does, and as he legitimately may—it is far better, both for the Exchequer and for them, to set them free to do what they want than to introduce niggling little measures of this sort. He may be interested to know that Professor Bradshaw and his colleagues have also reported that in all the 20 countries they have studied, maintenance is not the answer to the problems they have been studying. They also draw attention to the exceptionally poor leave provisions in the United Kingdom—in particular the lack of any parental leave in which the father can join. In many of these families there was once a father; in many of the others one hopes that in future there may be a father or a step-father.
In general, the way in which the problem of childcare must be resolved is in more and more involvement of both parents. The Equal Opportunities Commission is now taking up as many cases on behalf of men as on behalf of women. The rights of men to take part in childcare will be one of the big issues of equality for which to argue in the future. Before single parents can even meet the men, they have to be able to go out into the world of work. For a woman who has been at home with children that is often her only social life. There are a great many reasons why I think the Minister has taken quite the wrong approach, and why I think what he is doing is not at all in the interests of the taxpayer. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft Child Benefit, Child Support and Social Security (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 1996 be not proceeded with, and that this House calls on Her Majesty's Government to lay amended regulations which take account of the costs of lone parenthood and leave future changes in benefits more clearly subject to Parliamentary control.—(Earl Russell.)
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, as we know, most lone parents are divorced, separated or have come out of a longstanding relationship—an event likely to traumatise their children. However, I appreciate that the Minister forbids us to use that word. Essentially, therefore, the Government are freezing, and therefore reducing, benefits for lone parents, presumably in the belief that people are lone parents because the benefits are so generous. That tends to be the argument the Government use whether it is a case of asylum seekers or anyone else. In the Government's view people behave inappropriately because the system is so generous.
Yet at the same time the Government acknowledge that lone parents live in deep poverty. Three-quarters of lone parents and their children were living on or below the poverty line in 1992, compared with fewer than one in five children of two-parent families. To put it another
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way, 40 per cent. of lone parents have an income below f100 a week compared with only 4 per cent. of those living in two-parent families. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, commented on the Joseph Rowntree research and the implications of poverty. I am sure we would all agree—I think we would not disagree with the Minister—that the only long-term way out of poverty is to re-enter the labour market. Benefits can never produce an adequate standard of living by comparison with what the labour market should be able to provide, particularly if it is buttressed by a minimum wage.
However, as the noble Earl rightly said, these people are unable to re-enter the labour market because childcare costs are not met, even with the latest uprating of the childcare allowance, which in any case is of no value at all to anyone on full family credit. I am not at all convinced that it is right for a lone parent of a young child to be pressed against his will, or by extreme poverty, into the labour market.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, commented on the Bradshaw figures which compared Britain with the rest of Europe in terms of the proportion of lone parents who are not in work. He is right, but I suspect that if one looks back at the earlier Bradshaw research, one will find that is because lone parents in Britain tend to be younger than most lone parents in Europe. They therefore have younger children and the deciding factor both for lone parents and for women in a longstanding relationship as to whether or not they go out to work is the age of their child and not their marital status. I think I am right in saying that about 65 per cent. of all women parents are in full or part-time work once their child passes the age of 11, whereas only about 26 per cent. of those whose youngest child is below the age of five are in such work.
Therefore in a sense we are not exactly comparing like with like once we accept that in Britain, for various reasons, lone parents on the whole tend to be younger than their European counterparts, are more likely to have younger children and are therefore less likely to be in work. I understand that two-thirds of lone parents have children under five years. That would seem to give support to that evidence.
I believe that there is no disagreement—the Bradshaw research and subsequent revisiting of the issue by various studies by Katherine Keirnan and others have indicated—that lone parents want to work. It is striking that once the youngest child is over five years the majority of those lone parents work either full-time or part-time.
The latest research on lone parents and work—I believe that it was commissioned by the DSS—indicates the factors that stop lone parents from entering the labour market. They may become lone parents quite late in life. A divorced woman in her late 40s or early 50s may lack the skills to re-enter the labour market. Alternatively, they may be extremely poorly educated without GCSE qualifications. I am sure we all agree that JET-type programmes or GAIN programmes suitably tailored for the UK are the right way forward.
There is a growing problem about which I was not aware until I read the more recent research. Increasingly something like one lone parent in six is prohibited from

