Lords Sitting of 28 October 1997

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Oxford.

Lord Selkirk of Douglas
The Right Honourable James Alexander Douglas-Hamilton, QC, (commonly called Lord James Alexander Douglas-Hamilton), having been created Baron Selkirk of Douglas, of Cramond in the City of Edinburgh, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Crathorne and the Lord Renton.
Lord Lang of Monkton
The Right Honourable Ian Bruce Lang, having been created Baron Lang of Monkton, of Merrick and the Rhinns of Kells in Dumfries and Galloway, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Strathclyde and the Lord Fraser of Carmyllie.
Lord Gordon of Strathblane
James Stuart Gordon, Esquire, CBE, having been created Baron Gordon of Strathblane, of Deil's Craig in Stirling, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Healey and the Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill.

Gibraltar: Constitutional Status
2.48 p.m.
Lord Merrivale Lord Merrivale asked Her Majesty's Government:
What support they will seek, jointly with the Government of Gibraltar, from appropriate European Union governments towards the settlement of the future constitutional status of Gibraltar.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, any change in Gibraltar's constitution would of course be a matter for Her Majesty's Government and for the Government of Gibraltar. However, we seek to ensure that our European partners are aware of our policy and position on Gibraltar.
Lord Merrivale: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. Does he agree that the support of certain European Union governments for joint UK/Gibraltar decolonisation proposals would carry weight in talks with the Spanish Government?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, we have always pursued this matter together with the Gibraltar Government. Clearly the Spanish dimension of these problems is an important one and arises from time to time in European
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discussions. However, we do not think it is a sensible move to establish a counterbalance to Spain within the European set-up. We want to do a deal with the Government of Gibraltar and then cover the Spanish dimension on a bilateral basis.
Lord Shepherd: My Lords, the Minister referred to doing a deal. Will the noble Lord confirm that the protocol preamble to the Act which set up the constitution of Gibraltar will not be touched in any respect without the consent of the people of Gibraltar?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, that is absolutely the position. I said "do a deal" with the Gibraltar Government about any change in the constitution. We would not allow the people of Gibraltar to pass into any different constitutional state without their consent. That protocol in the 1969 constitution will be utterly upheld.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, what difficulties does the Minister anticipate from the Treaty of Amsterdam and the commitment to freedom of movement given that Britain has asked for the right to opt in to various aspects of the Schengen agreement and it will be a matter of unanimous votes as to whether Britain is allowed to opt in or out? The Spanish Government and the Gibraltar issue will no doubt have some relevance as regards that.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, there are two aspects. Contrary to some opinions expressed in Gibraltar and elsewhere, the Treaty of Amsterdam does not affect the right of Gibraltarians to free movement within the European Union, including across the border with Spain. Those rights are enshrined in the treaty and have in no way been changed by Amsterdam.
In relation to opting-in in the future to aspects of Schengen, while those matters are subject to unanimity from our partners any decision to exclude Britain or Ireland from opting-in to the Schengen provisions would be based on a Commission opinion and would be unlikely to be vetoed by any individual member state. Its direct effect on Gibraltar is therefore extremely remote. The treaty does not in any sense alter the rights of the people of Gibraltar.
Lord Moynihan: My Lords, is it still the firm position of the Government to use the British veto at the December ministerial meetings to block Spain's integration into NATO's military command structure unless the current Spanish restrictions on the movement of military aircraft in and out of Gibraltar are dropped?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the discussions are continuing within NATO as they were at the Madrid Summit, and will continue bilaterally with Spain and within NATO. To use the term "veto" in NATO circumstances is not normal. We would hope that an agreement could be reached on that; certainly that would

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be our intention. But our position has been made absolutely clear in relation to any Spanish encroachment on the sovereignty of the territory of Gibraltar.
Lord Chesham: My Lords, will the Minister give us some idea as to when a constitutional conference may take place on Gibraltar?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, as I understand it, the Gibraltar Government are making proposals. We have not yet received those proposals; they are not yet finalised. We do not envisage a conference in the sense to which the noble Lord refers. However, we shall consider seriously the initiative taken by the Government of Gibraltar. There are certain limits on the options in both the Treaty of Utrecht and the existing constitution.
Lord Merrivale: My Lords, can the Minister say whether the Government view favourably a formula which would give Gibraltar a similar status to that of the Channel Islands?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the Government do not consider it helpful to talk of alternative models. Every territory is different. I repeat that we shall consider the proposals of the Government of Gibraltar when they are ready.

Suicides: Data
2.54 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney Lord Jenkins of Putney asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether, having regard to the information published in Australia concerning the number of people over 75 who committed suicide in the period 1990–94 and the means they used to kill themselves, similar statistics can be obtained for this country and, if so, whether they will collect and publish them.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Baroness Jay of Paddington): My Lords, statistics on suicide are routinely collected as part of the death registration system. Data on the means used by people aged 75 and over to kill themselves are published for England and Wales by the Office for National Statistics (formerly the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys) in Series DH2. Statistics on individual causes of death by age are published for Scotland in the Annual Report of the Registrar General for Scotland, and for Northern Ireland in the Annual Report of the Registrar General for Northern Ireland.
I can give my noble friend the headlines of the information he requires, if he would like them. However, as I said, the detailed information is publicly available.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that Answer. However, do not the figures so far as we have them confirm that in this
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country and elsewhere we are now enabling people to live beyond the age they wish to live? I am not yet in that condition myself, despite my vast age. But I and many people think it absurd that while doctors are known generally to assist people to depart, every now and then the law catches up with one and charges him with murder. That is absurd. Is it not time that we considered seriously this matter to enable a doctor under suitable precautions to enable people to do that which they wish when their wish is to leave this earth?
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend has no wish to leave us. We certainly have no wish for him to leave us. In view of his rather gloomy universal point, I should indicate that in England and Wales, for which the precise figures are given, there were only 355 suicides in that age group in the last recorded year. That is perhaps too many, but that is out of a total of 326,558 deaths. Therefore I believe that one can feel it is not yet a major problem even though my noble friend is concerned.
As regards doctors giving medication or other support to people who wish to commit suicide, my noble friend will realise that the Government have no intention to promote the cause of voluntary euthanasia although we understand the vigorous public debate in that area.
Earl Howe: My Lords, the Question asked by the noble Lord is germane to the wider debate as to whether a so-called advance directive which an individual may make when he or she is healthy should be legally binding when that individual becomes mentally incapable. To what extent do the Government think that there is a valid case for clarifying the existing law by introducing a Bill on this sensitive subject of mental incapacity?
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, as the House will be aware, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor gave notice last week that he was investigating these matters through a Green Paper on mental incapacity which followed the report of the Law Commission on this subject. The Law Commission took the view—it is one which the Government are now considering—that, as the noble Lord suggests, people should be encouraged and enabled to take decisions that they are capable of making when they have mental capacity. That includes the ability to plan ahead for a time when they have lost capacity to consent to or refuse medical treatment. But of course that advance directive could not include a requirement for an illegal act.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, the Minister is always helpful, although she was unable to give a very helpful reply today. Is she aware that although I disagree with euthanasia, I believe that the time has come to think more sympathetically about the request made by my noble friend?
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend who has raised this issue on several previous occasions in your Lordships' House. I believe that we have had helpful discussions about it.

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We recognise that there are differing views about the range of responses which should be available to people at different stages of their life. Wherever possible patients should have some choice in their treatments and care. But the law does not permit euthanasia, and only requires that sometimes the level of medication necessary to control the overall symptoms in a patient may shorten life. It is a matter that we have discussed previously in your Lordships' House; it has the rather interesting title of the double effect. However, that is not an issue connected with voluntary euthanasia.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, is the Minister aware that a new organisation has been set up in the past year to seek to help farmers who perhaps intend taking their own lives? I must declare an interest as a patron. If anyone wishes to have further details perhaps they will get in touch with me. I shall see them on their way!
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I must say the number of Members of this House who seem inclined to use a rather forward-looking description of their activities is rather intriguing. The noble Baroness will probably be aware, since she takes an interest in the subject, that the Department of Health has commissioned Professor Keith Hawton specifically to carry out research in the area of suicide among farmers. It is a matter that is of concern to us.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, is my noble friend aware—as I am sure she is—that very recently this House set up a Select Committee to deal with medical ethics and the matters just referred to? Is she further aware that it had a most noble, learned and experienced membership?
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for pointing that out. I was indeed a member of the committee.

National Bus Company: Pension Fund
3.3 p.m.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth Lord Thomson of Monifieth asked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they are taking to implement the ruling of the Pensions Ombudsman in September 1996 regarding the distribution of the surplus of the Bus Employees Superannuation Trust to employees of the privatised National Bus Company.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Baroness Hayman): My Lords, the Pensions Ombudsman's determination required the pension fund trustees to seek recovery of the surplus paid to the Department of Transport in 1990. The previous government offered, in November 1996, to fund an action to put these complex matters before the courts. The trustees accepted that offer. A writ has now been served and the statement of claim is expected shortly.
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We are studying the legal and other background to the issue and will take legal advice on the claim when it is received before deciding the best way forward.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, I thank the Minister for the rather thoughtful note in her final sentence. Is she aware that the Government, when in Opposition, felt strongly that the pensioners of the former National Bus Company—to use the words of the then Shadow Minister, now the Minister— were the victims of a squalid debacle? Would it not be wiser for the new Government, as my noble friend Lord Russell suggested in a debate on pensions the other day, to make a new start in this matter? Will they accept the view of the Pensions Ombudsman, call off the legal action—which will cost a good deal of taxpayers' money—and enable those pensioners to enjoy the surplus to which they are entitled while they are still alive?
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I understand the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, and felt very strongly by the pensioners. In Opposition, we acknowledged those strong concerns. We are well aware that they are equally deeply felt at the moment. No commitment was made in terms of repayment of the surplus. The ruling of the Pensions Ombudsman related to the trustees themselves. This is a complicated issue. It has a long history and involves decisions taken under the previous government. We have to consider all the aspects carefully and take proper legal advice before coming to a view on how to deal with the problem that we have inherited.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, does the issue relate to who owns the surplus? If so, some clear legal ruling on it is long overdue.
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, the Pensions Ombudsman's direction was to the trustees to seek repayment of the surplus that had been paid over to the Government. We need to consider carefully, in the light of the writ that has been issued and served and the statement of claim, what the Government's response should be.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, this is a much delayed process. Will the collapse of the Stock Market have any detrimental effect on the entitlement of the pensioners concerned?
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I am always extremely nervous of making any comment on the ramifications of the Stock Market. The issue relates to the sum of money that was repaid to the Government. That should not be affected by anything that is happening in the Stock Market at present.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, is the Minister aware that I welcome her more cautious approach to this issue than her party showed when in Opposition. Is not the problem that the ruling of Dr. Julian-Farrand flies in the face of the agreement made in 1986 indicating that after certain accrued

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benefits had been paid to members of the pension fund, and the pension fund was inflated by more than the RPI, if there was any deficit the Government would make that up and any surplus would go to the Government? Surely it is those two aspects of this bargain that are important and appear to have been ignored by the Pensions Ombudsman.
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I should not wish to suggest that those arguments, which have been advanced by the noble Lord in the past, were ignored by the Pensions Ombudsman. He came to a decision and made his ruling in full knowledge of the agreement that was made on the terms that the noble Lord described. The issue now is what the appropriate government response to that ruling should be. It is not at all unusual for the Pensions Ombudsman's decisions, because of their technical and complex nature, to be referred to the courts for clarification. That is one of the options to be considered.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, I am grateful for the careful language that the Minister uses. I should not wish to use any exaggerated language. However, in the case of the new Government, there is a certain question of honour involved. Does the Minister agree that, on examination, this is a rather unhappy story? When the privatisation took place and decisions were taken about the pension fund, the trustees who were appointed and who took the decision to hand the surplus over to the Treasury were government officials. Is the Minister aware that the lawyers dealing with the matter were on both sides of the case? It is an unhappy case and given the view that the Government took when in Opposition, they would be well advised to make a fresh start.
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I understand the points that the noble Lord raises—although I must point out that the trustees who came to the arrangement described by the noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, were the original trustees of the pension fund. The strong feelings on that aspect are understood. As a new Government we are undertaking the responsibility of examining the issue—which is complex and involves a large sum of money—properly and in the round before taking a decision.

Low Pay Commission: Consultations
3.7 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington Lord Dormand of Easington asked Her Majesty's Government:
What forms of consultation the Low Pay Commission has undertaken and what plans it has in connection with the consultations.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Clinton-Davis): My Lords, the Low Pay Commission has invited a large number of organisations and individuals to submit written evidence
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to it. It is also taking oral evidence. Last week it visited Scotland to hear evidence there and it will be visiting Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England. Evidence gathered will be used during the formulation of the commission's recommendations to government about the statutory national minimum wage.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that it is a cause of widespread satisfaction that the Government have entrusted the role of providing advice to an independent body? Will he give an assurance that there will be no change in that principle for the rest of the investigation? I am grateful for my noble friend's remarks on consultation. However, will he say whether there have been any problems with the forms of consultation that have taken place so far? Is he aware—I am sure he is—that there is often disagreement on what constitutes real consultation?
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for the way in which he posed the first two questions, and indeed the third. The commission is an independent body. Its chairman has been widely applauded, even by supporters—few though they may be—of the party opposite. I can give my noble friend an assurance that we do not envisage any change in the principles that have been adumbrated.
Regarding the progress that has been made, the commission got down to work within 90 days of the election. It has approached over 600 organisations and individuals and invited them to give written evidence. Over 300 items of evidence have been received. On any account, that is a good response, given that the first invitations were issued in late August, with flexible return-by dates. I have heard no complaints about the procedures that have been adopted.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, in the light of the comments by the Minister without Portfolio in another place, who said:
"I think there will be a differential. That is the view of the Government and the right course of action to take",
and the request made by the President of the Board of Trade that the commission should consider differentials, is it the Government's wish that the commission should consider exemptions from the minimum wage for 16 to 25 year-olds, and perhaps even for young people on Welfare to Work programmes?
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, the position that has been applied as far as the Low Pay Commission is concerned is set out very clearly in its terms of reference, which have been put before Parliament and clearly explained. They are, in essence, to recommend the initial level at which the national minimum wage might be introduced; to make recommendations on lower rates or exemptions for those aged 16 to 25; and to consider and report on any matters referred to it by Ministers. The commission has to have regard to the wider economic and social implications, the likely effect on the level of employment and inflation, the impact on the competitiveness of business, particularly the small

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firms sector, and the potential impact on the cost to industry and the Exchequer. I believe that that sets out the position very clearly and I do not think that my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade has departed from it in any way.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, can my noble friend tell us clearly whether the Government will necessarily feel obliged to accept every dot and comma that the commission recommends?
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, of course they will not. The commission is considering the evidence. It will weigh the evidence in making its recommendations and then the Government will embark upon a full and comprehensive consideration of those recommendations. It is for the Government eventually to decide on the policy.
Lord Evans of Parkside: My Lords, can my noble friend give the House an indication of when he expects the commission to produce its report and make a recommendation to Her Majesty's Government? Is he aware that there have been some suggestions that it could be up to three years before such a report could be produced? Will he take this opportunity to make it clear that he expects a report to be produced far more quickly than that?
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I gladly respond to that question. There is no question of three years. The commission has been asked to report to the Prime Minister by the end of May 1998 at the latest.
Lord Acton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the United States of America raised its minimum wage to $5.15 last month? Is he aware that those of us who shop in both places know that $5.15 buys rather more in the supermarkets of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, than does £4 in Tesco's, Covent Garden? Are not fears of the minimum wage somewhat exaggerated?
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, first, perhaps I may welcome my noble friend to these Benches.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Clinton-Davis: I have to confess immediately that his knowledge of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, exceeds mine. Having said that, I think the point he makes is well taken, although I do not wish to embark upon a discussion of the actual level. That is initially a matter for the Low Pay Commission to recommend.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, in the light of the answer which the Minister gave to my question, did he agree or disagree with the honourable Member in another place, the Minister without Portfolio, when he said that that was the Government's view about differentials being applied to the minimum wage?
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, if in fact my honourable friend made that assertion, I dare not disagree with him!

Business
3.13 p.m.
Lord Carter: My Lords, at a convenient time after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend the Leader of the House will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement which is to be made in another place on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

Magistrates' Courts (Procedure) Bill [H.L.]
Read a third time.
Clause 5 [Short title, commencement and extent]:
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine of Lairg)The Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine of Lairg) moved the amendment:
Page 3, line 18, leave out ("Section I extends") and insert ("Sections I and 3 extend").
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, this a minor consequential amendment, resulting from an omission in the drafting, to the amendment moved at Committee stage. It simply ensures that the references in Clause 5 to the other clauses in the Bill are correctly and fully identified. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(The Lord
Chancellor.)
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, this is a useful little Bill. I am sure noble Lords will agree that anything that achieves the result of making justice quicker and cheaper and administration more efficient will be welcome to this House.
I believe that this is the first Bill that my noble and learned friend has piloted through the House. Something tells me that in future he may be faced with a rather more difficult job of piloting than on this occasion. I am sure that those who participated in the debates in the course of the Bill would wish to join me in paying tribute to the courtesy and patience which he has shown.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Mishcon is characteristically generous. His own long contribution to the cause of the reform of the law is well known. This is indeed my first Bill. I believe that it is accurate to predict that it will not be my last and it certainly will not be the most difficult.
It is a small Bill, but important in its way. It makes small incremental improvements which, added to future small incremental improvements, will bring substantial benefits in the long run.
The commendably economic progress of this small law-reforming Bill has been a model. I am grateful to all noble Lords who contributed so supportively. The end result is the Bill that we are about to pass.
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

Local Government Finance (Supplementary Credit Approvals) Bill
3.18 p.m.
Read a third time.
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.
Moved, that the Bill do now pass.—(Baroness Hayman.)
Lord Bowness: My Lords, I said at Second Reading that this was not a Bill which we on this side of the House could support and I regret to say that the passage of the Bill has not led us to feel any differently about it. Despite the number of occasions on which the noble Baroness has talked about the Bill being for the purpose of building and improving houses, I think it is true that this is a Bill about more local government borrowing to finance revenue and increase public spending. It is not about the release of the accumulated receipts and certainly not about the release of future receipts. The amounts involved, at least initially, are very small compared with the hopes that have been raised; perhaps that is a good thing in view of the borrowing aspects.
Although we cannot support the Bill, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the courtesy and patience with which she has dealt with the points raised from this side.
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: My Lords, those who have followed the course of the Bill will realise that I am not my noble friend, for whose absence today I am here to apologise. We take a slightly different view of the Bill from that expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Bowness. Broadly speaking, we support it, but we feel that it does not go far enough in allowing local authorities more freedom to invest their own money where they wish to invest it. That having been said, I am happy to see the Bill go through.
Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I am grateful for the comments made by the noble Baroness in the absence of her noble friend. I understand the reservations about the Bill not having gone far enough, but I am grateful for the support for what we have managed to achieve.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, for the second part of his remarks. The whole of the debate has been conducted with patience and courtesy and it was useful in terms of the amendment that we managed to discuss. I am disappointed, if not surprised, that the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, has, to the end, kept up what can only be described as a very carping attitude to the Bill.
The Local Government Finance (Supplementary Credit Approvals) Bill will provide the Government with the legislative foundation for a capital receipts initiative that can begin to reverse years of cuts to Exchequer support for housing. In that context, and in view of the undoubted distress, concern and ill health that bad housing causes in this country, I am sorry that noble Lords opposite cannot give their wholehearted support to such a move. The Bill is neither lengthy nor complex. In essence it will simply allow the
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Government to distribute additional public expenditure in the form of supplementary credit approvals, striking a balance between the historic generation of capital receipts and need. This is far and away the most effective way to release the additional spending represented by set-aside capital receipts. I should also say that, despite the criticisms that have been made, it is the mechanism that has received the endorsement of the local authority associations, of individual local authorities and of key housing practitioners.
In 1997–98, in England, an additional £174 million will be released to local authorities, followed by a further £610 million in 1998–99. In releasing those receipts, the Government are fulfilling their manifesto commitment. We have brought forward the legislation needed to distribute the resources fairly and we consulted widely and openly on our proposals. I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
On Question, Bill passed.

Local Government (Contracts) Bill
Report received.

