Lords Sitting of 3 December 1998

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

Civil Servants: Working Time Directive
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What are the circumstances in which civil servants in press and private offices can be exempted from the rules governing the 48-hour working week.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, civil servants in the press and private offices, like any other worker, can choose to work more than an average of 48 hours a week where they have agreed to do so voluntarily. As with any other worker, they can change their mind subsequently at any time.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. Is the report in the press correct that civil servants in these appointments have individually to sign agreements that they are not affected by the 48-hour rule? If so, will share fishermen be able to do the same? They still face an EU working directive which threatens seriously to damage their livelihood.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the noble Lord's first question is not quite right. It is not that they sign that they are not affected. They sign that they voluntarily agree to work more than 48 hours a week on average. As regards share fishermen, we and the European Commission understand the difficulty because they are not paid in the same way as anyone else. It has proved impossible, for example, to use the working time directive to give them four weeks' paid holiday. But the Commission is seeking to reduce the number of exclusions from the directive. It will have to do so with our agreement; and our agreement will come only after detailed consultation with the fishing industry.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I am sympathetic to the situation of the civil servants? I was assigned by the Foreign Office to work for two years for the Prime Minister, then Mr. Churchill. The number of staff at Number 10 and the Cabinet Office was very small compared with today. Incidentally, I was succeeded in that position by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Tanworth, whom I am glad to see in his place. I should add that I also worked very long hours for Mr. Ernest Bevin and other Labour Foreign Office Ministers but I was happy to do so.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I should be sad to think that the noble Lord worked harder for Labour Ministers than for Conservative Ministers. He may like to know that the detailed inquiries we have
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been able to make indicate that workers in press offices do not normally work longer than 48 hours. It is not a problem for them. Duty press officers are on for a limited part of the time. There is a problem in the DTI where private office staff work on average 40 hours a week. That is being addressed, as indeed it is being addressed for the staff of your Lordships' House.
Lord Ewing of Kirkford: My Lords, were the press officers working longer hours yesterday?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I thought it was Conservative spin doctors and control freaks who were working overtime yesterday.

Malaysia
3.4 p.m.
Lord Moynihan Lord Moynihan asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their current assessment of relations between the United Kingdom and Malaysia.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean): My Lords, Malaysia is an important economic partner for the United Kingdom, with strong historical links and shared membership of the Commonwealth. But this has not inhibited us from instituting a frank dialogue on human rights issues, including the treatment of Anwar Ibrahim.
Lord Moynihan: My Lords, what specific action have the Government taken to satisfy themselves that in the case of the former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Anwar Ibrahim, international standards for fair trial, including the presumption of innocence of the accused, are being observed, that the Malaysian law is being applied all the time in accordance with the basic human rights principles, and that the law is not being misused to detain or imprison him solely for the non-violent expression of his political views?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have been following the case closely. We have taken every opportunity to raise our concerns bilaterally. The Secretary of State raised the case with the Malaysian Prime Minister on 21st September, and with the Malaysian Foreign Minister on 24th September. We have also raised our concerns through our High Commission in Kuala Lumpur. Moreover, the presidency issued a declaration on 2nd October expressing deep concern about the reports of physical mistreatment of Anwar Ibrahim and calling on the Malaysian authorities to guarantee the rule of law and to respect human rights.
The latest EU statement was only last week on 27th November. That expressed concern that the Malaysian authorities still have not published the results

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of the investigation. The EU urged them to do so. There has also been an observer from the Bar Council, Mr. Charles Flint, QC.
Lord Shore of Stepney: My Lords, the Minister's action will certainly win the approval of this House. Does my noble friend think that it might be helpful to engage the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Secretary in making, if possible, similar representations, in particular now that, since the Harare Declaration, the Commonwealth is committed to democracy and human rights?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the members of the Commonwealth are expected to adhere to the principles of the Harare Declaration, as my noble friend indicates. But it is for the Commonwealth Heads of Government to set that agenda. This was discussed by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group only last month. I regret to say that there was no consensus at that meeting. The next Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is in November 1999. That will be an opportunity to discuss the issue if the situation in Malaysia has not improved in the intervening months.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, will the Government also take an active interest in the case of Mr. Param Cumaraswamy, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of the judiciary, who is being sued for libel in the courts of Malaysia in circumstances which certainly look as though they are intended to silence him?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the EU has raised our concern about Mr. Cumaraswamy's case relating to his right of immunity as a UN rapporteur, as the noble Lord indicates. We have raised those concerns with the Government of Malaysia. The UK also made a statement on Mr. Cumaraswamy's case at the UN, expressing regret that the Government of Malaysia had taken such actions. Malaysians can be in no doubt that problems of this kind do not help their international reputation.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, I think that we would all agree that it is right that the Government and the European Union should take actions in any way they can in support of democracy and human rights in Malaysia. Will the Minister confirm that it would be the view of the British Government that no third country could exert extra-territorial criminal jurisdiction over actions which are committed in Malaysia?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, extra-territorial jurisdictions vary enormously from country to country and I am sure the noble Lord will understand why, at the moment, it would be improper for me to go any further on that issue
Lord Renton of Mount Harry: My Lords, will the noble Baroness take into account a rather different side of the coin? There are many thousands of Malaysian
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students in this country who are already in considerable difficulties because of the great fall in the value of their local currency against sterling in recent months. Many of those students are here under the aegis of the British Council, of whose board I am a member. Many of them will become extremely important citizens in Malaysia in the future. Will the Minister take all possible action to ensure that the natural outcry against Malaysia for its human rights abuses does not impinge on the future of those students in this country? Will she ensure that everything possible is done to help them financially?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right. Britain and Malaysia co-operate extremely closely in the field of education. The largest overseas student contingent in the United Kingdom is Malaysian. We have seen as many as 20,000 students in the United Kingdom at any one time. It is enormously important that relationships for the future are properly fostered and nurtured in the way that the noble Lord suggests.
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, does the Minister have any information about the frigates under construction in the Yarrow yard, which I understand should have been delivered to the Malaysian Navy in 1996?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, yes. GEC Yarrows signed a contract in 1992 to deliver two frigates to the Royal Malaysian Navy, as the noble Lord suggests, in 1996. Sea acceptance tests are currently under way and we hope that the ships will be delivered in mid-1999.

Turkey: Political Detainees
3.11 p.m.
Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their attitude to the continued detention of Leyla Zana and other DEP members of the Turkish parliament in the light of decisions of the European Commission and Court of Human Rights that the proceedings leading up to their detention were in breach of the European convention.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, as I have indicated to the House on previous occasions, we regard the prosecution of democratically elected politicians for the non-violent expression of their views as wrong. In the case of Ms Zana and the other former Democracy Party (DEP) members of the Turkish parliament, we support the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in November 1997 that the original detention of the MPs was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
We welcome the Turkish Government's acknowledgement of the court's judgment and the payment of compensation awarded to the defendants.

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We understand that a number of other aspects of the case of the former DEP MPs are still before the court, and we continue to monitor all developments closely.
Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. However, I remind her that Leyla Zana's sentence has been extended for no reason other than that she wrote a letter on her opinion of what was happening to her in jail. Can we not remind the Turkish government, if they really believe in human rights, that they must release elected members of parliament if Turkey ever hopes to become part of the European Union?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, the issue of human rights and civil liberties in Turkey is one which Her Majesty's Government and our colleagues in the EU are pursuing with the Turkish government as part of their application. What has happened to Ms Zana is extremely regrettable. I have taken note of the points which the noble Lord has made. In my initial Answer, I hope that I made the Government's position very clear on the issue of detaining MPs for the non-violent expression of their beliefs.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, does the noble Baroness have any information as to whether or not Mr. Murat Bozlak and more than 250 leading members of the HADEP party, who were recently arrested, have been released or charged?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, we have been extremely concerned about the continuing reports of the raids on the HADEP offices and the detention of its officials. Our ambassador in Turkey has raised with the Prime Minister's office in Turkey as recently as 24th November the reports of 3,000 HADEP members and officials being detained. I hope it is clear that we strongly condemn the systematic attacks on a legal and democratic party. We are extremely concerned about the news of the detention of Murat Bozlak. We continue to reinforce to the Turks that they will be judged internationally by their treatment of legal and democratic parties.
Lord Moynihan: My Lords, does the Minister agree with the United States' view that the European Union's failure to put Turkey on the same basis as the other 11 aspirant countries for EC membership was a mistake?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I do not suppose that the noble Lord will be surprised to learn that, no, Her Majesty's Government do not agree with the United States view on that. The Government believe that the action which was taken in relation to Turkey was the right action. We were able to go forward at Cardiff in a very constructive way. The Government, both bilaterally and through the EU, have offered Turkey considerable help on progressing its application to join the EU.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, does the Minister agree that conditions for joining the European
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Community which apply to Turkey are exactly the same as those which apply to all other applicants to the European Union?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I can confirm that that is the position. The conditions are the same for all applicants.
Lord Rea: My Lords, would it not be better for the European Union to present its case to Turkey more in terms of carrots than sticks; in other words, to offer conditional advantages to Turkey if only it accelerates its improvement in relation to human rights?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I urge my noble friend Lord Rea to read the statements coming from the Cardiff European Council, which gave us a good basis on which to take forward relations with Turkey. The Council endorsed the European strategy for Turkey; agreed annual reports on Turkey's progress towards a readiness for EU membership; and noted the Commission's intention to bring forward new proposals for funding.
There has been good progress on the European strategy. It aims to develop relations with Turkey across the board as well as building on the customs union. The Commission made a very useful first visit to Ankara in September to discuss the details of that strategy. Therefore, I believe that the policy is one of carrots. There may be a few sticks but there are many carrots too.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, now that the Minister has had time to think again, does she know whether the Government believe that any third countries have extra-territorial criminal jurisdiction over Turkey?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I do not know whether any countries have extra-territorial jurisdiction over Turkey. If the noble Lord would like me to research that interesting question, I shall of course do so and write to him.

Turkey: Kurdish Conflict
3.17 p.m.
Lord Rea Lord Rea asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will join the Italian Government in using the request of the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, for political asylum as an opportunity, under United Nations or pan-European auspices, to start negotiating an end to the conflict in south eastern Turkey.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the Government support the Italian Government's determination to fully implement its laws and treaty obligations in the case of the leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), Abdullah Ocalan. The question of political asylum is a decision for the Italian Government. We have made clear that we regard the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

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We are aware that, on 27th November, Chancellor Schröder and Prime Minister D'Alema discussed the possibility of an international conference on the Kurds. Mr. D'Alema also raised this issue with my right honourable friend the Prime Minister during their talks in London on 30th November. We do not judge that there is, at present, any scope for a multilateral negotiating process to address this issue.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. It perhaps gives some hope that we may take a positive line on this. Is the Minister aware that Ocalan, like many others who have been branded terrorists, is now genuinely interested in open-ended talks aimed at ending the conflict in south east Turkey? That is a conflict which has been many times more destructive than that in Kosovo, and that conflict is one which interests both Europe and the United States.
Is she further aware—the Minister acknowledged it in her Answer—that several other countries in Europe feel that Ocalan's presence should be used to set up a procedure not only to examine any charges against him but also to examine critically the whole question of the origins of and possible solutions to the conflict in south east Turkey through, perhaps, the OSCE, the Council of Europe or even the United Nations?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I urge my noble friend Lord Rea to be cautious on this issue. Mr. Ocalan is the leader of a brutal terrorist group which was responsible for the death and injury of British citizens and for thousands of deaths within the Turkish and Kurdish communities in Turkey. My noble friend says that perhaps Mr. Ocalan has changed his mind about the use of violence. However, we are not convinced by the PKK's recent announcement of a cease-fire. There have been numerous such announcements in the past and none has been sustained.
We note that there was a suicide bombing incident in south east Turkey on 17th November in which a number of civilians were injured, and another suicide attack in Diyarbakir on 1st December. It is proper and right that I should draw your Lordships' attention to the claims of the PKK in the past few days that they shot down a Turkish military helicopter in south east Turkey. Neither the suicide bombings nor the shooting down of the helicopter seem consistent, in our view, with the claims that the PKK has renounced violence.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that, three times over, the PKK has offered cease-fires which were rejected with scorn by the Turkish Government? Is it not true also that, instead of demanding a separate Kurdish state, it is now prepared to settle for autonomy? Is not that a great step forward and an indication that there are possibilities for a negotiated settlement?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, it is important that those who say they renounce violence demonstrate that what they are saying can be relied upon. The incidents which I detailed to your Lordships,
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three of which have happened in the past two weeks, indicate that it is unlikely that the Turkish Government will want to have those sorts of discussions with the PKK.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the conflict with the PKK has led to an overshadowing of the plight of other minorities in south east Turkey, such as the Chaldeans and the Syriacs? They have seen their numbers reduced from 30,000 to around 3,000 and their monasteries and villages systemically destroyed. Will the Minister undertake to instruct our officials in Turkey to continue to watch the violations of religious and political liberties that take place in Turkey and to raise those matters on a bilateral basis with the Turkish Government?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, we already raise those issues with the Turkish Government on a frequent basis. I raised those issues when I was in Ankara a few months ago. The conflict with the PKK has a camouflaging effect on other difficult situations regarding minorities in Turkey. But I am happy to assure the noble Lord that I shall ask officials to continue to be as vigilant in the future as I know they have been in the past about violations of human rights.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, does the Minister accept that the presence of 3 million people of Turkish birth or descent within the European Union, a substantial minority of whom are Kurds, means that the European Union is necessarily involved in that internal conflict? Does she accept also that the presence of a Turkish minority in Britain, as well as a number of Kurds and the one Kurdish language television station currently broadcasting, means that the British Government must play some role in this delicate situation?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, used the word "involved". We have a clear interest in what is happening in Turkey. It could not be said constitutionally that we are involved, but Her Majesty's Government have dealt with a number of these issues with our colleagues in Turkey and are also discussing the issue relating to MED TV, to which the noble Lord referred.
Lord Moynihan: My Lords, I thank the Minister warmly for the many answers she has given today. But perhaps she can help me with one final question. Following Italy's refusal to grant Turkey's request for the extradition of Abdullah Ocalan on the specific grounds that Italy's constitution does not allow extradition to countries with capital punishment, what is the Government's policy on such extradition?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord warmly for his questions and perhaps I may say how delightful it is to see him in his place. Each of these cases, as I am sure the noble Lord will appreciate, must be dealt with on its merits. Her

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Majesty's Government make their view on capital punishment clear to the countries with whom we are good friends as well as to countries where we perhaps have marginally less cordial relations. However, I urge the noble Lord to look at each case as it arises, as Her Majesty's Government will be doing.
Lord Kilbracken: My Lords, the noble Baroness twice described the PKK as a terrorist organisation. It cannot be denied that it has been guilty of terrorist acts, but do not those acts pale into insignificance compared to the terrorist acts committed by the Turkish army in south east Turkey, which included the destruction of 2,700 Kurdish villages?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I hope I made clear to your Lordships' House that Her Majesty's Government take a serious view about infringement of human rights in Turkey and that we raise those issues with the government of Turkey when we can. We are committed to trying to work with Turkey to overcome some of these problems. However, I ask the noble Lord not to allow himself to put on one side the dreadful crimes of which the PKK has undoubtedly been guilty, including kidnapping, murder, threats, intimidation, extortion and racketeering. The PKK has been guilty of raids on schools, and some of its activities have directly resulted in the deaths of British citizens. We should not allow ourselves to become blinded to that point.
Lord Rea: My Lords, perhaps I may ask my noble friend one final question. With regard to the breaking of the cease-fire, when one declares such a cease-fire but is then attacked by a helicopter gunship, what does one do?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, the noble Lord's question begs the question of the exact circumstances in which that incident took place. But he must ask himself what an organisation is doing in declaring a cease-fire and then engaging in suicide bombings, two of which happened in the past week.