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re-entering the labour market either because the lone parent or his or her child has a disability or a serious health problem. As we know, disability can break up a marriage. The costs when either that lone parent or the child is disabled are extremely high. Will the Government consider mitigating the worst effect of these regulations on lone parents where there is a disabled member of the family by raising the level of the disabled child's premium, or the disability premium, to cover the moneys lost by freezing rates to lone parents?
I realise that the Minister may not wish to respond to that point tonight, but I shall be grateful if he will at least consider the matter. All the research now seems to suggest that while most lone parents churn through (if I may use that rather ugly phrase) income support—the median time on income support is only about two-and-a-half years; the labour market, family credit, perhaps a full-time job, and back to income support—those who stay on income support for the longest period are those who enter lone parenthood in their 40s, have low educational background qualifications or a disabled child. As we know, where there is disability there are huge additional costs as well as stresses. If the Minister will consider that point, we shall be grateful.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell stated—I am sure he is right—the purpose of the regulations: that the Government seek to avoid the legal challenges experienced in recent weeks by incorporating one-parent benefit into child benefit and lone-parent premium into income support and family premiums. Whether it is legal for government to do that is not entirely clear. Section 145(4) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 states that,
"No rate prescribed in place of a rate previously in force shall be lower than the rate it replaces".
I believe that I have the correct phrase. Hence the Government are clearly unable to do what they would like to do; that is, to cut the benefit. Instead they seek to restructure the benefit by incorporating single-parent benefits into two-parent benefits, thus freeing them from Section 145 which would prohibit a lone-parent benefit, as it stands, from being reduced. In other words, the Government are using restructuring to cover freezing and ultimate cuts.
We regret the loss of one-parent benefit. Although it is incorporated in income support, it is disregarded for purposes of family credit. It is, therefore, a valuable passport from welfare into work, which we all want. It is not tapered; it is not means-tested; it is not a disincentive to move into work; it is not cut as earnings rise. Over half a million lone parents gain from that. They will not do so in future. Frankly, I believe that the Government are making a great mistake.
We are unhappy about these changes. However, having said that, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, moved a Motion which, if we were to support it, let alone if he were to win it, would turn out to be fatal. The elected House has already voted these regulations through. I may regret that; I may deplore it; but they have done so. If an unelected, appointed and largely hereditary House should effectively vote the regulations down, we
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should be challenging the hegemony of the Commons because, unlike an amendment to a Bill, the Commons could not overturn our vote. We should not merely be asking the Commons to think again, which is perfectly proper; we should be overturning a Commons decision which the Commons could not rescind. By any democratic test, that would be offensive and improper. As a result, although I entirely support the substance of what the noble Earl said, if he were to pursue the matter to a vote we would abstain. In my view, it would be improper for us to seek to overturn what the elected House determined.
9.45 p.m.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, as I expected, the noble Earl and the noble Baroness have made a number of effective and detailed remarks about the Government's proposals. I intend to make two more widely focused comments which I hope the Minister will be prepared to bear in mind when making the decisions which the Government clearly intend to make as a result of passing the regulations.
I recognise that the Government are on the horns of a dilemma on the issue of single parent benefits. I wish to make two points which should inform the Government in any decision they make. The first is that the committed two-parent family, supporting and caring for its own children, often with the support of the extended family, is generally agreed on average to be the family structure which gives children the best chance of growing up with the love, support and care that they need. I do not say that it is the only structure, nor that it always succeeds, but that it is the most likely to. It is also the family structure which secures the children's upbringing at the least cost to the state and taxpayer. Thus any government who produce tax benefit structures which discourage parents from bringing up their children in a family of two committed parents living together are no friend of children nor of the taxpayer.
The second point is very different. It relates to encouraging lone parents to take employment. There is substantial evidence, both in this country and the United States, that for the healthy emotional development of a young child under the age of two or three, it is critically important that the child should be looked after consistently by one or at most two adults to whom he or she can learn to relate and with whom he or she feels secure. The converse is that a very young child who suffers constant changes in its care and the person who looks after it will tend to become confused and insecure. To provide a consistent, one-person, high quality care, unless it is provided by the mother or a member of the child's family, is possible but very expensive.
I suggest, therefore, that in framing their tax benefits policy, the Government should have in mind two governing principles. The first is not to do anything which will discourage parents from forming long-term stable partnerships, preferably in marriage. The second is not to do anything which will discourage those mothers who want to from caring full-time for their own child during the first two years of its life.
9.48 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I wish to respond to the Motion put by the noble Earl. In doing so it might be for the convenience of the House if I explain the purpose of the regulations standing in my name on the Order Paper which were laid before the House on 5th June.
We are all agreed that this is a difficult problem. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that the ideal situation for bringing up a child is undoubtedly in a two-parent family. I may he old-fashioned, as perhaps the noble Lord is, but we probably all agree with the proposition that that is the best possible situation for bringing up children. Unfortunately, over the past few years in this country the growth in the numbers of lone parents has been quite dramatic. I believe I am right in saying that it has been faster than in most other countries around the world, certainly in Europe.
The proportion of one-parent families increased from 12 per cent. of all families with children in 1980 to 23 per cent. in 1994. Of that group, the number of single lone mothers—unmarried mothers, as perhaps my politically incorrect explanation would have it—has almost doubled in the past five years. Single mothers between the ages of 20 and 29 are the fastest growing group of lone parents.
Undoubtedly this is a serious problem. It is certainly not good for the children and it is not good for the mothers themselves. I have no intention of launching into any kind of homily on the subject, but it is something that we ought to note, and we ought to be prepared to say loudly and clearly to young girls that being a lone parent is not a sensible course of action on which to set out. It is not good for the girl herself; nor is it good for the child. I hope we are all agreed on that.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am sure that the Minister would accept this but, given that his words will be read in Hansard, I am sure he will want to be the first to say that the figure for teenage mothers, that is, under 20 year-olds—he is talking about "girls" so I assume he is referring essentially to teenagers—is less than 8 per cent. It is falling and is among the lowest in Europe. The average age for someone to become a lone parent is in the later twenties. For the most part it is at the end of the break-up of a stable relationship. Three-quarters of all children born to lone parents have two parents on the birth certificate. I assure the Minister that my information comes from the Rowntree Trust and from well-established research at the University of York.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I have little doubt that every child has two parents. That is a biological fact. The problem is that not all of them have two parents from birth. I said that about one-third are single lone mothers, and I emphasised the word "single". My point is that the number of single lone mothers almost doubled in the five years to 1994. I pointed out that the fastest growing group was of mothers between 20 and 29. If I use the word "girls" it is perhaps because in Scotland it has a different
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connotation from that which the noble Baroness puts on it, and there is not considered to be much of an age differential when one refers to ladies as "girls". So perhaps I ought simply to say "ladies" of 20 to 29—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: It is getting worse!
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, that is because the noble Baroness, from the South of England and these cultured shores, is not used to the terminology of Scotland. But let us not argue. The fact is that these ladies, if she wishes me to call them ladies instead of girls—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: They are "women".
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: These ladies between 20 and 29 certainly seem to be the fastest growing group of single, mothers resulting in lone parent families.
These regulations will incorporate the lone parent premium which has been paid in income-related benefits into the family premium, and it will also incorporate one-parent benefit into the main child benefit rates.
The aim is to provide a more flexible framework within which the Secretary of State can, at each uprating, review the appropriate level of special support for lone parents. He will of course, as he is obliged to do, consider all relevant factors and, when they permit, these regulations will allow him to narrow the gap between the level of both family premium and child benefit received by lone parents and couples. We have chosen this approach because the pace of change will be gradual. So people will be given plenty of time to adjust and there will be no cash losers.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, is concerned about the degree of parliamentary control which the new arrangements will bring about. Not counting his Motion this evening, this will be the sixth occasion here and in another place on which Parliament has had an opportunity to discuss our intentions. So the basic principle has received a fair amount of parliamentary attention.
In terms of progress towards narrowing the benefit gap, our intention is to take decisions year by year in the context of the uprating. The uprating announcement is the subject of a Statement in both Houses and of an affirmative order debated in both Houses. Although by convention the order is not opposed, there is still an opportunity to bring concerns to the attention of Parliament. Noble Lords here and honourable Members in the other place will have four occasions a year to raise this issue, as well as all the other opportunities provided by the rules of both Houses for discussing issues of concern, including this one.
The noble Earl and the noble Baroness argue that lone parents are a poor group and should have extra help within the benefits system. They are a poor group, largely because the majority rely on income support which is designed to provide an adequate but not a lavish lifestyle. Lone parents will never be well off unless they can earn their way out of income support.

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That is why we have concentrated all our efforts on providing pathways out of income support. So the key issue is not whether lone parents on income support are badly off but whether they have greater needs than couples with children on income support.
If we look at work, the Bradshaw Report was mentioned by the noble Earl. The proportion of lone parents in work did indeed fall in the 1980s in line with the increase in the number of single, never married, lone parents with very young children. Obviously, single, never-married lone parents who become lone parents at day one, so to speak, of the child's existence are going to be quite a big percentage of the group with under five year-old children. Our work incentive measures have started to reverse this trend in the 1990s. The proportion in work had risen from a low point of 39 per cent. to 43 per cent. by 1993, reflecting, I believe, the success of the improvement in family credit.
But of course there is a difficulty of deciding whether lone parents should go to work or whether they should stay at home and look after the children, which is the second point the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, made. That is a difficult one. It is a difficult dilemma for lone parents because undoubtedly, as I said, they are not going to find themselves well off on benefit. That would be a serious behavioural consequence. If we put up benefits significantly they would have relatively no incentive to go to work.
Equally, they have to decide whether, given their talents, they would be better off in work in the same way as many two-parent families decide whether or not both parents should work. Indeed, an increasing number of families in this country, for a number of reasons, including correct changes in the way we look at women's participation in the labour market, have two wage earners, partly because they like the advantage of two wages but also because increasingly women have every right to careers on their own account. I am sure the noble Baroness agrees with me absolutely on that. These two-parent families with wages coming in also have problems with childcare, so they are in the same position as lone parents. But there is a problem getting lone parents into the labour market.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I do not want to keep intervening but again that statement is not supported by the evidence. The evidence is that three-fifths of households are now two-income families, one-fifth are unemployed and one-fifth have one earner. The reason why only women can afford to work if their partner is in work is two-fold. First, you do not have the poverty trap created by the benefits system. Secondly, two parents mean two sets of in-laws and two sets of opportunities for informal Box and Cox childcare. All the research shows that that is why the wives in a two-party relationship where the husband is in work are able to work. Those opportunities are denied to the single parent.
10 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I do not want to continue the debate on this line but I think there
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is more to it than the simple economic factors that the noble Baroness has given. I strongly suspect there is a lot of evidence that people who are in work are more likely to marry partners who are also in work. Therefore, I think there are other aspects, although I do not deny that the points the noble Baroness has made play a part. It is not a complete picture by any manner of means.
I turn to the problem of getting lone parents into the labour market. I accept that lone parents have difficulty getting into the labour market. One of the problems, is that many lone parents, especially single unmarrieds, do not have a high educational achievement and therefore their skills are rather limited and their ability to find jobs is that much more limited. I accept that. I also accept that there is evidence of higher than usual incidence of ill health and disability among the children. But the major pilot scheme that we announced last December alongside the proposed changes that I am making will give direct job focused assistance to get lone parents into work. That, we believe, will be more effective in raising lone parents' living standards than, for example, the JET-type schemes in Australia which focus on training.
The evidence from GAIN in America, especially the county in which it has been most successful, is that the most important thing for lone parents is to get them jobs—not so much to get them training as to get them jobs. That is where the real advantage comes. Therefore the pilot that we are doing, directed at getting lone parents into employment, is very important.
I believe that there is no solid evidence to back up the assumption that lone parents need proportionately more money than do couples. The noble Earl tells me that a lone parent with one child has two mouths to feed and a couple with one child has three mouths to feed. When I battled away on another of the Rowntree reports, which figured something called the Gini coefficient, it divided income by the number of mouths to feed in the household. But when I come to look at lone parents, somehow or other the Gini coefficient is set aside and we do not look at that. I do not think that it is necessarily true that lone parents have so much higher costs than a family couple with the same number of children. In fact, other than childcare costs for lone parents, the research by Professor Bradshaw showed that, relative to budget standards, lone parents on income support are slightly better off than couples. Certainly, at certain levels of income from work, lone parents can be better off than couples with the same income from work with the same number of children—one child each, for example. So I do not believe that the case has been properly made out that lone parents have such significantly higher costs—a two parent one child family, let us say, as against a one parent one child family—that we should have the differential in child benefit proposed.
I have outlined some of the reasons why we have decided to have these regulations. I have instanced the increase in the number of lone parent families—three-quarters of a million in 1975; one and a half million in 1994. Their dependence on social security benefits has also increased: 40 per cent. relied on supplementary benefit in 1971; 65 per cent. relied on income support by 1994. Although our work incentive