Public Processions etc. (Northern Ireland) Bill [H.L.]
3.23 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Lord Dubs): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Over the past few years, tensions surrounding disputed parades have left deep scars on Northern Irish society, revealing unprecedented sectarian distrust and division and at times presenting a serious threat to public order. The tensions surrounding disputed parades threaten to overshadow the fact that the vast majority of parades are both uncontentious and peaceful. Of over 2,900, only a handful of parades are disorderly. Fewer than two dozen needed restrictions imposed on them this year. But those which have led to trouble have posed a serious problem which we are determined to tackle.
The task is all the more important given the current real prospects for political progress. For the first time in three-quarters of a century, we have an inclusive political talks process based on principles of democracy and non-violence and including representatives of all strands of opinion. We need to give the talks and the new structures which may emerge from them the best possible prospects of success. It is hard to imagine a more important contribution to that than tackling the tensions surrounding the marching season.
The parades issue is both complex and sensitive. It touches questions of rights and responsibilities which lie at the heart of our civil society. Balancing conflicting rights is always one of the greatest challenges in a democratic society. But the issue is all the starker in Northern Ireland given the strong emotions, entrenched positions and the sometimes dangerous consequences of friction. No provision can legislate those difficulties away. But the events surrounding parades at Drumcree and elsewhere have focused attention on the current

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mechanisms for handling disputed parades. We believe that those arrangements are no longer either adequate or appropriate.
The Government took office earlier this year just as the tensions of the marching season were rising once again. Clearly, urgent action was needed. The Secretary of State, with her officials and the many people of goodwill, spared no effort to find an accommodation to head off potential disaster.
Although, as we now know, the very worst did not happen this year, local accommodation did prove impossible at Drumcree. The police were again placed in the no-win position of having to make decisions on public safety grounds—and enforce them—in a highly volatile atmosphere in which they were likely to be condemned no matter what action they took. The Secretary of State made it clear at the time that the chief constable had her full support in taking those difficult decisions. Subsequently, some courageous decisions were made. In particular, the Orange Order's decision to call off a number of marches on 12th July in the wider interests of tranquillity in Northern Ireland has rightly been widely applauded.
I am in no doubt that we are moving forward in Northern Ireland and that the political progress for which we will continue to strive could transform the atmosphere for the marching season next year. But we cannot just wait and hope. As the Secretary of State said when she announced the Bill, we need a parades policy which can win everyone's allegiance because it is based on clear principles, because it represents a threat to neither side and because it recognises the rights, aspirations and responsibilities of everyone.
After the events at Drumcree in 1996, the then government commissioned Dr. Peter North and two colleagues to produce an independent report on the parades issue. The Bill before your Lordships is the legislative expression of our commitment to that report. I welcome this opportunity to pay tribute to Dr. North and his two colleagues for the enormous amount of work they put into producing their report, which deals in an admirably fair and balanced way with what is an extremely difficult issue.
Before coming to the substance of the Bill, I shall, with your Lordships' permission, briefly summarise the findings of the report. The North Report revealed major problems with the way in which public order legislation was working in Northern Ireland and recommended some radical and far-reaching changes. In particular, it concluded that current legislation, by focusing mainly on public order issues, provided a perverse incentive to those who threatened to act outside the law.
The North Report recommended setting up a new body, the Parades Commission, with the task of working to achieve agreement on contentious parades. It also recommended that that body should take over from the police the power to issue determinations when local agreement was not possible. In addition, the report recommended that the commission should take into account wider factors, including,
"the impact of the parade on the relationships within the community".
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The North Report summarised the problem of parades as one of competing rights: the internationally recognised right to march; the right of local residents not to suffer intimidation in their own neighbourhoods and to be free of unreasonable disruption; and the right of all to be free from the threat of serious public disorder. The vital task of the Parades Commission will be to balance those rights, which may at times conflict.
The commission has already started its work under the limited mandate given to it by the previous government, and performed invaluable work throughout the last marching season. Under the dedicated and determined chairmanship of Alistair Graham, the members of the commission quickly got to grips with this most difficult of issues, making themselves known to the very many groups and individuals involved and working tirelessly to facilitate agreement. We owe Mr. Graham and his colleagues a debt of gratitude for their work, and I assure them of the Government's wholehearted support for the challenge ahead.
The commission has demonstrated in its work this year the importance of efforts to facilitate local agreement. While the commission will have power to make binding determinations, it will do everything it can to avoid having to do so. No decision-making process can match an amicable agreement on the ground. The commission will have wide powers to encourage and facilitate such agreement. In particular, it will wish to stimulate early constructive debate on particular parades and help to diffuse tensions, thereby making it more likely that local accommodation can be reached. It is therefore important to understand that the commission's powers to make determinations represent a final stage in that process—something of a last resort and in some senses a sign of failure. The commission will have succeeded fully in its task if the powers granted to it in this Bill never need to be used.
This Government have said all along that we would examine our commitment to implement North in the light of the experience of this year's marching season. We have done so, and we maintain our view that the implementation of the report's findings remains the right way forward. However, through that process of examination, we have identified some enhancements to the arrangements which are included in the Bill. I propose to draw your Lordships' attention to those in my summary of the Bill's main provisions, to which I shall now turn.
Clause 1 establishes the Parades Commission for Northern Ireland and refers to Schedule 1, which makes provision for its membership together with their term of office, remuneration, and other ancillary provisions relating to the commission.
Clause 2 sets out the functions of the commission in relation to parades. In particular, the commission will have the duty to promote greater understanding of issues concerning parades, seek to facilitate local agreement on contested parades, and make determinations with respect to those should local agreement not be possible. The clause also enables the commission to provide financial and other assistance, and commission research.

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Clause 3 provides that the commission's remit could extend beyond parades to include the law and practice relating to other expressions of cultural identity which take place in the open air and which may have an adverse effect on relationships within the community. The clause exempts parades, which are covered by the provisions of the rest of the Bill, and also sporting events.
This clause is one of the provisions which augments the North recommendations and which will, we hope, further enhance the legislation. It stems from widely expressed concerns that a parades commission as envisaged by North would focus too narrowly on a method of expressing cultural identity which, in practice, is undertaken particularly by one side of the community. We listened to those concerns and took them into account in providing this potential extra role for the commission.
However, the commission will initially face the challenge of establishing how it will take forward its new responsibilities on parades, and it would not be right to divert it from that task in the initial stages. We do not therefore propose to commence this further remit into operation immediately on Royal Assent. The Secretary of State will, however, keep it under close review and hopes that it will be possible to activate the provision within a matter of months.
Clause 4 requires the commission to issue a code of conduct providing guidance to those organising a parade, and governing the behaviour of the organisers of parades and those participating in them.
Clause 5 requires the commission to issue a set of procedural rules on the practice and procedure it will follow in carrying out its functions. Those rules are drafted taking account of the North Report's recommendation that the new structures we are establishing must be as transparent as possible if they are to be effective.
Clause 6 requires the commission to issue guidelines setting out how it will interpret its powers in practice. The guidelines set out the various factors to which the commission will have regard in making determinations.
Drafts of those three documents were published for consultation purposes by the commission yesterday and copies have been placed in the Library. The commission has encouraged all those with constructive views to offer on the drafts to let it have them by the end of January. Following enactment of the Bill, the documents will be laid before each House and will be brought into effect by an order made under the affirmative resolution procedure. Your Lordships will therefore have an opportunity in due course to debate those documents.
Clause 7 deals with the advance notice to be given for a parade. It provides that the notice period be increased to 28 days, an increase from the 21 days provided for in current legislation and recommended by North. This slightly longer period of notice is considered appropriate in view of the procedures the commission will need to follow in considering contentious cases.
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Clause 8 enables the commission to impose conditions on parades where it considers that appropriate, including conditions as to the route of the parade or preventing it from entering any place. This clause is the key provision of the Bill, and I have already referred to its significance. First, it transfers the power to make determinations on contentious parades from the Royal Ulster Constabulary and entrusts it to the Parades Commission. The power which the commission will have to impose conditions is broadly similar to that currently enjoyed by the RUC, but the key change is the basis upon which determinations will be made.
The clause sets out some of the conditions which the commission may impose and provides that it may, in accordance with the procedural rules, take the guidelines into account in issuing, amending or revoking a determination. It outlines some of the factors which will be covered in the guidelines issued under Clause 6 and to which the commission will need to have regard in reaching a decision. The factors the commission will need to take into account partially reflect current legislation, including any public disorder, damage to property or disruption to the community which may result from a procession. They also however include the new factor which North recommended of the,
"impact the procession may have on the relationships within the community".
The commission will also be able to take into account the failure of any specified person to abide by the code of conduct.
In addition, the provision endorses North's recommendation that, where the route of a parade is long-standing, that should be one of a range of factors the commission should take into account in considering its decisions. We hope that that will go some way to easing the fears of those in the loyal orders who may have believed that this legislation is designed to attack their traditions and even their identity.
Clause 9 enables the Secretary of State, on an application by the chief constable, to review a determination made by the commission and to revoke, amend or confirm it after consulting the commission, where consultation is practical. The North Report recommended legislative provision for the Secretary of State to reconsider a determination by the commission in cases where the chief constable expresses his concern. This clause enables the RUC to appeal a determination of the commission to the Secretary of State. In reviewing a decision by the commission, the Secretary of State will need to take all the relevant factors into account, however, not just public order.
Clause 10 retains the specific power of the police to take action to deal with or prevent a breach of the peace. This follows the report's recommendation that the police should retain the power to intervene on public order grounds where a determination of the commission is defied. As I explained, the commission will seek to make its decisions in advance of a parade, but should the public order situation deteriorate in the period between the decision and the day of the parade, or indeed on the day of the parade, we have included the

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specific power recommended by North enabling the police to take whatever steps they consider necessary to protect public order and safety.
Clause 11 retains the Secretary of State's power to ban marches in certain cases. The clause restructures this power, however, introducing as recommended by North the new factor of the impact the parade may have on relationships in the community. It also reduces the maximum period of a blanket ban on all parades in an area from three months to 28 days.
Clause 12 confers the power on the Secretary of State to provide by order for the registration of bands. That would enable the Government to establish a court-based registration scheme in the event, which we do not expect, that the commission's powers do not prove sufficient to deal with the mischief that unruly bands sometimes cause. It would then be an offence to take part in a parade as a member of an unregistered band or a band that failed to comply with the conditions of registration.
Clause 13 empowers the police to require persons in the vicinity of a parade to surrender any alcohol they may have, re-enacting existing Northern Ireland legislation.
Clause 14 makes it an offence to hinder or obstruct a lawful public procession and Clause 15 confers on the police the power to arrest without warrant anyone suspected of committing an offence under the Bill. Both clauses re-enact existing law.
Clause 16 makes provisions about orders and regulations under the Bill and Clause 17 deals with the interpretation of the Bill. Clause 18 and Schedules 3 and 4 provide for amendments and repeals made necessary by the Bill. Clause 19 deals with the Bill's short title, commencement and extent.
Discussions are proceeding in the usual channels in relation to the appropriate form for the Committee on this Bill. I shall listen with interest to any comments your Lordships make this afternoon.
I believe that this Bill will go a long way to putting new structures in place which can deal with this vexed issue in a balanced, principled and effective way. The questions people want to know about our policy are obvious. How will it work on the ground? What sort of decisions will result? Who will take them, and when? Of course, setting up an independent body means just that. If I could give a fixture list for next year's parades and how the commission might treat them, there would be no job left for the commission. Nor would its independence look very credible. But these questions deserve to be addressed.
Our decision to implement North's recommendations was made on its merits. But it is fully in line with the firm position we have taken on rights both in opposition and in government. In particular, last week's White Paper, setting out our plans to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, demonstrated once again the top priority we give this subject. Rights underlie our approach because they are the natural heritage of all, regardless of political
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affiliation. But, also, we believe a system based on transparency and recognised rights stands the best chance of success, even in the vexed area of marching.
However, rights do not exist in a vacuum. They also come with responsibilities. Despite the continuing problems of the marching season, there have been many recent indications that people on both sides were prepared to recognise the value of compromise. The Secretary of State has already paid tribute to their courage and vision, which will enable us to build for the future. I hope the new structures we are setting up will make such gestures easier. In our rights-driven approach, a sensible decision not to exercise a right will not make it any the less real, or reduce the possibility that it can be exercised again in the future.
I have today outlined the broad approach to the parades issue which the Government are taking. There will be, I know, considerable debate and discussion of these proposed measures both in this House and in another place in the coming weeks. If the Bill achieves its aims—and I believe it will—parades will cease to provide a forum for intransigence and grievance and bitterness. It will therefore contribute immensely to the process to which we are all committed, the securing of a better future for all the people of Northern Ireland.
I look forward to the debate today and in particular to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cope. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Dubs.)
3.42 p.m.
Lord Cope of Berkeley: My Lords, left to myself, I would not have pressed a maiden speech on your Lordships so soon after the agreeable ceremony of my introduction last week. But working Peers are here to do things and I am glad to be my party's spokesman on Northern Ireland matters. Having served as Minister of State in the Province, I find, like my noble friend Lord Mayhew (who made such an eloquent maiden speech last week), that you never get it out of your system and, indeed, that you do not desire to. The daily courage and the generosity of the people of Northern Ireland see to that. But there is also the challenge to us all of this beautiful part of our country torn apart by politics, with all the pain and grief to its staunch inhabitants.
Among that pain and grief, processions of various kinds have been the occasion of the most terrible clashes. The present troubles began with the civil rights marches of 1968 and 1969. The demands that those marchers made have all been addressed vigorously over the years, but there remains the underlying conflict about which country the Province should belong to. This Bill attempts, with that background, to make marches without trouble easier to achieve for all concerned.
The Bill stems, as the Minister said in introducing it, from the report of Dr. Peter North, Father Oliver Crilly and the Reverend John Dunlop. He was right to say that we owe them all a debt of gratitude for an exceptionally clear and thorough report. I should perhaps disclose to the House that I have known Dr. North for many years. In fact we were at school together at Oakham, which

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was then a direct grant school. When the school decided in its wisdom to put on a Shakespeare play for the first time, it chose what actors call the Scottish play. Peter North played the part of Macbeth and I played the part of Lady Macbeth, in a long blonde wig. I understand that Dr. North's further education was alongside the noble Lord who is to speak for the Liberal Democrat Party today. That shows what coincidences life holds. However, the result of that, I suppose, is that it does not in the least surprise me that the North Report is a very thorough job. It is right that its main recommendations should be implemented in the Bill. I welcome a statutory basis for the Parades Commission and I also welcome the fact that the Government have put these provisions in a Bill and not in an order.
I have several rather more detailed points to put which, if they can be cleared up today, might even serve to shorten the Committee stage. Clause 2 permits the commission to provide financial assistance to any person or body it wishes, with the approval of the Secretary of State. I wonder for what sort of purpose and on what scale this money might be—not too much, I suspect, because such assistance is not mentioned in the Financial Memorandum.
Clause 3 goes wider than the North review was asked to go and provides for the commission itself, at some unspecified time in the future—though the Minister did say that it would be implemented within months—to make recommendations about the law and practice applying to other expressions of cultural identity. That is a valuable provision which will help to put the whole matter into context. "Within months" is a helpful phrase, but as far as I am concerned, the sooner this is able to be implemented the better.
The Minister also pointed out that sporting events are specifically excluded from this clause but did not say why. Sporting events can be very vigorous expressions of cultural identity in Northern Ireland. The existence of special sports belonging solely to one community ensures that that is so. It seems to me odd to propose to exclude them by specific law both from the possibility of regulation, which I understand, but also from future consideration under Clause 3 of the Bill.
In Clause 11 the Secretary of State is given the power to ban particular processions or indeed types of processions. That is basically the same power which the Secretary of State has now. In making the decision she will have regard to possible disorder and disruption, to the potential demands on the police and the Army and to the effect of the proposed march on relationships within the community. But curiously, as I read the Bill—I am no lawyer—the Secretary of State, in banning a march, cannot take into account two other matters which the commission will have to consider. They are, first, any failure of those involved to comply with previous regulations; and, secondly, so-called traditionality—the fact that a procession has customarily been held on a particular route. I would have thought that the Secretary of State should have regard to these matters too in taking a decision to ban a particular march.
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Lastly, I hope the Minister can tell us why the Bill provides for stiffer penalties—up to two years' imprisonment—for organisers of processions who fail to comply with a regulation on a legal procession but smaller penalties—up to six months' imprisonment—for someone who organises an illegal procession without notice or someone who breaks up a legal procession or attempts to do so. That is an undesirable imbalance in the penalties provided for under the Bill. I suggest that your Lordships need to consider these points, among others, if we are to do our job as a revising Chamber. But it is also particularly important on Second Reading to consider the overall effect.
The Bill, when implemented, will lead to statutory mediation to try to deal with the problems in advance. It will also mean that regulations, both in general and for specific parades, will normally be settled by the commission and not by the police who have to enforce them. It will not insulate, however, either the police or Ministers from decisions on some of the most difficult parades.
The ultimate decision to ban is, rightly, not open to the commission. Sometimes those who wish to obstruct a legal march or those who wish to hold a march to mark an anniversary or to protest about something may set out to show the strength of their feelings by deliberately escalating events to the stage where the commission process cannot deal with them. There are precedents for that kind of thing happening in Northern Ireland. The buck will then stop with the police and Ministers.
The vast majority of people from both traditions in Northern Ireland are sorely tested, but they are ultimately people of good will. But in legislating we always have to remember that some are not and any new provision is likely to be tested by evil men. There is no escaping that unless at some time there is the settlement that we all long for. At present we all hope and pray that the talks will go ahead to a conclusion in a spirit of reason and democracy, even though recent statements by Sinn Fein/IRA do not encourage such hope. It seems to me that the Government keep conceding points to them—such as ending internment, the Prime Minister shaking hands etc.—without as far as we know getting anything in return. The Republican representatives do not yet give the impression that they have seen the truth, which has been evident for years, that neither Northern Ireland, nor Britain, nor any other self-respecting democracy can be bombed into submission to the will of terrorists. The Irish Republic itself, despite the obnoxious clauses in its constitution, stands for law, order and democratic decisions. If you have a good cause in a democracy the ballot box is enough.
This Bill will help to minimise the threats to law and order and, we hope, the genuine offence that can be given to people of both traditions by decisions on parades. But the Royal Ulster Constabulary will still need to hold the line, as it has done so gallantly over the years. It is an impartial force for law, order and justice, which are the essential foundations of democracy. I built up the highest respect for the RUC

