Lords Sitting of 14 November 1996

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

BSE Slaughter Policy
Lord Carter Lord Carter asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they expect to lay before Parliament the orders required for the BSE accelerated slaughter scheme.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, all aspects of the proposed accelerated slaughter scheme are currently the subject of detailed discussions within government. We shall report to Parliament when decisions have been reached.
Lord Carter: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Is he aware that the Government seem to have manoeuvred themselves into an impossible negotiating position? Under the Florence Agreement we cannot get the beef export ban lifted without a selective slaughter scheme. If we read Hansard of yesterday's debate in the other place carefully, the Government now seem to be saying that with a selective slaughter scheme they cannot get the export ban lifted. Whatever happened to the negotiating triumph that we were told the Prime Minister brought back from Florence?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, we continue to operate within the Florence Agreement. I did indeed read Hansard of yesterday's proceedings in another place. I was delighted by the remarks made by the Opposition spokesman for agriculture who said that he would support a slaughter scheme whether or not it was scientifically justified and whether or not it would result in the lifting of the ban. That was an encouraging statement, and certainly it is one of the matters we are contemplating.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that if, as promised, the over 30-month scheme is completed by the end of December there will be slaughter house capacity to continue with a further accelerated cull?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, yes, indeed, once the backlog is dealt with, it will be possible to find room for an accelerated cull. However, before we can do an accelerated cull it will be necessary to identify the animals to be culled.
Lord Geraint: My Lords, will the Minister explain why his Government penalise British beef producers by paying less for their stock under the BSE slaughter scheme than the open market price?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, the price paid was, I understand, intended to be the open market price for cull cows. That obviously varies in relation to the price of clean beef.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, when do the Government estimate that the 1,300 or so animals required to be dealt with in Northern Ireland will have been slaughtered?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, that is a matter about which we will hear more shortly.
Lord Carter: My Lords, do the Government have the first idea of the tremendous uncertainty that exists on farms that might be caught by a selective slaughter scheme? Farmers do not know whether to keep heifers or sell them or what forage stocks they require. They also face many other farming problems. Cannot the Government give those farmers some idea of their intentions?
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I do not see the difficulty. If the cows are useful and producing milk the farmers can continue to farm them for that purpose. If they are no longer producing milk they can put them in for slaughter under the over-30 month scheme.

European Union: UK Budget Contribution
3.5 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter Lord Boyd-Carpenter asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is the total cost to public funds of Britain's membership of the European Union in the current year.
The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): My Lords, the Government's current estimate of the United Kingdom's net contributions to the European Community budget in the financial year 1996–97 is £2.9 billion. A revised estimate which will take into account the latest developments will be included in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Financial Statement and Budget Report later this month.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that not very illuminating reply. Will he tell the House whether there is any intention of securing that there is no increase in that enormous figure?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, one of the reasons why our contribution is £2.9 billion and not £4.8 billion is of course the rebate that our noble friend Lady Thatcher won at Fontainebleau. The figures I have given underline the importance of that rebate.

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The contribution to the European budget varies for a number of reasons. We are determined to keep budget discipline within the European budget itself. I am happy to say that we are now being joined by other countries which are or are becoming contributors to the budget. Germany, which has always been a contributor, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden are all joining us in a determination to ensure that the budget is frozen.
Viscount Tonypandy: My Lords, in view of the fact that the Foreign Secretary said that we buy from Europe more than we sell to her—this part is my quotation and not the Foreign Secretary's—and that we have done so ever since we joined; and bearing in mind the fact that Europe is the only continent with which we have been in the red for the past 23 years; that we have fortunately made a profit through our invisibles and the market in general in the rest of the world; has not the time come for Her Majesty's Government to give serious consideration also to the invisible factors that hurt the pride and self-respect of the British people?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the important thing about the EU is that it is the world's largest trading bloc. It has 40 per cent. of the world's trade. Of course we in this country are the world's fifth largest importer and exporter. It is vital that we take all the advantage that we can of being a member of that big trading bloc—a trading bloc with many well paid customers who can buy our products. I do not want to go on at length, but our motor exports to other EU countries are up twofold in the past five years; our financial services are hugely advantaged by our membership of the EU; London is the major financial centre for the whole of Europe. Those matters are all vital for our country's economy. They must be weighed in the balance when one considers the advantages of our membership of the EU.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, should any disadvantages occur in the future because of our membership of the Union, have the Government any rights to make a protest on behalf of this country?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I presume that the £2.9 billion that I mentioned earlier could be construed as a disadvantage, and of course it is. All of these matters have to be looked at in terms of a balance sheet. They have to be weighed against the advantages, some of which I have just read out. There are many others. We have to consider them all when we face those people who would have us withdraw from the EU, which seems to me to be a foolish idea.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, does the Minister agree that whether we were members of the EU or not, it would be totally contrary to the World Trade Organisation, the GATT, and every other international understanding to seek to exclude us on the basis of fortress Europe? Does he not agree that, in or out, we would have the same right to trade as Japan, the USA and every other country?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, we certainly would have the same rights on the face of it but I do not think that we can guarantee that we would be as closely involved in the development of the European Union or various other trade aspects in which the European Union can be involved throughout the world. If our interests are represented in trade negotiations on a European basis, they obviously carry a lot more weight than they would do were we there as one individual trader, no matter how important that trader might be. The other aspect is the very considerable amount of inward investment which is coming to Britain as part of the European Union.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords, will the Minister tell the House how much of the £2.9 billion is represented by our CAP contribution and whether I am right in thinking that that sum comes back to this country?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, the noble Lord is wrong in the last part of his question because the £2.9 billion is net. The gross figure is, I think, £9.6 billion. There is then £4.8 billion in receipts. It is in those receipts that one finds the benefit, if there are benefits to us, of the CAP. Those which come back to this country come via the £4.8 billion of receipts. As I have already mentioned, on top of that there is the £1.9 billion of the Fontainebleau agreement negotiated by my noble friend Lady Thatcher.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on taking a positive view of Europe, which is unusual these days since it seems to me that almost all that we hear about Europe is negative. I do not make that as a political point; I make it with absolute sincerity.
Does the Minister agree that one of the most preposterous arguments is to do with our balance of payments deficit with the Union? If the argument is that because we run a deficit with the Union, we should leave it, since we run a deficit with the rest of the world, logically that would suggest that we should leave the rest of the world as well.
My main point is does the Minister agree—and that was my immediate response to his Answer—that £2.9 billion in the context of both Britain's GDP and total government expenditure is a trivial sum? I am not saying that we should not like it to be smaller or that we do not congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, on getting it as low as it is, but surely £2.9 billion is not a sum about which we should get terribly hot under the collar when we consider some of the fundamental problems which confront our country today.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, perhaps speaking more as a social security Minister than as a Treasury spokesman, I cannot agree that £2.9 billion is a trivial sum, even in the context of the European Union. But the noble Lord is absolutely right about the importance of the European Union. One of the reasons that we can make that contribution to the European Union budget to help its poorer members is that we run a successful and competitive economy. I only wish that

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the Commission and the European Court of Justice would take that on board when they make their decisions.
Lord McNally: My Lords, has the Minister yet had an opportunity to read the speech by Mr. Niall FitzGerald, chief executive of Unilever and chairman of the CBI (Europe) Committee? At the CBI on Tuesday he made it clear550 that an overwhelming majority of the membership of the CBI see continuing membership of the European Union as essential to the prosperity of the British manufacturing industry. Surely those are the voices to which we should listen.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, indeed, I did notice that the CBI underlined the importance of our membership of the European Union. Perhaps I should draw attention also to the fact that it underlined the need for us to be competitive and not to be bound by restrictive labour laws emanating from the Commission.

Gulf War Veterans: Medical Assessments
3.14 p.m.
The Countess of Mar The Countess of Mar asked Her Majesty's Government:
How they propose to trace all the members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces who served in Operation Granby and who may be ill as a result of exposure to organophosphate pesticides.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe): My Lords, we have urgently examined the medical records of those who have attended the Gulf Veterans' Medical Assessment Programme and have invited a small number who display certain symptoms to return for further assessment. We continue strongly to urge all Gulf veterans who believe they are ill as a result of their service in the Gulf to come forward for assessment if they have not already done so.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that reply. The noble Earl has never refuted my assertion that there is evidence that some 10,000 medical records have been wiped off the MoD computer. GPs are having considerable trouble in obtaining medical records for those who were members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces but who are no longer serving. Many of those men who were in tents rather than hotel accommodation will have been exposed to organophosphates. Will the Minister say how he proposes to trace them?
Earl Howe: My Lords, work is currently under way in the Ministry of Defence to determine how many of our servicemen were exposed to which organophosphate pesticides. We shall announce the results of our work as
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soon as possible; but I am not yet in a position to provide a concrete answer to the noble Countess because the work is still being carried out.
Lord Burnham: My Lords, in the circumstances of the campaign and bearing in mind the urgency with which so much work was carried out, is it not the case that the information which the noble Countess requires is simply not available and cannot be obtained?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am not nearly as pessimistic as my noble friend. We have a number of handles to pull in relation to the history. We believe that we are getting closer to the facts. It is to be regretted that we did not reach that stage earlier; but we are pursuing the work urgently and commensurately with the importance of the task in hand.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the Ministry of Defence deserves the heavy flak which it has received on this issue, especially from the Select Committee, which is exceptionally well-informed? Would it not be helpful to establish a veterans' association along the lines of that established in the United States which could help to locate those service personnel? Would the Government co-operate with such a body?
Earl Howe: My Lords, a department of veterans' affairs sounds wonderful until it is realised that it would simply add a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy to what is, I believe, a currently satisfactory system for meeting the needs of ex-servicemen and women. In the current situation, I do not believe that it would provide any added value at all because what matters is that the message that they should come forward for medical assessment should reach those who feel that they may be ill as a result of their service in the Gulf. I believe that that message has been well-publicised.
Lord Merlyn-Rees: My Lords, while the researches were taking place into this issue, did the Government find out who individually or what in the form of a body gave the silly instructions to spray those pesticides inside tents while men were sleeping there?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the facts as to what happened in the Gulf are emerging; and, as I said, we shall announce the results of our work on that matter in due course, and I hope quite shortly. But the noble Lord should not overlook the fact that in previous campaigns in the desert, many of our soldiers fell ill with one kind of disease or another. The Gulf conflict saw very much less suffering from diseases. That was a tribute to the care and protection given to the thousands of troops in theatre.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, the noble Earl will recall that the Government, his predecessor in office and himself denied that there was anything called Gulf War syndrome or that Gulf War syndrome existed. We now understand that the Government have changed their view. If you spend two-and-a-half years denying that

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something exists, how can you then trace the people who you now admit are suffering from it? Will the noble Earl respond to the question of the noble Countess? Were 10,000 medical records wiped off the MoD computer?
Earl Howe: My Lords, my understanding of the last matter is that while certain records did go missing for reasons which hardly need spelling out but which have to do with the urgencies and exigencies of war, we believe that we have sufficient information at our disposal to assist those who come forward for examination. As I have said, a number have come forward.
As regards the first part of the question, there is still no clinical evidence from the assessments that we have done that UK Gulf personnel are suffering from a single medical condition or syndrome peculiar to Gulf service or any unexplained pattern of illness. However, we are determined to get to the bottom of this. I do not believe that anyone yet knows the answers. The research programme that we shall put in train will, I hope, get closer to the truth and we shall also make an announcement about that very shortly.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, is the Minister aware that I first started asking Questions about OPs in the Gulf because two years ago I was told that they were used out there? For two years I have had a list of OPs used by the Americans in their tented accommodation. It seems to me to be a terrible indictment on the MoD and a lack of care for the troops that the department should have denied for over two years that OPs were used, and that inquiries were not even made when I asked more than twice about OPs being used in the Gulf. I understand that Top Clip Gold Shield, which is a sheep dip, was taken out there. Were they going to spray the Iraqi sheep?
Earl Howe: My Lords, as I have indicated, it is obviously a matter of great regret that incorrect information was given both to Parliament and to the noble Countess. Indeed, no one regrets that fact more than I do. I can assure the noble Countess that the inquiries she made of Ministers were pursued. The answers that we received consistently were that organophosphates were not used in the Gulf, other than in very restricted circumstances on Iraqi prisoners. That information has turned out to be untrue. However, I stress that all previous statements by MoD Ministers have been made in good faith on the basis of the information available to them at the time.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, can the Minister explain whether what I thought he said was in fact what he did say; namely, that these substances were used on prisoners?
Earl Howe: My Lords, we have always been aware that a few Iraqi prisoners were treated with organophosphate compounds. However, we believed that that was the extent of the use of organophosphates.
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However, we now believe that they were more widely used, and it is that more widespread use which is the subject of our current investigations.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, what does the Geneva Convention say about the use of toxic chemicals on prisoners?
Earl Howe: My Lords, if I may say so, I do not believe that that question advances the state of knowledge very much. We are talking about pesticides for the treatment of flies and lice, which is rather different from organophosphates which may be used in warheads.

Noise Act 1996: Implementation
3.22 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland The Viscount of Falkland asked Her Majesty's Government:
What minimum action should be expected from local councils by way of implementation of the Noise Act 1996.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, it is up to local authorities to determine how best to implement the Noise Act in their area.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. However, is he aware that a number of local authorities have stated quite openly that they are not in a position to implement the legislation? Will he agree that that is little comfort to old people in particular who are subject to loud noise from unco-operative neighbours? Noise is in fact an environmental hazard at least as bad, if not worse, than the fumes from a bus or, indeed, other kinds of pollution. Is the noble Earl aware that the failure by local authorities to meet the requirements of the legislation could result, among other things, in serious damage to the health of elderly people?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy for the remarks made by the noble Viscount. Loud noise can be very offensive, not only to old people but also to younger people, especially if it is of the "thump-thump" variety which can go on during the night. The noble Viscount said that local authorities were not in a position to fulfil the requirements of the Act. I believe that that is the case with practically all local authorities.
The legislation falls into two parts. The first deals with a new night offence while the other clarifies the law on confiscating noise-making equipment. The new night offence was open to consultation which began on 23rd September. That consultation relates to the noise level which the Secretary of State should set, the type of devices which should measure noise and the type of draft circular to be issued to local authorities. We have now received the response to that consultation and are

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considering it. We shall soon be able to issue a draft circular to local authorities on the basis of which they will be able to take action.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, has the Minister noticed that, since the introduction of CCT in your Lordships' House, the noise level in some of the corridors has risen beyond that which most of us feel to be acceptable? Is that the province of Westminster City Council or is it a matter for your Lordships' House to determine?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am sure that it is a matter for your Lordships' House. If the noise level has risen in the corridors of the House, I think it is quite likely, based on my experience, that it has also risen in the Chamber, especially when some noble Lords make provocative speeches.
Lord McNally: My Lords, although my noble friend rightly talked about noise affecting the elderly, is the Minister aware that a noisy neighbour can be a neighbour from hell for families of any age? Will the Minister applaud those local authorities which have used the new legislation to end tenancies for persistent noise offenders? A noise offender on a housing estate can bring down the quality of life for all the people living there.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord is perfectly correct. Noisy neighbours can be deeply offensive. It is right that some local authorities should take the steps they can to remove noisy neighbours in order to enable other people to live reasonable lives. I cannot help but be reminded of the little jingle that says, "A noisy noise annoys a noisy oyster"; indeed, I think that it also annoys a noisy next-door neighbour too.
Lord Merrivale: My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister say whether he is satisfied with the evaluation carried out by certain local authorities regarding the level of noise emitted by certain equipment in some areas? I give your Lordships one example. Kensington and Chelsea Council seems rather lax in its evaluation of noise emitted by equipment in that area.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am not too familiar with the study to which my noble friend refers. The Noise Act only relates to noise emitted between the hours of 11 o'clock at night and 7 o'clock in the morning. I rather doubt whether the employees of Kensington and Chelsea Council operate at that time. Of course, if they do, no doubt the local authority will take such measures as are appropriate.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, assuming that the consultation goes forward and we get the proper response from the Government, can the noble Earl say what powers local authorities will have to ask the police to investigate noise? It seems to me that one of the problems is that, at present, the police have very few powers. That is one of the reasons why the Noise Act was passed. Will local authorities be able to call upon the police immediately? Will the environmental officer
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in the local authority be able to contact the local police station and ask the police to move in? And will such incidents constitute a criminal offence?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it will be up to the environmental health officer concerned to take the necessary proceedings against the people who are emitting the noise. He can call upon the police for support. They will be able to give him the support he requires provided that it falls within their priorities. However, if there have been three murders next door, it is much more likely that the police will be employed in that respect rather than chasing the noise makers. Nevertheless, as I said, provided there is sufficient reason for the police to be able to support the environmental officer, they will be able to do so. But it is not really a matter for the police.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, following on from that, if the police are investigating three murders on their doorstep and there is a noise incident, can the noble Earl say what action the local authority environmental health officer can take other than simply walking around to the place himself?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, that is exactly what he would do. Indeed, the environmental health officer would walk round to the place, go to the people concerned and say, "You are making a noise". He will go there with his decibel counter and assess whether or not they are emitting 35 decibels. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Williams, finds that extremely funny, but if an environmental health officer visited his house when he was having some people to dinner and that officer did not bring a decibel counter, I dare say the noble Lord might feel very upset if told to remove half of those people because they were making too much noise. It is up to the environmental health officer to determine whether or not the noise being emitted by the people concerned is above the level. If it is, then the officer can impose a fine, a fixed penalty of £100, or he can take the people to court where a maximum penalty, at level 3, of £1,000 could be imposed.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I can assure the noble Earl that my dinner party guests are of the quietest variety and would not trouble the environmental health officer—unlike the noble Earl's dinner party guests who, judging by the baying of some noble Lords opposite, could be of a rather noisy variety. However, is not the difficulty the fact that the environmental health officer really does not have the support of the police? Indeed, the police may have other priorities. If he does not have such support there is very little he can do about night-time noise.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord prides himself that his dinner party guests make no noise at all. That shows the style of his dinner parties. I shall know what to do if the noble Lord ever asks me to dinner. Not all noise is emitted by loud hi-fis. Sometimes people use sanders and do-it-yourself kits

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in the middle of the night. It is surprising what people do. In that situation it is perfectly all right for an environmental health officer to call on that person to ask him to stop using the sander. The person will invite the officer in, apologise and agree to stop using the sander. However, if it is a case of hi-fi music, a loud thumping noise and the presence of lots of people, that is different.
Lord Merrivale: My Lords, at what distance from the noisy equipment does the counter have to be put for it to be determined there is a disturbance to people in that area?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the person who complains of the noise will invite the environmental health officer into his room and it will be determined whether or not the noise in the room concerned is at a level of 35 decibels or more. It would have to be more than 10 decibels above the underlying noise over an average period of five minutes. The next question my noble friend will ask is: what is 35 decibels? The Building Research Establishment states that it is the level which is experienced in 90 per cent. of single-glazed bedrooms which are in the front elevation on a busy suburban street. Your Lordships who have houses which fall into that category will know exactly what 35 decibels is.