Viscount Cranborne: Tributes
3.27 p.m.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Jay of Paddington): My Lords, perhaps the House will allow me to rise briefly to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to his new position as Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition. I am sure that I offer him this welcome on behalf of the whole House.
As Leader of the House, I am looking forward to working with the noble Lord. Since I became Leader a short time ago we have had extremely personal relations—
Noble Lords: Oh!
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I am sorry I allowed that to slip out. The noble Lord and I have
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had very good personal relations across the House on a number of professional and business matters and I am sure that they will continue. I also take this opportunity to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Henley, to his new position as the Opposition Chief Whip. I know that the Government Chief Whip will be looking forward to working with him. I am sorry to see that the noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, is not in his place, but I am sure that we shall all benefit from his forensic and political skills in his new role as Deputy Leader of the Opposition.
On this side of the House, we have tried to keep up with the changes and movement which have taken place on the Opposition Front Bench in the past few hours, but among those resignations which I understand have occurred is that of the Deputy Leader, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie. We were sorry to hear that. Again, I had good personal contact with him both inside and outside the House, and we wish the noble and learned Lord well.
We were all saddened by the circumstances in which these changes occurred and I should like to pay a warm tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, I was genuinely deeply saddened by the noble Viscount's resignation yesterday. In my position as a relatively new Leader of your Lordships' House, he was always extraordinarily kind and helpful to me and offered me valuable advice. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that I was brought up to believe, and indeed learnt in my professional life, that one can often disagree fairly firmly with other people about matters of policy and so forth and yet retain cordial and friendly relationships with them. For my part, I have to say that that was my experience of my dealings and my professional conversations with the noble Viscount. I am very sorry that those will no longer take place in the way that they did.
No one in your Lordships' House can underestimate or undervalue the role that the noble Viscount played both as Leader of the House and, subsequently, as Leader of the Opposition, especially in understanding and preserving the very important role that he understood this House to have within the constitution. It is important to recognise that his authority and the arguments that he put forward on a number of occasions in that context have been very powerful. Personally, I expect that we shall see those continued from his other position now on the Back Benches. I am sure that we shall value the noble Viscount's authoritative contributions to those discussions which we shall have on matters affecting your Lordships' House, as well as on other issues.
Although I was aware that the noble Viscount would not be in his place this afternoon, I did not want this occasion to pass without, in a sense, being able to convey my personal thanks for the role that he played in my understanding of the role of Leader of your Lordships'

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House and, indeed, for the understanding that I think he brought to all our discussions about the constitutional importance and the political role of this House.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
3.30 p.m.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: My Lords, perhaps I may associate those of us on these Benches with all the sentiments expressed by the noble Baroness the Leader of the House in her elegant remarks. I should like to refer only—and I hope that this will not be misunderstood—to the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne. Whether he is a loss to his party is a matter for it to decide. However, all of us who have had experience of him in this House believe that he will be a loss to your Lordships' House in the role that he performed both as Leader of the House and thereafter in accomplishing the very difficult transition from government to opposition after 18 years. He managed that with very considerable skill and I do not believe that that should be forgotten by all those who were the beneficiaries of it.
Perhaps I may add the following without perhaps introducing any further note into our remarks. When the Labour Party was in opposition, I understand that it elected its leader in this House. Indeed, I and my predecessors were elected by my colleagues here. If the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, wants to remove the possibility of sacking, I recommend that, while he retains the confidence of his own troops, he should get elected by them very quickly.
Lord Weatherill: My Lords, from the Cross-Benches perhaps I may reinforce the tributes that have been paid today to the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne. In all our dealings with him, we have always found him to be wholly reliable, honourable and indeed very courteous. In particular, I wish to pay a special tribute to him for his assistance in facilitating the agreement with the Government which resulted in the announcement made yesterday by my noble friends Lord Carnarvon, Lord Marsh and myself about the interim arrangements for your Lordships' House between the government Bill for reform of this House and the second stage. Without the noble Viscount's wise guidance and advice and indeed his negotiating skills, I have to say that that agreement would not have been possible. We look forward to having the same good relations with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, as we had with his predecessor.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln: My Lords, from the Bishops' Benches perhaps I may add our own appreciation of the work of the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne. A bishop of Lincoln knows quite a bit about local difficulties.
Noble Lords: Oh!
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln: I hope, my Lords, that that makes him more sensitive to the difficulties of the Opposition. However, we thank the noble Viscount for his courtesy and kindness to us. Those of us who flit in and
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out of the House, rather more perhaps than Members on other Benches, do appreciate the kindness and courtesy which all Leaders and Officers of the House show to us. We assure the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, of our concern and our prayers for him. We wish him well in the onerous task that he faces.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, perhaps I may thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for her very kind and generous words of welcome which were given in her customarily charming way. I have to say that "customary charm" has become a little hit of a Sicilian cliché. but I very much adhere to the sentiments behind it. I shall have to think of a new way of describing my warm relationship with the noble Baroness, other than simply referring to "personal relations".
On behalf of my noble friend the Chief Whip and the new Deputy Leader of the Opposition, my noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, perhaps I may thank the noble Baroness for her expressions of good will. Since the noble Baroness became Leader of the House, the House of Lords has rarely been off the front pages of newspapers. However, I know that that has not always been her fault.
I do not wish to do this on behalf of my noble friend Lord Cranborne, but, if he were present, I know that he would thank the noble Baroness very much for what she said and indeed that he would thank other noble Lords for what they have said about his role in this House both as Leader of the House when we were in government and through the transitional phase when we became the Opposition. As his Chief Whip during that period, I learnt a great deal, not just about the management of this House but also about various political skills. I hope that I shall be able to put those skills to some use in the months ahead. It is a source of very great personal regret to me that my noble friend has left the Opposition Front Bench, but I wholly understand the reasons why this has happened.
I know that this House can only manage its business with the co-operation and agreement of all sides of the House. As Leader of the Opposition, I wish to follow the very clear example that has been set not just by my predecessor but also by the noble Baroness's predecessors when the Labour Party was in opposition to try to effect the very best management of business in this House. However, I can assure the noble Baroness that I shall not be a soft touch. We have taken some hard blows over the course of the past 24 hours. But, after we have retired briefly to lick our wounds, we shall return Hydra-like to be as effective and thorough in opposition as we always have been.

Business
3.38 p.m.
Lord Carter: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend Lady Blackstone will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement which is being made in another place on teachers: rewarding and restructuring.
Lord Carter: My Lords, it may be of convenience to your Lordships if I say a few words about the Christmas

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Recess. Subject to the progress of business, it is expected that the House will rise for the Christmas Recess on Thursday 17th December. We expect that the House will sit at 11 a.m. on that day. It is also expected that the House will return on Thursday 7th January—again, subject to the progress of business. I can certainly confirm that the House will not return before that day. Indeed, rumours which have appeared in press reports stating that the House will sit on Boxing Day are completely untrue, not least because Southampton will be playing Chelsea on that day and this Chief Whip fully intends to be there.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, can the noble Lord say why now is not "a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m." for us to deal with the Statement? Alternatively, if it is not, can the noble Lord say whether immediately after the Bills have been introduced would be a convenient moment for the Statement, rather than interrupting the subsequent debate?
Lord Carter: My Lords, I am not sure whether the Statement has yet been dealt with in the other place. In the normal course of events, the timing for the taking of the Statement is agreed between the usual channels for the convenience of all the Peers involved.

Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Irvine of Lairg): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision for the enforcement of contractual terms by third parties. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Trustee Delegation Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the law relating to the delegation of trustees' functions by power of attorney and the exercise of such functions by the donee of a power of attorney; and to make provision about the authority of the donee of a power of attorney to act in relation to land. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Bill [H.L.]
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Williams of Mostyn): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to provide for the referral of offenders under 18 to youth offender panels; to make provision in connection with the giving of evidence or information for the
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purposes of criminal proceedings; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Disability Rights Commission Bill [H.L.]
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Baroness Blackstone): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to establish a Disability Rights Commission and make provision as to its functions; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Baroness Blackstone.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

European Parliamentary Elections Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Parliamentary Privilege: Joint Committee
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Boston of Faversham): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Commons message of Monday last be now considered and that a Select Committee of six Lords be appointed to join with the Committee appointed by the Commons, as the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, to review parliamentary privilege and make recommendations there on;
That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the Committee:

L. Archer of Sandwell,

L. Mayhew of Twysden,

L. Merlyn-Rees,

L. Nicholls of Birkenhead,

L. Waddington,

L. Wigoder;

That the Committee have power to agree with the Commons in the appointment of a Chairman;
That the Committee have leave to report from time to time;
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the proceedings of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in the last Session of Parliament be referred to the Committee;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee from time to time shall, if the

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Committee think fit, be printed and delivered out; and
That the Attorney-General, the Lord Advocate, the Solicitor-General and the Solicitor-General for Scotland. being Members of either House, may attend the Committee, may take part in deliberations, may receive Committee papers and may give such other assistance to the Committee as may be appropriate, but shall not vote or make any Motion or move any amendment or be counted in the quorum.— (The Chairman of Committees.)
Lord Renton: My Lords, I welcome the appointment of a joint committee of both Houses to consider parliamentary privilege. Will the noble Lord do everything that he can to increase the number of such joint committees so that Members of another place may benefit from the experience, expertise and wisdom of Members of your Lordships' House?
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I might be misreading the Motion of the noble Lord, the Chairman of Committees, but in relation to the last paragraph I see that among those who will be entitled to attend the committee and take part in its deliberations are the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General for Scotland. Once the Scottish Parliament is up and running and those two officers of state will not be Members of either House but Members of the Scottish Parliament, what will happen to Scottish interests in relation to parliamentary privilege and that committee?
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, in answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Renton, I am sure that he will appreciate that my own powers in those matters are strictly limited. Any consideration of the points that he has raised will be for at least two other committees of your Lordships' House, namely the Liaison Committee and the Procedure Committee. I shall ensure that what the noble Lord has said will be taken into account by any relevant committees at the appropriate time.
As to the point raised by the noble Baroness, those matters will be for the Scottish Parliament once it is set up. There is nothing I can usefully add to that today.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Delegated Powers and Deregulation>: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to report whether the provisions of any Bill inappropriately delegate legislative power; to report on documents laid before Parliament under Section 3(3) of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 and on draft orders laid under Section 1(4) of that Act; and to perform, in respect of such documents and orders, the functions performed in respect of other instruments by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments;
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That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the Committee:

L. Alexander of Weedon (Chairman),

L. Ampthill,

L. Archer of Sandwell,

L. Dahrendorf,

L. Dean of Harptree,

L. Goodhart,

L. Mayhew of Twysden,

L. Merlyn-Rees,

L. Prys-Davies,

L. Waddington.

That the Committee have power to appoint sub-committees;
That the Committee and any sub-committee have power to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom;
That the Committee have power to co-opt any Lord for the purpose of serving on the Committee or a sub-committee;
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee or any sub-committee shall, if the Committee think fit, be printed and delivered out;
That the Committee do meet on Wednesday 9th December at half- past ten o'clock.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
Lord Elton: My Lords, I apologise for giving very short notice of my question to the noble Lord. It has caught my eye that this committee is to have power to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom, a facility which was never required when I was a member of it. I wonder whether this signifies a widening of its remit or whether there is some other reason why it should wish to vacate Westminster.
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for giving me notice of that question. This is not an unusual power to give to Select Committees of your Lordships' House. I am sure that he will understand that I would not wish to pre-empt any decisions which the committee might make if your Lordships approve this Motion today. I am sure that that committee will bear in mind the request of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and will furnish information about the point he has raised once it has considered it.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

European Communities: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the third Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider Community proposals, whether in draft or otherwise, to obtain all necessary information about them, and to make reports on those which, in the opinion

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of the Committee, raise important questions of policy or principle, and on other questions to which the Committee considers that the special attention of the House should be drawn;
That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be named of the Committee:

L. Berkeley,

V. Bledisloe,

L. Borrie,

V. Brookeborough,

E. Cranbrook,

L. Geddes,

L. Gisborough,

L. Goodhart,

L. Grenfell,

L. Hope of Craighead,

L. Howell of Guildford,

L. Hussey of North Bradley,

B. O'Cathain,

L. Reay,

L. Tomlinson,

L. Tordoff (Chairman),

B. Uddin,

L. Wallace of Saltaire,

L. Walpole,

L. Willoughby de Broke.

That the Committee have power to appoint sub-committees and to refer to such sub-committees any of the matters within the terms of reference of the Committee; that the Committee have power to appoint the chairmen of sub-committees, but that such sub-committees have power to appoint their own chairman for the purpose of particular inquiries; that two be the quorum of such sub-committees;
That the Committee have power to co-opt any Lord for the purpose of serving on a sub-committee;
That the Committee have leave to report from time to time;
That the Committee and any sub-committee have power to adjourn from place to place;
That the Committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the Reports of the Select Committee from time to time shall be printed, notwithstanding any adjournment of the House;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee or any sub-committee from time to time shall, if the Committee think fit, be printed and delivered out;
That the Minutes of Evidence taken before the European Communities Committee or any sub-committee in the last Session of Parliament be referred to the Committee;
That the Committee do meet on Tuesday 8th December at a quarter-past four o'clock.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I would like to put a question that I have put before to the noble Lord about appointments to this committee. I take it that the usual channels have been involved in the appointment
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of new members to this committee. I would remind the noble Lord that opposition to matters stemming from Brussels and from the Treaty of Rome do not run along party lines. Indeed, they have not done so for a number of years. Did the committee, in making these appointments, bear that fact in mind? At first sight the present composition of this committee does not reflect the opposition which runs against the Treaty of Rome in your Lordships' House.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Tordoff): My Lords, perhaps I can assist the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees in replying to that question. Subjects which come before your Lordships' committees do not divide on party lines, nor do they divide on issues of scepticism or non-scepticism. It is the function of your Lordships' committees to take evidence on matters which are brought before them and to make decisions based on that evidence. It is true to say that there are a number of members of all the sub-committees and the Select Committee who have varying degrees of scepticism or support for the European Union. On a day-to-day basis, that does not come into their decision-making processes. They present information to your Lordships' House in a purely independent-minded kind of way on the basis of evidence which is put before them. I do wish that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, would understand that. It is an answer that has been given to him many times in the past.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, perhaps I may reply to that. I have had the privilege of sitting on your Lordships' Select Committee for a number of years—and indeed one of the sub-committees—and I do not accept the interpretation that the noble Lord has put on the question that I asked.
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Tordoff, the Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees, for his intervention. It may be of interest to those of your Lordships who are comparatively new to your Lordships' House to know that he is the one person your Lordships allow me to call my noble friend. I have only one noble friend in your Lordships' House. Your Lordships may feel that that is no more than I deserve.
As to the substance of the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, I would only add to what my noble friend has said. I can confirm that the usual consultations have taken place and that the usual channels have of course conducted those consultations. I am very grateful to them—as I think your Lordships are on a variety of matters—for the work that they undertake in this respect. Different strands of opinion are from time to time taken into account in the proposals for the appointment of members to your Lordships' Select Committees. If I may say so—with the impartiality that your Lordships would expect from the holder of this office—on a day like this, on the afternoon following the night before, it is not always easy to predict the variety of ways in which your Lordships will exercise your Lordships' independence.

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It is not always possible to take into account those differences of view. I hope that what my noble friend and I have said will go at least some small way towards satisfying the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