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while I carried responsibility, and we continue to rely on it. I hope and believe that this Bill will help the Royal Ulster Constabulary to keep the peace.
3.52 p.m.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, it is my very pleasant duty, on behalf of the House, to offer the noble Lord, Lord Cope, first, our congratulations and then a welcome. First, on behalf of the whole House, I should like to thank him for an outstandingly cogent and eloquent maiden speech. Secondly, on behalf of a rather smaller group of your Lordships who normally meet at less salubrious hours of the day, often in the wastes of the dinner hour, to discuss Northern Ireland business when our numbers can be counted on the fingers of two hands, I offer him a welcome to a very important club. We shall be pleased to see him alongside us in the wee small hours.
The noble Lord has a wide range of experience in another place. He has extremely distinguished experience in government including, as he reminded us, a spell in the Northern Ireland Office, which is quite apparent from the ease with which he has picked up his old brief and gone straight to the heart of the matter in this important debate this afternoon. I had not realised that the noble Lord had had such wide experience of the harsher side of life. I knew that he had had a spell in the Whips Office of the Conservative Party. The problems of Northern Ireland need all the wisdom that we can muster and I know that your Lordships will join with me in appreciation of the fact that the noble Lord will be speaking in this House on Northern Ireland topics and, we hope, on other matters, too. We hope that we shall hear from him often in the days and years to come.
The author and his colleagues who produced the North Report deserve our thanks. Dr. North and his two colleagues did us proud. It is a good report. It is good to see that the Government are now acting on it, that is, after some delay because the report came out in January. I personally regret that action was not taken in the spring before the present Government came to power. I believe that when they were confronted with it they were probably right to leave it until this autumn to see how the summer went. In fact, the summer did not go too badly, largely because common sense obtained and also because a lot of people did a great deal of work behind the scenes including, it must be said, some leaders of the Orange Order themselves who made an outstanding contribution to a relatively peaceful resolution with no repetition of the scenes at Drumcree, which had done so much damage the previous year to relationships between the two communities and the police. It is always serious in Northern Ireland if the police and the communities find a distance between them as, indeed, at the time, did the two governments. This year has been much better. We on these Benches believe that the Government are now right to turn the North Report into this Bill.
There is such a gulf in Northern Ireland between the perspectives of the two main communities, not least on this issue. I am sure that the House appreciates that both positions are quite understandable, tenable and defensible. There are those who believe that they have
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an inalienable right, derived from history and tradition, to assemble a march and that that right is being infringed for, as they would see it, political reasons. Equally, of course, there are those who believe that an assertion of superiority is being forced on them backed up by the might of the security forces. It is that gap in perception that causes the problem. I believe that the North Report did well in trying to align these perspectives. Some of the suggestions have already been enacted, I believe, successfully. The legislation that the previous government produced in their twilight weeks, which insisted on a notification period for parades, was instrumental in making this summer's parades markedly less troublesome than those of the year before.
The Bill takes the recommendations of the North Report further and we find that welcome. The central innovation, which is that of a Parades Commission, which is truly independent, is a major advance. I believe the fact that ultimately, as set out in Clause 9 of the Bill, the Secretary of State may reconsider the recommendations, is right and inevitable in the tense situation of Northern Ireland. I find it welcome to see a Bill with such a rounded group of measures. For instance, I am very glad to see in Clause 8 that those who incite others to break the proposed law are as liable as those who break it. Similarly, in Clause 14, clear sanctions are laid out for those who obstruct a march which has been allowed by the commission.
The Minister presented the Bill so clearly. Perhaps I may raise with him one or two points of concern. There are some aspects of the North Report which do not appear in the Bill and there are other items that were not pre-figured in the report but which are in the Bill. Perhaps I may briefly refer to them. I regret the fact that several parades cannot be grouped together in the way that Dr. North and his colleagues suggested. It would be helpful if the commission were able to say. "Well, we will let you have that march, but you cannot have that one". There is more scope for negotiation and compromise if groups of marches can be treated together. As the Minister knows, at the moment it is intended that the commission will treat marches independently.
There is the issue that the preliminary view of the commission is given informally. That is desirable because consultation in Northern Ireland is often very valuable. But there is a danger if the commission were to publish its preliminary view informally. Some people might imagine that they can change it before it becomes the formal view and they may even resort to threatening violence to get their way. The Minister might care to refer to this in his reply, but I believe it would be better if the commission consulted and then decided.
Finally, there is a matter which is of some concern to myself and my colleagues on these Benches. The Government's efforts to balance the Bill between the interests of different communities are clear and, on the whole, they are welcome. But I wonder whether one or two aspects have been put in for symbolic purposes in order to represent balance, whereas they may in fact diminish the effectiveness of the commission. In particular, Clause 3 gives the commission potential power over a wide range of activities far removed from

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the question of marches. For that to be effective, there would have to be an assurance that the Government and the RUC would act. I wonder, therefore, whether Clause 3 is wise. My noble friends and I may want to return to this later as we further consider the Bill.
In conclusion, in supporting the Bill, as we do more or less unreservedly from these Benches, we still recognise that it can be no more than a facilitating measure. In the end, we are dependent on the growing confidence, a display of common sense, the ability to compromise and the recognition of each other's point of view. In the end, those are the keys to progress in Northern Ireland. This Bill can make a contribution, but we should not mistake it for a solution.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
4 p.m.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Richard): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The Statement is as follows:
"Commonwealth Heads of Government met in Edinburgh from 24th October to 27th October, the first such meeting in Britain for 20 years. Labour was in power the last time the meeting was held in this country, and I am delighted that a Labour Government were able to welcome Commonwealth Heads back to Britain. Fifty-one member states attended the meeting, 43 represented by Heads of State or Prime Ministers—the largest ever gathering of Commonwealth Heads. We also welcomed Fiji back to the Commonwealth.
"I would like to thank the people of Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular, for the warm welcome they gave my fellow Heads of Government and their delegations and for their hospitality. I believe they helped to show a new face of Britain to the world.
"Her Majesty the Queen was able to address a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting for the first time. The warmth of the welcome she was given was a tribute to the regard in which she is held by Commonwealth Governments all over the world.
"Also for the first time, a Commonwealth Business Forum was held immediately before the Heads of Government Meeting. It reflected the clear focus of the meeting on economic issues, in particular trade, investment and development. After an excellent debate we were able to agree the Edinburgh Commonwealth Economic Declaration on "Promoting Shared Prosperity". This demonstrates the unique role the Commonwealth can play in bringing together developed and developing countries in this area. This declaration, the first of its kind, sets out economic principles shared by the Commonwealth, to match the political principles on good government and human rights set out in the Harare Declaration of 1991.
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"The declaration marks real progress in four areas: first, agreement that the Commonwealth should be a force for freer trade in the world. In particular, we supported the expansion of duty-free market access for exports from the least developed countries, the need for adequate successor arrangements for ACP banana exporters and a study of steps to increase trade between Commonwealth countries.
"Secondly, we recognised the important role the private sector has to play. We strongly supported the conclusions of the Business Forum, and in particular the decision to establish a business council to facilitate contact between businesses across the Commonwealth. We also agreed on the benefits international investment can bring and decided to finalise a code of good practice for Commonwealth Governments to encourage private investment.
"I attended the launch of a new South Asia Regional Fund in the margins of the meeting. The fund should provide some 200 million US dollars from the Commonwealth Development Corporation, countries of the region and others to promote investment in south Asia. I particularly welcome this example of regional co-operation. The Government also intend that the CDC itself should develop a new relationship with the private sector. This will give it increased funds for investment; and the proceeds from the sale of shares in CDC will be ploughed straight back into the development programme.
"Thirdly, we endorsed the target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 and emphasised the importance of substantial and swift debt relief in achieving this. This built on the valuable work of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Mauritius Commonwealth Finance Ministers' meeting and the target of ensuring that every highly indebted poor country is launched on the process of debt reduction by the year 2000. The UK is willing to cancel aid debts of lower income Commonwealth countries totalling £132 million provided they follow sensible economic policies. We have already made formal offers to seven countries with debts of £18 million. Discussions have started with others.
"Fourthly, the meeting sent a strong message to the Kyoto Climate Change Conference in December that all countries, both developed and developing, will need to play a role in achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, I was able to announce that the Government will provide an additional £3 million for the Commonwealth's Iwokrama rainforest project in Guyana.
"On the political side, Commonwealth Heads reaffirmed their commitment to the Harare Principles on good governance and human rights and agreed that any future Commonwealth members must meet the Harare criteria. We agreed that the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group set up at Millbrook in 1995 should continue to deal with serious and persistent violations of the Harare Principles.
"The meeting spent some time discussing our approach to the Nigerian regime. We unanimously agreed to continue the suspension of Nigeria. This excludes Nigeria from all Commonwealth activity.

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"The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group now has delegated power to invoke a number of specified measures, if the group decides these would further the process of transition and respect for human rights in Nigeria. These include visa restrictions, withdrawal of military attaches, the cessation of military training, an embargo on the export of arms and the downgrading of diplomatic missions and cultural links.
"In addition, after 1st October 1998, the action group will assess whether Nigeria has satisfactorily completed its transition programme. If this assessment is negative, Heads of Government will consider Nigeria's expulsion from the Commonwealth and the introduction of further measures, such as a mandatory oil embargo.
"I believe these measures, taken together, send a clear and strong message to the Nigerian Government from all the members of the Commonwealth: if they do not improve substantially their respect for human rights and move back to democracy, they face severe sanctions.
"Heads of Government strongly condemned the military coup in Sierra Leone and decided to continue the suspension of the military regime from Commonwealth meetings. We also called for the immediate reinstatement of President Kabbah, the legitimate Head of State, whom I welcomed to the meeting as my special guest.
"A final communiqué reflecting our discussions was issued at the end of our meeting yesterday morning. Copies of this and the economic declaration are available in the Library of the House.
"In conclusion, I am pleased to report to the House that there was a remarkable degree of agreement at Edinburgh on both economic and political questions. Many Heads said that it was the most harmonious CHOGM for many years. I believe that the Commonwealth is needed now more than ever. It bridges the gap between developed and developing and provides a forum for co-operation and joint endeavour; and it provides a strong moral lead in a world where basic human rights are too often under threat.
"I also believe that this CHOGM was a success. The Commonwealth has a new focus on economic issues. It is showing the rest of the world the way on environmental problems such as climate change. It is setting an example in the field of human rights—our action on Nigeria makes clear that the Commonwealth will not tolerate undemocratic behaviour and human rights abuses among its ranks.
"At Edinburgh, my fellow Heads of Government and I began a process of change to prepare the Commonwealth to face the challenges of the 21st century. A renewed Commonwealth will be a force for good in the world. I look forward to this process being taken further before our next meeting in South Africa in 1999."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.9 p.m.
Viscount Cranborne: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House is grateful to the Lord Privy Seal for repeating the Statement with his usual clarity and deliberation. There is very much in the Statement that noble Lords on this side of the House welcome, not least the apparent emphasis on the respect in which the Queen is held by the Commonwealth. We also welcome unreservedly the return of Fiji to Commonwealth ranks. We are particularly pleased that the Statement underlines the importance of economic issues and free trade. All of us know in our heart of hearts that trade rather than aid is usually more effective. Equally, we understand that if that is to work the rich countries, perhaps more than others, must sign up to the principles of access to their own markets by countries of the third world. We also welcome the South Asia Regional Fund and the Commonwealth Development Corporation's new relationship with the private sector. Equally, we are pleased to see what the Statement says about the message to the Kyoto Climate Change Conference. We also welcome the reaffirmation of the Harare principles.
The Commonwealth has always been held to be important in the rhetoric of governments of both parties. I do not emphatically make a partisan point when I say that sometimes it is perhaps more undervalued than the rhetoric suggests, as evidenced by the priorities in policy. I believe that the matters I have mentioned are a constructive move on the part of the Government, and we welcome them.
However, the Lord Privy Seal might regard my response as uncharacteristic if I did not carp a little. There is not a great deal that is new in what the Lord Privy Seal has reported to the House. That is very different from the Prime Minister's rhetoric. It is clear from the speech of the Prime Minister that the word "new" was an integral part of his rhetoric in Edinburgh as it has been since well before the general election. He has said:
"There is a new British identity: modern, enterprising, outward, open and compassionate … the new Britain is a meritocracy where we break down the barriers of class, race and religion",
etc., etc. One can compare this with the wording of the Labour manifesto:
"New Labour. Because Britain deserves better … I believe Britain can and must be better … We will modernise Britain … Under the Conservatives Britain's influence has waned … The tragedy of the Conservative years has been a squandering of Britain's assets and the loss of Britain's influence",
etc., etc. I admit to the Lord Privy Seal that that is entirely consistent. However, I ask the Lord Privy Seal to speculate and tell us what has happened in the past six months since 1st May when this remarkable transformation from a weakened and declining influence to a modern and enterprising power has taken place. If the Lord Privy Seal says that it is due entirely to the rhetoric of the Government I shall beg to differ from that diagnosis. I hope that he will be able to give a more convincing explanation than the one that I have just suggested.
I should like to put a number of questions to the Lord Privy Seal. First, is he disappointed that in spite of the recognition of the benefits of free trade that I have

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clearly welcomed this afternoon there is no explicit endorsement of a new round of trade negotiations? Can he elaborate upon that? Can one look forward to something more concrete than that which is contained in the Statement? Secondly, in that context will the Government ensure that any transitional measures that may flow from these initiatives will not transmogrify themselves into protectionist measures, their transitional element somehow becoming lost in the protectionist instincts which all too lightly come out in initiatives of this kind? Thirdly, can the Lord Privy Seal inform the House how far the criteria to be used to judge Nigeria's return to the fold will apply also to other Commonwealth countries? Are we on the way to the achievement of a common standard for all countries? If the answer to that question is yes, how will that standard be applied?
The final part of the Statement expressly says that the conference was a huge success. I do not believe that it can be judged to be a signal success in every respect—perhaps not nearly as much as the Statement implies. Before it began one heard many fine words about the Government's good intentions. Unfortunately, that is becoming a depressingly familiar pattern. Yet again, words have not been matched by the application of appropriate deeds that are consistent with the rhetoric. I say "appropriate" because regrettably the conference was marred by a certain high-handedness on the part of the British Government, perhaps building on the no doubt invigorating experience of the Foreign Secretary in India. I do not wish to teach my grandmother to suck eggs. However, it must be obvious to the Lord Privy Seal that government-to-government meetings should be approached with due humility and a readiness to listen. Clearly, what happened in Edinburgh was something very different. It began with the Prime Minister's somewhat curious boast that he would create a new Commonwealth for the 21st century and the unedifying spectacle of the leaders of so many countries being treated to what was, frankly, a rather tawdry promotional video for Britain and New Labour. Would it not have been more tactful to remember that it was a Commonwealth Conference and not a Labour Party promotional campaign?
The conference ended with the Prime Minister being forced into another humiliating apology for the behaviour of his spin doctors who had, we are told, offended Commonwealth leaders by giving more attention to British domestic affairs than those of the Commonwealth in their press briefings and disclosing the contents of confidential bilateral talks between heads of government. It was depressing to hear representatives of some of this country's oldest and firmest friends in the Commonwealth complaining about the patronising and arrogant attitude of Britain. It does not altogether surprise us in our diagnosis of the shortcomings of this Government. Unfortunately, we have had to endure it since 1st May. It is all very well for the Prime Minister to admit that the Government got it wrong. I hope that in future he will pay greater attention to ensuring that the important details are got right and that less time is spent polishing the new Labour image.
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The word "family" is most usually used in conjunction with "Commonwealth". Does the Lord Privy Seal accept that at successful family gatherings individual members of the family promote their own domestic agendas with the greatest restraint? This sad episode is yet another example of much good emerging from the Commonwealth Conference being in the end marred by the Government's incompetence born of inexperience.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, I join with the Leader of the Opposition in thanking the Lord Privy Seal for repeating the Prime Minister's Statement in another place. I do not wholly join with him in his remarks about the character of the conference. I noted that the Prime Minister reported that other heads of government had declared the conference to be one of the most harmonious Commonwealth Conferences for many years. I freely concede that as someone who 20 years ago played a reasonably active part in connection with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference held in the United Kingdom at that time. It was certainly a great deal more harmonious than the one I helped to plan.
Having said that, I express a sense of deep disappointment from these Benches that there was not a more decisive view taken on Nigeria by the Commonwealth heads of government.
I echo the words of the Leader of the Opposition. Will the Lord Privy Seal tell us something about what the heads of government did about human rights in other parts of the Commonwealth? I think, for example, of Kenya and the Cameroon. My other question on that front is to ask what was done and what rules were laid down about the applicants who are rather encouragingly queuing up to become members of the Commonwealth, but whose membership would present certain problems to us.
We welcome the fact that the Commonwealth Action Group is to be turned into what might be called a standing committee. I could call it a kind of Nolan Committee on human rights in the Commonwealth. It will be important for the British Government to give that action group the maximum support, because, in our view, the Commonwealth is nothing if it is not these days about human rights.
We support the thrust of the communiqué on world trade. I agree fully with what the Leader of the Opposition said on that matter. We welcome also the Government's initiatives on the relief of debt for the poorest of the Commonwealth countries. I hope that there will be, as mentioned in the communiqué, an effective special dispensation within the world trade pattern for the Commonwealth banana producers, and other similar groups, affected by the changes in the pattern of world trade.
I make two final points. The first relates to a matter that was raised on the margins of the conference; that is, the Lockerbie air disaster. From these Benches we support fully the Foreign Secretary's persistence in the view that those alleged in Libya to have had complicity in that disaster should face their trial in Scotland, where

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the Scottish judicial tradition could assure the rest of the world that there would be an absolutely fair trial. I hope that we shall stand firm on that position.
Finally, I join with the Leader of the Opposition in his tribute to Her Majesty the Queen who, in my view—I speak as Britain's last separate Commonwealth Secretary of State—over the many years of her reign has done so much to keep the Commonwealth meaningful in a modern world—a multi-racial community of nations, promoting human rights and seeking to erode human poverty.
Lord Richard: My Lords, I am obliged to the Leader of the Opposition and to the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, for the partial welcome they gave to the Statement. I listened with great interest to the noble Viscount, as indeed I always do. I started by taking somewhat copious notes of what he had to say. Then predictably he said, "I must carp a little". If your Lordships will forgive me, at that stage I stopped taking such detailed notes of what he was saying, because, I am afraid, it was woefully predictable.
The fact is—the noble Viscount may not wish to recognise it—that not only do we think that this was a highly successful heads of government meeting, but all the other heads of government who were at Edinburgh thought that it was a highly successful heads of government meeting. The picture that the Leader of the Opposition painted of an arrogant British Government going around upsetting the rest of the Commonwealth, is frankly unrecognisable from what took place.
Viscount Cranborne: Did he apologise?
Lord Richard: My Lords, some solid achievements came out of Edinburgh. I am glad that in part of what he had to say the noble Viscount recognised that. I was asked three questions by him. The first was about further negotiations with the WTO. Surely the important fact is that the economic communiqué clearly endorsed moves towards freer trade. I am not here to disclose the details of the negotiations that led up to the communiqué. It would be foolish were I to do so. The noble Viscount saw fit to lecture us on how to conduct international conferences. I will say one thing to him: the way not to conduct international conferences is to disclose what goes on in the negotiations when conferences are concluded. There is a clear commitment in the communiqué towards freer trade. The noble Viscount asked that transitional measures should not be protectionist. I concur.
I was asked about Nigeria both by him and the noble Lord, Lord Thomson. Perhaps I should read what was said in the communiqué about Nigeria. I was asked also about the terms of reference and operation of the CMAG. I shall deal with that first. The communiqué states:
"Heads of Government reviewed the composition, terms of reference and operation of CMAG. They decided that CMAG should continue its work as a standing ministerial mechanism to address serious and persistent violations of the principles of the Harare Commonwealth Declaration. They agreed that CMAG should, in the two-year period after the Edinburgh CHOGM, consist of the following countries".
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It is interesting to note the membership of that group:
"Barbados, Botswana, Britain, Canada, Ghana, Malaysia, New Zealand and Zimbabwe. They further agreed"—
and this, I think, is the answer to the noble Viscount's point—
"that in future CMAG's remit should extend to member countries deemed to be in serious or persistent violation of the Harare principles, on the basis of established guidelines. They decided that the Commonwealth Secretary-General, acting on his/her own or at the request of a member government, should bring the situation in question to the attention of the CMAG membership. which would then include it or otherwise in its work programme in the light of its guiding principles".
That is new. With the greatest respect to the noble Viscount, it is important. It means that the Commonwealth Secretary-General is being given, so to speak, an interventionist role which he did not have before to the CMAG which consists of that large and diverse number of countries.
I shall deal with Nigeria itself. What is it that we want to see so far as concerns Nigeria? I believe that it is clear. As a minimum, as my right honourable friend said in another place, we want to see the release of all political prisoners, including Chief Abiola, General Obasanjo and the others. We want to see the early resolution of the case of the 20 Ogonis facing the same charges as Mr. Saro-Wiwa and others. Most importantly, we want to see a free and fair transition to civilian democratic rule in a way that allows all those who wish to do so to participate. We will work closely with the CMAG and our EU partners to keep pressure on the Nigerian regime to reform. The noble Lord, Lord Thomson, said that we had not done enough. Perhaps he will forgive me if I describe what powers the CMAG now has in relation to Nigeria. The communiqué states:
"Heads of Government also empowered CMAG to invoke, in the period before 1 October 1998, Commonwealth-wide implementation of any or all of the measures recommended by CMAG if, in CMAG's view, these would serve to encourage greater integrity of the process of transition and respect for human rights in Nigeria. These included: visa restrictions on members of the Nigerian regime and their families; the withdrawal of military attaches: the cessation of military training; an embargo on the export of arms; the denial of educational facilities to members of the Nigerian regime and their families; a visa-based ban on all sporting contacts; a downgrading of cultural links; and the downgrading of diplomatic missions".
In other words, that is what can be done between now and 1st October 1998. The communiqué continues;
"Heads of Government agreed that, following I October 1998, CMAG should assess whether Nigeria had satisfactorily completed a credible programme for the restoration of democracy and civilian government. They further agreed that if, in that assessment, Nigeria had completed a credible transition to democratic government … then the suspension will be lifted and if not and it remained in serious violation of the Harare principles, Heads of Government would consider Nigeria's expulsion from the association and the introduction of further measures in consultation with other members of the international community… Such measures would include a mandatory oil embargo, a ban on air-links with Nigeria and the freezing of the financial assets and bank accounts in foreign countries of members of the regime and their families.".
With great respect, I believe that that is a sensible way to proceed. Certain sanctions can be applied between now and next October if, in the opinion of the ministerial action group, that would assist the transition to democratic rule. The heads of government have