Christmas Recess
3.31 p.m.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House to know that, subject to the progress of business, the House will rise for the Christmas Recess on Thursday 19th December and return on Monday 13th January. The House will sit at 11 a.m. on Thursday 19th December.

Business
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m., my noble friend Lord Howe will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on Zaire.
City of Edinburgh Council Order Confirmation Bill
Considered on Report.
Edinburgh Merchant Company Order Confirmation Bill
Considered on Report.

Zaire
3.33 p.m.
Earl Howe: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement on Zaire which is being made in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"The Great Lakes region of Africa is facing a complex emergency and a potential humanitarian catastrophe. Throughout this century violent clashes have occurred periodically between local tribes and Tutsis of Rwandan origin who have lived in Zaire for generations—who are known as Banyamulenge. Those tensions have been aggravated by the arrival in Zaire of over 1.2 million refugees fleeing conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi.
"Despite efforts by the international community, and the government of Zaire, those refugees have been unwilling to return to Rwanda. The presence amongst them of up to 50,000 armed militia has been a destabilising factor in the region. Violence flared earlier this year, when Tutsi and other groups were attacked by armed Hutu militia (the Interahamwe, who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda) and by elements of the Zairean army.
"The current crisis was precipitated by Zaire's decision to withdraw citizenship from the Banyamulenge, and its threat to expel them from Zaire. The Banyamulenge retaliated by counter-attacking in areas close to the borders with Rwanda and Burundi, and captured the main towns in Kivu province. Zaire has portrayed the conflict as an invasion by Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Rwanda says that all its troops which had been supporting the rebels have now withdrawn.
"During the past 24 hours, fighting in the region is reported to have intensified. One thing at least is clear. If no action is taken, we could be facing a huge humanitarian tragedy. The United Nations has estimated that the death toll could rise in the next week to 10,000 to 20,000 per day. Over 800,000 refugees are reported to have left their camps, and a quarter of a million Zaireans have also left their homes.
"The United Nations Secretary-General's Humanitarian Co-ordinator is leading the humanitarian effort and the UN Secretary-General is drawing up urgent plans for a humanitarian task force, and planning an international conference to address the political causes of the conflict. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees' organisation is struggling to distribute what aid it can. The Overseas Development Agency which has done an excellent job is in close contact with UN agencies and non-government organisations but, without help, the agencies will not be able to avert the impending crisis.
"On 9th November, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for nations to plan for a multi-national force to protect humanitarian relief and promote refugee repatriation. Repatriation must feature in any lasting solution to the crisis. Because

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of the complexity and urgency of the task, the UN is looking to western nations to provide forces in the first instance.
"Britain has been actively involved in contingency planning since last Friday. Canada has now emerged as the lead nation for a multinational force and the USA, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Britain, amongst western nations, have indicated a willingness to participate. We understand that a number of African countries are also potential troop contributors: South Africa, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Gambia, Tunisia, Kenya, Botswana, Ethiopia, Mali and Chad.
"A statement from Washington last night made clear US views on key points relating to the mission. First, there is a need to assess fully the threat before deploying and have the consent of the governments of the nations in the area.
"Secondly, the mission should be to facilitate the delivery of aid by civilian relief agencies, and to allow the voluntary repatriation of refugees by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The mission would not include disarming the militias nor policing the refugee camps.
"Thirdly, the force will operate under Chapter 7 rules of the UN Charter which permit an active enforcement role. It would not be a "blue-hatted" operation.
"Fourthly, the participants would bear their own costs and additional arrangements need to be made to support participation by African nations. But non-troop contributing countries who can afford it should help bear the costs.
"Fifthly, the humanitarian mission should be of short duration—about four months. The exit strategy would be to transfer a more stable situation to other nations, whose task would then be to ensure that the conditions of today do not recur.
"Sixthly, the US has made clear that it would wish its involvement to be around Goma airfield, in establishing an air bridge to the region, and to provide security along a corridor from Goma to the Rwandan border.
"Those principles provide a good starting point for us to develop a full plan before the time our forces could deploy. A senior British military planner is in New York today working to develop joint thinking between the allies.
"There are important additional questions to be settled. First, of course, is what level of force might be required were our entry into Zaire to be opposed, and how many would be needed to enable relief to reach those furthest-scattered refugees.
"We need to settle detailed objectives flowing from the broad principles spelled out in Washington. In particular we will need to agree critical matters like rules of engagement.
"No British forces will be sent unless the Government are satisfied that the objectives are clear and attainable; the prospects of handing on to a follow-on force are good; command and control is
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clear; and that British forces are sufficient and well enough armed to protect themselves, and to save lives. Complex as those issues are, we must prepare ourselves now for action since the urgency is great.
"I have authorised a small number of reconnaissance troops to travel to the area to assess the conditions that British forces would face. I have shortened the notice to move of certain units centred on the Joint Rapid Deployment Force.
"The House will rightly ask why Britain should become involved in a place far from our country and where no vital national interest is engaged. Because we are a civilised nation.
"We can see people about to die in their thousands, and we are one of the few nations on earth who have the military capability to help at least some of them. We recognise our humanitarian obligations.
"We take pride in our permanent membership of the UN Security Council, but it carries with it clear obligations. Some of our leading allies in NATO are willing to assist, and our place is with them.
"Britain often faces such calls to action. I believe we should respond out of our deep concern for our fellow man, and with a sense of pride that Britain can make a difference."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.41 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Earl for repeating the Statement made in another place. It is a grave situation. The noble Earl is quite right in saying that,
"we could be facing a huge humanitarian tragedy".
Therefore, in these circumstances we support generally the Government's view and we shall not do anything to oppose effective, humanitarian action on behalf of those who are suffering at present in this terrible crisis in Central Africa.
However, perhaps the noble Earl could elaborate on several questions which arise from the Statement. I understand that we are at an early stage and a detailed plan will come out shortly.
First, the White House statement specifically states that US troops in this operation will be under US command, that there will be a Canadian commander-in-chief of the operation, as I understand it, but, to quote the terms of the White House statement,
"US troops would remain at all times under US command".
I put this point to the noble Earl. Would that be the case for British troops? If US troops are to be under US command, would British troops be under British command? If not, I do not see how we can reconcile our participation in this force with a different command structure being imposed by the United States. But, if so, what is the command and control structure to be? How can one negotiate a situation where a Canadian lead, presumably a commander-in-chief, has a US deputy force commander, as specified in the White House statement, and the US deputy force commander is the man who gives instructions to US troops? That is the first point.

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Secondly—I do not wish to press the noble Earl too hard because I know it is a difficult and fluid situation—could the noble Earl comment on another point which was picked up in the White House statement? It states that,
"The force will not separate or disarm militants, conduct forced entry, or police operations in the camps",
Nevertheless, it will have robust rules of engagement. If we are sending British troops into a difficult situation, I very much hope that the robust rules of engagement will prevail over any precondition that the United States Government might set on the intervention of the troops. As the noble Earl rightly said in the Statement, if British troops are sent into any situation, it is in all our interests that they should be able to protect themselves against whichever enemy comes from whichever side. In this case we do not know which enemy will come from which side.
Will the noble Earl also comment on the proposed duration of the project? In the fifth condition—it was a condition put by the White House on United States participation—the White House statement says:
"We envision the humanitarian mission to be of limited duration—about four months. We are discussing with other nations the need for a follow-on presence".
As we have learnt on many occasions, it is vitally important that we have an exit strategy. It is no good sending in troops or forces unless one knows how one will get them out. I am not entirely clear that we, the White House or the Canadians, have an exit strategy. If the noble Earl could help us on that, I should be grateful.
The fourth condition in the White House statement says that,
"The costs of the mission will be borne by participating states".
The Statement mentions a number of African states—Senegal, Zimbabwe, Gambia; I shall not repeat the list. How do we ensure that the cost of the operation is borne by states who already seem to be in dire poverty? Could the noble Earl enlighten us further on that?
When saying that we support the Government, I hope it is clear that we support the Government generally that any deployment of British troops must be with the consent of the countries in the region. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to reassure us that that is the case. The force must be a multinational operation. I am slightly unclear—perhaps other noble Lords are slightly unclear—about how an operation can be under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter and not be under the United Nations control: that it would not be a "blue-hatted operation", in the words of the Statement. Are we clear that the multinational force's objective must be to facilitate the distribution of humanitarian relief aid by the relief organisations, and not to disarm the combatants? If that is so, as I hope it is, then we must be prepared to think about the possible scenario that people will come at our troops from all sides, and the troops must be able to defend themselves.
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This is, I believe, the third Statement that I have taken for the Opposition involving British troops going into danger and possibly risking their lives. I conclude by wishing them the best of luck and a safe return.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, the Statement is in two clearly different parts. The final part asks why Britain should be engaged so far away in unknown parts. The answer is:
"Because we are a civilised nation".
It goes on to argue that people are about to die in their thousands and we are one of the few nations on earth with the military capability to help at least some of them.
I find the final part of the Statement irresistible. Of course it is right, and of course, although belated, the Government's decision to do their best is to be welcomed. I believe that as the terrible crisis proceeds, British people seeing the results on television will be of that opinion, too, and will not be content for the Government to stand aside.
I find the rest of the Statement thoroughly alarming. It is, I believe, a little more provisional and hypothetical than the Government's previous statements. The conditions laid down in this part of the Statement make the reality of British participation extremely hypothetical. I read that we have no troops on standby, for instance, although that would have been a natural thing to expect in view of earlier government statements. We are told that Washington insists on the need to assess fully the threat before deploying and to have the consent of the governments of the nations in the area. Which nations? And how have they reacted? We are not at all sure that that condition is fulfilled.
We are told that,
"the humanitarian mission should be of short duration".
Yes. The Statement goes on:
"The exit strategy would be to transfer a more stable situation to other nations".
The noble Earl read out a list of the other nations. I am bound to say that, although one or two of them have some military capability, it was not a very reassuring list of African countries which are to take the strain when the international work is over.
The Statement says that these principles provide a good starting point for us to develop a full plan. Again, that is hypothetical and not very reassuring.
The conditions the British insist upon are that:
"No British forces will be sent unless the Government are satisfied that the objectives are clear and obtainable"
not absolutely sure to me—and that,
"command and control is clear".
The noble Lord, Lord Williams, dealt with that point. The command proposals are not clear at all and could easily lead to confusion.
In view of the latter part of the Statement, we have no alternative but to do our best. That is what my noble friends would want and that is what, I am sure, the British Government would want as this business proceeds. But the position is unclear. No one knows who is fighting whom. I do not think American satellites

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are able to distinguish between one fighting group and another in the forests of the area. We do not know what is going on. I am bound to say that although I sincerely welcome the principle that Britain should take part in this international effort, speaking as an old soldier I am truly worried and distressed by the lack of certainty in the military planning.
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Williams and Lord Mayhew, for what they said. I understand entirely their disquiet—if I can put it that way—over the lack of certainty in the Statement that I have read out. They will understand, I am sure, that that lack of certainty is a reflection of a very fluid situation. It is also a reflection of some urgent consultations and planning which are moving extremely quickly by the hour. I am sure that at a later date it will be appropriate for the Government to issue a further Statement on what we plan to do as our contribution to the crisis.
It is too soon to define the precise nature of the tasks which the multinational force will be asked to perform and the contribution that British troops will make. We have sent a British team to the United Nations today to discuss the mission for the multinational force. As I indicated in the Statement, we are dispatching reconnaissance teams to the region tomorrow. Those initiatives and further planning in the UK will determine the precise nature of the force and our contribution.
We have to look at the situation on the ground. The messages we are receiving are confused. We need a clearer picture. In particular, we need a clearer picture of what the humanitarian aid operation will require and what the agencies need to do their work. I should stress that it is no part of our objective to be sucked into someone else's war. The imperative here is to save lives and to enable aid to be delivered. There is no shortage of equipment, food and supplies. The difficulty is getting those supplies to those who need them. The purpose of the multinational force is to create the conditions for aid to start being delivered again. That is our overriding aim.
It would also be right for me to stress that we are acutely conscious of the risks to our own troops. The multinational force is being deployed to bring humanitarian relief. We would expect all parties to respect that objective. However, we recognise that there is an extremely uncertain situation on the ground. The force will be mandated and equipped to defend itself appropriately. We have made clear that British troops will take part in the operation only if we are satisfied by the plan that emerges for the multinational force. We must have a clear mandate and a clear concept of operations. We must have achievable objectives and, to answer the noble Lord, Lord Williams, acceptable command and control arrangements. We shall also require a clear exit strategy. The detailed discussions on those issues are taking place today in New York, following which we should be able to take a final decision.
I come back to what the Statement says about the basis for a multinational force. It will be constituted under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which is the chapter
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that refers to peace enforcement as opposed to peacekeeping. There will of necessity have to be robust rules of engagement if our troops are to feel, and be, secure in the theatre.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams, asked how long British troops might be deployed. As I indicated, our forces will not be deployed until there is a clear mission with achievable objectives and with a defined exit strategy. The length of the deployment remains to be determined but we would expect to hand over to a follow-on force after a relatively brief initial period, the objective being to create more stable conditions following which other troops could take the place of our own.
To answer the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, the exact size of the force will flow from the planning activities being undertaken today. It is clear to all that the size of the force in what may very well be appalling conditions in eastern Zaire must be sufficient to do the job and to ensure that the troops can defend themselves against any threat.
I believe that that covers the main points raised by noble Lords although clearly there will be other questions arising over the next few days. I should be more than happy to write to both noble Lords with any further information as it emerges.
4 p.m.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can clarify a little further the point about Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter. There seems to be some inconsistency in insisting upon the force being humanitarian and speaking in terms of self-defence and Chapter 7, which, as the noble Earl will know, requires the United Nations to judge that the peace and stability of an area is threatened and to use armed force to enforce the peace. That is not precisely what this force seems to be designed to do. It will affect all kinds of things, such as the exit strategy mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, and—the other important point—the command and control arrangements. Can we therefore have a little more clarity about this matter of the force being mounted under Chapter 7 rather than under one of the other chapters of the United Nations Charter?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the noble Lord has put his finger on the essence of the difficulties. The situation in eastern Zaire is changing very rapidly. There is no consistent or reliable picture of the total number in need, nor of their current situation and condition. The UNHCR estimates that about 1 million refugees and displaced people may be in need of assistance. In North Kivu, Mugunga camp now has a population of around 400,000, to which the UNHCR still has limited access. But there are reports that those refugees are moving further west into Zaire. The situation in South Kivu is even more unclear. There are reports of around 300,000 refugees around Bukavu and a further 200,000 around Uvira. There may be others dispersing further west as well.
Against that backdrop and the backdrop of a number of warring factions in the area, it is impossible to say until we get there what the threat is likely to be to our