The Public Service: Select Committee Report
3.50 p.m.
Lord Slynn of Hadley Lord Slynn of Hadley rose to move, That this House take note of the report of the Select Committee on the Public Service (HL Paper 55, Session 1997–98).
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, some of your Lordships will recall a debate in this House on 8th March 1996, which was a Friday. On that occasion the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, called for the abandonment by the Government of plans to privatise the Recruitment and Assessment Services. During the debate he stressed the fact that our Civil Service had three features. First, it was a career service whose members could give frank advice without fear that their contract would be ended or would not be renewed; secondly, it was a unified Civil Service, bound together by a common ethos by which the best talents in any department could he promoted and moved across departments. Thirdly, it was a service which was recruited through open competition by an independent body.
The noble Lord stressed that the first and second of those features had over the years been chipped away and that the third would disappear if RAS, as it became known, was privatised. He said:
"We are engaged … in an historic debate".—[Official Report, 8/3/96; col. 543.]
He was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, who criticised the breach of a long-standing tradition that changes in recruitment or structure and other reforms of the Civil Service should be made after consideration by Parliament as a whole or by an independent body, a tradition which ensured the neutrality, the independence and the integrity of the Civil Service. He called for a Select Committee to consider the proposals. That committee was set up by your Lordships' House in the following month to,
"consider the present condition and future development of the public service in Great Britain with particular regard to the effectiveness of recent and continuing changes and their impact on standards of conduct and service in the public interest".
The Liaison Committee of your Lordships' House recommended that the Select Committee should begin by reporting as a matter of urgency on the Government's plans for the future of RAS. We were urged to report before the Summer Recess, which we did on 16th July, after being told in this House by the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, that the committee had been driven at a ferocious pace. We concluded in a unanimous report that the case for privatisation was not made out and that there were positive reasons against it. We urged the Government to reconsider the matter.
The debate on our report was remarkable for a number of reasons, outstanding among which was the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, which is to be found in Hansard for 25th July 1996 (at col. 1551). The noble Baroness recognised that the Civil Service, like other large organisations, probably needs some reform, but she urged the committee to proceed with its work so that there could be a full debate in the next Session. The thrust of her speech was in the direction that we should keep the Civil Service in such shape that the young would still be able to choose the public service and its ethos, which is a noble one.
If your Lordships read literally our terms of reference, they were very wide. They were cut down by the exclusion of local government, the National Health Service and educational institutions. That still left all government departments, executive agencies, non-departmental public bodies and other agencies created by or working for the public service. To carry out such an investigation in depth would have taken a very long time and we were urged again and again to report as soon as was reasonably possible.
In those circumstances, we reached a compromise. We decided that we should begin by investigating a number of departments in depth, excluding the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and then see more briefly whether our tentative conclusions could be taken as representative of the Civil Service as a whole. It was essential to do that because there are so many differences between the departments. We were satisfied that our detailed conclusions were broadly representative.
It was necessary and useful to investigate and record briefly the changes which had occurred since the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1853 laid down the criteria to which the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, had referred in his speech. Some of these changes had occurred through reports such as the Fulton Report, the Priestley Royal Commission and the Pliatzky Report and others had developed in reaction to changes in thinking and practice in commerce and industry and against the background of extensive social and political changes.
The changes which we traced through in our report were extensive. We were satisfied that outside Parliament people were not aware of or discussed the changes taking place. We recommend for the future that proposals for structural change should be reported to Parliament and that such a report should be referred to a Select Committee of your Lordships' House, which would then say whether it was appropriate for the matter to be the subject of a debate by your Lordships.
The first significant point which struck one throughout the inquiry was that many of the traditional functions of the departments of state on the surface appeared to have been taken away from those departments. Some functions were sold off—privatised. We did not receive evidence to suggest that where that had been done it should be reversed, although we said in regard to RAS—what in my opinion should apply to other forms of privatisation—that the operations which had been sold off should be reviewed before any agreement for renewal was made.
Other functions were attributed to non-departmental public bodies, of which there are many kinds, which are more independent than the departments and, on the whole, are not staffed by civil servants but by staff employed on short-term contracts. Others were attributed to what are called executive agencies. The phrase is misleading, perhaps if only to a lawyer, since it suggests that the agencies are separate bodies acting on behalf of departments, whereas it emerged quite clearly that the agencies are not separate bodies but are units with functions inside the departments themselves. It was suggested to us that the core department should be concerned with policy. The agency was concerned with detailed administration. That distinction is not clear-cut and is unworkable. The two aspects—operations and policy—clearly overlap. Each influences the other.
We came to the conclusion that there did not appear to have been at any time a clearly defined policy as to which of these three structural changes should be adopted in any particular case. If further changes are to be made, we recommend that it should be explained fully why they are being dealt with in the particular way adopted.
It is obvious from even what I have said so far that we have moved far away from a unified service. The question was whether, as some witnesses suggested, that change had caused a harmful fragmentation of the civil service. In the end, we did not think, despite the division of functions, that that had occurred. However, we recommend that the operation of those bodies should be observed before further changes are made. In particular, we consider it essential that policy decisions should remain with the core Civil Service.
The question was whether the executive agencies had assisted the Civil Service or produced results that were disadvantageous. It seemed to us on the evidence that overall the executive agencies had performed well. That was shown to be so particularly by the Contributions and Benefit Agencies of the Department of Social Security. It is clear that there had been both for the customer and the Civil Service advantages in that change. It is important that the chief executives of agencies should be answerable to Ministers and that Ministers should ultimately be answerable to Parliament for the activities of executive agencies as well as for the core department.
Almost all witnesses attached great importance to the Civil Service ethos, integrity, loyalty to the Crown, commitment to the task and frankness—a "No, Minister" approach that everyone thought ought to be encouraged. Although employees in the private sector no doubt have those qualities, they are of particular significance in the Civil Service, where the job involves genuinely a form of service to the public. We attach the greatest importance to maintaining that ethos. A high quality Civil Service is crucial for the well-being of the state. It is no less crucial a factor in producing high-quality candidates for appointments. That depends in large part on nurturing, not merely leaving on one side or controlling, the ethos of the Civil Service.
Maintaining that ethos depends to a substantial degree on the morale of the Civil Service, which we were told by some witnesses is low. Perhaps that is due to pay being lower than in the private sector, the substantial reduction in the number of civil servants or recognition that appointment to the Civil Service no longer necessarily means a career for life. I confess, to my surprise that the evidence indicated that morale was not affected adversely by the recruitment of outsiders to higher appointments in the Civil Service but in our view, that practice needs to be watched and changes made in light of further experience.
There seems little doubt that recently many in the Civil Service have felt unsettled, which has an effect on morale and, in the long term, on efficiency. We believe that feeling is likely to have been encouraged by the frequency of change in the past 30 or 40 years. In the interests of restoring or maintaining morale, the effect of recent changes should be reflected upon and fine tuned, rather than introducing major changes without proper consultation.
We were concerned to see whether the use over 20 years of a new type of political adviser, paid from public funds, had been harmful. We have no evidence that it had been harmful or that members of the Civil Service resented such appointments. However, we believe that it is essential to monitor that aspect to avoid Civil Service independence or areas of legitimate activity being blurred by such appointments.
We recommend on balance, for the reasons set out in the report, the introduction of a Civil Service Act to take care of some of the concerns that we have expressed. Overall, we conclude that the country can be proud and should be proud of a Civil Service based on the ethos to which we have referred.
We were greatly helped in our work by our special advisers, Professor Richard Chapman of the University of Durham and Ms Janet Lewis-Jones, who brought considerable expertise to our deliberations. I pay particular tribute to our Clerk, Mrs. Mary Bloor. Her considerable ability, dedication to the task and doggedly independent advice to the chairman were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Civil Service to which I have referred.
I am most grateful to my colleagues on the committee who read voluminous evidence and met on many occasions—often at inconvenient times—to finish as soon as we possibly could. We took evidence from two Ministers, eight departments of state, three agencies, a number of retired civil servants, academics, unions, expert charities and so on. That evidence was of the greatest possible help. I hope that they will not think it impertinent when I say that I cannot envisage any other parliamentary institution where such experience and commitment can be brought together without remuneration for such an important task.
It was probably unlikely from the beginning that our report would be a show stopper but there were serious matters to be considered. It is something of a relief that, after detailed examination, the report was not a show stopper. It did not appear that the whole structure of the administration was falling apart, even if there were some things to be remedied.
Despite that, there are serious caveats that we urge governments now and in future to bear in mind for the detailed reasons set out in the report of the committee. I beg to move.
4.7 p.m.
Lord Newby: My Lords, it is with more than usual trepidation that I rise to speak in this debate. Having left the Civil Service in the lowly position of Principal, I find myself speaking in a debate with a bevy of former permanent secretaries and a number of senior judges, which is a particularly daunting task.
We are debating an important report, and some of its findings are relatively reassuring—the high standards of impartiality, integrity and intellectual rigour that cover and characterise the Civil Service remain. Other findings are quite worrying. The report refers to the lack of rationale for recent changes in the organisation of the Civil Service. It refers also to an absence of debate on the proper sphere of government and it mentions low morale.
There are clearly a number of components to low morale in the civil service. Two are particularly important. The first relates to the lack of esteem in which Civil Servants are held, which in my view depends crucially on the lead given by government. In my final years in the Civil Service the then Prime Minister, now Lady Thatcher, made it perfectly clear that she had a poor opinion of the ability of the Civil Service to deal with the tasks it was given. Although I do not believe that view was shared by the noble Baroness's successor, a significant amount of damage was done in the early 1980s in the sense that people who were working extremely hard at difficult tasks were not appreciated at the highest levels of government.
The present Government, particularly the Treasury, have made some of the same mistakes and sometimes behave as though civil servants are a pathetic lot who have not caught up with modern reality and that only Ministers and, in some cases, special advisers are capable of getting to grips with issues.
Again, I think this is a damaging attitude of mind. I know that it does not prevail across the whole of government and I hope that it diminishes rapidly as Ministers gain more experience of office.
The second issue which has led to a lack of morale in the Civil Service is inevitably the question of pay, on which this report is almost totally silent. As the Institute of Fiscal Studies revealed in its recent report on public sector pay, the differential between the public and private sectors has diminished over time. For women the public/private sector pay differential has halved from about 16 per cent. in the early 1980s to about 8 per cent. in the early 1990s. For men the differential, when corrected for occupational composition, has declined from about 8 per cent. to nothing in the same period. These are substantial declines. The figures relate to a period a couple of years ago. I think that when they are updated they will reveal that that decline has probably
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continued. This relative decline is felt both at the top end of the Civil Service as regards policy makers, and lower down.
The Government's response to the proposal for incentive payments for teachers—about which we shall hear this afternoon—is only a partial answer. It is crucially important that all public servants, whether they are at the top of the tree or at the bottom doing rather more mundane jobs, feel that they are getting a fair rate for the job. This simply has not been the case in recent years to an increasing extent. These issues affect not just existing civil servants but also potential recruits. We hear much about problems of recruitment of teachers and nurses. However, when talking to those with politics degrees at some of our best universities, I was amazed to discover that virtually no one even considers a Civil Service career, whereas certainly when I attended university a considerable time ago it was among the most highly valued of careers and one of the most sought after. That is a major change and reflects the change of esteem in which the Civil Service is held and the low pay of civil servants. Those are two major issues and both of them need to be addressed in the longer term.
The other issue I wish to mention relates to the other points I made on the lack of rationale for recent changes and on the role of government. These are big issues and I do not intend to discuss them comprehensively this afternoon. However, I wish to mention a crucial development in this area; namely, the Government's commitment to introduce public service agreements. As the Comprehensive Spending Review explained, these agreements, which will be drawn up between the Treasury and other departments, will include the objectives of the departments and measurable efficiency and effectiveness targets. Such agreements, particularly if they are concluded after a full public debate on their content, could give a degree of clarity as to the objectives of government in individual policy areas, and clarity as to where responsibility really rests for achieving them. They would require Ministers to justify changes in policy on a much more systematic basis than at present. They would logically require payment of bonuses to civil servants and to Ministers for performance, and penalties for failure. Again this is rather in line with the Government's proposals for the teaching profession but which at the moment they do not intend to apply more widely.
While I accept that such agreements cannot easily cover some of the intangible tasks and features of the public service, which by their definition cannot be easily measured, they could nonetheless in my view benefit both civil servants and government alike. I understand that there will be a signing ceremony across a range of these public service agreements next week. Given that one of their purposes should be to increase transparency in decision-making, it seems extremely strange that there has been no consultation on them. There are understandable fears in some quarters at least among suspicious minds that they are largely an attempt by the Chancellor to impose even greater Treasury control on all aspects of government.

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Given the potential significance of these agreements, I have a number of questions to put to the Minister on them. First, what consultations have taken place on the public service agreements between the Government and the Civil Service unions? Secondly, what other consultations, if any, have there been? Thirdly, will the agreements include incentives and penalties? Fourthly, what plans do the Government have as regards how the agreements will be audited? Finally, what plans do the Government have for the systematic scrutiny of such agreements, either in this House or in another place?
The British Civil Service rightly remains the envy of much of the rest of the world. However, to use the term that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, employed, it needs nurturing. The Government in their response to the report have responded to some of the concerns expressed. However, in my view great care will still be needed to ensure that we have a Civil Service in the next century which matches the qualities of the British Civil Service of the present century.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, my first utterance must be to express appreciation and gratitude to my noble and learned friend for his introduction to this report, and to him and his committee for what is a masterly state paper. My noble and learned friend brings experience as a much admired jurist. But also as a former Treasury devil he will have had an intimate knowledge and experience of the working of government in every respect. I hope I may say how glad I am that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is to reply to this debate. He is now in the Cabinet Office; crucially, and as a former Law Officer he, too, will have had a wide conspectus of Whitehall.
My second duty must be to apologise for my intervention, as it is 40 years since I had responsibility in this sphere when the Civil Service was administered by the Establishment Division of the Treasury. It is, however, apt that we are debating the public service at this time in the context of the general discussion that there has been—and which is going on—on the constitution generally. That discussion has often seemed to proceed as though the only political legitimacy was that conferred by election. Of course the Civil Service, like your Lordships' House, has whatever political legitimacy it has quite otherwise than that. One must remember that there are some 2 million in the electorate who do not register a vote and who have no allegiance to any political party. Quite obviously, they are not directly represented in the other place, although any Member of Parliament considers that he has a duty to all his electorate. However, the views and positions of those who have no party allegiance are reflected only on the Cross Benches of your Lordships' House and will, I think, appear in the Civil Service.
The report poses the question of whether the Civil Service should not be regarded in some respects as a separate organ of the constitution, distinct from the Ministers of the Government. That question seems to me to be very important, and not only academically. As a matter of practical politics, the Civil Service stands
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apart from Ministers. Its duty is to give them frank, impartial, informed and unpartisan advice, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, indicated.
What then is the position of the Civil Service vis-à-vis the ministerial part of the Executive? Your Lordships will recollect Arthur Balfour's notable introduction to the World Classics edition of Bagehot. He was concerned about a two-party system, in which one party is bent on undoing the work of its opponent. "Why", he speculated, "does that not lead to some sort of political schizophrenia? Why is not democratic government torn apart?" He had two answers. The first was the Monarchy and the second was the Civil Service: the Civil Service, in its magnetism, preventing a tack to either starboard or port going too far. The Civil Service, as a whole, would say to the Minister, "You have gone far enough on your starboard or your port tack; you are now going into dangerous areas. There be dragons. There be leviathans. It is time that you pulled over the helm". That is the task of the Civil Service. Even with all the tacking, we can make reasonable progression.
I think that that insight throws some light on a number of the particular problems identified by the committee. One has been mentioned already. I refer to the special advisers. I find it difficult to identify their exact task. They seem to extend not only within 10 Downing Street, but right across Whitehall. How many are there in all? Do all departments have them? It seems that they have a dual function, partly presentational, which means so much to this Government, and partly relating to party policy. They originally came about in the 1960s because at that time the Labour Party doubted the real impartiality of the Civil Service. It thought that the Civil Service was middle class and middle policy, whereas it wanted to pursue a radical policy.
How does that fit in with Balfour's vision? In my respectful submission, not at all. The government response to the report states that the special advisers complement the Civil Service and the advice that it gives, which is agreed to be impartial, unpartisan and honest. How is that complementary? How do you complement impartial advice, except by partial advice, advanced from a party political angle? Does not that mean that the advice given to Ministers is not balanced. The government response claims that the Government receive advice from all sources and implies that the special advisers are merely another source. That is not so. If the TUC or the CBI makes a representation to the Government, that is quite different from a representation from a special adviser, who is sitting in the office next to the Minister and who has recourse—as I think the Minister will confirm—to all the government papers, except possibly those of high confidentiality.
That matter was raised at the end of the last Session of the previous government in a debate initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, also spoke. I am glad to see her in her place on the Front Bench. They protested against the special advisers having recourse to Civil Service material. I ventured to think that that was exaggerated and rather partisan under the circumstances. If special advisers do not have recourse

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to government material, their advice can be only partially valuable. If they do have such recourse, the quality of their advice is quite different from that given by, for example, the CBI or the TUC.
In my respectful submission, the whole institution of special advisers is potentially dangerous—dangerous to the balance of the constitution—and should be closely watched. If the report has done nothing else—and it has done a great deal else—it has valuably drawn attention to that matter.
I should like to refer to one other matter within the general context of the Balfour view of the Civil Service. That is recruitment and seconding, which is referred to at a number of points in the report. The committee reports a view that recruitment from outside is liable to disappoint the civil servant who hopes for promotion. But is that so, provided that, as is recognised in the report, these days the Civil Service is rarely a whole life career? Is it so if the civil servant can himself secure advancement in the kind of area from where the recruitment has come?
I am thinking in particular of the Government Legal Service. In America there is free movement between private practice, the government legal service, academic life and the judiciary. The present chief justice of California was formerly a professor of law at the university there.
I therefore suggest that we need not be afraid of recruiting from outside provided it does not upset the whole structure and ethos of the Civil Service, and provided that we can ensure that the civil servant equally has an opportunity of service towards the end of his career outside the Civil Service itself. I know that there are difficulties in the way of a civil servant taking employment with someone who has been in a contractual relationship with his department. But that is a special case which could be dealt with on its merits.
Finally, perhaps I may take up a word that I have used, as have preceding speakers, and which occurs frequently in the report; namely, "ethos". It is most important. But as the report and the Government accept, high esprit de corps depends very much on the esteem in which the Civil Service is held. I suggest that esteem is likely to be eroded in the event of "over-government". The more sparing the government and the more restricted the decisions of the civil servant concerned, the higher they will be held in esteem.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, before we move to the Statement, I should like to take this opportunity to remind the House that the Companion indicates that discussion on a Statement should be confined to brief comments and questions for clarification. Peers who speak at length do so at the expense of other noble Lords.

Teachers: Rewarding and Restructuring
4.34 p.m.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, with permission, I shall now repeat a Statement on teachers: restructuring and rewards that has been made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, I wish to make a Statement about the Government's consultation on reform of the teaching profession. This Statement relates to England; my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Wales will report separately in the New Year.
"Over the last 18 months, this Government have shown their determination to raise standards. Children are learning to read effectively in the new literacy hour. Infant class sizes are falling for the first time in a decade. We are rapidly expanding specialist schools and developing education action zones. We have tackled failure whenever and wherever it exists and we are providing £19 billion to invest in improving education across the UK over the next three years. This is money for reform and modernisation, to give our children opportunities denied for far too long.
"Teaching is at the heart of our drive to raise standards. Good teachers are our most precious asset in raising aspiration and achievement. That is why today I am proposing a fundamental step forward for the profession. Our first objective is to develop a new career structure which will recruit, retain and reward the teachers we need.
"Under the present system, after seven years, a good classroom teacher earns around £22,500. Further reward is paid only for responsibility, rarely for performance. The Government believe this must change. That is why we are proposing two new pay scales for teachers, separated by a performance threshold.
"There will be a tough new appraisal system. Up to the threshold, teachers would progress as now. To cross the threshold, teachers will need to demonstrate high and sustained levels of achievement and commitment. Heads will appraise and review their progress, under-pinned by external assessment. This will ensure credibility and consistency.
"Success in crossing the threshold would mean an initial salary increase of up to 10 per cent.—or around £2,000 a year—and access to further pay steps on this higher scale, based on appraisal of performance. Teachers could then either take on more leadership responsibilities or concentrate on high performance in classroom teaching. Over time we would expect a majority of teachers to be of a standard to cross the threshold.
"Our second objective is to strengthen school leadership. Good heads are the key to success. We need to develop strong leaders, reward them well and give them the freedom to manage. Successful heads who have turned around the most challenging schools

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could earn up to £70,000 a year, with strengthened appraisal and the option of fixed-term contracts. We also propose to set up a national college for school leadership, drawing on the best that education and business have to offer.
"We also want to reward staff for teamwork in raising standards. Our new annual school performance bonus would provide a significant number of schools with a financial reward—payable as a bonus available to all staff—for improved performance achieved year on year and for sustained good results.
"Our third objective is to have a well trained profession. We are establishing the General Teaching Council, and have introduced a curriculum for initial teacher training—with Ofsted inspection—and the induction year for newly qualified teachers. Today I can announce that we intend to go further by introducing a new national test for all trainee teachers in numeracy, literacy and ICT. Additional help will be available to mature entrants in achieving this standard.
"It is vital we attract the best graduates into teaching and ensure that our outstanding teachers can move quickly up the profession. Industry and the civil service have fast tracks. We plan to introduce a fast track for teaching to enable good new teachers to make rapid progress.
"Every teacher should keep their expertise up to date. To help them to do so, we are investing in better training in literacy, numeracy and information technology and in improving the quality and availability of teachers' professional development. A pilot scheme of individual learning accounts will encourage all school staff to invest in their skills over and above government funding. We will enable more training to take place out of school hours to minimise disruption to pupils' education through over-reliance on supply cover.
"Our final objective is to provide better support for teachers in the classroom. From the investment in repair and renewal, through to the learning grid, we are committed to creating the classroom of the future. Today I propose a new targeted fund to improve the working environment for all staff, giving teachers access to the equipment they need.
"The teacher of the future will also make better use of the talent of support staff in schools. Many teachers already use teaching assistants to help with literacy and numeracy or to support children with special needs. Over the next three years we shall fund at least 20,000 additional qualified teaching assistants with improved training, qualifications and opportunity. We are also keen to see the use of undergraduate and postgraduate students earning while learning, together with those from the wider community.
"We also want to support small schools to share facilities, technicians or bursary support. I can announce today that a new small school support fund will pilot new ways of working together. This will benefit many rural schools.
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"This Green Paper contains radical and modernising proposals which will help to transform the standards and status of teaching in this country. This is about something for something. For the first time in years, a commitment to invest and reward teachers in return for a new professionalism is on offer. This will mean greater individual accountability, more flexibility and higher standards.
"We intend to consult widely with teachers, parents, local authorities and governors, for whom we shall provide support and expert guidance to help them implement our proposals. The vision of a world-class service for our children in the next century is one I believe we all share. Good teachers and support staff are the key to achieving that vision. It is to prepare for that new century, to celebrate the value and worth of our teachers, and for the sake of our children, that I commend these proposals to the House today."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.41 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement. I have not had time to read it carefully. The letter that came with it said that I was being given advance notice of it, but in fact it was delivered to my office at three o'clock this afternoon. As I thought the Statement was to be given at 3.30, not 4.30, I was doubly disadvantaged. I shall read it very carefully. Teachers will wish to read the Statement carefully, too, because it leaves a great deal of detail still to be understood.
We support wholeheartedly the notion that good teachers should be rewarded and that they should be encouraged to continue to improve their professional skills throughout their working life. The setting up of the Pay Review Body was important because it gave teachers confidence that pay was being considered externally from government. It will be helpful at this stage, as we draw nearer to the settlement, if the Government can assure teachers that they are to receive the recommended pay award that will come from the Pay Review Body. This will be important in the context of this paper. Can the noble Baroness confirm that a supplementary letter has been sent to the Pay Review Body entreating it to hold the pay award at an affordable level?
It is true that fewer teachers are entering the profession and that that must be addressed. As a result of the introduction of tuition fees applications for the bachelor of education course have fallen considerably in the current year. Calling teachers "sneering cynics", as the Secretary of State for Education did recently. does not help when one is trying to encourage them and gain their confidence.
Once again we have yet another announcement of the £19 billion extra for education. This is one policy that is never knowingly undersold. I recently asked the noble Baroness for a breakdown of the expenditure of that £19 billion. The list of headings that it will be used for include a major boost to standards of literacy and