1415
measures have begun to reverse that trend, there is still a substantial extra cost to the taxpayer. I am sorry to mention the poor old taxpayer but he, after all, pays the bill. Benefit expenditure on lone parents is estimated to be £9.5 billion in 1995–96.
We believe quite firmly that lone parents should have neither preferential nor adverse treatment. We want a system that helps and encourages people to support themselves and their families and which minimises the burden on taxpayers generally. Our strategy has three elements. The first is to ensure that both parents take responsibility for their children and that maintenance is properly paid. Maintenance provides an incentive for lone parents to improve their standard of living by seeking work. Over 83,000 working lone parents receive family credit and they also receive maintenance. It is that other parent who I believe has a responsibility before the taxpayer to maintain his child, even though he may no longer live—indeed may never have lived—with the mother and the child.
Our second objective is to encourage lone parents to take up work. Although I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about under five year-olds, I think one could argue the point about under five year-olds both ways. It rather depends on the economic advantage that the lone parent can gain by going into work. In order to ensure that lone parents are better off in work, we have reformed the structure of family credit. We have provided extra help with child care costs of up to £60 a week. I was pleased that the noble Earl, Lord Russell, welcomed that.
If we compare ourselves with other countries, very few other countries take the same view as we do about lone parents and their obligation to seek work. As I recall, we take the view that under 16 years they do not have an obligation. Many of our friends in Europe, for example, have cut-off points at 11 and at five, after which they expect lone parents to look for work. Since 1992 over 200,000 lone parents have moved from income support into work, supported by family credit, and they have gained an average of £30 a week. New measures to help them further include the faster processing of family credit claims, with 90 per cent. of the claims being dealt with in five days. This improvement removes the financial uncertainty by ensuring that there is no gap in income between leaving income support and receiving their first wages.
The pilots I have mentioned should provide opportunities for up to 30,000 lone parents in the pilot phase. That will be coupled with an increase of 18,000 over three years in the 50,000 after-school child care places already made available. None of these measures will force a lone parent to take up work if she prefers to be a full-time parent, but all of them are geared to trying to make sure that if a lone parent wishes to take work then the opportunities are there.
The third objective, as I have already mentioned, is to ensure even-handed treatment of couples and lone parents. That is the guiding principle behind these regulations.
On one-parent benefit, it is important to remember that in 1976 this was originally a temporary advance payment of child benefit for lone parents, because the
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main child benefit scheme was delayed. Mr. Frank Field, chairman of the Social Security Select Committee in another place, has pointed out that it was, and I quote,
"never part of any strategy; merely an attempt at a quick fix to appease furious voters".
He wrote that in the Daily Mirror on 5th September, 1995. The then Secretary of State—now the noble Baroness, Lady Castle of Blackburn—said in another place when the Child Benefit Bill was introduced:
"So there is to be an interim benefit of £1.50 a week for the one-parent family for a year from April 1976 until the child benefit scheme comes into effect … the benefit is purely a temporary one".—[Official Report, Commons, 13/5/76; cols. 337 and 339.]
Improvements in help for people in work means that the situation is now very different. Instead of being financially disadvantaged, a lone-parent in work will have more net income than a couple at the same level of gross earnings. The same argument occurs in the lone-parent premium. The single rate is 64 per cent. of the couple rate. A lone-parent will receive at least 73 per cent. of what an equivalent couple family receive before adding the lone-parent premium. It is clearly unfair that this modest differential should further be eroded by a special payment to lone parents.
Finally, perhaps I can say a word about the jobseeker's allowance and the draft Jobseeker's Allowance (Pilot Scheme) (Amendment) Regulations, which were laid before the House on 10th June. This amendment is merely to correct the omission which crept into the original regulations when the Maidstone B office was omitted. I am sure your Lordships will be perfectly happy about that.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, said I should try not to tempt him into dividing. Perhaps I may suggest that the right reverend Prelate reminds him that one should yield not to temptation. I hope that today, as on other days, I have explained what we are about—not about penalising lone parents but simply putting lone parents and married couples on exactly the same footing when it comes to receiving child benefit and the family premium. We believe that is a right and proper way in which to proceed.
Earl Russell: My Lords, after this afternoon it has been a real pleasure to return to discussing a subject about which we merely disagree. We do disagree quite considerably, mostly about questions which are reducible to evidence and therefore about questions we can usefully go on discussing. I did promise myself this afternoon that if the Minister were once again to invoke the interests of the taxpayer—this mythical single being—I would tell him the story of Mrs. Clare Booth Luce and the Pope. Mrs. Clare Booth Luce, as one or two of your Lordships may remember, was a very doughty figure, a daughter of the American Revolution, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican under President Eisenhower, and a person with whom it was not generally wise to argue. She had an audience with the Pope at 11 o'clock. Another audience was fixed for 12. The next person was there at 12, but there was no sign of the Pope. At 12.15 the secretary knocked. There was no answer. At 12.30 the secretary knocked very loudly indeed. There was no answer. At a quarter to one the

