Lords Sitting of 22 July 1996

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

Police Force: Recruitment
The Earl of Longford The Earl of Longford asked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they have taken to fulfil the pledge given at the last Conservative Party Conference to increase the police force by 5,000.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, the Government are providing an additional £180 million in funding to enable chief constables in England and Wales to recruit 5,000 more constables over the next three years.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, as always, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for standing like Casabianca on the burning deck, when five of her Conservative predecessors have fled quite recently from the debate. I once again commend her gallantry. Is the noble Baroness aware that in the past statistical year there was a decrease in the total police population of over 300? I spoke to the Police Federation this morning and I was told that there is much concern as to whether the Government will live up to their promises.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the Government will definitely live up to their promises. The sum of £180 million is a 100 per cent. specific grant so it is over and above the capping rules that operate for police authorities. The money will be given over three years. We have given chief constables the freedom to choose how they spend that money. Last year 845 new constables were recruited, which is not up to the full 1,000. There is the money for the constables and some of that money went on high-tech equipment and more scientific systems for helping the police to detect crime. The money is pledged for next year and the year after and so the money for 5,000 policemen is pledged and will be honoured.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the police of this country are beloved—
Noble Lords: Oh, oh!
Lord Molloy: They are! They may not be to the party opposite, but we on this side of the House believe that our police are beloved. Noble Lords opposite can have their views and say so. Does the noble Baroness agree that their loyalty to all parties, the people and particularly to Parliament are factors of which we can
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be proud? Is the noble Baroness aware that we are pleased to hear that she will be examining any points which the British police submit to the Government?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I believe that I carry all my colleagues with me and, indeed, the whole House when I say that we have the finest police force in the world, which is loyal to the country, to Parliament and the Queen, and long may it be so.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am sure that the Minister checks her figures very carefully before she gives them. I do not quite understand how the figures she has given square with the recent statistics of Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary in that the number of constables increased by only 544 between March 1995 and March 1996, which I believe is the relevant year. In the letter from the Home Secretary to Sir Michael Shersby of 30th May, he spoke about additional funding of £20 million in 1996–97. Does the noble Baroness agree that that does not appear to square with the figure of 800 police officers which the Minister gave, or indeed with the figure of £180 million for the five-year period?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, we can play with statistics as much as we like, but I can say that the money for 1,000 police officers has been made available to the police. The chief constables use that money to the best effect. We now have over 16,000 more police than we had when we came to office in 1979. The chief police officers themselves are predicting that there will be over 1,600 more in this present financial year, 1996–97. If I have got the noble Lord's figure wrong for the precise size of the increase for 1995–96, I shall write to the noble Lord.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, do I understand the noble Baroness to be saying that chief constables may use the money as they think fit and that they need not employ extra constables if they are short of money for other equipment?
Baroness Blatch: No, my Lords. They will make operational decisions about where the money is best spent. They will be held to account for spending that money by the inspectorate, which will be the eyes and ears of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to make sure that the money is going towards front-line policing activities.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, although the noble Baroness tell us never to believe what we read in the newspapers, is she aware of the concern felt by many at a report in tonight's Evening Standard that there are to be substantial cuts in the resources of the Metropolitan Police in the next year? Can she comment on that?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, it is true that I do not believe everything that I read in the newspapers. It is for the Commissioner of Police in London to decide how resources made available to him are best deployed.

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There is nothing in the budget plans for the Metropolitan Police that will cause front-line policing to suffer. The commissioner assures us that operational activity is unaffected. Indeed, I understand that the performance of the Metropolitan Police has improved and continues to do so; and with my right honourable friend's support it will continue to improve. It may well be that there is some restructuring going on in London, which is all part of the operational activity of the chief commissioner. There may well be people within the police force who are not happy about that. The budget for the Metropolitan Police this year has increased.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, would the Minister care to comment on the fact that it is now the policy of many police forces, and in particular of the Metropolitan Police force, to seek to recruit mature entrants and that as a result of government policy mature recruits to the police service in London, with family responsibilities, now have to apply for housing benefit to be able to live? Are the Government satisfied about putting recruits to the police service in that position?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, recruitment policy is a matter for the police authorities. They will recruit from across the age range. They need young people because policemen and women have to be physically fit to be able to carry out the job. Is the noble Baroness implying by her question that we pay the police so badly in this country that they require housing benefit in order to live? I think that the noble Baroness overstates her case. Is the noble Baroness advocating that the police should have more money?
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Baroness can help me. I have been listening to her answers and I am a little puzzled. Last year, while watching the Conservative Party Conference on television, I heard the Home Secretary claim that there would be an additional 5,000 bobbies on the beat. I said, "Hooray, that is just what people want", but now I understand from the answers given to questions that that is not quite the case and that instead of providing the bobbies on the beat, which everyone likes to see, chief constables are using that money for other purposes. Can the Minister explain that?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I understand the noble Lord's confusion. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister pledged the money for 5,000 more policemen. He wanted the policemen to be constables. He wanted the constables to be front-line and on the beat. That was my right honourable friend's priority. However, we have also given chief constables the freedom to deploy their budgets. We shall be looking carefully at how they deploy them, which is why I said that 845 of those 5,000 have been recruited. The chief constables have been asked how many they predict will be employed in this financial year, the first of the years in which the money is available—there will be £20 million this year, £60 million next year and £100 million in the third year—and they predict that a further
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1,600 policemen will be employed. They will be constables and they will be constables on the beat. The money for 5,000 policemen will be made available. We expect the police authorities as far as possible to spend that money on policemen.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords—
Noble Lords: Next Question!
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, am I not to have another go? Will the noble Baroness confirm or otherwise my original statement that last year, after 17 years of Conservative rule, the total number of police decreased by 300?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, after 17 years of Conservative rule, we have 16,000 more policemen than when we came to office in 1979.

Display Screen Equipment: Sight Tests
2.46 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are satisfied that the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 are being fully observed by employers; and what steps are being taken to ensure that they are doing so.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, recent research on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive showed that there was adequate compliance with the regulations. Inspectors continue to help employers to comply with the regulations—both during their visits, and on request.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, but is he aware that the Trades Union Congress recently undertook a survey into the way in which the regulations are working, from which it transpired that a number of employers were failing to comply with the regulations, particularly in the area of sight testing and in making available free sight tests? Does the Minister agree that one of the ways in which employees can make absolutely certain that these very important regulations are being complied with is to belong to a union and to ensure that their union makes it clear to their employer that the regulations must be complied with?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am not surprised that the noble Baroness says that, but I do not know that I can confirm what she has said. If a person wants to join a union, he may do so, but I would not suggest that he should do so. That is a matter for him. I know that the TUC carried out a survey, as did the Health and Safety Commission. Its survey covered 1,200 employers, 660 employees and 100 union representatives. It found that over 95 per cent. of employers said that intensive users were allowed to

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take breaks; that 80 per cent. had made alterations to work stations; that 39 per cent. had made formal risk assessments of work stations; and that 35 per cent. had arranged eye tests, but eye tests only have to be provided on request. As a result, 1 million people have had their eyes tested. I do not think that is a bad record.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, can the Minister say whether there have been any prosecutions?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, in the period 1993–95 six improvement notices have been served by the Health and Safety Executive.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, can the noble Earl explain why employers have to pay for the eye tests and not the National Health Service? Are the Government secretly planning to sign up to the social chapter, which would mean that all kinds of burdens that are not normally placed on employers would be placed upon them?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord lets his imagination run ahead of himself. There is no suggestion that we should sign up to the social chapter. The fact is that we were obliged to comply with this directive which was passed by qualified majority voting. It was brought into effect in regulations on 1st January 1993. We were against the directive because we thought that it was unnecessary. Employers have to provide proper work places and proper conditions for their employees. If an employee requires his eyesight testing—not because he thinks he is short-sighted, but because he thinks that his eyes have been damaged as a result of working with a screen—the employer is obliged to arrange such an eye test.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, I am responsible for employing several hundred people who require eye tests because they work on computers. Why does the employer and not the National Health Service have to pay for them? That places an additional burden on employers which they would expect to have only if this country had joined the Social Chapter.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I do not believe that the noble Lord should worry too much. If he has hundreds of people working for him who require lots of tests presumably he must be arranging fairly good ones. But, so the theory goes, if people feel that their eyes are being damaged as a result of the circumstances in which the noble Lord obliges them to work, it is right that the noble Lord should arrange for them to have their eyes tested to make sure that they are all right.
Lord Peston: My Lords, can the noble Earl confirm that in this country we no longer have free eye tests? I hope that is right because only the other day I was charged for such a test. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt of Weeford, is unaware of what this Government have done. Does this particular set of regulations apply to employees in your Lordships'
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House? Is this House meeting all of the standards set out in the regulations, whether or not they apply to the employees?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Peston, is probably in a better position to answer that question than I am. He is chairman of the Refreshment Department. I am sure that all of the people who look into his computers as well as frying pans have had their eyes properly looked after. I cannot tell your Lordships whether or not that is so in this House, but these regulations apply to all people who work for employers where visual display units are used.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, is the noble Earl satisfied that Regulation 6 is being fully observed by employers? That regulation obliges employers to provide users of this equipment with adequate health and safety training.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, when the inspectors visit premises they ensure that people are given proper facilities. They are obliged to make sure that the working environment is good: in other words, that the employees have chairs which are properly adjusted, that their working routine is correct, that they have breaks and that they have training for the machines and systems. They are also required to arrange eye tests. The inspectors have found that, on the whole, it has worked sufficiently well, such that only six people have had improvement notices placed upon them. Of course, when inspectors make visits, they give advice to employers where that is necessary. I have no reason to believe that the position is other than satisfactory.

Social Security Benefits: Administration
2.52 p.m.
Earl Russell Earl Russell asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the plans reported in The Guardian on 29th June and 18th July to transfer social security functions to the private sector are correctly reported.
The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): My Lords, the Secretary of State for Social Security announced on Friday three initiatives for further involvement of the private sector in delivering social security benefits. These are the administration of the child benefit centre; management partnerships in three Benefits Agency areas; and the launch of the procurement process for a new information technology strategy. These improvements to administration will not change any individual's benefit entitlement. As I announced on 28th June, we are also seeking to transfer ownership and management of the department's estate to the private sector.
Earl Russell: My Lords, as the Secretary of State so generously timed his Written Answer at 4.30 p.m. last Friday to allow us to question it today, can the Minister explain how the Secretary of State has discovered the

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philosopher's stone, which has eluded his predecessors for four centuries, so that it is possible for a monopoly provider to provide a public service for private profit without ripping off the consumer?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I suppose that the noble Earl is referring to the decision to see whether it is possible to outsource the administration of child benefit. We on this side of the House, unlike the noble Earl, believe that private enterprise has a lot going for it that state suppliers do not have. One of them is efficiency and effectiveness. We will be looking at the possibility of putting out a contract with the private sector to administer this benefit to our specification. From previous experience, we are likely to achieve savings in administration. In addition, as the IT system of child benefit requires to be updated and modernised we will have the expertise of the private sector to help us to do it.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, can the noble Lord confirm that Mr. John Beckwith, chairman of the Premier Club, which offers to provide lunch with the Prime Minister for £100,000 and advises businessmen on how to break the law by not declaring these as political contributions in their accounts, is on the short list of bidders for the DSS premises? How does the Minister square that with his conscience?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, should not believe everything he reads in the newspapers. A short list will not be drawn up until after 2nd August. Mr. Beckwith and a number of other companies have expressed an interest in the project and have asked for papers. Whether or not he returns those papers or makes the short list remains to be seen. With regard to the other part of the Question posed by the noble Lord, I did not think there was anything illegal about individuals helping political parties. Perhaps the noble Lord is jealous that his own leader cannot command the kind of dinner party interest that would bring in the level of funds that has been talked about.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the magic words to be uttered in response to the original Question are perhaps "direct labour organisations"? Does my noble friend recollect that only a few years ago most noble Lords on the opposite side of the House regarded direct labour organisations as wonderful things and said that if anything was done to them the whole fabric of government would collapse? They have just moved their ground a little. In another five years they will have caught up with this initiative, too.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, my noble friend reminds me of wider issues. For many years the parties opposite appeared to believe firmly in the public sector. Over the past 17 years we have privatised many companies, much to the disgust of the parties
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opposite. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, still appears to believe in nationalisation and that the public sector is much better than the private sector.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, exactly why do the Government seek to privatise the administration of child benefit? It cannot be to save money, because child benefit is the cheapest of all benefits to administer. The cost of administration is now only 2p. in the pound. It is hard to believe that anyone in the private sector can emulate that. Clearly, there is a hidden agenda—perhaps it is not well hidden—for the breaking up of the Civil Service. Is this also a back-door method of closing rural post offices because they will lose important chunks of business?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I am delighted by the last part of the Question put by the noble Baroness. This matter was dealt with in the press release which the noble Earl leaked to the world on Friday. Rural post offices are already in the private sector. The proposals that we have made with the Benefits Agency and Post Office Counters Ltd. in order to pay benefits by the plastic card method reinforce our commitment to keeping open rural post offices. Further, the administration of child benefit at Washington has absolutely nothing to do with the payment of child benefit at rural post offices. It is a pity that the noble Baroness does not recognise that.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, does the Minister guarantee that mothers will still be able to collect their child benefit in cash from post offices?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, what mothers will get is a card which looks very much like the one I have in my hand. That card will enable them to go along to any post office or sub-post office the length and breadth of this country and receive the child benefit to which they are entitled. I am appalled that the noble Baroness should be raising scares like this.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, can the noble Lord confirm that one of the front-running contenders for the contract for the administration of child benefit is a company called EDS which previously ran the Child Support Agency payments and is currently before the courts in Florida for the way in which it has handled affairs over there? Can the noble Lord assure the House that those facts will be taken into consideration before any decision is made?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the announcement seeking expressions of interest was put out only on Friday. I do not have a clue who will respond to it. I can neither confirm nor deny what the noble Baroness said because no one has yet responded.

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It is only Monday. In any case, it seems to me that the noble Baroness, like other noble Lords opposite, is pretty conditioned to being hostile to private enterprise.
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, if privatised, would those staff continue to have discounted terms at the Westminster gym?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I have to admit that I would never go near a gym, Westminster or anywhere else, so I am afraid that I cannot answer that question.
Earl Russell: My Lords, instead of generally philosophising about the private sector, will the Minister address the question I asked in my first supplementary about the monopoly provider? Does he recall on Second Reading of the Water Bill the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, saying that he was in favour of a private monopoly if it could be done without injuring the consumer? Has it been?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, as far as concerns child benefit, what will be asked of any company which is invited to do that work will be that it pays the right benefit to the right person at the right time. We shall be monitoring that carefully. We shall lay down the standards. We will ensure, as we all do when we employ the private sector to do whatever it is, that the project is delivered at our specification and at our price.

Burma: Human Rights
3.1 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney Lord Jenkins of Putney asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will support the Danish proposal for sanctions against Burma, having regard to the widely condemned human rights record of the State Law and Order Restoration Council which governs that country.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, we do not believe that we should impose economic sanctions on Burma. Our trade with Burma is negligible and such a measure is unlikely to be effective. There is also little international support for sanctions.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, since this Question was put on the Order Paper has not a further request for sanctions come from Burma itself in the name of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the only really elected party in Burma, who should be in government at this time? In those circumstances is there not a moral duty on the Government at least to consider the
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question, irrespective of the size of present trade with Burma? In any event, does the Minister agree that no steps should be taken to increase that trade?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, first, we maintain close contact with all the pro-democracy groups, including Aung San Suu Kyi. Our ambassador in Burma meets her regularly. Not only is the UK/Burma trade negligible, we do not wish to see a country cut off totally, because then we do not have a critical dialogue. The DTI does not intend to provide financial support for any trade missions to Burma during the course of this year. Any future requests for such assistance will be assessed most carefully against the circumstances obtaining at that time, including the political and human rights position in Burma. I hope that it is now clear where we stand on the trade issue.
Lord Finsberg: My Lords, is it not a great pity that many of the ASEAN countries seem too scared to put upon Burma the pressure that they should be putting?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, my noble friend is right. He may recall that when answering a recent question on Burma I said exactly that. We shall be raising the issue of Burma this week at the ASEAN meetings which are to be held in Jakarta, because it is for the ASEANs too to use their influence with the SLORC. That is the critical way that dialogue should be pursued.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, given the lack of success of critical dialogue so far with Burma, I am a little surprised by the Minister's confidence that that will have any impact in future. Will she tell the House why a DTI official was in Burma last month investigating possible business opportunities there on the very day that her right honourable friend Mr. Hanley in another place said that trade missions to Burma had been cancelled?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I cannot answer the noble Baroness's question, but I shall find out because I, too, wish to know. Perhaps I may underline that we are not providing any financial support for any further trade missions to Burma. That is clear. We may have received requests in the past. We cannot say for evermore that we shall not support them, but each and every one will be assessed carefully, especially against the political and human rights situation in Burma. No one wishes more than the Government to see that the rightly democratically elected government are in power in Burma. We have to do everything that we possibly can to ensure that a dialogue begins with the pro-democracy groups, in particular with Aung San Suu Kyi.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, has the Minister seen the reports of the death of Mr. Nichols, the Danish honorary consul in Rangoon? Has she noted the protests which have been made not just by Denmark but by Australia, the USA and a number of other countries which have asked for a full inquiry into the circumstances of his death in custody? Will the UK join in that initiative?

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Will it ensure in particular that the violations of human rights which continue to be extremely serious in Burma are raised at the human rights sub-committee in Geneva next month?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, first, we were to the fore in getting the EU declaration sent on 5th July last which called on the SLORC to provide a full and satisfactory explanation of Mr. Nichols' death. We have not yet seen the full report. We were deeply sorry to hear of his death. He was not a fit man before he was put into prison, but the conditions there probably contributed towards an earlier death than would otherwise have occurred. I assure the noble Lord that we shall continue to make representations about detention. Although some 200 people have been released, 37 people are still detained. We shall continue to do all we can to see that they are released.
Lord Richard: My Lords, will the Minister tell us whether this matter has been raised at the Security Council? If so, who raised it? In informal discussions at the Security Council what view did other countries take of the matter?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the matter has been discussed informally, but it has not been raised in the Security Council. I cannot give the noble Lord a direct answer of who said what to whom, but I shall make further inquiries and let him know what I can tell him.

Business of the House: SSRB Recommendations
3.7 p.m.
The Lord Privy Seal (Viscount Cranborne): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to redeem my undertaking given last week to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and make a brief Statement about the position in regard to your Lordships' reaction to the recommendations of the SSRB. When I moved the Motion to approve the Ministerial and other Salaries Order last Tuesday, a number of your Lordships understandably raised questions about Peers' expenses. I indicated then that I was looking to hold discussions with the other leaders and Whips and with the Convenor of the Cross Benches. I indicated also that I hoped to be able to give a progress report of those discussions before the House adjourned for the Summer Recess. It is for that purpose that I crave your Lordships' indulgence this afternoon, although I hope your Lordships will understand that I cannot be too specific at this moment.
The meeting to which I referred has now taken place. I was most grateful to my opposite numbers for the constructive view that they took and the number of suggestions that they made. A number of concerns were of course raised. I have undertaken to consult further on those particular matters. In particular, I have agreed to explore, through the appropriate channels, whether it would be possible for the SSRB to look further at a
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number of those points. I hope therefore that your Lordships will be content to leave the matter there for the moment, on the clear understanding that in the light of progress, or indeed the lack of it, I should be able to report further to the House in due course.
Lord Richard: My Lords, perhaps I may say on behalf of this side of the House that we are grateful to the Lord Privy Seal for making that Statement. He is accurate. The meeting did take place. I am glad that he thought that it was helpful. I thought that it was helpful. I hope that he came out of it feeling that his elbow had been strengthened. I hope that he will now continue to use his elbow in the direction that the people who took part in that meeting obviously thought that it should be used. Having said that, I wish him joy!

Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): 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 (123) as first printed by the Commons.]
COMMONS AMENDMENT
1 Schedule 4, page 29, line 3, column 3, at end insert—

'In section 60, paragraphs (b) and (c) of the proviso to subsection (4).'.

The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. Since all the amendments are of a similar technical nature, I believe that it would be appropriate to speak also to Amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 4.
All of the amendments concern purely consequential repeals. Amendment No. 1 provides for the repeal of provisions in Section 60(4) of the Law of Property Act 1925 which require fewer words in the deed creating an entailed interest than was the case before 1925. Since it will no longer be possible to create entailed interests in future, these provisions will become superfluous and the amendment removes them in order to avoid confusion. Amendments Nos. 2 to 4 are necessary to ensure the repeal of certain provisions in other legislation which operate by reference to trusts for sale and the doctrine of conversion and which will accordingly become obsolete as a result of the conversion of trusts for sale into trusts of land and the abolition of the doctrine of conversion by this Bill. They are necessary because the provisions which they affect are either contained in or provided for by the Housing Bill and Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Bill, both of which will, as regards the relevant provisions, be in force before the

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trusts of land reforms. Had the order of commencement turned out to be the other way around, it would have been the other Bills which required amendment.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
COMMONS AMENDMENTS
2 Schedule 4, page 33, leave out lines 19 to 22.
3 Page 33, line 37, column 3, at beginning insert—

'In section 93A(4)—the words ", or by that section as applied by section 28 of the Law of Property Act 1925 in relation to trusts for sale", the words ", or by that section as so applied,", and the words "or by trustees for sale".'.

4 Page 33, line 54, at end insert—

'1996 c. 00.

The Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996.

Section 55(4)(b). Section 73(3)(b). In section 98(2)(a), the words "or to the proceeds of sale of the dwelling".'.

The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 to 4.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 to 4.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Damages Bill [H.L.]
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 (148) as first printed by the Commons.]
COMMONS AMENDMENT
1 Clause 5, page 4, line 13, at end insert—
'(8) Where—

(a) an agreement is made settling a claim or action for damages for personal injury on terms whereby the damages are to consist wholly or partly of periodical payments;

(b) the person against whom the claim or action is brought (or, if he is insured against the claim, his insurer) purchases one or more annuities; and

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(c) a subsequent agreement is made under which the annuity is, or the annuities are, assigned in favour of the person entitled to the payments (so as to secure that from a future date he receives the payments as the annuitant under the annuity or annuities),

then, for the purposes of section 4 above, the agreement settling the claim or action shall be treated as a structured settlement and any such annuity assigned in favour of that person shall be treated as an annuity purchased for him pursuant to the settlement.
(9) Subsections (2) to (7) above shall apply to an agreement to which subsection (8) above applies as they apply to a structured settlement as defined in subsection (1) above (the reference in subsection (6) to subsection (1)(b) being read as a reference to subsection (8)(b)).'.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1.
This is a technical amendment to ensure that the enhanced policyholders protection conferred by Clause 4 will apply regardless of when the person entitled to the payments becomes policyholder of the annuity which is central to the structured settlement. It was moved in the other place when it became apparent that Clauses 4 and 5 might not be effective when that person became the policyholder by assignment after the structured settlement was first set up.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
COMMONS AMENDMENT
2 Clause 8, page 5, leave out lines 25 to 28.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 2, which is a privilege amendment.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 2.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Deer (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
Report received.
Then, Standing Order 44 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution of 18th July), Bill read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

Asylum and Immigration Bill
3.14 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons reasons and amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons reasons and amendments be now considered.—(Baroness Blatch.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
AMENDMENTS TO BE MOVED ON CONSIDERATION OF COMMONS REASONS AND AMENDMENTS
[The page and line refer to Bill (51) as first printed by the Lords.]
LORDS AMENDMENT
6 Clause 3, page 3, line 33, after ("under") insert ("Part II of the 1971 Act (appeals: general) or")
The Commons disagreed to the above amendment but propose the following amendment in lieu—
6A Page 3, line 33, leave out from 'under' to end of line 34 and insert—

'(i)Part II of the 1971 Act (appeals: general); or

(ii) section 8 of the 1993 Act (appeals to special adjudicator on Convention grounds),

as respects matters arising before his removal from the United Kingdom'.
Baroness Blotch: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 6 to which the Commons have disagreed, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 6A in lieu thereof.
When a third country certificate is issued an applicant will, of course, have an appeal under Clause 3 of the Bill against the Secretary of State's third country certificate. In certain limited cases he might also seek to appeal on non-asylum grounds and we need to ensure that third country removals should not be delayed by unrelated appeals. Previously, the Bill provided that in third country cases an applicant could not bring an asylum appeal under Section 8 of the 1993 Act unless or until the third country certificate had been set aside by a special adjudicator.
The Government brought forward, and this House adopted, amendments which adjusted the Bill slightly to provide that an applicant could not bring either an asylum appeal under Section 8 of the 1993 Act or a non-asylum appeal under the 1971 Act unless or until the third country certificate had been set aside by a special adjudicator. However, it became apparent that Amendment No. 6 could be construed as preventing a person who has been removed under a third country certificate ever exercising an immigration right of appeal in the United Kingdom again. For instance, an asylum applicant who was removed to a third country might some years later obtain an entry clearance to come to the United Kingdom as a student. If the student was refused entry on arrival he would not be entitled to an appeal against that decision because the third country certificate had never been overturned.
It is arguable that Amendment No. 6 could not be construed as having such an extreme result, but we wish to make absolutely sure that the provision cannot be misinterpreted. We are, of course, seeking only to prevent applicants lodging non-asylum appeals against decisions made prior to removal which would have the effect of delaying or preventing removal. Therefore, the Government brought forward Amendment No. 6A in another place to make it clear that we are not removing immigration appeal rights for ever from applicants who are removed to a third country.
Moved, That the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 6 to which the Commons have disagreed, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 6A in lieu thereof.—(Baroness Blotch.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
3.15 p.m.
LORDS AMENDMENT
9 Clause 8, page 6, line 2, leave out ("subsection (3)") and insert ("subsections (2A) and (3)")
The Commons disagreed to this amendment for the following reason—
9A Because it does not address such problems as may be faced by domestic workers from overseas.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 9 to which the Commons have disagreed for their reason numbered 9A.
The effect of Amendment No. 9, which together with Amendment No. 11 was successfully moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, would have been to exclude from the provisions of Clause 8 those employers who employed an overseas domestic worker in respect of whom a police officer, doctor or solicitor had certified that he or she had suffered substantial physical abuse or serious economic exploitation arising from what was described as "previous bonded employment". In practice, that would have meant that the second and any subsequent employer of a domestic worker who fell into that category could not commit the offence of employing someone not entitled to work here, yet the domestic workers themselves would still not be entitled to take the employment in question and they would either be working in breach of their immigration conditions or they would be overstayers.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, is a vigorous and respected campaigner on behalf of those domestic workers who are abused by their employers. I wish to put on record my admiration for the way in which he has doughtily supported the cause of those people, many of them very young.
However, the amendments would have done little to minimise the risk of abuse occurring in the first place, whether by the first or any subsequent employer. The amendments and the debates which were stimulated in your Lordships' House and in another place have served to highlight the plight of those who are abused. But the Government's view is that it is quite properly a matter to be dealt with by our criminal and employment laws, under which domestic workers, in common with all other employees, have full protection while they are in this country.
The right way to minimise the risk of abuse occurring in the first place is to sift out those cases where the arrangements fall short of the criteria which have been established for entry clearance in this capacity before they even come here. The Government have said, and I repeat it, that we will gladly consider any suggestions for further refinements to these pre-entry arrangements which might help to weed out unsatisfactory cases.