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numeracy; cutting truancy, boosting pupil numbers at 16; increasing access to further and higher education; raising the levels of attainment at all levels post-16 and increasing the proportion of those from lower-income households; the Sure Start programme; doubling of the capital spending on schools, which I believe is about £5.5 billion; the pledge to reduce class sizes 18 months ahead of schedule; increasing access funds and piloting an education maintenance allowance for young people between 16 and 18; introducing a new pupil support grant to combat truancy and exclusion; investing in the national grid for learning to link schools electronically and prepare them for the 21st century; and increasing participation in further and higher education. There was no mention of teachers' pay. What will be the source of funding for teachers' pay and the considerable cost of this package? Is the funding to come from the £19 billion?
The noble Baroness made a number of statements with which I agree, but the purpose of this short time is to pose questions so that we understand the Statement more fully. Under the present system, as the noble Baroness pointed out, after seven years classroom teachers earn about £22,500. There is to be a new scale—in fact the noble Baroness described it as two scales. Is my understanding correct that there will be a linear scale and that part of the way up that line there will be a bar through which no teacher can go without producing evidence that they have reached a particular standard that makes them worthy of going beyond £22,500? If I understand the Statement correctly, teachers who do not achieve that standard will remain at £22,500 and teachers who reach it will receive the reward.
Will all teachers who reach that standard qualify? It is said in the Statement that the hope is that the majority of teachers will reach that threshold. On a quick calculation, the cost of that would be £900 million. It would be helpful, particularly for local authorities, to know whether the money will be in the system to meet that cost.
According to the Statement, the Government hope that this will be achieved in something under seven years. In other words, it is an accelerated way of helping very good teachers go through the scale. I have no argument with that in principle, but I wonder whether the noble Baroness can say something about time-scale. In the Times Educational Supplement of 20th November the Secretary of State said:
"There's no way we can progress a large proportion of the profession in a couple of years. We're talking about over a teaching life".
A teaching life is 30 to 40 years. Can the noble Baroness clarify what was meant by the Secretary of State's statement and what is the time-scale by which all teachers who reach this level of attainment will be allowed to progress to the higher salary levels?
What is said in the Statement about successful heads is welcome in that heads who are appointed specifically to turn around a failing school are asked to meet a great challenge. But is that all there is to be said about heads? Is the noble Baroness saying that the only heads who
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can earn up to £70,000 will be those who meet the challenge of turning around schools that have failed? What about those outstanding heads in many other schools—some of them in very difficult parts of the country—which are not challenging in any abnormal sense but where the heads are nevertheless doing an outstanding job?
The national college is an interesting proposition. It would be interesting to know what budget is to be set aside for it and when we are likely to see it.
The whole-school reward is another interesting proposition. How is a school to he assessed? If the Government intend to reward individual teachers and whole schools, is it better to be a good teacher in a bad school or a bad teacher in a good school? That question sounds flippant, but it is not. It will be very important as regards rewarding the outstanding teacher who is working in a school that would not be singled out for a whole-school award.
The test for teachers is an interesting proposition. It is a sad indictment that teachers have to be given numeracy and literacy tests in order to enter the teaching profession, particularly primary teachers who will teach those two subjects. Is the consequence of failing those tests that they will not proceed with their teacher training and not enter the system?
I deal with fast track teachers. The Statement says:
"We plan to introduce a fast track for teaching to enable good new teachers to make rapid progress".
Because there has been so much press comment in the past day or two—I have heard the Secretary of State today—and a great deal is made of this, I wonder why the terminology is not that the Government will introduce a fast track for teaching to enable good teachers to make rapid progress. It would be helpful to be told who would do the assessing and at what point in a teacher's life he would be singled out to qualify. Who would assess and make the selection? If any graduate achieves the standards that are required to apply for fast track, will the process be automatically triggered or will it be capped? If there is to be a cap, how will it work? If there is a cap, it means that there will be teachers sitting alongside one another who are equally qualified, some of whom will receive the benefit and some of whom will not.
I deal next with individual learning accounts. Reference is made to a pilot scheme of individual learning accounts which will encourage all school staff to invest in their skills over and above government funding; in other words, I believe that it will be at the teacher's own expense. If it is over and above government funding whose funding is it? It goes on to say that that will enable more training to take place out of school hours. I read that as meaning that teachers shall be encouraged to do more training at their own cost and in their own time. If I have it wrong, perhaps I may be disabused of it.
The noble Baroness said that schools would be encouraged to use the talents of support staff. I have not come across many schools that do not have very good ways of using talented support staff. Their problem is not lack of encouragement to use it but money to meet

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the cost of it. This year in particular many primary schools are shedding classroom assistants simply because they cannot afford to pay for them. What schools need is more money. We welcome the piloting of ideas to help small schools to share facilities and to support each other. The bursaries sound a very good idea.
It was said that the Green Paper is modernising and radical. Teachers will be vigilant about how it is delivered and whether it is properly costed and funded. I should like to ask about the automaticity of all of the schemes to which the noble Baroness referred. I shall continue to be vigilant and I shall read both the Green Paper and the brochure very carefully. I advise school teachers to be as vigilant as I am, as I am sure they will.
4.52 p.m.
Lord Tope: My Lords, I have begun many debates in your Lordships' House by declaring an interest. I must do so now given the subject of this Statement. My wife is employed as a teacher. I have just acquired an additional interest in that my son, who will graduate next summer, has applied to train as a teacher. I believe that I shall have a considerable pecuniary interest in the future of these proposals.
I start by thanking the Minister for repeating the Statement. I warmly welcome the fact that the Government are to tackle this extremely important issue. It has always appeared to be a nonsense to all of us that good and successful teachers are rewarded by having to do less and less teaching and more and more administration. It is true that being a very good teacher does not necessarily make one a very good administrator. That has always seemed to me to be a nonsense. If these proposals enable good and successful teachers to use their skills more in the classroom and less on paper work, I am sure that that will be welcomed by everyone.
The Minister is right to say that successful schools depend on strong and good quality leadership. I am pleased that there are proposals to reward and recognise the strong leadership that is needed not only by heads, although that is particularly important, but also by other skilled senior staff. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, I have had only a short time to skim through the Green Paper. While I make no complaint about that, I welcome its broad thrust, provided that I have understood it correctly. I believe that I have. However, perhaps the Minister can confirm that, first, we are talking about rewarding teachers judged on their own skills and competencies by appraisal, not rewarding them on the achievements or otherwise of the pupils. That is a very important difference; secondly, that there are opportunities for all teachers; and, thirdly, that it is expected that the majority of teachers will benefit from these proposals.
I also welcome the fact that the Green Paper deals with the issue of classroom assistants. They are a great strength in many schools. My wife works in a primary school and I know it is particularly true in that case. I am pleased that we are not leaving them out and are not looking simply at the top of the profession but also at the essential support that they receive.
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I can understand how these proposals will help with the retention of teachers. It is of vital importance to address that issue. Quite apart from my son's decision this week, I have a little more concern about how it will help with recruitment. It will take some years for teachers to reach the threshold. Since this is a consultation document, will the Government consider reducing the period before the threshold? I welcome the proposals, as far as I have understood them, for undergraduates to do some teaching, but are the Government considering paying trainee teachers? The proposals of my party—this is not purely self-interest—are that student teachers should be paid 50 per cent. of the rate. We need measures of that kind to attract people into the profession. It is important that they see how they can progress throughout their career. When one is in one's early 20s, considering where one may be in one's 40s or 50s is perhaps not as important as it should be, certainly not as important as worrying where one will be in one's later 20s and 30s when one is thinking of setting up home.
I turn next to funding. The Minister will be aware that I have a particular interest in that I am the leader of an LEA. Yesterday we had the revenue support grant settlement and today all of my colleagues in local government are trying to understand exactly what that means for their local authorities. I am particularly concerned to have confirmation that money will be available to meet the extra cost of these proposals. I should also like to know how that extra money is to reach schools. Will it come through the SSA system and the LEAs? I suspect that at least initially it will come to schools via some other route. But if we are to build these quite proper expectations, it is important to have the cash available where it is needed to meet them.
If and when the money has reached the schools, how will it reach the teachers? Schools are funded on average not actual salaries. If one increases actual salaries for a number of successful teachers, it does not necessarily follow that they will get the additional money. Clearly, it is the Government's intention that they should do so. I should like to know what delivery mechanism is to be used to achieve that.
These are important measures for the medium and long-term and we support them. But an immediate crisis needs to be addressed. I too turn to the impending pay settlement which I believe is due next month. I understand that the Minister does not wish to pre-empt anything that may be recommended by the review board. However, it would be extremely encouraging to the profession if the noble Baroness could at least give a commitment at this stage that the pay award, whatever it turns out to be, will not be phased. The teaching profession has suffered in recent years from phased pay awards. It would be extremely disappointed, to put it no stronger, if there were yet another phased pay award. A commitment from the Minister on that matter would be very welcome.
As I said, we will certainly give a welcome to the broad thrust of this Green Paper. I hope that the teacher unions will also do so. I am sure that when they come to consider the detail they will have many questions and there may well be proposals with which they are not

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happy. However, I hope that they will take the opportunity to engage in a positive and constructive discussion with the Government on how to tackle this issue, and not simply have a knee-jerk reaction to something which is simplistically, and perhaps wrongly, termed "performance-related pay".
Lastly, I hope that the Government will listen to what is being said to them. I learnt during the various proposals for a London government that the London Green Paper had within it various shades of green. One shade of green meant that it was not really for consultation, but other shades of green meant that the Government were open to proposals and were listening. This paper is a very bright shade of green, and I hope that means that the Government will listen to constructive proposals that are put as to how best to tackle this most important issue. If the Government do that, I am confident that we shall at least begin to redress the very serious imbalance that exists within the teaching profession at the moment.
5.2 p.m.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, perhaps I may begin by saying that I am sorry the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, did not feel she had had quite enough time to look at the Green Paper. It was our intention to get the paper out a little earlier in order to give Opposition spokesmen some time. However, I hope that in taking the Statement at the time we did the noble Baroness had at least an opportunity to look at it.
The noble Baroness asked a great many questions. I am not sure that I am going to be able to pick up all of them in the time available, but if I have to miss any I will of course write to her about them. I was grateful for the welcome that she gave to at least one or two of the proposals put forward. I am also grateful for the more general welcome given by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, to what I believe are radical proposals which are genuinely intended to try to reward our teachers better, to raise their status and to improve both recruitment and retention.
The noble Baroness began by asking questions—I think the noble Lord, Lord Tope, also mentioned this topic—about the pay review body. The noble Baroness said that she would not expect the Government to anticipate what is going to be said, and obviously at this point we cannot make a commitment to accept all the recommendations—no government would ever do so—until we have seen them. We do not know what they are going to be. I say to the noble Baroness and to the noble Lord that the Secretary of State has made clear that the pay settlement must be affordable. Again, I think the noble Baroness would expect any Secretary of State to do that. We do have a proper pay policy for the public sector; but he has also said—and this may reassure the noble Lord, Lord Tope—that he would not want to stage it.
The noble Baroness asked about the costs of the programme in the proposals that are set out in the Green Paper. I would say to her that of course we want to resource these proposals properly. We will be putting
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on one side something like £1 billion to support the proposals. In the first year it will be around £400 million, with another £600 million in the second year.
The noble Baroness was also concerned about the timescales. The intention is that we should introduce these proposals from the autumn of the year 2000, although one or two proposals, such as those relating to the highly skilled advanced teachers, are already en route. Indeed, we have already appointed the first of the advanced school teachers and we will be building up their numbers over the next two years.
The noble Baroness asked whether head teachers who were not necessarily working in the schools which they had managed to turn around would also be eligible for much higher salaries. The answer to that is yes, of course. If a head teacher is doing a superb job in a school, particularly if it is in a difficult area, whether it needs to be turned around or not, he or she will be eligible for a substantially higher salary.
The noble Baroness also asked who will benefit more—a good teacher in a bad school or a bad teacher in a good school? Those who are drawing up the criteria for the bonus scheme will need to consider that kind of issue and they also need to consider the extent to which different members of a school which is awarded bonuses will actually benefit from those bonuses. Additional pay will not automatically be allocated to every teacher in such a school, regardless of how good or bad he or she might be.
The noble Baroness asked whether all teachers reaching the threshold standard will qualify. The answer to that is yes, they will all qualify and they will all be assessed against the national standard. She also asked about the timing of progress beyond the threshold. We will try to assess and appraise every teacher who has got beyond the threshold as soon as they pass it; so we shall be progressing very large numbers of teachers through this scheme once it is implemented.
The noble Baroness also asked when the national leadership college will be set up and how much funding it will receive. I can say that it will be established in the year 2000. We will publish a prospectus for it early next year and we have set aside £10 million to support its establishment in the first instance.
Turning to the question of whether teachers in training who fail the tests for literacy, numeracy and IT will be allowed to teach, I am sure that the noble Baroness and indeed every Member of your Lordships' House would not expect us to allow a teacher into a classroom who cannot pass these tests. They will have to go back and take further training and improve their basic skills in order to join a school and, if I might put it in this way, be let loose on children.
The noble Baroness also asked for details of the fast track. We shall be publishing a separate consultation document about that in March of next year. We see the fast track as a very important way of encouraging more talented and able young people, and indeed older people, to come into the teaching profession.

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The noble Baroness asked whether we would be expecting teachers to contribute to individual learning accounts over and above any government funding. The answer to that question is yes. The whole idea of an individual learning account, which is central to the Government's policies on life-long learning, is that the account should be a partnership between the individual himself or herself, the employer and/or the Government. I believe that that is right. We want people to invest in their own learning, whether they are school teachers or people working in any part of the private or public sectors. Also, on the question of whether we think teachers should spend some time upgrading their skills in their own time, the answer again is a categorical yes to that. Just as many other professions put aside some of their leisure time for self-improvement, we hope that teachers would be willing to use a little of their holidays when they are not actually working in the school for that purpose. I believe that many of them will recognise the value of doing so.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that clarification. Given that teachers can now train in their own time, and pay for it, does the reference in the Statement mean that it will be a requirement in the future?
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, no, it will be up to the individual teacher to decide whether he or she thinks that it is worth investing in his or her future. I would hope that the great majority of teachers will want to do so on a voluntary basis, but of course they will be encouraged to do so.
I think that the noble Baroness welcomed the idea of supporting small schools by developing a team approach to their teaching and building up contacts between them. There will be additional funding to help that. I believe that that will be particularly valuable to schools in rural areas.
I turn to some of the additional points made by the noble Lord, Lord Tope. He commented that he valued the proposals in the sense that they are not just about rewarding people at the top, but about rewarding people lower down the system—young teachers, as well as experienced teachers who perform well in the classroom. It is right to point out that primary schools will benefit from these proposals in that respect.
The noble Lord said that he saw the value of the proposals from the point of view of retention, but was not so clear about recruitment. I believe that the proposals for fast tracking those who are able will help recruitment. The fact that teachers who perform well will be rewarded more highly—those who reach the top of the profession will be able to receive salaries as high as £70,000—should achieve that.
He asked about the pay for trainee teachers. Under the scheme we shall pay those undergraduates or postgraduates in the system who wish to work as the new teacher associates. Again, I believe that that will help recruitment. We recognise the case which has been made for trainee salaries, but we judge that the right incentives to boost recruitment are those announced at the end of October. They are in the annexe to the
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document, including major new financial incentives for those who will teach science and mathematics, subjects in which there are shortages.
The noble Lord asked about rewards linked to appraisal outcomes, not just results. Pupil outcomes are only one of many components of appraisal. It is important that we do not get into a system where we simply pay by results. That is not the intention of the proposals.
He also asked how extra funds would reach the schools. Would that be through the SSAs; and how would they be directed to teachers? We shall be consulting on a more technical document to be introduced in the new year which will go into those kinds of questions. Therefore I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me if we delay an immediate response. However, we wish to ensure that there is ring-fenced funding to make it absolutely clear that those schools which have good teachers who have proven that they deserve this extra reward will have the funds to be able to provide it.
Finally, the noble Lord hoped that we would listen to teachers and others. It is a consultation document. We shall be consulting until the end of March and of course we shall listen. We very much look forward to hearing the views of anyone who has an interest in improving the quality of our teachers and the standards of their performance in the schools; and, I should add, we shall welcome any views from Members of your Lordships' House.
5.15 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness as I was not in my place when she started her Statement. I share her view that we all want to help teachers improve because they are absolutely essential to education.
Perhaps I may ask two questions. First, it is very difficult to keep up with all the publications emanating from the Government even in the educational world. Last year there was an announcement that there would be a superteacher scheme. I believe that there were to be 5,000 superteachers. How do they fit into this scheme? Are they separate, or part of it? I do not understand how it would work if one were in a school.
Secondly, I may have misunderstood what the Minister said. If I have got it wrong, I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me. In reply to a question, I think from the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I thought she said that the scheme set out in the Green Paper was not a payment for results. If one sets out objectives for teachers which are met, what is that but a payment for results? I may have misunderstood. It seems to me that if one sets out objectives which are met, it must be a good result if one receives extra payment for it. Can we have clarification on that point?
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness on keeping up with the large number of documents published. As a House of Lords Minister she has much experience of that. We are asked to cover for our whole department's work and not just the policy area for which we are responsible.