1417
secretary took his courage in both hands and went in—and found the Pope cowering in the corner saying, "But my dear Mrs. Luce, I am a Catholic". I am a taxpayer—and I hope that the Minister will not again forget it.
When the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, says that two parents are generally better than one, I give him instant and total consent. If he had left out the word "generally", it would have been quite another matter.
The Minister suggested that I give advice to young girls. I advise him that I am not in the business of preaching ways of life to young girls. I think that a lot of them are better qualified to make decisions on that than I am. I agree with John Stuart Mill that if the behaviour complained of is as detrimental as alleged, the example must be rather a salutary warning than otherwise.
I shall not again go into the whole question of the costs on single parents. It seems to me that the Minister is on weak ground there and that most people's ordinary experience, as well as the bulk of research, is against him. Commonsense is not something conclusive on which to rely, but where commonsense and research both say the same thing, I am at least tempted to believe them and I want some fairly good evidence before I do anything else.
The Minister admits that the basic intention is to narrow the gap. I grant him that Parliament may discuss things, but discussing and controlling are not the same thing. Ministers listen with a certain care when they expect votes which they do not always bring to every occasion. However, everybody is human, so I say no more. I have no moral objection to what the Minister said about the other parent, but I think that he should study Professor Bradshaw's findings in all his 20 countries that that arrangement simply does not yield results. It does not in any sufficient quantity bring in the bacon. That may be a pity, but it appears to be a fact. Attempts in this country to change it have not yet led to any success.
I was extremely interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said about the figures on disability. On her point about age, yes, Professor Bradshaw did say that it was a significant point and that it accounted for part of the differential. He also said that it did not account for all of it. I imagine that there is no argument between us on that.
I was also extremely interested in what the noble Baroness said about Section 145 of the 1992 Act. The possibility of a challenge by the courts is interesting, but I also listened carefully to her noble friend Lord Irvine of Lairg on 5th June and I have read the article on his public lecture on the relationship between the Executive and the judges. The noble Lord argued that a great deal of the tension between the Executive and the judiciary is because of a defect of democratic control; because we are leaving things to be done by the judges which we ought to be doing ourselves. I agree. This is the second such example in one day's parliamentary business. We are leaving too much to the judges.
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I heard what the noble Baroness said about another place. One must, of course, give due weight to the will of another place, but I do not feel such entire reverence towards it as the elected Chamber as the noble Baroness appears to feel. That is because I am by no means convinced that another place represents the people any better than we do—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Oh!
Earl Russell: My Lords, that is not just a matter for our own party. It is also because the other place contains no Cross Benches—and a place that contains no Cross Benches cannot represent the people adequately. The noble Lord, Lord Clark of Kempston, shakes his head. I should be most eager to give way to him if he could explain why he does so. I am quite prepared to listen. I do not have an iconoclastic reverence for another place.
I believe that the Motion to Resolve is a very sensible compromise. But it takes two to compromise. The noble Baroness and her party have chosen on this occasion not to join in this compromise, so the Motion to Resolve does not serve its declared purpose. I am not prepared to leave the whole work of challenging regulations to the judiciary. We have spent a good deal of today dealing with the mess that that creates. I believe that Parliament ought to shoulder its own responsibilities. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Child Benefit, Child Support and Social Security (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 1996
10.15 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 5th June be approved [22nd Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have already spoken to these regulations. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 5th June be approved [22nd Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.)
10.16 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Motion shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 48; Not-Contents, 10.

Division No. 4

CONTENTS

Balfour, E.

Courtown, E.

Blatch, B.

Cumberlege, B.

Burnham, L.

Demon of Wakefield, B

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Downshire, M.

Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Dundonald. E.

Clark of Kempston, L.

Elliott of Morpeth,L.

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Elton, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Gisborough. L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Goschen, V.

Mountevans, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Munster, E.

Henley, L.

Northbourne, L.

Hogg,B.

Northesk, E.

Howe, E.

Pilkington of Oxenford, L.

Kenilworth, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Kingsland, L.

Reay, L.

Lindsay, E.

Renton, L.

Lucas, L.

Renwick, L.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Seccombe,B.

Mackay of Clashfern, L. [Lord Chancellor.]

Skelmersdale, L.

Trumpington, B. [Teller.]

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Wilcox, B.

Mancroft, L.

Wynford, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Broadbridge, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L. [Teller.]

Carlisle, E.

Ogmore, L.

Elis-Thomas, L.

Redesdale, L.

Holme of Cheltenham, L.

Russell, E. [Teller.]

Howie of Troon. L.

Williams of Crosby, B.

Resolved in the affirmative, and Motion agreed to accordingly.

Jobseeker's Allowance (Pilot Scheme) (Amendment) Regulations 1996
10.25 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 10th June be approved [22nd Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have spoken to this regulation. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 10th June be approved [22nd Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Community Care (Direct Payments) Bill [H.L.]
10.26 p.m.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons amendments be now considered.—(Baroness Miller of Hendon.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[The page and line refer to Bill (64) as first printed by the Commons.]

COMMONS AMENDMENT
1 Clause 1, page 1, line 13, leave out 'pay' and insert 'make'.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I beg to
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move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 2 to 8.
While there has not always been complete agreement on all the detail, this Bill has in general had the support of both sides of your Lordships' House. One issue on which we are of one mind is that local authorities should not treat people who receive direct payments differently than they would treat them under their charging policies if they were receiving the equivalent services. These amendments bring us even closer together on that point, and I hope that your Lordships will welcome them.
The point of disagreement when your Lordships first considered this Bill was over how to achieve the level playing field which everyone wanted. The Government never intended that local authorities should be required to seek a financial contribution from people to whom they make direct payments, nor that they should be required to means test. We do not believe that the Bill as originally drafted had either of those effects. However, there were some in this House who felt that it would be better to mirror more closely the wording in existing legislation on charging for non-residential services. The noble Baronesses, Lady Hollis and Lady Darcy (de Knayth), both tabled amendments seeking to ensure that the tests which apply to charging for services would also be applied in the case of direct payments.
As my noble friend Lady Cumberlege said then, we did not think that such amendment was necessary. Without the amendments before us today, the Bill does not require local authorities to treat differently under their charging policies people who receive direct payments and people who receive services.
However, since this Bill was first considered by your Lordships, we have had the benefit of nearly 400 responses to our consultation exercise. Among those, we received the following comment from the Association of County Councils and the Association of Metropolitan authorities:
"It would appear that charging will require means testing and hence a new layer of bureaucracy".
Further soundings confirmed that there was indeed some uncertainty about the meaning of the Bill on this point.
The Government listened to these concerns, particularly against the background of your Lordships' three debates on this issue. Out of an abundance of caution, we decided to put the matter beyond doubt and gave a commitment in another place to amend the Bill so as to clarify this, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said at Committee stage, to make it transparently clear that there is a level playing field.
The amendments now before us amend subsections (1), (2) and (3) of Clause 1 to match more closely the wording used in Section 17 of the Health and Social Services and Social Security Adjudications Act 1983. The local authority is not required to means test. If the authority proposes a financial contribution, and the person receiving direct payments satisfies it that he or she cannot reasonably afford that amount, then the authority must reduce the amount to a level which it considers he or she can afford.