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The Commons disagreed to these amendments because they did not address such problems as may be faced by domestic workers from overseas. I hope that in view of what I have said the House will take a similar view.
Moved, That the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 9 to which the Commons have disagreed for their reason numbered 9A.—(Baroness Blotch.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
LORDS AMENDMENT
11 Clause 8, page 6, line 12, at end insert—
("(2A) Nothing in this section applies to an employee who was employed as a domestic worker and in respect of whom a police officer, doctor or solicitor has certified that he has previously suffered substantial physical abuse or deprivation, or serious economic exploitation, arising from previous bonded employment.").
The Commons disagreed to this amendment for the following reason—
11A Because it does not address such problems as may be faced by domestic workers from overseas.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 11 to which the Commons have disagreed for the reason numbered 11A.
Moved, That the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 11 to which the Commons have disagreed for the reason numbered 11A.—(Baroness Blotch.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
LORDS AMENDMENT
24 After Clause 10, insert the following new clause—
Saving for social security regulations
(".—(1) Notwithstanding any enactment or rule of law, regulations may exclude from entitlement to any of the following benefits, namely—

(a) income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit under the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992;

(b) income support and housing benefit under the Social Security Contributions and Benefits (Northern Ireland) Act 1992; and

(c) jobseeker's allowance under the Jobseekers Act 1995 or the Jobseekers (Northern Ireland) Order 1995,

any person who has made a claim for asylum other than on his arrival in the United Kingdom or within three working days of that arrival.
(2) Regulations may provide that, where such a person as is mentioned in subsection (1) above is subsequently recorded by the Secretary of State as a refugee within the meaning of the Convention—

(a) that person may, within a prescribed period, claim the whole or any prescribed proportion of any income support, housing benefit or council tax benefit to which he would have been entitled had he been recorded as a refugee immediately after he made the claim for asylum; and

(b) where he makes such a claim as is mentioned in paragraph (a) above in respect of housing benefit or council tax benefit having resided in the areas of two or more local authorities in Great Britain,
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the claim shall be investigated and determined, and any benefit awarded shall be paid or allowed, by such one of those authorities as may be prescribed.

(3) Regulations making such provision as is mentioned in subsection (2)(b) above may require the other authorities there mentioned to supply the prescribed authority with such information as it may reasonably require in connection with the exercise of its functions under the regulations.
(4) Schedule (Modifications of social security regulations) to this Act—

(a) Part I of which modifies the Social Security (Persons from Abroad) Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations 1996; and

(b) Part II of which modifies the Social Security (Persons from Abroad) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1996,

shall have effect.
(5) The Jobseeker's Allowance (Amendment) Regulations 1996 shall have effect as if they had been made on the day on which this Act is passed.
(6) In this section—

"claim for asylum" and "the Convention" have the same meanings as in the 1993 Act;

"prescribed" means prescribed by regulations;

"regulations"—

(a) in relation to income support, housing benefit or council tax benefit under the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, means regulations under that Act or the Social Security Administration Act 1992;

(b) in relation to income support or housing benefit under the Social Security Contributions and Benefits (Northern Ireland) Act 1992, means regulations under that Act or the Social Security Administration (Northern Ireland) Act 1992;

(c) in relation to jobseeker's allowance under the Jobseekers Act 1995, means regulations under that Act or the Social Security Administration Act 1992;

(d) in relation to jobseeker's allowance under the Jobseekers (Northern Ireland) Order 1995, means regulations under that Order or the Social Security Administration (Northern Ireland) Act 1992.").

The Commons agreed to this amendment with the following amendment—
24A Line 3, after 'exclude' insert 'any person who has made a claim for asylum'.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 24A to Lords Amendment No. 24. At the same time, I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 24B, 24C, 28 and 28A and 28B.
We have discussed on a number of occasions the issue of benefits paid to asylum seekers and, in particular, the considerable and increasing numbers who are paid benefit and who turn out not to be genuine asylum seekers and not entitled to any money from the taxpayer. The Government remain convinced that it is right to clamp down on this abuse. We are also convinced that we should continue to oppose any weakening of the policy.

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The policy was first announced in October last year. It was subject to a full public consultation through the Social Security Advisory Committee. It formed part of the social security uprating Statement given on 29th November to this House by me and to another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. Draft regulations embodying the policy were debated and agreed in this House and in the other place in January. The regulations were discussed in the other place on 23rd January and accepted by a clear majority of 279 to 264 votes.
Here in your Lordships' House there was a full and wide-ranging discussion on 30th January, and the House voted by majorities of 43 and 49 not to accept resolutions calling on the Government to consider alternative means to support asylum seekers.
The policy came into effect on 5th February and ran until the Court of Appeal decided on 21st June in a majority decision that these changes could only be introduced by primary and not by secondary legislation. In order to obey the judgment of the court, I announced to your Lordships' House on 24th June that I would introduce a new clause and schedule to the Asylum and Immigration Bill in order to place the policy in primary legislation. The party opposite divided the House on a procedural vote which the Government won by 135 to 100 votes. At the same time my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, Mr. Peter Lilley, made a Statement to the other place which was subject to the scrutiny and question that such Statements receive.
On recommitment and on Third Reading your Lordships discussed and voted on a number of amendments but agreed the main thrust of our policy. However, an amendment was carried by three votes which gave those who did not claim asylum on arrival three days to make an in-country application. It also provided for benefit entitlement right up until the end not only of the Home Office decision-making process but also to the end of any subsequent appeal, no matter how long and drawn out it was.
Last Monday the other place voted on your Lordships' amendment and rejected it by a majority of 21. There is no argument in favour of giving them a further opportunity to reconsider. Your Lordships will, I am sure, wish to reflect in the light of all the consideration and reconsideration already given to the issue whether this House wishes to continue to dispute this issue with the elected Chamber.
Perhaps I may remind your Lordships why we felt it necessary to restrict benefits in February, and why we felt it necessary, as a result of the Court of Appeal's decision, to incorporate the new clause and the new schedule into the Bill. Over the past two years claims across the main western European countries, have nearly halved—I repeat, nearly halved—but, here in this country, they have doubled. Ten years ago, as I have told your Lordships on a number of occasions, claims in the UK were running at a level of 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000; in the past two years they have been running at a level of 42,000 and 56,000 respectively. That is quite out of line with trends in the rest of Europe.
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Over the same period, the proportion of those actually succeeding in their application fell from 21 per cent. to 5 per cent. Moreover, in 1995, as noble Lords will recall because I have said it many times before, out of every 100 applications for asylum considered, only seven were accepted as genuine refugees, either at the initial decision stage or on appeal. Indeed, 93 were found not to be refugees under the Geneva Convention. Some 16 of those 100 applicants (almost all of them from Bosnia, Somalia or Afghanistan) were granted exceptional leave to remain. That means that the vast majority of those who apply for asylum are not fleeing persecution but seeking to improve their economic circumstances.
Although there has been broad agreement, with some exceptions, that we have a problem here, the only solution that I have been offered by noble Lords who oppose the measures brought forward by the Government is that we should put more resources into the process of dealing with asylum applications in order to speed up the clearance times. However, we have already done that; indeed, we have taken a range of steps to speed up the asylum process. We are investing £37 million over three years in more caseworkers and adjudicators, and asylum staff are up eightfold since 1988. Those steps have produced results; for example, the number of decisions rose by 21,000 in 1994 to 27,000 in 1995, and we are on course to take over 37,000 decisions in the current financial year.
However, the simple fact of the matter is that, until the February regulations were introduced, any improvements in the asylum process were quickly swamped by the ever-growing tide of asylum applications that I have mentioned.
The February regulations removed benefits from three groups of asylum seekers: first, those who enter illegally or overstay their leave to remain, and apply for asylum; secondly, those who enter the country claiming to be business people, tourists or students giving assurances that they have the means to support themselves and that they will not rely on the British taxpayer but who later change their minds and claim asylum; and, thirdly, those who have already been found by the Home Office not to be refugees and who are appealing.
Our intention was to remove the incentive for economic migrants to come to our country and abuse our asylum system. As I explained three weeks ago to your Lordships, the policy has worked. Noble Lords may recall that, at the time, I was asked what had happened since February. I then explained the comparison between last year and this year, month by month. When comparing January 1995 with January 1996, we saw a 7 per cent. decline in the numbers. In February we saw a 6 per cent. decline and in March we saw a 5 per cent. reduction. However, in April we saw a 27 per cent. decline and, as your Lordships will recall, the figures that I had on the last occasion when we dealt with this matter were those for May which showed a decline of 49.16 per cent.—that is, 3,450 applications in May 1995, compared with 1,754 in May 1996. I can tell your Lordships today that the June figures follow exactly the same pattern; namely, 3,630 for June 1995 compared with 1,730 for June 1996, making a fall of 52 per cent.

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Why have those figures fallen so dramatically? The only possible reason is the one that I have claimed all along. Very many asylum applications are in reality benefit applications: nothing more, nothing less. It is access to our benefit system which drives them and not a genuine fear of persecution. The genuine asylum seeker comes here not to get benefits but for safety and protection from persecution. It is not the genuine refugee who responds to economic incentives; it is the economic migrant masquerading as an asylum seeker who responds to such incentives.
The three-day amendment which your Lordships passed and which the Commons have overturned would reward those who entered this country claiming to be coming here on business, for a visit, on holiday, or to study. One, two or three days after giving an assurance that, while here, they would have no recourse to public funds, they would be able to change their story and gain immediate access to our benefits system and to the very public funds that they said they did not require.
The argument in favour of three days is that people are so frightened when they arrive at immigration that they do not tell the truth. They therefore require three days to calm down and make contact with friends and advisers who will help them claim for asylum.
That is the point made by Mr. John McCarthy in a letter which I and a number of your Lordships received at the weekend. But it is a misunderstanding of what the amendment is about. The amendment is about benefit claims, not claims for asylum. The idea that asylum seekers have to address the complex application procedure and reveal the full details of their circumstances on arrival is, quite simply, false. All they need to do is to say that they want to claim asylum. It is wrong to suggest, as John McCarthy does in his letter, that they will not have the opportunity to put their case later. I can assure your Lordships that they will be able to discuss their case after seeking the support and advice of friends or support agencies.
I have also checked the statistics. Your Lordships will recall that in 1995 out of every 100 applicants, only five were accepted by the Home Office as fulfilling the requirements for asylum. Moreover, the figure does not rise, as your Lordships might expect if the three day argument was sustainable, but actually falls to 3.5 in 100. Therefore, the number of bogus asylum seekers in the three day sub-set is actually greater than the total population of genuine asylum seekers.
As I have assured your Lordships on many occasions in the past, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—to stop, inhibit or frighten anyone who is asking for asylum the moment that they arrive on these shores.
So why do they delay? One reason is the influence of agents—particularly the racketeers of the asylum industry who advise that it is best to claim in-country. This is because those who claim in-country are much more difficult to remove at the end of the asylum process than are those who claim on arrival. Those who seek to abuse the asylum process as a means of prolonging their stay in the UK clearly have an incentive to delay their claim until they are already in this country.
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Genuine refugees need no such incentive. They come to this country purely to seek asylum and can reasonably be expected to do so on their arrival here.
Your Lordships' House has considered this issue on six different occasions including today. The other place has considered the issue on four different occasions. There is neither the need nor the justification for your Lordships to take the highly unusual step of sending another amendment back to the other place. I commend the acceptance of the Commons' clearly arrived at decision not to accept your Lordships' three day amendment.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 24A to Lords Amendment No. 24.—(Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
COMMONS AMENDMENT No. 24B TO LORDS AMENDMENT No. 24, AS AMENDED
24B Leave out lines 10 and 11.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 24B to Lords Amendment No. 24.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 24B to Lords Amendment No. 24.—(Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.)
AMENDMENT TO COMMONS AMENDMENT No. 24B
24BA At end insert ("and insert—
"(1A) An asylum seeker (as defined in regulations) who—

(a) makes a claim for asylum within three working days of the day of his arrival in the United Kingdom; and

(b) is able to satisfy the Secretary of State as to the date of his arrival in the United Kingdom,

shall for all purposes be treated as if he had made a claim for asylum immediately upon his arrival in the United Kingdom."").
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I beg to move as an amendment to Commons Amendment No. 24B, Amendment No. 24BA. The Minister, in addressing the first amendment in this group of amendments, told your Lordships that the matter has been before this House six times and before the House of Commons four times. That is stretching it a bit. The House will recall that the Government's intention to implement these changes by order was ruled to be unlawful by the Court of Appeal between the Report stage and Third Reading in this House, the Bill having already passed through all its stages in the House of Commons. Therefore, in order to make lawful what had been declared unlawful, the Government were obliged to bring amendments to the Bill in the form of a new clause, at Third Reading—in other words, at the last stage in the second Chamber.
Under pressure—and it was only under pressure—they agreed to a recommitment of this part of the Bill so that the matter could be discussed with rather more freedom than was possible at Third Reading. Under pressure—and only under pressure—they agreed that the Third Reading should not take place on the same

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day as the Committee on recommitment. Therefore, as far as the Government are concerned, these precise measures have been debated only once in your Lordships' House, and the Opposition succeeded in achieving a little more—a very modest amount more—flexibility. Of course, earlier versions of the regulations had been debated before by the House of Commons but these amendments were considered only once—on Monday last—on a consideration of a Lords amendment.
This is a revising chamber. In the classical expression of the duties of a revising chamber, it is the responsibility of this House to ask another place to think again. That is exactly what is proposed in the amendment before your Lordships today. The House of Commons has had only one opportunity to consider this matter. I seek to show—and believe I can show—that the basis of that debate was considerably mistaken and that a much better debate on the amendment which is now before the House can take place.
It is entirely proper—without in any way challenging the primary right of the elected Chamber to have its way in the end—to say to the House of Commons that on this occasion it is possible to do better, either than we did in our first amendments or than it did when it considered the matter for the first time on 15th July.
The whole basis upon which the Government are approaching this matter is based on a fallacy. The fallacy is that there is something more genuine about an asylum application at the port of entry rather than a subsequent application. We all know that there will be—as the Government persist in calling them—bogus applications. At any time there will be people who will seek economic rather than political asylum, but that can happen whether at the port of entry or later.
But the evidence of the success of applications for asylum goes, if anything, in the other direction. In the first four months of this year there were 775 successful applications for asylum, of which 610 were in-country applications—in other words, after the time of entry—and only 165 were made at the port of entry. It may be said that the first four months of this year were not typical, but in every single one of the past four years the proportion of in-country applicants who, in the end, are granted asylum or exceptional leave to remain is higher than the comparable proportion of applications at the port of entry.
It must be abundantly clear from the evidence that a comparison between in-country applications and port of entry applications does not in any way form a distinction between genuine and bogus applications.
What the Government are doing, at the very best, is a crude attempt to cut down on the number of applications by starving people out—that is what it comes to—without regard to the justice of those applications and without regard to the likelihood of them succeeding. The Secretary of State for Social Security, Mr. Lilley, was of course addressing a rather different amendment when he made his speech to the House of Commons last Monday. It is nevertheless necessary to
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consider in detail the arguments that he put and to consider the way in which they are answered by the amendment before your Lordships today.
The first point he made concerned illegal immigrants. He went on about illegal immigrants. In common parlance everyone knows what illegal immigrants are. Illegal immigrants are people who come in in small boats off the coast of Dorset, or in containers. The term used in immigration law is nothing to do with illegal immigrants; it is illegal entrants. The Secretary of State appears to mean people who say something different when they arrive to what they said before, or say subsequently.
The vast majority of people who reach this country at all—whether or not they tell the truth about being asylum applicants when they arrive here—have had to do something in order to reach our shores in the first place. They have had to tell lies to someone to get out of their countries and to obtain a visa for this country which gets them onto a plane or a ship and into the tender hands of our immigration officials at the port of entry. However, the Secretary of State seems to think there is something magical about the words "illegal immigrants" which applies only to those people who arrive in this country and do not immediately declare themselves to be asylum seekers. He also made the point—which was valid for the previous amendment—that there is no secure way of telling whether someone has arrived in this country within the relevant past three days. I acknowledge that point. It could have been amended by a further amendment in the House of Commons. It has been corrected by our amendment which requires that the asylum seeker,
"is able to satisfy the Secretary of State as to the date of his arrival in the United Kingdom".
He could do that by means of a passport stamp, a travel document or other means, but it is the Secretary of State who has to be satisfied. The onus is entirely on the asylum seeker. If it is argued that there might be an appeal to the social security appeals tribunal—although I notice the Minister did not make that point—the appeal can only be made on a matter of fact. I remind the House that benefit is not payable while that appeal is awaiting decision.
The second point the Secretary of State made was that somehow the availability of immigration law appeal rights would stop the Government from returning an applicant to a safe third country. The amendment deals with that point by stating that the asylum seeker,
"shall for all purposes be treated as if he had made a claim for asylum immediately upon his arrival".
In other words, he has no rights other than asylum rights. He certainly has no rights beyond those of any port of entry asylum seeker. It has been confirmed by learned counsel that this means that a claimant who takes advantage of this amendment could indeed be returned to a safe third country. The only right gained under this amendment is the right to benefit. That right to benefit is, of course, means tested. I shall return to that matter.
Mr. Lilley also said that the Government are not allowed to discriminate against illegal immigrants under the terms of the Geneva Convention. That is indeed the

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case. I remind the House that the Geneva Convention states specifically that unorthodox or even illegal means of exit or entry should not debar an applicant from the right to apply for asylum, or indeed to be given asylum. There is no distinction at all as regards discrimination against illegal immigrants or illegal applicants in the amendment as drafted.
Mr. Lilley made a point of referring to the availability of benefit throughout the appeal process as well as regarding the original application. Our amendment removed the discretion for the Government to apply regulations to make sure that that was not the case. It was never our intention that benefit should be paid throughout an appeal process. As Ministers made clear in response to a later amendment, that would have been an open invitation to everyone to appeal. Therefore the amendment before the House today describes an asylum seeker "as defined in regulations". In other words, it returns to the Secretary of State and the Government the power to insist that those who appeal against an adverse decision are not therefore entitled to benefit.
The Secretary of State—and the Minister today—talked about the means of support which an applicant may claim to have when he comes to this country and subsequently makes an asylum application. I remind the House that these benefits are means tested. Mr. Lilley confirmed that to the House of Commons last Monday. If the applicant has convinced immigration officials that he has adequate means of support, he will not obtain benefit when he comes to this country. If that is not the case, the investigation carried out by immigration officials at the port of entry is not detailed enough and is based on inadequate evidence. The benefit is based entirely on a means test and those who have means of support—and can show they have means of support—will not get benefit. Every single argument that the Government have put against our previous amendments is either not true or has been answered in the amendment which is before your Lordships today.
The Minister may point to the cost of these amendments. The figure has varied a great deal. It started at £80 million a year on the basis that it would include benefit while a rejected applicant was appealing. Therefore we can take off at least half of that and we are down to £40 million a year. We should consider the fact that only 5 per cent. of in-country applications are made within the first three days. I acknowledge that the number of applications made in the first three days would increase if this amendment were carried but we are still talking about a small proportion of the total number of applications. It may emerge on proper investigation that the figure would be £10 million a year. I think that is probably a high figure. I say without fear even of the spin doctors in Conservative Central Office when they come to write their election manifestos that if it costs £10 million a year for us to be a civilised society and to prevent people in our country living in destitution when they have done no wrong and have committed no crime, that is a price worth paying. It is up to the Government to make sure that the cost is as low as possible. It is up to us as civilised people to make sure that there are not destitute people in our society.
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Moved, That Amendment No. 24BA, as an amendment to Commons Amendment No. 24B, be agreed to.—(Lord McIntosh of Haringey.)
3.45 p.m.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey. I make no apology to the House for returning to this subject. The Minister has pointed out that it is an issue which we have discussed on a number of occasions. However, as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, emphasised, the specific amendment we are now considering has not been considered frequently in this House. Indeed it has been considered on only one previous occasion and in a somewhat different form.
I therefore make no apology for returning to this subject even though I recognise that the House has spent a great deal of time on it. I can think of few Bills with which I have been associated—either in this House or another place—where there has been such a wide sense of concern and disquiet and a real effort made to try to modify its terms. The opposition to the Bill goes far beyond the traditional parties who undertake that role. The opposition—the attempt to alter the Bill—includes almost all the Churches, large numbers of non-governmental organisations, large numbers of people directly concerned with the welfare of refugees and large numbers of members of the party opposite in both Houses of Parliament. This is not simply a normal party argument. It has elicited, I believe much to the credit of this country, a large degree of anxiety and concern. All the argument has in effect boiled down to the one amendment that we are considering this afternoon. I shall make my remarks brief but I hope to the point, supplementing what has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh.
First, those moving the amendment have attempted to meet the objections raised in another place by the Secretary of State for Social Security. The objections were, first, that there was no way of guaranteeing that we would know within three days that an asylum seeker had entered this country. We believe that we have met that argument by laying the burden of proof on the person seeking asylum. It will be up to him or her to show when he or she entered the country. If he is unable to do so, this amendment will not benefit him.
Secondly, it has been argued in another place that a further difficulty arose from the original amendment; namely, that those who made in-country applications would obtain a degree of additional protection which they would not receive if they applied at the port of entry. That has been dealt with precisely in the amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, we have had the powerful advice of learned counsel that the amendment meets that difficulty.
When objecting to the amendment in another place, the Secretary of State for Social Security made two substantial arguments: first, that to distinguish between what he described as illegal immigrants and those whom we attempt to protect in the amendment would be contrary to the Geneva Convention of 1951. This very