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accepted that no such transition could well result in Nigeria's expulsion from the Commonwealth and the introduction of further sanctions.
I was asked a specific question about criteria for membership of the Commonwealth. It remains the same. There must have been a constitutional association between the country applying and one of the other members. In addition, there must be compliance with the Harare principles. As regards Palestine, if in accordance with the Oslo settlement it moves to independent sovereignty and there is such a thing as a sovereign Palestinian entity, an application to the Commonwealth from such an entity would be considered in accordance with the basic principles, just as any other applicant country would be considered.
4.31 p.m.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, does the Lord Privy Seal agree—and I am sure that he does—that the Commonwealth Conference, with its emphasis on investment flows and market access, marks the continuation of the process which has evolved during the past two years of a steady upgrading in the Commonwealth of the priorities of British foreign policy? That is most welcome. Indeed, the process has evolved since a Select Committee in another place recommended that it should be the procedure and I am glad that that has been the response.
Does the noble Lord further agree that far from the Commonwealth being an outdated grouping it is quietly evolving as one of the most fascinatingly modern networks in modern world conditions? It provides a trans-regional set of connections and a common business culture which are not available from the United Nations or any particular trade bloc. That, too, is welcome.
Given the new opportunities and the fact that we are seeing the Commonwealth as a resource and not as an old-fashioned reunion, and given that we want Commonwealth members to speak up for us in the world's new trade groupings—for example, APAC and ASEAN—what are we doing to speak up more effectively for the Commonwealth in the European Union, as we have in the past and as I believe we should?
Lord Richard: My Lords, I share the noble Lord's views. The Government are conscious of the responsibilities that they owe to their fellow Commonwealth members. As regards negotiations inside the European Union, we stated in the communiqu… that we shall do everything we can to ensure that, for example, the position of the Caribbean banana producers is assured in the light of the rulings of the World Trade Organisation.
As regards the way in which the Commonwealth should now be approached, it is not often a chairman can say with conviction, "I was right", as the noble Lord can. His committee was right and I hope that we are continuing the process successfully.
Lord Desai: My Lords, I welcome the Chancellor's debt initiative. However, is there a plan not only to help
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countries with their economic policy but, following the Harare Declaration, to have broader policies of democracy and good governance? One of the ways in which debts can be reincurred is through bad governance. Is there any such hope either through the Commonwealth Secretariat or through Her Majesty's Government?
Lord Richard: My Lords, I am not sure that I totally understood the question. If my noble friend is asking me whether there are any proposals for encouraging democracy in individual countries, the answer is only in the most general sense of the word and through the existing Commonwealth institutions. It would not be sensible for the Commonwealth to embark on a democratic education programme of all the member countries. On the other hand, severe sanctions are available to it if a country is in persistent and serious breach of the Harare Declaration. On that the Commonwealth was totally agreed.
Viscount Waverley: My Lords, I, too, unreservedly congratulate the meeting on its economic agenda, in particular the debt and development issues relating to small states. Will the Government follow through issues relating to banana quotas, which I trust will continue to feature in a successor Lom… agreement?
Lord Richard: My Lords, I have made it clear that we will continue our policy in relation to banana producers. I hope that it proves successful.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, was there any discussion on accession to the Commonwealth of countries which are in the queue to join? Is there any procedure for accepting and acknowledging the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth and what functions are or might be implicit in such a procedure?
Lord Richard: My Lords, in order for a country to become a member of the Commonwealth three things must be in place. First, it must have had a constitutional association with another member of the Commonwealth. Secondly, it must have a regime which is consonant with the Harare principles, as set out in the declaration. Thirdly—and I omitted to mention it earlier—it must recognise the Queen as the Head of the Commonwealth. If those conditions are satisfied the application will be received and considered in the usual way.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, I am obliged for that answer. Is there a formula whereby a newly acceding country recognises the Queen as Head of State? Is there a set formula or occasion for that purpose?
Lord Richard: My Lords, I am not sufficiently "protocolaire" to know whether there is a precise sentence which the head of the incoming state Must utter. Certainly, the new state must accept the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, how does Mozambique fulfil the condition that there must have been a constitutional

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association with an existing member of the Commonwealth? Secondly, in the light of the interest which Members of this House recently showed in the remaining British dependencies, is there any prospect of them being collectively represented in future Commonwealth gatherings?
Lord Richard: My Lords, I know of no proposed mechanism whereby the dependent territories should be "coalesced" into one set of representatives at the Commonwealth Conference. If I am wrong I shall write to the noble Lord.
As regards Mozambique, perhaps the Commonwealth heads of government decided to admit it in the light of the conditions which were then prevalent and had been prevalent in southern Africa and the fact that there were a large number of Commonwealth countries in southern Africa. It was a practical and pragmatic decision which this Government would not wish to reverse.

Public Processions etc. (Northern Ireland) Bill [H.L.]
4.39 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
Lord Molyneaux of Killead: My Lords, I believe that I can speak for other noble Lords who plan to speak in the Northern Ireland debate today by saying that we in no way resent the injection of the Statement and the subsequent exchanges on Commonwealth affairs, given the fact that we in Northern Ireland are deeply concerned and interested in the well being of the Commonwealth in general.
I, too, should like to offer my sincere congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, on his impressive maiden speech; and, indeed, on his first speech from the Dispatch Box. That is an example of speedy promotion which comes as no great surprise to any of us who had the great privilege of working with the noble Lord during his very beneficial service in Northern Ireland. I should also like to point out that we are encouraged by the presence today of at least two former Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland and of several Ministers who served in the Province.
With the intention of setting the debate and the Bill in context, perhaps I may mention that on 31st August, 1994, the day when the IRA declared—and it is worthwhile noting what was said—
"a cessation of military operations",
it was clear to me that other activities would continue. That afternoon, on my way to see the Prime Minister in Downing Street, I was asked by at least two of the 100 journalists there present what the next steps would be. I replied that I expected the terrorists would revert to the crowd scenes, which had served them so effectively some 25 years earlier. Recently Mr. Adams publicly explained that he and his colleagues had devoted two years to organising what they and other people term as, "concerned citizens groups", which caused serious disruption especially in 1996.
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As the Minister and the Liberal spokesman have said, the 1997 phase plainly failed because the organisers of traditional processions refused to play the enemy game. That avoidance of the traps, particularly in the 24 to 48 hours before 12th July of this year, threw the IRA/Sinn Fein into such confusion that, in a desperate attempt to regain the high moral ground, they called the current ceasefire. I do not complain about that; indeed, it is a bonus for everyone. I have outlined the background because in the remaining six weeks of the so-called marching season—that is, from the 12th July to the end of August—the entire situation was transformed and, as a result, the Province was, and is, well on the road to normality. In a sense that confirmed the view of the previous government that heavy handed legislation might not be the wisest course. They may have had in mind the Americanism, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". So I would absolve the previous Secretary of State of accusations of delay in such matters. I believe that he was wise to wait and see how the so-called marching season progressed.
When I accepted an invitation to tender my views to Dr. North and his review body, I advised against hasty measures of a permanent nature, explaining that the IRA always orchestrated a given target until success was achieved and then simply moved on to another target. I have to say with a great deal of sadness and regret that the IRA has now identified such a fresh target in the Province—the widespread Royal British Legion parades on Remembrance Sunday, when, like many of your Lordships, I shall be participating as a branch chairman in a truly cross-community, non-sectarian tribute which has been observed for 75 years. Over recent weeks certain bodies, not far removed from the so-called, "concerned citizens", have been going around expressing concern and opposition to those customary observances. For example, seeking assurances that Royal British Legion standards bearing a small element of the national flag in one corner should not be displayed; and, further, that no regimental colours or, indeed, Naval or Royal Airforce Ensigns should be carried.
There could be no doubt that this marks the beginning of a new phase of IRA activity which could not possibly have been foreseen by the North review body. Given the fact that the Royal British Legion is a United Kingdom organisation, I have to say that Her Majesty's Government should not ignore the possibility of an extension of those activities to England, Scotland and Wales of the IRA turning crowd scene tactics to Great Britain. I hope that the Minister will consider expanding and extending the Bill to cover the whole of the United Kingdom. The fact that such powers were on the statute books would be a real deterrent to any IRA sub-contractors planning various forms of disruption in Great Britain, based as they would be on the existing networks in this country which have sustained the bombing campaign far beyond Northern Ireland.
With the Committee stage of the Bill ahead of us, it is unnecessary to go into detail on the various clauses. Therefore, I shall confine my remarks to what I believe are the underlying issues. We shall need to look carefully at Clause 2 which gives the commission two

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apparently conflicting remits. First, it gives the commission a mediation role; and, secondly, it gives the commission power to issue determinations, thus taking over from the police in decision making. We clearly need to study that conflict very carefully.
There is a further inconsistency between Clauses 7 and 14 in the matter of penalties in regard to failure to comply with the law. When we come to the Committee stage, surely we ought to try to achieve a real balance between those who deliberately break the law and those who do their best to comply with it but may have found it difficult in certain circumstances to do so. Clause 7 also requires the giving of 28 days' notice, which will not greatly affect traditional parades because most of them are organised at least 12 months in advance. However, I wonder whether there is an infringement of civil liberties implicit in the clause. To me the only safeguard resides in subsection (5)(b) which provides for an exemption of a "class",
"specified in an order made by the Secretary of State".
I have to ask: would a procession arising from a sudden industrial dispute be specifically exempted on a given day, and how much notice of that event would be required? Further, how could that loophole prevent exploitation by, for example, a paramilitary body?
I believe that there is also need for a rethink on Clause 8, subsections (1) and (2), which give powers to the commission to issue determinations. Presumably those determinations will have to be enforced by the police. The police will therefore be exposed to censure, first, by the news industry and then, to some extent, by sections of the public who will misunderstand the real situation and the real powers of the commission. I have one suggestion which your Lordships may like to consider between now and Committee. Might it not be possible for two or three members of the deciding body—that is to say, the commission—to be physically present at the limited number of predictable flashpoints to make it clear that the decisions were theirs and to explain to television teams on the spot that the police had no discretion in the matter?
Finally, might it be possible to have clear guidance on the input of the Irish Government? That is not a hypothetical question because Irish Government Ministers have in the past stated—and, on occasions, boasted—that they have applied pressure on Her Majesty's Government in regard to decisions made on various processions. Until now that was the only identifiable channel between Dublin Ministers and Ministers in the Northern Ireland Office. However, it would be safe to assume that there could have been day to day communication via the joint secretariat, and no doubt that occurred.
However, this Bill alters the situation considerably. The key body in this whole operation is now the new commission which will in practice take the important decisions. Will the commission be subjected to direct pressure from the Irish Government or any other western government, or will all foreign influence be brought to bear on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who might then have difficulty in transmitting the foreign
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representations and who might even have difficulty in disclosing the source of the representations? That is an important matter. Given the dedication of the present Government to the principle of open government, it would seem consistent to apply that principle—a principle which, I am convinced, would do much to remove suspicion and more than anything else would constitute a confidence-building step and would be welcomed as such.
4.51 p.m.
Lord Fitt: My Lords, the Northern Ireland representatives in this House, who formerly were elected representatives for many years, still carry with them the baggage of their cultural identities. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Cope, to the Opposition Benches. He and I were Members of another place. He will know that in this House opinions are held but not with the same enthusiasm—for want of a better word—as those held by elected representatives who have to fight the next election. I am certain that the noble Lord will consider that everyone speaks sincerely in this House.
This legislation which has been brought before the House is controversial. As I have already said, we carry the baggage of our experiences in Northern Ireland over many years. The noble Lord who has just spoken and I are perhaps the two oldest former Northern Ireland elected representatives. I remember vividly a procession on the Longstone Road that was led by a Northern Ireland Cabinet Minister. It was one of the most contentious and controversial marches that took place at that time. That Northern Ireland Cabinet Minister, a Minister of home affairs who was in charge of law and order in Northern Ireland, led that unionist march much to the chagrin, fear and loathing of the minority community who lived in that area. I am happy to say that that Minister began, over many years, to realise that such demonstrations of his authority and superiority at that time were no longer relevant. Indeed he became a colleague of mine at the time of the Sunningdale Agreement. I refer to Brian Faulkner. Therefore changes have taken place but at that time that march engendered fear. People living in Northern Ireland, particularly those of my age, still carry memories of that march.
The noble Lord, Lord Molyneaux, spoke of human rights and liberties. I remember sitting in the old Stormont Parliament in 1953. At that time the unionist government, which represented the overwhelming unionist majority, brought to the statute book in Northern Ireland one of the most draconian, apartheid Acts of Parliament ever promulgated in Northern Ireland—the flags and emblems Bill. That Bill gave the unionists in Northern Ireland every right to march wherever and whenever they wanted. At the same time the Bill placed restrictions on the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland.
The noble Lord, Lord Cope, said that he thought the civil rights movement began in 1969. However, that is not the case. I was there when it began in 1964 in the general election of that year. I was an agent in West Belfast. One of the candidates, Liam MacMillan, was a Republican candidate. On his platform there was an Irish tricolour to establish his cultural identity. The

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Reverend Ian Paisley was just entering the political arena at that time and he demanded that the flag be taken out of the election headquarters. He said that if that was not done, he would lead a march of 10,000 Protestants to remove the flag from the election headquarters. I was present when the police arrived. They broke into the premises in a vicious manner and removed the flag. That flag was a symbol of a candidate's cultural identity. That action led to a week's vicious rioting on the Falls Road in West Belfast. At that time West Belfast was not a Republican ghetto. Liam MacMillan, who was subsequently assassinated, only polled 3,000 votes at that election. There were only 3,000 Republican votes in West Belfast at that time, and yet the special powers Act was used to push through some most contentious legislation.
We still carry memories of those marches and of the people involved in them. It has been said that of the 3,000 marches that occur at the moment in Northern Ireland only 20 or 30 are contentious. That is quite true. I have anxieties about the Concerned Residents' Association, some members of which are genuine but some are bogus. Some of them are manipulated by Sinn Fein and the IRA. Their actions are not directed to help the interests of residents and tenants. Their actions are dictated by political objectives. However, most of the marches in Northern Ireland have taken place for many years and are non-contentious.
I should like to welcome the legislation that we are discussing, but I have reservations as to whether it will be effective. The commission may sit and perform its functions, but at the end of the day the RUC will have to police all the demonstrations. The RUC will be the body in the middle, as it has been for many years.
The noble Lord, Lord Holme, expressed some reservations about Clause 3 of the Bill. I have many reservations about that clause. I do not understand why it was introduced at the last minute. The words "Public Processions etc." on the front of the Bill are a reference to the provisions of Clause 3. The Bill seeks to take account of expressions of cultural identity of the people of Northern Ireland. I wish to discuss further some of these cultural expressions. In unionist Protestant areas there are kerbstones painted red, white and blue, but in other areas kerbstones are painted green, white and orange. There are some gable walls depicting William crossing the Boyne and other gable walls depicting the Pope and the Virgin Mary. There are some gable walls depicting IRA volunteers and other gable walls depicting UVF volunteers. These are all expressions of the cultural identity of those areas. Are we to see members of the commission going from kerbstone to kerbstone, from gable to gable and from flagpole to flagpole giving their impressions of these items? The whole stance of Clause 3 is ludicrous. I am sure that by the time this Bill leaves this House that will have been recognised.
I believe that the commission's report was drawn up in its entirety by Dr. North. It pointed to the divisions which exist between the two cultures in Northern Ireland. When the recommendations of the commission start to bite, the marching season in Northern Ireland will be starting. That will be in March or April of next
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year. The present peace talks are scheduled to finish about May of next year. If there is a breakdown in the peace talks, if there is no resolution of the conflict which now exists and there is no attempt to bring about a power sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland which will satisfy the interests of everyone, this legislation will be absolutely worthless. In the event of a breakdown in the peace talks, the legislation will not be worth the paper it is written on. In these debates I try my damnedest to exude some optimism. However, given my experience of Northern Ireland I believe that that optimism is sometimes unduly placed.
The Bill refers to public expressions of culture identity, and states that these must be carried out in daylight. One cannot paint kerbstones in the dark. One cannot draw murals of King William, the Pope, or anyone else in the dark. So they will have to be done in daylight. Will a member of the commission watch? If he watches King Billy being painted on a gable wall, and makes any objection I would not lay too much money on his survival. We have to look at the reality of the situation.
We are still living with the past, with the flag and emblems legislation which created such a mindset among the minority in Northern Ireland. The incoming Labour Party abolished that legislation in 1966, and certainly not before its time. However, the existence of that Act in Northern Ireland created in the minds of the majority community the concept that, "We are the masters. We have the Government behind us. We will decide where we will march. But, more importantly, we will decide where you will not march". I talk only of the 50 years about which I can recall. It will be very difficult for all those involved in this legislation to get over that past history.
I believe that the personnel on the commission are responsible people. But they will have to be very aware of the sensitivity of both communities and must not appear to ban one community from marching, and then give the other community some scrap to keep it quiet. The people of Northern Ireland are not fools. The vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland wants to see the marches take place, as they have done over many years without difficulty.
I wish the talks that are now taking place every success so that this legislation may possibly be no longer necessary.
5.2 p.m.
Lord Blease: My Lords, at this Second Reading of the Public Processions etc. (Northern Ireland) Bill, I wish to say that I welcome the Bill. I commend the efforts of the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Dr. Mowlam, the Northern Ireland Office and the newly formed Parades Commission for the speedy way in which the complex aspects of parades have been examined and the proposed legislative measures compiled. I support the declared principles of the Bill and will join in every way possible to expedite the essential parliamentary procedures in this House.
In the main, I believe that the measures proposed will help considerably to establish acceptable democratic procedures and practices for the organisation of and