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Local authorities may not require people to contribute more than it appears to the authority to be reasonably practicable for them to contribute. That is equivalent to the law in relation to charging for non-residential services. Both leave local authorities discretion over whether and, if so, how much to charge and whether to set a flat rate charge, or a scale of charges. It is important that there is a level playing field. As amended, the wording of this Bill will be similar to that of the existing law on charging, but both allow the local authority discretion. That discretion is subject to similar constraints in both cases. However, there is no guarantee that local authorities will exercise their discretion with respect to people who receive direct payments in the same way as for people who receive services.
We said previously that we would issue firm policy guidance emphasising that local authorities should treat people who receive direct payments and people who receive services fairly and in the same way. We still intend to issue that guidance.
These amendments bring about what the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollis and Lady Darcy (de Knayth), were pressing for on previous occasions. I hope that your Lordships will give these amendments the welcome which they deserve. I commend the amendments to the House.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1.—(Baroness Miller of Hendon.)
10.30 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I understand that the Minister was speaking to Amendment No. 1 and all the subsequent amendments. We are happy to see this Bill return to this House and we are even happier that some of the amendments which we initially failed to persuade the Government to accept have now been taken up, reinforced by the formal evidence of the local authority associations which were briefing us at that time.
It is absolutely right—and I am delighted that the Minister has made it clear—that there should be an equivalence between those receiving direct payments and those receiving services and that no means-test should be smuggled in by the back door while, as the Minister was right to say, protecting the discretion of local authorities to ensure that similar cases are treated in similar ways, whether by direct payments or service provision. We are pleased about that.
The Minister will not expect me not to make a few further points. We are very sorry that the amendment for which we fought that direct payments should not be confined to those under 65 was won in Committee in another place and then overturned by the Government on the Floor of the House. We all accept that not all authorities are ready, willing and able to extend their powers in that way. However, it was a useful discretion for those which could and would have welcomed such a provision; in other words, those which have already been running DP schemes and which are ready to take on a broader-based clientele.
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We accept that local authorities which are new to direct payments will wish to phase in their schemes. I believe that the Government have made a profound mistake in that regard and are foolish to believe that the discretion of the Secretary of State should overrule the discretion of the local authorities which know what is the situation on the ground.
The Government are saying that the over-65s are not competent to manage their own affairs. That did not stop a sizeable number of Members of another place and many noble Lords, probably two-thirds of whom are over 65, determining that other 65 year-olds are not able to operate their own affairs.
However, the Government have agreed to review the situation after a year. There is no doubt that we all wish to see local authority schemes which are as broadly-based as possible. However, we are arguing about the speed at which that should progress. I should like confirmation or a reaffirmation from the Minister that the scheme will be reviewed after a year, not just for those with learning difficulties, who have been included, but also as to whether those local authorities which wish to do so should be able to include in the scheme those aged over 65.
In the meantime—and there was a trace of this in the debate in another place although the Government's position on it was somewhat equivocal—will the Government consider pilot schemes to encourage the existing voluntary schemes or the laundered schemes through third-party trusts, which is the experience of many local authorities?
The second point that I should like to make is that we are very sorry that another amendment which was pursued in this House has not been followed through by the Government; that is, to whom direct payments may be paid. The Government accept that they may be able to include the over-65s in the scheme in due course. Nobody on this side of the House has any wish to turn existing informal family care into a paid employer/employee relationship and we accept that, if all relatives could be turned into employees, there could be pressures on either side in that direction which we wish to avoid. It may be that a reluctant relative is press-ganged by a disabled person or a disabled person would prefer the formality of a more distant relationship and not wish to feel beholden to an immediate member of the family.
However, to avoid that lesser evil—namely, where both parties may be pressed into a situation that they do not want—the Government are committing a much greater evil. In my view, they are arbitrarily excluding relatives who are not especially close, and not necessarily living in the same household, from becoming employed. Indeed, that suggests that even someone who moves into the same household as a lodger and who strikes up a friendship with the person needing care cannot be employed to attend to that person's personal care needs because that would still be forbidden under the Bill or under Section 7 guidance. It is extremely unwise of the Government.
The Government have accepted that in rural areas and in extraordinary circumstances where there may be a scarcity of suitable people to provide care or where there

1423
may be, say, an HIV situation, discretion may be exercised. However, the Government would have been wise to accept an amendment that we pressed—or, indeed, introduce such an amendment in the other place—whereby if a social worker is satisfied that the employment of a relative is appropriate under the circumstances, that would be sufficient. Again, we do not need the Secretary of State double guessing local authorities and professionally trained social workers in the kind of delicate and sensitive jobs that they undertake all the time. Many disabled people, especially those requiring help with quite intimate, physical bodily functions, would much prefer the care of a relative to the uncaring, casual and sometimes off-hand and unreliable care that comes from a paid agency employee. I believe that the Government are also being stupid in that respect.
There is a middle course; namely, to require that social workers satisfy themselves on a professional basis that what is suggested is the right way forward. I would back the judgment of a professionally trained social worker who is accustomed to abuse cases and similar situations over that of the Secretary of State—and, indeed, of his staff—at any time. However, the regulation-making powers are there. I am confident that they will be extended by the next Minister for the disabled to cover that category of need.
Much of the effectiveness of the Bill will depend on guidance issued by the department, especially as regards support arrangements for managing direct payments by individuals in their new role as employers. Much of that guidance, in turn, will be informed by the technical advisory group which I know has been of great help to the Minister. Will the Minister be retaining that group as an expert body to examine progress on direct payments and to inform future guidance?
I welcome the amendment that we originally put forward which has been belatedly accepted. I regret that the Government are not progressing faster towards improving the situation of those over 65 years of age, especially as regards allowing local authority discretion. I also sincerely regret—and I believe this to be both perverse and very silly—that social workers will not be allowed to assess the propriety of a relative such as, for example, a niece or the partner of a nephew, to be employed in a caring relationship. Finally, we would like some information about the future of the technical advisory group.
Having said that, we welcome the Bill. It enshrines the principle that the disabled person is at the centre of his care network and not merely a dependant upon it. The disabled person is the one best placed to determine how his care needs are to be met, by whom and in what ways. We sincerely hope that the Bill will bring freedom, spontaneity and independence to disabled people so as to allow them to live their lives as they see fit and not as we judge fit for them. I very much hope that local authorities will be encouraged by the Minister to adopt such schemes.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, we agreed from the start that we want to see a level playing field between people who receive direct payments and those
1424
who receive services when it comes to the contribution that they are asked to make to the cost of their care. I am pleased that your Lordships welcome the extra clarity that the amendments bring.
Perhaps I may briefly respond to the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. I am sure she will agree with me that the matters to which she referred are not directly related to the amendments now before the House. However, I am pleased to respond to them briefly. I thank the noble Baroness for the courtesy of giving me advance notice of the issues.
The noble Baroness wished to know why people over 65 were not considered in the beginning, especially as many of them work. We thought it right that those who first campaigned for the Bill—disabled people of working age—should go first and people over 65 should follow. I can confirm that the Government are committed to reviewing the eligible group when direct payments have been available for one year, with a view to extending it to people over 65. We believe that it is only sensible that we should wait until we know the outcome of that review, in particular whether any serious problems have emerged in the first year of operation of direct payments, before coming to a decision about extending eligibility.
The noble Baroness was concerned about the restriction on paying relatives and friends to provide a service. My noble friend Lady Cumberlege agreed to look carefully at the restrictions on paying relatives and friends. The Government reviewed their proposals in this area in the light of responses to the consultation. Our reasons for these restrictions were widely accepted. We have no specific plans to review these restrictions when direct payments are available, but I hope that the noble Baroness will be comforted by the knowledge that we shall of course monitor the implementation of this legislation and will consider whether any changes to the framework we are laying down are necessary in the light of experience.
I am pleased to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, that we believe that the technical advisory group's advice has been helpful. I am sure that it will continue to be so. We are committed to consulting the group in the preparation of the guidance on direct payments. As I have already explained, these amendments do not change the effect of the Bill but I hope they remove any doubt about the Government's intention. They respond to concerns raised in this House and elsewhere by introducing wording which matches more closely the wording of existing legislation.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
2 Clause 1, page 1, line 13, leave out from 'him' to second `of' in line 14 and insert `, in respect'.
3 Page 1, line 15, at end insert `, a payment of such amount as, subject to subsections (2) and (3) below, they think fit.'
4 Page 1, leave out lines 16 to 23 and insert—
'(2) If—

(a) an authority pay under subsection (1) above at a rate below their estimate of the reasonable cost of securing the provision of the service concerned, and