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morning we have had a fax directly from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees giving its opinion that there is no such conflict.
The second objection related to the difficulty of people arriving at an airport not making an application at the airport or port of entry because they did not understand the specific procedures of this country. The simple case is that asylum seekers from countries with a long history of torture and of fighting against the human rights of their citizens are the least likely to have any idea about the procedures of this country. How are they supposed to learn what those procedures are? How are they supposed to read Hansard of the House of Commons of 15th July, since in most cases they do not even speak our language?
A question was raised in another place by the honourable Member for Finchley (at col. 850 of the Official Report) in the debate of 15th July 1996. The Member for Finchley asked how people who arrive in this country in a state of fear and trauma understand that they have to claim asylum at the airport. In responding to that simple and direct question, the Secretary of State for Social Security referred only—I repeat "only"—to the difficulties that might arise if an airport or a port of entry had no interpreter able to interpret the language of the person seeking asylum. He did not address the issue raised by the honourable Member for Finchley.
I hope that we may receive an assurance from the Government that notices will be put up in airports in the main languages of people seeking asylum—those include the tribal language of Rwanda and Burundi—telling them that they must make application immediately if they wish to have their case considered. I have seen no such notice in Heathrow and I do not believe such notices are available generally. As regards the first problem—of how the genuine asylum seeker is to be able to satisfy the rules now laid down—I suggest that we have had no satisfactory reply.
The distinction frequently made by Ministers between those who apply in-country and those who apply at the port of entry has been dealt with in part by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. He pointed out that out of 775 successful asylum seekers in the first four months of this year, no fewer than 615 made their claims from inside this country. The reason is plain. Most asylum seekers not knowing our procedures turn to a Church, a voluntary organisation or other members of their community for advice. To do so is the simplest thing in the world. But how do they seek that advice until they are able to get hold of a telephone in this country or an address? On common sense grounds, it is unreasonable not to give some time for people to be able to approach those organisations which can help them. We on this side of the House have continually insisted that we are only too happy to help in any way we can where there is reason to believe that there are improper or fraudulent organisations operating in this field, as indeed there are. There are also many outstanding and decent bodies.
Let me give a couple of examples of the kind of people who apply within three days but not at the port of entry. The examples are drawn from a refugee legal centre—a thoroughly resectable body which has public
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finance to assist it. One is an Angolan youngster under the age of 18 who applied two days after arriving in this country for the straightforward reason that he did not know what to do. The adjudicator found that it was wholly reasonable for a young person to seek advice before making an application and upheld his case.
The second example was a badly tortured Iranian. He had had his legs broken in torture in Iran for the reprehensible crime of supporting democracy in that country. In prison he had his crutches taken away from him so that he had to crawl everywhere. Having finally reached this country, after advice he made an application within three days.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness will allow me to intervene. Can she tell the House what the young man told the immigration officers as he entered this country?
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will know. He may have details of the case that I do not have. He shakes his head happily. I also know that the decision finally was made in the young man's favour.
Perhaps I may continue with the arguments that I wish to put before the House. A further argument is that in some countries there is nowhere to apply for papers to enter this country. For example, for many months there was no British Embassy in Bosnia—yet Bosnia was one of the countries most afflicted by refugees seeking in some cases to flee from genocide.
Finally, I turn to one other issue which is extremely disturbing. Perhaps the Minister can throw some light on it. We understand that on 4th June 1996 a draft resolution was put forward by the steering committee of senior officials which serves the so-called K4 Committee of the third pillar—the pillar concerned with internal security. I remind the House that this is not within the European Union structure. It does not involve the European Commission. It is the intergovernmental structure on which the British Government insisted at the Maastricht discussions and under the Treaty of the European Union was protected as an intergovernmental structure within which individual governments were free to exercise a veto. It is not a European Community structure. That draft resolution, promulgated on 4th June, called upon all countries involved to ensure that full information was available at ports of entry and that a co-ordinator was appointed to concern himself or herself with procedures for asylum. The draft resolution indicated that there ought to be adequate maintenance—and I emphasise the phrase—for those seeking asylum status when they reach the country concerned. It also indicated that there should be information in all the most probable languages available to refugees.
That was a draft resolution, not a final resolution. To the best of my knowledge it has never been mentioned to either House in the course of our debates. It might conceivably have influenced our view, especially on the claim that Britain is in some sense a peculiarly soft touch, since it affected all the other countries of the European Union as well as ourselves. The resolution has never been part of the discussions in which we have

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been able to take part. In my view, in democratic terms it is disturbing that both this House and another place should not have been aware of that draft resolution. Our Government were clearly participants, as a member of the steering committee of senior officials.
The amendment is the end of a long process of attempting to make the Bill more humane and compassionate. We believe that it richly deserves your Lordships' support, not only for the arguments behind it but also because noble Lords have repeatedly attempted to amend the Bill and draw the attention of another place to those attempts. The amendment should be supported not least because of the tremendous breadth of support far beyond this House for an attempt to qualify the more brutal and sharp-edged elements of the Bill. I support the amendment.
4 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I do not know whether the Minister has an answer to the two well argued speeches to which your Lordships have just listened. It seems to me that both the noble Lord opposite and the noble Baroness made a strong case for the amendment, although naturally I, and no doubt, many others will have to reserve a decision as to how we vote, if there is a Division, until we have heard my noble friend's answer. I warn him, however, that he has a strong case to answer. I wish him well.
Lord Jakobovits: My Lords, in the absence of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Runcie—I am sorry, I see that he is here, and I shall therefore re-phrase the remark, as the last claim I would ever make is to be able to replace or represent him. In the presence of the noble and right reverend Lord, I wish to say that it was thanks to the enormous kindness of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, at Third Reading of the Bill in this House, that I had an opportunity to give my general reflections more extensively in favour of the spirit of the amendment and of the Bill in general. Therefore, I can content myself with a few brief remarks.
Having either listened to the entire debates in both Houses or having read them in Hansard, I am deeply impressed at the degree of agreement between the two sides on the general thrust of the Bill. Both sides wish to favour the admission of genuine asylum seekers; both sides wish to exclude frauds. On that, there is a remarkable measure of agreement from all sides. The only remaining argument concerns the three days of grace—whether to have the cut-off at the moment of entry or three days later.
Surely, on a matter of such relatively limited consequence it is not worthwhile spoiling the national reputation that we have in this country for humanitarian attitudes. I fear that if the amendment is voted down, that is precisely the message we will send to the world; quite unnecessarily, because there is little difference of substance involved. It may be that the reason some people are so concerned or even disturbed over the policies favoured by the amendment is that we, as a nation, have never in our lifetime faced the need to be political refugees. Therefore, we do not know what it feels like. We should consider that large parts of the
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world today are, alas, deeply afflicted; a few people, by chance, reach our shores and seek the normal courtesies of a welcome. Just in case they are genuine refugees, surely we should not wish to deny them the benefit of the doubt for three days. Therefore, I appeal to the Government not to allow the matter further to divide us and harm the reputation of our country throughout the world. I appeal to them to support the amendment, considerably modified as it now is, and allow it to pass without further Division in the House.
Lord Runcie: My Lords, I do not wish to remain silent since I might otherwise be suspected of being a bogus amendment supporter. Since attention has been drawn to my presence, I wish to state that the point made by those proposing the amendment seems so precisely drawn that I would not wish to enter again into general arguments which I agree have been thoroughly rehearsed in this House. The Secretary of State in another place made some good points rejecting certain arguments that we advanced. However, he said quite precisely that if he had had more time and if the request for the benefit of three days had been more precisely drawn, he might have allowed it.
I believe that those who framed this amendment have met the reservations which the Secretary of State advanced. We have now drawn it very precisely in regard to meeting his arguments. Those who are closest to the suffering and the serious problems of a small but significant number of people are gravely disturbed. I mean Church groups, local community groups, voluntary societies and ethnic groups who know that there is a real problem. It has not been thoroughly tackled by the argument that if we clear away the bogus applications, the others will all receive fair treatment. There remains a problem which is not answered by the statement—which is reasonable and which I personally accept—that much of the help will be made easier to provide if bogus asylum seekers are dealt with firmly. But there remains a group of people that could be attended to by passing this amendment. It is up to us to treat the case on its merits, and treat the amendment on its merits. I ask the Government to think again.
Lord Carr of Hadley: My Lords, I urge my noble friends on the Front Bench to support this amendment. I say to them and to my colleagues on these Back Benches that I do not use this amendment as a back door through which to attack the whole principle of the Bill; nor, so far as I know, do other noble Lords who support it. I accept strongly and completely that the trends of asylum seeking in recent years have been such that any government would have felt compelled to take strong measures to bring it to order. I regret that that is so, but I believe it is. I wish that it were not necessary; but it is necessary. It is necessary to switch from our previous principle to the principle of saying that asylum seekers must declare themselves to immigration officers at the moment of entry, or almost at that moment. The point under debate is: "almost at that moment".

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With respect, it is all very well for those of us who are sitting reasonably comfortably in this House to imagine that people can simply arrive, go to an immigration officer and say that they do or do not want to seek asylum. None of us would have any trouble.
I wonder, however, how many of us have been at the point of entry. I must confess that for some 22 or 23 years I have not. Things may have changed a lot in that time. However, when I was Home Secretary, on more than one occasion I deliberately visited our ports of entry when I received information that a large number of immigrants were due to arrive, to see what it was like. I do not for one moment criticise the actions and intentions of our immigration officers. At that time I was merely extremely glad that I was not one of them. You see those large numbers descending upon you. Some of them no doubt deliberately wish to take you in; but many are pretty helpless and incapable of explaining what they want, even in the simplest terms. All our human instincts tell us that we owe it to them to say that they ought to do it at the point of entry or almost at the point of entry. If this amendment referred to a period of three months, or even three weeks, I should not support it. But I believe we can tolerate three days.
I was disappointed when the Government and the other place decided not to accept your Lordships' amendment, which I supported a week or two ago. I accept that one or two potential loopholes in it were pointed out which I had not perceived at the time. However, the amendment as now drafted blocks those up. If my noble friends on the Front Bench say that it does not block them up and in some way they should be blocked up, all well and good. But I believe that we owe it to our own reputation to give a maximum of three days, with the added safeguards, including this amendment. I for one could not do anything but vote for it, although I hope that it will not come to a vote.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, I am conscious that I have sat through much of this debate without taking part in it. I have not spoken before. However, this is a rather special issue. I apologise for doing what I would not normally do and joining in at this point in the debate.
It is a tragic fact that for the vast majority of people in the world the lowest levels of social security in this country would be bliss. I think we are all agreed on that. Everybody on all sides accepts that there have to be controls. The only argument is an extraordinarily narrow one. It fascinates me, and it has been mentioned by several speakers. What we are discussing is whether we should give people this very small period of three days to sort themselves out, get over their confusion and declare themselves as seeking asylum.
The problem is not the failure to seek asylum. At every airport in the world you have to say why you are coming. It is not just a matter of stating that you are here on business—because the next questions, if you are a six-foot Aryan looking perfectly respectable, are: "What sort of business? How long do you propose to stay? Do you have a return air ticket?".
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The alternative is to lie. I do not say that in a pejorative sense. I understand someone lying if he sees the possibility of a different life for himself and, later, for his family if he can introduce them. I should do so myself in that situation. But the fact is that that person would have to lie consistently over a number of areas.
I cannot believe that a person seeking asylum in a foreign country, where he has never lived before and where he will have to spend a great deal of money, does not have some idea of which country he is going to. I find it difficult to believe that in most cases such a person does not have some idea, from his associates for example, of the sort of questions that will be asked. He must have thought of nothing else on the aircraft or the ship but what he is going to say. Rightly or wrongly, when he arrives he has the choice of saying, "I seek asylum", or, "I am a student; a businessman; I am joining somebody or other; yes, I do have money; I won't be a charge on the state", and a whole pile of things which he knows perfectly well are not true.
What then happens if he goes away and is given three days to apply? I repeat that I do not criticise the man for doing that in the situation from which he no doubt comes and for the reasons he seeks to come to this country. But what does he do then? He does not book into a local hotel and leave his address; he goes underground.
A case can be made for saying that the method of entry into the country should be easier. That can be argued indefinitely. It can certainly be argued that more should be done: notices should put up; more people should be available; and a number of other measures should be taken. I find myself unable to accept with any degree of logic that it makes any sense to have controls and then to allow people who have demonstrably lied in order to get round those controls, albeit for the best of reasons, to have a three-day start on the authorities. It is something I do not understand. For me, it stretches credibility too far.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said, the question is whether we intend to ask another place to think again. That entitlement is very rarely used. This is a particularly sensitive time. The party opposite has certain proposals that will affect the ethos and independence of this House, and there are constitutional consequences which urge a degree of caution.
I am grateful to see the noble Earl, Lord Russell, in his place. I wish to refer to his letter in The Times today. The noble Earl says that to accede to this amendment and to ask another place to think again would be a mere exercise of executive control. It would be far more than that. Let us face it; in effect we should be running the gauntlet of confrontation with another place which has, in substance, already considered this argument and expressed its will.
Lord Renton: By a big majority.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: That does not matter, my Lords. It has expressed its will. The other place has expressed its will—at a sensitive time, in view of the

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policies of, I hesitate to say, destruction of your Lordships' House. This is a sensitive time when we should walk with care and caution.
The name of the game this afternoon is not ping-pong. It is much more akin to Russian roulette. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, seems to ignore all the sensitive constitutional considerations which must be taken into account in this matter. There is a paradox here. Perhaps, if I may say so without offence, it is an apparently somewhat cynical paradox. The party which, if it gets the chance, is moving towards a form of instant government without the Parliament Acts—
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, is the noble Lord accusing me of being cynical? He used the word "cynical" about what we are doing this afternoon.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: In my respectful opinion, my Lords, much as I respect the noble Lord, I feel that if he would open his mind to the situation, he might see that there is an appearance of cynicism behind this. Perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to explain. What in effect is happening is that the party opposite, for which the noble Lord speaks presumably on this occasion, is committed—unlike the noble Earl, Lord Russell—to the formation of a form of instant government without the Parliament Acts, and on this occasion, he now has resort to the Parliament Acts to delay and defeat the will of the elected Chamber. If we were to accept this amendment, the effect could but be to add grist to the mill grinding away at our own delaying powers. So much for the constitutional position.
As to the merits of the argument, I totally accept what my noble friend the Minister said about the tide of applications, the abuse, the benefit applications by economic migrants and the racketeers. In a previous debate, with other noble Lords I supported the idea that there should be clear, precise, cautionary information given at all ports of entry. I believe that on that matter I join forces with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. But I oppose this amendment, which extends benefit rights so widely—indeed to illegal entrants. Every word that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, rings only too true to my ears.
Fewer than one in 10 have been found to be genuine asylum seekers. Only 3 per cent. of asylum appeal decisions result in the grant of refugee status. With the greatest respect and humility before the noble and right reverend Lord, I wonder whether in regard to constitutional consequences he truly knows what he does. He, of us all, will remember Ecclesiastes, Chapter III. Perhaps he may ponder on a time to insist and a time not to insist. I most respectfully suggest that this of all times is a time for restraint.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool: My Lords, I think that it would be good if your Lordships' House came back to the subject of asylum seekers. I support the amendment. I believe that it is a genuine attempt—and the Government should recognise it as such—to meet the detailed objections that were made in another place to the amendment which was carried with support from
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all sides of your Lordships' House. Like other noble Lords, I have read Peter Lilley's letter to Julian Brazier, in which he set out his detailed reasons for opposing the amendment. Putting—as the amendment does—the onus of proof of date of arrival on the applicant would meet his main objections and the subsequent wording:
"shall for all purposes be treated as if he had made a claim for asylum immediately"
prevents the door from being opened more widely.
The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, spoke of someone entering as a businessman being rewarded. Does he truly believe that someone would be admitted today as a businessman and successfully apply on Thursday as an asylum seeker? The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, rightly drew attention to the higher proportion of in-country applications. Noble Lords will see the force of that and the danger that genuine asylum seekers will be returned to countries where they are in great danger.
This is a very modest amendment which speaks of "within three working days". Do we have to speak all over again of people who may have been the victims of torture or have reason to flee for their lives, who come, not knowing the language, to a country which has, as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, regulations that are just as difficult as sheer language problems? Of course many are scared when they face officialdom again. The noble Lord, Lord Carr, made it clear that it is not a calm and easy situation. The Minister spoke logically and coolly, as though it were a calm and straightforward situation when someone is desperately hoping that he might be able to find a place of refuge. I regret that in his description he made no reference to the kind of situations from which asylum seekers may have come. Three days to take some advice does not mean a change in principle from applying at the port of entry.
I led an ecumenical delegation to see Mr. Howard last autumn. This withdrawal of benefit was still only an idea at that time but we questioned him about it. He told me that he believed that Britain was regarded as a soft touch. Perhaps he feels that something good has been achieved now that Britain is regarded as a brutal touch, and fewer asylum seekers, including fewer genuine asylum seekers, try to come here. I am dismayed that Britain is regarded as a brutal touch.
I am very disturbed to note that in the letter to which I have already referred from the Secretary of State for Social Security to Julian Brazier, a Minister of the Crown continues to use the loaded word "bogus"— I regret that the Minister used it again today—to describe those who do not qualify by the Home Office rules as asylum seekers. Ministers repeatedly quote the figures that 4 per cent. are granted the status of genuine asylum seekers and therefore 96 per cent. are bogus. It is a classic case of putting up a new set of hurdles and then declaring that anyone who fails to leap over them is bogus. We should stop using the word in that context.
The Government claim too that our fears of many genuine asylum seekers being made destitute by the withdrawal of benefit have proved to be exaggerated. The Refugee Council assisted over 1,000 asylum

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seekers who lost benefits. Together with other bishops, I wrote a letter to The Times in which we quoted a church in north London. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford visited that church, together with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester. Twelve asylum seekers were being given refuge at the time.
It interested me to discover that the Daily Mail ferreted out where the church was and sent a team to spend the day checking up on what we had said. No doubt it would have splashed the story across the paper if it could have disproved our letter. But it was just as we had said and the Daily Mail printed nothing. Do not let facts disturb a campaign!
I am thankful that non-governmental organisations and Church bodies are offering support to some of those distressed people. The minister of the United Reformed Church said:
"I simply cannot recognise the picture presented by the Government of the 'bogus' asylum seeker, the 'economic refugee' here to take advantage of our 'honeypot' of generous benefits, as in any way an accurate description of the people who have passed through our church. None of them would put up with the hardships, indignities and sheer discomfort of this situation purely voluntarily. Words fail me to describe the demeaning and humiliating experience undergone by these people, most of whom have left families, friends, homes, jobs and roots in order to endure this miserable existence".
I hope people will see that it is not a change of the principle already agreed by the Government and will support the amendment.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, it is an uncomfortable position in which to be as a Back-Bencher when one's head and one's heart pull in opposite directions. In private life one responds almost inevitably to the heart; in government affairs one must keep them in balance, and that is what we on the Back-Benches are seeking to do. I find the names subscribed to the correspondence about these amendments and some of the speakers to be people for whom I have an extremely high regard. But perhaps my noble friend the Minister can help some of us in our difficulties.
First, we must forget the issue of the economic refugee; compelling though it is, it is not the question before this House, as the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, rightly said. It is an emotive issue but it is not relevant to our present debate. We are discussing a relatively small number of people who come to this country in search of freedom from fear and persecution and who satisfy the criteria set, as I understand it, by the United Nations.
Is it the case that every airline is under a duty to secure that the passengers coming to this country have legitimate papers to gain them entry? If so, presumably those people had to go to a British diplomatic power based abroad in order to secure those papers. That is the first opportunity at which, without any stress or duress, the terms under which entry to this country is accepted can be made clear to them. It may be that because local people are employed by those embassies, the prospective refugees may feel that such a declaration of interest imperils them and will keep it to themselves.
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Next, the prospective refugees board the aircraft and before they can land in this country they must complete a landing card. It is a simple document. Is that document—if not, can it be?—presented in such a way that it contains, in most of the languages likely to be spoken by refugees, a description of the process to the extent that either one declares one's hand at the port of entry or one loses one's chance? It is against that loss of chance that this amendment is directed.
We next come to the point of entry. It would be helpful to know what are the conditions there. My noble friend Lord Carr spoke of his sight of it many years ago. It would be helpful to know whether things are the same now and whether translation services are readily and easily available. That is the point at which those who have not declared their hand at the embassy, who obtained entry papers perhaps under false pretences to gain access to the aeroplane and who were not persuaded by the landing card that they should declare their hand at once may be retrieved.
Those are the safety nets. Another one was usefully made clear by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams; that is, appeals after entry against an unreasonable requirement to make a declaration. Two cases were cited which I should have thought exactly match the criteria which describe the people the amendment seeks to protect.
It seems to me that there are at least five levels of protection in existence. My noble friend the Minister must convince your Lordships that those levels of protection exist and work. I found the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, coming as he does from the Cross-Benches and not always a friend to the Government, to be a practical illustration of real life; and it is real life we are talking about and not the heart.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, I intervene briefly on the constitutional and parliamentary situation. Your Lordships heard the other considerations admirably and indeed movingly presented.
What has happened is that your Lordships carried an amendment. The other place disagreed with that amendment so that at the outset there is a collision. The Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, spoke of the elected Chamber as though election were the sole source of political legitimacy, particularly when the Chamber was elected many years ago and quite inconsequent of the issue before your Lordships.
The Minister suggested that the amendment was unprecedented. On the contrary, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, would have been fully entitled to ask your Lordships to insist on the amendment passed last time, it having been only once considered by the other place. That is a generally accepted constitutional parliamentary precept, though it is not one which I am prepared to accept. I do not believe "the other place" is the right term. It is almost always "the Government".
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, put forward a compromise which meets the points made by the Secretary of State in the other place. That is entirely in accordance with precedent and with practice. The

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amendment seeks to narrow the difference between the two Houses, and I hope your Lordships will accept it in that spirit. It will be open to the Government, if they wish, to fine tune the difference still more, though it seems to me, as at present advised, that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, met the point that the Secretary of State made.
I repeat that what the amendment is doing is seeking to minimise and, in the end, to eliminate the difference between the two Houses. That is entirely in accordance with parliamentary propriety and with your Lordships' role in the constitution. On the contrary, if noble Lords were to accept that once the elected Chamber has expressed a view that is an end of the matter it would be an abnegation of your Lordships' role in the constitution; indeed, it would concede a good part of the argument that is at present being levelled against your Lordships' Chamber. For those various reasons as well as the powerful arguments that your Lordships have heard from the Front Benches on my right and from a former Home Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Carr, I hope that your Lordships will support this amendment.
The Lord Bishop of Coventry: My Lords, it was far more important that your Lordships should hear that magnificent contribution than anything from me. It is crucial to realise that the greater number of those whose applications for admission to asylum have been accepted are people who could not bring out the truth about their position at the point of entry. That is not because they are congenital liars. I know a number of these people; I have met them and many of the people working with them in the Churches and voluntary agencies. They will echo the minister from the United Reformed Church who was movingly quoted to us. It is absolutely clear that at that time they cannot properly articulate. They may even have prevaricated with a British embassy abroad in order to get here at all.
But numbers of those applying within three days have had their applications accepted. They have been recognised as genuine refugees who are absolutely within the terms of the Government's guidelines. It is extremely important to acknowledge that fear is a vastly paralysing and inhibiting emotion. Many people watching refugees arrive have seen the kind of state they are in. To criticise and cavil at them in those circumstances for not being totally honest is fatal. The three days provide precisely the kind of security which the right person will be able to use. They will be able to come to their senses and express their application properly within the time. That is the whole spirit of the amendment. Surely, most of us who have had anything to do with these people personally will eagerly accept the amendment.
4.45 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate has made a speech as valuable as that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale. I have no higher praise. I say to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Runcie, and the right reverend Prelate, how deeply grateful I am to the Christian Churches for what they have contributed in this debate in helping to restore my pride in my country.
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We have had a fascinating debate. I was particularly struck by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Carr of Hadley. What he said is in effect the words of Article 31(1) of the UN convention: people should not be penalised for illegal entry if thereafter, without delay, they put in a claim for asylum. The noble Lord is able to produce agreement out of dispute. He is able to spot the point of reconciliation in argument. His speech illustrates why I still believe that politics is not merely a skill but an honourable profession. I am most grateful.
To the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, I shall quote the remark made in this House by the first Lord Shaftesbury in 1675:
"My Lords, if you grow useless, you will soon grow burdensome".
I listened with care to the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, to restrict applications to the ports. But, regrettably, what the noble Lord is proposing is illegal under international law. It is illegal under Article 31(1) of the UN Convention on Refugees, which I quoted a moment ago.
Lord Elton: My Lords, perhaps I may clear the noble Earl's mind. I have not proposed anything except that the Minister shall make a clear exposition of certain points, which, I hope, cannot be illegal.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I am glad to hear that he was not in fact, as I imagined he was, proposing a restriction to the ports. That we cannot do not only because it is illegal, as incorporated in British law by Section 2 of the 1993 Act, but also because the Home Office, by its own admission, in speaking to the Social Security Advisory Committee, states that it is not able to keep a continuous 24-hour watch on all ports and airports. In those circumstances it is cruelty beyond compare to penalise people for not doing what the Home Office has not made it possible for them to do.
The Refugee Council found that 57 per cent. of people who did not benefit because they did not claim at the ports failed to do so out of ignorance. There are a great many other good reasons for not claiming at the ports. There is the need for advice, which has been touched on many times. The Refugee Legal Centre, representing people on appeal, says that its success rate is 20 per cent. compared with the normal rate of 3 per cent.—in other words, the chance of success is multiplied more than six-fold. That is one good reason for making an application in-country.
I heard the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, and I take the point he makes. But as my noble friend Lady Seear has told me many times, in politics one must choose the lesser of two evils. The noble Lord has drawn my attention to an evil, which I accept. However, I believe that starving innocent asylum seekers with a genuine claim is a worse evil. It is on that issue of priority that I take my stand.
The Minister made a great deal of the attraction of our benefits. He overrates them. There are two points here. The first is quantity and the second is access. In terms of quantity our benefits are now down to the