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participation in public parades and marches. I believe that the measures will enable constructive and wholesome respect for rights and responsibilities in the organisation of and participation in public processions, parades, marches and public meetings. The measures will encourage wholesome respect for rights and responsibilities in our sadly divided community and will provide the means by which the basis may be formed for building trust and understanding on the principles of accommodating differences. I believe that the measures will help towards the building of public principles for the foundation of a peaceful settlement and a prosperous society in Northern Ireland.
I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley. I am pleased to see him here and compliment him on his maiden speech. With his understanding and experience of affairs in Northern Ireland, his opinion in this House will help with the growing awareness of the totality of affairs in the Province.
I listened with interest to remarks of my noble friend Lord Fitt on the role of the RUC. I share my noble friend's respect and join with his thanks for the way that the RUC has dealt in the past with the tremendous problems of marches. I join with my noble friend also in saying that 3,000 parades are held annually in Northern Ireland. About 20 of those cause trouble. Those troubles could be sorted out at their origin. The noble Lord, Lord Molyneaux, has also had experience of Northern Ireland. He pointed out in a positive way that we must discuss the principles of the Bill in detail, and referred to the role of the commission.
My experience has not been that of an elected Member of the Northern Ireland Parliament but as a trade union official for over 20 years. I had to organise, arrange and be responsible for hundreds of marches, to Stormont, to my noble friend Lord Fitt and others lobbying against unemployment and for change in our community. There was always a sense of responsibility. The May Day parade in particular was welcomed by the public in general. I always received help from the RUC, and had every convenience made available to achieve success. I am sure that such help is always forthcoming when a parade is mounted with a specific need.
I do not wish to go into great detail on the Bill. There are many problems as regards the day-to-day operation of the commission. My noble friend Lord Fitt examined the detail of the day-to-day working of the commission. However, there is also the operation of the 28-day period. The police have to have notice of parades. The commission has to be referred to. The legislation provides that the commission presents an annual report. I am not sure that an annual report by the commission will help this House to understand the times in which the problems occur. It will probably be the responsibility of the Secretary of State and the Minister in this House to report on the experience of the commission.
Finally, I wish to deal with a few points that I believe may arise. I do not wish to detain the House with a half appraisal; we shall be occupied with the details at Committee stage. In my experience, problems arose not with members on the parades but from the hangers on,
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the people who accompanied the march. Those people were out to use the parade as a way to upset the general operation of law and order in the Province.
I refer to a point which perhaps should be conveyed to the commission rather than dealt with in the Bill. At this stage one wonders about the proper way to handle it, but it is important to draw attention to this fact. At what age should people agree to participate in a parade? I have seen hundreds of children in a parade. I have seen babies in prams and youngsters being carried. It makes for a sensitive area in which it is difficult to apportion responsibility. One is worried as to how the situation can be controlled if something happens.
My noble friend Lord Fitt mentioned the use in the Bill's Title of the term "etc." in relation to public meetings. Very often, following parades, public meetings are held. It is at those meetings that the flames are fanned and the difficulties arise. I am sure that the Minister will be called upon in Committee to deal with a number of these matters—how they should be conveyed to the commission, how they should be dealt with on the Floor of the House and what should be included in the Bill. Those are the problems that immediately arise. In any case, I wish to indicate to the Minister who will reply that he has huge support in many aspects of the very difficult job that he has to undertake.
5.10 p.m.
Lord Alderdice: My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for the conscientious and detailed way in which he outlined the provisions in the Bill. We have quickly come to recognise that approach as characteristic of the way in which he works and presents matters in this House, and we greatly appreciate it. Perhaps I may add my own word of welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Cope, who made his maiden speech. I came to know the noble Lord when he served at the Northern Ireland Office. He was recognised there with some distinction for the solid, informed, conscientious and steady way in which he carried out his responsibilities. In someone who dealt with security matters in Northern Ireland, those characteristics were of enormous and reassuring importance. They were apparent in his speech today. We welcome the noble Lord, and look forward to his further contributions on Northern Ireland and other issues in this House.
As the noble Lord, Lord Cope, will know, the issue of parades, or indeed any other aspect of Northern Ireland life, tends to become quickly infected with the ancient feud. Over a long period of time parades have shown themselves to be susceptible to that infection. In Northern Ireland, it is not just a question of the past 20 or 30 years—or in the more extensive experience of the noble Lord, Lord Fitt, 50 years. If we go back 100 years we find that governments were moved to ban all marches for a period of time because they became the occasion for violence, trouble and disorder.
That was not always the case. There were times, for example, when Orangemen went out not to march but, as they said, to walk. That distinction in terminology was significant. At times when the community was more

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placid and people genuinely merely wanted to express some cultural tradition, they went out to "walk". When people go out to march, and to parade, there is a military distinction attached to that terminology that is not without its significance. People go out to march around particular areas, to show that they are "their areas", and that they are in control of those areas. Very often, they want to do so in contra-distinction to others who may live there but to whom they may wish to say, "We are in control even though you may live here". That is what some of the distinction in terminology means.
More recently, those kinds of difficulties have come to infect the whole process. The noble Lord, Lord Molyneaux, alluded to that, pointing out that there are those who wish to express objections to particular parades—in some cases parades that have gone on for a long period of time without significant disorder—because they want to make a political point that they are now in control of the particular area. There are some on the loyalist side who, knowing that significant demographic changes have taken place in an area and that it is no longer their particular area, nevertheless want to continue to hold their march, as though in some way they will continue to show that they have control. They often wish to do so at a time of greatest anxiety on their part that they are no longer in control. So in recent years the matter has come to the fore in a way that it did not previously.
In this regard the noble Lord, Lord Cope, will find a change in his experience. Previously, he had the good fortune to be in government. Now he will experience the enormous frustration of being requested by government to provide advice. Noble Lords may ask why it should be frustrating to be requested to provide advice. When one is first asked, one feels honoured. One gives consideration to the matter, consults widely, returns with the best thought-out plans that one can, presents them to the Minister, and then finds that one of two things tends to happen. Either the Minister refuses to accept the advice—that is the more fortunate possibility—or, less fortunately, the Minister accepts some of the advice and puts it into operation in such a way as to produce the worst possible result and the greatest possible frustration, and you receive the blame for having tendered the advice in the first place.
Dr. Peter North may well find himself in that situation, and to some extent at the hands of two succeeding governments. The first, the previous Government who asked for the advice, received it. Reading through it in detail at the time it was published and again more recently, I find the report remarkably good. I should not say "remarkably" in relation to Dr. North and his two colleagues; I should say, "expected" good report. I particularly expected it because so many of the matters that he included were based on advice that I and my colleagues had given to him. The first was that it would be good to have a commission to produce some kind of advice, mediation, and indeed determination if that were required.
Why did we make such a suggestion? We told the North Commission that it should make such propositions because we had already brought them to the previous Government in the previous year. After the
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trouble at Drumcree in 1995, we went to the Secretary of State at that stage—now the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew of Twysden, and we told him, "There is going to be trouble next year as there has been this year, and it will be much worse in 1996. We advise you to put in place a commission which can assist with mediation but which can make a determination if that is so required in order to ensure that the RUC, who are always piggy-in-the-middle in having to make a determination and enforce it, have that invidious position removed from them, and a rational discussion can take place on the matter". We further engaged his interest in the matter. He asked for some thoughts and advice, which we tendered—not in so much detail as in the succeeding year, but nevertheless we tendered it. But it must then have fallen foul of some of his advisers or colleagues, because it disappeared.
The next year, 1996, the whole Drumcree episode was every bit as bad as we had predicted it would he. So we returned with our proposals, newly burnished and expanded a little, with more detail, and this time with much greater support from all and sundry, who had begun to realise the trouble that was brewing. The North Commission was established and produced the report; and the Government, I fear, balked somewhat at it and felt it would be better to engage in what may be described as "wheelbarrow" politics; that is to say, you put the matter in front of you and wheel it along, not necessarily unpacking the burden at that stage.
So the commission was established, and with little power. Predictably, it was not able to do a great deal in terms of the summer period.
I support the Bill strongly; I wish to see it come into operation. However, there are two major problems. First, if there is to be negotiation between those who want to hold marches—they need not necessarily be loyal orders; they may well be nationalists—and those in the area who are at best unsure about the march being held, often a deal must be struck.
Given that there are usually a number of marches down any particular road over a period of a year, there needs to be some balance of the number of marches, the kind of marches, and what is expected over a period of time. Peter North recognised that. He referred to it in Recommendation 15, in Chapter 12 of his report. He states that the pattern must be viewed over the period of a year. It is clear that the current commission believes that to be a good idea. In the procedural rules published yesterday, it points out that in expressing a preliminary view it would like to examine any or all of the parades in a location. But if the provision is not clearly marked on the face of the Bill, I guarantee that there are those who will challenge whether the commission can enforce its recommendations; who will put the matter to judicial review, and so on. The last thing we need is for the commission to be dragged through that kind of situation where there is an uncertainty in its own mind and that of the community as to whether it really has the power to look at these matters. I hope that either the Minister and his colleagues will consider including a clause with appropriate wording that would not be incongruent with the European Convention on Human Rights or that they might be prepared to accept the views of some of the

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rest of us on that matter. It seems to me that, if deals are going to be done—as they must be—the pattern of parades over a period of time and their location will be important.
The second problem has already been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fitt, and my noble friend Lord Holme of Cheltenham; that is, the provisions of Clause 3 relating to expressions of cultural identity. I can only assume that the Orange Order, the Black Preceptory and the Apprentice Boys assumed that the purpose of the commission was to ban a certain number of marches—enough to appease those who did not want the marches. I have a different view. Where Orange marches or Apprentice Boys marches are inappropriate or insensitive and should be banned or re-routed, then so be it. But there could well be unreasonable requests by residents who are simply trying to stir up trouble. In such cases the Orange march should be allowed to go its course with legal backing; the police should not have to make the determination but simply ensure that the march went through. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that unionist people assumed that the commission was going to be anti-unionist and suggested to the Government that some balancing clause would need to be put in.
The term "cultural identity" tends to be one used more by nationalists in Northern Ireland, at least in the past. Therefore the connoting of other forms of cultural identity in the Northern Ireland context is the kind of language used to describe what unionists might think of nationalists and therefore something that could be banned on the other side.
In a previous debate in your Lordships' House I pointed out that the way forward was not to produce two sets of rights which would always have to be balanced one against the other because there would always be a dispute as to who was on the short end of the stick. The way forward is to produce one set of rights which applies to everybody: one commission for parades, no matter who sets them up, to adjudicate between the paraders and the residents, no matter which side of the community they come from.
When you introduce expressions of cultural identity, you do two things. First, you identify cultural identity with political allegiance. That notion has bedevilled politics in Ireland for the last 100 years: the insistence that if you are a Protestant you have to be a unionist and, at best, light on your Irishness; and if you are a Catholic you have to be a nationalist and certainly would put Irish at the top of the tree.
When we include in a piece of legislation a commitment that cultural identity will be some kind of balance to the commission on parades, which is mostly concerned with Orange parades, we fall into that very trap. It is a particular foolishness because, as the noble Lord, Lord Fitt, pointed out, while unionists, Orangemen and others might well think the commission will find itself applying cultural expression mostly to representations of Gaelic/Catholic/nationalist identity, I can guarantee that there will be those sophisticated enough in the nationalist community to say, "Here is another stick with which to beat unionists". And there
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will be a list of every Orange arch, not to mention all the gaily painted kerbstones, gable walls and other things. Outdoor concerts and goodness knows what else will be dragged into the whole business. The outcome will not be the one intended by the Government, not the one that I suspect was intended by those who promoted it from the unionist side, but rather something that will drag into the mire all kinds of other issues which are at this stage relatively less political and certainly way outside the remit of parades. The Parades Commission, instead of becoming something that helps to solve a difficult problem, will become mired down in it. No one will want to be a member of such a commission. It will be made into a kind of sin-bin, asked to solve all the impossible problems of defining cultural, political identity and nationalism.
I hope that the Minister and his colleagues will be prepared to look carefully at whether a clause such as Clause 3 adds to or enormously detracts from the possible success of the Bill, which otherwise, in its fullness and its congruity with the North Report, I fully endorse and heartily welcome.
5.25 p.m.
Lord Cooke of Islandreagh: My Lords, all the points which I intended to make today have been covered—and in most cases covered rather better than I could do—by other noble Lords and my remarks will therefore be brief.
I welcome this Bill as a serious attempt to find a better way forward. It will at least relieve the Chief Constable of the sole responsibility for permitting or banning parades or processions. He and his officers have in the past acted as mediators, arbitrators and then decision-makers where there have often been significant political implications. He has had an impossible job. The commission will have a difficult job, but at least the way it will operate will be laid down in a structured manner.
Several noble Lords have spoken of the 3,000 or more marches and parades which take place every year, 20, or even fewer, of which perhaps give rise to serious problems. We should not forget that walking or parading throughout the Province is on many occasions a social activity. Throughout the Province parades by Orange orders or the Ancient Order of Hibernians have often taken place in the same area with some understanding and mutual respect. It has not been uncommon for there to be co-operation, perhaps in the lending or borrowing of band instruments and so on. I hope that the scale of the structure to be imposed will not be totally out of line with these peaceable parades.
There are endless parades. What is a parade? Is it a small Church parade, a walk on a Sunday? Such things happen almost spontaneously. Care will need to be taken about the definition of a parade. There are all sorts of small gatherings and those involved would not think of giving 28 days' notice; they just happen. That must be made clear; otherwise there will be great confusion and tension.
Unfortunately, in some respects the parade problem has become worse in recent years. Most urban housing estates have now become polarised and mixed

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housing and mixed communities are no longer the norm. Some new estates close to the parade routes have been built, the residents of which are almost wholly nationalist. Both sides have been responsible at one time or another for the build-up of fear and bad feeling.
A recent and more sinister development is that Sinn Fein/IRA regards many nationalist areas as its territory and has actively encouraged resistance to parades by the loyal orders, perhaps under the excuse of culture but in fact to increase unrest and to prove that the police are not accepted and that it is the police who provoke riots in their areas.
The Sinn Fein/IRA objective is to prevent loyal order parades by threat of violence. On occasions this summer concessions were offered by loyal orders for some contentious parades but these did not meet with a positive response. In the past few days in Bellaghy in Co. Londonderry the residents committee objected to the traditional Armistice Sunday parade by the Royal British Legion, an entirely non-political organisation, because of the band that will be used. This clearly suggests the nature of the problem and the commission's task.
Reasonableness and mediation are not the answer where the Sinn Fein/IRA tactic is to cause trouble. If it bans traditional parades by the loyal orders because nationalists threaten violence, that will not be acceptable. If the commission determines that a parade cannot reasonably be objected to and permits it to take place, any breach of the peace will be another problem for the police. The commission's task is not an enviable one.
Clause 3 has been spoken of at length. It makes no sense to me. I know that it was added at the last moment to try to bring in the matter of cultural identity. I see nothing but trouble from it, and serious consideration must be given to abolishing Clause 3 or writing it in some way that makes sense. At the moment, it is a recipe for trouble. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, that any expression of cultural identity immediately starts apparently to favour one side or the other. That is quite the wrong way to go about it. The Bill must be written in a way in which the treatment will be the same and be fair treatment for all concerned.
Clause 7 requires notice of a parade. What is a parade? That question must be looked at very carefully. To go through such an enormous procedure for very small gatherings and walks will create an impossible situation.
The work of the commission has to be formalised with a code of conduct and procedural rules. But laying down a formal procedure for objections may—indeed, will—encourage objections and protests. It could become a shop for manufacturing grievances. That aspect must be watched because there are enough alleged grievances already in Northern Ireland.
I was encouraged and interested by a letter in last night's Belfast Telegraph. I quote from part of it. It starts:
"It is with great anger and indignation that I, as a Roman Catholic born, bred and still living in Crumlin, note the `coming out of the closet' of a so-called Nationalist anti-parades group".
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The writer goes on to describe his relationship with the Orange Order in his area and says:
"As for me, I'll still be out giving and receiving a friendly wave or two from my Orange neighbours, who are usually first in the line to bid me greetings on St. Patrick's Day".
He signs the letter "Concerned Catholic". He is one of many hundreds of thousands of sensible citizens, Protestant or Catholic, who identify and recognise just what is happening, where Sinn Fein or another organisation stirs up trouble in order to cause strife.
5.33 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, several noble Lords have spoken on this subject with much greater authority than I could ever bring to it. Perhaps I may bring to this matter a different perspective, which I feel it is a duty to bring to the problem of Northern Ireland. After all, it is the problem of all of us, whether or not we live there.
First, as many noble Lords have said, out of the 3,000 or so parades, demonstrations and marches which take place, only a very few cause problems. It is only a very small number which has caused the major problems that we have seen on our television screens. That happened especially in 1995 and 1996, when there were two such episodes.
The noble Lord, Lord Molyneaux, said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I say, "If it's broke, please only fix that part which has gone wrong. Don't replace the whole machine." We must understand precisely the way the commission has to operate. All parades are not at issue. All parades should not become an issue. All forms of expression of cultural identity are not in contention and we should not bring them into contention. It is very important that we concentrate on the two or three major "set piece" occasions (if I may so call them) which have in recent years become occasions for confrontation.
If that is the case, we must consider the work of the commission in a different way. One of the great problems in setting up commissions is that they want to have something to do. If they do not have anything to do they will invent something to do and it will become a huge industry. There will be lists of issues such as cultural identity, and so on, and they will go on for ever.
To me Clause 2 of the Bill is the crucial clause. Basically, it speaks about information and mediation in a much more open way than has been done so far. The duty of the commission is:
"to promote greater understanding.….to promote and facilitate mediation".
Also, it is very important that the guidelines issued by the commission talk about "local accommodation" in a very positive way. I believe that it is a problem of local accommodation and consultation between the citizens so far as possible without having to bring in the commission. Ideally, the commission should be an invisible hand—it should not actually be there. So far as possible it should encourage the local community to act.
In that respect, confusion often arises through defining the problem in much greater generality. I am always surprised when people discuss this matter or write reports on it. Excellent as this report is, it does not go into the laws of those countries in which communal

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conflicts are a major problem. Despite the recent Commonwealth heads of government meeting, we do not realise that in India, for example, there is a similar big problem between Hindus and Moslems. There is the same issue of cultural identity; there are parades and processions; and festivals and battles take place. It only matters if people are physically intimidated or harm each other. A bit of "aggro" is all right. What is of real concern is the breakdown of law and order—for example, in 1996 when the RUC was put into a position into which it should never have been put.
So I believe that this is not a problem of cultural identity or whatever. It is a problem of how one can stop a process before it becomes a seriously physically violent process. Everything else should be allowed to happen as it does. We shall not solve the whole problem by this legislation or any other piece of legislation. The problem may or may not solve itself, but that is another issue.
I see the commission's remit as centred very much around Clause 2—mediating, helping, informing and educating—rather than taking the route of determinations, where it will get into a very invidious position. People will ask, "Who does the commission represent? What power does it have?" Eventually, it will become a political body. Political power lies with the Secretary of State, and that is where it will end up. That will only devalue the commission. A tough decision cannot be taken by the commission; all it can do is solve problems which are suitable for resolution at a fairly friendly level.
It will be very important to see the commission as much more of a civil society organisation, helping other forces to achieve local reconciliation and local accommodation, than as a body which frequently takes the determination route, which I hope it does not have to do. That way lies trouble.
I also share the reservations of other noble Lords with regard to Clause 3, which I do not even understand. Certainly, if the intention is to open out to many more issues, I would suggest that either we stop now or, if there must be a Clause 3, then forget to implement it.
I say only one more thing, relating to what was said by my noble friend Lord Fitt. We more or less have a fixture list of major parades; we know the dates, and so forth. Therefore, as happened in 1997, one can take anticipatory action. The major problem arises from starting in March, while the talks process is at an extremely delicate stage. We may fix a deadline; but deadlines can be inciting.
I ask my noble friend to say to the commission—there are now only four or five months—"make sure the discussions start now", especially if the talks process either does not finish in May, looks as though it may be prolonged or—heaven forbid!—breaks down. There will then have to be a solid third line of defence because that is not the task of the commission. That is something we must anticipate early on.
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As has been pointed out, there are interesting inter-relationships between ceasefires and no ceasefires and civilian troubles in relation to marches. That interaction is going to be extremely important.
I welcome the Bill but hope that my noble friend will take on board the comments made this afternoon. The smaller and more accommodating a civil society the commission becomes, the better it will be. We do not want to get into a situation whereby more issues become contentious than is already the case.
5.41 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I start from the distinctly unfashionable proposition these days that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a good thing and ought to be sustained. A prerequisite for that, in my opinion, is that there should be common rights and common duties throughout the kingdom, because it is right that there should be and because it helps to create a sense of common identity. For the same reason, laws ought also to be harmonised unless there is good reason for doing otherwise.
How does the Bill stand up to that test? Unlike some of my libertarian colleagues, I have never maintained that the right to demonstrate is an absolute and unqualified right. When people talk about the right to demonstrate, they normally mean mobile as opposed to static demonstrations like the rallies in Hyde Park. This Bill, first and foremost, concerns the right to demonstrate. Like the noble Lords, Lord Holme of Cheltenham and Lord Fitt, and others, I do not believe that one can take Clause 3 seriously. As a general principle—again on an "all United Kingdom" basis—the right to march must be balanced against the right of others to get from A to B without missing their trains, their flights, their job interviews and so forth. But to that end it should not be necessary to ban marches and parades altogether; merely to require some minor modifications to them. For example, people could be required to march no more than three or four abreast so that traffic can flow freely and, if the road is narrow, that could be reduced to two abreast. Nor would it be unreasonable to curb excessive noise.
What worries me about the Bill is whether the principle of absolutely minimal modification will be adhered to in practice under sustained pressure from Sinn Fein/IRA. We all know, though it is not spelt out, that the Bill is introduced above all to cope with Orange and other loyalist marches and, to a lesser extent, with Remembrance Day parades.
The strategy of Sinn Fein and its fellow travellers is to try continually to get the goal posts moved to the detriment of unionism in its widest sense and to destroy the morale of unionists, again in the widest sense of that word. To that end the members do their best to stir up a hostility to those traditional parades which rarely occurred in the past or, to the extent that it did, was only in a lukewarm, half-hearted form. It is as though national socialists—of a different ilk from the IRA—in England, taking advantage of the mild irritation felt by the residents of Notting Hill and Bayswater over the inevitable noise and litter associated with another