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forces. We must err on the side of caution; we must, as I indicated, send sufficient troops to do the job; and we must expect trouble. Given that the objective is to deliver aid, that in itself in normal circumstances would come under the heading of peace-keeping and humanitarian assistance. However, we cannot be certain that there will be no resistance on the ground. There may very well be such resistance and I believe that our troops should have appropriate rules of engagement to meet those circumstances should they arise.
The Earl of Sandwich: My Lords, the Minister has not mentioned the role of the Zairean army and in particular the role of the dictator of Zaire, who, if I am not mistaken, is refusing to return during his convalescence. Can the Minister say something about the wider background in the country of Zaire itself and the role of the army?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the Zaireans have indicated their broad agreement to an operation of the kind that I described. However, it is clear that their grip on power in the eastern part of Zaire is tenuous, if indeed it exists at all. I do not believe that the Zaireans are in a position to guarantee us anything. However, I know that President Mobutu is engaged actively with a number of world leaders in an effort to ensure that the crisis can be addressed in rapid order. Obviously, it is unfortunate that President Mobutu has recently undergone an operation and is therefore not at the peak of physical fitness. But I understand that he is actively engaged in this matter and we shall continue with our own dialogue through the appropriate embassies and other agencies.
Lord Howell: My Lords, most noble Lords will express their appreciation of the way in which the Government are dealing with this matter and the proposals they have put before the House today. However, we are anxious that all the qualifications stated by the Minister, which clearly have to be dealt with, should be dealt with as a matter of the greatest urgency, for the reasons set out in the second part of the Statement; namely, the fact that thousands of people are dying. In a sense, it is regrettable that it has taken even such time to reach this situation. Can the Minister give any indication about the reconnaissance team and how long it might require before it can report back, enabling our forces to be present in Africa to deal with the tasks designed for them?
Secondly, I regard the issue of disarming combatants as a matter of major importance. We have to prevent troops being unnecessarily at risk. On the ground, however, it seems from what we can read that that will be almost inevitable. To protect our troops and the innocent people whom we are designing the operations to assist, it will be necessary to disarm the combatants. So, may we be assured that, if that proves to be the case, there will be no inhibitions so far as our troops are concerned?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. It is impossible for me to tell him precisely the
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timescale before troops go in, assuming that they do. The United Kingdom has the ability to deploy initial forces within 24 hours and, as I indicated, elements of the Joint Rapid Deployment Force are likely to be the troops that we choose to send in.
The assessment team will, I believe, be able to deliver a reasonable over-view of the situation on the ground within a matter of three or four days. I envisage that, if the United Nations further resolution emerges as we expect it to emerge, authorising sending a multinational force, and assuming that the plans now being drawn up in New York take concrete form in the way that we hope and expect, then the multinational force should be able to leave within six or seven days. But I stress that that is a very tentative estimate at this stage and it could turn out to be over-optimistic.
However, we must press on and I am sure the noble Lord will agree that the overriding aim, particularly in view of the alarming reports that we have received on the danger to civilians from starvation, is a worthy one.
Lord Elton: My Lords, does my noble friend recognise that the rather subdued mood in which the House received his Statement is due to the fact that it is under conflicting emotions at this moment? I think we are all extremely glad and would not wish it otherwise than that we should recognise our duties as members of NATO and, even more, as members of the human race. We could not possibly have stood aside.
Moreover, the situation is necessarily obscure, and a commitment, if it is to be made, has to be made at once for it to be effective; otherwise, it will arrive too late. So it is quite clear that it had to be made before the situation became clear and the provision for a reconnaissance force to be sent out in advance is entirely right and very reassuring. A decision will only be made in the light of that; but it will also be made in the light of the reservations expressed by the United States Government (to which, I understand, other members of the force subscribe) as to the non-intervention in order to disarm combatants or to secure control of the camps.
The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, rightly pointed out that Chapter 7 suggests that the force is there to do precisely that. I take it that it has been put there under Chapter 7 in case the force becomes trapped into a situation which develops into a war. That is something we are all anxious should not develop. Yet how, if the only intervention is to introduce food and medicine, is a more stable situation to be brought about? Will the presence of those resources attract large numbers of people to one place rather than several? If that is not the effect of the intervention in political terms, what is intended?
I understand from what my noble friend said that the absence of the president of the state is not as crucial as might have been thought because the state is not in control of the area in which we are interested. That again reflects on the exit plan. I wonder if I am alone in remembering the days of the League of Nations and the United Nations' mandates that were inherited from the League of Nations and whether, in order to bring this sorry and ghastly chapter to an end, we will have to

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go further in our duties as members of the human race—not on our own but through the United Nations—and establish some kind of civil authority with military backup in that area that actually works.
Earl Howe: My Lords, I can readily agree with a lot of what my noble friend said. As he will know, we are looking at a part of the world with a long history of ethnic tension between Zairean tribes and various groups who have traditionally fought each other. It is a complex situation aggravated by an influx of refugees from Rwanda and Burundi. The Tutsis have reacted to a campaign against them by Zaireans and Hutu refugees. It is not a situation that will be solved in a hurry. We must be conscious that there are acute risks; that once troops go in, there will be a continuing military requirement for a number of months. I trust that in relation to our own troops we are clear that the exit strategy must involve a rapid withdrawal, once a follow-on force has been assembled.
The mission of the United Nations Special Envoy to the region, Raymond Chrétien, is to try to defuse tensions. We wish him well in his task. I do not underestimate his difficulties. In the meantime, the difficulties of separating the warring factions and disarming the militia should not be underestimated. It may or may not be a task that our troops are called upon to perform; I do not know. At this stage the overriding objective is to facilitate the supply of aid and supplies and it will be a case of first things first.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, we are all glad that something is being done. But there is a great deal of anxiety as to what is being done and how it is being done. The Government advise us that this exercise is to be based on Chapter 7. There will be a multinational force led by one country with rules dictated by another. The force is not even going to wear the United Nations uniform. Furthermore, the operation of that force is designed to carry on providing aid to refugees and do nothing about the underlying problem that has been exacerbated over the past couple of years. Given that scenario, we have every justified reason for being cautious about accepting what the Government are putting in front of us.
Perhaps I can ask two specific questions. First, why will the force not be wearing the United Nations uniform? Secondly, does this unfolding fiasco help to change the Government's mind and attitude to there being a military committee of the United Nations that can do some forward planning and exert command and control in a sensible way over these exercises in the future?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I understand the caution of the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, in these circumstances. I have not tried to hide the uncertainties that exist. It is undeniably true that we are talking about a short-term solution to a problem with long-standing causes. However, a multinational force is an appropriate first response to the immediate humanitarian crisis in the region.
It cannot be a blue-helmeted force because there is no peace on the ground; there is no agreement between the warring factions to cease fighting. In those
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circumstances it has to be a multinational force under a United Nations mandate; a force that has the means at its disposal to meet not simply the humanitarian objective, but also be able to meet the military objective, if that emerges, of defending itself appropriately in the circumstances and ensuring that the mission is accomplished. However, the response we make to this situation will have to be co-ordinated closely with the humanitarian aid agencies. Once the mission is under way and the situation has stabilised, we would look to a follow-on force to take forward that work. It is far too soon to say how long this situation will take to resolve itself.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, does not the Minister agree that invariably in crises like these there are no short-term solutions to Africa's problems? Does he agree also that earlier this year there was an initiative by the Americans for an African 10,000-strong reaction force? One of the greatest inhibiting factors to the effectiveness of that force was the lack of training. Can the Minister comment on whether or not Her Majesty's Government have any proposals as to how to assist in the training of such an African reaction force?
At the start of the Statement the Minister commented that
"The current crisis was precipitated by Zaire's decision to withdraw citizenship from the Banyamulenge".
Can he say what initiatives are being taken in order to try to ensure a political resolution to what clearly must be the long-term solution to this crisis?
Earl Howe: My Lords, to answer the last part of the question of the noble Lord, Lord St. John, first, I mentioned that the UN Special Envoy in the area is charged with the job of trying to bring the warring parties together to defuse tensions and to achieve a ceasefire; in other words, to achieve the conditions we would all like to see for a well-ordered humanitarian operation.
The African multinational force is still only a concept, though a useful one. But it remains to be seen which countries in Africa would wish to be a part of such an arrangement; who indeed could afford to be. While I take some encouragement from the fact that a number of African nations have indicated their willingness to take part in the immediate relief operation, it begs a number of questions as to which will be able to deliver real capability on the ground. We for our part believe that only the western nations can deliver the results in the first instance that we would all like to see. A multinational force has the capacity to deploy much more quickly than any UN-organised pan-African force, and that of course is important here, when time is of the essence.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, could the noble Earl tell us which units have been earmarked for this task and, in particular, in view of the nature of the task, what medical units have been earmarked?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I cannot yet tell the noble Lord which units will be deployed, but it is our intention

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that certain units from the Joint Rapid Deployment Force will be sent. I shall be able to give him more concrete information on that as our plans develop.
As regards medical care, I am quite clear that we shall have adequate medical facilities at our disposal and, of course, as the noble Lord will know, over the next few months we shall be withdrawing quite a number of troops from Bosnia. That will enable us to transfer a good part of the medical facilities from there to where we need them in Africa, should this mission take place.

Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill
4.22 p.m.
Report received.
Clause 4 [Acquisition within limits shown on deposited plans]:
Lord Cornwallis Lord Cornwallis moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 2, line 16, at beginning insert ("Subject to paragraph 12A of Schedule 4 to this Act").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 1 standing in my name and to speak to Amendments Nos. 2, 4 and 5. The objective of my amendments is to ensure that the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project does not result in the excessive taking of land which it transpires is required only temporarily, whilst at the same time presenting no obstruction or delay to the project's progress.
I remind your Lordships that we are dealing with the construction of a railway. Unlike other railway projects and, indeed, other projects that have gone before it, the land needed for the active completion of the enterprise far exceeds that which is required for its actual operation. Less than half of the land to be taken will be required permanently, and my amendments seek to ensure that approximately 1,200 acres—twice the area of the City of London—surplus to the promoters' needs are returned to the original owners. This is not covered by any provision on the face of the Bill nor by any undertaking. The Bill authorises the promoters to take over 2,100 acres of which they have said they require only 850 acres for permanent operation.
I moved amendments substantially to the same effect in Committee on 31st October and I was most grateful for the support that I received from noble Lords on all sides of the House. Although the Minister resisted the amendments on that occasion, I should like to place on record my thanks to him for meeting with me and my advisers and subsequently meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Stanley, during the course of last week to discuss the Government's concerns on what we are proposing. I believe it is fair to describe the Government's central concern as being the fear that our amendments would introduce an element of uncertainty, and this in turn would make it more difficult to obtain funding for the project in the City. Whilst my own view is that the Government's concerns on these points has been exaggerated, I have taken full account of them in bringing this revised set of amendments to the attention of your Lordships.
The principle which underlies the amendments is that espoused by the chairman of the Select Committee on the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, who said in Committee,
"In other words, ownership remains with the farmer. Only the bit of land that is really absolutely necessarily required for the running of the railway line is what has to be handed over at the end and not the beginning of the period concerned".—[Official Report, 31/10/96; col. 464.]
As the final detailed design of the scheme cannot be determined until it has been constructed, in many cases final decisions on which land can be returned to owners after temporary use have to await that stage.
The amendments do not disturb the existing provisions for the acquisition of land under the Bill, save for adding one safeguard: when an owner of agricultural land receives a notice to treat for the acquisition of his land and it is not clear how much of that land will be needed permanently, he would have the option—I repeat "option"—to serve a counter notice. This would have the effect of delaying the acquisition but, crucially, not the possession of the land, as the amendments provide for an irrevocable and incontestable licence for the promoters to take occupation of the land without delay in order to undertake all necessary works for the construction and operation of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
Furthermore, where the Secretary of State is satisfied from the outset that the land will be required permanently, the amendments allow him to proceed straightaway to overrule the counternotice and to acquire the land in the normal way. In the case of land occupied under licence he can require the conveyance of any area where he is satisfied that it will be needed permanently.
There are four important changes to these amendments compared to those moved in Committee and which meet the Government's concerns. First, the provisions are confined exclusively to agricultural land, reflecting the fact that the limits of deviation have been drawn wider in the rural section of the route and also that this land is used by and needed for the farm businesses on the route.
Secondly, the amendments have been adjusted to permit the promoters to occupy the land under licence for up to five years after the completion of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link to allow sufficient time for the precise requirements to be identified. The Minister indicated to me that it might take some years after the opening of the line for the land requirements for maintenance and safety regimes to be determined. The five-year provision now covers this concern.
Thirdly, the power to serve a counternotice rests only with the owner of the freehold. Any other minor interests in the land would remain subject to the powers of acquisition with the right to compensation on the statutory basis.
Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, these amendments differ from the Committee amendments in that the provision for arbitration on which land is required permanently has been removed. Under these amendments the exercise of the power to acquire the freehold of the land remains with the Secretary of State

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and is merely delayed until he is in a position to determine which areas of land are needed permanently. Thus there can be no uncertainty because the Secretary of State himself will be in the driving seat with absolute power to secure all of the land that he and London and Continental require for the operation and maintenance of its Channel Tunnel Rail Link, as well as for landscaping and other mitigation works. He has what I would suggest is a generous five years in which to make his decision after the line has been opened.
This is a unique project. In delivering the public benefits of the scheme with certainty, it must be fair to those owners of land who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in its path. My amendments achieve justice for them without in any way fettering the ability of the Secretary of State or the promoters to put the scheme into full operation as soon as possible. They achieve the balance of interests which the Select Committee supported and which the promoters themselves have accepted. I commend them to the House. I beg to move.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, because discussions have taken place between the Minister and a number of your Lordships about this amendment, would it not be helpful for the Minister at this stage of the debate to intervene to indicate what the Government's reaction has been? Otherwise the debate is a little unrealistic. I would therefore invite the noble Viscount to say what his position is in the light of those discussions, because, for the most part, your Lordships have not been party to them. The Minister has the right to intervene in the course of a debate on Report without prejudice to his right to speak again and without curtailing the debate for the rest of your Lordships.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Viscount Goschen): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall intervene very briefly now just to say that I think it would be appropriate to listen carefully to all noble Lords who want to make representations on this amendment. I understand that it is very usual procedure for noble Lords to talk to each other outside the Chamber and to discuss various matters relating to various amendments. We have had meetings with the noble Lords, Lord Cornwallis and Lord Stanley, privately, and with their advisers. But I do not think that materially affects the normal procedures of your Lordships' House.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: My Lords, the House should know what has happened since your Lordships gave support to this amendment at the Committee stage. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, I want to thank my noble friend Lord Goschen for all the time and trouble he has taken to meet us and to explain the Government's primary concern, which was that our original amendment might hinder the ability of the developers to make the railway. We did not accept that it did. However, to make absolutely certain, we have drafted the amendment now before your Lordships. Perhaps I should disclose that it was the weakest—by that I mean the most tolerant to the developers'
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imaginary fears—of a series of amendments which we had considered. The noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, has explained how our amendment deals with and clarifies the concerns which the Government quite rightly have regarding certainty for the promoters to develop the rail link. We have no wish to, and the amendment does not, hinder this major project.
The second and lesser concern expressed by my noble friend was that our amendment created a precedent in the existing compulsory purchase rules. So far as concerns certainty for the promoter to construct the line, our amendment clarifies the position by putting on the face of the Bill those assurances suggested by the Select Committee on 25th July and, as the House has just heard the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, say, supported by the Select Committee's chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, in Committee two weeks ago.
Our amendment also clarifies and puts on the face of the Bill the promoters' commentary on the Select Committee's suggestion that we discussed at very great length at the Committee stage. I suggested, and was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, that the language in that was gobbledegook. My heart went out to my noble friend Lord Goschen when he had to explain it to your Lordships two weeks ago. As my noble friend Lord Renton pointed out in Committee, assurances made by the Select Committee carry, sadly, little legal weight. Indeed, they merely create the very thing that the Government do not want—uncertainty. Assurances and such phrases as "negotiate in good faith" and "willing", frequently used in promoters' statements, carry very little weight. If they do carry weight, let us hear what weight they carry.
What certainty is there in assurances for either the promoter or the individual? If I were a developer I would dislike the uncertainty of having nothing on the face of the Bill bar assurances to guide me on what I had to do if I wanted land temporarily. I can see litigation resting on what weight the so-called assurances carry. I repeat: our amendment creates no such uncertainty. It puts on the face of the Bill those assurances that the Select Committee wanted. However, the Government objected to our original amendment because they appear to distrust decisions taken by an independent arbitrator. We have therefore allowed the Secretary of State to take this decision. He of all people will be most anxious to see the project completed quickly. I have to admit that it concerns me that the Government distrust independent arbitrators.
As regards the argument that we are altering the existing compulsory purchase rules, that is rubbish. Our amendment is exactly the same as that in the Coal Industry Bill, but that Bill went further as regards compensation. Our amendment does not do that. In our amendment the developer has an absolute right to take what land he wants. All our amendment does is to draw the Secretary of State's attention to certain matters as enumerated by the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, before he takes permanent ownership of land required only temporarily.

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As I said in Committee, our amendment does not affect or bypass the protocol known as the Crichel Down rules—where land is taken and put to permanent use but then becomes surplus, it should be offered back to the original owner. However, the rules were never intended to apply, and should not apply, to land which is taken permanently when it is needed only temporarily. That is the crux of our amendment and the problem that the Crichel Down rules do not address.
I trust my noble friend will not suggest that our amendment either restricts certainty for the promoter or makes a major change in the compulsory purchase power. It does neither. Moreover, I would not support an amendment to hinder this major project.
Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I have read carefully the amendment tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Cornwallis and Lord Stanley of Alderley, and I listened carefully to what was said at the Committee stage. I am not persuaded. I bring to the House some experience of the Channel Tunnel. I was involved in the exercise some years ago when the Channel Tunnel Bill, as it then was, became an Act. Exactly similar powers were then available for compulsory purchase.
Before I go into the detail of the amendment, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to an article in today's Independent which appears to suggest that the Government have put undue pressure on the Select Committee in another place about how much compensation might be made available. I hope that I am incorrect in assuming that this is seen as improper advice from government Ministers. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond because it is obviously a rather serious allegation against the Select Committee, which is obviously acting in a quasi-judicial role.
I now turn to the amendment. I see the Channel Tunnel rail link as being no different from any other major road or rail project; the Birmingham North relief road, the Channel Tunnel or whatever. We must reflect on the state of the project now and where it is likely to be in about a year's time when, one hopes, the finance will have been raised and the construction work can start. As your Lordships know, it has been designed in outline and development is going on all the time. But because of the standard procedures with a hybrid Bill, the land purchase outlines have to be defined in extreme detail on the documentation to the widest possible areas, as we have just heard. That must include temporary work sites, future landscaping, which obviously will not have been designed yet, and things like river works, access roads and diversion roads while a bridge is built, for example. As in any other project the design development will go on for several years. But what the promoters cannot do is increase their land take from what they have put on the plans now. The procedures would be long and complicated.
The noble Lords, Lord Cornwallis and Lord Stanley of Alderley, say that they do not wish to affect the certainty of the project going ahead. Obviously, one accepts that. But the one thing that a major project needs to go ahead is certainty as regards the land required to
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undertake the work. When one is raising large sums of money in the City from people who are not engineers and not used to construction works, they do not understand the detail. But if they see anything which smacks of uncertainty I am sure it will have an effect. When they read something like Amendment No. 5 to Schedule 4 they find that the amendment is designed as regards the owners of the land. I expect that there are several hundred owners of agricultural land along the route. If it appears to the owner that the whole or any part of the land is not required permanently for the authorised purpose, then there will have to be several hundred amateur designers working out how big the embankment, the drainage ditches and the road are going to be. That is a nightmare. I know that there are additions to the Bill which allow the Secretary of State to take over the land, but I invite the House to consider the legal costs and the bureaucratic delay when several hundred owners are arguing as to whether a particular embankment or ditch is permanent or temporary. Is that really the way to get a project going? Obviously it cannot be said whether those things are temporary or permanent as yet.
I believe that it was the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, who referred to the number of acres. I made a quick calculation that there was an average of 50 metres of land required each side for 100 kilometres over the length of the route in the country. Fifty metres is 25 metres on either side of the permanent way, which is not very much. When I look at assurances from the Government—and I am sure that noble Lords will agree that occasionally I do question such assurances—I have to see what is in it for either side. What is in it for the promoter not to sell back the land? A strip of land 25 metres wide on either side of a railway is no good to anyone. One cannot build a motorway service station beside the railway because the trains cannot stop. Why should not the promoter sell the land back to the farmer?
In fact, I go much further and suggest proceeding as Eurotunnel did with the Channel Tunnel. A great many small parcels of land were bought and sold and shared out between different farmers in order to create a much better shape for an agriculture holding and so make it easier to work. I see no reason at all why a promoter should not want to sell back land that he did not want to whoever wanted it. The obvious person to ask first is the person from whom it was bought. That person may well not want it, but he may. That is the logical thing to do. I do not see any motive at all for the Government or the promoter not to sell back the land.
At the end of the day the promoter will need certainty and assurance. The day he raises the money and the Government say, "Yes, go ahead", he wants to know that within a month or two, or whatever the timescale is, he has that land. He has done his planning. That is critical because the shorter the time he needs to build a project the sooner the revenue will come in. We have seen that as regards the Channel Tunnel although that was not a very great success. However, it could have been a lot worse.
I remind the House that both this House and the other place have debated the principle of the Bill and have supported it. I believe that this amendment could