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mid-EU level, below the Netherlands and, to my surprise, I discovered, below those of Ireland. So people who come here because of the quantity of our benefits are misinformed. In terms of accessibility, refugees to this country now have worse access to benefits than in any other European country except Greece.
When the Minister boasts at having reduced the number of applications since January, he comes perilously close to appearing to admit the central contention of the Court of Appeal that the withdrawal of benefits threatens the right to seek asylum itself. That is a finding which the Government have not yet taken on board.
If, as the Minister claims, people who are deterred from seeking asylum here seek it in other countries in Europe, it means that we, by making ourselves less attractive and sending people to other countries, are not only performing a hostile act against those other countries but are also infringing the principle of the level playing field. The Minister knows how the European Union feels about that. My noble friend Lady Williams quoted a draft EU directive which would make illegal what the Government are now proposing to do. As things stand the Prime Minister needs another quarrel with the European Union as he needs a hole in the head.
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, I supported the Government last time with a heavy heart. I did not vote on the merits of the amendments in isolation but in the context of the Bill as a whole, balancing the Government's intentions overall. However, I recognise that the amendment that we are considering today has been restructured.
The Bill is to be applauded for getting to grips with the situation as it stands. However, the question is whether the root cause has been addressed. The unacceptable delays created by current procedures must disappear, preferably speedily. If that were done, I believe that it would greatly obviate the need for the benefits proposed in the amendment. However, I can reconcile myself to the backdating of claims in the event of a successful application. That is a good point. I have listened to the steps that are being taken to expedite current applications. However, I wish to press for further clarification. Are there any plans to introduce further procedural overhauls or is it considered that sufficient has been done? For my part, I do not want to see people on the streets as a result of cumbersome procedures. I should like those concerns to be allayed before I decide which Lobby to enter.
Lord Wolfson: My Lords, I should welcome guidance from my noble friend the Minister on two matters. First, can he give adequate assurances that no one will be sent back to a country with a bad human rights record? Secondly—this point was raised also by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby—will prominent notices be displayed in a variety of languages, and will interpreters be available, at ports of entry to point out to people the requirements of what will soon be the Asylum and Immigration Act?
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, it is late in the day and I shall be brief. But many people outside the Chamber, as well as inside, believe that this House has both a duty and an opportunity to put right what has been left undone by another place. Like other noble Lords, I believe that this is a reasonable, simple, honest and courteous amendment. It does not seek to upset the Government, only to present in a new way an argument which has already found favour with the majority in your Lordships' House.
This is not an amendment which fully reflects the views of that majority. We would have preferred our amendment in its original form. This is a fall-back position. Nonetheless, it is important: first, because it shows the strength of feeling in this House; secondly, because it meets the Government's principal objections; and, finally, because it shows genuine asylum seekers that this House, after all the speeches that have been made and all the votes that have been cast, still demonstrates the concern which the nation should reasonably expect of its Parliament. I say "concern" because I do not believe that we have yet reached the point of compassion which the Minister mentioned and, for lack of any further government support, the Churches and voluntary agencies may again be left to pick up the pieces.
If the amendment is not passed, I do not see how we can face genuine asylum seekers who seek our protection under a UN convention. I do not see how we can face the vast number of people in the voluntary sector who have supported, and campaigned for, genuine asylum seekers. I do not see how, hand on heart, we can say to them that we have achieved substantial changes to the Bill.
As your Lordships know, the amendment has all-party support—and not only in this House. Senior Members of the Conservative Party in another place want to see some of the improvements that have been made to the Bill carried forward to its enactment, including some made by this House, such as this amendment. I am not sure whether the Minister is supporting the amendment, but he may well plead that the Government are trying to be realistic and that they cannot afford to be charitable when they are perched between the cliffs of the Treasury on the one side and the deep blue sea of the general election on the other.
I remind the House that good housekeeping and charity are one thing; justice is another. This is an occasion when the Government could yet salvage some credit, and possibly some Conservative votes, from a Bill which has already tarnished Britain's generally good race relations and harmed its international reputation. I sincerely hope that the House will consider the wider implications and vote for the amendment.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, we have heard the case made for the amendment which would return the issue to the Commons for its further deliberation. I was slightly intrigued and not a bit amused that one of the arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, was that he wanted to give the other place the opportunity to have a much better debate. I found that a bit insulting to those of his

1203
right honourable and honourable friends who took part in the debate in another place. I listened to that debate and the other place seemed to go over all the issues and to debate all the ins and outs of the issue before arriving at its decision. I do not think that it is a good argument to say, "The other place did not have a very good debate last time; let's give honourable Members the opportunity of another debate." Although it is true that the House of Commons has considered this amendment only once, it has considered the policy on a number of occasions, going all the way back to the social security Statement of last November.
Before I turn to the detail of the amendment, perhaps I may say a word about the EU resolution because the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, made quite a lot of it. It is a non-binding resolution. It requires unanimity. I am sorry to disappoint noble Lords, but we shall not be agreeing to anything which is not compatible with this country's arrangements, and that includes our benefit arrangements in relation to asylum seekers.
The amendment would extend the right to benefit from those who apply on arrival to those who apply within three days of arrival. The matter has been argued almost entirely on the grounds that it is unfair to expect a genuine asylum seeker to apply on arrival. That point was made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool. The whole case has been predicated on disturbing descriptions of an asylum seeker's state of mind and the manner in which he is greeted on his arrival in this country.
Today, as at other stages, a picture has been painted for your Lordships of the manner in which genuine asylum seekers are greeted. I am sure that your Lordships have a pretty frightening mental picture of people in uniform, probably with guns, facing queues of frightened, traumatised people who are unable to think straight or even to speak—
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: Well, that is what your Lordships have been saying—
Noble Lords: No!
Earl Russell: My Lords, can the Minister tell us any other country which has attempted to restrict in-country applications as we are now doing?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, what I can do is to tell the noble Earl, as I have told him on a number of occasions, that most other countries in Europe—in fact, all other countries in Europe—have seen a decline in asylum applications while we have seen a considerable increase. We have to deal with the situation that confronts us. Other countries have chosen to cut down on immigration in other ways. We are doing it by this means. I believe that it is the right means.
Perhaps I may continue. That is the picture—
Lord Carr of Hadley: My Lords, I am sorry to have to interrupt my noble friend, but I was the noble Lord who referred to conditions at airports. I said that I had visited them. I went out of my way to paint exactly the opposite picture to the one that my noble friend has just mentioned and I resent his remarks greatly.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, if my noble friend had waited just a second, he would have realised that I was about to turn to what he said. I was not referring to what my noble friend said, but to the picture that I have heard painted over many weeks whenever the subject has been discussed. My noble friend rightly painted a different picture because he has been there—although not recently. I can advise my noble friend that I made such a visit last week because I found it difficult to listen to the accusations that were being made without being able to say from the Dispatch Box that I had been to see for myself. I do not know where my noble friend Lord Can went. I went to Heathrow Terminal 3, which is quite a busy entry point into the United Kingdom from all corners of the globe. I did not see any uniforms, perhaps apart from a few aircrew passing from their aircraft through the special channel into the UK. I certainly did not see any guns. I saw lots of people dressed in various costumes from the four corners of the world. I saw people on business, holiday and visits.
5 p.m.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I should like to ask the Minister which noble Lord referred to guns.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, today nobody has. However, a certain picture has been painted. Noble Lords do not like it when they get some of it back. I have listened to suggestions about how awful it is for somebody from abroad when he meets immigration staff. I am attempting to explain to your Lordships what it is actually like. Some of your Lordships may not like it, but here it is. Lots of people who pass through Heathrow come to visit or are in transit to other parts of the world. The atmosphere is quite relaxed; the queues are orderly. When one reaches the top of the queue two young ladies direct one to the next free desk in a long line of desks. The people behind those desks look ordinary. On a warm summer's evening last week the men were in shirt sleeves; the women wore summer dresses. From looking down the list of officers it was clear that a few had their origins in the very parts of the world from which the people coming off the aircraft had come. There was nothing in any way frightening about it.
Passports and landing cards are asked for. While the officer checks the passport and the name against his computer he asks two basic questions. He may ask other questions but he asks two basic questions: "How long are you here for?" and "What is the purpose of your visit?". He listens to the answers, and perhaps asks some more questions. It was for this reason that I intervened in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. I asked what the young man had said in reply to those

1205
two questions and any others that he might have been asked. Clearly, if he was in a poor physical state he would be asked other questions. What did he say? That is the point at which the individual says that he is here to claim asylum. The noble Lord, Lord Marsh, in a very powerful intervention, highlighted those questions and others which were asked to elicit those facts.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I was the rapporteur of the Council of Europe committee that looked into this very point. It was found that many of the economic refugees who had been briefed by people who took money from them were absolutely pat in their answers to the questions that were asked. However, many of the genuine asylum seekers were confused and did not give the right answers.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, has, perhaps accidentally, made my case for me. If they are genuine refugees and are disturbed and have not been well briefed by agents—as the noble Lord rightly points out, many people who arrive at the immigration desk have been well briefed—it is the easiest thing in the world to tell the truth and say that they are here to seek asylum.
As the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, said, the discussion rather depends on how the questions and answers proceed. For example, one lady from Australia was here to visit for the first time since she had gone to Australia as a wartime bride. That came out in the discussion. Another man with a well-travelled passport worked for the International Planned Parenthood Organisation. Another couple were on their way to New York. They were here for a week and showed their onward tickets. There was nothing forbidding or frightening to prevent someone coming here for asylum from saying so, as indeed many do. Therefore, if the suggestion that they cannot do so is right, none would do so, but many do apply for asylum at the point of entry.
Another point that arises is the language difficulty. If an individual cannot speak English and there is no one immediately available in the line who can speak the relevant language the individual is taken to a special suite with a waiting room and a series of interview rooms. I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that there is a well-oiled machine for finding an interpreter. Sometimes one is immediately available, because immigration authorities know those areas in the world from which people most commonly need the services of an interpreter. Sometimes it takes a few hours and the individual waits in the waiting room with a cup of coffee or whatever it may be, until an interpreter arrives. In a very few cases an interpreter cannot be found that day. In those circumstances, the person may be given temporary admission with an appointment to return to complete the formalities perhaps the next day. When the interview takes place, whether a few hours later or even the next day, with the interpreter present, the immigration officer can establish through the questions that I have already mentioned the length of stay and the reason for the visit. If the person is looking for asylum he or she can say so and the
1206
application is treated as an on-arrival application for benefit purposes. Even if the individual has to go away and return the next day because he does not speak English, or there is no one available who can speak his language, at that point it is still considered to be an at-port application and benefit will be granted.
I can stand at this Dispatch Box and say to those of your Lordships who are understandably concerned about genuine asylum seekers who pass through that hall at Heathrow that I saw absolutely nothing which would do anything other than reinforce in a genuine asylum seeker who had chosen this country as a safe haven his belief that he had indeed arrived in that safe country. Immigration officers are trained to look out for all kinds of people, including those who are fleeing. In particular, they want to help people who flee from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia, to name today's horror hot spots. They have probably heard more harrowing tales than most of us; and they told me a few.
One understands that people may have had to invent stories in order to leave their homeland, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, said, they do not need to repeat them when they arrive in this country.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, people who have had to tell lies to leave their country do not know that when they get here they will be treated differently.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, if they do not believe that they will be treated differently when they get here why do they seek to come here in the first place? That just proves my point. If these people have selected this country as a safe haven, surely they believe that when they arrive here they have arrived at a safe haven.
I underline that the issue before us does not actually concern asylum. Whether someone makes an application on' arrival or after he has been here for three days, three weeks, three months or even longer, or whether he has entered legally or illegally, his claim for asylum will be treated fairly and judged according to this country's international obligations. I can assure my noble friend Lord Wolfson that there is nothing in what we are discussing today that will send back someone who is a genuine asylum seeker. We are discussing solely access to the benefits system. I have said on a number of occasions that seven out of every 100 cases are found to be genuine asylum seekers and asylum is granted.
I can tell the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, that we want to improve the system. We have gone a long way to making considerable improvements. In 1994 there were 21,000 decisions; there were 27,000 in 1995; and we hope that there will be 37,000 this year. But if the numbers continue to rise the problem will become greater. We will have to run faster to stand still. Over the past six months there has been a considerable decline in the number of asylum seekers. We are beginning to make real progress with applications. That can only be to the benefit of genuine asylum seekers. In addition, we look sympathetically, in accordance with our long tradition as a safe haven, at those whose lives have been shattered by war and civil strife. Sixteen out of every 100 are so treated and are granted exceptional

1207
leave to remain. I am afraid that the remaining 77 have gained access to our benefits system on the back of the genuine few whom we all want to help.
The opposition amendment is presented as a modest change with limited consequences which will be of primary benefit to genuine refugees. I am afraid that that is not quite the case. While it remedies some of the defects of the amendment proposed three weeks ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham—I have rather missed her this afternoon as my normal sparring partner—it leaves a number of unresolved problems. It still rewards those who have entered illegally. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mackintosh, that there is no distinction between an illegal entrant and an illegal immigrant, as he suggested had been implied in the speech of my right honourable friend Mr. Peter Lilley. In both cases people enter this country in breach of immigration law either because they avoid control completely or because they deceive the immigration officers at passport control by means of false passports or whatever it may be.
With the best will in the world, when dealing with such a group it is just not possible to establish the three-day period. We can hardly be expected to take the word of someone who has already deliberately and knowingly broken the law. The organised racketeers of the asylum industry—I am afraid that they do exist—would soon tap a new and lucrative trade, providing people with bogus papers, helping to back their claim to have entered the previous day or the day before that. Even scrupulous pressure groups and lawyers would find much to dispute and litigate in a three-day decision. In practice, the only watertight way of operating a three-day grace period would be to exclude all illegals by demanding a stamped passport as proof of entry. Even that, I can assure noble Lords after my visit to Heathrow Terminal 3, would require careful scrutiny because forged and tampered passports do exist.
I do not believe that people who genuinely tell immigration officers that they are here on a visit, on holiday, on business, to study and will have no recourse to public funds while they are here will within three days decide to claim asylum with genuine reasons. Things do not change that fast. The reality is that they have used those reasons to gain benefit and then they change their position.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool may be confused, because if you need permission to enter you must either claim asylum or satisfy the authorities that you are here on business, as a tourist, to study or whatever it may be. The great majority of in-country applicants—excluding those who are here illegally—have said that they here on business, as tourists, to study. They would not get in if they had not said that. So, as I have said before, they have said something to the immigration authorities which just is not true. We should be encouraging them to tell the truth at the point of entry.
My noble friend Lord Elton asked me what information is available. Posters have been placed airside at Heathrow and Gatwick by the Immigration Law Practitioners Association advising passengers of
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the importance of claiming asylum on arrival in order to secure benefit entitlement. My noble friend's suggestion—I believe that my noble friend Lord Wolfson also suggested it—that we should perhaps place warnings on landing cards merits further consideration, but landing cards are not issued to people claiming, as some do, to be EU nationals and who walk through the blue channel. Of course they are not issued to clandestine illegal entrants. The people who receive landing cards are those who come to the desk, as I have explained, and have a conversation with the immigration officer. It is at that point that they should claim asylum. My noble friend has made an interesting suggestion, and we should give it consideration.
I do not like disagreeing with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry but I have to say to him that the statistics do not bear out his statistics that the great majority of people who claim within three days are genuine asylum seekers. As I said in my original speech, in comparison to the five in every 100 who are granted asylum by the Home Office, it is 3.5 in every 100 in the three-day group. The right reverend Prelate shakes his head, but I am afraid that those are the statistics for granting asylum during this three-day period.
The amendment is designed to appeal to those of your Lordships who basically agree with me that our benefit system is being abused by bogus asylum seekers but who are still concerned to do the decent, charitable thing in line with our common Jewish and Christian traditions. The amendment creates a confused and disputed borderline. It would cost at least £30 million a year. It would be more if the three days were to recreate the incentive to economic migrants that we fear it would.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, said that he was quite prepared to pay £30 million if it would keep Britain's good name, but what he seems to miss out is that we are paying a good deal more than that in order to keep our good name—because, as I have explained, many of the people who will claim at the port will not be found to be genuine, nor will they be granted exceptional leave to remain. So a good deal of the roughly £140 million—perhaps £100 million—in benefit expenditure that we envisage we should continue to have to spend will still be going to people who turn out not to be genuine asylum seekers, nor people who merit exceptional leave to remain. I believe that £100 million is not a bad price—it is a good deal better than the £30 million that the noble Earl was prepared to pay. I am going three steps further than he is in being prepared to contemplate paying benefit to people who do not turn out to be genuine.
Our proposal creates a clear and distinct borderline as far as concerns the benefits system. It says clearly that those who apply for asylum when they arrive here do not have to go into detail; they do not have to give a great story; they just need to say, "I am applying for asylum", and they will be allowed in. Their story will come at a later stage. That is all they need to do. That gives a clear-cut borderline for people getting into the benefit system.

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As I have explained from the evidence of my own eyes, there is nothing to prevent an asylum seeker at the immigration desk on his arrival in this country, saying, "I have arrived in a safe country. I have planned and schemed to get here. Here I am. I am here for asylum". There is no reason at all. There is nothing here to justify the amendment.
As I explained, the statistics tell us that those who apply within three days are less likely to be genuine. So there is nothing there to justify the amendment. Those who have entered the country illegally will still be able, through a bit more illegality, to gain access to and to abuse our benefits system. So there is nothing there to justify the amendment. Further, there is absolutely nothing here, and in the arguments that your Lordships have heard, to justify this House overturning the considered decision taken by the elected Chamber. If the amendment is put to the vote, as I suspect it will be, I hope that my noble friends and other noble Lords who are prepared to look at the arguments in an open-minded way, and look at the facts before us, will join me in the Lobby.
5.15 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am grateful that in this long and keenly argued debate so much of the time has been spent on the merits of the issue rather than the proprieties of the relationship between this House and the other place. I am grateful that in the end the Minister himself conceded in his winding up speech that the issue of the three-day amendment had been before another place on only one occasion. He put into my mouth words about the quality of the debate which I do not think he will find when he looks in Hansard, because it would never be my intention to criticise the quality of debate in another place. I believe that we are in almost universal agreement—with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, who saved himself by accusing me only of an appearance of cynicism rather than cynicism—that it is entirely proper for us to do what we are doing today.
So let us turn then to the merits of the issue. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, described it as a potential conflict between the head and the heart. I hope that he will think that most of us have argued the case for the amendment on the grounds of the head rather than the heart. Of course there have been references, although relatively few, to individual hard cases. In particular, those on the Bishops Bench who know what happens to asylum seekers when they arrive in this country and are faced with destitution have made well-argued and convincing attempts to show noble Lords what destitution can mean and what it would mean if the system were allowed to continue for very much longer.
But I do not believe that the arguments of the head should be neglected, because they are fundamental. In opening the debate on the first amendment, the Minister sought to claim that the orders had been successful because the number of applications had gone down. He
1210
invited the House to draw the conclusion that they had gone down because the right to benefit had been taken away.
That raises a whole series of questions, which were best expressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool when he talked about the difference between a soft touch and a brutal touch. When one changes regulations, in particular when entry conditions differ as between one country in the European Union and another, that will have an effect on the number of applications. After the passing of the 1993 Act the number of applications went down dramatically but then went up again.
The Minister has shown the House—and I do not dispute his figures—that in April, May and June the number of applications went down further. He is suggesting—and it may well be that it is a significant part of the argument—that that is because the possibility of benefit has or had been taken away. But surely it is not the number of applications which shows whether taking away benefits is right; it is the number of genuine refugees which matters. We simply do not yet know that. We do not know whether those who have been turned away or who have failed to apply for asylum are more or less likely than before to be genuine refugees and worthy of asylum in this country. Until we know that, surely, without being a soft touch, we ought to be pulling out all the stops that we can in order to avoid being the brutal touch in Europe. That is what we threaten to be. The test is not in the numbers; it is in the success rate.
We return to what are in almost all cases secondhand accounts of what happens at the points of entry. I pay tribute to the Minister for having gone to see what happens. That was the right thing to do and he was right to describe it to your Lordships. But, of course, what he saw was what happens everywhere at all points of entry. Ninety-nine out of every 100 people coming to this country needing landing cards—in other words, coming from outside the European Union—are genuine people who have genuinely obtained visas by telling the truth that they are coming here as visitors, tourists, students, business people or whatever. The 1 per cent., who are those in difficulty and those about whom we are talking are those who have to tell lies on their application forms for a visa, because they all come from countries which require visas. They then have to come to this country and say not only, "I am an asylum seeker" but also, "I told a lie when I stated on my visa application that I proposed to come here as a visitor", or a student or on business.
I do not know how many asylum applicants the Minister saw during his time at Heathrow's Terminal 3. But he and all noble Lords ought to put themselves in the position of people who, in order to leave their country, have to falsify some aspect of their relationship with their country of origin and the country to which they intended to go. That is the best answer that I can give to the noble Lord, Lord Marsh, who seemed to believe that it was a conscious and rational decision to tell a lie at the point of entry. I suggest to your Lordships that that is far from being the case.

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I am confirmed in that view by a letter written only this morning by the representative for the United Kingdom and Ireland of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. He writes:
"UNHCR's general concerns over the withdrawal of welfare support for certain classes of asylum seekers have already been expressed in its comments to the Social Security Advisory Committee late last year. Notwithstanding these general observations, UNHCR is of the opinion that the present amendment",
and he is speaking specifically about our amendment,
"ameliorates the hardships to some of those genuine asylum seekers who, for a variety of valid reasons, do not claim refugee status immediately upon arrival. At the same time, the amendment will not undermine the Government's legitimate endeavours to curtail procedural abuse from those who have no claim to refugee status. The amendment is not inconsistent with the United Nations' obligations under the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees and UNHCR is supportive of it".
What is being done by this part of the legislation, what is proposed by the Government, is to cut a swathe through our international obligations on the spurious claim that those who apply after arrival in this country are less likely to be genuine refugees than those that apply at the port of entry. The effect will be that we will exclude people who are genuine refugees. Our reputation as a civilised country cannot support that.
I had genuinely believed that we had gone so far in meeting the Government's arguments that it might be possible to reach agreement without a Division today. I wish that were so, if only by a pause. I can tell from the Minister's speech that it is hopeless for the Government to say that the differences between us are not that great and that we could retain our reputation as a civilised country at a relatively low cost and without compromising any of the principles which they seek to achieve by this legislation. I have no such response. I must seek the opinion of the House.
5.26 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (Amendment No. 24BA as an amendment to Commons Amendment No. 24B) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 168; Not-Contents, 182.

Division No. 1

CONTENTS

Ackner, L.

Broadbridge, L.

Addington, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Annan, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Ashley of Stoke, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L

Avebury, L.

Carr of Hadley, L.

Baldwin of Bewdley, E.

Carter, L.

Barnett, L.

Castle of Blackburn, B.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Chichester, Bp.

Beloff, L.

Chorley, L.

Berkeley, L.

Clancarty, E.

Birk, B.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Birkett, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Blackstone, B.

Cobbold, L.

Borrie, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Brentford, V.

Cooke of Thorndon, L.

Briggs, L.

Coventry, Bp.

1212

Dacre of Glanton, L.

McNair, L.

Dainton, L.

Mallalieu, B.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Mar and Kellie, E.

David, B.

Meston, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, B.

Molloy, L.

Desai, L.

Monkswell, L.

Diamond, L.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Nicol, B.

Donoughue, L.

Northbourne, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Ogmore, L.

Dubs, L.

Oxford, Bp.

Eatwell, L.

Palmer, L.

Elles, B.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Ezra, L.

Peston, L.

Falkender, B.

Phillips of Ellesmere, L.

Falkland, V.

Prys-Davies, L.

Farrington of Ribbleton, B.

Rea, L.

Gallacher, L.

Redesdale, L.

Gillmore of Thamesfield, L.

Richard, L.