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expression of cultural identity—the Notting Hill Carnival—were trying to stir up the residents into physically blocking it.
There is certainly a good case for banning any parade which proposes to march through residential streets in the centre of a hostile area, though there are not many such attempts. But marching along main roads on the periphery of a hostile area is a different matter, and there is no case for banning processions in places which are merely in sight of a hostile area, like the walls of the old City of Derry. In borderline cases a reasonable compromise would be to require participants to march in complete silence and to carry no provocative banners. That should be good enough for anybody apart from the fanatics on both sides.
Remembrance Day parades should never be banned; after all, they are open to everybody and many members of the nationalist community died fighting the Kaiser and Hitler respectively—the latter at a time when the IRA was secretly negotiating with Ribbentrop, the Nazi foreign minister, as we learnt from a recent television documentary.
I enjoy a good marching tune as much as the next man. But even if I lived in Northern Ireland—which I do not—I could never consider joining anything like the Orange Order; it is simply not my cup of tea, for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, I can understand why so many people do so, which may seem surprising to those on the mainland who have never faced any genuine threat to their national identity.
We are constantly enjoined by republicans to look at everything from an all-Irish perspective. If one does exactly that and examines the history of the island of Ireland over the past 80 years, one will see that, though ethnic cleansing was certainly carried out by both communities (there can be no dispute about that), the overwhelming majority of those dispossessed were Protestants and unionists. The population statistics, the voting statistics and the abandoned churches in the South testify to that. The Spectator recently carried some interesting correspondence about the pogroms, as they were described, of 1921 and 1922 in the west of Ireland.
Evictions in the North have been fewer but bloodier. No less an authority than Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien has written of the systematic liquidation of unionists in the border areas of County Fermanagh. That perhaps helps to explain why many Orange parades (which, by all accounts, were genuinely festive and could be enjoyed by all and sundry, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice pointed out) have in recent years unfortunately taken on a much harder edge.
At any rate, the branding of those parades as "triumphalist" by those who disapprove of them seems wide of the mark; the description "survivalist" would be more accurate. That is why, if the Bill is accepted without amendment, one trusts that its provisions will be applied with the greatest tact and sensitivity and with a built-in predisposition towards allowing long-standing traditional parades to continue to take place with the minimum of restriction.
5.48 p.m.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for taking part in the debate and for their valuable, interesting and well-informed contributions. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Cope, on his maiden speech. We were both in the other place together, I for a shorter time than he. He has had a distinguished ministerial career, including a period in Northern Ireland where he is still well remembered and well regarded. I congratulate him on an excellent maiden speech. I am pleased to say that he was broadly supportive of the Government's position; woe betide us when the day comes that he is not. I hope that that day will not come in relation to Northern Ireland.
We know only too well the complexity of the problems Northern Ireland has faced for so long. The parades issue has proved in recent years to be one of the most complex. It is a microcosm, as many noble Lords have indicated, of the religious and political entrenchment which still, despite the invaluable progress we have seen, characterises society there.
One lesson that has been learnt down the years—many noble Lords referred to this point—is that imposed solutions cannot work. The source for an acceptable settlement must, by definition, be the people of Northern Ireland. So it is with parades. The central aim of the legislation, therefore, as I have set out for noble Lords, is to encourage agreement between those who are locked in confrontation. Although we have entrusted the new body with the power to make all important decisions on disputed parades, we want above all to create the conditions in which this power need not be used and instead agreement can be facilitated. That is the key aspect of the Bill.
We are committed to preserving the civil rights of all our citizens and our intention to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic legislation is a pledge of our commitment in that respect. Accordingly, our principle is equal treatment for both sides of the community in Northern Ireland. It is this principle which lies at the heart of our approach.
Many noble Lords made important contributions. I do not wish to get into details of what will be an interesting Committee stage. On the other hand, I want as much as possible to deal with some of the specific points that were raised and questions that were asked. If I do not deal with all of them, I hope noble Lords will accept that the Committee stage will be the next opportunity when they can, as it were, press their particular points.
The noble Lord, Lord Cope, made a number of points. He asked about financial assistance in Clause 2. The commission has a duty to promote greater understanding of parades and to promote and facilitate mediation. The provision in subsection (3)(a) would be, for instance, to enable the commission to give financial assistance to any person or body which is engaged in the business of mediation and conciliation. As the noble Lord said, we do not envisage that the sums involved will be major—small sums of money but as part of a useful process.
The noble Lord also asked about the exclusion of sporting events in Clause 3. We recognise that sporting events can be a statement of community identity but we

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do not believe that anyone wants to take offence at this or to politicise sport. That is why we have decided to exclude such events from the extended remit as set out in Clause 3. There are events which people may or may not choose to attend. But there may be public order problems which can arise in connection with sporting events. Those may be the ones to which the noble Lord referred. They may have a sectarian aspect. However, we believe that these are straightforward policing matters with which the police have powers to deal and therefore are not relevant to this Bill concerning public processions. The existing powers the police have should be sufficient to deal with those.
The noble Lord asked a technical question—I call it technical—about the Secretary of State's power to ban marches and said that this does not require the Secretary of State to have regard to traditionality or the failure of those involved to comply with the code of conduct. The desirability of allowing a procession customarily held along a particular route to proceed along that route is relevant to the question whether the commission should impose a condition on that parade since one of the conditions the Government can impose relates to the route that that parade may follow. But it is not relevant to the overall power to ban a parade. That is a different matter. Once the power to impose conditions is considered inadequate, the route which it should follow is not therefore relevant to the question whether it should be banned completely. Therein lies the difference. The code of conduct is also relevant to the imposition of conditions but has no direct significance for the banning power. It would be too extreme to allow breaches of the code to result in a total ban. In the distinctions we have drawn here, to which the noble Lord referred, we have kept faithfully to the recommendations in the North Report.
The noble Lord also asked about different penalties for different offences under the Bill. This is a quite complicated point. It would seem here both that the possible penalties are maxima and that the authorities have a range of possible charges depending upon the circumstances. Some of these provisions re-enact existing legislation. But on the specific example given, I think it is reasonable that the maximum penalty in events where no notice has been given but no further trouble has resulted should be lower than in those cases where the organisers consciously decided to defy a legal ruling reached by the commission after due consideration. As for breaking up processions, if that is done with violence, there are a variety of other public order offences which can be put against those involved in such activities.
The noble Lord, Lord Molyneaux, asked a number of significant questions. He asked about 28 days' notice being required under Clause 7. He asked about those individuals who might wish to organise a parade which concerned, for example, an issue which arose at short notice—such as a trade union dispute. Under Clause 7(2) notice must be 28 days or as soon as reasonably practicable. Therefore, account can be taken of issues which have arisen so quickly that the 28 days' notice would not have been appropriate.
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A number of contributions covered the question of Clause 3 and what might be called the extended remit. I was asked what it would cover. It would be for the commission itself to consider—and make recommendations if necessary—the law and practice concerning other expressions of cultural identity. We have no fixed views about what it should look at, although the Bill will make it clear that we have excluded sporting events. Undoubtedly, the commission would receive representations from the public and others about those expressions of cultural identity which concerned them. However, the key point on this—I understand the different feelings in the House—is that, as originally conceived and based on the North recommendations, we felt that the Bill might be seen as not being even-handed across both communities and both traditions in Northern Ireland. We sought to redress that so that the Bill can be seen to be even-handed across the whole of Northern Ireland. To deal with that we felt that this extra provision would be desirable.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I hope he will address the point made by my noble friend Lord Alderdice that the concept of balance may be particularly inappropriate in the Bill. Do I understand the noble Lord to say that what is cultural identity is to be defined by the commission only and that the Government will give no more guidance than what appears on the face of the Bill?
Lord Dubs: My Lords, on the second point, I think it would be inappropriate for the Government to tell the commission how to act on this provision. We believe that it is for the commission to take this into account, bearing in mind that the powers of the commission are simply to give advice in this respect to the Secretary of State. The commission does not have any further powers than as envisaged in the Bill.
As regards the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, as to whether we are seeking too much balance, what we want is legislation that will be accepted by all the people in Northern Ireland. That is what we are aiming at. We want consent for the legislation. I believe that the attempt to achieve balance will help to get consent for the legislation. I hope that I can bring both noble Lords with me on this. I understand their concerns, but we believe that the effect of this provision will be to achieve balance and therefore the consent that is essential if the legislation is to have a fair run and if the commission is to be able to carry out its task.
Another key issue raised by a number of noble Lords is why we did not adopt the North proposals on what I might call a "package deal" covering a whole series of marches. Perhaps I may use that expression, inelegant as it sounds. That matter was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Cope and Lord Alderdice, and a number of other noble Lords. It is clear that the package deal was a recommendation in the North Report. Indeed, it is one of the very few areas where our legislation does not implement the report in full.

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The commission will seek to facilitate local agreements over longer periods in the way that the report proposes. It will also have the power to express in advance its preliminary views on what the outcome for particular parades should be. We hope that that will go some way to achieving the assurance that the North Report was looking for.
However, we believe that there will be considerable practical and legal difficulties in giving the commission the binding powers suggested. The purpose of the package deal suggested would be to provide reassurance and certainty about the number of parades that will be permitted in any given area. But while in practice many parades are known about well in advance, others are organised at short notice. Overall rulings would not be able to take them into account. We are clear that the Parades Commission needs to make its decisions on the basis of all the facts surrounding an individual parade. If the commission had already made its decision in advance of knowing the full circumstances of the case, it would be vulnerable to the charge that it had fettered its own discretion.
The right to march is an important one and in the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights restrictions need to be justified on the grounds that they are necessary and proportionate to the circumstances of the case. The only way around that problem that we can see is either to give the commission an explicit power to set quotas for the number of parades which are acceptable in given areas, regardless of the circumstances, or to require parade organisers to give a much longer period of notice, perhaps six months or longer, to enable decisions to be taken in advance of the marching season. Both of those are radical suggestions and pose grave difficulties in ECHR terms.
We recognise the weight that some place on this particular recommendation of the North Report. While we see the difficulties we retain an open mind and will be happy to consider any suggestions put forward either in this House or in the other place. I hope that that will reassure those noble Lords who are unhappy about the specific point to which I have referred.
Perhaps I may deal very quickly with a number of outstanding issues that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Molyneaux, spoke about the Royal British Legion parades and his concern that there may be some problems about them. I share that concern. I believe that those parades are a tribute to the large number of people who gave their lives fighting for this country in both world wars, including many Irishmen, both Catholic and Protestant. They made a significant and valiant contribution, particularly to the 1939–45 war, alongside people from Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, Kenya, Jamaica and many other countries. We see those parades as paying tribute to all those people who died and who came from all those countries. It would be most inappropriate and wrong in principle if anyone thought that there was something wrong with those parades. They are a right and proper expression of respect for the many people who died.
The noble Lord, Lord Molyneaux, asked about the position of the Irish Government. The Parades Commission is independent. It is meant to be
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independent of this Government as it is of any other government. It is that very independence of the commission which is central to what we are seeking to do and why we believe that this proposal ought to achieve consent across the whole community—precisely because of the independence of the Parades Commission. The noble Lord also suggested that members of the commission should attend flashpoints. I am sure that they will. I believe that some of them did in the last marching season. No doubt they will have heard the noble Lord's suggestions and will take account of them.
The noble Lord, Lord Fitt, said that we all carry baggage. I have learnt that that is certainly true in Northern Ireland. He also said that at the end of the day the RUC will have to deal with the difficulties. That is so if all else fails, but if the commission's role, as defined in the Bill, is successful we will not get to the point where the RUC will have to pick up all the pieces.
The noble Lord, Lord Blease, spoke about hangers on at parades and about young children taking part and the difficulties that that will cause. Again, these are issues which I am sure that the Parades Commission will take into account when dealing with any particular parade.
My noble friend Lord Desai spoke about the small number of parades that cause problems. I agree with that. He also said that not all expressions of cultural identity are in contention, and they are certainly not. He emphasised the importance of local accommodation. I agree fully with all of that. He also suggested that the Parades Commission should start its work now in anticipation of the next marching season. Again, I am sure that those words will have been heard by the members of the commission.
The noble Lord, Lord Cooke, spoke about threats of violence and said that they themselves might prejudice the holding of a parade. We have experienced threats of violence over the years in connection with parades and it is precisely to deal with that problem that we have a Parades Commission—in the hope that it will take all the issues into account and arrive at a balanced conclusion. I do not believe that the very existence of that commission will encourage more people to express grievances; at least I hope it will not. Indeed, we have had so many grievances expressed in Northern Ireland that I do not believe that one piece of legislation is likely to add to them, but one never knows for certain. But I do not believe that that will necessarily be the case. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, spoke about a number of situations where marches will be banned. But the essential point of the remit of the Parades Commission is that it will not ban marches but will deal with matters short of banning them such as affecting the route. If we get to the point of banning marches the commission will not have succeeded.
In conclusion, agreement on parades will transform the prospects for political progress. The difficulties are immense, as many noble Lords have indicated. But I believe that such agreement is achievable. Let us grasp this opportunity to set in place a vital building block on which we can base a secure and just settlement for

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Northern Ireland. I thank noble Lords for their very positive support for the Bill and ask them to give the Bill a second reading.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

The "Ministerial Code"
6.7 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what are the reasons for the new components and features of the Ministerial Code which has replaced Questions of Procedure for Ministers and was made public on 31st July.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Ministerial Code about which I am enquiring was made public on 31st July, the first day of the Summer Recess. I applied for this debate on the following day, 1st August. This is the earliest opportunity for me to raise the subject. The code replaces a document entitled Questions of Procedure for Ministers which has been updated from time to time and which has provided guidance for Ministers in both Labour and Conservative Governments for at least 45 years and perhaps considerably longer, but certainly for 45 years to my knowledge.
I have good reason to know because 43 years ago I was responsible, among other things, for ensuring that, in its latest version, it was received personally by every Member of the Government. In that earlier incarnation I was a public servant in what was then known as the Foreign Service. I had been assigned by the Foreign Office to work with the then Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, as Private Secretary to the Secretary to the Cabinet who was then Sir Norman Brook.
The Prime Minister's staff was extremely small then compared with later times and with today. When I moved back to Foreign Affairs after Churchill had retired, I handed over to my successor, who is now the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Tanworth, who much later became Secretary to the Cabinet himself at a time, coincidentally, when I was a member of the Cabinet in the early 1970s. That was one of my later incarnations.
In those days, the document Questions of Procedure for Ministers was confidential, but several years ago it was decided to make it public, so the last edition of 1992 was public property, with a new paragraph 1 being inserted in November 1996, expanding on the general principles governing the conduct of Ministers. That paragraph has been repeated in the new code, with minor changes of wording. In fact, although renamed, the new code restates the principles set out in the previous document, mostly in identical paragraphs which have simply been lifted from its predecessor. That is what makes one particular change very significant.
Although some 130 paragraphs repeat virtually word for word the previous rules and guidance concerning correct conduct, financial implications and conflicts of interest, an additional paragraph. No. 88, is an astonishing new directive about contacts with the media.
All major interviews and broadcasting appearances are to be agreed beforehand with the Prime Minister's Office and records of all contacts by Ministers and officials with newspapers and broadcasters are to be made and kept. That raises questions. Will Ministers have to report on every chat over a meal or a drink with a journalist? Is the real object to reduce and restrict such contacts? I suggest that such centralisation must hamper the normal work of busy Ministers and their routine communication with the media. Must we assume that more is now to be done in briefing the press by the "spin doctors", an American term that I regard as an affront to the medical profession? They would better be described as "spidermen" as they spin yarns and weave deceptive webs.
How does that relate to recent reports that unattributable briefings are to be ended or radically changed? The misunderstandings and contradictions over EMU in the past few days have certainly illustrated shortcomings in the system which is now being used. When the new code appeared at the end of July a member of the Prime Minister's entourage was reported in the press as saying:
"It is the strategic and message discipline we operated in Opposition as translated to Government".
Even after three months in office, the Labour Party had not understood the constitutional and other differences between being in opposition and in government.
Presentation of government policy does, of course, need to be co-ordinated. This new decree goes much further in attempting to control centrally every part of the normally continuous relationship between the media and Ministers. The departure since 1st May of the heads of information divisions in several government departments—now thought to be as many as eight—is part of the general unease in the Government Information Service. Here I should mention a very recent case. One senior government information officer resigned a few days ago from his position in the Department for Education and Employment. The episode was widely reported, so I shall briefly remind the House that a junior Minister had tried to include in a government press release derogatory comments on the previous government's attitude. Rightly, the Permanent Under-Secretary insisted that the passage be deleted. I understand that it then went to the Labour Party's Press Office for issue.
That incident involved also the role of civil servants. The paragraphs on civil servants in this code and in its predecessor are identical—paragraph 55 in the 1992 version and paragraph 56 in this new code. I suggest that what must have gone wrong was failure to observe the clear guidance in paragraph 56 of the code or failure to interpret it in practice.
I have put some questions about new paragraph 88 to the noble Lord who is to reply from the Government Front Bench. I look forward to his replies and his explanation of that extraordinary addition. I have great respect for the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, especially as he is usually allotted the most difficult subjects on which to answer for the Government and he does so as well as is possible in those situations.
I move to paragraph 48 on "special advisers", a description that covers political advisers, spidermen and specialists in particular subjects. It expands upon the equivalent paragraph in the 1992 document, which was paragraph 54. Those advisers are not established civil servants and they hold temporary positions. One change in the new code is that each Cabinet Minister may appoint two special advisers. Can the noble Lord confirm the report that 53 political advisers have been appointed so far by the present Government, compared with 38 under the last government, and that the increase in the Prime Minister's Office has been from eight to 18?
The public were treated to a brief insight into the spinning methods of special advisers earlier this month when the Scottish Television film "We are the Treasury" was widely shown on television. In what was probably an unguarded moment, a spiderman admitted to acting in ways not consistent with a service to provide government information.
I turn to other changes. First, there is a foreword by the Prime Minister—an addition that was not in the equivalent 1992 document. In that short foreword we read the sentence:
"I have decided to publish this document because openness is a vital ingredient of good. accountable Government".
No one can argue with that, but the document that this replaces was also published. Of course, this code would have had to be published. There would have been an almighty parliamentary row if it had not been published, like its predecessor. The decision to publish had little to do with openness. It followed previous practice. I am sure that that sentence was not a facile attempt to claim credit for what was not a new departure; namely, publishing the document. However, I must point out that that is what it looks like.
Another change is that there are three new paragraphs on accounting officers—paragraphs 57 to 59. I assume that the reason for this relates to the latest procedures for the Select Committee on Public Accounts and I shall not say any more about that because I am sure that it is acceptable.
A further change comes in the sections on not accepting fees for speeches, writing or broadcasts. There is a new injunction in paragraphs 96, 100 and 104 not to divert fees to charity, with no dispensation to do so if no particular charity is nominated. When I was a junior member of the Government in the early 1960s and a Cabinet Minister in the early 1970s, I was able to steer fees to disability charities. Is there any ethical or other reason why that should now be expressly forbidden? Charities need all the contributions that they can get nowadays owing to competition from the National Lottery.
On acceptance of gifts, the limit rises with inflation. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, will recall the incident many years ago when the late Mr. Tony Crosland, then a Cabinet Minister, was presented with a coffee pot after performing an opening ceremony in this country. It was later discovered to be an unusually valuable pot. As a result, a figure was promulgated to be the limit in future for the acceptable
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value for a token of gratitude or a souvenir which it might seem churlish for a Minister to decline. Thereafter, Private Secretaries reminded Ministers in successive governments of the "Crosland Coffee Pot" and tried to advise potential donors behind the scenes beforehand to avoid any embarrassment.
As I have the time, I shall mention an experience of my own since it demonstrates that unforeseen situations can arise. In June 1970, I was appointed Secretary of State for Scotland. Among the many devolved subjects administered by the Secretary of State, his Ministers and the Scottish Office is agriculture. I therefore immediately made arrangements to relinquish the supervision of my farming operations at my home in my constituency in Northern Scotland. For four years a neighbour, who also farmed, kindly directed my farming and forestry. That was correct as I was, among other things, to be taking decisions on government grants in Scotland separately from the Ministry of Agriculture in England.
The unexpected situation arose more than two years later. In June 1970 no one could have foreseen that oil would be discovered in the North Sea in commercial quantities. There was no Department of Energy before 1974. In 1973 certain Labour MPs raised the question on the Floor of the other place as to whether Scottish Office Ministers owned shares in oil companies as the Secretary of State for Scotland was so much involved in the development of the new offshore oil industry. To avoid any suspicion of impropriety I directed the stockbroker concerned with the modest share portfolios of both my wife and myself to sell the shares in companies involved in the North Sea, including construction, engineering and shipping. The stockbroker's response was that the House of Commons must be mad. I corrected him and pointed out that the other place was not requiring me to part with those investments. It was my own decision to do so. As a large majority of the present Ministers have not before been members of a government, I hope that this reminiscence may be helpful in showing that they must be ready for the unexpected.
I will summarise my main points on the passages concerning special advisers, civil servants and the media. Ministers should separate making policy from spinning; and serving a party machine in opposition is very different from presenting the policies of a government.
6.22 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for calling our attention to a document published at the beginning of the Recess which contains, among other things, the statement that important documents should not be published after the rising of Parliament. His account in the light of his own ministerial experience of how this differs from or complements the previous document which was also public is something that we may well wish to study in Hansard.
I have no such experience to share with noble Lords. My interest is a different one. During the period when the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, held high