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I can clarify the superteacher issue. It was a term of art for advanced school teachers. They are not different from what is set out in the Green Paper. The announcement about them was made earlier. As I said when responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that part of the Green Paper has already been started. We have given it further clarification and developed it in the Green Paper. I hope that that solves the noble Baroness's problems.
Baroness Young: My Lords, can the Minister state where in the Green Paper we find that important piece of information?
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, a chapter in the Green Paper is concerned with the issue of rewarding those teachers whom we want to keep in the classroom.
On the point about payment by result, I am sorry if I did not make myself entirely clear. Of course we want to reward teachers where they are fulfilling the objectives that we all share. However, I was referring to the more limited issue of pupil performance as set out in the performance tables that were covered earlier this week. I hope that that clarifies the point.
Baroness Uddin: My Lords, I welcome this Statement by the Government of comprehensive intention as a breath of fresh air. I believe that after 18 years it will bring back respect and dignity to the profession, and parents look forward to the outcome. A recent Ofsted report on education in Tower Hamlets leaves no place to hide. It concludes that there is continuous shameful under-achievement. I am therefore delighted to welcome the proposal for performance-orientated pay. I believe that that will boost parents' confidence. They can look forward to an improved result in their children's education. Perhaps I may ask the Minister how it is intended that the general teaching council will be reflective of the student population across the country.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her welcome of the proposals in the Statement and, indeed, for what is set out in the Green Paper. We are consulting on the general teaching council, as we promised in the legislation which went through earlier this year. I am willing to admit that some pressure from the Opposition meant that we agreed that the majority of the members of the General Teaching Council should be teachers. However, we shall be making further announcements later about the introduction of the GTC.
Baroness Uddin: My Lords, in view of the fact that ethnic minority teachers are so few and far between, how are we to ensure that there is ethnic minority representation on the general teaching council?
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, it is extremely important that teachers from every kind of background right across the system—primary, secondary and special schools—are adequately represented on the GTC. I shall
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certainly pass on my noble friend's comments about the importance of having good ethnic minority representation on the GTC to my honourable friend the Minister for School Standards who is responsible for it.

The Public Service: Select Committee Report
5.21 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, it would be highly improper for me to address the subject of our debate—the report by the committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley—in his absence. Therefore, until he arrives, I must find something else to talk about.
There has been a departure this afternoon by the usual channels from what we thought had been agreed; namely, that on days when there are two short debates, neither is interrupted by a Statement but the Statement is put between them. That is for the convenience both of those who are interested in the Statement and those who are interested in either debate. I hope that representatives of the two Front Benches in the House will pass on that message to the respective Chief Whips.
Since the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, is now in his place, I can begin with what I was supposed to begin with; namely, congratulating him on a most interesting and informative report.
When I read it—and this may be true of some other noble Lords—I was naturally reminded of times and battles long ago. In 1961, I published a book about relations between the Foreign Service and the rest of the Whitehall establishment based upon research which I had been enabled to make by the intervention on my behalf of Lord Normanbrook, whose rule over the Civil Service probably ante-dates the memories of many people here.
On the other hand, I now find in this report that that very important topic is neglected. I think it was a mistake to omit consideration of that because if it was important in 1960 and 1961, when I was doing that research in Whitehall, it is even more important now that we are members of the European Union.
That is referred to as though that was a problem on its own rather than a problem which stretches across the whole of the public service. It must be important that public servants in any department are capable of talking language which is understood by those in another.
Perhaps I may give one very simple example. When Her Majesty travels abroad nowadays, she is often asked to do things which would bring benefit to British overseas trade. In regard to that, for advice as to what would be appropriate, she must rely on the DTI. On the other hand, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is always asked to estimate in advance the political dangers which may be incurred in a particular country, either physically or, more often, in the light of the sensitivities of some governments to certain remarks. If

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those two departments are not capable of talking to each other, it is possible that Her Majesty might be embarrassed.
Some years later—that is, some 30 years ago—when I was Gladstone Professor of Government and Public Administration, I was assisted by William Armstrong, later Lord Armstrong of Sanderstead, to set up in Oxford a weekly seminar in which distinguished members of the public service, nominated by him, would come and talk to the students. They would explain about the public service both as part of their general education in government and no doubt also in the hope—and this has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Newby—that some of them would seek careers in the public service.
I regret that that activity has been abandoned in the University of Oxford. The Gladstone chair is now referred to as a chair of politics, not of government and public administration. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, the public service does not seem to attract either the attention, the respect or the hopes of many young people.
My hope is that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who is to follow me in this debate, now himself a senior academic in the University of Oxford, will take up that idea of William Armstrong and start seminars of that kind again. It is extremely important that that should be done.
However, it is important in another sense; I believe that that relegation of interest in the public service, of exploration of its organisation and its ethos, is in danger well outside the walls of the university. I believe that anxieties on that score are inadequately reflected in some of the statements, recommendations or observations in the committee's report.
We did go over some of that ground in a debate to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, referred on the privatisation of the recruitment process for the public service. I thought that that was nonsense at the time and, as usual, my observation has proved to be correct. It is not a satisfactory method. I have very little sympathy, on the whole, with Her Majesty's Government, but they may be prepared to look again at that matter. But of course, it is not simply a matter of recruitment. As has been mentioned, it is a matter also of conditions of service and so on.
It may be—my contacts are not what they were in the days of William Armstrong—that the committee has underestimated the degree of anxiety felt by those recruited for what they thought was a lifetime career by the constant emphasis on bringing in people from outside and the notion that there should be a backwards and forwards movement. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, said, that may be appropriate inside the American legal system which recruits to Washington, but it is not appropriate if one believes in the foundations of the British constitution where the Civil Service is concerned; namely, that it should be a single body with a highly developed sense of public service which cannot be assimilated to the criteria of the private sector. We all know that bringing in Ministers from business has not been an unmitigated success under various governments; bringing them into the Civil Service has yet to be proved to be successful.
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Noble Lords will not be surprised that I, too, echo the misgivings expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, in relation to special advisers. I have not been able—studying the careers of major figures in governments of the past—to believe that they would have required anything beyond the advice given to them by the civil servants in their departments. It may be that with all this business of faxes, the Internet and all that nonsense, they require a degree more secretarial assistance than used to be the case—I do not suppose many Cabinet Ministers write many letters with their own hand. But, surely, one secretary per Minister would be enough. He could carry out all the normal secretarial chores of sending flowers to the Minister's mistress or boyfriend, as the case may be. However, for serious work and, above all, for advice, it is surely right that there should be an almost exclusive position to retain the persons who have come up through the service; who are cognizant of its many ramifications; and who are, as the committee's report suggests, in some respects the repository of the constitutional tradition which they are meant to serve.
It may be said that such people might not be very good at projecting the Government's policies. That may be so; but projection is rather less important than getting the policies right. It may well be that concentration upon projection may lead to neglect of the importance of getting the policies right. The time has come—in this I agree with the report—to introduce a Civil Service Act which will settle the boundaries for some time of what is political and what is administrative and, because of the changing circumstances in which governments operate, as the committee suggests, there should be an annual report back to Parliament on what is going on.
We say—and it has been echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and others—that we have the best Civil Service in the world. That was true. I sometimes wonder whether, if these tendencies are not checked, it will continue to be true. If it is not true, we will lose one of the few advantages we have in competing for influence on the world scene.
5.35 p.m.
Lord Butler of Brockwell: My Lords, I endorse the congratulations to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, and the Select Committee on this report. By examining the philosophy of the division between the public and private sectors, as well as the way in which that division has been operated in practice, the committee performed a valuable service.
Before commenting on the substance of the report, I should like to pay my own tribute to the late Lord Bancroft, whose concern for the public service was, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, said, a progenitor of the Select Committee. When I was at the beginning of my career in the Treasury, Lord Bancroft was my establishment officer and over many years I sat at his feet. His concern for the integrity of the public service was deep and lifelong.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, said, the incident which gave rise to the Select Committee was the privatisation, under the previous government, of the

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Recruitment and Assessment Service, which recruits staff to the Civil Service. Many in your Lordship's House felt that this was a privatisation too far in the belief that it put in the hands of a private sector company a function essential to the preservation of a high quality and impartial Civil Service. Hence the Select Committee's review of what properly belongs to the public sector and what to the private sector. I shall return to the issue of the Recruitment and Assessment Service.
In passing, I should perhaps say that in one respect the Select Committee does less than justice. In saying that there has been insufficient parliamentary scrutiny of the changes to the Civil Service, the Select Committee perhaps neglects the work of the Select Committee on the Civil Service in another place under Mr. Giles Radice which scrutinised these reforms throughout and produced a number of useful reports to which the Select Committee of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, referred.
The Select Committee recognises the difficulty of defining what functions must belong to the public service beyond the most basic functions of passing laws and ensuring an independent judiciary, but it suggests that an attempt should be made. In their response to the report the Government say that the decision on which option is best for a specific function should be taken case by case on a pragmatic basis. I agree with that. But now that I am licensed to be a little more controversial, it is possible to suggest some guidelines, drawing on the experience of recent years.
In terms of incentives to efficient performance, it must be acknowledged that the public sector has some disadvantages compared with the private sector. It does not work with its own money. It cannot, in practice, go bust and it labours under the proper burdens of political accountability which Parliament imposes on it. There are some who would say that those obstacles to efficiency are so fundamental that the state should do the minimum and as much as possible should be privatised.
That view is too simple. There are some situations in which the private sector also has limitations and I offer three examples. The first is when the service is a monopoly. There is not much reason to think that a private monopoly is better than a public monopoly, notwithstanding what may be done by regulation; indeed, it may be worse. The second is where the recipients of the service do not pay for it, as is true of many public services so the market cannot work. The third, and in my view the most important, is when the service involves acts of judgment between citizens and where fairness of process is of the essence. I do not think, for example, that many people today would advocate a return to the tax farming of the Roman Empire. The market is an entirely inadequate discipline of such activities. I cannot see any alternative to that of democratic accountability, which works through the public sector and ultimately to Parliament.
My anxiety, as I said in evidence to the Select Committee, is that recently governments may have gone too far in putting in the hands of non-elected quangos functions for which elected governments should be
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accountable. It is almost as if electors have lost so much confidence in those whom they elect that they would prefer to see decisions taken by people who they do not elect. I was therefore glad to see that the committee says:
"It is not justified to delegate to a quango or the private sector solely or principally so that Ministers can avoid being accountable".
If we leave aside the areas where there are clear borderlines between the proper functions of the public and private sectors, there are extensive grey areas where the function could, in practice, be in either. Here I agree with the Government in that I think it is best to be pragmatic. What works best is best. In many cases, there may be advantages in allowing there to be competition between the private and public sectors, as in the market testing programme under the last government. In areas where functions remain within government, I believe that there has been shown to be advantage in replicating the pressures which produce efficiency in the private sector, such as profit and loss accounts, empowerment and personal incentives. I welcomed the Select Committee's acknowledgement that the introduction of agencies has, in practice, raised standards.
At all events, I reject, as did the committee, the implication that you can have efficiency or integrity but not both. That is a false dichotomy which is insulting to many people of integrity in both the public and private sectors. It seems to me not only possible but obligatory to aim for both efficiency and integrity in public services.
If I then apply those arguments to the privatisation of the Recruitment and Assessment Service, I would have thought that privatisation entirely wrong if it had removed the assessment or selection of candidates to the Civil Service to a firm in the private sector. But I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, that if the way in which the private sector firm handles the mechanics either impinges on that assessment or has failed to improve the efficiency with which the recruitment process is undertaken, the licence given to the private company should not be renewed and that the function should be brought back within the public sector.
The Select Committee's report contains an important passage about the ethos of the Civil Service and says, correctly, that the attitude of Ministers to the Civil Service is crucially important. Here I must say that I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby, though what a pity it is for the Civil Service that his career in it was not more prolonged. It seems to me that it has been a source of reassurance to the Civil Service and a vote of confidence in it that, after 18 years in opposition, the new Government have shown so strikingly their support for a permanent, non-political Civil Service.
Of course, it is to be expected that there will be some transitional frictions and there are further reforms to be made; indeed, history never stops. After a period in which the emphasis has been on strengthening the vertical management of the Civil Service, the new Government are giving attention to the horizontal links and central co-ordination. That is quite right. But overall, and with very few qualifications, the Government have shown by their actions that they

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believe in a professional and non-political public service. That is something which the Civil Service should take comfort from and something which, in my view, we should applaud. The Government's actions have spoken louder in this respect than any words could do.
I should like to assure the noble Lord, Lord Newby, that, on the basis of a very short experience, some of the most outstanding young students in my college are this year and at this very moment taking the examination and applying to the Civil Service, not at all, I think, as a result of my influence. Perhaps I may also respond to the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, and say that debate on governments is alive and well in Oxford. There are seminars which were run, first of all, under David Butler, and now under Professor Vernon Bogdanor, which contribute greatly in that respect. There is also a club which sounds very much like the club to which the noble Lord referred called the Redcliffe-Maud Club, named after my predecessor as Master of University College, which meets frequently to debate these issues. Therefore, I do not believe that the noble Lord need think that interest in such matters is dead in Oxford.
Finally, I should like to comment on the case for a Civil Service Act. On balance, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn said, the Select Committee was in favour of this, although it set out the pros and cons very fairly. As perhaps is clear from my evidence quoted by the Select Committee, I feel luke warm about such legislation. If I read the Government's response correctly, they are also luke warm as they only "note" this recommendation, which is very often an indication that they are not terribly enthusiastic about it.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Nolan, put it pithily when asked by the Select Committee about such an Act. He said:
"We have quite enough Acts already".
I realise that the motive of those who favour such legislation is to entrench the essential elements of a non-political Civil Service and protect it against a future government. Of course, I welcome that. However, I am concerned that such legislation should not prevent the Civil Service from responding to changing circumstances and public expectations. The way in which the legislation is drafted in that respect, if it were proceeded with, would be a matter of the greatest importance.
5.47 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity of participating in a debate on the report of the Select Committee on the Public Service. I joined the committee part-way through its investigations. However, I was a member during the time that the committee looked at the effects of the development of the system of executive agencies. We were, I think, very much aware that there had been significant changes in the way in which the Civil Service operates, but we had not appreciated—certainly I had not—just how much had changed. Our report sets out in some detail the way in which it has changed since 1967. Indeed, it is a very valuable record.
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I joined the committee aware that agencies—of a more or less autonomous kind—had developed, in order to undertake part of the work formerly done by a unified Civil Service. As has already been indicated, those changes had taken place against a background of privatisation when the view of the then government had been that, essentially, competition was good for everyone, and that, if there was no "market", one had to be created.
Recruitment policy seemed to us to have changed. An attempt was being made to bring the Civil Service and its personnel policies more into line with what was happening in private industry, where "jobs for life" and the security that that concept brings to staff were rapidly disappearing. We wondered what effect this would have on the well-known and much admired Civil Service ethos. We were also concerned about the line of accountability from agencies to Parliament, and about ministerial accountability generally. With those considerations in mind, we set about seeing a large number of witnesses whose interviews are recorded in our full report. Under the wise leadership of our chairman, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, we also decided that we had to look at the workings of an agency on the ground. For that reason, we went to Leeds—not only to look at the workings of the benefits agency there but to look at the operation of a benefits office in an under-privileged area.
We had previously seen representatives of the Civil Service unions as well as organisations looking after the interests of benefits recipients, senior civil servants, academics and many others. The visit to Leeds was, for me, one of the most interesting and useful things that we did.
We were all impressed by the level of service and the efficiency with which the work was undertaken. The visit to the benefits office, however, was very revealing. It was in an under-privileged area of the city. The staff, under a very competent manager, seemed to be doing their best to offer a good and compassionate service in very difficult circumstances. Attempts had been made to make the place "user-friendly", with armchairs and a carpet on the floor, but it was repeatedly vandalised. The staff dealing with claimants had to do so from behind a double layer of plate glass. Threats to staff from angry claimants were apparently quite common. We were seeing the result of what the Prime Minister has described as "social exclusion" and, as a result, the staff were having to deal with angry and alienated people. They were doing their best but were having to handle a very difficult situation.
As our report makes clear, we had a number of concerns about the changes that have taken place. I believe that a situation in which people compete for their own jobs with outsiders is not conducive to maintaining a high level of staff morale. I was interested to hear this afternoon that the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, seemed to be of a similar view. We learnt that the famous Whitley system for dealing with Civil Service terms and conditions of employment had been change beyond recognition. Each semi-autonomous agency now has responsibility for its own negotiations and for the terms and conditions of its staff.

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I questioned the union representatives about this. It was clear that they are not happy about it, but they have endeavoured to adjust. There are now at least 120 different bargaining groups within the Civil Service—instead of just one national one dealing with Civil Service terms and conditions cross the board. Of course, that means that there can be widely differing rates for the same grades of employment, depending on the location of the agency set-up. The unions made the point that the administration of such a system was bound to be more costly, since each side has to field a team for each site instead of there being one dealing with issues nationally across the board, as there used to be.
Another aspect of concern to us was whether staff were sufficiently protected should an individual feel the need to whistle-blow on some dubious or unsafe practice undertaken by a superior. As has already been said, we looked at the possibility of the introduction of a new Civil Service Act, which would contain a code of good practice. However, the Government—while welcoming much of our report—have been rather vague in their response to that recommendation. They clearly believe that the legislation they have recently introduced adequately covers whistle-blowing and gives protection to such employees.
Overall, as our report shows, we were impressed by the dedication and commitment of staff. Of course, I am talking about one particular area—the DSS and the Benefits Agency—in which I have a particular interest. We were concerned, since this agency has to deal with some of the most deprived and under-privileged people in our society, that the level of service should be as high as possible. What we saw convinced us that, generally speaking, a very good job is being done, often in very difficult circumstances. The staff have to administer rules which have been decided upon by politicians, but they are the first in line if members of the public—the claimants—are dissatisfied.
The agency system, in the instances we examined, did seem to have improved efficiency. That was the view of a number of organisations concerned with looking after claimants. The unions regarded the agencies, as they put it, as "morale neutral". They did have concern, however, about what they saw as a lowering of morale, which they attributed to quite different reasons. They believed it was mainly due to the lack of security that now exists within the Civil Service. Once the Civil Service had offered stable employment, but no longer.
This of course is mirrored elsewhere. I personally do not applaud it as I believe that most people need stability in order to plan for themselves and their families. This applies as much to the Civil Service as to other employees. Our concerns about the possible eventual undermining of the all-important Civil Service ethos remain, although it is fair to say that there is, as yet, little evidence that the changes which have taken place have undermined that ethos. However, I think that this situation needs to be carefully watched.
5.55 p.m.
Lord Burns: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble, and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, and other members of the committee on a thorough piece of work. They have shown great stamina over quite a long period of time in putting together their report. I, too, welcome the work that they have done.
It is right that the work should have been undertaken. The issues, which are very important, do not always receive the attention they deserve—other than from a small number of people who are particularly interested in such things.
My own experience of the Civil Service has not been typical. I joined the Treasury in 1980 on a four-year contract and stayed for 18½years. During my transition from academic life, I was warned by many commentators that I should beware of the combination of the charm and the scheming of Treasury mandarins. In the end, I found that transition extremely easy. Treasury officials are indeed charming, but they are also enormously able, supportive and collegiate. They are deeply committed to their work. There is no doubt that the public service ethos is very much alive and well. Officials are willing to take on a lot of responsibility.
I agree with other noble Lords that we are very fortunate to have so many able people who are sufficiently attracted by the quality and responsibility of the work that they are willing to sacrifice the financial rewards which they could, without doubt, easily command elsewhere. Whatever changes are made to the Civil Service, it is vital that we continue to be able to attract such talented people.
My response to the noble Lords, Lord Newby and Lord Beloff, would be much the same as the response given by the noble Lord, Lord Butler; that we still manage to attract an enormous number of very able and talented people. Obviously, one's experience goes back only a limited period and it is difficult to compare the different generations when one does not know them equally well. However, throughout my time in the Treasury I remained completely in awe of the large number of very able people who we attracted to do the job and of the load that they were able to bear.
I want to address three issues. First, the whole question of whether there has been too much change within the Civil Service and some of the causes for that. Secondly, the suggestion that the relationship between Ministers and officials is no longer all it might be. Thirdly, how we might strike a balance between the confidentiality of official advice and some of the benefits of greater openness.
My period as Permanent Secretary coincided with a period of great change within the Civil Service. The report that we are discussing today describes this change very well. I would like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Butler of Brockwell who led the Civil Service through that period. It is important that we recognise that it was his desire to combine innovation with the traditional values and standards of the Civil Service, which brought a great deal of comfort to many of his colleagues during that period of very rapid change.