Gilmour of Craigmillar, L.

Ripon, Bp.

Gladwin of Clee, L.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Glenamara, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Rix, L.

Greenhill of Harrow, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Gregson, L.

Rochester, L.

Grey, E.

Rodgers of Quarry Bank, L.

Halsbury, E.

Runcie, L.

Hampton, L.

Russell, E. [Teller.]

Hamwee, B.

Ryder of Warsaw, B.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Haskel, L.

Sandwich, E.

Hayman, B.

Seear, B.

Headfort, M.

Serota, B.

Healey, L.

Shaughnessy, L.

Henniker, L.

Shepherd, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Sherfield, L.

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Simon, V.

Holme of Cheltenham, L.

Simon of Glaisdale, L.

Howell, L.

Southwark, Bp.

Hughes, L.

Stallard, L.

Hunt, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Hunt of Tanworth, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Hutchinson of Lullington, L.

Strafford, E.

Inchyra, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Jakobovits, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Jay of Paddington, B.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Jeger, B.

Thomas of Walliswood, B.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Thomson of Monifieth, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Thurso, V.

Judd, L.

Tonypandy, V.

Kennet, L.

Tope, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Tordoff, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Kintore, R

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Wallace of Saltaire, L.

Kitchener, E.

Warnock, B.

Lester of Herne Hill, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Listowel, E.

White, B.

Liverpool, Bp.

Wigoder, L.

Lockwood, B.

Williams of Crosby, B.

Longford, E.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Williams of Mostyn, L.

McCarthy, L.

Wilson of Tillyorn, L.

McGregor of Durris, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Wright of Richmond, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Young of Dartington, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Barber, L.

Ailsa, M.

Barber of Tewkesbury, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Belstead, L.

Astor of Hever, L.

Berners, B.

Attlee, E.

Birdwood, L.

1213

Blaker, L.

Inglewood, L.

Blateh, B.

Ironside, L.

Boardman, L.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Bowness, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Kenilworth, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Kimball, L.

Brain, L.

Kinnoull, E.

Bridgeman, V.

Laing of Dunphail, L.

Brigstocke, B.

Lane of Horsell, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Buccleuch and Queensberry, D.

Lindsay, E.

Burnham, L.

Liverpool, E.

Butterworth, L.

Long, V.

Cadman, L.

Lucas, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Campbell of Cray, L.

Lyell, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Carver, L.

McConnell, L.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Chelmsford, V.

Mackay of Clashfern, L. [Lord

Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Chancellor.]

Clark of Kempston, L

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Cockfield, L.

Mackintosh of Halifax, V.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Courtown, E.

Marlesford, L.

Craig of Radley, L.

Marsh, L.

Cranborne, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Crickhowell, L.

Merrivale, L.

Cuckney, L.

Mersey, V.

Cumberlege, B.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Davidson, V.

Milverton, L.

De Freyne, L.

Monson, L.

De L'Isle, V.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Moore of Lower Marsh, L.

Deedes, L.

Mountevans, L.

Demon of Wakefield, B.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Derwent, L.

Moyne, L.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Munster, E.

Downshire, M

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Dudley, E.

Nelson, E.

Eccles of Moulton, B.

Newall, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Nickson, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Norrie, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Northesk, E.

Eme, E.

O'Cathain, B.

Feldman, L.

Oppenheim-Barnes, B.

Ferrers, E

Orkney, E.

Finsberg, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Gainsborough, E.

Pearson of Rannoch, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Pender, L.

Geddes, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Pilkington of Oxenford, L.

Goold, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Goschen, V.

Prentice, L.

Gray, L.

Prior, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Quinton, L.

Greenway, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Griffiths of Fforestfach, L.

Rawlings, B.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Rees, L.

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

Renton, L.

Hanson, L.

Renwick, L.

Harding of Petherton, L.

Romney, E.

Harlech, L.

Saint Albans, D.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

St. Davids, V.

Harmsworth, L.

St John of Fawsley, L.

Harris of Peckham, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Henley, L.

Seccombe, B.

Hesketh, L.

Shannon, E.

Hindlip, L.

Sharpies, B.

Hogg, B.

Shaw of Northstead, L.

Holderness, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Hothfield, L.

Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, L.

Howe, E.

Stevens of Ludgate, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Strange, B.

Ilchester, E.

Strathcarron, L.

1214

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Trefgarne, L.

Strathmore and Kinghorne, E.

Trumpington, B.

Sudeley, L.

Ullswater, V.

Swinfen, L.

Vivian, L.

Tebbit, L.

Weatherill, L.

Teviot, L.

Westbury, L.

Wilcox, B.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Wise, L.

Tollemache, L.

Wolfson, L.

Torrington, V.

Wynford, L.

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment No. 24BA, as an amendment to Commons Amendment No. 24B, disagreed to accordingly.
On Question, Commons Amendment No. 24B, as an amendment to Lords Amendment No. 24, agreed to.
FURTHER COMMONS AMENDMENT TO LORDS AMENDMENT No. 24
24C Line 12, leave out 'as is mentioned in subsection (1) above' and insert 'who is so excluded'.
5.37 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 24C to Lords Amendment No. 24 and to which I have already spoken.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 24C to Lords Amendment No. 24.—(Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
LORDS AMENDMENT
28 Before Schedule 1, insert the following new schedule—
("SCHEDULE MODIFICATIONS OF SOCIAL SECURITY REGULATIONS
PART I
SOCIAL SECURITY (PERSONS FROM ABROAD) MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS REGULATIONS 1996
Preliminary
1. In this Part of this Schedule—

(a) "the 1996 Regulations" means the Social Security (Persons from Abroad) Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations 1996; and

(b) expressions which are used in the 1996 Regulations have the same meanings as in those Regulations.

Income support
2. In regulation 8 of the 1996 Regulations (amendment of the Income Support Regulations)—

(a) paragraph (2) so far as relating to the sub-paragraph added to regulation 21(3) of the Income Support Regulations as sub-paragraph (j); and

(b) paragraph (3)(c) and (d),

shall have effect as if the 1996 Regulations had been made, and had come into force, on the day on which this Act is passed.
Housing benefit
3. In regulation 7 of the 1996 Regulations (amendment of regulation 7A of the Housing Benefit Regulations)—

(a) paragraph (a) so far as relating to the sub-paragraph added to regulation 7A(4) of the Housing Benefit Regulations as sub-paragraph (g);

1215

(b) paragraph (b) so far as relating to sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of the paragraph substituted for regulation 7A(5) of those Regulations; and

(c) paragraph (c),

shall have effect as if the 1996 Regulations had been made, and had come into force, on the day on which this Act is passed.
Council tax benefit
4. In regulation 3 of the 1996 Regulations (amendment of regulation 4A of the Council Tax Benefit Regulations)—

(a) paragraph (a) so far as relating to the sub-paragraph added to regulation 4A(4) of the Council Tax Benefit Regulations as sub-paragraph (g);

(b) paragraph (b) so far as relating to sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of the paragraph substituted for regulation 4A(5) of those Regulations; and

(c) paragraph (c),

shall have effect as if the 1996 Regulations had been made, and had come into force, on the day on which this Act is passed. 46
General
5.—(1) Subject to sub-paragraph (2) below, any person who is excluded from entitlement to income support, housing benefit or council tax benefit by any of the provisions which are modified by the preceding provisions of this Part of this Schedule—

(a) shall not be entitled to the benefit for any period beginning on or after the day on which this Act is passed; and

(b) shall not be entitled to the benefit for any period beginning on or after 5th February 1996 except on a claim made before the day on which this Act is passed, or an application made before that day for the review of a decision.

(2) Nothing in this paragraph shall apply in any case where a person is entitled to the benefit in question either—

(a) by virtue of regulation 12(1) of the 1996 Regulations (saving); or

(b) by virtue of regulations making such provision as is mentioned in section (Saving for social security regulations)(2) of this Act.

PART II
SOCIAL SECURITY (PERSONS FROM ABROAD) (MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS) REGULATIONS (NORTHERN IRELAND) 1996
Preliminary
6. In this Part of this Schedule "the 1996 Regulations" means the Social Security (Persons from Abroad) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1996.
Income support
7. In regulation 4 of the 1996 Regulations (amendment of the Income Support (General) Regulations)—

(a) paragraph (2) so far as relating to the paragraph added to regulation 21(3) of the Income Support (General) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1987 as paragraph (j); and

(b) paragraph (3)(b),

shall have effect as if the 1996 Regulations had been made, and had come into operation, on the day on which this Act is passed.
Housing benefit
8. In regulation 5 of the 1996 Regulations (amendment of the Housing Benefit (General) Regulations)—

(a) paragraph (a) so far as relating to the sub-paragraph added to regulation 7A(4) of the Housing Benefit (General) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1987 as sub-paragraph (g);

1216

(b) paragraph (b) so far as relating to sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of the paragraph substituted for regulation 7A(5) of those Regulations; and

(c) paragraph (c),

shall have effect as if the 1996 Regulations had been made, and had come into operation, on the day on which this Act is passed. 91
General
9.—(1) Subject to sub-paragraph (2) below, any person who is excluded from entitlement to income support or housing benefit by any of the provisions which are modified by the preceding provisions of this Part of this Schedule—

(a) shall not be entitled to the benefit for any period beginning on or after the day on which this Act is passed; and

(b) shall not be entitled to the benefit for any period beginning on or after 5th February 1996 except on a claim made before the day on which this Act is passed, or an application made before that day for the review of a decision.

(2) Nothing in this paragraph shall apply in any case where a person is entitled to the benefit in question either—

(a) by virtue of regulation 11 (1) of the 1996 Regulations (saving); or

(b) by virtue of regulations making such provision as is mentioned in section (Saving for social security regulations)(2) of this Act.").

The Commons agreed to this amendment with the following amendments—
28A Line 46, at end insert—
'. Regulation 12(1) of the 1996 Regulations (saving) shall have effect as if after the words "shall continue to have effect" there were inserted the words "(both as regards him and as regards persons who are members of his family at the coming into force of these Regulations)".'.
28B Line 91, at end insert—
'. Regulation 11(1) of the 1996 Regulations (saving) shall have effect as if after the words "shall have effect" there were inserted the words "(both as regards him and as regards persons who are members of his family at the coming into operation of these Regulations)".'.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 28A and 28B to Lords Amendment No. 28, to which I have already spoken.
Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 28A and 28B to Lords Amendment No. 28.—(Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Nursery Education and Grant Maintained Schools Bill
5.40 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Lord Henley): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons reason be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons reason be now considered.—(Lord Henley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS REASON FOR DISAGREEING TO ONE OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS
[The page and line refer to Bill (62) as first printed by the Lords.]
COMMONS REASON FOR DISAGREEING TO ONE OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS

  LORDS AMENDMENT
  1 Clause 1, page 1, line 14, at end insert—
  ("(2A) No arrangements may be made under subsection (1) above in respect of grants payable under this Act on or after 1 April 1997 before the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament an evaluation of the operation over a period of twelve months of any grants for nursery education in the area of any local education authority made during the financial year 1996/7.')
  The Commons disagreed to this amendment for the following reason—
  1A Because it would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient.
  Lord Henley: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 1, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason No. 1A.
  The amendment which we passed in Committee seeks to require my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament an evaluation of the operation of phase 1 of the nursery education voucher scheme, over a period of 12 months, before making any arrangements for phase 2.
  The Commons have now considered this amendment and have disagreed with it,
  "Because it would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons and the Commons do not offer any further Reason, trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient".
  I urge your Lordships to agree with the Commons.
  We have considered very carefully indeed the points made in this House. We too believe that the nursery education voucher scheme should be evaluated—so much so in fact that we are already undertaking evaluation exercises and we are reaping the benefits and learning the lessons to inform phase 2 of the scheme.
  First, we commissioned a survey of parents in the phase 1 LEAs. We made the results of that survey available in the Library of both Houses two weeks ago. The findings are as follows. First, 60 per cent. of parents interviewed rated the scheme positively. In Norfolk, where the survey found that parents were most likely to know the key facts about the scheme, 87 per cent. of parents rated it "quite good" or "very good". Parents have not had difficulty with the applications; 72 per cent. found the forms "very easy to complete".
  These findings echo the findings of a survey undertaken by the Pre-school Learning Alliance which surveyed its member playgroups to see how parents in phase 1 are benefiting from the scheme. That survey found as follows: 80 per cent. of groups think that parents value vouchers; 27 per cent. of the playgroups had increased the number of sessions they offer, even in the first term of operation.
  Since your Lordships last debated this issue, the results of a second survey in the phase 1 areas have been completed. We have surveyed the views of providers and the results of that survey have been placed in the Library. The findings are as follows. The providers found registration easy and 60 per cent. found the administration
  1218
  "very easy" or "quite easy". Three-quarters found voucher redemption "very" or "fairly easy", and a similar proportion found the self-assessment schedule helpful.
  Your Lordships have also been concerned to ensure that only good quality nursery education is supported through the scheme. Perhaps I may give the House some of the findings of the providers' survey in this respect. Four in 10 providers agreed that quality of nursery education would improve in their area in the longer term. Over half of the providers in Norfolk were of that view. Nine in 10 providers favoured the desirable learning outcomes and one in five thought they would make good quality provision even better. More than eight in 10 providers welcomed the inspection proposals and almost all had a good grasp of the inspection criteria.
  This is all very good news and in my view demonstrates that our proposals will mean a significant levering up of the standards of nursery education on offer.
  As we have said throughout the passage of this Bill, the Government believe that the scheme should be evaluated. But let us consider the real motive behind the amendment that we discussed on another occasion. It is not to ensure full evaluation; it is to postpone implementation of the scheme. That delay is simply not necessary and it is damaging.
  I hope that all I have said so far will allow the House to see that the amendment is not necessary because we already have full and thorough evaluation plans in hand. But the amendment is damaging because, quite simply, it deprives children of the benefits of vouchers.
  In April 1997 more than half a million children will be eligible for nursery education vouchers. This amendment will deprive those children and their parents. The Government's position is clear. We want to allow those children to use those vouchers. We want to give parents the wherewithal to exercise choice of nursery education provider for their child. We want to start addressing the levering up of the quality of provision by introducing inspection and by providers starting to use the SCAA desirable learning goals. We want to give those parents who are hard-pressed to meet even the modest cost of pre-schools, the opportunity to use their voucher. And we want to do all this as quickly as possible. There is no possible reason for delay.
  I shall conclude my remarks by reminding the House of the key principles underlying the nursery voucher education scheme: first, parental choice; secondly, raising educational standards; thirdly, the injection of substantial amounts of new money.
  With those key principles in mind, together with the opportunity for those half-a-million four year-old children next April to benefit from good-quality nursery education, I urge the House to agree with the Commons. I beg to move.
  Moved, That the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 1, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason No. 1A.—(Lord Henley.)
  5.45 p.m.
  Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, it is a long-standing convention of your Lordships' House that

  1219
  if a Bill originating in another place is examined and amended by your Lordships' House, and that amendment is disagreed to when the Bill returns whence it came, that is the end of the matter.
  I admit that the Companion to the Standing Orders allows that even when the disagreement of another place is on the grounds of privilege, as is the case with this amendment, it is permissible for an amendment in lieu to be tabled in your Lordships' House which, if it were passed, would require the other place to think again and vote again. But the tradition is that to take this extreme action is against the ethos of this House. It is rocking the boat; it is not cricket; it is not done. We are the non-elected, revising and debating Chamber, and if our advice is rejected then the will of the elected body should prevail.
  At Committee stage of the Nursery Education and Grant Maintained Schools Bill, your Lordships passed an amendment which required that no grant should be made until Phase I of the scheme had run for 12 months and an evaluation of it had been brought to Parliament. That amendment was duly debated in another place, after dinner, late in the evening of last Wednesday, 17th July. I listened to the debate. I was not greatly edified by it. At the end of it, however, our amendment was disagreed to by 270 votes to 251, and the reason given, was:
  "Because it would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons".
  This is of course as superficial as it is specious because our amendment was designed to save expenditure, not to waste it. But in this particular convention the Reason given does not have to be, in itself, reasonable in any way.
  So the problem before us on Thursday, 18th July, was whether to express our dissatisfaction by tabling an amendment in lieu and forcing a Division today, which would at least register our very real sense of anger at the way this Bill has been treated, or to abide by the convention, bow to the will of the elected Chamber, fold our tents and steal away. After discussion, the view was taken that we should follow the latter course, and so I stand before you with nothing more than a neatly folded tent.
  This action—in response to the convention of your Lordships' House and nothing else—should not be interpreted as in any way a weakening of our implacable opposition to nursery vouchers. I said at Third Reading that, in our opinion, nursery vouchers are a waste of effort, a waste of time and a waste of money. I would not alter one word of that and, in saying so, I know that I have the support of the whole of the Opposition and, I suspect, very many of those on the Cross Benches. I speak also for the vast majority of governors, headteachers, teachers and parents of the schools concerned, who are appalled at the unnecessary and divisive bureaucratic nightmare which this pointless procedure will produce.
  I know that because of the gigantic postbag I have received. I speak for many other Members of these Benches, and of the Cross Benches, and of the Benches Spiritual. It has gone so far that this last weekend my personal telephone number at home was found by a large number of people, who have rung me up in fury at the rumour that we were not going to divide the House again
  1220
  on this issue today. Several of them were under the impression that we were in a position of power and could overturn the amendment again. It took a considerable portion of the Sabbath day—I regret to say—to disillusion them about that. They see this scheme for what it is—an open attempt to bribe the eligible voters just before an election by stuffing a paper promise of £1,100 through their letter boxes. For anyone to say that the majority of parents want this scheme is quite frankly rubbish. The proof will be found in the ballot boxes. If nursery vouchers are ever issued nationally—and I pray God they will not be—the Labour government will honour those that have been issued but scrap the nursery voucher scheme. That is a promise, and unlike this Government we shall keep our word.
  Lord Tope: My Lords, I rise more in sorrow than in anger, as they say. I am sad that what I think the noble Lord, Lord Morris, described as the powers that be in the Labour Party have decided not to pursue this matter further. The noble Lord, Lord Morris, explained carefully and clearly why that is. I understand why the Labour party in particular would have an interest in ensuring that what he described as the conventions of the House—I think they are more correctly described as the conventions between the two Front Benches—should not be upset at this time. I do not want to say any more about that. I do not want to embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Morris, any more, because he and I have worked closely on this Bill. I have come to respect his views and I think I know what his views are.
  However, it is not just a matter of personal sorrow and regret that we cannot take this matter any further. It may be no consolation to the noble Lord to know that he was not the only one whose telephone was disturbed. I, too, was tracked down at home. Perhaps, unlike the noble Lord, I have an answer machine which helps in that it refers people to my secretary, who was also tracked down. We received the same lobbying. Someone went to the considerable trouble of finding a fax number to send me a fax before the weekend. It is not someone from my part of the world or someone I have ever heard of before. As far as I know I have not heard from this person before although, like many other noble Lords, I have received so many letters I may well have done so. The fax was sent to me immediately after the decision in another place. It stated:
  "I feel very strongly that parents will feel let down if the Commons are not challenged on their overthrowing of your amendment for evaluation".
  I think that person speaks for a large number of people. That certainly has been the reaction that I have encountered since last Thursday. Sadly, she concludes the fax by stating,
  "Excuse my interference when I am only a parent but we feel so strongly".
  This Bill is all about parents, and their children who are as yet too young to hold their own independent views. For that reason I am sad that we are now coming to the end of the process.
  I wish to say just a few words about what the Minister said in his opening remarks. He accused us of using the amendment as a delaying tactic. The amendment may

  1221
  have caused a short delay, but that was not its principal purpose. Its principal purpose was as stated; namely, to ensure that there is a full evaluation. People out there who describe themselves as "only parents", people who teach in the schools, head teachers, governing bodies, local education authorities and even those within large parts of the voluntary sector, simply do not understand why the Government have set themselves against your Lordships' amendment to undertake an evaluation after a full year. It seems to them to make no sense whatsoever to have a pilot phase in the first place if it is not then to be fully and properly evaluated.
  We have said all this before. I do not wish to take up valuable time in saying it again. However, as we have not fully debated evaluation in this House, certainly since the amendment was defeated, I hope the Minister can say a little more about what sort of issues the further evaluation he has now promised will cover. I hope he will say when it will be available and where it will be available. I am sure it will be available in this House but it needs to be more widely available. I conclude as I began by professing more sorrow than anger. I am sad. This is a sad end to a sorry business. Above all, I believe this whole voucher scheme is an enormous wasted opportunity to bring about an end which all of your Lordships wish to achieve but which this scheme will not achieve.
  Earl Baldwin of Bewdley: My Lords, I too find this a deeply disappointing occasion for many in the education service. Of course I do not like the mechanism of vouchers as a way of increasing provision because, for all that it involves choice of a kind, it serves to fragment and complicate the system and move even further away from the concept of a local community of schools. I believe that this has served us better than most current commentators will allow, and that it would have been the better route by which to increase publicly-funded provision.
  But it is not as if we were attempting to wreck the voucher scheme. In Committee we sought, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, emphasised, to ensure that this would not be one of those reforms that, in common with others in recent years, would have to be remodelled later in the light of experience, by providing for a proper evaluation period so that the thing was more likely to be right first time.
  I cannot believe that this is a bad principle. The Minister said he wanted to bring in vouchers as quickly as possible. How often have we heard that ill-advised phrase in recent years? I am often horrified at the neglect of sound evidence for the basing of educational policy. Dogma, hunches, reference back to one's own golden school-days, are not good guides to what is best for the citizens of tomorrow. I do not say that the present party in power is uniquely prone to these, but the sheer volume of its reforms means that we have had our fill of them in the last 16 years.
  The Government, as ever, are convinced they are right on the issue in front of us. I only hope for the sake of the children that the scheme will work out for the best.
  Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I too express regret that here is an objective on which everyone in this Chamber could have agreed; namely, that it is desirable that all children of four years whose parents wish them to have access to a variety of nursery provision should have that access. However, the golden opportunity has been lost because the Government have decided on the means of achieving that provision in the face of overwhelming criticism from over 80 per cent. of parents whose children in this age group already attend their local schools and who have exercised that parental choice for which this Government claim credit; namely, choice in access to nursery education.
  For those parents who would prefer not to exercise that choice, the Government could have introduced a scheme. The only change that this voucher scheme introduces is giving money to those who choose an alternative, for example a playgroup in the voluntary sector, or those who choose to pay for private provision. For once I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, who has said that if we have limited public funds they should be targeted at those most in need. For those parents who want access to their local maintained, voluntary aided or voluntary controlled nursery school, the £1,100 will not pay for that. The opposition has not come from Members on these Benches, but from hundreds of people involved in pre-school provision for four year-olds. Letters have been received from dozens of people representing thousands of others who have expressed deep concern. There is agreement that four year-old children should have such access if their parents wish; and that that access should not damage the existing provision for three year-olds or the quality or quantity of the range of education on offer at present.
  Vouchers are not popular. I have yet to meet a parent in the pilot area whose four year-old child goes to the local school who has a good word to say for vouchers. The parents who believe that vouchers are popular are those who do not have access at present and believe that the voucher is a guarantee of a place. I hope that in the coming few months, the Government will not put forward a voucher as representing a place. It does not. If the local school is overcrowded and there is no provision, the voucher is worthless. One cannot exchange it for the provision that one desires.
  There is, too, the messing about with local government finance. During various stages of the Bill, one of the Minister's supporters from the Benches opposite, in response to a challenge about changes in local government and local government finance, said rather proudly, "Yes we did pass all that legislation; and, yes, it was all necessary". I refer to the poll tax. The poll tax was a much worse mistake. There is strong hostility to the proposal in the Bill.
  The second golden opportunity that has been lost is the failure by the Government to recognise the benefit of partnership between central government and local government but, more importantly, at local level to ensure that all children's needs are met. Market forces do not meet the needs of the child who may be difficult to provide for, or the child in an out of the way place. It is sad that governors and teachers up and down the country, the people of Wales who have expressed objections, and