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political office I had to teach about the British system of government. I have been all too painfully aware that that has been in constant change. Therefore, I look to a document of this kind to see what clues it may provide to the way in which government is at present conducted. From that point of view it is a very striking document because of the emphasis that is given to the presentation of policy rather than its formulation or implementation. For example, one of the matters to which it refers—it is not something for which this Government bears responsibility—is the pullulation of junior Ministers with particular aspects of their department confided to them and those aspects made public. That used not to be the case. It raises all kinds of questions as to what junior Ministers are supposed to do and how they fit into the presentation of government policy. As to that, the document is singularly unenlightening. The only positive statement that is made is that the Permanent Secretary retaining responsibility for the department at large is not subject to junior Ministers but, on the other hand, junior Ministers are not subject to his directions.
One can visualise some confusion when policy must be made and presented at very short notice. For example, one would have liked to know in greater detail—it may become very important as government legislation appears before us—the position in the Department of Social Security. We have a Secretary of State who is supposed to conduct that part of the Government's business and a Minister in the department who has been told to think the unthinkable. We have a Minister in this House who, presumably, has to mention the unmentionable. After all, the matter must be complete in some way. One would like to know how the balance is struck. It is not an academic question or one that has not already had some consequences.
I shall not rehearse what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, has said about the confusion induced in the financial world by the antics of presentation of government policy regarding EMU. I take a different example. Noble Lords will be aware from the press that Her Majesty's visit to India, which is a very important event in her reign—earlier today we were assured how important was her position in the Commonwealth—was clouded by attacks on the part of the Indian press upon the alleged determination of the British Government to act in some mediating capacity in relation to the problem of Kashmir. How did that arise? It arose because at the Labour Party conference a junior Minister made a speech in which he precisely suggested that Britain could intervene favourably in this long-running conflict. It appears that he was unaware that among his audience were not merely Labour Party stalwarts but a representative of the Indian High Commission. As a result, India knew that at least one Minister—not, I hasten to add, the Foreign Secretary—was contemplating what for India was something that should never be contemplated, like it or not; namely, that the Kashmir problem was an international one.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, also drew our attention to the whole business of co-ordinating the presentation of government policy, in particular the quite extraordinary role that is allotted to an officer not
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new to government but clearly of great importance: the head of the No. 10 Press Office. When one reads of the importance that is attached to his assent to any communication between a Minister and anyone else one begins to understand why, so it is rumoured, the policeman in No. 10 Downing Street has been given instructions as to what to do if someone comes along—let us say a Korean—and says, "Take me to your leader". The policeman is told that he must ask that individual whether he is referring to the Dear Leader or the Great Leader. If he says, "the Dear Leader" he is conducted straight to the Prime Minister. If he says, "the Great Leader", he is allowed to enter the Downing Street press office.
It does not, as we have seen in recent weeks, altogether work. The trouble is that although the Labour Party believes that it has a mandate not merely from the electorate but occasionally from Heaven, and it talked at the last election as though the party manifesto was a combination, at the highest level, of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, there are voices, apparently even in the Labour Party, even of persons elected on a Labour ticket, who disagree, who have different views. It is hard to believe that even that great apparatus will, in the end, succeed in doing what, thankfully, no government have been able to do: silence the natural scepticism of the British public and British Members of Parliament. Even the Mandelson clones at the other end of the Palace have been unable to silence their natural scepticism and natural desire to speak out.
6.31 p.m.
The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for introducing today's debate. The Motion seeks clarification of the new components and features of the Ministerial Code. At the outset we should acknowledge that, at a variety of levels, these should have the potential of promoting within government the essential virtues of probity and integrity. There is nothing wrong with that. But the real question we should be asking ourselves here is what price is being paid for this benefit.
It is something of a truism, but things are not always as they seem. The code is no exception. It is symptomatic of the process whereby this Government's protestations about giving more power to the people are tempered by:
"parallel thrusts towards less accountability and a strengthening of the executive".—[Official Report, 14/10/97; col. 422.]
It could reasonably have been supposed that new Labour would have used the code as a mechanism to deliver greater democratisation. In this we cannot dispute that it does deliver a very much stronger framework of ministerial accountability. But it does not place this in the hands of the public. It does not even place it in the hands of Parliament. No, my Lords, it delivers it into the hand of the Executive as personified by the Prime Minister, and the No. 10 press office.
By way of illustration, I wish to focus upon Paragraphs I(iii), I(iv) and I(v). These represent a substantial re-working of the sense conveyed in

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paragraph I(iii) of Questions of Procedure for Ministers. I shall not weary your Lordships by reading the relevant texts in full.
Before embarking upon an analysis of the nuances of meaning between the two texts, some background is necessary. Your Lordships will recall that, in the wake of the recommendations of the First Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, a new paragraph I was drafted for insertion into QPM to buttress and, in a sense, replace the provisions concerning accountability of Ministers to Parliament as outlined in paragraph 27. At that time and in subsequent debate of the Scott Inquiry Report, both main parties of opposition expressed considerable concern at the phrase "knowingly mislead". Ann Taylor, in giving evidence to the Public Service Committee inquiry on accountability in 1996, noted that QPM would be rewritten if there were a Labour government and that "knowingly" in paragraph I(iii) would be removed. We now have a Labour government. We have the promised re-write, and yet, paragraph I(iii) retains the phrase "knowingly mislead". No doubt the noble Lord will wish to explain this apparent change of heart.
So to the revisions made to the text. The phraseology of QPM:
"Ministers must not knowingly mislead Parliament and the public",
may well have been imperfect. But the new code, while requiring Ministers to be "accurate and truthful" to Parliament, only imposes a duty of being "as open as possible" in their dealings with the public, a requirement that was, in any event, explicitly stated in paragraph I(iii) of QPM. By any measure that is a dangerous dilution of ministerial accountability and responsibility to the public. I ask the noble Lord to explain that apparent anomaly and to clarify how the Government reconcile it with the Prime Minister's:
"strong personal commitment to restoring the bond of trust between the British people and their Government."
We should not lose sight of the fact that the code is no more and no less than a Prime Ministerial edict as to the standards he expects his Ministers to live up to. The chain of accountability that it delineates is from Ministers upwards to the Prime Minister alone. This is exemplified by the phraseology that:
"They can only remain in office for so long as they retain the Prime Minister's confidence".
In effect breaches of the code and any sanctions that may be applied as a result, notwithstanding the possibility of an intervention from the Cabinet Secretary, vest wholly within the personal judgment of the Prime Minister. That was a particular criticism of QPM and its operation under the previous administration. As the Public Service Committee Report noted:
"It seems extraordinary to us that the only explicit statement of how Ministers are expected to discharge their obligations to Parliament appears not in a Parliamentary document, but in a document issued by the Prime Minister".
It went on to say that this:
"contributes to an illusion that the obligations on Ministers in relation to Parliament are derived from the instructions of the Prime Minister, and not from Parliament itself'.
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And yet, perhaps not so surprisingly in the context of this Government and despite all of their protestations about greater accountability, the Ministerial Code perpetuates, even strengthens, this centralisation of control and power in the hands of the Prime Minister.
Here I ask the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, to give an authoritative and definitive statement as to the constitutional status of the code. In particular, I would ask him if it is the Government's view that the Resolution on Accountability of another place has primacy in this area. This bias towards centralisation is most apparent in the code's provisions with respect to the media and special advisers.
As my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy has already told us, it is in these areas that it has been most extensively revised. Here I do not dispute the desirability of co-ordination of government strategy and implementation, but the text is now framed almost to convey the impression that Ministers are not permitted to sneeze, particularly in front of the media, without authority from the No. 10 press office.
That desire of the centre to exert absolute control over all presentation of policy has about it the character of obsession. It lends credibility to the impression that this Government perceive policy exclusively in terms of its impact upon the electorate. Its presentation is deemed to be more important than its substance. That is dangerous. It does no favours for either good government or democracy.
There is merit here in seeking to review the operation of the code by reference to policy presentation in recent months. It is my understanding that the code was implemented on the first day of this Government. That being so, it is curious that the Chancellor, despite the provisions in paragraph 27 that:
"the most important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, in Parliament",
found it convenient to use the media as his preferred means to disseminate his intention to transfer control of interest rates to the Bank of England. There is scope for similar criticism to be levelled at the handling of various other major policy initiatives such as the Budget Statement and the publication of the Dearing Report.
Taken as a whole those examples demonstrate a certain disdain of this Government for Parliament. They are also technical, if not actual, breaches of paragraph 27 of the code, and yet, so far as we know, no sanctions have been applied to the Ministers concerned. No identifiable action has been taken to reprimand them. In effect Ministers have been able to by-pass their accountability to Parliament and the public. The chain of accountability has been diluted.
A charitable mind might infer that, despite previous lapses, the Chancellor's decision to withhold any policy statement on the single currency until yesterday is indicative of his and the Government's desire to be seen to be bound by their own code. Fair enough perhaps, my Lords. But this should not disguise or excuse the muddle of recent weeks or the damage that the Prime Minister has admitted it has done. As we all know, this was not a product of idle or irresponsible speculation by the media. No smoke without fire. It was a nudge here,

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a wink there, from this Government's serried ranks of special advisers indulging in their favoured pastime of off-the-record briefing on behalf of their ministerial masters.
This highlights the area of the code about which I have my most serious reservations. A recent Daily Telegraph article summarises the role of special advisers thus:
"[They] are, in Tony Blair's new Britain, at least as important as politicians. Gone are the days when Cabinet Ministers would ring editors on their direct lines to set the news agenda—these days leave it to the professional. Spin doctors are busily employed rebutting negative stories about their bosses … More significantly, advisers work by telling journalists, off the record, of the 'real meaning' behind seemingly mundane words."
Here I should point out to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that the source of my quotation last week—that "You have to be economical with the truth sometimes"—was a senior political adviser to this administration speaking openly on television. The problem is that the Ministerial Code does not include them within its general remit, despite the fact that many of them are, to all intents and purposes, ciphers of their respective Ministers.
We are referred instead to "the Model Contract promulgated by the Prime Minister on 19th May, 1997". This, apart from some exceptions relating to impartiality and objectivity, requires them to act in accordance with the Civil Service code. But the only apparent and binding chain of accountability to which they seem to be subject is directly to the Minister by whom they have been appointed and whose interests they are in any event seeking to protect. This is "crony-ism" at its worst. What special advisers in this administration contribute to government is an essentially hidden, unaccountable and unelected tier of decision-making, operating within the machine, within the political and democratic processes, but outside—even, to an extent, actively flouting—the requirement for truthfulness, accuracy and openness. As the "unattributable" mouth-pieces of their respective bosses, they exist as a mechanism to allow Ministers to by-pass parliamentary scrutiny and accountability.
We can but hope that the Government intend to address this problem as a matter of urgency rather than falling back on the platitude of blaming the activities of their spin doctors on media speculation. In a spirit of helpfulness, I suggest that there would be merit in amending paragraph 48 of the Ministerial Code to create an explicit linkage of accountability between Ministers and their special advisers. This would bring the latter within the framework of proper accountability to Parliament and the public as well as binding them unequivocally to truthfulness, accuracy and openness.
In conclusion, as with so much with this Government, it is what lies behind the veil of the rhetoric that matters. The Ministerial Code is of a piece with this. It brazenly parades democratic virtue with one hand while furtively increasing the power and control of the centre and weakening accountability with the other.
6.44 p.m.
Lord Hayhoe: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy for raising the Question today. Percipient commentators should always look carefully and critically at Government announcements slipped out by way of planted Written Questions on the last day before a long parliamentary Recess. That has not been unknown in the past, but in recent years the practice has been strongly discouraged by authority. I wonder why the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, was asked to plant the Question about a new edition of Questions of Procedure for Ministers at the last moment. It was not because the Question was of little importance. It was answered by no less a noble Lord than the Lord Privy Seal. Much more likely, the timing was chosen because of the high political significance of the changes made by No. 10 to the document, which is now renamed Ministerial Code: A Code of Conduct and Guidance on Procedure for Ministers.
Perhaps there was fear of embarrassment if Members of both Houses of Parliament could have picked over the document while Parliament was in Session. No doubt, the Government will deny any such shabby intention. But, to adapt a well-known phrase, "They would, wouldn't they?".
Peter Riddell of The Times, a widely-respected and distinguished political commentator, described the new Ministerial Code as:
"the most revolutionary publication produced by the Government since the election".
In his article on 1st August, he focused his comments, as do I, on paragraph 88, which was referred to by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy. It relates to the co-ordination of government policy. I believe that the paragraph deserves to be read in full. It states:
"In order to ensure the effective presentation of government policy, all major interviews and media appearances, both print and broadcast, should be agreed with the No. 10 Press Office before any commitments are entered into. The policy content of all major speeches, press releases and new policy initiatives should be cleared in good time with the No. 10 Private Office; the timing and form of the announcements should be cleared with the No. 10 Press Office. Each Department should keep a record of media contacts by both Ministers and officials".
Of course I accept the need for proper co-ordination of government and ministerial announcements and speeches. No doubt on many occasions the previous Government could have done a lot better in that regard. But the essence of paragraph 88 goes well beyond sensible co-ordination and implies a measure of central control by the No. 10 Press Office which threatens the constitutional independence of Cabinet Ministers and their departments of state. There are real issues at stake which generate worry and concern.
In recent weeks, we have seen the attempts by the Prime Minister's Press Secretary to impose tight controls over Civil Service press officers of the Government Information Service. His actions have aroused a great deal of informed press comment and genuine anxiety that the political impartiality of civil servants may be at risk. I understand that the Select Committee on Public Administration in another place is

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taking a close look at the situation, which sits uneasily with the Government's proposed Freedom of Information Act.
There are also serious questions to be answered about the removal or departure of heads of information—they were referred to again by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy—from the Treasury, the Department of Social Security, the Ministry of Defence and other departments. Your Lordships will recall the Question asked by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy on Wednesday 15th October. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, was not at his best in answering that day, perhaps for the reasons so well described by my noble friend. The Minister's anxieties about his difficult task in defending the Government on the issue were exemplified by his response to the rather silly supplementary question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich. The Minister suggested that he should look at what Sir Bernard Ingham had written in his memoirs about what happened to him in 1973 at the Department of Employment. I have my copy here, having read it a long time ago. The case the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, called in aid occurred almost a quarter of a century ago, although I well recall what happened because Keith McDowall, who was also involved, is a good friend of mine and perhaps of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh.
However, there is much more recent and relevant evidence available from Sir Bernard. I commend to the Minister the Parliamentary Monitor of October of this year and the article in it by Sir Bernard. The article was entitled "Spindoctors Prescribe Bitter Pill for Government Information Service". Now, Sir Bernard is a very firm supporter of the GIS. He certainly approves of Alastair Campbell's efforts to improve that service, both in ensuring that it has early access to information and in underlining to all policy makers, Ministers, the importance of presentation. No one with experience of government would deny that general issue, and I believe that Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service, was also endorsing those same objectives in his evidence to the Select Committee on Public Administration in another place, as reported on the lunchtime news programme today.
However, Sir Bernard draws the line when Mr. Campbell commands the GIS to:
"Decide your headlines … Sell your story and, if you disagree with what is being written, argue your case".
Perhaps I may now quote Sir Bernard's response to that. He says that,
"the GIS is not there to sell stories. Its job is to present policy. Nor is it there to build Ministerial images. That is precluded by rule. And it most certainly is not there to dictate to a free press what should be written, how it should be written and to challenge its news judgement … The GIS also has to have some regard for its behaviour. Frankly, there would be no place in my GIS"—
that is, Sir Bernard's GIS—
"for Mr. Mandleson, Mr. Campbell, Labour Party communicator Dave Hill and the aforesaid lout Charlie Whelan on the evidence of their Mafia-style approach to news management from Nick Jones, the BBC's political correspondent, in his hook Campaign 97.
Recent television programmes, referred to by previous speakers, "We are the Treasury" about the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Whelan, Ed Balls et al,
1036
together with the briefings and the counter-briefings about the EMU, clearly indicate what an awful mess the Government are in.
When Peter Kellner, not known for his antagonism to this Government, commenting in the Evening Standard upon the way in which the announcement about the extra £250 million, £250 million, and then, surprise, surprise, £300 million for the NHS this winter, was made, concludes that the Government,
"puts the demands of spin doctors ahead of the needs of real doctors";
and when Melanie Phillips warns of the dangers in a cogent article in the Observer of 12th October under the headline:
"Democracy is the biggest casualty when journalists are prepared to stand by and let Labour's spin-doctors engineer the news",
surely it is time for second thoughts on such matters. I wish that I had more confidence that journalists and the press barons would take appropriate and effective action. But I recall the old lines of doggerel:
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to."
6.55 p.m.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: My Lords, I believe that we are all more grateful than perhaps we suspected we would be to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for raising this matter in the form of an Unstarred Question. We have heard four speeches of very substantial merit. Not only did I enjoy listening to them but I will also want to read them more fully in Hansard to consider some of the very important points that have been made. However, I wish that we were not discussing such a matter on an Unstarred Question but that we were doing so on a more substantial occasion. The issues raised by the document under consideration do go to the heart of parliamentary government, whether we approve of the document on the whole or whether we are as critical of it, as some noble Lords have so far been.
However, looking back on my own ministerial experience which lasted for 11 years, I have to say that I am not quite as surprised at some of the points contained in the document as are other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. For example, he referred to paragraph 88 as being,
"an astonishing new directive",
and said that the real object was to hamper and restrict normal contacts with Ministers. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Hayhoe, said that it was,
"a measure of centralised control",
threatening, as I understood it, parliamentary government.
As a Cabinet Minister, I remember very well that no Minister was expected to appear, for example, on the "Today" programme on the "World at One", on "The World this Weekend", on "Newsnight" or, indeed, on "Panorama" without reference to Number 10. The permission of the Prime Minister, which really meant that of his principal press officer, was always required by any Minister appearing on a major media event.