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As the House is only too well aware, not all change is necessarily always seen as being for the better. Sometimes change takes place which, in retrospect, we judge was not wise and was not an improvement on what had gone before. In general, there are many pressures to change which are proceeding all the time and one has to be aware of them. Organisations have to adjust. In the Civil Service, as in the wider world, we have been adjusting to a large number of pressures. I should like to mention a few of them in a general tone of sometimes being in favour of change.
It has been pointed out clearly in the report and by noble Lords today that, whether in their role as consumers, patients or whatever, the public have become much more demanding about the kind of services they want. They demand prompt, reliable, high quality and convenient services at a time of their choosing. That explains why so much effort is being devoted in the Civil Service to trying to find managerial solutions which will improve the chance of delivering those high quality services to citizens. That includes the Next Steps Agencies and the Citizen's Charter, which have been trying to follow other organisations in delivering a higher standard of service than used to be the case.
Secondly, the pressure of technological innovation, much of it through advances in information technology, has opened up immense opportunities to deliver these improvements without putting impossible pressures on budgets. The public sector is aware that it has to do all it can to harness those technologies, but this has implications for the numbers of people employed and the structure of the jobs that they do. This often leads to quite difficult change as one goes through that process. But, again, much of it is directed towards being able in the end to produce and deliver the kind of services that people need.
Thirdly, we have seen improvements in how to manage and organise processes in order to deliver greater efficiency in organisations all over the world. Many of these lessons have been taken on board in terms of looking at the Civil Service. Conventional management thinking has moved away from traditional systems of centralised and hierarchical control. There is now a much greater emphasis on decentralised systems. When one works with and talks to some of the young people coming up through the Civil Service, it is interesting to note the extent to which they want to have clear objectives. They want to know how they will be assessed; they want to have responsibility; they want to have a say in the jobs that they do; and they want to have more influence themselves on their career profile. All of this has important implications for the kinds of personnel systems that one operates. Some of the traditional centralised systems do not enable one to offer that kind of opportunity.
We have seen in many other organisations some of the pressures for more open, longer term relationships with the world outside. The traditional public service culture of secrecy and "Whitehall knows best" has had to change. This has meant greater openness. It has meant being prepared to explain much more and to have more two-way movement between Whitehall and the rest of
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the economy. That does not necessarily imply, as the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, suggested, a huge amount of change or that it need be necessarily immensely disruptive. We have seen some of the great benefits that have come about from having some of our civil servants go out to work in the private sector for a period of time and then come back, bringing extra wisdom and breadth of view to the job they are doing. That is very much to be encouraged. Similarly, we see some of the benefits of traffic in the other direction.
Finally, in all organisations throughout the world we are seeing a trend towards the buying in of more services and to establishing contracts with other organisations to supply parts of what might have been done centrally in the past. It would be very surprising if this move did not have relevance and the Civil Service did not also attempt to see what advantages might come from that. Things do not always have to be produced within one centralised system.
I am in no doubt that the public sector, along with other organisations, will have to adjust to many of the forces. It may not necessarily be to the same extent as other organisations. Nevertheless, the Civil Service cannot be left untouched by them. While I agree with many of the warnings contained in the report, it is important that we do not attempt to put a ring-fence around the public sector and say that change should never happen or make it difficult for necessary management change to happen.
It is right that the Civil Service should operate within a broad framework that Parliament approves and that from time to time Parliament should maintain a scrutiny over what happens and offer its views. But I am nervous about the tone that occasionally emerges that whatever we do we must always maintain everything within the public sector in the way that it has been done in the past, regardless of how the rest of the world has moved on or the lessons that have been learnt from other activities. That would be a mistake.
My second point is about the relationship between Ministers and officials, a point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. Like a number of things in life, this is often said to be not as good as it once was. People always seem to have the idea that once upon a time there was a golden age when things were rather better. Obviously, my experience does not go back that far. What I can say is that I have experienced many excellent working relationships during my time in the Civil Service which seemed to me to strike just the right balance that one would like to see between Ministers and officials. Essentially, the deal is that in return for the privilege of being involved in the policy debate and having a chance to put views—sometimes forcefully—officials will then do their best to make policies work and subsequently keep their personal views about the decision to themselves. The deal is that Ministers are willing to listen to advice even when it is uncomfortable and accept responsibility for the decisions they have taken. Across a wide range of government business, my experience is that that is very much the way the world works.

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Sometimes, for various reasons, it does not quite work that way, but usually it does once the parties have got to know each other and their working styles. Sometimes there are periods of settling in with new Ministers. After a period in Opposition, Ministers come with very clear ideas, often worked out in detail, about how they want to do things and they are very intent on putting them into place. Sometimes mischief makers will have warned them that officials are likely to be obstructive. Not surprisingly, special advisers and other outsiders tend to be given an even more important role to play in the early stage because they have often worked quite closely with the Minister when he was in Opposition.
I saw it to a degree when I first went to the Treasury in 1980, which was shortly after the change of government. One saw it a little in the early stages of this Government. Officials can feel frustrated if they feel they are being asked simply to implement policy rather than to be part of the whole advice and implementation process. Sometimes, in the early stages, Minsters do not fully appreciate that officials can argue quite strongly against the case and yet when a decision has been taken still be quite assiduous in putting it into practice afterwards. However, those frustrations do not last very long. In my experience, things settle down. It is a mistake to imagine that some of the tensions that one might get at an early stage with new Ministers will necessarily be sustained.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, that the transition to the new Government has gone remarkably smoothly. It owes a great deal to the efforts of everyone involved and particularly to the amount of preparation that was done beforehand both by shadow Ministers and senior officials.
The third point I want to make is about openness. There is a general trend towards getting some more daylight into the process of ministerial decision making, although not all of it is intended. I fully understand the argument for maintaining the tradition that the advice of officials to Ministers should not be made public for a very long time. There are real worries that to do so would undermine the effectiveness of the organisation in defending and implementing decisions. I accept that confidentiality makes it easier for officials to provide advice which is "fearless and frank" if they know that it will not be publicly available soon. At the same time, there are pressures for more accountability and openness. There is a growing pressure for more clarity about the roles and responsibilities of civil servants in practice as well as in principle.
The tradition of the faceless official is changing. Officials are no longer invisible or voiceless. They speak in front of parliamentary committees. They sometimes appear on television in "fly on the wall" documentaries. They are profiled in the press. If they are lucky, or unlucky, they might appear in the memoirs of Ministers. Sometimes we read accounts of contemporary history where the assistance of some of the key players is quite clearly in evidence. Of course, the paradox is that if something goes seriously wrong and there is an inquiry, all the advice will become
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publicly available anyway. It is only if things go well that no one reads the papers which lie behind the work that has been done.
My view is that we must find a way of meeting both needs in a more systematic way and to go further in meeting the legitimate demands for accountability as to how decisions are taken. At a minimum, we need to be much more ruthless and systematic about disclosing the analytical background to decisions and, over time, to make further strides in making material more publicly available, which does not harm the relationship. That would be good for officials and Ministers and would do more than codes or Acts in throwing light on which of the parties is doing the job that it should be doing well.
6.9 p.m.
Lord Gillmore of Thamesfield: My Lords, it was a great privilege to serve as a member on the Select Committee on the Public Service under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley. I am glad that, several months after the report was published, it is possible for your Lordships to hold a debate of substance. Meanwhile, the Government have published their response. While that was broadly positive, not all the Select Committee's recommendations were accepted.
It is not surprising that in the past 20 years or so there has been an enormous change in the Civil Service. It would be surprising if change had not been on such a scale, yet despite the heroic efforts of many senior civil servants—notably the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell—those changes were not widely known and, where they were known, they were not widely understood. It is a matter of great satisfaction that the report shows that the Civil Service has weathered that storm of change, which included a substantial reduction in the number of personnel, with great resilience.
The old virtues of integrity, loyalty to the Crown and to public interest, dispassion, political impartiality, administrative thoroughness, freedom from corruption and a keen regard for fairness and equity have survived wholly intact. In some instances, as the noble Lord pointed out, the standards of service delivery to the public have actually improved.
Although all that is reassuring, it is important none the less to note that there runs through the report a thread of warning signals about the future of the Civil Service. They are warnings about the dangers and risks ahead and areas that require close vigilance. Those points of vulnerability include, in no particular order of importance, the risk of fragmentation and structural division; the danger to morale of piecemeal, ill-considered changes; the fudging of clear lines of ministerial responsibility and accountability; and the erosion of the essential confidentiality between Ministers and civil servants, without which the readiness to proffer unwelcome advice—speaking truth unto power—will be jeopardised.
I will dwell for a moment on the relations between Ministers and civil servants to which the noble Lords, Lord Burns and Lord Newby, referred. It relates to the Haldane principle of ministerial-Civil Service

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partnership, where Ministers conduct business in the presence of officials. It follows that any distancing between Ministers and officials is dangerous and to be deplored. That is not to say that officials have a monopoly of advice. Clearly they do not, and officials accept that is so. However, in times when views are—perhaps more often than in the past—sought from outside, it is vital that Civil Service advice should be taken. That is not an option. It is and must remain a ministerial duty of loyalty.
It is most welcome that the ministerial code published in July 1997 states without equivocation:
"Ministers have a duty to give fair consideration and due weight to informed and impartial advice from Civil Servants".
However, loyalty between Ministers and civil servants has an equally important facet. Loyalty, as any 20 year-old platoon commander in the British Army will tell you, is a two-way business. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, welcomed the way in which the Government had praised the way in which the Civil Service had handled the transition in May 1997. But I do not believe that the report is entirely fanciful when it describes a tendency among politicians to denigrate the public service or to damn it with distinctly less than faint praise.
Many references have been made this evening to the late Lord Bancroft. One is reminded of his memorable phrase that
"the routine words of praise delivered through gritted teeth deceive nobody".
Good government requires the loyalty not just of civil servants to Ministers but of Ministers to civil servants. That is not a matter of sentimentality or of slavishly following tradition. It is essential to the proper functioning of the system and to the maintenance of ethos and morale in public service. It too is a duty, not an option. As the report makes clear, that duty is shared by all Ministers—not just the Minister for the Civil Service, who is the Prime Minister, or the Parliamentary Secretary for the Office of Public Service.
The report recommended that the responsibility to sustain and uphold the ethos of an impartial, dedicated and non-political Civil Service should be spelled out in the ministerial code. It is a matter for regret that the Government, in their response, do not appear to have accepted that recommendation. I hope that Ministers will be prepared to think again.
6.17 p.m.
Lord Croham: My Lords, my interest in and concern about the Civil Service started 60 years ago, so I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, for the way in which he conducted the Select Committee and presented its report this afternoon. It seems a long time ago since our debate started, so perhaps I may be excused for returning to some of the points that the noble and learned Lord made.
When we began the inquiry, there was great concern in many quarters about the effect of some of the changes in government in recent years—changes in departments, which can happen all the time, and the consequences of the next steps agencies. Fear was expressed that the derogation of power over recruitment, grading and pay
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to agencies meant that the service would become fragmented. The fact that Ministers were sometimes passing questions to chief executives meant, it was suggested, that they were trying to get out of their responsibility for everything that went on in departments. There was also a fear in many quarters that the next steps agencies were merely steps on the way to privatisation, which is why at some point in our inquiries the question arose whether there was a natural boundary that should not be passed when moving from the public to the private sector.
On many of those points, the committee felt, having heard witnesses, that the fears expressed were exaggerated. There was clear evidence that agencies had improved efficiency and economies in their operations—and that was the primary motive. It is also fairly clear from the evidence we obtained that Ministers are not ducking out of responsibility for operations. If any serious question arises, they accept responsibility and are prepared to haul things back from the agencies if the political situation should require that.
Some of our witnesses were concerned about another question; namely, whether these developments and other changes might have impaired the capability of the Civil Service to give effective policy advice, or damaged the qualities and attitudes which have been looked for in the Civil Service. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, paid tribute to my late friend and colleague Lord Bancroft who would have served on the committee had his health permitted. Lord Bancroft would perhaps have been rather more concerned about the state of the Civil Service than some of the speakers today. He was always concerned about staff and I think he felt that many of the developments that were taking place were perhaps more serious than some speakers have indicated.
As regards the policy point, it was clear to the committee that the work of the agencies is well integrated with the rest of their departments' work. Therefore the creation of the agencies does not appear to have fragmented the policy advising capability of the service. The cohesion of the service as a whole is now bolstered by the creation of the senior Civil Service to which special rules apply. That is a good step but it became necessary in my view because a lot of unpicking has occurred in the 20 years since I left the Civil Service. It was well integrated 20 years ago.
However, there are other reasons for a degree of concern about the Civil Service ethos of which others have spoken. Ministers of all parties have consistently stated that they look for and support certain qualities in the Civil Service; namely, impartiality, integrity, honesty and objectivity, with selection for promotion on merit, together with the more general ethos of public service. That sentence is taken from the Government's response. However, I am afraid that from time to time actions belie this attitude, in part because Ministers of all parties seem to fear that, if the Civil Service has to serve a party in power for more than one term, it becomes indoctrinated by it. Therefore in compensation there is a temptation to inject more and more political elements into the system.

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The fear that civil servants become politicised is unjustified. That is evidenced by the present Government's response to the Select Committee report. The Government pay tribute to the way in which the Civil Service coped to their satisfaction with the changeover after the 1997 election. This is of no surprise to any civil servant or ex-civil servant. It was demonstrated to the committee by the way Permanent Secretary witnesses, both before and after the election, clearly acted as spokesmen for the Ministers of the time. That made it impossible for the committee to explore with them any issues of Civil Service morale, which Ministers tend to take for granted, but about which witnesses independent of government—some of whom were ex-civil servants—expressed some concern.
But despite the knowledge that civil servants have always dealt properly with a change of government, a few steps were taken last year which in my view mark the first serious inroad into Civil Service political neutrality. I refer to the appointment of a number of politically committed individuals to executive posts in which their defined role is to give a political slant or spin but in which they will have executive control of ordinary civil servants. Those civil servants will be working in units which will have a consistently political stance. Their performance and possibly their pay will be judged on how well they meet the wishes of the specialist adviser who is their boss, and their impartiality will certainly be compromised in other people's eyes. This could have adverse consequences both for morale and esteem.
A regular civil servant in charge of a team knows when something will break the rules of impartiality and how to deal with the situation. However, an executive appointed to a political role is unlikely to have much concern for the ethos of political impartiality. So far it has been only a small step but its importance should not be underestimated. It is the first time that special advisers have been given executive authority over civil servants. It is a step which was deliberately not taken in 1974 when the concept of special advisers was first introduced on a significant scale. They were not given command over ordinary civil servants. If this became a precedent and its scope increased with successive changes of government—just as last year there was a substantial increase in the number of special advisers—it would not be long before we had a political Civil Service. We may want to go in that direction but we should not do so inadvertently.
Political impartiality has been one of the essential elements of the Civil Service ethos and it is an essential condition for the continuity of the service when governments change. It also represents the most important distinction between the Civil Service ethos and the public service ethos. The public service ethos reflects the tradition in this country that public servants do not use public authority or public funds for their own benefit, or that of their families or friends, or of bodies in which they have an interest, or indeed for their political parties, unless there is explicit parliamentary approval for their actions. This is not an ethos which applies only to paid public servants. It applies to all in
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public life who claim to operate in the public interest, whatever their political attitudes. It applies to all of us in this House. However, a permanent Civil Service needs political impartiality as well. The Select Committee believes that the Civil Service ethos has not been compromised by the creation of executive agencies. I agree with that but I fear that there are other dangers.
6.26 p.m.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, before I discuss the Select Committee's report I must declare an interest. I am a pensioner of one of the Civil Service unions and paradoxically I also do some work with Andersen Consulting's public sector group. I, too, congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, and his colleagues on the report and on providing us with the opportunity to debate it today. The debate is overdue. I sympathise with the committee as its work was interrupted by a general election and, due to the pressure of business, this debate takes place some time after the report was published.
Since then many developments have taken place with the new Government coming to power. Understandably, those developments are not addressed in the report. Therefore the Select Committee's remarks concern mainly the previous administration's record. If I may say so—again, for perfectly understandable reasons—one feels that the report looks to the past rather than tackling current and future developments within the Civil Service. I do not intend that remark as a criticism, as for the reasons I have mentioned it was not possible to tackle the report in any other way. However, I hope we shall soon be able to address the significant changes which are at present taking place within the Civil Service. I refer to the consequences for the Civil Service of the establishment of the Scottish parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, the future role of the Government's offices in the regions and their relationship with the regional development agencies and the role of the new task forces which have been established since the Government came to power. I refer also to the need to examine "cut across policies" and to shift away from the vertical structures of the 1980s and the early 1990s. Revised rules on PFI have now been issued which have significant possibilities for the Civil Service in the future.
Nonetheless the report contains many issues of principle. Once again I congratulate the Select Committee on the way in which it has addressed those issues. I share the view expressed by many other speakers; namely, that I find the report acceptable. The report contains a number of issues which I am sure the Government are happy to embrace, although some questions remain as regards a number of them which have been mentioned by previous speakers. Those matters will need to be re-examined.
I welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, to his new post and wish him well. I know that he will be anxious to give genuine support to his civil servants and to the Civil Service in general. He will want to do everything that he can to raise morale and to motivate. I hope that the new Government will be able to give civil servants a sense of vision of what