  1223
  (I suspect, although I cannot prove it) the people of Northern Ireland where all four year-olds are in school, are being consulted about extending the voucher scheme. A full year will be necessary to consider the effect on local government finance, and the problems that the proposal creates for the very governors to whom the Government have handed the responsibility of the funding. Why do the Government not listen when concerns are expressed about what is being provided?
  My worry among others is this. Let us consider Wales, and Northern Ireland where the Government are consulting at present. The vouchers are still being brought in in areas where all children are in schools. I am deeply suspicious that it is the beginning of a thin edge of the wedge. I cannot see any reason to be pleased that the Government chose to claim privilege as a reason. I accept the legitimacy of the other Chamber. I accept that finance is involved in the Bill. But we could have been celebrating one of the few achievements of partnership, unanimity and consensus. Instead I take part in the debate on the Bill with a heavy heart. If I had been told even three years ago that this Government would come up with a proposal for nursery education that brought in new money and that it would leave me with a heavy heart I should not have believed it. Perhaps I should have believed anything of this Government.
  6 p.m.
  Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I have not taken part in the discussions although I have listened to them all. Perhaps I may say one thing. The sad aspect is that even if the voucher scheme is the most enormous success, and enormously popular, should the Labour Party ever be elected, it will abolish it.
  Lord Henley: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Morris, can unfold his tent because he has other business beyond this, and I hope to see him for that. Perhaps I may say this in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington. She seemed to be criticising another place for claiming financial privilege. That is entirely a matter for another place. It is not a matter for us to question. The fact is that it has claimed financial privilege and there is an end to it.
  The noble Lord, Lord Morris complains—I believe that it was slightly unfair—that the debate after dinner in another place was somewhat unedifying. Perhaps I should remind the noble Lord of the form which the debate took on this amendment in this House at Committee stage. I seem to remember that the noble Lord got to his feet and said, "I beg to move", and that was the sum total of the debate on the amendment. If the noble Lord will remember, we earlier debated the subject of evaluation; and the Committee came to a view which was completely contrary to the view to which it came after the rather odd procedural gambits of the noble Lord at ten o'clock that night. We had the rather unedifying spectacle of the Committee of this House making a decision on the same matter with completely contrary views on the same day. Perhaps that is a matter that we should consider. It is something that this House should not try to do again. I appreciate that in moving this first amendment, the noble Lord rather sotto voce informed the Committee that
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  he would be coming to other amendments later, despite the fact that they were grouped with that amendment. But the noble Lord knows perfectly well, with his hand on his heart, as I know, that the whole of that first debate was on evaluation. He knows perfectly well that the Committee came to a clear decision on evaluation. It was not a decision that he liked, and so he came back to the issue at a later stage and used devices which I think were not entirely edifying.
  My honourable friends and right honourable friends in another place, as did his honourable and right honourable friends, had an edifying debate last week on this subject. They came to a clear conclusion that they did not want this amendment. That is why it has come back to us; and that is why I ask the House to agree with the views of another place.
  I wish to add a word or two about evaluation. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, asked about evaluation. We have said a great deal about evaluation both in this place and in another place at all stages of the Bill. We take that evaluation seriously. It will cover a wide range of aspects of the scheme. It will become available from now and over the autumn. So far as possible all of it will be published, and inspection evidence will be available from late autumn. There will be a survey of parents and of providers. We have already mentioned those. There will be an analysis of the issue of vouchers and an analysis of the redemption of vouchers. I believe that lessons are already being learned. I do not think that it will be necessary at this stage to continue to make the points that we have made at Committee and other stages as to how thorough that evaluation will be.
  We believe that it is important, as I said, that half a million four year-old children have the benefit of those vouchers, as do the children of Norfolk, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Wandsworth at present. They should have the benefits of those vouchers and of the good quality nursery education with the inspection that will come with it, which will lever up standards, as soon as is reasonably practical, which is next April. That is why I now ask the House to agree with the Commons in their rejection of Amendment No. 1 for the reason given in Amendment No. 1A.
  Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, so that the record may be correct perhaps I may point out that at Committee stage in your Lordships' House the first amendment in the first group was on an order, not on evaluation. The Government chose to read that group otherwise after we had given them the grouping in the middle of the previous week.
  Lord Henley: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord is being somewhat disingenuous. We had a group into which all those amendments were put. It was obviously open to the noble Lord, as he will remember from the form of words that appears on the top of the groupings, to move them at a later stage if he so wished, and he exercised his right. However, if the noble Lord reads through that debate, he will find that every single argument put forward from this side and the other side was entirely on evaluation, and nothing but evaluation. That is what the Committee of the House decided at something like

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  4.30 on that Monday afternoon. For some odd reason, the Committee came to a different conclusion on the same subject later on. The noble Lord knows that. I commend the Motion.
  On Question, Motion agreed to.

Education (Assisted Places) (Amendment) Regulations 1996
6.9 p.m.
Lord Henley Lord Henley rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 20th June be approved [24th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the House will recall that we introduced the Assisted Places Scheme in 1981 for the purposes of opening up educational opportunities for able children from less well-off families. The draft regulations before the House this evening cover England and Wales. Separate arrangements were made for a corresponding scheme in Scotland. Before I explain the draft regulations, I should like to restate why the scheme exists and why it is a remarkable success.
The Government are committed to raising standards in education. The Assisted Places Scheme plays a key part in promoting excellence in academic achievement and enhancing choice and diversity. We want all parents and children to have a rich variety of good schools from which to choose, regardless of income. Through the assisted places scheme, we are making opportunities at top independent schools more widely available. In contrast, noble Lords opposite would remove these opportunities from thousands of children. Their stated intention to abolish the assisted places scheme would restrict access to thousands of children and make independent schools solely the preserve of those who can afford the fees. It would remove the ladder of opportunity from these talented children.
Independent schools themselves wish to see the benefits of an independent education made more widely available. Many are reaching out into the community and enjoying a greater social and cultural mix within their walls. They have a long and honourable tradition of offering scholarships. But there are limits to what schools can do by themselves. The Assisted Places Scheme builds on and extends the schools' own contributions. It is a shining example of partnership between the state and the independent sector.
Since this excellent scheme was introduced, almost 80,000 children in England and Wales have benefited. There are now well over 30,000 pupils in the scheme. Four out of 10 assisted pupils enjoy totally free education because their family income is below the threshold of £9,572 a year and eight out of 10 are from families with incomes below the national average of £18,540 a year. Eighty per cent. come from the lower middle, skilled and unskilled working classes.
We want to widen access still further to parents in every part of the country. That is why we are doubling the scheme—to give twice as many children the opportunity to benefit. At present, there are 5,900 entry places
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available each year in 300 schools in England and Wales. From September 1996 there will be almost 10,000 places available to some 370 schools. Over 60 new schools will join the scheme, selected on the basis of their record of academic achievement. For the first time the scheme will support children under the age of 11. This new development extends the ladder of opportunity to younger children, an initiative we hope to build on in the future.
All the schools in the scheme have been carefully selected on the basis of their records of academic achievement. In 1995, over 94 per cent. of assisted pupils doing GCSE achieved grades A* to C, with some schools getting 100 per cent. pass rates. Ninety-four per cent. of assisted pupils entering for A-level received grades A to E, with some pupils achieving four grade A passes. Recent independent research by the London School of Economics confirms that, first, assisted pupils entered for significantly more A and AS-levels than their counterparts of similar ability in the maintained sector. Secondly, they achieved higher total points scores than pupils in the maintained sector. Thirdly, their average points score per examination entry was higher than for maintained sector pupils. Fourthly, overall the benefit of an assisted place is between 3.2 and 6.2 A-level points. Translated into grades, the advantage is between one-and-a-half and three A-level grades over all subjects taken.
Despite this overwhelming evidence of the success of the scheme, noble Lords opposite are committed to abolishing it. The Labour Party has said that the funds released would be used to reduce class sizes in the maintained sector. But pupils who would otherwise have benefited from the scheme would need to be educated in the maintained sector. That would largely swallow up their planned savings.
The average net annual cost of an assisted place in England in 1995–96 was about £3,700. This is very roughly only £800 a year more than the equivalent average annual recurrent cost of a maintained secondary school place. This differential is more than justified by the better results for assisted places scheme pupils.
Abolishing the APS and educating all assisted pupils in the maintained sector would eventually save only about £24 million a year at current prices. That ignores the capital costs of building extra places in the maintained sector for the displaced pupils: £24 million would provide fewer than 1,000 extra primary school teachers—quite insufficient to fulfil Labour's pledge to eliminate classes of over 30 in the first three years of primary schooling. Indeed, it would reduce the average Key Stage 1 class size by less than half a pupil.
Phasing out the APS by stopping new intakes but letting pupils already in the scheme continue would save less than £5 million in the first academic year. Even that could not be realised for three years under existing legislation. The Education Act 1980 requires the Secretary of State to give schools three years' notice of any unilateral termination of their participation agreements. Furthermore, the under £5 million would pay for only 200 extra primary teachers—about one for every 90 primary schools. Any gain of that kind would be minimal compared with the loss of opportunity for the 10,000 pupils about to enter APS schools each year.
Turning now to the detail of the regulations before the House, these amendments have a very specific, straightforward purpose. They simply update the principal regulations, which are the Education (Assisted Places) Regulations 1995. Essentially, they implement the annual uprating of the parental contribution tables, and thus set out the amounts parents must pay towards their child's assisted place at a participating independent school in the coming year. If approved, the amended regulations will come into force on 25th August 1996.
Regulation 4 of the draft regulations increases the allowance made for each dependent child from £1,165 to £1,200. This is in line with inflation and will maintain the level of help for families with more than one child.
Regulation 7 similarly uprates the income bands used for assessing parents' contributions towards fees. The income threshold at or below which parents pay nothing towards fees is raised from £9,572 to £9,873 a year. There are corresponding increases in the thresholds for the higher income bands.
Regulation 3 permits schools to offer an assisted place to a child from the very beginning of his or her compulsory eduction. We are making places available, for the first time, to children in the junior and preparatory departments of some of our best independent schools.
Regulation 5 sets out a technical change to the requirement that at least 60 per cent. of all assisted pupils in a school should have been recruited from publicly maintained schools. The 60 per cent. rule would not be appropriate to children entering school at the start of their compulsory education. Regulation 5 therefore provides for five and six year-olds to be excepted or omitted from the calculation. There are no other substantive changes. I beg to move.
Moved,
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 20th June be approved [24th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Henley.)
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, I hope that all of your Lordships are regular readers of that very readable organ, the House Magazine. There is much wisdom to be gained in perusing it and the current issue is no exception. In the "Commons Diary", for example, on page 2, the honourable Member for Leominster tells us how he recently attended a meeting of the Malvern College Council, his old school. He says:
"The interesting point involves the difficulties being faced these days by many traditional public or boarding schools. The market for boarding is shrinking and schools need a varied base. In Malvern's case that base is boys and girls from the pre-prep to 18 with a lot of pupils from mainland Europe into the bargain.
It is all a sign of the times and the possible ending of assisted places will strike a near mortal blow to some private schools".
There is the heart of the matter. The assisted places scheme was not introduced in 1981 with the prime object of introducing the ragged-trousered offspring of some poverty-stricken, horny-handed son of toil to a benevolent Mr. Chips who would guide this nascent Newton, this emergent Einstein to heights of intellectual development beyond his parents' wildest dreams. No, it was introduced because then, and since, a number of independent boarding schools were in imminent danger of going bust.
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And they still are—even with the exorbitant fees of over 30,000 children now in the system being paid to these independent schools by a benevolent government. We have the honourable Member for Leominster's published words for that.
Every summer just before we reach for our buckets and spades, we go through the ritual dance of considering how this scheme is faring. So I will only briefly rehearse the reasons why we on these Benches opposed it, have always opposed it and will continue to do so.
Suffice it to say, first, that we consider it entirely unjust to penalise the many for the advantage of a selected few. Secondly, we consider it unfair to cream off some of the most academically able children in the maintained sector and place them in independent schools, where they will unquestionably do very well. So they should. That will distort the picture of the academic achievements of that independent school, to the detriment of the academic results of the schools from which those children are taken. Thirdly, we oppose the scheme because it seems to us a totally unwarranted subsidy by the state of the private sector.
Is it not a fact that an essential difference between independent schools and local authority schools is that the former are far less accountable than the latter? I asked the Minister last year, and I ask him again: will he tell the House what degree of accountability, and in what form, is required from the 300 or so schools in the assisted places scheme which receive at the present moment something over £100 million of public money? Indeed, as is regularly pointed out in another place, the taxpayer also contributes more than £130 million to independent schools by virtue of the service boarding scheme. We are not opposed to the service boarding scheme as such, though we would very much like to see more extensive use made of the state boarding schools. But the assisted places scheme and the service boarding scheme together contribute a little more than £¼billion of public money to the independent education sector—yet independent schools are not accountable in anything like the same way as local education authority schools. Only a very few of them have had Ofsted reports. Is it not time that much stricter controls were imposed upon this very considerable amount of public money?
What is new in this year's regulations? Three things: the government proposal to double the number of places, the annual uprating and the decision to bring preparatory schools into the scheme for the first time. The real reasons for the first are not difficult to find. Boarding schools are finding it harder and harder to put paying bodies into beds. I was recently told, and I have heard it many times, that the first criterion of a successful head teacher in an independent boarding school is the ability to fill all the boarding places. The fashion for sending your children away from home to be educated is visibly waning, and it seems that more and more parents realise—as the Secretary of State for Wales is reported as realising—that good comprehensive school education makes private education a waste of money.
The annual uprating is not a contentious issue, and the regulations for it seem sensible and acceptable. I only wonder whether it will mean that more or less money will

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be left in the scheme when an incoming Labour Government inherit it, and turn the resources to better and more equitable use.
The extension of the scheme to what the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State described in another place as,
"the junior and preparatory departments of some of our best independent schools",
would be amusing if it were not so sad. One can almost hear the howls of protest from those preparatory departments which have not been selected and which wish so fervently to get their trotters into the trough. And one can aurally perceive the sighs of relief from those which have been selected, and so saved, at least for the moment, from the rigours and humiliation of what we may refer to, euphemistically, as Carey Street.
There is nothing more to say about this year's regulations, except farewell, because it may well be that this is the last time we shall need to discuss these matters.
The Labour Party's position and policy on the assisted places scheme are transpicuously clear, and I can offer the honourable Member for Leominster and former pupil of Malvern College no crumb of comfort. The assisted places scheme is no part of our policy, and we shall abolish it. I refer noble Lords to our recent publication, New Labour, New Life for Britain, obtainable from Walworth Road at the bargain price of £10, where, on page 40, the first of Labour's early pledges is to,
"cut class sizes to 30 or under for 5, 6 and 7 year-olds by using money saved from the assisted places scheme".
That is a promise. And, unlike the Government, we shall keep our word.
Lord Tope: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Morris, began by referring to the annual "ritual dance". Last year was the first year that I joined the dance. As a new boy, somewhat naïvely, I looked back at the previous 14 years of annual debates on this subject. I have to say that I did not feel greatly edified as a result of that research and I have not bothered with such detailed research this year. The noble Lord concluded by saying that next year's debate on this subject may be—just may be—a little different. I hope so, for many reasons—not least a degree of boredom in having to say the same things over and over again.
I need to put on record again this year that the Liberal Democrats continue to oppose the assisted places scheme. It continues to be our policy that we would phase it out. We would of course honour existing commitments, but it would be phased out over a period of time.
Before I go on to state the reasons for that, I must again put on record—as continually seems necessary—that we have no problem at all with, and no opposition to, independent schools. Indeed, our party conference in September will debate an even better education paper, available from our party headquarters. (I do not know the price). One proposal among many others will be the retention of charitable status for independent schools. It will also propose to extend charitable status to all schools. It will oppose any suggestion as to the imposition of VAT on school fees. Even more importantly, we shall be encouraging independent schools to work in partnership
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with local education authorities; to open up their facilities to wider use; to buy in services from LEAs; and indeed to sell services to LEAs where that is appropriate. It will seek to allow LEAs to set up locally determined partnership schemes to support pupils at independent schools—for instance, where there is seen to be a particular need, locally determined, perhaps on the part of those with special needs, perhaps in art and sport. I hope that that is evidence that the Liberal Democrats at least have no problem with independent schools and wish to work more closely and positively with them.
So why do we oppose the assisted places scheme? We oppose it first and foremost because it is a wrong use of public funds. As was stated earlier this evening, scarce public resources need to be targeted where they are most needed. In my submission, they are most needed in the provision of teachers, books and equipment, and long-overdue repairs to buildings. The Minister in his concluding remarks, which were intended, I think, more to rubbish the Labour Party's scheme than otherwise—stated that abolition of the assisted places scheme would save only £24 million; that would provide only 1,000 teachers. That is only a small drop of what is needed, but it is a very important drop. It is a much better use of those resources than the assisted places scheme.
The noble Lord, Lord Morris, said that the principal purpose of the scheme is to prop up the independent schools. I believe that to be the case. I suspect it is no coincidence that, as pupil numbers in independent schools are declining, so we are seeing an extension of this scheme.
As I said, I have no problem with independent schools. I wish them well. I hope they succeed. My problem is that I do not believe that the scheme is a proper use of scarce public funds at a time when I know only too well that education budgets, funded publicly, are being cut, and cut, and cut. The need is enormous. Abolition of the scheme will not begin to solve the problem, but it is a step in the right direction. At the moment we are taking another, slightly larger step in the wrong direction.
The next question that we have to ask is whether the scheme achieves what it is intended to achieve. In his opening speech the Minister gave some very impressive figures and statements of achievement by pupils on assisted places. I do not for a moment want to belittle that achievement. But these are children who have been chosen specifically for their academic ability. They have been put in smaller classes than would have been the case if they had stayed at an LEA school. They have been better resourced with books and equipment and undoubtedly they have been taught in better premises and better buildings. It would be remarkable indeed if they were not achieving better results. I do not believe that that proves that the scheme is working. It simply proves that it would be remarkable if it were otherwise.
I turn next to inspection, which we touched on last year. In his reply to last year's debate the Minister said that there would be appropriate inspection. I wonder whether in his reply the Minister would tell us what he considers to be "appropriate inspection". Is it correct that only three independent schools this year are likely to be inspected by Ofsted? Is that adequate? Is it appropriate? He said last

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year that it monitors the results of assisted places pupils. Of course it does, but that monitoring comes after the event and even then, as I said, those pupils are among the brightest. It does not monitor whether they are doing as well as they could or should do under such a scheme. I am seriously concerned about the very little inspection that appears to take place in relation to independent schools and particularly those which benefit from the assisted places scheme.
There seems to be much conflicting evidence about who exactly are the parental beneficiaries from this scheme. The Minister quoted figures that suited his case. I shall quote some that suit mine. Two years ago research showed that 50 per cent. of parents benefiting from the scheme themselves had been to independent schools. That may have changed but I doubt whether it has changed significantly in two years. The research showed that only 10 per cent. of those parents were in manual work. It showed that a very much smaller percentage even than that came from ethnic minority backgrounds. There is evidence to suggest—I choose my words carefully—that many, not all but many, of the parents who benefit through the assisted places scheme could and would afford to pay for a place at an independent school if they were not fortunate enough to benefit through this scheme.
I conclude by stressing, as I did earlier, that my party is keen to co-operate with the independent sector and support it in that way, but we do not believe that a scheme which applies to less than 1 per cent. of school-age children is the right or appropriate way to widen that co-operation with the independent sector. The assisted places scheme is simply not the way to forge wider and better co-operation with the independent sector. Above all, it is not the best use of public funds. That money is small compared with what is needed. The "only £24 million" to which the Minister referred goes only a little way towards solving the problems that we have debated before in your Lordships' Chamber. But that sum of money is much needed and it is much better and more effectively targeted as public funds to support publicly funded schools. We oppose the order.
Lord Henley: My Lords, as always, we have had a very interesting debate—what the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, calls a ritual dance. He has taken part in that dance for a number of years longer than I have, but I hope to outlast him and look forward to debating with him again next year and the year after from this side of the Box.
As we go through this "ritual dance", we hear ritual noises from the parties opposite, and particularly from the Liberal Party, of alleged cuts in education at a time when this year we were able to find an extra £878 million for education as a whole.
Lord Tope: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He should not perhaps try to quote such figures to me. Is he aware that Ministers in another place have accepted that the additional money that the Government made available does not even reach the amount of money that the local education authorities themselves were already providing and that therefore no
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additional money has gone into the publicly funded education sector this year? In fact, there has been another reduction.
Lord Henley: My Lords, that is absolute nonsense. An extra £878 million has come from the central taxpayer and has gone to local authorities in the form of whatever the grant is called and made available to schools. One simply cannot say that there has not been extra money. I reject the allegations of cuts. We have seen considerable increases in the size of the education budget over the years. As I have made clear to the House on a number of occasions, throughout the United Kingdom we now spend something of the order of £35 billion on education at all levels. That is a very considerable sum indeed.
I totally reject the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, that this is some form of charitable relief for the independent sector and particularly the boarding part of it. First, let me make clear that, despite what he said, the assisted places scheme does not cover boarding fees. If a child is in receipt of an assisted place and is boarding, the boarding fees will come from somewhere else. So this is not outdoor relief or charitable relief for the maintained sector.
Let me also make clear the size of the sector about which we are talking. On average, less than one in seven of all pupils at assisted places schemes are government assisted pupils. Assisted pupils make up less than 0.4 per cent. of the total maintained and independent sector school population. So to say that they are keeping together the independent sector—or rather the 300 schools that benefit from the scheme—is quite simply nonsense. Also, to say that they will have an undue effect on the maintained sector by creaming off those from locally maintained schools is again nonsense and does not take us any further forward at all.
Both the noble Lords, Lord Morris and Lord Tope, made much of inspection. I can assure them that Ofsted will continue to inspect as and where appropriate and will conduct those inspections in as rigorous a manner as in the maintained sector. But it is obviously a matter for Ofsted, which is an independent body, and not one for the Government to direct, to decide exactly which schools it should inspect.
The noble Lord, Lord Tope, also tried to make out that those who benefit from the scheme were not those who ought to benefit from it. Let me make it quite clear that we have conducted quite an amount of research into the socio-economic background of parents and children who benefit. We know from an independent survey carried out by MORI for the Independent Schools Information Service that 80 per cent. of parents in the scheme—not the 40 per cent. claimed by the noble Lord—come from socio-economic groups which have not traditionally been associated with private schooling; that is, the upper and middle classes. I can also assure the noble Lord that again some 80 per cent. come from classes C1, C2 and DE—again, not those associated with private education.
I accept that the party opposite, like us, believes that we ought to extend opportunities for all pupils. But unlike that party, we believe in doing so by expanding choice and diversity and by placing choice in the parents' hands. That

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is why earlier this afternoon we debated the nursery voucher scheme and I am grateful that it has now completed its course through this House. The assisted places scheme also plays a vital part in this process. It is plainly achieving its objective of giving access to some of the best independent schools for children who would not otherwise have been able to contemplate them. We on this side of the House believe that that can only be to their and the nation's advantage. That is why I quoted the figures earlier. We intend to give twice as many children this opportunity and will expand and extend the scheme accordingly. The draft regulations before the House help to achieve just that. I commend them to your Lordships.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Social Security (Overpayments) Bill
6.40 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Viscount Allenby of Megiddo) in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Recovery of overpayments of social security benefit: amendments]:
Earl Russell Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 7, at end insert—
("( ) At the end of subsection (1), there shall be inserted "; so, however, that in a case where the misrepresentation or failure in question was not fraudulent, the Secretary of State shall only be entitled to recover the amount which is referable to the 12 months immediately preceding the determination.").
The noble Earl said: If the Minister will forgive me, a moment ago he said something to me which was a little unwise. He suggested that we should call it a draw. But the Minister knows the next thing that happens when there is a draw. It is a little late at night for a replay so I hope that we shall not have to have one. And I can assure my noble friend that there is no need for a penalty shoot-out on this Bill. This is an uncontentious, relatively calm part of tonight's business and I am glad that it is so.
The effect of Amendment No. 1 is to provide that the DSS should not be able, except where there is a case of fraud, to recover overpayments over a period longer than 12 months. The Minister knows perfectly well that the DSS has a rule that people who have had underpayments can recover them only for a period of 12 months; indeed, if they have the misfortune to be involved in a test case, not even for 12 months.
I do not maintain that there is anything in the least sacrosanct about the period of 12 months. I can remember some time ago, before the Minister was with us, arguing against that rule. I lost the argument and accepted it. My point is that if a period is stated, it should be the same
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period for both the DSS and the claimant. That is the principle on which the amendment rests; that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Even if there is not an equal period, there is no case, if there is a variation, for the department being able to recover overpayments over a longer period than the claimant. The Minister may not yet have been able to look at Elaine Kempson's book, Life on a Low Income, published by the Rowntree Trust. I hope that he will have time to look at it over the summer because we shall hear a lot more about it in time to come. The book deals at some length with a subject that I have often called to the Minister's attention; that is, the subject of debt on benefit; the problem of juggling with bills while the debt builds up; the problems of disconnection of water, electricity and so forth with which we are all familiar. It can be a serious problem and the intrusion into that pattern of heavily and barely manageable debt of a large overpayment over a period longer than 12 months can be crippling.
I am not suggesting that anyone who has been guilty of fraud should be spared that penalty. But where they have not it would seem harsh, especially when the department itself does not pay beyond the 12 months. In Elaine Kempson's book, in a study of 74 households on ordinary benefit without penalties, she found that 20 out of 74 seemed to be drowning in financial problems. I see no sense in deliberately thrusting them further under water. I beg to move.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: The purpose of this amendment is, with the exception of fraudulent or negligent overpayments, to restrict the period of a recoverable overpayment to 12 months from the date on which it is determined that a recoverable overpayment has occurred.
As the noble Earl has said on many occasions, the social security system is complex and difficult to understand—a sentiment with which I agree. The present test of misrepresentation or failure to disclose is relatively simple. To impose a test which required adjudication officers to decide on fraudulent intent or negligence in respect of overpayments going back over 12 months would be to add significantly to the complexity of deciding whether or not overpayments are recoverable. What adjudication officers would have to do is to try and understand the thought processes and knowledge of the person claiming benefit when they failed to disclose or misrepresented a material fact. That would indeed be an extremely difficult and complex thing to do and would provide huge scope for those claimants who were deliberately abusing the social security system to limit their potential financial liability.
In any case, I can see no reason why the period of recoverable overpayments should be restricted to 12 months from the date that a determination is made. The test as applied, that overpayments are recoverable where a claimant has fraudulently or otherwise misrepresented or failed to disclose any material fact, is a reasonable one. It was first introduced by the government in 1948—not of my party—and has been reconfirmed by successive governments in subsequent Acts, none of which restricted the period of recoverable overpayments.