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frustrate the implementation of the project. In my view there is nothing particularly special about the rail link. As I said, it is just another big project. If the legislation on compulsory purchase is wrong, it is open to noble Lords to introduce another Bill, or to persuade the Government to do so rather than to attempt to frustrate the implementation of, and to change the legislation for, one particular project.
4.45 p.m.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My Lords, I have not taken part before in the proceedings on this Bill. I do so now because I believe that we have reached a very critical stage on a very important issue. I read the Select Committee's special report and I congratulate it on the care it took and the effort it made to try to provide the proper assurance that noble Lords seek.
The Select Committee quoted the case of the Holt family land in Folkestone. I looked up the plans. It was a clear case of a great deal of surplus land, or land which could be returned. I believe that the Select Committee drew attention to that very well indeed. I do not believe that my noble friend has been unsympathetic in all the discussions. In fact, he has sought to give assurances, but understandably perhaps they do not go far enough.
As I see it, the practical trouble, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, is how one defines in the Bill land that is temporary. It is a difficult practical problem, which is not addressed in the Bill. It is addressed in the amendment. The answer is that the farmer himself can serve a counternotice to the notice to treat, not to delay the promoter but to remove the compulsory purchase order and for the promoter to continue on an irrevocable licence.
I believe that the practical answer to that suggestion is that farmers generally could misuse their power. I am not satisfied that that would be a good precedent. Equally, under the Bill there is no timetable or procedure for farmers to insist that the Secretary of State should look to see what has become temporary land. Clearly, from the amendment there could be a five-year rule that a farmer or owner can insist under the Bill that the Secretary of State should decide whether within five years land was no longer required and it was temporary land.
My noble friend's amendment includes the term "owner" rather than just "farmer". That is a fair comment. After all, today there are many owners of land who have been encouraged to offer farm business tenancies and quite rightly so. As I understand it, they would not qualify under the assurances that have been given.
As to the undertakings, I ask my noble friend the Minister to make certain that, if the Government are to rely on the assurances, when a notice to retreat is served on any farmer or owner he or she is made aware of the assurances. There needs to be clear evidence that farmers and owners are aware of the assurances that have been given because that would give a great deal of comfort to people, particularly to Members of your Lordships' House who worry, as I worry, that in the years to come those assurances could so easily be forgotten.
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My noble friend Lord Stanley referred to the Crichel Down rules. Noble Lords will remember that it all began with Commander Martin and the case that he started. As I recall, when the Government and local authorities acquire land by compulsory purchase, they have what is basically an unwritten duty to offer back that land first to the original owner. I think that I am right in saying that under the Bill the Secretary of State may acquire land by compulsory purchase within the limits of the Bill and the landowners have no right of appeal. There is no local inquiry. Under Clause 5, if the Secretary of State acquires land outside the limits of the Bill, that would be subject to a local inquiry.
A practical point arising from that is that the Government pass the land or the scheme to the promoter and the promoter passes it to the undertaker who builds the link. There may well be delays and one may forget about the value and the safeguard of the Crichel Down rules. Therefore, I ask my noble friend the Minister whether he can reinforce the principle of the Crichel Down rules and ensure that no land acquired by the Secretary of State under the Bill will ever be used or sold for other commercial purposes without first offering that land back to the original owner at a value equal to that pertaining on its acquisition.
Some years ago I was involved in quite a large statutory flood alleviation scheme. Large areas of land were acquired under compulsory purchase, of which something like 25 per cent. was required for temporary use only. It was a long and hard-fought case and in the end the largest owner achieved an agreement with the statutory body without the use of compulsory purchase despite the fact that that had been confirmed. It was a sensible and good result for all. I hope that we can achieve the same under this Bill.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, I am always full of admiration for my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley for the persistence with which he pursues land use issues. The agriculture lobby is extremely fortunate to have a champion of such vigour who pursues such issues so formidably. However, we must be careful not to succumb too easily to blandishments.
The noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, said that there would be no delay, but I question that. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and, as he said, it is difficult to see how this amendment would not cause delays in the implementation of what is an enormously overdue project. Not only is it a project of major national interest, but it is also a vital link in the development of our trading interests in Europe. We need the link and we need it as fast as possible. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will resist the amendment so that we may proceed with all haste to the successful conclusion of this vital project.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, since a certain amount of this argument seems to turn on the Crichel Down rules, which were raised by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, may I ask the Minister to confirm that my understanding of those rules is correct? My understanding is that the Crichel Down protocol was

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generated in connection with the disposal of land which had been acquired for permanent use, was used for such purpose permanently for some time, but was then sold. That is a different proposition from that which we are discussing. We are discussing the question of land being acquired partly for permanent use and partly for temporary use.
My understanding is that under the Crichel Down rules fairly onerous conditions apply to the offer of the land back to the landowner. Am I correct in believing, first, that the statutory undertaker must resolve that the land has become surplus to his operations, which is not unreasonable? Secondly, is it correct that the land must be offered to any other statutory undertaker or authority which might have a use for it and that only after that is it to be offered back to the owner, and then only subject to stringent conditions which include a duty to get the best possible price, a duty to include within that price any development potential which may have arisen during the period that it was occupied by the statutory undertaker and, thirdly, that the price is to be decided unilaterally by a valuer appointed by the statutory undertaker? Bearing in mind that the land will probably have been acquired at agricultural value, does it not seem unjust that it may have to be acquired back with a significant element of hope value or even with planning permission?
Referring to the subject more generally, it seems to me that a number of the arguments that have been adduced this afternoon suggest that because this is a very important scheme a certain small number of farmers or landowners should suffer the risk of a financial disadvantage and that that would be a fair sacrifice. If the Government would say that frankly, I would vote for them. If not, I think that it is up to the Minister to satisfy the House that the landowners are not being disadvantaged.
Lord Renton: My Lords, we are all obviously agreed that when land is needed only temporarily for the construction of this rail link, that part which is not needed after construction should be returned to the owner or farmer concerned. We are offered two ways of achieving that purpose. One is to have it written into the Bill with all the legal certainty that follows from that. The other method is to rely upon what is written in the report of the Select Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, quoted those words in Committee. In passing, perhaps I may say that the noble Lord did a formidable job in presiding over that Select Committee for so many sittings. The subject occupied his attention for a long time.
We are faced with a constitutional position. Instead of writing the matter into the Bill with the authority of both Houses of Parliament and with the legal certainty which we hope would follow, it is suggested that we should rely upon what the Select Committee of your Lordships' House said in its report that it requires. However, a Select Committee of one House does not make the law. We must get this right. It may be said that this has happened in the past and that one has to rely on the good will of contractors and their promoters, especially when the promoter is the Secretary of State.
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However, as several noble Lords have said, there may well be cases in which that good will does not prevail. There needs to be either a firm contractual undertaking by the undertakers (the owners) to the promoter (the Secretary of State), who will be answerable to Parliament, or certainty written into the Bill. The question arises whether the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, and supported by my noble friend Lord Stanley, provides that certainty. In view of the manner in which the remainder of the Bill is drafted, it has become a rather elaborate amendment. I believe that that was unavoidable. However, it seems to provide the certainty required. We might be making a great mistake and erring constitutionally if instead we relied merely on something which a Select Committee of your Lordships' House said it required.
Lord Ampthill: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down I should like to refer to a letter addressed to the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, which deals with the specific points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Renton:
"Under the Development Agreement with London and Continental Railways (LCR), LCR are required to comply with all these undertakings and assurances. Compliance is a clear contractual obligation and one of the key minimum requirements of the project imposed on LCR by the Government".
I say no more.
Lord Renton: My Lords, if that is a contract that has been entered into it is a pity it was not drawn to the attention of the House long before. We might not have had to hold this discussion. I do not believe that merely to have read out to the House a statement virtually at the last minute, which we are told is evidence of a contract having been made, is the correct way to legislate in this important matter. Between whom exactly has it been made? Obviously, subcontractors will be involved in this matter. It would be far better and safer and, in the long run more likely to be just, to amend the Bill. If your Lordships pass the amendment, or better still my noble friend Lord Goschen, having taken advice, accepts the amendment and any adjustment is to be made purely from the drafting and technical point of view, let it be made. Meanwhile, your Lordships will have established an important constitutional principle.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, with respect to my noble friend Lord Renton, I do not believe that he ought to try to persuade the House that this is the first time this matter has been raised. At Committee stage my noble friend Lord Goschen spelt out the position with great clarity. No doubt he would wish to say the same today in different words. It is right to put on record the clear procedure:
"It has been understood that it is not possible, nor practicable, to put every single minor or major detailed technical undertaking into legislation. Therefore the procedure is that the undertakers give assurances which are registered in a registry of undertakings. Those are contractually binding. If the promoters do not comply with them, they can be enforced by the Secretary of State through the development agreement in the usual way. However, there is an additional safeguard. Compulsory purchase powers are vested in the Secretary of State. In exercising those powers, he will wish to be

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satisfied that the LCR has done everything reasonable to negotiate licences where they are feasible".—[Official Report, 31/10/96; col.464.]
Nothing could be clearer than that. It seems to me that to try to persuade the House that somehow all of it has to be written into the Bill in great detail when there is a well established procedure and a complete register of the undertakings—
Lord Renton: My Lords, perhaps my noble friend will allow me to intervene.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, if my noble friend allows me to finish my sentence, I shall be happy to give way. Where there is an established procedure with a Select Committee and a register of undertakings which become contractually binding, I cannot see that any purpose is served by writing into the Bill the complicated provisions proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, and his noble friend. The argument of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is that every owner would have the opportunity to come along and suggest that something was temporary and not permanent. If ever there were uncertainty, it would be that.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I ask my noble friend to bear in mind that there is no suggestion that all of the detail of the kind he suggests should be written into the Bill. What the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, seeks to write into the Bill is the principle at stake. That is expressed in a somewhat complicated piece of drafting merely because it must be dovetailed into a long and complicated Bill. With great respect to my noble friend, he has not got it right.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, I believe that I have got it right. The statement made by my noble friend at Committee stage was perfectly clear. I hope that the House will reject this amendment.
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I do not often disagree with my noble friend Lord Renton, but on this occasion I am afraid that I must. He believes that a principle is at stake. I believe that another principle is at stake. I will go into that in a moment. I have no idea whether the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, will press this amendment to a Division. I rather hope that he does not. I hope that both he and the House will listen carefully to the further assurances that my noble friend the Minister gives to the House.
I have listened carefully to the points made in this debate. I am familiar with what was said at Committee stage. I understand that at Report stage a new approach is taken in this amendment. Everyone is familiar with the compulsory purchase powers under the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965. I believe that they are well understood by land practitioners, financiers and the legal profession. Where land falls outside the limits of the Bill the normal compulsory purchase procedures apply, in which case the landowner will be able to object and appear at a public local inquiry. But that is not the subject of this amendment, and it will not be touched by this amendment. Where the land falls within the limits
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of the Bill, he will have an opportunity to petition against the land being acquired. My noble friend Lord Kinnoull cited a case in which petitioners had made representations.
Equally, the landowner will also be able to make representations to the Secretary of State for Transport that the land is not needed permanently at the time either a notice to treat or other notice is given of the intention to make a vesting declaration. The Select Committee has studied this matter in great detail, as it has made clear in its report, and is satisfied with the current provisions. I also understand that this amendment is not aimed at amending planning law but will create a new planning regime for this project alone. I do not believe that it is proper to do so, especially as this is a hybrid Bill. I do not believe that if it is done in a hybrid Bill it will provide any precedent in law. I also understand that this is not an attempt to amend the Crichel Down rules. While these rules are non-statutory, Parliament has taken a close interest in them since the Crichel Down case led to the resignation of the Minister responsible. Since 1954 I believe successive governments have accepted the basic principle that such land should normally be offered back to the former owners at its current market value, which is the same basis as the payment on acquisition.
The amendment introduces a new right of appeal against a CPO, or, more to the point, under paragraph 12A, which is the subject of the amendment, the owner can give notice to the Secretary of State to substitute a licence for a CPO if he, the landowner, decides that the piece of land in question will be required only temporarily. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that puts a heavy duty on the landowner to act responsibly. There is no doubt that it would lead to litigation and have to be tested in court, and there is no precedent for that.
I agree with other noble Lords who have said that that approach will lead to uncertainty. It will give uncertainty to the promoters and the financiers of this mega project which, as my noble friend Lord Montgomery said, is so important. I have no doubt that delay and uncertainty will increase costs.
Having been a Minister in the DoE, and responsible for the planning regime, I believe that it would be extremely ill-advised to make changes to the operation of a system of compulsory purchase and compensation, including the arrangements for the disposal of surplus land, in a piecemeal, one-off, basis in the Bill. It would create inconsistencies with the statutory and non-statutory arrangements that apply elsewhere. The proposed amendment alters the normal process by which land is acquired for public interest projects. Novel arrangements should not be introduced in the circumstances of one project which may have unforeseen consequences for others. Therefore I urge my noble friends and other noble Lords to listen carefully to what my noble friend the Minister has to say, and not to support the amendment.
Lord Ampthill: My Lords, I shall be extremely brief because most of what I intended to say has already been said, and I promise not to cover the same ground again.

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Perhaps I may say at once that the amendment is a considerable improvement on that moved by the noble Lords, Lord Cornwallis and Lord Stanley of Alderley, in Committee. The previous amendment caused great concern—it was dreadfully difficult to understand; it was probably flawed technically; and it would possibly have re-hybridised (a dreadful word for which I apologise) the Bill, although that last point depends upon which lawyers one has last spoken to.
So far, so good. Many of your Lordships will have received the literature distributed by the NFU and the CLA, and very seductive it is. It manages to make its proposals seem completely innocuous and to present no problem to the promoters. I regret that I must differ about that—other noble Lords have also done so—for I believe that it will introduce an unacceptable degree of uncertainty into the drafting of the prospectus needed to raise the £3 billion for the construction of the project. There are other curious features in what the NFU and CLA have put forward but they have been well dealt with by other noble Lords, in particular, by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. So I shall not dwell upon that.
If the amendment in its present form had been presented to the Select Committee there is no doubt that it would have been rejected by the Select Committee. I strongly recommend the House to do the same.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, perhaps I may at the outset do what I intended to do when the Motion was put originally and when I misled myself about how and when to get up. I rose at that stage to offer an apology for an unforgivable mistake made in the course of col. 444 in the debate of 31st October when I said that the Committee owed a great debt, not to the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, but to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson. Having the Donaldson Report on my brain I made that error, and I hope that the noble Lord will accept my apologies.
Lord Ampthill: My Lords, I am delighted with the promotion.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I have great respect for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson, but in the right place.
The debate on this issue which took place in Committee reflected a great deal of anxiety on the part of a number of Members of this House about the situation; whether inequity was going to be the order of the day if the Government's proposals were to be accepted by Parliament. That unease has been reflected in today's debate, but the Committee gave us a useful opportunity to probe the Government's intentions. That was done at considerable length and has benefited today's debate.
The Minister courteously offered to write me a letter about the question of undertakings, for which I am most grateful. I am sorry, in a way, that the content of that letter was not put before your Lordships because it might have been able to suppress some of the anxieties that have been expressed.
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I am satisfied, in the circumstances described to me by the Minister, that it would have been inappropriate to have incorporated some 600 or so undertakings. It would not have been possible to make one exception here and one exception there, because then the Minister would have been faced with having to say, "Why did you make the exception here and not in other cases?" It was important to recognise that these matters could be dealt with by undertakings. Having probed the Minister quite extensively, I am satisfied that he has taken the right course.
So far as concerns the enforcement of breaches of undertakings, it is a matter for the Minister on behalf of the Government. The Government have entered into these undertakings. The Minister would in his proper judgment be able to determine whether an action might be taken in the particular circumstances which prevailed at the time on behalf of a particular owner or owners.
In winding up the debate on this side I should like to underline what my noble friend Lord Berkeley said in his excellent contribution towards the beginning of the debate. The Opposition's concerns can be encapsulated in two major themes. One is: could there be a real risk of uncertainty which would compound much further delay if the amendment were to be accepted by the House today? Would it also involve major difficulties in raising the funding necessary for the project, as the promoters suggest? There can be no doubt that with this being perhaps one of the greatest civil engineering projects that this country has ever undertaken—it involves massive national interest—that therefore becomes a critical issue.
I believe that if there is a risk of injustice to some people, which the whole House would regret deeply, perhaps one of the ways in which to deal with it would be to address the issue raised by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. The noble Earl made the extremely important suggestion that where undertakings are to be relied on, the Government should ensure that the people who are affected by those undertakings should have their attention drawn to them specifically, not by Act of Parliament but in a way which can be determined by guidelines or in some other way at the relevant time. That is an extremely useful suggestion and I hope that the Minister will reply positively to it.
The noble Lord, Lord Stanley, said that the Coal Industry Bill created a different situation and a different system. I do not believe that that is an appropriate simile. The Coal Industry Bill cannot, under any circumstances, be compared with the nature of this project.
As regards the Crichel Down rules, I did not raise that issue last time because I was satisfied by what the Minister said and I remain satisfied. Therefore, I cannot be charged with inconsistency.
I turn to another point which has been raised by the promoters of the Bill. It was a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and other noble Lords on the other side of the House and it is extremely important. Is it right that we should establish a precedent in the course of the Committee or Report stages of the Bill which