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constitutes good public service in a way that we have not seen or heard of much in recent years. That ideal has taken some battering.
The noble and learned Lord will also want to maintain the ethos and unity of the Civil Service. Both are rather difficult to define precisely. Having spent much of my life around Whitehall, I understand them, as do most noble Lords present this evening. The Select Committee is keen to preserve both—and we share that ambition.
I have also spent much of my time around the Civil Service network in the rest of the country. It is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that sometimes there is a tendency to be a little elitist in the way in which we address issues of this nature. We must remember that the vast bulk of civil servants are not employed in Whitehall but in many different locations throughout the UK. I tend to share the view about their attitude to ethos, as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, when he gave evidence to the Select Committee. At paragraph 271 of the report he is reported as saying that "ethos" is not sensed in quite the same way,
"out in the Benefits Office in Truro or in Wick".
In my opinion, the unity of the Civil Service is not quite as strong as sometimes we tend to make out when we put on the rose-tinted spectacles and look to the past. Yes, there is unity, but it is an interesting kind of unity. I was recruited, not into the senior Civil Service, but down at the bottom end. I started as a clerical officer. I was recruited by the Inland Revenue over 30-odd years ago. I was a civil servant, but quite frankly my first loyalty then was to the Inland Revenue rather than to the Civil Service as a whole. That was the case with many civil servants who were recruited when I was and it is also the case now for many civil servants. Their first loyalty is to the department, or now the agency, within which they serve.
Looking to the past, we had hundreds of grades, with people remunerated in different ways. Different grades are not something new; we had them in the past. We had different pay arrangements in different parts of the Civil Service. We must ensure that we keep a balance when we talk about ethos and unity.
As a trade union official, I spent quite some time opposing some of the changes that were put into place, as the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Burns, know only too well. As time has passed, the union movement has learned to live with those changes. Some of those changes were introduced by the previous administration. I want to pay my respects to the previous administration in that regard because some of the changes which they introduced have been good for the public service overall, although they also made some mistakes.
Generally speaking, agencies have been a success. There is a limit to how far one can continue to create agencies, but in the main agencies have been a success. We have seen the devolution of management functions and responsibilities within agencies which, I believe, has overall led to an improvement in management performance at a range of levels within the Civil Service, way beyond anything that we had in the past.
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Without the introduction of agencies and the devolution of certain functions, I do not believe that we would have been able to move in that direction.
I share the Select Committee's view that we must ensure that there is proper accountability to Parliament. There is no question about that. However, we must also look for ways of ensuring that there is proper and full accountability to citizens. I am not sure that people are quite so unaware of the changes which have taken place within the Civil Service as has been suggested. There was plenty of debate in the other House, plenty of campaigning by the unions and a good deal of coverage in a whole range of areas about what was happening in the Civil Service. I believe that the population at large now know that we have new agencies. People know that they have new rights, charters and better opportunities to take the Civil Service to task if it fails to perform adequately. Those are all moves in the right direction.
We must ensure also that we constantly seek to increase the rights of citizens—or "customers", as they are now called by some civil servants—to ensure that proper democratic accountability is operating, not just in Parliament, but also more widely. Ten years ago I used to suggest to members of the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service that when questioning civil servants they ought not to construct their questions on the basis of what was said at their surgeries and in letters sent to them as MPs, but that instead they ought to survey and poll their customers. I know that that is not particularly popular at this end of the Palace, but I believe that it would be worth while. As Members have never done that, they have never been properly equipped to take to task some of the civil servants who appear before them. Interestingly, many government departments and agencies now carry out polls and conduct research work among taxpayers and "customers" to see how their services are received. Regrettably, we do not always have access to that kind of detail, although it would help us all. An effective freedom of information Act would be another interesting tool available to us in the context of extending democracy and widening people's knowledge of what we do.
I hope that the new Minister will not only maintain the Civil Service drive for greater efficiency, put in train by the previous administration, but do even better. I sensed in the Select Committee report some unease about value for money and efficiency. I hope that I have misread and misunderstood that. It is important to recognise that that must stay at the forefront of what constitutes public service; otherwise the public service will diminish even further, and none of the speakers this evening would wish to see that happen.
I pay tribute to the previous Conservative government for their work on agencies and getting better value for money. In my opinion, the Civil Service is more highly regarded by the general public now than 20 years ago. Credit is due to the other side for having put much of that in train.

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Now we have to see where we go with the present Government. I hope that they will be bold. I hope that they will persuade civil servants to move forward with them and that they will offer them opportunities in a variety of ways.
One of the down-sides of the previous administration's contribution was that they focused so much on segmentation and on creating agencies—small, individual units—that they failed to see what was happening with technology. They failed to recognise the opportunities that could have been taken on board to improve performance and get better value for money by creating new relationships between agencies and departments and implementing cross-cutting policies. In their last couple of years in office the previous government turned their attention to that issue. I hope that the new Government will do even more on that front. There are great prospects for achieving better policy and for effecting fuller savings and more efficient operations than in the past.
I look forward to the White Paper on better government. Along with the development of IT, I hope that these proposals will play a significant part in the White Paper. I hope, too, that the Government will spend a great deal of time talking about achieving even better management than we have had previously. It is vitally important to the Civil Service, as well as policy-making.
Another issue that was not taken up in the report and on which we need to continue to work is investment. The Government are committed to high-scale investment in health and education. However, I hope that we shall find new ways and means of bringing better investment to departments, agencies and NPPBs. Without that investment, the comparisons that many people draw between the public service and the private sector will continue to be unfavourable as regards the public service. We have people with remarkable aptitudes, but in many areas we are working with old tools in comparison with what is available in the private sector. We need to find ways and means of achieving better investment.
I am not advocating privatisation, although I do not believe that it should necessarily be taken off the agenda. The Government should be prepared to explore all the opportunities and avenues open to them in order to provide the best government, and in particular to find better investment in the public service. That means exploring partnerships even further, not merely with the private sector but with the voluntary sector, and seeking investment from other quarters.
Finally, we have people who can meet all the needs of government in terms of policy development. However, we cannot deny the perception that has arisen in recent years that Civil Service policy-making has fallen somewhat short of the requirements of the country. In the past, policies were developed by political parties, the Civil Service and academics in the universities. In recent years that has tended to change. We have seen what might be described as a vacuum filled to some degree by business and business leaders,
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initially from the Conservative Party. We have seen the growth and influence of the think-tanks; and we continue to see the growth of political advisers.
I draw comfort from the evidence given to the committee by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that at the end of the day the Prime Minister has the right to call for support and advice from the best quarters when he needs it. That is not solely the Civil Service. I hope that it is predominantly the Civil Service; however, like the noble Lord, Lord Burns, I believe that we must be flexible in our approach. We must be prepared to look wherever we can in order to receive the best support, advice and assistance that are available in order to achieve the best available government.
Civil servants have an opportunity, given some of the changes announced during the summer, to move back into those areas of policy-making where there has latterly been a shift. I was pleased to hear the announcements in July that two new major committees are to be established within Whitehall. They will provide an opportunity for examining prospects and policies and an opportunity for innovation and new policy development in the longer term by civil servants. I believe that those creations will be well received and supported by civil servants. They are necessary for them. I also share the view that they need the opportunity of more cross-fertilisation with life beyond the Civil Service. We need to give greater encouragement to that kind of interchange. I am not without hope and confidence as regards the future of the Civil Service. The service needs to continue to adapt and move with the times. However, we need to make sure that we do not lose sight of the basic principles enunciated in the report.
Within the Civil Service there is significant talent that is not yet being fully utilised. The younger civil servants I meet are more like those described by the noble Lord, Lord Burns. I believe that they would wish to have the opportunity to grow and flourish, rather than see themselves pushed into corners.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, It is with some diffidence that I rise to make a modest contribution to this debate, given that it is many years since I was officially involved in these matters and that such knowledge as I had is well out of date. Indeed, I go back to the regime of the late Lord Normanbrook, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, referred. However, it is a subject which remains of deep concern to me.
As the previous speaker pointed out, the time taken to arrange this debate means that there has been a whole range of changes since the report was published, including the role of the Minister, to whose speech we are all looking forward. I confess that I get a bit lost among the proliferation of new enterprises, but one of the changes that caught my eye was the announcement just before the summer break of a new centre for management studies involving the future of the Civil Service College. I get the impression that, somehow, the college has never quite matched the high hopes that we had for it in furthering the well-being of the service

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when I surrendered for its use the premises at Sunningdale which we had been running as a civil defence college. I doubt whether the Minister will have time to dwell on that point in his reply, but perhaps he will write to me at his convenience.
I have been well aware for some time that we have long since strayed from the simple concept of a unified service which stemmed from the Northcote-Trevelyan Report. Indeed, as a member of the Fulton Committee, I must take a share of the responsibility for that committee's report, which, unsatisfactory though it was in many respects, did I suppose mark the beginning of major changes. I have to admit that the present admirable report brought home to me that the developments in recent years were even more sweeping and far-reaching than I had previously realised. I do not think that my noble friend Lord Burns need be too apprehensive in regard to the public service being ring-fenced against change.
The Government's reply to the report manages to complicate matters for the simple-minded reader by re-arranging the committee's conclusions in a different way. I noted that there was no comment on the reference by the committee to its earlier report on the recruitment and assessment services to which my noble and learned friend Lord Slynn and other speakers referred.
The previous government lost quite a lot of marks with some of us for simply ignoring the conclusion reached in a vote by this House and going ahead regardless. Although I suppose it will take quite a long time before a proper judgment can be made, I should like to take the opportunity of asking how long the contract will run with the present operators and whether this Government intend to implement the undertaking given by the previous government to carry out regular reviews. I believe they used the word "audits".
I should like to pick out two points arising from the report. The first concerns performance-related pay. When I joined the Civil Service, assistant secretaries, for example, worked their annual way up a scale of £1,150 to £1,450 a year and permanent secretaries were paid £3,000 a year, and that was that. I appreciate that performance-related pay is now part of the culture, but I notice that the committee found that the devolution of responsibility to departments was contributing to a sense of disunity within the service. The Government's reply rather brushes this aside, but I gain the impression from elsewhere that there is a good deal of dissatisfaction with the fairness of the present system, including suggestions that sometimes there has been shown to be bias against women and members of the ethnic groups. Indeed, I believe that one major department has given up the system for the time being. I realise that there can be no ready cure for the basic complaint that anyway there is not enough money to go round, but I should be interested to know whether the Minister regards the present arrangements as satisfactory and whether it is thought that they do indeed provide motivation.
Secondly, I found the committee's report not totally reassuring on the matter of career planning and how that is linked with delegation of powers to departments. Are there opportunities for those who think they would
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benefit from operational experience to get a move to a next steps agency without taking the risk that their parent department might lose sight of them? Do such moves take place on any scale? And what are the arrangements for picking out from among the lower orders of the 3,000 senior civil servants the leaders of the future and planning their careers across departmental boundaries? The Government's reply in this context is soothing but not very specific.
There is then the question of appointments to top posts from outside, to which a number of noble Lords have referred. The committee, as we were reminded, found no evidence so far of any adverse effect on morale but warned that such appointments should not be overdone. I should like to echo that point. With the contraction of the service, the number of top posts is, if anything, likely to diminish. If too many of this smaller number were filled from outside, the long-term effects, as this fact gradually became known to potential recruits to the service, could be quite serious.
I shall end on a brighter note. I had feared that career civil servants might increasingly come to be regarded by Ministers primarily as managers rather than as advisers on policy. I can only say that, watching the activities of my old department in recent legislation and elsewhere, and listening to what the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Mostyn, has said about the support he has had from officials, I am in no doubt that Home Office civil servants—and I am sure they are not alone in this—continue to play a very active part in the working out of new policies, of which there is no shortage, as an announcement about forthcoming legislation earlier today reminded us.
6.53 p.m.
Lord Hayhoe: My Lords, I cannot rival the history of the noble Lord, Lord Croham, but I joined the Ministry of Supply something over 55 years ago at the most junior technical appointment level that existed at that time, receiving the princely salary of £156 a year, which is rather different from the rates of pay prevalent now. I first met Ian Bancroft when I was posted as a Minister of State to the Civil Service Department, having left the Civil Service and moved into the world of politics, which I think has served me rather better than the Civil Service would have done. Ian Bancroft was then head of the Home Civil Service and Permanent Secretary at the Civil Service Department. From my earliest acquaintance with him, continuing through the years as one saw him sitting on the Cross-Benches in this House, my admiration and affection for him grew all the time and I am glad to echo the comments that have been made about him. I only wish that he were present to be taking part in this debate.
Perhaps I may, as a member of the Select Committee—though I joined it rather later than the noble Baroness, Lady Turner—echo the well-deserved tributes paid to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley. He was a superb chairman. At one stage we were in great disarray and I was not clear that we would ever be able to come together and produce a report. By a masterly précis, which he put together, as far as I could

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see, over the luncheon interval, he got us all back in line and we moved forward to achieve what I think is a well-angled report about a very important subject.
Twelve months have elapsed since we were about ready to publish the report in December last year. At that time we wondered whether we should delay publication because it was confidently predicted that the Government were to produce a White Paper at any moment. I am glad that we did not delay because the White Paper is still awaited. Perhaps, in replying, the Minister can confirm that it has now been subsumed into a White Paper on better government which is predicted to be published some time next year.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, I wish to say a few words about performance pay. I have come across this on a number of occasions and my doubts about its usefulness have increased. In our report we refer to the evidence given by Professor Hennessy, who described the performance pay system introduced into the higher ranks of the Civil Service as "ludicrous" and went on to say:
"If I thought that Deputy Secretary X was going to work that much more effectively and zealously because of a merit payment of £1,000 at the end of the year, I would be deeply worried about Deputy Secretary X because that is not what should get them out of bed in the morning to do a good job for the state".
I entirely agree. Although senior civil servants, when asked about performance pay, loyally said that they thought it might have some marginal usefulness, I very much doubt that that is the case so far as the higher ranks of the civil service are concerned. In my experience, the people who occupy those positions will not be moved much either way by the thought of a small merit bonus at the end of the year. Indeed, like Professor Hennessy, I should be very saddened if that affected their motivation.
The main point I wish to make is on a subject which has been referred to throughout the debate. A theme of our report, much mentioned by earlier speakers, centres on the question as to whether the immensely important public service ethos which has permeated and animated the senior ranks of our Civil Service following the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of the last century has been undermined and seriously damaged in recent years. It is generally agreed that a radical and fundamental revolution in public administration has occurred, in a somewhat haphazard fashion, over the past 20 or 30 years. As we say in paragraph 168 of the report,
"there has been little or no coherent rationale underlying the changes made in the Civil Service in recent years".
Perhaps a university thesis will be written to show that there was such a rationale, but none of us knew about it at the time.
Fears have been expressed that privatisation, market testing and the next steps agencies, with their associated emphasis on management skills and value-for-money, have undermined in some way the old Civil Service virtues. I was delighted that these fears, which were abroad at an early stage in the work of the committee, were not supported by the main thrust of the evidence that we gathered.
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I wholly agree with the noble Lord from the Benches opposite that so often when we talk about the Civil Service we think of a small group of a few thousand, in the main senior people with access to Ministers who have an impact upon the formulation of policy; whereas there is a real civil service out there composed very largely of young people, particularly women, who are not very well paid but who do an enormous number of routine tasks all over the country. I was glad to hear the reference to staff who work in social security offices who often face terrifying behaviour by claimants who bang desks and the like. We must never forget the very loyal service that they give when distributing the benefits that Parliament has laid down.
Another threat to Civil Service morale and values at a senior level came with and from the new Labour Government following last year's general election. New Ministers with their spin doctors and policy advisers—close and trusted friends and colleagues—caused quite a flutter in ministerial corridors in Whitehall. I take one incident. There was that insensitive, if not positively disgraceful, treatment of Jill Rutter, whom I knew when a Minister in the Treasury in the middle of the 1980s. She was head of information. Other information officers suffered a somewhat similar fate. It appeared that senior civil servants were ignored or excluded from policy discussions at that time.
I am glad that there is now a code of conduct for political and special advisers and that the non-party political status of the Government Information Service has been made absolutely clear. Fears about politicisation have happily proved to be somewhat exaggerated, although I do not believe that one can ignore the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, who highlighted some of the potential dangers in this area. As the noble Lord, Lord Burns, explained, it is perhaps inevitable that when governments change some, but not all, incoming Ministers are slow to appreciate the quality and independence of their senior civil servants. But as time goes on quality should show through and a better balance between what may be described as the "regulars" (the Civil Service) and the "irregulars" (special advisers, et al) will be achieved. The warning of the noble Lord, Lord Croham, on this issue is one of which I hope the Government will take very careful account.
I come to what is perhaps a more controversial point. Paragraph 254 of our report refers to the evidence of Sir Christopher Foster and Mr. Frances Plowden who spoke of
"the erosion of the Haldane principle of Ministerial-Civil Service partnership which used to be the keystone of their relations".
This matter was referred to explicitly by the noble Lord, Lord Croham, and implicitly by my noble friend Lord Beloff. Between 1979 and 1990 Conservative governments led to a diminished role for the Cabinet and Cabinet committees. An increasingly presidential-type regime was imposed that undermined to an extent the independence of departments and the value of collective decision-taking. To have collective