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It is important to remember that when people claim benefits they are receiving public money which the taxpayer has worked hard to provide. It is therefore incumbent on claimants to ensure that they have reported everything that they should regarding their claim to benefit. Even where we are dealing with innocent misrepresentation where the claimant knew the facts but failed to report them—and those cases are rare—the claimant has benefited from public money to which he or she was not entitled. It can certainly be argued that asking for the overpayment to be repaid is hard on the claimant, but it is equally hard on the taxpayer—many of whom are not wealthy—if we do not seek to recover the overpayment.
I believe that the Bill as it stands strikes a fair balance between the person claiming benefit and the taxpayer. Even when it is decided by an adjudication officer that an overpayment is recoverable—and there is a right of appeal against such a decision—the Secretary of State can, and does, exercise his discretion where serious hardship would be caused and can waive in whole or in part his right to recover the overpayment.
I hope that, with that explanation and the assurance that the Secretary of State has a discretion which he can exercise where there will be serious hardship, the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Earl Russell: I was interested to hear the Minister say that it was difficult to judge the existence of fraud. I wish he had said that to the House when he was on his feet about an hour ago. Nevertheless, I concede that what he says is true. And yet, he must also concede that in the ordinary courts of law the question of judging whether or not an intention is fraudulent comes before them almost every day. I agree that it is difficult, but I do not believe that the difficulty is insuperable.
I agree with everything that the Minister said about public money. But he should put into the scale against that the fact that those who are receiving benefits are receiving an entitlement. To deprive people of an entitlement which is also a subsistence is something which ought to be weighed in the scale even against public money. I was wondering whether to ask the Minister for an assurance about the Secretary of State's discretion, which he then gave in the last part of his speech. I think that is all I am going to get out of him but I ask him, when he exercises his discretion, to remember mercy as well as justice. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.45 p.m.
Earl Russell Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 1, line 7, at end insert—
("( )The following subsection shall be inserted after subsection (1)—
"(1A) A person shall only be taken to have failed to disclose a material fact within subsection (1) if—

(a) he knew the fact in question; and

(b) it was reasonable in all the circumstances, including but not limited to his mental state) for disclosure of the fact to be expected of him,

whether or not the failure also constitutes a misrepresentation of a material fact within subsection (1)".").
The noble Earl said: Amendment No. 2 is a rather more technical amendment. It deals with the case of Jones v. Chief Adjudication Officer which came before the Court of Appeal in 1993, though it was not reported until 1994. The amendment seeks to assimilate the threshold for misrepresentation to the threshold for failure to disclose. As the law stands at present, the threshold for misrepresentation is very much lower. Therefore, by using the declaration that all material facts have been reported, the department can assimilate every failure to disclose into a misrepresentation and thus make it easier to prove.
The case of Jones v. Chief Adjudication Officer was a difficult one. I believe that the case itself was correctly decided, but some of the things that were said in the course of it, possibly obiter—not being a lawyer I would not be too insistent on the point—are capable of giving some ground for anxiety. It is entirely reasonable to say that people should not be required to disclose what they do not know. I was a little perturbed by Lord Justice Evans saying that,
"when a person has misrepresented a material fact, his knowledge of that fact is irrelevant so far as Section 53 is concerned. It is sufficient that there was the misrepresentation, whether the fact was known to him or not".
Most of us can disclose everything we know. I have never found a way of disclosing what I do not know because if I do not know it I do not know that I am failing to disclose it. It seems to be a fairly fundamental objection, which is not to say that it needed to be asserted, as the learned judge asserted it, in order to decide the case of Jones.
Mr. Jones had claimed unemployment benefit but had not received it. He filled in his form correctly at the time. He subsequently received unemployment benefit but failed to disclose that he had subsequently received it. Obviously, he had been incorrectly in receipt of benefits. There were other ways of arriving at the conclusion that he had received a payment that he should not have done and that he should repay it other than that of requiring that he disclose what he did not know. He obviously should have completed the declaration when he received the unemployment benefit and said that he had done so. That is where Mr. Jones's failure lay. It was not in any failure to disclose something that he did not know.
The amendment would also allow people to take into account the mental state of the claimant. For example, one can imagine the existing law about failure to disclose being applied to a patient with as yet undiagnosed Alzheimer's disease. The effects of that could be absolutely catastrophic. So where a person is subsequently discovered to have contracted Alzheimer's disease, it might be reasonable not to insist on recovery of overpayment when they might have failed to disclose a material fact simply because at the moment they were actually incapable of remembering it. That is a point worthy of thought.
The learned judge I have quoted was not the only one who discussed this case. A different line was taken by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith. He made the crucial point that knowledge is not needed in innocent misrepresentation. It is the word "innocent" which is really crucial. Clearly, a misrepresentation is a misrepresentation, whether one

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knows it or not. But one can argue that if it is an innocent misrepresentation, it should not necessarily—with a person whose income is as low as that of someone on benefit—give rise to the right to require the recovery of overpayment. So in that way I believe that one might reconcile what the two learned judges said, the one with the other. One might perhaps incorporate this amendment into law without actually meaning to reverse the case, which I believe was correctly decided. This amendment would save the day. It would require that people should not be penalised for failure to disclose what they do not know. It is a simple principle and I hope that the Minister will find it acceptable. I beg to move.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: The purpose of this amendment, as the noble Earl has described it, is to limit the Secretary of State's right to recover overpayments in certain circumstances where it would not have been reasonable to expect the person to have known that a change in circumstances must be reported to the department. In my view the amendment is not necessary. Case law already deals with cases of mental incapacity, illiteracy or educational or linguistic difficulties. Therefore, it would encompass, I suspect, the case that the noble Earl made about Alzheimer's disease. Indeed, perhaps I may go further and give the noble Earl an assurance that the mental state at the time of the claim is taken into account in deciding whether a person had knowledge of a relevant fact. The Secretary of State could decide not to pursue overpayment if Alzheimer's disease was subsequently discovered. No obligation can be imposed to disclose something that a person does not already know and an overpayment arising in such circumstances is not recoverable.
More importantly, case law does not limit consideration of failure to disclose in the way the amendment would do. Rather than benefiting claimants, which I am sure the noble Earl intends to do, it could have the effect of narrowing the interpretation of these provisions as established by the case law over a long period. Even in those cases where the right to recover is undisputed the Secretary of State maintains a power of discretion to waive recovery in whole or in part.
The noble Lord mentioned at length the case of Jones v. Chief Adjudication Officer. I am aware of that case. Perhaps I may suggest to the noble Earl that the latest authoritative position is a decision made in December 1995 by the Court of Appeal in Franklin v. Chief Adjudication Officer. Mrs. Franklin was overpaid income support because there was no disclosure that the interest rates on her mortgage had reduced. The social security appeal tribunal found that Mrs. Franklin had not known of the decrease in her mortgage interest rate. The court determined that the overpayment was not recoverable under Section 71 on the grounds that Mrs. Franklin had not misrepresented a material fact and also that she had not failed to disclose a material fact since the fact was outside her knowledge. I do not particularly want to read out some of the relevant parts of the case, but, if the noble Earl looks at the judgment, which was given on Wednesday, 13th December 1995, it may help with the problem he brings to our attention in this amendment.
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Where a person has no knowledge of a fact, there will be no recovery if he either fails to disclose it or misrepresents it. That has long been the position for failure to disclose. The Franklin case, which was decided last December, shows that a person is only required to report a relevant fact of which he has knowledge. There is no misrepresentation if he completes the standard declaration without reporting a fact of which he had no knowledge. With those assurances and with the recommendation of a little light reading for the noble Earl of yet another legal judgment, I hope that he will be able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Skelmersdale: In answer to the noble Earl's amendments my noble friend has mentioned the Secretary of State's discretion to waive the refund of overpayment either in whole or in part. Surely, there is a third course. It would be helpful to me at least, and, I hope, to the noble Earl, if we can be told that where a substantial sum of money is due to be repaid, this can be done over a period of time and settled in the adjudication.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: As we are in Committee, perhaps I may respond. The period of time during which the overpayment can be paid back is, in the first instance, a matter for negotiation between the person and the Benefits Agency. If no agreement can be arrived at, there is a limit to the amount of weekly overpayment which can be imposed. If my memory is correct it is £7 and £9—odd if the claim was fraudulent. Obviously, depending on the size of the overpayment, that will have some bearing on the length of time during which the overpayment is made. If it is felt that that would be too much for the person, it can be reduced to a lesser amount as long as the overpayment is made. I think that it is fair to say that the Secretary of State tries to take a reasonable view of repayments.
7 p.m.
Earl Russell: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I was aware of the case of Franklin and I am encouraged by the Minister's reading of it. If that is indeed the law, I am satisfied, but I ask the Minister to continue to watch the situation to see whether the cases which caused so much confusion in Jones continue to arise and, if they do, to reconsider whether the law may be in need of clarification.
On the question of mental state, it is not quite so simple. It is clear that a person's mental state is relevant to the question of whether the claimant knew the facts in question, but there is a commissioner's decision—the reference is CA/303/92—which holds that the question is only whether the claimant knew the fact in question, not whether he understood that it was reasonable to require him to disclose it. There are a number of cases of mental impairment—severe brain injury after a road accident comes to mind—where that distinction might be vital. I hope that the Minister can again tell me, as he has on other issues, that he has discretion and that he will exercise it with mercy. Can he help me that far?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: I am not sure that I can help the noble Earl that far, but I am prepared to say

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that there have been cases—I am not sure that I can refer to them by name because I have only a code in front of me—where it was decided that a person must be reasonably expected to disclose a material fact. If the person may not reasonably be expected to know of the material fact because of his or her mental state, there is no failure to disclose.
I do not think that we are far apart. However, as we cannot continue to bat previous cases back and forth, I hope that the noble Earl will accept that I am content to consider what he has said and to write to him with clarification of the cases that he has drawn to my attention.
Earl Russell: I am most grateful to the Minister for that assurance. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Earl Russell Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 1, line 22, leave out ("subsection") and insert ("subsections").
The noble Earl said: This is a comparatively small amendment. It covers the point of vires for an appeal. If there is to be an appeal against an overpayment, it must cover the matter which came up on the review. That is inevitable. It is in the necessity of the case. However, the effect of the Bill has been to separate the review from the overpayment for reasons which I believe are good and which I accept.
Perhaps I may quote from paragraph 10 of Commissioner Mesher's judgment which gave rise to the Bill. It is the same passage which I believe also gives rise to the case for the amendment. He said:
"It would be most unfair to a claimant if an adjudication officer could … after the time for appealing against the review decision has expired, decide that a resulting overpayment was recoverable".
That was why Commissioner Mesher found there was a problem about recovery after the period of the review was over. As that problem has been met, Commissioner Mesher's other problem needs to be met also. The amendment is simple and equitable and will, I hope, save confusion. I beg to move.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: As the noble Earl said, the purpose of the amendment is effectively to reopen the appeal rights of a decision to revise or vary an award where a decision on the overpayment aspects are considered at a later stage. The noble Earl quoted Commissioner Mesher's decision in the Mustard case about the problem of separating the review of the payment from the decision on whether there has been an overpayment; to what extent; and why it arose. They have always been separated and our purpose is to place the legislation in exactly the position that absolutely everyone considered it to be in since 1948.
A person has the right of appeal to a social security appeal tribunal against a decision of an adjudication officer. He has three months in which to exercise that right. The period can be extended by the tribunal chairman in very exceptional circumstances. However, in the interests of good administration, there must be a point where a matter about entitlement to benefit is considered closed. If a person has been receiving an amount of
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benefit for three months without appealing, it is only right to consider that the amount in payment is accepted and that there cannot, unless there are exceptional circumstances, be a longer period in which that appeal can be made. If a determination on an overpayment is made after the expiry of the time in which an appeal against the revised or varied award can be made, there will still exist a right of appeal against the overpayment decision. That seems to me right. We are talking about where the person fully accepts the amount currently in payment—he has not appealed within the three-month period allowed—but disputes the overpayment part. If he chose not to exercise his rights of appeal when the award was revised in the first instance, I do not see that he can expect the matter to be reopened at a later stage—after the initial three-month period has expired.
In any event, giving a person what effectively amounts to an extended period in which to appeal, in circumstances where his own misrepresentation or failure to disclose led to the award being revised, is manifestly unfair to those who report the facts about themselves correctly and promptly and who do not have extended appeal rights. That is why I think that it is important that we do not extend beyond three months the initial ground for appeal (against the actual decision to vary the weekly or monthly payment), although I accept that beyond that period of three months the person may wish to appeal against the decision on overpayment. The two are separate. I think that the fact that there is a cushion of three months in which someone can appeal against the recalculation of the weekly benefit that is in payment is more than sufficient. To go further would be to go too far. Having listened to that explanation, I hope that the noble Earl will withdraw his amendment.
Earl Russell: I must confess to being rather disappointed by that answer. It seems to me to amount to a total denial of the possibility of an appeal against recovery of overpayment. I cannot see how you can appeal against recovery of overpayment without questioning the assessment of the overpayment which led to the recovery. I think that Commissioner Mesher was quite right: the two matters necessarily become involved with each other.
I take the Minister's point that when you are found to have been receiving an excess of benefit, obviously you should take it up and, if you think that it is wrong, you should appeal immediately. However, if one talks to people on benefit, one realises that they spend a lot of their lives in what I can best describe as a "fog" about why the DSS does to them what it does. A great many of them, without understanding, accept that the DSS moves in a mysterious way and they grit their teeth and bear it. However, if one suddenly faces a demand for recovery of a four-figure sum which one has no chance of producing, that may be a very different matter. I think that the Minister is risking making the right to appeal against recovery of overpayment practically nugatory. Will he read Commissioner Mesher's judgment again and reconsider the matter in the light of what he said? Is the Minister prepared to go that far?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: I am reading the appropriate paragraph of Commissioner Mesher's

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judgment. I have been studying it. Even in the interests of being as generous as I can to the noble Earl, I do not think that I can go any further than I have gone because that might lead the noble Earl to think that I was being more generous than I intend to be on this matter.
I am perfectly clear that if, over a period of three months, a person has accepted a reduced payment, there is no case for extending the period in which he can appeal against that reduced payment beyond those three months. Obviously I appreciate that that person may wish to appeal against the size of the overpayment demanded, but that may be on other grounds. He has already accepted that new conditions and new information leads the Benefits Agency rightly to a new conclusion on the amount of the new weekly payment. He can dispute whether he knowingly misrepresented the facts or knew the facts. He can certainly dispute these other matters in an appeal against a decision for overpayment, but I do not believe that it is right that we should extend the three-month period for an appeal against the decision on the recalculation of the benefit itself.
Earl Russell: It is an illness of office that one tends to believe that everybody else is wrong. Briefs come back marked "Resist". I understand perfectly well why that is so. I hope that if I remove myself with my amendments and I leave the Minister so that I am no longer here to say "no" to, the Minister may just think again. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 4 not moved.]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clauses 2 and 3 agreed to.
Report received.
Then, Standing Order 44 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution of 18th July), Bill read a third time, and passed.

Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 1996
7.12 p.m.
Earl Russell Earl Russell rose to move to resolve, That this House invites Her Majesty's Government to withdraw the Draft Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 1996 and to lay amended regulations making the power to increase the benefit penalty discretionary and therefore to be exercised with regard to the welfare of any child likely to be affected by the decision, as required by Section 2 of the Child Support Act 1991.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg leave to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I should like to offer my thanks to the Minister's honourable colleague, Mr. Andrew Mitchell, first, for a great deal of kindness over correspondence; secondly, for giving me a meeting in which we discussed these new regulations in some detail; and, thirdly, when I asked for additional information on some of the points covered in the CSA research, for sending me a very large quantity of material.
I have read it all but it does not answer any of the questions about which I asked Mr. Mitchell for further information. I regret to say that I shall have to ask those questions again.
We are familiar with the proverb, "Give a dog a bad name and hang him". We have seen that done today to asylum seekers. It is being done under these regulations in very much the same way to women with children. The idea is being put about that they must be fraudulent and therefore outside our mercy. It is a wonderful way of denying sympathy to people in need. I find it extremely disturbing.
In the course of preparing this speech I looked back at our debates on the Child Support Act 1991. I found I had said then that if a benefit penalty was needed as large as the one that we have now, it would mean that the resistance among women to the Child Support Act was so great that the Act would be unenforceable. I believe that that was a good judgment. The Minister has decided that the present benefit penalty on women who do not co-operate with the CSA of losing 20 per cent. of their benefit for a year and 10 per cent. for a further six months is not enough. He says that that level of benefit penalty fails to provide a sufficient incentive to co-operate with the CSA. I cannot help wondering whether the conclusion that I drew in 1991 may be rather more appropriate. The Government have concluded that there is a need to make the benefit penalty more effective if they are to tackle abuse.
What are the real causes of women's failure to co-operate with the CSA? Surely the Child Poverty Action Group is right that in the context of the requirement to co-operate there will always be a margin for error. That emerges from a case in the book by Elaine Kempson. She quotes the case of a woman who left her husband after a particularly bad beating. She did not qualify for income support because he was supposed to be paying her maintenance, which she never received. That is a familiar story, too. Mounting money problems forced her to return to her violent husband. That woman did not have sufficient confidence in the good cause procedures to go anywhere near them. I wish that the Government were as alert to those cases as they are to the very few of fraud.
In a crucial passage in paragraph 43 of the CSA's research, a distinction is drawn, which the CSA regards as fundamental, between those who have genuine concerns and those who do not co-operate with the CSA. It assumes that these are two fundamentally different groups. There is a refutation of that on page 131 of the very same research. One would have thought that the authors might have noticed what they had themselves published. That case concerned a woman who refused to co-operate with the CSA and would not give any reasons. But the relevant officer, who fortunately had scholarly instincts, looked up the old liable relative documents and found that, although she had not claimed this, she had left her husband because of repeated incidents of violence. Because he happened to be a genuine scholar, the woman was found to have good cause. But that violence would have been just as genuine if the officer had not happened to look up the documents. It would have been just as genuine if it had

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not found its way in the first place into the liable relative papers. We do not know how many causes of that kind may be being missed.
Another common cause for failing to co-operate, which is perhaps not as bad a cause as the Minister believes, is a desire to protect a second family. It so happened that on Saturday evening very occasionally I took a little time off and watched a film on television. It emerged that the brother of the heroine suddenly discovered that the man he believed to be his father was not. His response was to take to heroin. That was a fictional case, but I am sure that it is possible to find real cases which can go with it. That may be a good cause for not co-operating, even if the CSA does not find it. It may be a common cause that to co-operate with the CSA will disrupt an amicable arrangement between divorced parents. The example of Mrs. Smith in the CSA's model cases in the appendix to this research is a typical case in point. It is a fictional case, but I believe that it is very accurately delineated.
God knows, it is hard enough for couples who have split up to reach amicable arrangements and keep them going. They may perfectly well dislike having the CSA marching in and putting its muddy boots all over those arrangements. Even if the Minister does not accept that that is so, he must accept that there is a limit to the practical powers of the state to force people to act against their own interests as they perceive them. That has always been so, and, thank God, it is.
The commonest reason: Professor Craig's report for the Rowntree Trust studied the cases of 53 women who had been subject to the CSA. Not one of those women was better off as a result. So, in this benefit penalty regime, we have a regime which is all stick and no carrot. If the Minister is keen for more women to co-operate with the CSA, he might think about a tiny little bit of carrot. The Minister knows perfectly well what we shall be asking him for. I shall not labour the point. It is a maintenance disregard, better arrangements for passported benefits, and, above all, some way of dealing with the frequent failure of maintenance to arrive. That is something that many other European countries have done, with profit. We have not done it here, and we are paying for it.
Another common reason, as one of the women in the Rowntree study said, is that she has refused to co-operate because she does not want to go into, as she put it, "the gory details of a rotten marriage". People coming out of a marriage, like people coming out of a party, tend to be suffering from centrifugal force. Requiring those people to resume a relationship with their former partners could be rather like an administrative requirement to require Dr. David Owen to return to the Labour Party. I do not think that it would be particularly effective.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Is the noble Earl inviting us to a Dutch auction?
Earl Russell: My Lords, no, I do not conduct my auctions on Dutch principles. I think that the House takes my point. When a woman says that she is going to wash this man right out of her hair, that is a force which the state cannot change.
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I remember saying in 1995—the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, opened his eyes wide with astonishment—that in some of these cases even the death penalty would not be a sufficient inducement to make the woman go back into a relationship with her former partner and co-operate. Those were considered words. I know actual examples. I shall not go any further. In those cases I believe that there is no penalty which is sufficient to make the woman co-operate.
Again it is vital that though violence is regarded as sufficient cause, fear of violence is not. The case of Miss Rogers in the CSA's model cases is a classic case in point. She said, "I fear he will hurt me one day. So I want to go where I will never see him again". When a woman decides that, it is hard to make her change her mind, but she can find it difficult to offer proof. Let us take this:
"It was the way he looked at me. It was very difficult to put into words. He had a strange and odd effect on me".
That is actual evidence. It is the evidence of the WPC who had to go to see Thomas Hamilton of Dunblane about his gun licence. She was right. That instinct is part of a woman's survival kit in the world. Anyone who tries to make her abandon it will fail. So the Minister is barking up the wrong tree. However fierce his penalty, he will never get to the top of it. He can go on and on producing fiercer penalties.
Among all those possible causes for not co-operating, the only one that the DSS can see is fraud. I wish the DSS were as worried by its own errors as it is by those of claimants. The research offers a weak foundation indeed for that belief in fraud. It admits itself that it is not a statistically significant sample. It quotes the belief of staff that there is a great deal of fraud. But I did discover one interesting thing from the large mass of material that I was sent. It is the comment in paragraph 3.75 that that belief of the staff in a large level of fraud was perception rather than fact. That I believe to be correct.
The sample was untypical in that only one member of it had appealed against a reduced benefit direction. It was unscholarly in that it lumped together confirmed fraud and suspected fraud. I have had no additional evidence about cases of suspected fraud. Taking those two as one and the same thing is legally totally unsound. Of the 38, 26 are alleged to have told the research that a 40 per cent. benefit penalty had no impact. That is literally totally unbelievable. I have asked to see the words of the question to which that was a reply. I have not seen them. I can only translate that comment, saving your Lordships' presence, as, "… off". I think that that is all it means.
I do not believe the Minister realises quite how tight life is on ordinary levels of benefit: not being able to buy a wreath for a father's funeral. In Elaine Kempson's words:
"Insufficient income to cover even their basic needs".
She stresses that the hardship of being on benefit grows, often in geometrical proportion, as you are on it longer. So if you are on a 40 per cent. reduction for the whole of your children's youth, that will grow very heavy indeed.
It must affect the children also. We were told in 1991 that it affected only the mother and not the children, but you do not divide the pat of butter into one half which is for the mother, which shrinks, and another half which