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would materially affect planning law? I do not believe that that is appropriate and in my view the idea should be rejected.
I wish to conclude by dealing with the other point which was raised by my noble friend because I am not seeking to engage in a vast criticism of the Government as a result of the article which appeared in the Independent today. However, I should like to know how the situation arose. Is it true that a letter was written by the Secretary of State along the lines suggested in the article which was designed to cause the committee to take into account matters which had not been introduced in evidence? Was the letter written? Why was it written? Would it not have been more appropriate if the Government had sought to draw attention to the important issue of costs in another way?
The Government are duty bound to be concerned by major difficulties concerning the issue of costs, as we should be if we were in office, and as I hope we shall be. It may be that we shall be affected by those major issues in practical terms. But in the light of attempts which have been made in another context, which are being investigated in another place, it is appropriate that the whole situation should be clarified. I do not know how the Government should go about putting forward a wholly appropriate argument without giving evidence. Perhaps they could not do so. It may be that the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, will clarify that for me.
Lord Ampthill: My Lords, it certainly could not happen in this House.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that. I doubt very much whether it could happen in another place. Therefore, the Government are faced with a dilemma. How do they draw to the attention of the committee something which is highly relevant and which is motivated by a number of the speeches which have been made in the House today? Therefore, I ask the noble Viscount to explain that situation and perhaps reflect upon it in future so that we can have some guidance on the matter. It may be that he would wish to do that at a later stage of the Bill.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, it may be appropriate for me to intervene at this stage of the debate. Perhaps I may deal first with the issue which is not directly related to the amendment but as noble Lords opposite have raised it, it may be better to deal with the matter at this stage so that we can then concentrate on the argument at hand.
The noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Clinton-Davis, referred to an article in the Independent newspaper entitled:
"Ministers subvert Kent blight inquiry".
Of course, that is not the case. That issue was resolved satisfactorily in another place last autumn. It was hardly exposed last night.
The fact is that no undue pressure was brought to bear on the Select Committee in question. Sir Tony Durant, chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee, spoke to my right honourable friend the Secretary of
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State for Transport on behalf of his all-party committee about the letter. He and his committee received an assurance that the Government have not in the past and will not in the future bring undue influence to bear on the Select Committee or its chairman. The assurance was read out in Public Session and the committee was satisfied. I hope that that answers completely the noble Lords' concerns.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I am in no way adopting the argument of that headline which I think is unacceptable. I have not sought to condemn the Government over what has happened. However, the Minister may find it useful to reflect on the points which I made and perhaps deal with them at another stage of the Bill. I think they are important issues which any government would have to address.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I am more than happy to discuss the Select Committee procedures of your Lordships' House with regard to a hybrid Bill, but it may be better to do that through correspondence.
I turn now to the amendments themselves. The issues of land acquisition and disposal are central to the workings of this Bill. At re-committal, we had a very detailed debate about the amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, and my noble friend Lord Stanley during which I voiced the Government's major concerns about the workability of the amendments. In particular they would not deliver certainty that land needed for the project can be acquired and then can be held permanently if needed for the operation of the railway. There would instead be a patchwork of licences. Since that time, I have had meetings with the noble Lords and their advisers, but I have to say that although the amendments before us today have been substantially changed, our concerns remain.
In considering the noble Lords' amendments, I believe we must keep at the forefront of our thinking that we are talking about probably the largest civil engineering project this country has seen since the last war, with a cost of about £3 billion. It is the flagship of the Government's Private Finance Initiative and a classic example of a partnership with the private sector.
The House and another place have given very strong support to the CTRL throughout the passage of this Bill. Although it may be tempting to think that Royal Assent virtually delivers the project, that is not the case. The Bill, when enacted, will create the conditions within which the project can be got off the ground. But the real construction will not start until project financing has been achieved. Raising the finance will be a major hurdle, and it is important during this debate this afternoon to bear in mind that the content of the Bill will be a major influence on LCR's ability to clear that hurdle.
We have heard a great deal about the question of uncertainty and new procedures. The noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Ampthill, among others, referred to that. That is one of the key points.
I think it can fairly be said that nobody enjoys having to acquire land by compulsion. But it is the only satisfactory way that successive governments have

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found of securing land acquisition and assembly for projects—and especially linear projects—which benefit the national interest. The Bill uses perfectly standard compulsory purchase procedures, which have stood the tests of time and general acceptability. Indeed the powers sought in the Bill are no different from those that would be used for building a new road. Compulsory purchase is, of course, never to be embarked upon lightly. There has to be a clear justification for public benefit and those affected must have a proper say. The CTRL is undoubtedly of national importance, which has been stressed in debates in both Houses. Also—and this is important—those whose land is affected by the CTRL project have had a full opportunity in each House to be heard by a Select Committee.
The Select Committee in another place sat for a full year; the Select Committee of your Lordships' House sat for three months, hearing nearly 300 petitions, many from those with land interests. These two committees heard vast quantities of evidence and probed every nook and cranny of the project. They considered their conclusions with evident diligence and authority. Yet at no stage did either Select Committee throw doubt on the compulsory purchase procedures, still less recommend that they be abandoned in favour of a scheme of certification of the need for land such as that set out in the amendments before us.
Perhaps I may describe to the House the standard regime. Under the standard procedures the promoters have the certainty that they can have all the land needed for the construction of the project and also that they can hold on to land that is needed permanently without risk of challenge. But under these amendments the land assembly process is turned on its head. The problem is not just with the initial assembly of land for the construction of the project. There is then another hurdle to be cleared—and one which has never been tested before—on what land can be held permanently. This hurdle involves the Secretary of State having to certify, using set criteria, whether every separate piece of land is needed permanently. As we have heard, that would be bureaucratic, but it would also open up the possibility of challenge in the courts.
There are also various technical defects in the amendments and areas which are unclear. However, I believe that it will be for the convenience of the House if I concentrate on the main principles. I certainly accept that, as far as possible, land that we are certain will only be needed temporarily should in fact be taken temporarily. That is why we have provided in Schedule 5 to the Bill special powers for the temporary possession and use of certain plots of land which we think will not be radically altered and we need to take only temporarily. We have made it clear all along that we do not wish to purchase land under compulsion where that is not necessary and we have given an undertaking to that effect, which was debated extensively in the Committee of the Whole House.
I feel that I ought to say a few words about the undertakings because that was a major item in the speech made by my noble friend Lord Renton—and, indeed, if I may say so, heavily disagreed to by my other
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noble friend Lord Jenkin. The point about the undertakings really has been made crystal clear at all stages of the proceedings in this House. The letter that has been referred to is one from myself to the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, which I instructed should be copied to all noble Lords who spoke at the recommittal stage. I shall be most unhappy if it transpires that my noble friend did not receive a copy of that letter. However, a copy of it was also placed in the Library of the House.
There have been nearly 600 undertakings for this Bill. They are legally binding. Perhaps I may repeat: from the early days of the project, it was recognised that various undertakings and assurances would be needed to be given to Parliament, local authorities, affected landowners, and others, to ease the concerns of the various affected parties. Therefore, we have set up a special mechanism to ensure that all the undertakings and assurances given during the passage of the Bill are accurately and faithfully recorded on the Register of Undertakings and Assurances, so that the nominated undertaker who will design, construct and operate the CTRL will be in no doubt as to his obligations. I believe that to be a fairly categorical description of where we stand with undertakings. They are vital to the Bill. They are not merely casual assurances. As I said, they are legally binding undertakings which are recorded in detail and which can be acted upon if there are any breaches thereof.
The undertaking that I was describing which relates to temporary land is contractually binding on London and Continental Railways. It requires LCR to seek to negotiate a tenancy or licence where land is only needed temporarily, though that is dependent on there being no legal problems with dealing with any other interests and rights in the land in the licence.
My noble friend Lord Kinnoull made a powerful speech. He feels that there is a case for promulgating this information; and, indeed, that idea was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Stanley. During both Select Committees—that is, both in this House and in the other place—the promoters of the Bill produced a document called, The Guide to Farmers and Growers, which was sent to all the agricultural petitioners. That document set out the approach that will be taken to farmers and growers both during the design and the construction phases of the project. It contains some assurances and explains the procedure for maintaining communications with landowners and occupiers. It is via those communications that LCR intend to keep farmers and growers abreast of developments and inform them of undertakings and assurances that affect them. I see that the noble Lord wishes to intervene. I give way.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, perhaps I may point out to the noble Viscount that it was not the noble Lord, Lord Stanley, who supported the idea; indeed, it was the noble Lord, Lord Stanley Clinton-Davis, who did so.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: My Lords, I should point out to the House that I wrote to my noble friend the Minister. No doubt he got muddled between us. However, I also supported the idea.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, I must apologise for being over-familiar with the Opposition.
As my noble friend Lord Jenkin correctly said, there is the further protection that the Secretary of State, before exercising his compulsory purchase powers, will wish to be satisfied that LCR have acted reasonably. I quite accept that the undertaking does not go as far as guaranteeing that there will be licences in every case where land is not needed permanently, because this may be unworkable in some cases where there are other interests in the land. Also, LCR cannot be bound to accept any terms regardless of their reasonableness. However, the undertaking still provides a valuable and additional safeguard and support.
During the course of the debate we heard a great deal about the Crichel Down rules. A further protection is that where land that has been acquired by compulsory purchase becomes surplus, the normal Crichel Down rules will apply. That is a contractual requirement on LCR which has been specifically written into the development agreement between the Secretary of State and LCR.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, asked for more detail about the Crichel Down rules and their relevance to land disposed of after compulsory purchase. The standard arrangements are for land to be acquired before construction, and then any that becomes surplus after the works have been completed, is—with specific exceptions—offered back to the original owner under the rules. Those exceptions relate to situations where the land is still required in the public sector, or where the site has been materially changed by development on it as part of the project for which the land was acquired. The noble Lord also asked whether there was a problem about not knowing if land was required permanently or temporarily in relation to the application of the Crichel Down rules. I can assure the noble Lord that there is no problem about that specific issue.
Down the years, and for projects of all sorts, those standard arrangements have generally been accepted as providing the best and fairest balance between the interests of the original owner and the body that acquired the land. But for the CTRL project, the House is being asked to accept that the standard rules should no longer apply. Instead of those rules, some totally different arrangements should be substituted which are completely untried and have never been put to the acid test of operational practicability for a project of this sort. The project is much too important to the national interest to be used as a guinea pig.
I understand that some noble Lords have general objections to the Crichel Down rules, but they have stood us in good stead. Indeed, successive governments have believed that they give the fairest balance between the national interest and the rights of the landowner. I strongly believe that a hybrid Bill for one particular project is not the place to mount an argument for a change of potentially general application. There is no means by which the issues can be considered in the round by looking at a single project. I have sought to highlight the dangers of the uncertainty that the amendments would produce.
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Making changes to the normal arrangements just for one project would raise the question of whether this sets a precedent for others. I suggest to the House that it can never make good legislative sense to try to change long-standing national policy from the narrow base of a project-specific Bill—and a hybrid one at that. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, will not feel the necessity to press his amendments, but if he does I hope that noble Lords will follow me in voting against them.
Lord Cornwallis: My Lords, this has been an extensive and most interesting debate. I am most grateful to everyone who has taken part in it. The Crichel Down rules are continually referred to, but there are several gaps within them, in that land can be held for anything up to 50 years before it is returned to the original owners. One of the objectives of the amendment is to limit the time in which the promoters could decide whether or not they needed the land permanently. As regards land taken temporarily, I do not believe that there is any undertaking within the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, believes.
No matter what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, says, individual landowners have to be dealt with individually. As far as I am aware, there is no method by which the Government or anyone else can make a blanket compulsory purchase over the 68 miles of the railway line without dealing with those who happen to be living along it. It is amusing to say that one cannot build a petrol station by the railway line because the train does not stop. However, if we do not build this line soon, it probably will. However, I anticipate that there are roads that cross the railway line at different places, and there could well be land adjacent to those roads which could be used for development sites of one sort or another and not be returned to the owner.
These amendments were not tabled simply because we thought it would be nice to get the land back. These amendments were tabled in the light of experience. The amendments were tabled because for years landowners have suffered from not getting their land back in spite of promises to the contrary. Therefore, as I believe I said in my closing remarks on 31st October, we are not overgiven to being trustful. I can tell the Minister that there are at this moment—and there may well be others—three instances that we are aware of in which the undertakings given to the Select Committee are not being dealt with as they were supposed to be according to the undertakings given by the promoters. If that is already happening in respect of the purchase of alternative sites, what faith can we have in the ability of the promoters to honour the other undertakings?
We are not against compulsory purchase. We believe that the compulsory purchase rules should be strengthened in favour of the landowners. I have made my next point before and I was told—as I have been told this afternoon—that this is not the right Bill to deal with the point. It never seems to be the right Bill. I hope someone will tell me when the right Bill comes along to deal with the point.

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In the meantime it is quite obvious that the Minister will not give way. In the light of what has been said I do not believe that the House is in favour of these amendments. I hope that we have made a strong point to the Minister with regard to the problems that arise. Perhaps the Government can be persuaded to look at the rules at some time or other to consider how they may be brought up to date. If my memory is right, the Crichel Down rules are now some 50 years old, and things have happened in the past 50 years. Having consulted with the noble Lord, Lord Stanley, with great regret I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 [Acquisition outside limits shown on deposited plans]:
[Amendment No. 2 not moved.]
Viscount Goschen Viscount Goschen moved Amendment No. 3:
After Clause 40, insert the following new clause—
VARIATION OF DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT: DISAPPLICATION OF S.2 OF LAW OF PROPERTY (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) ACT 1989
(".—(1) Section 2(1) to (6) of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 (under which a contract for the sale etc. of land can only be made by incorporating all the terms agreed in one document) shall not apply in relation to the variation of a development agreement.
(2) This section shall be deemed to have come into force on 31st May 1996.").
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this is a highly technical drafting amendment which is intended to deal with problems arising out of a recent Court of Appeal interpretation of Section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 44 [Acquisition of land]:
[Amendment No. 4 not moved.]
Schedule 4 [Acquisition of land within limits shown on deposited plans]:
[Amendment No. 5 not moved.]
Schedule 8 [Heritage: rights of entry]:
5.45 p.m.
Viscount Goschen Viscount Goschen moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 174, line 32, after ("land") insert ("in Greater London").
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 6 I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 7, 8 and 9. This addition has been requested by English Heritage. The amendment extends the power of entry already given to it, by an amendment agreed by the Committee of the Whole House, to inspect and observe works to listed buildings authorised by Schedule 7 of the Bill. The amendments extend these rights to include non-listed buildings in conservation areas. To be consistent with English Heritage's rights under normal legislation, however, the rights of entry for both listed and non-listed buildings in conservation areas will apply only in Greater London. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Viscount Goschen Viscount Goschen moved Amendments Nos. 7, 8 and 9:
Page 174, line 39, at end insert—
("(5) In this paragraph, "decontrolled works" means works to which section 7 or 74 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 would apply, but for paragraph 1(1)(a), (3) or (4) or 2(1)(a) of Schedule 7 to this Act.").
Page 175, line 5, at end insert—
("(5) In this paragraph, "decontrolled works" means works to which section 7 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 would apply, but for paragraph 1(1)(a) or (3) of Schedule 7 to this Act.").
Page 175, leave out lines 24 to 26.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendments Nos. 7 to 9 en bloc.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Schedule 10 [Disapplication and modification of miscellaneous controls]:
Lord Jenkin of Roding Lord Jenkin of Roding moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 180, leave out lines 22 and 23.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 10 it may be for the convenience of the House if I speak also to Amendments Nos. 11, 12, 13 and 14. I can assure noble Lords that this debate, unlike the previous one, will be brief. I begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Goschen for the immense amount of care that he and his officials have taken to determine whether we can reach an acceptable agreement. This measure is concerned with the London night time lorry ban. Originally it had been intended that the whole ban should be suspended for traffic involved with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. That has been changed and at the recommittal stage there was a government amendment purporting to carry into effect an agreement with regard to the lorry ban scheme but, unfortunately, it did not appear to be acceptable, and perhaps did not altogether reflect the agreement that at least the lorry ban organisations thought they had reached.
We had a good meeting at which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was present. I think she would agree that it was a fair hearing. I know for a fact that discussions have been continuing in the hope that the Minister might have been able to table amendments on this matter at this stage of the Bill. However, as a result of his determination that the matter will be dealt with properly, and that the necessary safeguards both as regards the construction of the railway and the lorry ban will be included, he was not able to table the amendments today. I have been given to understand that it is his intention—no doubt my noble friend will wish to comment on this—that amendments will be tabled in time for Third Reading.
In those circumstances it would be a work of supererogation if I were to take the House through the amendments detail by detail. They were intended to raise issues which may well be dealt with in a different way. I beg to move.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I support what has been said by the noble Lord. Although I was not able to be present at the discussions, the debate in Committee and the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, followed up the issues have undoubtedly enabled the Minister to consider them in a constructive, positive way. I join with the noble Lord in saying how pleased we are on this side of the House that the Minister has reflected further on the matter.
We shall await the amendments that he seeks to bring forward. I hope that he will bring those forward at the next stage of the Bill. But I think that the whole House should feel gratified that an important matter concerning London has been dealt with in such a constructive manner.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for the hearing that he has given this issue. The workings of the London lorry ban are perhaps a little complicated, and interesting for one who has not dealt with them in detail previously. They are important. It is important to ensure that the lorry ban scheme is protected. But London's environment should be protected as far as possible in a way that does not jeopardise the project by unnecessary bureaucracy. I believe that the lorry ban unit is working towards that aim.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said that discussions have continued since Tuesday morning. I understand that they have continued almost without break since then. I hope that those who are to operate the ban, those concerned with the project, and parliamentary draftsmen can agree.
I apologise to the House for having intervened in the issue, having been unable to do so at Committee stage. At that time I was abroad. My office attempted without success to send me a fax. When I telephoned to inquire what it was about and was told that it involved the CTRL, I felt that there was little I could do from rural Italy. I am glad to have the chance to be involved now.
Viscount Goschen: My Lords, we have had a constructive debate both during the recommittal stage and in private meetings subsequently. It is clear that we all believe that protecting London's environment and the control of heavy lorries through London is an important issue.
My noble friend Lord Jenkin made clear his concerns during the course of recommittal. While we did not feel able to accept the precise amendments that he suggested at the time, we believed that we would be best placed to engage in negotiations with the noble Lord and his advisers in order to come forward with a satisfactory solution. Those discussions have already produced benefit. I hope that we shall be able to come to an agreed position by the next stage of the Bill. It is my firm intention to create and allow an agreed position. Although agreement has not been reached, the distance between us has been considerably narrowed; and I am pleased about that.
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I shall bring forward amendments at Third Reading of the Bill. I hope that they will prove satisfactory to the House. In the light of that assurance, I trust that my noble friend will wish to withdraw the amendments.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. The remaining outstanding issue is whether there needs to be an entirely separate regime regarding the London lorry ban for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link or whether, with the modifications in Schedule 10, the lorry ban can be run under the London borough traffic schemes standard, or normal procedures. That is what we should like to see in order to reduce bureaucracy.
If I remember aright, we considered the issue, in an earlier deregulation Bill. The Government brought forward proposals in order to reduce bureaucracy but they appeared to jeopardise the scheme and were withdrawn. We seek to reduce to the minimum the necessary bureaucracy. I know that my noble friend and his officials will do their very best to achieve that aim. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 11 to 14 not moved.]