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Whatever the previous document may or may not have said, I find it difficult to believe that a very similar rule was applied by the previous Prime Minister. I believe that it is a matter of common sense.
There was a very similar convention, if not a rule, applied to the speeches of Ministers. I remember the trouble that we sometimes took to evade it. If it was a major one, we were meant to send a speech to No. 10 for approval. Indeed, all too frequently—and I can confess it now because the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, is absent from the Chamber this evening—if I was making a speech on a Friday night, I would send it to No. 10 when I caught the train and then I would be lost until the moment I delivered it. Those were the days before mobile telephones! I was prepared to risk the Prime Minister's wrath the following day, provided that I had had my say. However, the convention, the rules, were very plain. Therefore, I am not too surprised by what the document says, except for the boldness of setting it down.
Then there is the question of special advisers. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, drew attention to paragraph 48 of the document which contains a reference to two special advisers. As I understand it, that was the case in 1974–23 years ago. I had one special adviser and I thought that that was quite sufficient. But certainly my colleagues in the Cabinet at that time could have none, could have one, could have two; but not more than two. So I am not too surprised that that has been embodied in a very open way in the document before us this evening.
The noble Lord also referred to the acceptance of gifts. I very well remember the case of Anthony Crosland and a coffee pot. But if we are concerned with the probity of government, paragraph 126 of the document corresponds very closely indeed with paragraph 83 in my document which dates from 1966. I am sure that I should have given it back, but I retain it to this day—No. 108, marked "Confidential".
Therefore, looking at the document before us—I read it carefully at the time of its publication; and I do not dissent from the view that it ought to have been published not on the eve of the Recess, but at some other time—I do not get quite as upset as have other noble Lords. However, I agree that Ministers should be more able and feel themselves freer to make statements on their own account. Indeed, we should have a great deal less of spin doctors than we have been having in recent months.
There is no doubt at all—and here I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Northesk said—that the muddle of recent weeks leading to yesterday's Statement was damaging and that that was principally the work of spin-doctors. I further agree that there is a very real danger of centralisation in No. 10. However, do not tell me that that is a new phenomenon. Let us not forget the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher. She of all Prime Ministers centralised things at No. 10. If she is a model for the present Prime Minister, I regret it; but those who laboured and sometimes suffered under her regime should not now seek to be critical of a Prime Minister who may, to a large extent, follow in her footsteps.
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I, too, believe that the system will break down. Methods that are appropriate to campaigning in opposition are totally inappropriate to the running of a government. Sooner or later, if a kitchen cabinet at No. 10 becomes dominant, we shall see the disintegration of this Government. We shall see the unhappiness and the difficulties in which Harold Wilson found himself in 1967, largely as a result of relying more on a kitchen cabinet than trusting his Ministers. The principle of Cabinet government is that the Prime Minister chooses the Cabinet Ministers and they get on with the job. If they are shackled either by No. 10, or more particularly by spin doctors, this Government will be a worse government than I, among others, would like them to be. It is right to issue a warning, and there is nothing wrong in using the document that we are discussing as a text.
Like other Ministers of my era and since—and, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, has reminded us, the document has provided guidance over a period of 45 years—I was guided, restrained and occasionally irritated by Questions of Procedure for Ministers. Indeed I chafed a great deal more as a parliamentary secretary than as a Cabinet Minister. The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, made an interesting point about the role of junior Ministers today. That has changed. We must recognise that the structure of government must change, and often for the better. Junior Ministers have a great deal more responsibility than they did 30 years ago. Herbert Morrison wrote a book in, I believe, 1950. It was the only text at that time on the subject of how governments had to work through the actions of Ministers. It is fascinating to note the extent to which he considered that parliamentary secretaries were appointed—not by the Prime Minister but by the Cabinet Minister—essentially as dogsbodies for whom work had to be found. No parliamentary secretary is a dogsbody today. They often have important responsibilities.
However, I find it difficult to accept the extent to which junior Ministers—I refer to parliamentary secretaries in this Government, but also very much in the previous government—have often referred in Parliament to decisions as their own, using the first person singular, when they were clearly not, nor should have been, their own decisions. They were decisions made by reference to their parliamentary head, their Member of Cabinet, and yet they have been referred to in a personalised sense. I do not believe that is good for government and it certainly does not accord with my concept of collective responsibility. On the whole I think that Ministers who know their way around should not need this guidance. Indeed some of it strikes me as assuming that Ministers are a great deal more naïve than most of them turn out to be. Those of us who have been involved in public life have a sense of what is proper and those of us who are attached to Parliament know that that is where we should often be.
If there is something which is missing in this document which I believe should be included, it is an emphasis on the obligation of Ministers to Parliament and the need for Ministers to be in Parliament, and not only to make Statements or answer questions from time

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to time. Those who have been Ministers know how easy it is to be seduced by the responsibilities and authority of ministerial status and also to be seduced by one's civil servants. A Minister may start off by believing that he ought to go to the House of Commons, but his civil servant may say, "But, Minister, you have a meeting at three o'clock". The Minister says to his private secretary, "But I would like to go to the House". The private secretary then says, "But, Minister, what business have you in the House today"? The Minister says, "I should like to hear other Ministers' replies to questions". The private secretary finds it extremely difficult to understand that, and too often Ministers succumb; they do not go to Parliament except when they have specific business to carry out. It is then that they become out of touch not only with Parliament but also with their own Back-Benchers. In the long run that is another recipe for bad government, whichever party is in power. I should have liked to see in the document a reference to remind Members and Ministers that Parliament comes first. I think that item is as necessary as some items that are included in the document. They are Members of Parliament, whether of this House or another, before they are Ministers. They should never forget that.
The document contains some interesting items which certainly did not appear 30 years' ago. There is a reference, for example, to air miles. Air miles are such new phenomena that I still do not understand them. I think that a reference to air miles in this document is possibly a bridge too far. There are references to special advisers. We all agree that that is necessary. There are no significant changes in the number of areas mentioned. There are no significant changes in the references to civil servants and party conferences. There are no significant changes in the references to spouses.
I remember when I took my spouse—as I am obliged to call her—to a conference in Lille. She did not have to attend, but it was thought a good idea for her to attend. I had to refer to the Treasury the additional cost to the public purse. I understand that an insistent secretary laboured long and hard for up to six months before making a submission to the Chancellor that my wife should be charged the cost of the sandwiches that she ate. We were happy to pay that. I believe that was an extravagant interpretation of what I believe is now paragraph 83 in this document. However, the principle is important; namely, that spouses should not constitute a charge on the public purse unless they are performing some proper function.
I note that paragraph 77 concerns Ministers who may be recalled from abroad. I well remember driving on holiday across France and Switzerland to my holiday home in Italy. Someone came out and told me that the Chief Whip was on the telephone. The Chief Whip told me on the telephone, "I have to tell you, Bill, there is a vote tomorrow night and we need you". I replied, "You may need me, but I do not really want to come". The Chief Whip said, "I totally understand and if I were in Tuscany I would not want to return home". We all went to Tuscany, even 30 years ago! That Chief Whip is now a Member of this House. I told him on the telephone, "I do not think that I shall come". He replied, "I totally
1040
understand but I suggest that you tell that to the Prime Minister. He is at Chequers. Here is the telephone number and perhaps you could ring him up and tell him that you do not think you can be present tomorrow evening because you are on the beaches in Tuscany". I caught the 'plane early the following day and went to the House of Commons. The Government had a majority of six, which in those days was quite substantial. Therefore I have been a victim as well as a recipient of good advice from this document.
I wish we had more time in which to speak. I entirely agree with what has been said about the Civil Service and about keeping it impartial by treating it fairly. It would be foolish to alienate the Civil Service or seek to differentiate between individuals on political grounds. I am disturbed by a degree of restlessness that I detect, particularly in the Treasury, on the part of career civil servants who feel that somehow they are being superseded. Although in some cases this evening as regards the comments that were made on the document, it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, I welcome this discussion because if there has been a fault it has been a fault on the right side.
7.9 p.m.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, my purpose in rising to speak at the end of the debate on the Unstarred Question is to bring together the threads of the discussion on behalf of the Opposition. I wish to convey in particular the real depth of concern that I perceived in listening to the speeches of my noble friends and to some extent that of the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, about how the Government are reacting in their early months in government. I refer to their role, their accountability to Parliament and to the accusations made in some quarters that they are treating Parliament with contempt, using their enormous majority in another place to rush through legislation and to make announcements when Parliament is not sitting, quite deliberately, bringing to life what my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham famously called the "elective dictatorship".
First, I very much welcome the opportunity to have this debate. My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy always brings to this House lively and interesting subjects for discussion and has done so again today. I agree with him. The Government's start on this issue was not good. They issued this document on the last day before the Summer Recess—incidentally, before the longest Summer Recess for another place in living memory. My verdict on the Government's record so far as regards their desire for openness and accountability is that it is pretty pathetic. As I said earlier, there is a real sense of disappointment. I believe that there is a serious failure on the part of the Government to take many of what I was going to call the platitudes—I think that many are not platitudes—or many of the phrases laid out in the code seriously.
I wish to ask the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, a series of questions. The most important in many respects is this. Can he tell the House whether all Ministers have been required to have read the document and to sign a document saying that they have done so,

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so that it is beyond any real doubt that all Ministers in the Government have read the document and clearly understood the procedures laid out?
One of the chief new features of the document is a foreword by the Prime Minister. It is of great interest. In his foreword, the Prime Minister states:
"We will extend openness further through a Freedom of Information Act".
I shall be delighted if the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is able to tell us when the Bill will be forthcoming, what stage the ongoing discussions with his colleagues in Government have reached, and when we may expect a Bill.
The Prime Minister continues:
"We should be absolutely clear about how Ministers should account, and be held to account, by Parliament".
I very much welcome the clarity of that statement. Yet since 1st May of this year we have seen an enormous number of announcements given to the press rather than to Parliament. To some extent that must always happen in any government. But these are major announcements from a Government who always pledged themselves in Opposition to take Parliament seriously. I know how often the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, pledged himself to that aim. That is why I welcome the fact that he will reply to the debate.
Let us consider some of the examples. The change to Prime Minister's questions was announced to the press. So were the issues of the operational independence of the Bank of England, the Joint Cabinet Committees with the Liberal Democrats, the changes to the contract for the millennium dome project, new guidelines on arms sales, changes to immigration rules, and the now infamous case of the briefings on new policy positions on the single currency. I wonder whether the noble Lord who will reply thinks that these first few months of Government have been a success.
As my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy pointed out, the Prime Minister draws specific attention to paragraph 1 of the code, which inter alia states:
"They"—
that is Ministers—
"must not ask civil servants to act in any way which would conflict with the Civil Service Code".
A number of noble Lords raised the issue as regards Jonathan Haslam. It was reported on 17th October that Jonathan Haslam, the senior information officer of the DEE resigned when Mr. Stephen Byers, the Minister in that department, tried to force him to write a press release that explicitly criticised the previous government. Can the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, confirm or deny this report? If it is true, will disciplinary action be taken against the Minister concerned, or has it already been taken? There is a serious charge attached to this. If the code is to be taken seriously by Ministers, the Prime Minister's office must have some form of retribution; or is the code just regarded as pious words?
Since 1st May, seven chief information officers have been removed. They are going at the rate of one every three-and-a-half weeks—about the survival period of a
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subaltern on the Somme in the First World War. How many more does the noble Lord expect to lose between now and Christmas?
In paragraph 48, the new Ministerial Code explicitly increases the number of special advisers, allowing every Cabinet Minister a quota of two publicly financed advisers. My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned this point. I understand that even in the House of Lords we have two special advisers when one sufficed before. Their numbers far exceed those under any previous government. It is an embarras de richesses, or, in the light of recent events, perhaps it is just an embarrass.
I turn now to paragraph 88, about which many noble Lords have spoken at length. I agree with my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy and others that this paragraph is the most significant change that has taken place in this new ministerial code. It is a most extraordinary paragraph. I did not entirely agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank. Yes, of course all Government Ministers need to ask permission when they go on a national medium such as the "Today" programme, the "World at One" or "Newsnight". But I am not sure that that is what the paragraph deals with. The last sentence states:
"Each Department should keep a record of media contacts by both Ministers and officials".
That places the responsibility not just on the Minister but on the Private Office within the department itself.
The new paragraph states:
"All major interviews and media appearances, both print and broadcast, should be agreed with the No. 10 Press Office before any commitments are entered into".
I believe that this is evidence of the desire of the Prime Minister and his close coterie to control every minuscule aspect of government. It means that everything that is said or done by Ministers can be laid at the door of the Prime Minister. There is no air raid shelter for him when the flak begins to fly. I believe that he will regret many aspects of paragraph 88.
I return to a subject that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, knows well: the debacle that we saw over the policy on EMU. Perhaps I may ask him to elucidate as to who said what to whom. In the spirit of the Prime Minister's statement in the foreword to the code that,
"openness is a vital ingredient of good, accountable Government",
will he agree to have published the media contacts of Treasury officials and Ministers in the past month; and most particularly in the 48 hours before the infamous Financial Times report disclosing the Government's positive stance on EMU?
The paragraph also demands that Ministers should clear all their speeches with Number 10. Yet I know that during the Summer Recess the Foreign Secretary made a speech to the Trades Union Conference where he announced that reforms would be made to this House and that a Bill would be brought forward in the next Queen's Speech, in the autumn of 1998. Given that I assume the Foreign Secretary cleared that with the Prime Minister's Office, will the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, now confirm whether that is to

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happen? If the Foreign Secretary, as subsequent press briefings seemed to indicate, has gone beyond his brief, was he disciplined; and if so, how?
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, will resist the temptation to lay all the blame on the previous government. We are very proud of our record on openness. It was the former Prime Minister himself who first published our own version of Questions of Procedure for Ministers.
Already this Government have shown that there is much to be worried about. But anybody who is interested in Parliament and the way it operates will be interested to read this debate. It is one that I have very much enjoyed. I have taken up too much of your Lordships' time and I look forward to listening to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh.
7.21 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, let me agree wholeheartedly with what the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has just said. I very much enjoyed the debate. It has quite properly ranged more widely than the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and is all the better for that. I have no difficulty in answering in a few minutes the literal Question that he asked about the nature of the changes and the reasons for them. I hope that I shall have time to go rather wider and deal with the substantive issues raised by noble Lords. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell. I recognise his peculiarly lengthy qualifications for introducing such a debate. The House is grateful to him.
I begin with an apology, for which I shall no doubt get into trouble. I believe it was a mistake for the new ministerial code to be published on 31st July. I am sure the reason for that was that the Prime Minister was determined that it should go out before Parliament went into Recess. I am sure that the reason was utterly practical, in that the production and drafting had not been completed until the last minute. However, we ought to have done better. I hope that we will do better. I accept the criticism made, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, on that point—although I have to say to the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, who referred to paragraph 27, that the paragraph is preceded by the phrase,
"when Parliament is in Session",
which qualifies the other quotations that he made.
Having apologised for the timing of the document, I have no apologies to make for the document itself and for the changes that have been made to the previous Questions of Procedure for Ministers. The code has been expanded to take account of the recommendations of the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life. It is included in the wording of the resolution on ministerial accountability—I shall return to this matter when referring to the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Northesk—adopted by the House of Commons on 19th March 1997—in other words, just before Parliament was dissolved.
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The Government are determined that Ministers will accept their proper measure of responsibility for their conduct and for the actions and conduct of their department. That is in line with our manifesto commitment to,
"review Ministerial accountability so as to remove recent abuses".
We have amended the rules on ministerial appointments to non-departmental public bodies to reflect the report by the Nolan Committee and the guidance given by the Commission of Public Appointments under Sir Len Peach. As was mentioned, we have highlighted the role of accounting officers in ensuring the efficient and effective use of public resources in departments. We have clarified the rules on civil servants attending party political events: basically, they do not, and should not. We have greatly clarified the guidance provided on Ministers' private interests to show how a conflict of interest can arise and steps that can be taken to avoid a conflict. We have also published separate guidance on the work of the Government Information Service. It is the first time that any government have had a single, self-standing note covering the entire range of the Government Information Service's work.
I have made a list of all the amendments made. I should very much have wished to have time to refer to all of them. However, in those few minutes I have given enough of a summary of the significant changes that have taken place. I emphasise that in other respects the ministerial code, despite a change of name, isidentical with Questions of Procedure for Ministers, which was rightly and properly published by John Major when he was Prime Minister in May 1992. I pay tribute to him for doing that for the first time.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, seemed to think that the Prime Minister was claiming credit for the first publication of the code. He was not doing that. He was introducing the next section referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, about extending openness further through a freedom of information Act. If I may deal with the noble Lord's question out of turn, the freedom of information Act is not in this Queen's Speech; it will be in the next Queen's Speech. We have made that clear. There will be a White Paper at the turn of the year and a draft Bill thereafter, so that the Bill can be considered fully and properly by Parliament.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, prefers the word "spidermen" to "spin doctors". I rather agree with him. However, I do not think that it will catch on. We had better recognise that we are stuck with "spin doctors". The noble Lord is right, as is the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, to say that it would be dangerous, and probably short-lived, were we to continue to think of importing into government Labour Party practice in Opposition. I happen to think that our publicity machine in Opposition was brilliant. But I recognise that it is not the same as the responsibilities of an information machine when in government. I am sure that, as time goes on, the responsibilities of government will stop whomsoever said that we should continue with our previous practices.

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We were told by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, that there is a general unease in the Government Information Service. I have met quite a number of members of the Government Information Service and I do not find that unease. I do not find any feeling that there is politicisation of the Government Information Service—simply that there is a better definition of its role. As the ministerial code and the guidance makes clear, there are a number of matters which government information officers cannot do and which political information officers must do. That is what has happened in the first six months as a result of these publications.
I was asked specifically about a number of resignations from the Government Information Service. As I said before, these issues are largely between the individuals and their departments and it would be improper for me to comment. I would just say, on a question of fact, that Jonathan Haslam, the Department for Education information officer, had indicated his intention to move before there was any question of a possible dispute with Stephen Byers.
I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, about numbers. I confirm that there are now 16 full-time and two part-time advisers in No. 10, making a total of 54 full-time and eight part-time advisers.
The noble Lord asked me about donations to charities. I take his point, but some people gain treasure in heaven by giving to charities. If they are accepting too much payment and giving it to charities, maybe they are doing themselves some good as well—and perhaps it is a good idea to restrain it.
The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, referred to his difficulties in teaching about government when governments are so secretive, and I certainly understand that. But I do not think that he has a point when he criticises the fact that there are specific responsibilities for junior Ministers and points out that the permanent secretary is not responsible to junior Ministers. We know from statements of ministerial responsibility, not just from this Government but from the government who preceded us, that the Secretary of State is responsible overall for the work of a department. I do not believe that that is the problem. I say that also to the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, who reminds me of Morrison's book Government and Parliament, which was a textbook for me in my time. I accept that it is not merely an academic question but also a practical one. I think it is efficient to have a division of responsibility between junior Ministers and not to treat them as dogsbodies.
The noble Earl, Lord Northesk, concentrated his criticism on paragraph 1 of the code. The elements of that paragraph which he criticised so forcefully are not those of the Government but of a Resolution of the House of Commons of 19th March 1997 in the last week of the previous government. That applies to subparagraphs (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) of paragraph 1 of the code, which were the ones to which he took especial objection. They were the result of a resolution of the House of Commons in the time of his government—not ours.
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I was asked about the primacy of the House of Commons Resolution on accountability. I confirm that it is in force and current unless and until it is amended.
I do not take too seriously suggestions that Ministers are not allowed to sneeze, and I do not worry about the metaphor. Certainly most of us have not had any difficulty in expressing ourselves in public and in private in the last six months.
I was interested in the discussion about the role of special advisers and the comment on the model contract for them. I would remind your Lordships that the model contract for special advisers insists that they are servants of the Crown and bound by the Civil Service Code. The Civil Service Code refers to integrity, honesty and objectivity. It is our intention that the Civil Service Code shall, for the first time, be made statutory.
When noble Lords opposite criticise the model contract, they ought to remember that in the past special advisers were employed on a letter of appointment, which was not made public. Surely there is a gain in open government in that respect if no other.
I turn to the important point made by noble Lords about paragraph 88 and relationships with the press. There were no other recent Ministers, other than the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who abstained from comment on this to confirm or otherwise what the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, said: that these provisions in paragraph 88 are not new but have happened all the time, as the noble Lord graphically explained. These provisions refer to major interviews. Not all interviews and media appearances should be agreed with the Number 10 press office. That has always been the case, under Conservative and Labour Governments. The purpose is to secure collective responsibility, which is why, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, I am certainly not going to publish the list of Treasury contacts with the press. That is not the purpose. And I am certainly not going to comment on the Foreign Secretary's speech to the Trades Union Congress. The purpose of this and the detail of it have been well precedented in previous governments, Labour and Conservative, as we have been reminded, and we have no reason to be in any way apologetic about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, did not like Ministers saying "I". I rather agree with him; I think it is dangerous. I find myself tempted to say "I" when I agree with what I am saying and "we" when I do not. I think I ought not to be tempted in that way.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, asked me whether Ministers sign to indicate that they have read the code. No, they do not, and they did not do so previously. The noble Lord did not do so previously and he knew perfectly well the answer to that question.
On the question of the ultimate responsibility of the Prime Minister, of course the noble Lord is right, and that is exactly the way it should be.
I have run out of time. I agree with all noble Lords who say that substance is more important than presentation. If we have advanced towards a common understanding of that, then the debate has been worthwhile.
House adjourned at twenty-three minutes before eight o'clock.