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(b) the payee satisfies the authority that his means are insufficient for it to be reasonably practicable for him to make up the difference,

the authority shall so adjust the payment to him under that subsection as to avoid there being a greater difference than that which appears to them to be reasonably practicable for him to make up.
(3) In the case of a service which, apart from this Act, would be provided under section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (after-care), an authority shall not pay under subsection (1) above at a rate below their estimate of the reasonable cost of securing the provision of the service.'.
5 Clause 4, page 3, line 15, leave out 'pay' and insert 'make'.
6 Page 3, line 15, leave out from 'him' to second 'of' in line 16 and insert ', in respect'.
7 Page 3, line 17, at end insert a payment of such amount as, subject to subsection (2) below, they think fit.'.
8 Page 3, leave out lines 18 to 22 and insert—
'(2) If—

(a) an authority pay under subsection (1) above at a rate below their estimate of the reasonable cost of securing the provision of the service concerned, and

(b) the person to whom the payment is made satisfies the authority that his means are insufficient for it to be reasonably practicable for him to make up the difference,

the authority shall so adjust the payment to him under that subsection as to avoid there being a greater difference than that which appears to them to be reasonably practicable for him to make up.'.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 to 8 en bloc. I spoke to these with Amendment No. 1.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 to 8.—(Baroness Miller of Hendon.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Marriage Ceremony (Prescribed Words) Bill
10.42 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Southwark: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Lord Bishop of Southwark.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord Burnham) in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Alternatives for prescribed declaration and words of contract]:
Lord Northbourne Lord Northbourne moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 7, after ("building)") insert—
("(a) after the words "and each of them shall say to the other" the following words shall be inserted—
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"I (name) have carefully considered the promises I am making here today and I understand that I am entering into a marriage partnership with you (name) under which each of us is making a commitment to support and care for the other and for any children of the marriage for as long as we live. I acknowledge that even if this marriage should end in irretrievable breakdown I shall continue to have a responsibility to love and contribute to the support of any child or children of the marriage and"; and
(b)").
The noble Lord said: I say immediately that I entirely support the main thrust of this Bill. It is not my intention in any way to damage that thrust. This is a probing amendment. If it had arisen earlier in the evening, I had rather hoped it might lead to an interesting and important debate. I daresay at this hour it will not.
There is a need to encourage young couples who are contemplating marriage to consider carefully the nature of the engagement they are entering into. One may ask, do they not already do so? Surprisingly, many do not.
During the debates on the Family Law Bill many noble Lords, including the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor repeatedly referred to the importance of the beginning of marriage, and to the fact that when the question of divorce arose it was much too late in a marriage to be able to do anything effective to put it together again in most cases. Professor Father Jack Dominian, who is possibly one of the greatest experts in this country on the subject of marriage, said that,
"The only way to reduce marriage breakdown is preparation for marriage".
A marriage guidance counsellor to whom I spoke recently talked about people coming for counselling advice being asked, "Are you communicating with one another?" He said that some of them never seem to have communicated—although there must have been some body language somewhere.
An intelligent young Roman Catholic priest from Australia who deals regularly with marriage preparation told me that many of the couples say to him, "Father, we know all about it. We know you have to do this but it's only a formality, isn't it?" His attitude is, "Yes, it's only a formality but I have to do something about it. Would you mind filling in this questionnaire? You go over there; and you go over there". In many cases, even on the simplest question the couple's answers are completely different.
There is probably consensus that if couples were clearer about the nature of the commitments they were making, they would have a better chance of the success and happiness both for themselves and their children which some of us have been fortunate enough to enjoy in our marriage and would like to see others enjoy.
I have put down a clear, unequivocal, easily understood promise which is made by each to the other in front of friends and family. I believe that it might help. The words which I propose look simple but they are designed to cover several important issues. First, they emphasise that marriage is a very serious promise made by each partner to the other. Secondly, it emphasises that marriage is not just about a relationship. It is also about a partnership to do a specific job: to

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care for one another, and to care for the children of the marriage. My words define what that job is. Finally, in the first sentence, the parties agree that the partnership is intended to last for life.
The second sentence of the amendment may cause a certain number of raised eyebrows. Having promised that the partnership is for life, why are we talking about irretrievable breakdown? We have just passed the Family Law Bill which accepts irretrievable breakdown as a possibility. If we were to accept a provision of this kind in this Bill, or draft it in some future legislation, we would have to bring couples face to face with the fact that if they are too selfish, too greedy, too demanding, or if they take too much out of the marriage and put too little in, they may end up joining the 30 per cent. who now face irretrievable breakdown with the great suffering to themselves and the children which that involves.
Divorce is the single greatest threat to children in our society today. It also causes untold misery to their parents. I wonder whether a promise along the lines of the amendment could make a contribution to reducing the number of adults and children who suffer the trauma of divorce. I beg to move.
10.45 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, was so courteous as to give me advance notice of the wording of his amendment. Therefore I have been able carefully to consider it. I have also had the opportunity to ascertain that the Labour Party has not yet finalised its policy position on this matter. So I am empowered to say that I find myself very much in sympathy with the impulse which underlies the amendment and with the desire of the noble Lord to make the seriousness and lifelong responsibilities of civil marriage as clear and as binding on the parties as it is possible to be. In many ways that is what the amendment does.
It is especially true so far as concerns the children of the marriage. His amendment sets out absolutely unambiguously what those responsibilities are. But the difference between religious and civil marriage is such that one cannot, in making laws about civil marriage, avail oneself of the understandings and assumptions which belong appropriately to a religious understanding of marriage as a sacrament. In a religious context, one can easily and well talk about "a responsibility to love", which is the wording of the amendment. It means something in the context of the vocabulary of theology or ecclesiology or liturgy, but within the context of a secular jurisprudence or among the arcane attics of the parliamentary draftsmen, it is very difficult to ascribe to a phrase like "a responsibility to love" any precise or enforceable meaning. It is difficult to see how a responsibility to love could be established or denied in the courts.
Given that difficulty, it is not easy for us on these Benches to give our unreserved support to the noble Lord's amendment. But if the Minister could find it in his heart to take the amendment away and consider it
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and return at a later stage with a more easily enforceable form of words, it could perhaps improve not only the morality but also the euphony of the Bill to its and our inestimable advantage.
The Earl of Courtown: Noble Lords will recall that I made clear during the Second Reading debate that the purpose of this Bill is to introduce greater choice for people who are getting married by allowing the use of more modern language in the marriage ceremony for those couples who want it. As I explained, the 1990 White Paper, Registration: Proposals for Change, recognised that there was a case for providing modern-day language alternatives which had substantially the same effect as the contracting and declaratory words prescribed in the Marriage Act 1949. The proposals in this Bill have broadly the same purpose.
In seeking to provide an alternative form of contracting words which would set out the responsibilities of marriage, the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, goes beyond the recommendation of the White Paper. Moreover, the reference to the possible irretrievable breakdown of marriage would be inappropriate at the time of the marriage ceremony when the presumption, and certainly the hope, must be that the marriage will be for life.
This is not, of course, to say that the Government do not recognise the importance of these issues. As the Committee is aware—and this was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne—the Family Law Bill which recently completed its passage through Parliament sets out the principle that the institution of marriage is to be supported. Under the new system, couples will have to reflect on their marriage breakdown, consider their responsibilities and decide arrangements for the future before a divorce order is granted. They will receive information about the availability of marriage guidance counselling and other sources of help and will be encouraged to take all practicable steps to save their marriage. The Bill places public funding for a marriage support service on a statutory basis. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, the Government are therefore unable to support the amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Southwark: I am grateful that so many noble Lords have remained for this debate and to the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, and the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, for their contributions. I thank also the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for the gracious manner in which he introduced his amendment. I understand and share many of the concerns of which the amendment speaks, but I do not believe that the Bill is the right place for them to be expressed. In his quotation from Jack Dominian, the noble Lord hinted that marriage preparation classes before the ceremony are the right place for those matters to be raised.
The proposals of the Bill do not affect the marriage services of the Church of England. I am therefore speaking on behalf of the Roman Catholic and Free Churches. The text contained in the Bill has been agreed by the Roman Catholic and Free Churches as being