Theft (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
5.56 p.m.
Lord Goff of Chieveley: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
The Bill is introduced to amend the law of theft following a decision by your Lordships' House acting in its judicial capacity in a case called Regina v. Preddy, in which judgment was given on 10th July of this year. The case was concerned with mortgage frauds, when people obtain advances of money to enable them to buy houses or flats, borrowing the money usually from banks or building societies, and do so by making false representations to the lender about their assets, the property, their jobs, or any other material fact.
In Preddy the accused were charged and convicted of obtaining property by deception contrary to Section 15 of the Theft Act 1968. But the Appellate Committee of your Lordships' House, which on that occasion was presided over by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, the leading speech being delivered by myself, concluded that Section 15 was not apt for that purpose. This was because an offence is committed under Section 15 when a person by deception obtains property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it. I stress the words "property belonging to another". The trouble is that in the modern world, when substantial sums of money are transferred from A to B, in many cases the money received by B was never the property of A. The usual situation is that there is a bank account in A's name, which I will assume to be in credit. That credit is in law property belonging to A. But when money is transferred from A's bank account to B's bank account, the credit is not transferred to B. All that happens is that the credit in A's bank account is reduced and a corresponding

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credit is made to B's account with another bank. That result may be achieved by a payment by cheque or by telegraphic transfer or electronic transfer as between banks. But in those processes, B never receives any property belonging to A.
Your Lordships will appreciate that this result follows, a fortiori, when A's bank account is not in credit but is overdrawn. All that happens then is that A's overdraft is increased. Obviously there can have been no property at all belonging to A which might be said to have been transferred to B. As a result, in Preddy, as your Lordships' House held, although the accused acted dishonestly and benefited from their dishonesty, they did not commit any offence under Section 15 of the Theft Act 1968. Their appeals were allowed and their convictions quashed. I may add that this conclusion was inevitable. A serious gap was revealed in our law of theft. Something clearly must be done about this very quickly.
I am glad to be able to inform your Lordships that the Law Commission has acted with the most commendable speed. It rapidly carried out an informal consultation exercise, and then produced with expedition a report and a draft Bill. That is the Bill which is now before your Lordships' House.
I now turn to the Bill itself. The Bill contains only five clauses. It will apply to England and Wales and may be extended to Northern Ireland. First, it creates a new offence of obtaining a money transfer by deception. This is provided for in Clause 1 of the Bill, which introduces two new sections, Section 15A and Section 15B, which are to be inserted after Section 15 in the Theft Act 1968. A money transfer occurs when a debit is made to one account and a credit is made to another account, the credit resulting from the debit or vice versa. The offence embraces cases where payments are made by cheque or by any other means, such as, for example, telegraphic or electronic transfer. The new offence will be created by the new Section 15A. Section 15B will deal with matters of detail, with which I do not think I need trouble your Lordships.
Clause 2 of the Bill provides for another new offence, to become Section 24A of the Act. It is described in the sidenote as:
"Retaining credits from dishonest sources, etc.".
I feel bound to say that I do not myself believe that that is an altogether satisfactory description. The sidenote should, I think, be changed to read:
"Dishonestly retaining a wrongful credit".
That change can be made at a later stage.
A person will be guilty of such an offence if he knows, or believes, that a wrongful credit has been made to his account or to an account in which he has an interest and dishonestly fails to take reasonable steps to cancel such a credit. This is an altogether new offence. It is perhaps most closely analogous to handling stolen goods but applies in cases where the accused does not receive the property of another. The new offence fills what is considered to be another lacuna in our law of theft.
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Clause 3 of the Bill provides for these two new offences to be included among the Group A fraud offences listed in Part I of the Criminal Justice Act 1993. That will have the effect that, when this legislation is implemented, the appropriate provisions relating to jurisdiction will apply. In particular, this will enable the English courts to exercise jurisdiction even where one of the relevant events occurs abroad; for example, obtaining a money transfer by deception where the deception occurs in this country but the money transfer is obtained abroad.
Clause 4 is concerned with the offence of obtaining services by deception which is contained in Section 1 of the Theft Act 1978. The purpose of Clause 4 of the Bill is to make it clear that that offence applies in the case of obtaining a loan by deception. The section already contains a very wide definition in subsection (2) of what constitutes an obtaining of services within the section. This reads as follows:
"It is an obtaining of services where the other is induced to confer a benefit by doing some act, or causing or permitting some act to be done, on the understanding that the benefit has been or will be paid for".
However, there has been some doubt whether that definition, wide as it is, is wide enough to include obtaining a loan by deception. In a case called R. v. Halai it was decided by the Court of Appeal that the definition was wide enough to do so, but very recently that decision was itself disapproved by the Court of Appeal. Clause 4 will make it clear that obtaining a loan by deception does indeed fall within the scope of the offence.
This amendment cannot, however, completely solve the problem exposed by Preddy because it does not provide for cases of obtaining by deception non-cash payments other than loans. This will be covered by the new Section 15A.
The new offences set out in Clauses 1 and 2 and the amended offence in Clause 4 will not apply retrospectively.
Clause 5 sets out the Bill's short title, commencement and extent.
I respectfully commend this Bill to your Lordships' House. There have been widespread calls from the Serious Fraud Office, from financial institutions and others to fill the gap in the law revealed by the decision of your Lordships' House in the case of Preddy. The Law Commission, which has been instrumental in devising the solution to fill that gap, has consulted as widely as possible in the time available. I believe that the measures proposed in the Bill are generally regarded as sensible and effective to overcome the significant gaps in the Theft Acts which I have described. In his judgment in the recent case of R. v. Graham and Others, which followed in the wake of Preddy, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chief Justice commended the work of the Law Commission and expressed the hope that the Bill would be enacted as soon as possible. The Government are, I understand, equally anxious to speed the passage of the Bill, and I am very hopeful that it may attract cross-party support.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Goff of Chieveley.)
6.7 p.m.
Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I find myself somewhat embarrassed to be speaking immediately after the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goff of Chieveley, and before the noble and learned Lords, Lord Donaldson of Lymington and Lord Wilberforce. However, I shall console them by saying that my intervention will be very brief.
I want to do two things. The first is to congratulate the noble and learned Lord on producing in record time an answer to the problems raised by the case of Preddy. It was clearly right that the large gap that was opened up in the law should be filled as quickly as possible. I recognise that he was helped enormously by the speedy response of the Law Commission. Nevertheless, he must be congratulated on incorporating their work so swiftly and, if I may say so, so deftly in the Bill. I believe the whole House is very grateful to him for it. It will do something to revive Section 15 of the Theft Act which, I thought, had become largely moribund following the case of Gomez.
The noble and learned Lord's judgment has also restored my faith in the fact that there is still something left of the actus reus in the law of theft. One of the things that concerns me very greatly about the law in general is that it relies too much on the doctrine of dishonesty to obtain convictions. The fact that such detailed amendments have to be made to the law now suggests to me that the time has come for a much more general review of the law of theft.
A great deal now depends on the operation of Section 1 of the Theft Act 1968. After the case of Gomez, in the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House, the terms of Section 1 have become extremely widely cast. Any assumption of the rights of ownership in property is now regarded as an appropriation. Even consent to the appropriation by the victim is not a barrier to a conviction. All that is now left of the actus reus in Section 1 of the law is the fact that property must belong to another. Heavy responsibilities are placed on the shoulders of the jury, who have to take a view about what dishonesty is in each case. In my submission, that leaves too much uncertainty in a crucial part of our criminal law.
The situation is even more serious in the law of conspiracy to defraud, where it is hard to find a scintilla of an actus reus. In any democratic nation which believes in the liberty of the individual, it is crucial that there should be as much certainty as possible in the definition of the law. I have come quite firmly now to share the view of a number of distinguished academics—a view long held by Professor Glanville-Williams at Cambridge and more recently by Professor Sir John Smith—who believed that the actus reus of the law of theft should require an unlawful act itself in addition to the requirement of dishonesty. The best way of defining that unlawful act is to look to the law of civil wrongs: the law of tort; the law of breach of trust; and company law.
Of course, that will not entirely remove the element of uncertainty. As the common law develops, the law of tortious wrongs and of breaches of trust will change. It
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will require some effort on behalf of judges sitting in Crown Courts to keep abreast of the civil law as well as the criminal law. But against that, we shall have the crucial ingredient of certainty which has been lacking. If what I say is true of Section 1 of the Theft Act it also ought to be true of the offence of conspiracy to defraud, which I think should be looked at at exactly the same time because the two, in a way, run together.
The offence of conspiracy to defraud is used too widely now in prosecutions. The burden on the shoulders of the jury is even heavier as regards that offence than it is in Section 1 of the Theft Act. It is my belief that a similar amendment should be made to that effect; that is to say, there should be a requirement of unlawfulness in addition to dishonesty, and perhaps, too, the constraint of the 1977 Criminal Law Act, which applies to all other conspiracies save the conspiracy to defraud.
I said that I would detain your Lordships for only a short time. At least I can claim to have achieved that.
6.17 p.m.
Lord Wilberforce: My Lords, I support the Bill very strongly. It is quite clear that a defect in the law has been revealed by the case of Preddy and that the Law Commission and this Bill have done a repair job.
What has occurred here is very well exemplified by the occurrences which so often happen in English law—particularly, one may say, in the law of theft, which is a good example—when one starts with something very simple and primitive; for instance, there are the Ten Commandments and there are cases in which somebody has put his hand into somebody else's pocket or into the till. That is taking and it is theft, as everybody understands it. But then life becomes much more complicated. The techniques of appropriating other people's property develop—to quote the well-known rhyme:
"Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat".
In 1968 there was a situation in which the techniques of transfer of property and the techniques of dishonesty had developed enormously and the common law had not kept pace. So the Theft Act 1968 was brought in, and I remember taking part in the debates on it in this House. Unfortunately, very little time was given by the government of the day for discussion of what became the Theft Act 1968, which aimed at simplifying the law and making it much more comprehensible and up-to-date. A certain number of noble Lords tried to extend and improve on the wording used in the Bill. I remember being very strongly rebuked by the then Lord Chief Justice for the impertinence of trying to improve on the report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee.
However, we worked on that Bill and made some changes, but we did not make enough. Particularly, we were not able to deal with the very difficult section—which became Section 4 of the Act—which defines property as including:
"money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property".

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Those are very difficult words which possibly might have been modified so as to cover the situation in Preddy. Electricity was left out, as was gas, and there were all sorts of difficulties that we were not able to cure at that time.
The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, very well pointed out that the whole of the 1968 Act depended on the crucial and key word "dishonesty", which appears in Section 1, the main section of the Act, and also in Section 15, which deals with the case of a person who, by deception, dishonestly obtains property.
So the law already has to deal with a whole gamut of cases ranging over the whole field of human conduct, all brought under the word "dishonesty", which is not defined in the Act and which the judges have refused to interpret, saying that it is a jury matter. As the Law Commission puts it very well in paragraph 5.7 of the report:
"the law of dishonesty has failed to keep up with the ever-increasing complexity of modern commercial life".
That is absolutely true. The Law Commission paper also shows very well that a particular action, such as that with which your Lordships were concerned in Preddy, a case of mortgage fraud, may fall within a whole range of overlapping cases uncovered by the existing Bill. The Law Commission examined it all and said, "Well, it might have been brought just under theft. It might have been called false accounting; it might have been called procuring execution of a valuable security; it might have been called evasion of liability". To use the words of the Law Commission, there is an enormous degree of overlap between existing offences. So, even though there is such a range of offences, Preddy slips through the net of them all. That is what the Bill seeks to remedy.
Of course, a repair job can be done, as the Bill aims to do in this case. Repair jobs can be done from case to case but it will not be long before another gap in the law appears. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, hinted, the only remedy is a review of the whole area of dishonest behaviour, which is what the Law Commission itself is undertaking and was hoping to produce but could not do so in the time. One hopes that that will end not in an exhaustive—or even hopefully exhaustive—list of matters which are to be considered as dishonest or as theft, but in one or a few general propositions, which the judges and juries can work out.
I know that I am generally thought of as a codifier. I have often inflicted my views on that subject on this House. But there seems a very clear case in this area of the criminal law—I understand that the Law Commission itself agrees—for general clearing up of the offence of dishonesty and for bringing it under some general and intelligible conception, which can be understood and developed by the law in the proper way.
That being so, I have very little to say about the Bill itself at this stage. I shall perhaps just make two comments. First, I am not much enamoured of the list of immaterial matters to be found in subsection (4) of the new Section 15A. It is a list of matters which are supposed to be immaterial. That is doing the judges'
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work for them and doing it in a rather rigid way, which in time may cause more trouble. Some of the things are quite obvious and no sensible judge would decide otherwise; some may be slightly less obvious. I am not very happy about that list.
As to my second point, I find very difficult Clause 2 of the Bill, which introduces a new Section 24A. At first sight, it looks as though it deals with a general offence of retaining money to which one knows one is not entitled—one suddenly finds a favourable item in one's bank account. But the explanation—a very elaborate one—in Part VI of the Law Commission's report tells us that it is not that; it is in fact only a section, as my noble and learned friend explained, about handling stolen goods. One can work that out by following all through the references and by understanding the interesting examples in the report at paragraph 6.20. A slight element of confusion is added to by the fact that in those examples the criminal undergoes a mysterious sex change. He starts off by being "he" and finishes up by being "she". It is very interesting and very correct and it makes one think a little about the thinking behind the Bill.
We can consider those matters at a later stage. I simply register my difficulty in two respects. I agree entirely with the approach of the Bill in putting the new offences into what is called "Group A"—a curious shorthand for saying that extra territorial jurisdiction may be assumed if one of the elements takes place within the jurisdiction. Putting them into Group A is right. I agree also with the important decision which the commission argues well about not making it retrospective to existing offences.
The Bill is to be supported. One can only send it on its way with two further remarks. First, I congratulate—one cannot repeat this too often—the Law Commission on its extraordinary skill and energy in producing this carefully reasoned report in just over two months, covering the long vacation and with limited opportunity to consult. It is a remarkable achievement and shows what a good body we have in that commission. One must include in that, of course, my noble and learned friend for having taken on the Bill so rapidly.
The second and final point I cannot resist making is that the Bill and its procedure should leave us with an intense admiration for the British constitution. Here we have a law passed by Parliament in 1968 in which the judiciary took part—I took part and my noble and learned friend would have taken part if he had been there at that time. Then we have a judicial decision and it is decided that the Bill is defective. Who so decides? My noble and learned friend in his capacity as Senior Law Lord. We then have a new Bill brought in to remedy the defect. Who brings it in? My noble and learned friend in his capacity as legislator. In a short time we shall no doubt find somebody challenging the new Bill and saying it is defective and full of holes. Who will decide that? My noble and learned friend again. That is a totally admirable state of affairs and let us hear no more in this House about the division of powers.