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is for the children. I know that mothers try to do that to the point of malnutrition, but even beyond the point of malnutrition, if you switch off the heating, you switch it off for everyone. The children must suffer too. And the problem goes on to the next generation.
They tell me that a 40 per cent. benefit penalty or a 20 per cent. benefit penalty have no impact. I find that an insult to my intelligence. In saying that, the Minister is flinging a pot of ink in the face of the public. If he wants a farthing, I am willing to repeat it outside the Chamber.
Moved to resolve, That this House invites Her Majesty's Government to withdraw the Draft Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 1996 and to lay amended regulations making the power to increase the benefit penalty discretionary and therefore to be exercised with regard to the welfare of any child likely to be affected by the decision, as required by Section 2 of the Child Support Act 1991.—(Earl Russell.)
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for allowing us this debate in this form tonight. The regulations reduce benefit for the parent with care who fails to co-operate with the CSA without good cause by some 40 per cent. for a three-year term, which is renewable. I take it, but it would worth the Minister confirming it, that at any point that the parent with care co-operates with the agency the full benefit is promptly reinstated. The regulations are to take effect from October.
Perhaps I may start with the point that the noble Earl made last. We are talking about a significant sum: a loss to a family of nearly £20 a week, leaving her—I may not be a WPC, but I shall use the word "her" in this case—if she has one child with just £60 a week to live on if she is over 25 and £50 for a mother and child to live on if the mother is, say, 24. That is based on a review of just 72 cases out of the 27,000 cases in which there were benefit deductions.
The sampling evidence upon which this new practice has been constructed seems to me to be exceedingly unreliable, particularly when it is done by an agency which is notorious for its inaccuracy and error. Even after improvements during the past year, over one assessment in five is inaccurate. Improvements have been made, and we welcome them, but I should be somewhat more comfortable with all of this if I felt that the agency's procedures and processes were to be relied on rather more faithfully than we have so far been led to believe.
We do not doubt that there is a problem of collusion. While in 1974 there was a deduction of about 4 per cent. in benefit, it was double that last year. We know that the very act of triggering child support assessments has encouraged some parents with care to stop claiming income support, suggesting that their claim for income support may not have been legitimate; for instance, they may have been in work, living with a partner or claiming as a single parent. It is also sometimes the case that when child support assessments are made, allegations are made by one parent that the other is fraudulently claiming benefit.
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There is also some evidence, which we must accept, that some parents collude in order to avoid payment. Obviously, it is in everyone's interest, except that of taxpayers, that the parent with care should refuse to name the absent father and that in return for his avoiding formal maintenance he will pay informal maintenance of a lower figure which goes entirely to her and the children and none to the Treasury. That too is fraud.
It is also the case that some parents with care fail to co-operate with the CSA because they are genuinely bewildered. The noble Earl's description of them being in a fog in terms of the wondrous workings of the agency was most apt. They are bewildered and baffled by the whole process. Many find the forms very difficult to understand. Their English may be poor. Many parents with care may have minor learning difficulties. At present, the CSA makes no personal contact, such as a visit, and therefore it is difficult to know the extent of the problem.
Other parents may refuse to co-operate, not because they are confused but because they are all too clear that they do not want the absent parent back in their lives. They believe that if the absent father pays maintenance he will want access. For whatever reason, good or bad, they prefer to accept a benefit penalty rather than to allow that. The Minister, the noble Earl and I know that paying maintenance and rights to access are not the same, but that is not what is believed outside this House in many broken families.
Other parents with care may have a friendly relationship with the absent father. Their children may often stay with him in his new family and get on with the new half-brothers and half-sisters. They may not wish to threaten that relationship by appearing to hound him for maintenance. It is decent that they prize the good relations between their children and their father and have no wish to appear to jeopardise them at the cost to the children.
Finally, some parents with care are genuinely fearful of violence from an abusing partner. There is no doubt that for very good reasons many women do not co-operate with the agency. The test of the agency is whether it is sufficiently skilled and sensitive to recognise when such a real fear exists.
What is our position? We are emphatic that we do not tolerate fraud, nor do we accept collusion. I accept that there may be a case for some benefit reduction having a role to play in stopping fraud in particular. However, I believe that much of the blame for the present situation lies fairly and squarely with the practices and procedures of the CSA. Parents with care find themselves dealing with an anonymous, bureaucratic, error-ridden and deeply flawed organisation. It is wrong that the parent with care can suffer benefit reductions without having the opportunity to meet and discuss the case with the CSA official. We believe that home visits are essential if one is to determine the true situation and to assure a woman who is threatened with violence that she should be protected and to encourage the woman who may have learning difficulties and who is baffled and frightened by the whole system that she need have no fear in co-operating with the agency. We shall reinstate home

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visits. We believe also that there may be other and safer methods of tracing the absent father without jeopardising the well-being of the mother. Whatever our concern to eradicate fraud, there is no way in which we shall be party to putting women at risk.
Therefore the Government and the agency must be able to distinguish between a mother who is being deliberately fraudulent—possibly because she is working, which, clearly, must be stopped and a benefit penalty or the loss of benefit if her work takes her above that level should be considered—and the mother who is colluding with the absent father and enters into an informal arrangement with him. That, too, should be stopped. I hope that in the case of the first situation, if there is any question of misunderstanding and the woman should be on family credit, the agency will accept the fact that not everyone has such a clear distinction between income support and family credit and the 16-hours rule as do your Lordships.
The Government have only themselves to blame for the mother who colludes with the absent father. While not tolerating collusion, we know why it happens. It happens because the Government do not permit the parent with care to retain a single pound or a single penny of the maintenance paid in the form of disregard if he or she is on income support. We hope and expect to introduce such a disregard, thus making it more financially attractive for women with children to co-operate.
We must also distinguish between the woman who is confused and fails to co-operate with the agency, to which we believe the right response is home visits, and the mother who refuses to co-operate with the agency as a result of genuine fear. We all accept that the CSA staff have a difficult job. All of us would wish to pay tribute to the fact that, so far, in no case in which it has been reported that the CSA has refused to accept a fear of violence as good cause has there subsequently been violent assault or abuse. The staff are to be commended for that.
We shall restore home visits and we shall have a greater confidence in the system of penalties. Until they and a disregard are in place, and until alternative and safer means of tracing the father are in place, we oppose the Government's policy of increasing benefit deduction. It is wrong. It may, though I doubt it, succeed in getting more women to co-operate with the agency. However, it will plunge more children of lone parents into deeper poverty. Their health, education and well-being will suffer. Perhaps your Lordships will try to imagine a mother and a five year-old child living on £50 a week. Your Lordships might spend in one night that on a dinner for two. The health of those children and their education and well-being will suffer. Truly, the Government are insisting that we visit the sins of the father all too literally on the father's child.
7.37 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, this Motion is unnecessary for two reasons. First, although the Government are satisfied that child support provisions are entirely consistent with the welfare of children, child support legislation, in fact, imposes no requirement on the Secretary of State to consider these
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issues when bringing forward regulations. I recall, as I am sure does the noble Earl, that this matter was debated extensively during the passage of the 1995 Child Support Bill.
Parliament has decided that child maintenance should be set within the clearly defined framework of a formula which takes into account the needs of all parties involved: the children, their parents and the taxpayers. The foundations of the scheme are rooted in the belief, endorsed by Parliament, that the welfare of the child is best served through the support of his own parents based on their ability to pay.
It is also the case that there are already established and well-used safeguards to ensure the proper use of regulation-making powers, such as those relating to the vires of the powers or the unusual or unexpected use of powers. There can be little doubt that it was the will of Parliament in passing what is now Section 46 of the 1991 Act that parents with care should face a benefit reduction if they failed without good cause to co-operate with child support provisions. These regulations simply seek to make that penalty more effective.
Secondly, in accordance with Section 2 of the Child Support Act 1991, the welfare of the child must be considered in connection with all good cause decisions. Both the requirement to co-operate and reduced benefit direction decisions are discretionary decisions and will continue to be, as they have been so far, subject to welfare of the child considerations.
Earl Russell: My Lords, when the Minister says that it was the will of Parliament to impose a benefit penalty, is he aware that he means that it was the will of another place?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I thought that the other place was included in the term "Parliament". I presume that the noble Earl is pointing out to me, although I do not believe that I was here at the time, that this House did not perhaps agree with the Government's proposals but that the other place did. However, I do not wish to rehearse the arguments we had earlier today in that respect. Clearly the end part of the Bill—now the Act—was as I have stated.
In deciding whether to impose a requirement to co-operate the person acting on behalf of the Secretary of State must consider if there is any evidence of risk of harm or undue distress to the child. Welfare of the child is, therefore, already considered.
The reduced benefit direction is intended to ensure that parents with care consider carefully their decision not to co-operate without good cause. To be effective, a sanction must be applied in cases where co-operation is refused for no good reason. In deciding whether to impose such a direction regard must be had to the welfare of the child. But the welfare of the child cannot be considered in isolation and it is not the paramount consideration. Regard must also be had to the purpose and principles of the child support Acts; the obligation of both parents to support their children; and the advantages of receipt of maintenance. The

1249
child support scheme would be seriously undermined if the imposition of a reduced benefit direction was considered, in every case, to so adversely affect the welfare of the child that it should not be made. I hope, therefore, that the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw his Motion.
I turn now to the regulations which also formed part of the noble Earl's speech and that made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. The regulations make important changes to underpin the Government's commitment to the principles of child support, as well as making a number of minor changes to improve child support operations.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that it would be a great deal better if the CSA was doing better; indeed, the agency has had difficulties and we have never made any secret of that fact. However, it is improving year by year. In March 1996 an accuracy rate of 79 per cent. was achieved. Therefore, progress is being made but, of course, that is being made against the background that there are many men out there who do not want to pay and who are pretty unwilling payers. In such circumstances there will always be difficulties for the agency.
The most substantial changes in the amending regulations which have been mentioned both by the noble Earl and the noble Baroness are those to the reduced benefit direction provisions. Many noble Lords will recall that Section 46 of the 1991 Act provides that a reduced benefit direction may be imposed on a parent with care in receipt of an income related benefit who fails to co-operate with the Child Support Agency without good cause. The regulations make important and, in our view, necessary changes to those provisions. First, they increase the amount and duration of the benefit reduction; secondly, they remove, in certain cases, the six-week cooling-off period given to parents with care before a reduced benefit direction is considered.
The regulations also include a provision to amend the confidentiality rules to ease the appeals process; provisions to enable the agency to gather information to decide whether a case should be taken on, and to decide the best way of enforcing a maintenance assessment; and a number of minor and technical amendments to ease administration and underpin existing policy.
Perhaps I may turn first to the reduced benefit directions, which are really the key to the whole debate. We have been increasingly concerned about the large numbers of parents with care refusing to co-operate for no good reason. In the year 1995–96, the Child Support Agency investigated over 112,000 cases where the parent with care had responded to the agency's initial inquiries indicating an unwillingness to co-operate. In the same year, administrators accepted the parent's reasons for not co-operating in just under 39,000 cases, and no further action was taken. In just over 27,000 cases the parent with care refused to authorise maintenance action despite being required to do so and a reduced benefit direction was imposed.
1250
Of even greater concern is the number of parents with care who do not make any contact with the agency to say why they do not feel able to co-operate. Following the recommendation of the Select Committee, the Child Support Agency recently undertook a detailed investigation of the operation of the requirement to co-operate. In the sample survey used for the report, the parent with care had failed to make contact with the agency in no fewer than 45 per cent. of cases where a reduced benefit direction was issued.
7.45 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, does the Minister agree that that represents 34 people out of the 27,000 cases?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I shall come to that matter later. I referred to 45 per cent. of the sample. One can hardly move from the sample to the total number involved.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I believe that the sample was 72, therefore the Minister has evidence on 34 cases and from that he is speculating as to the situation of the other 27,000.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, as I said, I had intended to deal with that point at a later stage. However, perhaps the noble Baroness would prefer me to deal with it now. I quite agree that the sample was not a big one; indeed, it was a sample of 72 cases. That sample illustrated a problem for which there is wider and statistically valid evidence. The Benefits Agency review, which was based on a sample of over 1,600 cases, showed that almost 20 per cent. of lone parents had claimed benefit fraudulently or were strongly suspected of doing so. Therefore, there is some evidence to show that this is a problem. In fact, I believe that the Select Committee was thinking along those lines when it suggested that we should look at the issue.
It is clearly unacceptable that there are people who are not telling the Child Support Agency what the position is and who are just leaving it at that. The agency has a very good record in handling good cause interviews, and complaints have been very few. Indeed, I believe that the noble Baroness mentioned that point in her speech. The good cause procedures are designed specifically to establish whether the parent with care has genuine concerns. There is no evidence that anyone has suffered harm from the absent parent as a result of being required to co-operate. Again, I believe that the noble Baroness mentioned that fact.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect a parent with care to make her case to the agency. However, this high non-compliance rate must lead to the conclusion that, in at least some of these cases, there may be fraud or collusion between the parents to avoid child support liability.

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It also appears that the problem is getting worse. In 1994–95 19 per cent. of cases investigated resulted in a reduced benefit direction, and last year the figure was 24 per cent. I do not believe that we can allow that trend to continue. Accordingly, we are forced to the conclusion that current penalties are inadequate and provide insufficient incentive to those minded to abuse the child support system.
Just as an absent parent should pay maintenance if he can afford to do so, so a parent with care should co-operate in the pursuit of maintenance unless she has a good reason not to do so. Currently, a parent with care who refuses to co-operate with the agency without good cause may have her benefit reduced by 20 per cent. for six months, followed by a reduction of 10 per cent. for a further 12 months. It is regrettable that these penalties are necessary at all; in an ideal world they would not be. It is essential that the level of the benefit reduction reflects the seriousness of the parent's decision not to comply. The regulations before the House today will encourage the parent with care to think more carefully about her decision.
We achieve that aim by means of the following changes. First, Regulation 14 provides that the reduced benefit direction will be increased to 40 per cent. of the adult income support allowance for three years. The direction will be immediately renewed if the parent with care continues to fail to comply.
Secondly, Regulation 13 provides that only parents with care who give their reasons for not co-operating in writing will have the benefit of the six-week cooling off period. In all other cases, the Secretary of State will refer the case to a child support officer to consider imposing a reduced benefit direction immediately the parent with care fails to respond to the relevant notices. Even parents with care who fail to make any contact at all will still have ample opportunity for reflection and time to contact the agency if they choose to do so. No parents with care will have their benefit reduced before they have had a minimum of nine weeks to consider their position. During that period they will have received an offer of an interview and no less than five written communications from the agency. In addition, it will still be necessary for two agency officials to consider the case.
Perhaps I may explain the new procedure to the House. As now, when a parent with care applies for a relevant benefit she will receive the CSA 12C letter which explains that she may be required to co-operate with the agency and asks her to return a declaration saying whether she intends to claim good cause. If she returns the declaration to say that she thinks she, or any child living with her, will be at risk of harm or undue distress if she co-operates, this is considered. If she returns the declaration to say that she is prepared to authorise the recovery of maintenance, or if she does not return the declaration at all, a maintenance application form is sent after 14 days. She will then be given 14 days to complete that form, after which a reminder is issued giving her another seven days if the form has still not been returned. She will then receive a letter asking her to return the form, or give reasons in writing as to why she thinks she should not have done so
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within two weeks or the case will at the end of that two-week period be referred to a child support officer to consider a reduced benefit direction.
If within two weeks she gives her reasons why she should not be required to co-operate, she will be given six weeks before the case is referred to a child support officer to consider a reduced benefit direction, even though officials may not think that the reasons that she gives are sufficient to justify good cause. Once the case has been referred to a child support officer, he will allow the parent with care a further two weeks to make representations before he makes a decision on a reduction of benefit.
So noble Lords can see where the nine weeks arises. It will take at least nine weeks before a parent with care receives a reduced benefit direction. There is therefore plenty of opportunity for the parent to get in touch with the agency or attend an interview to explain her circumstances. A reduced benefit direction is the last resort and the agency's procedures and letters make this very clear.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, the Minister says that there will be five or possibly six communications in writing to the parent with care. Clearly, if she is competent, she will at least know what the situation is and take some responsibility for it. I apologise to the Minister if I am anticipating him, but will he comment or give guidance on the proposals about home visits?
A lot of this endless to-ing and fro-ing of paperwork is directed at women who may have fairly low literacy levels, who may not speak English as their first language or who feel themselves almost frozen into apathy after being bombarded by the system. Can the Minister comprehend that situation? As a councillor, I have known people in my ward in that situation who could not cope with the papers and letters coming through the door.
Will the Minister consider restoring home visits before going through to the child support officer to make the final decision?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, obviously, given the number of problems that we have in this regard with parents not returning their forms even at the end of quite a long procedure, it would be quite expensive and difficult to say that we could have home visits in every single case. In any case, all of the parents we are talking about have actually filled in income support application forms and perhaps been to the Benefits Agency office. I find it hard to believe that somehow they are unable either to fill in the form or go to the agency office to seek help and advice.
While we are interested in increasing the number of home visits across the whole benefits area, I cannot promise that we will particularly concentrate on home visits in this area. Most of the people we are considering are people who have income support and, therefore, they have made applications and know how the system works. They know where they can go for help.
Let me answer one point that the noble Baroness raised. Even after a reduced benefit direction has been imposed, a parent with care may at any time come forward to make

1253
her case and this will be considered. If she co-operates, or gives acceptable reasons why she should not be required to co-operate, the direction will be lifted immediately.
We are determined that parents with care will co-operate with the agency unless they have genuine reasons not to do so. We are matching the legislative changes proposed today with improved procedures to ensure that all parents with care understand what is required of them. They will be given every opportunity to state their case. Any parent with care who will genuinely be at risk from co-operating and explains this to the agency will continue to be exempted.
However, those parents with care who never contact the agency after being requested many times to do so, and those parents with care who have no reason—or a reason which does not involve harm or undue distress—for not co-operating should now do so. It is not right that taxpayers, many of whom have children of their own, should be expected to support children simply because they are not living with a parent who can support them. We believe that these changes will encourage parents to comply with the agency and, where they have genuine reasons not to comply, will encourage them to discuss these reasons with the Child Support Agency.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, raised the case about a parent with care who was not on income support but who had a violent partner. I am a bit puzzled about this. If the parent with care is not in receipt of any relevant benefit, such as income support, the agency will only become involved at the behest of the same parent with care. So the good cause process does not apply in those circumstances as the Child Support Agency is only brought into the picture on a voluntary basis by the parent with care.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the parent was in receipt of maintenance—or was supposed to be in receipt of maintenance—which was not coming. She had failed to explain to the agency that she had good cause—presumably because she did not trust the agency with her explanation. That was my point.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I misunderstood the point and I apologise to the noble Earl. But my point still stands for the circumstance that I thought was being referred to by the noble Earl.
I come back to it. There is no reason why a parent with care who is fearful about her ex-husband or her still-current husband should be frightened to tell the agency why she does not want the agency to approach this particular man. We look very sympathetically at those cases and we now have a lot of experience of judging them. But, as in all these cases, and in all instances of social security, one eventually has to make a judgment or no one would co-operate with us and everyone would say, "Yes, please, I will have the taxpayers' money".
The CSA does not force a woman to strike up relationships with ex-partners. The good cause process is not about forcing women to go back to their old relationships; it is about ensuring that the agency gets the information it requires to make sure that—as in most cases it is—the father of the child actually pays his whack
1254
for the child. He should not look to other people, who have their own children to look after, and say, "Please, will you look after my child as well", because for whatever reason he does not want to bother doing it.
Turning to the easing of the confidentiality rules during the appeals process, the regulations before us today include provisions for changes to be made to the way the child support appeal papers are handled when appeals are made. The agency takes very seriously its responsibility to protect personal information given in the course of assessing child support maintenance. When an appeal is made by one of the parties to a child support appeal tribunal, it is in the interests of natural justice that all parties to the appeal are copied the relevant papers. This is the responsibility of the independent tribunal service. It is very important that the whereabouts of a party to the appeal are not revealed where there is a risk to that party, and this vetting action will continue.
At present it is assumed that all parties will want this information protected unless they say otherwise. This results in all the appeal papers being edited—often to the point where they are meaningless—despite the fact that most parents are well aware of each other's whereabouts and many spouses remain in the marital home.
It is right that documents should be edited only if that is requested. This regulation change means that the parties to an appeal will tell the independent tribunal service if they want their address and other location details kept secret. If so, the papers will be edited to protect this information.
There are other minor amendments which have not been raised. They are minor and corrective amendments and I need not trouble your Lordships with explanations of them.
I shall wind up by making one or two points in direct response to some of the questions I was asked. It was suggested by the noble Earl that I should apply a little carrot as well as a lot of stick. Proper arrangements for child maintenance are obviously in the interests of the overwhelming majority of parents and their children. That is the carrot. They provide a stable income on which a return to work can be contemplated by the parent with care. The child maintenance bonus will provide a clear financial gain to those who move off income support into work. We have had discussion before on maintenance disregard. We believe that it is likely to be a disincentive to return to work. The parent with care has to earn a great deal more to be better off. We believe it is better to focus our limited resources on helping the lone parent to return to work. For example, those in receipt of family credit already receive a £15 disregard.
I think we all appreciate the problems of a parent with care being exposed to a violent ex-husband after a marriage has broken up. We believe that if the parent with care tells the Child Support Agency she has a genuine fear of violence and states that that is why she does not wish the Child Support Agency to contact the father, that will be accepted as good cause. If, however, she does not have good cause and if she does not bother to reply—as I have said, a fair number do just that—I am afraid the penalty already in existence is clearly inadequate for a number of reasons, possibly (in some cases at least) because there is collusion between the parents.

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This package of regulations contains important improvements to the scheme which will improve compliance, encourage clients to contact the agency and ease administration. They reflect our determination with respect to the basic principle of child support; namely, that all parents should support their children whenever they are able to do so. As always I am pleased to acknowledge that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, and the main party opposite—although we do not agree on all the details of the Child Support Agency—agree with the fundamental principle that ex-husbands have a responsibility to their children, and that they should not become ex-fathers, as it were.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I must confess to being disappointed with that reply. It was a reply which took place entirely within the confines of the office. It was a series of rational, bureaucratic, systematic calculations of logical principles. At no point in the Minister's speech did he appear to realise that he was dealing with the raw stuff of human emotions. At no point did he appear to realise that he may—in what appears perfectly logical within the departmental computer—nevertheless be tearing apart human happiness. People do not always behave in precisely the manner that the Department of Social Security believes to be logical. When I referred to a relationship, I was not attempting to suggest he thought the couple should be put back together again. For many people who have come out of a relationship even having to enter into correspondence with the other person can become quite unbearable. The Minister will not change that.
The Minister said he is determined that these people will co-operate. That begins to sound a little hysterical. It is the voice of the defeated bureaucrat who knows that he cannot do what he wants. In order to hear a voice from outside politics altogether I have tried to discuss what the Government are doing with a number of people who have absolutely no connection with politics at all. What I have heard from them is the voice of absolute cold shock and horror at what the Government are doing. That was a great deal stronger, I may say, than anything the Minister has heard from me because I understand the bureaucratic side of the argument as well, and that is also real.
I do not think the Minister understands at all what a powerful weapon he is wielding. In my book a 40 per cent. reduction in benefit takes you to the point at which you cannot live legally. For myself I would regard imprisonment as a less severe penalty. So women who do not co-operate with the agency are, in my book, being treated more severely than convicted murderers. I cannot believe that that is right. I am a taxpayer. However, I do not want to increase my comfort in other people's blood, and I do not believe I am the only taxpayer who thinks that way. I have told the Government before that I do not think they can make this Act work without the co-operation of at least one sex. If they do not get the support of women for the Act, the Act fails. They are doing everything they can now to throw it away. I listened with great care to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. I agreed with a large part of what she said and enjoyed listening to it. I heard nothing about the attitude of the noble Baroness to my Motion. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
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Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 1996
8.6 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 26th June be approved [25th Report from the Joint Committee].
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 26th June be approved. [25th Report from the Joint Committee,].—(Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish.)
8.7 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Motion shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 53; Not-Contents, 17.

Division No. 2

CONTENTS

Blatch, B.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Mackay of Drumadoon, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Marlesford, L.

Burnham, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Monk Bretton, L.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Chesham, L. [Teller.]

Mountevans, L.

Courtown, E.

Moyne, L.

Cranborne, V. [Lord Privy Seal.]

Newall, L.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Nickson, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

O'Cathain, B.

Palmer, L.

Goold, L.

Pearson of Rannoch, L.

Goschen, V.

Renkeillour, L.

Grantley, L.

Rawlings, L.

Greenway, L.

Rees, L.

Harlech, L.

Rennell, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Seccombe, B.

Harris of Peckham, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Henley, L.

Stewartby, L.

Inglewood, L.

Strange, B.

Lindsay, E

Strathclyde, L. [Teller.]

Liverpool, E.

Sudeley, L.

Long, V.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Lucas, L.

Trumpington, B.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Lyell, L.

Wynford, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Addington, L.

Redesdale, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Hamwee, B.

[Teller.]

Rochester, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Russell, E. [Tiller]

Lawrence, L.

Thomas of Walliswood, B.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Thurso, V.

McNally, L.

Tope, L.

Mar and Kellie, E.

Tordoff, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E

Resolved in the affirmative and Motion agreed to accordingly.
House adjourned at sixteen minutes past eight o'clock.