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appropriate to the forms of their liturgies. The proposed texts are in the first case an update on the wording that has already existed and in the second case in a form that is totally consistent with the marriage liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.
The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, though graciously introduced, would be completely inappropriate in the liturgical context. A marriage ceremony is not the occasion for such a declaration to be made. It would not be supported or even considered for use in the marriage service of the Church of England. Therefore I cannot support it for inclusion in the service of any other Church.
If carried, the amendment would create serious problems with regard to the Church's teaching on marriage. To enshrine in its liturgy even a suggestion of irretrievable breakdown goes against the teaching of the Church that marriage is a life-long commitment "till death us do part".
It may be that some other, more appropriate way outside the Bill can be found to raise the issues contained in the amendment. The noble Lord may therefore feel able to withdraw it.
Lord Northbourne: I am grateful for the kind remarks of the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris. As noble Lords may imagine, it is not my intention to press the amendment. In so far as it has been spoken to, it has received an encouraging measure of support. I shall pursue the argument about the inclusion of irretrievable breakdown with the noble Lord, Lord Morris, at a later date. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

Building Societies Act 1986 (Continuance of section 41) Order 1996
10.58 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Lord Henley)The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Lord Henley) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 5th June be approved [22nd Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of this order is to continue for a further five years the power of the Building Societies Commission, conferred by Section 41 of the Building Societies Act 1986, to require a building society to apply for renewal of its authorisation under certain circumstances. The power was originally intended to be transitional, to allow the commission to review the deemed authorisations which had been given under the 1986 Act. That is why Section 41 has effect for only five years at a time, and requires to be renewed after that.
A Section 41 power is useful and necessary in circumstances where, and over a period of time, the commission has a number of grounds for doubt about the adequacy of the way in which a building society is conducting its business and where the society is not responding sufficiently to the commission's prudential concerns. The society has up to six months to put its house in order, if that is necessary, before it seeks to satisfy the commission that it is fit to continue to be authorised.
The power under Section 41 has so far been used only once, which suggests that it is a useful discipline. The draft building societies Bill, on which we have just completed public consultation, would make the power permanent. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 5th June be approved [22nd Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Henley.)
11 p.m.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister's introduction of this draft order which seems to me to be an entirely sensible and appropriate measure. I have a number of brief questions for him which may, I hope, carry the matter further.
First, he said that the power in Section 41 has been used only once, which suggests it is a useful discipline. I suggest to your Lordships that this is a non sequitur. It may be that it has only been used once because it has been inadequately enforced. I would be grateful if the noble Lord could assure us that the Section 41 disciplines have been appropriately enforced over the period of this order.
Secondly, as the noble Lord pointed out, this was introduced as a transitional arrangement. I understand that in the building societies Bill, which is to be placed before your Lordships' House some time in the near future, this order will be made permanent. On this side we support making this order permanent. It is an obvious security measure to ensure that building societies are conducting their business in an appropriate manner. I would simply be interested to hear the thinking of the Government as to why a transitional order now is to be made permanent. Although, as I say, this is entirely appropriate, it would be nice to know their reasoning.
Finally, the building societies Bill is a measure which we have been anticipating for some time in your Lordships' House. We have heard a number of discussions on various measures and orders associated with building societies during which we have often been told by the Government that we should wait for the building societies Bill, when the reasoning behind particular orders and their full ramifications will be made clear. Now that the consultation has been completed, can the Minister say when we can expect the building societies Bill to be placed before your Lordships' House?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am very grateful for the response from the noble Lord, and I am grateful for his welcome for the Bill. He raised three questions, the first

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of which was the fact that the power has only been used once and therefore he suggested that possibly it is not necessary and is inadequate. I would suggest that the reverse is the case. The mere fact that it has only been used once suggests that that power was appropriate and has allowed the Building Societies Commission to act in the appropriate manner.
The second question the noble Lord asked was as to why this power was transitional. As the noble Lord will be fully aware, when the 1986 Bill was originally brought forward, it was brought forward merely as a transitional power. As I have explained in answer to the first question we then decided that, because this power was useful, we would extend it. As we still do not have the building societies Bill, it is obviously, therefore, essential to extend it even further.
That brings me on to the third question: when will the Bill come forward. As the noble Lord will be fully aware, we have just completed a wide-ranging consultation process. That consultation process ended the middle of last month. We are still awaiting responses from one or two of those from whom we would like to receive responses. We will then, in due course, bring forward the Bill. But as the noble Lord will also be fully aware, I cannot pre-empt what might or might not be in the Queen's Speech. But I can say, following the usual rubric, that it will be brought forward as soon as is convenient. I am very grateful for what I imagine I heard from the noble Lord, that this is something which will receive a degree of support from all sides of the House. I hope that when we bring forward this Bill, the noble Lord and others will give Her Majesty's Government as much assistance as possible. I commend the order to the House.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, just to make myself clear, I cannot guarantee to support the measures in the building societies Bill that the noble Lord brings forward. But I certainly support this order, which is entirely sensible.
Lord Henley: Obviously, my Lords, I was not expecting total and utter support from the noble Lord on every aspect of the Bill, but I think that the general thrust of the Bill is something to which the noble Lord would give a degree of support.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Deregulation (Still-Birth and Death Registration) Order 1996
11.5 p.m.
Lord Henley Lord Henley rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 20th May be approved [25th Report from the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that these regulations be approved. The draft order under the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 is concerned with removing the burden imposed on the recently bereaved from having to travel to give information for the registration of deaths and still-births.
1432
This particular order has now, with the exception of these particular proceedings, completed all the appropriate stages in both Houses. Its purpose is to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, which I understand follows from legislation going back as far as the 1830s. That particular Act was designed to provide for the registration of deaths and still-births by means of a declaration of the particulars to be registered. Currently, relatives and others are obliged to attend before the registrar of births and deaths where—I stress the word "where" in terms of place—the death occurred to give information for the registration of a death or a still-birth. The proposed change would allow them to choose to travel to the district where the event occurred—as they must at present—or to visit their local or other registrar.
We are satisfied that the measure will not reduce the necessary protection. Deaths and still-births will continue to be registered in the district where they occurred so that they remain traceable for many years to come. I believe that this is a minor and sensible piece of deregulation and will, as I said earlier, significantly reduce the burden on some of those recently bereaved. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 20th May be approved [25th Report from the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee.]—(Lord Henley).
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this enormously sensible measure. Indeed, it is so sensible and worth while that the one major criticism that one could make of the Government is to ask why they have not brought it forward earlier. The problem is, of course, that from these Benches I could ask why the Labour Government did not bring it forward earlier and why successive Conservative Governments did not bring it forward earlier either.
I should like to refer to two points which the Deregulation Committee asked about this measure. The first concerns the new form—the medical certificate of the cause of death—which doctors will now be required to fill in, which apparently will give information more appropriate for the new system of registration which no longer requires relatives to travel to the place of death, which is entirely sensible. The Government told the Deregulation Committee that the revised guidance notes for doctors were being prepared. I wonder whether the noble Lord could assure us that those revised notes are now available and will be available to doctors when this order comes into force.
Secondly, the Deregulation Committee asked that information about the cause of death could now be copied from the medical certificate—the new form of certificate which doctors are being asked to produce—and this will require amendments to secondary legislation. Could the noble Lord tell us whether those amendments will come before this House and, if so, when?
Lord Henley: On the first point raised by the noble Lord, relating to the number of different governments that have been before us, not just since 1953 but