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That leaves us with two advantages. It leaves us with the advantage of all the experience and brilliant intelligence, if I may respectfully say so, of my noble and learned friend to help us. It also gives the members of the Appellate Committee when these cases go there, the ability of having the intricacies of the legislative processes explained to them by one who participated. We get the best of both worlds. We ought to rejoice in that and by no means touch it. Leave it quite alone. I am happy to support the Bill.
6.23 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Lymington: My Lords, I am not entirely sure whether I ought to declare an interest and propose to do so, ex abundanti cautelâ. I do so not as a potential or intending mortgage fraudster, but as the chairman of the Financial Law Panel. That is a City-based non-profitmaking organisation whose task in life, sponsored by the Bank of England and the City Corporation, is to try to detect aspects of the law which hinder the smooth operation of the wholesale markets. In pursuit of that task it has been pressing for a long time for legislative amendment—or "repair" to use my noble friend's word—of the decision in Halai. However, it did not get very far. Then, happily from that point of view, we got the decision in Preddy and that decision achieved wonders which we, alas, failed to achieve.
I appreciate that the Law Commission is undertaking a wide-ranging review of all aspects of criminal dishonesty. I am sure that it will be taking fully into account the remarks made by my noble and learned friend Lord Wilberforce and my noble friend Lord Kingsland. It may also want to have a look at the law in Scotland, where I gather it is a great deal simpler. There is simply a common law offence of fraud. That is clearly not the place for this Bill, which is sharply focused—rightly so—on two loopholes which have been revealed by those decisions of the court.
I and, I know, the wholesale financial markets welcome wholeheartedly the introduction of the Bill. It meets a very real need. But, recognising as I do that the scope of the Bill is extremely limited—I am not talking about the Long Title or anything of that sort; I am talking about the objectives—nevertheless, I hope some consideration will be given to the position which arises in the case of the transfer of securities via Crest, Euroclear and Cedel. I am told that they operate on the basis that when A "transfers" securities to B, what he is actually doing is instructing Crest that he agrees to his right to delivery being extinguished and he would like Crest to create a new right of delivery to B (or was it A?) to whom he has sold the shares and to whom he wishes there to be a transfer.
That seems to me to be precisely the same situation as was met in Preddy, substituting "shares" for "money". As far as I can see it is not a criminal offence to achieve that result dishonestly for precisely the reasons given by this House in its judicial capacity in Preddy. An amendment could relatively simply be made by widening the relevant clause to include transfers of securities and doing the three-line exercise of saying that, where a right to delivery of shares is extinguished and, next, where a right to the delivery of shares is
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created and the two operations are linked together, then the offence is committed. I am not drafting; I am merely trying to indicate how closely analogous that situation is to the money transfers with which the Bill deals and to the reasoning in Preddy.
I wish the Bill a speedy passage. It is much needed.
6.27 p.m.
Viscount Colville of Culross: My Lords, I asked if I could interpose for one moment and I can conclude what I wish to say in a few sentences. First, I was involved in the 1968 Act. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, may well have been doing it rather better than I did, but the late Lord Dilhorne and I were on the Opposition Front Bench at the time and we did not get Section 15 right. Indeed, it has had to be amended since.
Perhaps I can tell your Lordships what is happening in the courts as a result of Preddy. Amendment after amendment of indictments is being put forward by the prosecution because of the obvious sense of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goff, and his colleagues said. For the main part the defendants are pleading guilty or the trial goes ahead because the essence of it is exactly the same. But we have a situation whereby the whole of the basis of the prosecution has been undermined—perfectly properly; I do not criticise that in any way—by the opinions of your Lordships sitting judicially.
We therefore have a situation where, if we look at the front page of the Bill, under the "Financial Effects of the Bill", at the moment the fact is that case after case is coming back for amendment of the indictment and for new proceedings to be brought forward in a different way. The sooner that is stopped, the better, because it makes no difference to the essence of the case; it makes no difference to the question of the dishonesty or not, as the case may be, but it is costing money.
My last sentence is addressed to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch: can we please get something on to the statute book very quickly, because it will be much easier to deal with criminal justice in the Crown Court if we have the law right?
6.31 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, we support the thrust of this Bill without reservation. This is a model, it seems to us, of how to attend to law reform. The judgment of the Judicial Committee was delivered, as was said earlier, on 10th July, and the report was agreed by the Law Commission as early as 18th September. That is really a remarkable achievement in a difficult area of the law. It is heartening to see that the commission under the chairmanship of Mrs. Justice Arden is determined to continue the excellent work of law reform carried out under the chairmanship of her predecessor, Lord Justice Brooke. On these occasions, when there is no party or partisan disagreement, it is incumbent on us all to put law reform into action where there is really no excuse for delay.

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I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that the whole law of theft is in urgent need of simplification and modernisation. I also agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, said, which was to the effect that this short Bill can only be a staging post which needs to be subsumed into the greater work of the modernisation of the law of theft, always bearing in mind that new means will be found as the instruments of theft. It used to be said in the United States that many more millions per year are dishonestly obtained at the point of a pen than at the point of a gun. That is certainly true in this country. But, alas, it is not the pen any more, it is the electronic transfer and the subtle variations which are going to be the mischief.
Of course, it may be that another corrective to the mischief is that there should be sentences as long for commercial fraud as there are for armed robbery and burglary, but that is another topic. Obviously, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goff of Chieveley, pointed out in his masterly exposition, there was a significant dishonest mischief which was obliged to go unchecked. This will not be the last occasion when we have to revert to this.
I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, in raising the question about the list of immaterialities, because clever defence lawyers—and many such there are, I am told—will seize upon the list of immaterialities and point out that x was not included in the list and therefore, far from being immaterial, it is absolutely material and therefore his client must be triumphantly acquitted.
By and large, this is a useful measure. It is a limited measure for the reasons I sought to suggest earlier. I see—and I address this remark, without necessarily teasing, to the noble Baroness the Minister—that the effect of the Bill on public service manpower is not expected to be significant. I do hope that that is wrong and that many more prison cells will be filled by those who ought to be filling them.
6.36 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, I have noted all that has been said during this very short but very important debate, and in particular the comments made by my noble friend Lord Kingsland and those made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, and other noble Lords. I, too, wish to join my noble friend Lord Kingsland in thanking the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goff of Chieveley, for agreeing to sponsor the Bill and for his incredibly clear and lucid explanation of its provisions and merits. His knowledge of the subject is, of course, unrivalled and it is for that reason that I shall confine my remarks about the debate to the general rather than the particular.
The Bill, although short, is highly technical. We have heard something of its history. Its chief purpose is to deal with the effects of the House of Lords judgment in R v. Preddy. The judgment turned on whether transfers between bank accounts result in the same property passing from one account to another. The Law Lords
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concluded that in law this is not so and that, when money is debited from one account, the sum credited to another account is not the same property that had left the first account. The effect of this is that acquiring a credit by deception is not an offence. Clearly, we could not leave the law in the state that the Preddy judgment created. To do so would have made it very difficult to prosecute for such fraud in the future, and would have left existing convictions open to challenge.
Following the Preddy judgment, the Law Commission stepped into the breach, and I would like to join with all noble Lords in paying tribute at this point to the speed and thoroughness of their work, which has been welcomed in both the financial and legal worlds. It is a significant achievement, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, said, to react so quickly and effectively to a problem, and to come to a conclusion that is so widely accepted. The Government accepted the Law Commission's recommendations immediately they were published. Parliament must now act with equal speed and legislate to close the loophole in the law with which we are faced.
The Theft (Amendment) Bill before the House embodies the Law Commission's earlier work on mortgage fraud, contained in their report Conspiracy to Defraud, and the proposals to reverse the effects of Preddy which were contained in their report Offences of Dishonesty: Money Transfers. The Bill creates two new offences of dishonestly obtaining a money transfer by deception, and of retaining credits from dishonest sources. It also amends the Theft Act to enable loans to be treated as services that can be obtained by deception.
I should like to say to my noble friend Lord Kingsland that, as has already been recognised by a number of speakers tonight, the Law Commission is looking at the whole issue of the law of dishonesty, which I understand will also take into account the workings of the Theft Act. As was noted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, this is a much needed Bill. As the noble and learned Lord said, it is tightly focused. It will not inhibit in any way the work being undertaken by the Law Commission. In the words of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, we will act with as much speed as we possibly can.
I shall not delay the House by repeating in detail what has already been said about the content of the Bill. The Government's main concern is that the serious defects in the law on fraud should be remedied. The clauses of the Bill achieve this. Our chief objective now is to see that this short but essential measure is piloted through Parliament as quickly as possible. Therefore, I trust that this Bill will be given a Second Reading. I certainly commend it to the House.
6.39 p.m.
Lord Goff of Chieveley: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lords and the noble Baroness for their most constructive comments on this important Bill. As always, I listened to my noble and learned friend Lord Wilberforce with the same spirit of veneration with which I have read his judgments for over 35 years. The

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comments he made will of course be taken on board, as will those made by other noble Lords and the noble Baroness in the course of their speeches.
There is certainly a review taking place at the Law Commission now of a whole range of dishonest behaviour. In my speech in the case of Preddy I drew attention to the extraordinary simplicity of the law of Scotland on this point, and I have urged the Law Commission to take advantage of the presence in your Lordships' House of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who was formerly a Lord President and is now one of the Law Lords.
I have also taken note of the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Donaldson about the transfer of securities. I shall certainly draw that to the attention of the Law Commission and consideration will be given to the question of whether a specific provision should be introduced into the Bill dealing with that particular point.
I do not believe it is necessary for me to say any more at this stage. I respectfully ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Angling: Sports Council Decision
6.40 p.m.
Lord Mason of Barnsley Lord Mason of Barnsley rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what were the criteria for the decision of the Sports Council to exclude angling from the 22 sports designated as having an enhanced status.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, last May the Sports Council held a seminar entitled "Building a Sporting Future", during the course of which it announced that 22 sports chosen by the council were to receive, what it called, an enhanced service from the Sports Council. Criteria were laid down for recognition. The main ones covered participation in the sport; what of governing body membership?; what is the geographic spread?; and excellence of the sport. I was staggered to learn that angling, based on these main criteria, did not qualify for the Sports Council's recommendation. One cannot believe that angling, the biggest participatory sport in the country, did not deserve recognition.
Angling has never been a favourite sport of the Sports Council but this deliberate act of omission from enhancing the activities of the most successful sport in the country has resulted in total disbelief, anger and derision by all sections of the angling community. The Minister and the Sports Council have been bombarded with protests from every angling organisation, including the Salmon and Trout Association, the National Federation of Anglers, deep sea anglers, the Confederation of English Fly Fishers, Dick Clegg's, Coarse Fisherman, and so on. Many individual branches throughout all sections of angling and many individuals have risen in anger. The Angling Times and Angler's Mail, with a circulation of around 200,000, condemned
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the decision, as did Tom Pendry MP, the shadow Minister of Sport, and a cross-section of MPs, led by Sir Cranley Onslow MP.
The first test to be recognised was participation. Angling has 3.2 million participants—not spectators—so in participation it has no equals.
The second test was: what of governing body membership? Well, through the individual and club membership the Angling Governing Bodies Liaison Group, covering the three disciplines of coarse, game and sea angling, represent half a million anglers from branch to national level. What is the geographic spread? Angling, covering fly fishing, trout and salmon, rivers and still waters, coarse and deep sea fishing around our shores—the answer is every nook and cranny in the United Kingdom. It has no equals.
And what of excellence? Our international fly fishing team and coarse fishing teams win gold medals and world championships with constant regularity, shaming football and cricket with their lack of success. The international coarse fishing team, competing against up to 30 countries, has won the championship golds in 13 of the past 17 years. Contrast that with England's dismal record at soccer. Fly fishers have also taken nine golds in recent years, and in the 17 country world championships, Britain's sea anglers are dominant. Again, there is not one sport in this country—and a participatory sport at that—that can even start to match up to our country's success and excellence through angling. So on all the four main criteria, angling beats all comers.
What of the results? Who was recognised? Of the £1.5 million that went to coaching, angling receives nothing. Of the £8.7 million that goes to 103 governing bodies, coarse fishing, with 2 million participants, gets just £25,000 and is 71st in the list—and game angling, with a million participants, receives £17,500 and is 84th in the list. It is quite incredible and absolutely astonishing that angling should be treated in this fashion and that on their own criteria such a vast blunder could have been made.
Here are a few examples. The Salmon and Trout Association received £17,500; the sea anglers received £30,000; but badminton received £240,000; basketball, £266,250; and table tennis £279,000. The Canoe Union received £320,000 and amateur rowing £447,000. I remind the House that anglers have to pay for a licence before they can use a rod. Those canoeing and rowing do not have licences yet they receive between them £767,000. Not by any stretch of the imagination can any of these sports satisfy the Sports Council's main tests as can angling.
The Sports Council has frowned upon angling in the past for its failure to speak with one voice; but that was prior to the review of angling in 1991. Since then the Angling Governing Bodies Liaison Group has been established, formed with the National Federation of Anglers, the National Federation of Sea Anglers and the Salmon and Trout Association, and is working well. Indeed, it put proposals before the council in 1994 for broader programmes to encourage participation. But as everyone knows, no significant support has been forthcoming.
In July Chris Poupard, the director of the Salmon and Trout Association, writing on behalf of the angling governing bodies, wrote to Iain Sproat, the Sports Minister. He said:
"The fact is that angling has been treated shabbily by the Sports Council since 1991 and seriously neglected in terms of both service and funding".
He went on to say:
"Since 1994 the angling governing bodies have met with, and put various proposals to, the Sports Council for assistance with programmes to broaden specifically education and training schemes aimed at young people. No support has so far been forthcoming".
Ken Ball, president of the National Federation of Anglers, wrote a powerful letter of protest to the Prime Minister. The reply came from Conservative Central Office. He regarded that as a brush off. When Chris Poupard wrote a letter of protest to the Minister on 10th May he got a brush off from the Minister's assistant diary secretary. My Lords, what about that for shabbiness? Indeed, it was insulting.
Within the broad criteria, the Sports Council focused attention on youth sport, youth development and excellence. Performance and excellence in angling are beyond doubt; and undeniably angling has more youths to develop in a sport that can be enjoyed from the age of four upwards. But to help maintain its standards and assist in further development—indeed, to quote the Sports Council, to enhance its services—it needs finance for youth development, as it is a youth sport as well, and to increase its youth activities. Angling needs aids for the disabled; greater facilities for the growing numbers of women involved; improved training and tuition opportunities; and especially for blind and disabled persons. Only recently, as President of the Lords and Commons Fly Fishers, and with the support of Gallaghers, the tobacco firm, I launched a wheelie boat to cater for disabled anglers in wheelchairs. Note, my Lords, it was not the Sports Council. The chairman, Sir Rodney Walker, and chief executive, Derek Casey, of the Sports Council could not have made a bigger blunder incurring the wrath of all the active participants in the nation's most famous and successful countrywide sport.
The Labour Party's Anglers' Charter, published last year, stated its position—that Labour will call upon the Sports Council to review the amount of funding it allocates to angling; and again, in an official press release following this recent disgraceful allocation, calls upon the Sports Council to review immediately this decision.
Finally, Tony Pawson, OBE, sports correspondent for the Observer for 45 years, an internationally renowned angler and former fly fishing champion of the world, wrote to Iain Sproat listing his objections to the Sports Council's decision. He wound up by saying to him:
"The current Sports Council attitude can only be based on extreme ignorance, or extreme prejudice, since the logic for angling being a major sport in this country is incontrovertible. To put it below a minority import like judo is farcical. I hope you will help them come to their senses before they incur too widespread hostility".
That was on 2nd June. Well, my Lords, widespread hostility has been incurred, and the Sports Council now should be thoroughly ashamed.
6.50 p.m.
Viscount Mills: My Lords, the Sports Council is quite right to draw up a logical set of criteria to assess the national development of sports and their governing bodies. Criteria include giving consideration to the public profile and the numbers of participants in the sport. So does angling meet these criteria? According to the most recent National Angling Survey commissioned by the National Rivers Authority in 1994, there were 2.9 million anglers aged 12 years and over in England and Wales. I believe that that figure represents England and Wales rather than the United Kingdom.
It is also relevant to note that in coarse angling, which has by far the most participants, 20 per cent. are aged 12 years to 16 years and 42 per cent. are under 30 years of age. As the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, has already said, this is an important consideration in determining the development potential of any sport and a criterion the Sports Council itself emphasises as being important. When compared with other sports which are included in the Sports Council's list of the top 22 sports for enhanced status, only golf and aerobics may overall have higher numbers of participants.
Two further criteria are the geographical spread of the sport and the availability of its facilities. Wherever there are rivers, lakes, ponds and canals in this country you will find anglers as well as all around our coasts. And where there are fisheries, increasingly these are well equipped, for example, with fishing lodges, special fishing platforms and with access and facilities for disabled anglers.
Other criteria include the achievements and the potential for international success within the sport in question. In the sport of angling, again, as the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, has already said, there is an enviable record of success. Indeed, there are few sports where England can boast of being world champions on so many occasions.
Finally, there are those criteria relating to the governing bodies. As a member of the Salmon & Trout Association for many years, I can personally attest to it being a body which has served and will continue to serve extremely well the interests of game anglers. Likewise, the National Federations of Anglers and Sea Anglers represent their branches of the sport with equal effectiveness.
It therefore seems harsh of Mr. Derek Casey, the Director General of the Sports Council, to single out the supposed lack of unity among the governing bodies as the major reason for excluding angling from the top 22 sports, particularly as these three bodies are continuing their efforts to progress towards setting up an umbrella body for the sport.
Before this debate I contacted the three angling governing bodies to ask for their comments on this particular point. They kindly produced a joint statement which, if I may, I would like to read to noble Lords:

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"The National Federation of Anglers, National Federation of Sea Anglers and the Salmon & Trout Association support the need for an effective single voice to represent angling in the UK. We believe any new body should he built on the foundations of the existing Angling Governing Bodies Liaison Group formed in 1993, which has proved increasingly effective. Representation within any new body should he confined to national organisations, with smaller groups and individuals able to seek advice from it. The financial arrangements for administering this should be borne by the participants on a per capita basis. An Annual Standing Conference open to all, will be held to report progress, future plans and to hear the views of those who wish to make a contribution. This process is deserving of the support and encouragement of the Sports Council, and we sincerely hope that support will he forthcoming".
That statement is signed by Mrs. Jean Howman, the chairman of the Salmon & Trout Association; Ken Ball, the president of the National Federation of Anglers and Jack Reece, the chairman of the National Federation of Sea Anglers. I believe that represents a powerful statement of unity.
I would like to conclude by highlighting the fact that the benefits of angling are not restricted to the very great pleasure it gives to literally millions of anglers. Fishermen have done, and continue to do, much for the water environment. They are prepared to take on polluters, challenge water abstractors and help to maintain and improve aquatic habitats. Without them, I fear that our waterways would be so much poorer. This dimension of the sport should not be forgotten.
I therefore have no hesitation in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, in calling for the Sports Council to reassess its decision. At the earliest opportunity, I suggest that the Sports Council should include angling in the list of the top 22 sports eligible for enhanced services. Not to do so will, I fear, both damage the public perception of the sport and anglers' views of the Sports Council. It also defies all rational explanation and appears to contradict the Sports Council's own selection criteria. All of that poses the question as to what is the real reason for excluding angling from this list.
6.56 p.m.
Lord Moran: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, has played a notable part over the years in defending the interests of our rivers and the anglers who fish them and also the still waters, both as a member of the board of the former National Rivers Authority, the Anglers Co-Operative Association and in many other ways. We must all be grateful to him for raising this question of the Sports Council's support for angling, or the lack of it, tonight.
It has puzzled me for a long time why the Sports Council takes this line on angling. I remember that some years ago I wrote to a former chairman of the Sports Council pointing out the extraordinary disparity between the amount provided by the Sports Council for angling and that provided for canoeing, which is a very worthy sport, but which does not have as many participatory members. I got a somewhat wishy-washy answer. The disparity has in no way been corrected, as the noble Lord, Lord Mason, pointed out. The British Canoe Union is receiving £320,000 in grant from the Sports
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Council this year, which is about four-and-a-half times the amount provided altogether for the three angling governing bodies, which comes in total to £72,500.
I believe that the amounts provided for angling by the Sports Council are derisory as the noble Lord, Lord Mason, and the noble Viscount, Lord Mills, have pointed out. They are roughly equal to the amount provided for the British Hang Gliding & Paragliding Association and for the English Karate Governing Body, both of which get £70,000 from the Sports Council. The Salmon and Trout Association gets, as has been pointed out, £17,500 a year, which is substantially less than is provided for Health & Beauty Exercise, for the Margaret Morris Movement or the British Petanque Association. They are no doubt very worthy bodies, but not really to be compared with a sport which is providing participatory opportunities for something like 3 million people.
It appears from the discussions that have taken place between the Sports Council and representatives of the sport of angling, that the objection of the Sports Council to giving any more money to angling is that it claims that angling does not speak with one voice. As both the previous speakers have pointed out, substantial progress has been made. The three governing bodies are speaking with one voice and have a liaison committee. It seems totally unreasonable for the Sports Council to declare, as it has, that those bodies must organise themselves in a particular way. Its 1991 review of angling recommended the formation of three bodies, an angling council to oversee the sport, an angling development agency and an annual standing conference. That would no doubt be perfectly acceptable, but I do not think it is for the Sports Council to lay down precisely what should happen or to withhold funds simply because the sport of angling is not organised precisely as it would like.
I note from the Sports Council's list of grants that other sports, which do not necessarily speak with one voice, are fully funded. The list of grants records separate grants to the British Olympic Table Tennis Committee, the English Schools' Table Tennis Association and the English Table Tennis Association, amounting to £317,500. There are also separate grants for the All England Women's Hockey Association, the GB Men's Hockey Board, the GB Women's Hockey Olympic Committee and the Hockey Association. There seems no reason in principle why the Sports Council should not give grants to the three governing bodies of the sport of angling—and it should do so on a proper scale.
The Sports Council must consider the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Mason, and should particularly consider financing the angling clubs which do such a lot for people in all walks of life. They need help in order to buy stretches of water and with their work for the disabled. The Sports Council should provide substantially more—not less than double what is now provided. It should certainly reconsider its decision to omit angling from the list of enhanced sports.
7.2 p.m.
Lord Glentoran: My Lords, I must first thank the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. Before going any further I should declare an interest in that I am a regional chairman of the British Field Sports Society.
I support the case that has been so ably made for anglers being included on the elite list. I shall not bore your Lordships by repeating what has already been said, but should like to bring one or two other points to the attention of the House. I went to find out about the list and think that we need to go back to a Statement made in the other place by my honourable friend the Minister responsible for sport, Mr. Iain Sproat, on 8th July 1994 on the structure and management of the administration of British sport. In that Statement, Mr. Sproat said:
"In due course, those changes will allow us to give much greater help to our most important national sports. It will be for the new body to decide those sports, but I would expect it to concentrate, although not exclusively, on about two or three dozen".—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/94; col. 585.]
The list numbers only 22. It does not reach two dozen, so I do not see that there is any rhyme or reason as to why it should not extend to 23 or 24 sports and thus include anglers.
I have also tried to find out a little more about the Sports Council's activities. I should like it to be noted that the last annual report was produced in 1992–93 and included a strategy and plan for as far ahead as 1995. Despite there being a plan for 1995 and despite the change of structure and of emphasis by the Minister responsible for sport, here we are now, at the end of 1996, but we have heard nothing about an annual report and no reports are readily available. I found it extremely difficult to find out anything.
The case has been extremely well made by those who have already spoken. Angling should be included on the list. I have a worry that there is no real logic governing its omission. If there is not, I should be even more worried because dare I suggest that there is another agenda in the Sports Council as far as country sports are concerned?
7.5 p.m.
Lord Addington: My Lords, the case that has been made out tonight seems to revolve around one important point—that fishing, or angling, in all its forms probably has the highest participation rate of any sport in this country. That is probably true, but we do not know the real participation figure because of the number of people who take part without a licence.
The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, has just referred to "prestige sports" and to how one interprets that phrase. It is undoubtedly true that vast numbers of people participate in angling, but is that the basis on which to decide that it should receive extra funding? If we do so decide, where does the funding come from?
My attitude towards angling is similar to Dr. Johnson's attitude to golf. He referred to golf as "a good walk ruined". I think that angling is a nice view ruined by something bobbing around in front of you in the water. I do not see the attraction, but I am not
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necessarily right and my opinion is not worth any more than that of anybody else. Indeed, it appears that I am in a minority here. However, we shall be in serious trouble if we start to say that angling can demand more funding simply because it enjoys mass participation. Mention has been made of the Sports Council's criterion of national participation. Let us not forget the hoo-ha and the great hue and cry over our performance in the Olympics. Where is the money to come from? We must all bear such points in mind.
It has been said that the angling associations have often been vitally important watchdogs for environmental concerns. Angling gets more sympathy from me on that count than when it argues for more money in competition with other sporting associations. I play rugby union. I am a coach for women's rugby union and amateur rugby league and am a vice-president of the UK Sports Association. All the relevant bodies for those sports receive some money from the Sports Council and if anyone tried to take money away from them I would put as much pressure on the Sports Council as the angling bodies are now doing to try to ensure that my sport is protected. We must always be even-handed.
If we are to bring pressure to bear when something goes wrong, we must also find new alternative ways forward. Anybody who is interested in sport must consider the position of participation sports as opposed to those sports involving the pursuit of excellence. We must also ask who needs the money. From what I have heard so far, and from other information that I have received, I have got the impression that angling does not need all that much help. Indeed, it is in rather better shape than virtually all other sports in this country. It is a question of balance because our resources are finite.
Having said that, however, angling's mass participation leads us to ask questions about policy. If we are taking the participation rate as opposed to Olympic membership as the criterion, we have real problems with the Sports Council. I take this opportunity to say to the Sports Council, "Kindly explain your position rather more clearly and rather more often". I do not know whether any other noble Lords have had the problems that I encountered when trying to get information from the Sports Council. It was not easy. Indeed, most of the information was second-hand. A great deal of the information that I needed for this debate had to come from the angling bodies because it did not come from the Sports Council. In the end they spoke with one voice and I received the information from one source as opposed to several. Faced with this attitude, one must balance several matters. If one knew by exactly which criteria one had to judge the matter and what benefits would accrue from it one would have a better idea of the position. If one is dealing with the matter simply on the basis that angling does not have one unified body but has taken steps to achieve it, and that participation in the sport is one of the primary criteria, angling should be there or possibly in a group all by itself. I do not believe that there can be any real argument about it. If not, the Sports Council must tell us why.

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As a word of caution, when one considers all of the bodies that receive funds they will fight back, but angling has one thing going for it: virtually anyone can be involved in it on an even keel. However, when one talks about sports associations one must remember that, for example, women have different needs in terms of coaching and the laws that apply to their sports. They play according to different criteria because of the physical differences between the sexes. They need separate funding. I hope that the angling bodies will not use that as an example in future.
7.10 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I rise to wind up the debate on a subject ably dealt with by my noble friend Lord Mason. I do so with some pleasure. The noble Viscount, Lord Mills, and other speakers have provided a great deal of information right across the board to put the case beyond argument. As regards the 10 criteria on the list, angling at present meets all of them. My noble friend has referred to the fact that Mr. Pendry, the shadow sports spokesperson for the Labour Party, has called upon the Sports Council to review its position and to support angling immediately. My noble friend also refers to the fact that the Labour Party has a charter for anglers and, if successful at the election, will seek to implement it.
But I believe that there is more to it than that. I cannot for the life of me see why angling has received such shabby treatment, bearing in mind the money that has been poured into soccer to curb hooligans. Some clubs are now so awash with money that they pay nonsensical prices for players. A few years ago they passed round the begging bowl to build new stadia. They had no money. They were annoying everyone within miles of their grounds. So-called football supporters attacked people. The Government listened to the clubs readily. Was it because it was big business? I have not heard of any hooliganism among anglers. I have not heard about any anglers who attack other members of the community. One point that has been missed is that angling is to an extent a family sport. That has been so for a long time. I believe that the Government are quite right to emphasise the importance of the family as a mainstay of the community in teaching people how to behave. I believe that, strictly, angling qualifies on that basis.
Having been a former secretary of a working men's club, I know that at the bottom end of the social scale angling is widespread. Most working men's clubs have angling teams, some of which are extremely successful in both national and international competitions. This activity runs right across the political, social and economic spectrums. It goes from the lower income groups right to the top. I refer to those who fish for salmon and so forth. No one can say that a narrow group of people is asking for special treatment.
I believe that this week a member of the Olympic Board has said that more money will be made available to win medals. It would not be a bad idea if it started with some of the people referred to by my noble friend Lord Mason and the noble Viscount, Lord Mills. I refer to those who have won international medals, sometimes
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with great frequency. If we do not do better at the next Olympic Games than at the last ones, we shall forget what an Olympic medal looks like. We shall have to return to history. The Sports Council may need to have its memory jogged as to what this situation is about.
Whatever the criterion by which one judges the situation, whether it is people spending their leisure hours in a fulfilling way without annoying others—I do not use the word "entertainment"—there is no sport to compare with angling. I understand that some fishermen go out on Saturday evening and fish all night. They return in the morning. No one has been interfered with or been troubled by them. I do not understand what Mr. Rodney Walker, who is known to me personally, is thinking about in acting in such an arbitrary manner. I believe that the sooner he reviews the situation and does justice to the angling community the better. The three main bodies are almost amalgamated into one. They certainly declare the same objectives. This sport has a tremendous following. Those involved in it are overwhelmingly peaceful. I should have thought that angling would have top priority and would not be at the bottom of the list. The sooner the Government lean on the Sports Council to alter the situation to the satisfaction of people who understand angling the better. If the speeches in your Lordships' House tonight are anything to go by, there is no question where the support lies.
7.16 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, in view of the remarks that have been made about our Olympians, I think it is as well to point out how well our disabled Olympians have done. To return to the subject of today, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mason, for initiating this debate. He is a keen angler and, I understand, the founder of the House of Commons and House of Lords Fly Fisher's Club. I assure noble Lords that the Government are well aware of the importance and popularity of angling and welcome this opportunity to explain to your Lordships the Government's policies on angling.
I also congratulate anglers for their amazing record of success both nationally and internationally. The National Rivers Authority commissioned a national angling survey in 1994 which estimated that there were around 3 million anglers in England and Wales. The survey also highlighted that angling made a significant contribution to the economy, with an estimated £3.3 billion per year being spent on angling-related activities. The Government, therefore, remain fully committed to developing the sport. Angling is eligible for lottery funding and has already received significant awards totalling nearly half a million pounds. My department also funds Sportsmatch, the business sponsorship incentive scheme for sport, which has awarded £59,461 to angling schemes. Together with a similar amount in commercial sponsorship, Sportsmatch has, therefore, generated over £100,000 for angling since its creation in 1992. Fishing will soon be exempt from non-domestic rates under a measure which will reduce the rates bill of sporting rights in England and Wales by £5 million a year. We have also taken action, among other things, to improve river quality and protect anglers from saboteurs.

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The noble Lord, Lord Mason, referred to angling and the disabled. Lottery funding has provided for the purchase of 10 wheelie boats through a grant of £20,674 to the Handicapped Anglers Trust, over £7,000 towards the reinstatement of a fishing lake at Darwen and nearly £40,000 to the Saddleworth and District Angling Society.
However, for the most part, the Government pursue their objectives for sport and active recreation through the Sports Council which awards annual grants to sports governing bodies. This year, it has committed £73,750 to the three main angling governing bodies: the Salmon and Trout Association; the National Federation of Anglers and the National Federation of Sea Anglers.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Moran, it is reasonable to expect the bodies responsible for angling to work together. There is no requirement for them to amalgamate. As the noble Lord made clear, the council supports more than one body for a number of sports, but to avoid waste they are encouraged to pull together.
In July 1994, the Minister for Sport announced the restructuring of the administration, and re-focusing of government support for sport on the young and the development of excellence. As part of this re-focusing, the Minister announced that he wished the Sports Council to concentrate its resources on fewer sports which best deliver these objectives. Operating under its Royal Charter, the Minister made it clear that it would be for the Sports Council to decide on those sports, not the Government.
On 8th May 1996, the Sports Council announced how it intended to take forward this new policy. The proposed system involved the categorisation of sporting activities, and their governing bodies, based on their national development potential and using a detailed list of criteria. In undertaking this exercise, the council considered: the public profile of the sport; participation levels; current and potential governing body membership; geographical spread of the sport; achievement at excellence level; potential for international success; availability of facilities; governing body administrative infrastructure; coaching and officiating infrastructure; and the extent to which the governing body's objectives were consistent with the council's policies.
At the conclusion of this exercise, the priority sports and governing bodies identified were considered again in respect of their particular relevance to the two main aspects of the Sports Council's remit; namely, young people and the development of excellence.
In summary, those sporting activities which were considered to be particularly relevant to young people and the development of excellence were designated Category A sports. The Sports Council will work more closely with these sports and their governing bodies to ensure achievements on the world stage are sustained, while also sustaining the existing pathways for young people through participation to excellence. I shall give a full list for the record of the 11 Category A sports: football; rugby union; rugby league; athletics; swimming; cycling; cricket; gymnastics; hockey; judo; netball and sailing.
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Those sports which were considered to be particularly relevant to either young people or the development of excellence were designated Category B sports. The Sports Council will work closely with these sports and governing bodies to ensure their particular area of strength is sustained, while helping to develop the "other" area. The 11 Category B sports are: badminton; basketball; tennis; canoeing; golf; rowing; squash; triathlon; fitness/aerobics; orienteering and table tennis.
My noble friend Lord Glentoran rightly pointed out that the Minister of State spoke of concentrating on two or three dozen sports. There is room for manoeuvre here within the Minister's target if the council believes that it can be justified, but that is ultimately a matter for the council.
This proposed system for corporate working with governing bodies of sport will provide a high quality range of services to all governing bodies as standard. It will reduce bureaucracy and enable the governing bodies of sport to make better use of the available resources. It will allow the Sports Council the flexibility to provide an enhanced service. This may mean additional funding, and will almost certainly mean the provision of additional development officer time to work with the governing bodies, through selected sports to address the Sports Council's key objectives.
I can assure noble Lords that the council's decision not to include angling in the list of 22 sports to receive an enhanced service was taken only after careful consideration. I am sure that the decision in no way underplays the importance which the council attaches to the sport. Furthermore, it is the Sports Council's policy to keep the list of sports to receive an enhanced service under constant review. Angling will not be excluded, but any consideration to include angling will be subject to the sport being represented with greater unity. It is hoped that the sport will be able to build on the good work already undertaken in developing clear work programmes and targets across the various angling disciplines. Indeed, I understand that the council had a useful meeting last month with representatives from the angling world to this end.
My noble friend Lord Glentoran raised a question of the publication of the Sports Council's annual report. It is expected early in the new year. My noble friend Lord Mills mentioned the umbrella body for angling. We welcome work towards creating an umbrella body for angling, which will undoubtedly help the Sports Council work with the sport of angling towards a common goal.
The noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, mentioned hooliganism. I agree that angling is a family sport, but I feel that I should speak up for football and the high standard of family accommodation which has been developed with the support of the Government and Euro '96, which was a tremendous festival of friendly sport and sportsmanship.
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the Government recognise the importance of angling, not only as a sport but also in terms of its many other benefits. The Government, and their agencies, have already implemented a number of important initiatives, and are

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continuing to develop a wide range of measures to help angling as a sport, as a recreational pastime and as a commercial industry.
In conclusion, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Mason, said that angling meets all the criteria. Angling is indeed an extremely popular sport in which there is a tremendous record of achievement. As I said earlier, it has
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received a good deal of support from the Sports Council and will continue to do so. I will draw to the chairman's attention the views expressed by your Lordships this evening. I know that he is listening to what has been said and that the council had a useful meeting with angling representatives last month.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past seven o'clock.