1433
sometime in the 1830s, it is not Conservative Governments nor Labour Governments, nor even Liberal Governments, but possibly goes back to Whig governments and others—all of them have failed to address this matter and we all stand to blame.
The noble Lord also asked when guidance would be available on the concerns raised by the Deregulation Committee in another place. I can give the noble Lord an assurance that that guidance will be available in due course and certainly at the appropriate moment.
He also asked whether amendments to secondary legislation would have to come before this House in due course. My understanding at the moment is that, if the amendments are needed, those amendments would not require the affirmative resolution procedure and would be matters for negative resolution. But I shall take advice on that particular point and, if I am wrong, write to the noble Lord. I hope that, having said that, I have addressed all the points which the noble Lord raised. If I have failed to do so, as I say, I will write to the noble Lord.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Explosives (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 1996
11.10 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Baroness Denton of Wakefield)The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Baroness Denton of Wakefield) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 12th June be approved.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move that the Explosives (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 1996, a draft of which was laid before the House on 12th June 1996, be approved.
The principal purpose of this short order is to amend the regulation-making power in Section 3(1) of the Explosives Act (Northern Ireland) 1970, so as to provide greater flexibility in the making of fireworks regulations. This change would be effected by Article 3.
The result will provide the Secretary of State with the same powers to make fireworks regulations as he currently has to make explosives regulations in general. At present, Section 3 of the Act restricts the Secretary of State's regulation-making power to matters covering the sale and use of fireworks. The reform proposals published in January this year—which have been generally well received—require a more flexible power. Hence the need to amend the 1970 Act.
The only other significant change is effected by Article 4. This amends the Explosives Act 1875 to make it an offence to sell fireworks to any child apparently under the age of 16 years, and brings the law in Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom. I beg to move.
Moved, That the order laid before the House on 12th June 1996 be approved.—(Baroness Denton of Wakefield.)
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, this is a sensible order and I therefore support it, particularly in so far as it gives extra protection to children.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, this is a late hour, a gloomy hour, and particularly well suited to discussing such matters as deaths registration and explosives, For me, it had a brief shaft of light a few moments ago when the noble Lord, Lord Henley, referred to past Liberal and Whig governments.
I feel that the order is probably long overdue; it is certainly accepted on these Benches. But I should like to take this opportunity to say one other thing briefly. I am well aware that the noble Baroness, with her heavy departmental responsibilities, will be aware of what I am about to say. It is this. I am using the rubric of explosives just to say something about the current situation.
I should like to congratulate the Irish Government and the Garda on their discovery of that large cache of explosives recently, and I should like to say how important it is. I trust that the Government agree—particularly at this juncture when the Provisional IRA have turned their backs so conclusively on the course of peace—how vital it is that the two governments continue to work closely together on the issue of security and indeed on the general thrust of the peace process, which must be continued with all possible vigour. I hope the noble Baroness does not mind my intruding those thoughts into the discussion of this amendment order, which I am glad to support.
Baroness Denton of Wakefield: My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their support and I would confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Holme, that it continues to be inexplicable that anyone should think that violence has any part in the building of peace in Northern Ireland. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the Irish Government and all others who reject violence utterly and totally. This order will bring a little more sensibility into this issue. I commend it to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Defamation Bill [H.L.]
11.14 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons amendments be now considered.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[The page and line refer to Bill (127) as first printed by the Commons.]

COMMONS AMENDMENT
1 Clause page 2. line 5, at end insert 'or providing'.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 2 and 3.
I begin by putting on record my deep gratitude for the contribution made to the Bill by Lord Justice Neill. I am sure that your Lordships will agree with me that this is a very worthwhile Bill and for that Lord Justice Neill should take a great share of the credit not only for chairing the committee which gave rise to many of the proposals, but also for the help he has generously given throughout the progress of the Bill to my officials and myself in considering how we should react to the various propositions put to us.
Amendments Nos. 1 to 3 are small technical amendments to subsection (3)(c). Subsection (3) sets out categories of defendants who will not be regarded as authors, editors and publishers for the purposes of this clause so that the new statutory defence may be available to them provided, of course, they can satisfy the other conditions set out earlier in the clause. It reflects the existence of new technologies not contemplated when the common law defence of innocent dissemination was developed. The amendments together spell out that those who are only providing systems or services making material available in electronic form are within the subsection.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am on the verge of achieving one of life's ambitions, which is to wish the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor a happy birthday. It is a very narrow squeak because the efforts of noble Lords on both sides of your Lordships' House earlier have just enabled me to speak before midnight. It is on occasions like this that one remembers what a pleasure it is to have a jury in defamation cases because one has at least a guaranteed audience of 13, which is rather more than one has at this hour in your Lordships' House.
I join the noble and learned Lord in what he said about Lord Justice Neill. He has been pre-eminent as a judge, both at first instance and in the Court of Appeal, in this arcane area of defamation, but much more than that—he has been a constant source of inquiry and suggestions for reform. He is a judge who is universally regarded with affection, respect and esteem.
Other than that, I have nothing to say to Amendments Nos. 1 to 3.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, for his good wishes and the timeliness with which he was able to express them. I join him in expressing admiration for Lord Justice Neill not only in relation to this field of law in which he is, indeed, pre-eminent but also for the great service he has given to the law in all sorts of other spheres. I commend Commons Amendment No. 1 to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
2 Clause 1, page 2, line 6, after 'equipment' insert `, system or service'.
3 Page 2, line 7, leave out 'or distributed' and insert ', distributed or made available in electronic form'.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 en bloc.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 and 3.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
4 Leave out Clause 13.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 4. I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 5 to 14.
The Government reflected deeply and carefully before deciding to accept Amendment No. 4 when it was moved in the other place. An amendment to similar effect was put down by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, when your Lordships were debating the clause. We had some discussion of it. The clause would have reversed the rule known as the rule in Scott v. Sampson, which prevents defendants from pleading and proving specific acts or omissions of the plaintiff, which might be thought discreditable, for the purpose of reducing the level of damages.
That rule can, on occasion, cause injustice. The intention underlying what was Clause 13 is right. But the concern is that the reversal of the rule could cause other injustices and encourage some defendants to use tactics to intimidate those they may have defamed. We have acknowledged the difficulty inherent in framing an alternative rule which takes care of those concerns and provides a better balance.
In the result, having regard to the balance of opinion in the Standing Committee in the other place, the Government decided that Clause 13 should properly be deleted. Amendments Nos. 5 to 14 are consequential. In the meantime, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 4.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No.4.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for that explanation. I was concerned that the Bill might have the defects and vices to which the noble and learned Lord has referred. My proposal was that, if it be introduced at all, it should be specifically limited to a stage in the trial following a finding on liability. It is possible that reform along those lines can be achieved. In its former incarnation the provision appeared to offer more mischief than benefit.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
5 Clause 15, page 12, line 6, at end insert—
'(4) In section 8(6) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and in Article 9(6) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Northern Ireland) Order 1978 (defamation actions: reports of court proceedings), for "section 3 of the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888" substitute "section 15 of the Defamation Act 1996".'.
6 Clause 17, page 12, leave out lines 28 to 30.
7 Clause 19, page 13, leave out line 13.
8 Page 13, leave out lines 16 and 17.
9 Page 13, leave out lines 31 and 32.
10 Page 14, leave out line 5.
11 Page 14, leave out lines 8 and 9.
12 Clause 20, page 14, leave out line 25.
13 Page 14, line 27, leave out from 'the' to `so' and insert `repeals in Schedule 3,'.
14 Leave out Schedule 2.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 5 to 14 inclusive. I have spoken to Amendments Nos. 5 to 14 with Amendment No. 4.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 5 to 14.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, we too on this side of the House wish the noble and learned Lord many happy returns.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes past eleven o'clock.