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responsibility imposed when collective decision-taking is denied is not a happy situation. Perhaps that has reference to events in our very recent memories.
From 1990 to 1997 my right honourable friend the then Prime Minister Mr. John Major sought to restore Cabinet government, at least as far as concerned reports in the press. A fractious and small disloyal minority in his party made life very difficult for him. Rumour has it that the present Prime Minister prefers the Thatcher model of neo-presidential power. If that is true, a further erosion of the Haldane principle is likely and the role of the Civil Service will be diminished at a time when I believe it should be enhanced.
I end by observing that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, in opening the debate, said that the report was no show-stopper, or words to that effect. I agree with him. But the report and the supporting documents constitute a rich and varied quarry of quotations and information to be hewed out by students of government and public administration in the future. To the small number of our fellow citizens who follow these matters with care and attention I can only commend the report as a very valuable contribution to debates on these matters.
7.7 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Tanworth: My Lords, I do not believe that anyone expects the last speaker before the gap to score many runs. I shall keep my remarks appropriately brief. I am very glad to join in congratulating the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, and his colleagues on the Select Committee on a most useful report and on introducing this very interesting debate. As a former civil servant I was naturally glad, even if not totally surprised, to note that the Select Committee reached the view that the service had managed to maintain its ethos of fairness, integrity, political impartiality and rigour despite the many changes that had fallen about its head. I also agree with the Select Committee that that ethos is vulnerable, and I shall concentrate my remarks on that.
We could have quite a different Civil Service; for example one based on the American model. However, if we want to maintain our traditional model it must be nurtured and respected. That respect must be earned, but if earned it should be given. The Select Committee emphasises the risks of fragmentation that arise from the creation of executive agencies and the devolution to them of the settlement of pay and conditions of service, the filling of senior jobs from outside, fixed-term contracts and problems over accountability. It is important not to lose the esprit de corps that comes from belonging to a unified service where a sense of proper behaviour or seemliness is acquired by a process of osmosis rather than a formal Civil Service code.
It is good that the Select Committee, having looked at the executive agencies, sees no sign of losing that ethos yet. And I emphasise the word "yet" because in some cases executive agencies will, and perhaps should, develop their own style and their own ethos. I believe that it will become increasingly necessary not just to nurture but to monitor how the ethos is living in this new and very different world.
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The changes to which I have referred and on which the Select Committee concentrated were the result of deliberate internal government decisions, usually with cross-party support. But I believe that during the 30-year period which the Select Committee examined there were also two external developments—not the responsibility of government—which have a bearing on the prevailing ethos.
The first is the cultural revolution of rising expectations, a product in part of the pressure for personal autonomy and self-realisation which gathered increasing force in the 1960s. That led not just to a challenge to the public service but to a much wider challenge to professionalism in general. Like other institutions which exemplify values over self-realisation, the public service has had to adapt to this new dispensation, which tended to see professional values as impediments to personal development. The very idea that some people—be they doctors, lawyers or civil servants—know best became profoundly inimical to fashionable social norms.
The second extraordinary development is of course greater transparency in government—we do not have full transparency in government—coupled with the growing influence and interest of the media. That has made it much harder for civil servants to shelter behind the traditional notions of ministerial responsibility. But identification can be carried too far.
I do not seek to argue that any of these changes, whether the internal changes in the Civil Service and its organisation or the external changes in the climate, are in themselves undesirable. Indeed, I think that most of them are probably highly desirable, but cumulatively they must make it harder to sustain the public service ethos. I think it is a great achievement of the Civil Service to have done that so far.
Accordingly, I support the recommendations of the Select Committee, including those relating to areas which I have not spoken about. Like the Select Committee, I am on balance, but only just on balance, in favour of a Civil Service Act to buttress the Civil Service code, provided it is always understood that there are ethical attitudes of seemliness, fairness and proper behaviour, which may be very difficult to put into legal language but which will remain just as important, provided that the Civil Service Act is not drafted—and other speakers have made this point—in a way which would impede flexible responses to developing situations.
It seems to me that although we want to maintain our traditional Northcote-Trevelyan Civil Service we are in a way on a process of evolution towards a new kind of Civil Service; more professional, more performance oriented, more open to outside advice and less arrogant. But the trick is to combine that with the old ethos of integrity and impartiality. I believe that that is happening, but the crucial thing will be for governments—for the present Government or any other government—to continue to show that this is what they want and what they value.
7.14 p.m.
Lord McNally: My Lords, there is an American saying that there has not been so much talent round one table since Thomas Jefferson dined alone. I have the feeling today that there has certainly not been so much Whitehall experience brought to bear on a particular subject for a very long time as there has been today. I of course approach these matters from a different vantage point from many of the distinguished Cross-Benchers who have contributed to this debate.
In a 32-year career since leaving university, I have been a think-tank employee, a special adviser, a Member of Parliament, a party apparatchik and a PR executive. I can already suspect that your Lordships are thinking, "This is a man who can't hold down a steady job". But in all those 32 years and in all those jobs I have had direct contact with civil servants, and my interest in the Civil Service even pre-dates that.
At university, when I was not involved in student politics I studied social history, and I have to say that Northcote and Trevelyan were collectively among my political heroes. The Northcote-Trevelyan report, along with the great Reform Bill, are two of the great taproots of our democracy. It was an extraordinary achievement of that time to persuade government to give up patronage in favour of an independent civil service. I consulted a few old textbooks and found that at the time many pundits predicted that governments would not do that because the power of patronage was too powerful a weapon for them to give up. Perhaps it is an encouragement to us all to learn that vested interests can sometimes seek power for the greater public good.
I join my colleagues in tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn, and his colleagues, for producing this report. Of course the spirit of Lord Bancroft has dominated this debate. Towards the end of his life he said:
"At this point in my life there arc very few matters, apart from my family, about which I can feel passionately. One of them is the future integrity of the public service and in particular the Civil Service".—[Official Report, 8/3/96; col. 573.]
I think that some of that passion has come through to some of his colleagues this evening. Lord Bancroft asked us to make our report a second Northcote-Trevelyan. I do not think that that was ever a realistic ambition for this report, but I think we have done some useful ground clearing so that the necessary look-to-the-future is on the basis of fact and not on prejudice.
Much of the debate tonight has, of necessity and by priority, been about the senior Civil Service and I should like to make a few remarks about that. Before doing so, I should like to associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Turner. and the noble Lords, Lord Brooke and Lord Hayhoe. I am not exaggerating when I say that, certainly for me, the visit we made to Leeds was a traumatic experience. Anybody who has any idea of comfortable, cosseted, tea-drinking civil servants just waiting for their index-linked pensions should go to a benefits office. It literally is the front line and often quite young people are given immense responsibilities on our behalf in dealing with some of
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the most difficult problems in our society. So sometimes when the term "civil servant" trips off the tongue it is worth remembering those who carry out that work on our behalf.
Over the past 20 years the Civil Service has been severely tested by rapid change. Some of that insecurity, stress and pressure has not been on the civil servants alone; it has been common in many industries and professions, such as banking. We cannot expect to protect our Civil Service from change; it is how we manage that change.
One successful period of change has already taken place. As a number of Members have commented, our report was held over during the period of transition from one government to another. There were question marks over the capacity of the Civil Service to embrace change after 18 years of often strong-minded government, perhaps dominated by the concept of, "Is he one of us?". Had the Civil Service changed? Was it capable of managing the transition? I am pleased to see that the Government's response states:
"The impartiality of the Civil Service—its ability to serve the elected Government of the day, and to provide continuity through changes of Government—has recently been tested … the Government believes that the Civil Service has fully passed that test"
I think that all members of our committee share that judgment. But that does not mean that there were not some worrying signs in the former administration. I believe that one or two civil servants stayed in the same post for far too long. It is a temptation that may arise again if a government stay in office for any length of time. In some ways it is for the civil servants to protect themselves by moving on from a specific job rather than becoming adopted by one Minister, in some cases moving departments with the Minister, thus staying so long with one Minister that they cannot return to the parent department. That is a danger. When we talk about influences on the Civil Service, civil servants should beware of that danger.
I turn to the question of political advisers. I spent five years as a political adviser to the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, first in the Foreign Office and then in Downing Street. I was pleased that the Government welcome the fact in paragraph 23 of their response that the committee,
"received no evidence that the system of political advisers had been abused or had caused resentment from the established Civil Service".
That was certainly true. However, the relationship between political advisers and the Civil Service has to be kept under review. There is the danger of what Professor Peter Hennessy has called "politicised over mightiness" of political advisers, or the fear that,
"notions of public service can seem marginal or even positively harmful to the hard pressed".
In our system, it is strange how one action has a result elsewhere. The introduction of Short money—the supplying of money to Opposition parties—created a shadow civil service. In a way which was not true 20 or 30 years ago, young men and women in Whitehall and Westminster working for opposition parties will gain experience of policy making, speech writing,

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parliamentary questions and all the procedures with which full-time civil servants are familiar. Some of them will move into Government spheres if and when there is a change of government. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Tanworth, indicated, in the years to come we shall have to work with a hybrid system in relation to advice to senior Ministers. No major political party will give up its resources as regards supplying professional advice. We have to get the balance right.
I again quote Professor Hennessy:
"We live in an era when the Armani-clad minds in the penumbra of fad and fashion-prone private think tanks"—
those who know Peter Hennessy will recognise the language—
"can be preferred (especially if the advice comes gift wrapped and suitably politically tinted) to that more sober, sometimes inconvenient fare served up by the tweed clad minds in the career bureaucracy".
I am not sure that I recognise either the Armani suits or the tweed clad minds. However, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Gillmore, is right: getting the balance right between advice from the Civil Service and political advisers is a responsibility of Ministers. Ministers must want a career-based, politically neutral, Civil Service to continue.
Perhaps the safest thing is not so much to ring-fence the Civil Service as to ring-fence the political advisers either by a statutory number of political advisers or a statutory amount of public funds that could be spent on political advisers. There would not then be the danger of a gradual encroachment on the role of the permanent Civil Service by political appointments.
To underpin the independence of the Civil Service, I believe that a Civil Service Act would be welcome. I also believe that what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nolan, in his Radcliffe lecture described as, "Government in the sunshine" would be best strengthened by a freedom of information Act. I was pleased that the noble Lords, Lord Burns and Lord Brooke, seemed to be in support of greater openness in government.
The report defends the special characteristics of our Civil Service: the lack of political bias; integrity; impartiality; objectivity; loyalty and freedom from corruption. It is right we should seek within our Civil Service to have the right social mix. A number of speakers have expressed the suspicion that existed in the 1960s and 1970s, certainly in the Labour Party, that our Civil Service was too narrowly socially based. There was a feeling of hostility and suspicion about its workings. From what I can observe of this transition, that seems to be less felt. Changes have taken place. A recent New Statesman article stated:
"The lazy lunches in the Pall Mall clubs have almost completely gone, as have the shooting weekends in Scotland. Sherry sales are well down. The new Whitehall is an arena where John Major's spiritual children indeed prosper, a place where the academically bright from beyond the public school have their best shot at real power, a venue for advancement for a bureaucratic Mittelstand comprising folks who find their way around a website at least as adeptly as they navigate a wine list".
That can only be progress. The noble Lord, Lord Allen, referred briefly to the social mix. I believe that there is a social duty on Civil Service recruitment to make special
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efforts to ensure that there is also an ethnic mix. I understand that over the past six years changes have been made in selection procedures for the fast stream appointments. Racial bias in the tests used has been analysed, and focus groups and other research have been used to try to make the selection systems fairer. However, representation from our ethnic minorities in our senior Civil Service is still very poor. I understand that the Commission for Racial Equality has been working to secure a timetable and action plan covering key issues in relation to fast stream appointments.
We are in a period of social and constitutional change. No one ducks the need for the Civil Service to adapt to new circumstances. The principles of my student heroes, Northcote-Trevelyan, are still valid. However, to remain valid they need civil servants, Ministers and a Parliament who are determined to preserve and strengthen them where necessary. Our Civil Service is both a buttress to our freedom and an asset to us all.
7.30 p.m.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I join with other noble Lords in congratulating the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, and his committee on this comprehensive report and the painstaking assimilating of a daunting amount of evidence.
In my opinion, it was appropriate also that the committee should have been chaired by a Cross-Bencher, a distinguished judge which, to my mind, symbolised the almost unique reputation for impartiality of our non-political Civil Service. It is right that we should give all credit not only to the noble and learned Lord but also to the members of his committee, even those who did not serve throughout the whole of its time, for what must be regarded as an entirely dispassionate and objective report.
I agree also with the noble Lord, Lord McNally. He commented on the very high quality and experience of all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate this evening. It is late now and I do not propose to take up much of your Lordships' time with a detailed review of all the report's contents and conclusions. In fact, many of the points made in the report have been covered already by many more experienced noble Lords this evening who have an intimate knowledge of the Civil Service.
I should like to mention one or two key points which have been made in the report. The foundation of the non-political nature of the Civil Service was laid down 195 years ago by the Northcote-Trevelyan report. That report ended the system of appointments to the Civil Service by patronage. The committee welcomes, as I do, the statement in the July 1997 edition of the Ministerial Code that has already been quoted this evening by the noble Lord, Lord Gillmore of Thamesfield, that:
"Ministers have a duty to give fair consideration and due weight to informed and impartial advice from civil servants".
However, giving fair consideration and weight to the advice of civil servants, whether the Minister accepts that advice or not, does not detract from the overriding duty of a Minister to accept responsibility for what his department does or does not do. A Minister cannot be

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heard to say that he was misled by his civil servants or that somehow it was their fault. I do so agree with the noble Lord, Lord Gillmore of Thamesfield, that loyalty goes both ways between Ministers and those in the Civil Service.
I believe also that if a person is in receipt of a ministerial salary and enjoys a ministerial chauffeur-driven limousine and all the other perquisites of high office, if something goes wrong, even if he considers that it is not his fault, it certainly must be his responsibility. That applies equally when a Cabinet Minister hives off part of his historic duties to an agency or non-governmental body such as the Bank of England. On every Minister's desk there should be a plaque of President Truman's favourite aphorism, "The buck stops here".
Another new trend is the shedding of the professional departmental press officers and their replacements by outsiders. I believe that there is a difference between a press officer who is seen by everybody as merely being the mouthpiece of his political master—the messenger, if you will—and someone who combines fact with political propaganda so that it is very difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Someone who, in many cases, actually helps to formulate the policies is supposed merely to "sell" to the public.
That brings me to the proliferation of the many special advisers that we now find in Whitehall. That matter has been noted by many noble Lords this evening. I believe that it is right and proper that senior Ministers should have access to political advisers paid for at the public expense: first, because a Minister needs someone to look over his shoulder, advising him of the political consequences of his policies and to help formulate policies without being involved in the day-to-day burden of running a department; and secondly—to my mind, much more important—because it enables the professional civil servants to distance themselves from politics, as I found for myself when I had the honour of speaking from the Dispatch Box on the other side of the Chamber.
But what concerns me is the increase in the number and cost of those special advisers. That matter has also been mentioned by many noble Lords this evening, in particular the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, when he opened the debate. It is a matter which needs to be carefully watched. The number of special advisers funded by the public under the present Government has increased from 38 to 64. A year ago, the cost was put at £2.6 million compared with an average in the last Parliament of £1.4 million. Four of them enjoy salaries of over £70,000 per annum, including one at over £100,000 per annum, all of which are more than is earned by the Secretaries of State in the other place.
And then there is the so-called Strategic Communications Unit. I am still not sure whether that unit deals with strategy about communications or communications about strategy, but its function seems to ensure that Ministers remain on-song. When the Minister replies, perhaps he will tell me which of my
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two interpretations is the correct one. In any event, the cost of that department for 1998–99 will be in the region of £500,000.
In the report, the committee refers to both the advent of political advisers and the creation of autonomous executive agencies under the jurisdiction of various departments. In the face of that, the committee emphasises that,
"to safeguard the Northcote-Trevelyan principles in terms of both recruitment and conduct clear guidelines need to be set out which protect the neutrality and independence of the Civil Service whilst opening up access of Ministers for political advice".
The noble Lord, Lord Croham, made the point that there is a great danger in blurring those lines of responsibility. My noble friend Lord Hayhoe and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, made the same point. I very much hope that we shall hear from the Minister, in his reply, that the Government intend to take up that important recommendation and will give us an idea as to when those new definitive guidelines will be published.
As the committee reminded us pointedly in its report, the overall responsibility for protecting the ethos and morale of the Civil Service lies in the first place with the Minister for the Civil Service; and that, of course, is the Prime Minister. That is with whom that particular buck stops.
The committee received evidence from many knowledgeable witnesses, including many Members of your Lordships' House. All spoke in the highest terms of the way that the Civil Service has coped with the changes that have taken place in the way that the country is governed and the way in which its affairs are administered. Others, involved in or with the executive agencies, including the Council of Civil Service Unions, told the committee of the improvement that has been achieved in the delivery of services following the creation of those agencies. I am pleased to note that endorsement of the policies of the previous government in the creation of the method of managing the Government's public responsibilities. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, will not be surprised that I am most grateful to him for acknowledging that.
I was interested to see the committee's view that the creation of those executive agencies has given rise to questions of accountability. As the committee pointed out, accountability sometimes—I stress sometimes—rests on the novel assumption that the chief executive is responsible rather than the Minister; further, that the Minister's responsibility to Parliament is satisfied by acting as a sort of mouthpiece for the chief executive, often by simply appending a letter from him to a Written Answer.
The committee strongly recommends that, as there are now a variety of interpretations of the nature of the devolution of accountability, there is,
"a need for the relationship to be precisely defined"—
to which I would add, "and consistently in all cases".
The committee considers that it is,
"unrealistic to imagine that a minister will not become involved when an operational matter suddenly raises a policy issue … so that it is impossible to devolve absolute accountability to Chief Executives".

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I do not believe that anybody would disagree with that. The committee asks the Government to affirm that the position of the agency chief executive is no different from any other civil servant, so that it would prevent it being thought that Ministers can pass responsibility for operational matters to chief executives.
Having had the opportunity to consider the report, will the Minister tell us whether the Government are both prepared to make that affirmation and to ensure that the Civil Service code should be amended to define the responsibility of Ministers for their executive agencies, as recommended by the committee?
Finally, the committee reported—I can do no better than quote its words—that,
"The evidence … has shown that the current Civil Service has coped in the highest traditions … with the change of Government which occurred in May 1997".
Its report also said that it had received much evidence testifying to the continuing high standards of efficiency, integrity, impartiality and intellectual rigour which characterise the Civil Service. The committee paid tribute to the Civil Service for maintaining those qualities so well. So do we on these Benches and, I believe, the whole House.
7.41 p.m.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Falconer of Thoroton): My Lords, like other speakers in the debate, perhaps I may start by making two points. First, on behalf of the Government I pay a real tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, for the work that he and his committee have done in producing the report. It is a serious piece of work which will be read for a long time to come as a major contribution to the study of the Civil Service and also what its ethos and qualities should be. On behalf of the Government I am genuinely grateful for the work that has been done.
Secondly, I pay tribute to the quality of the debate that has just taken place and express my extreme diffidence in replying to it. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, pointed out, the wealth of experience behind the views that have been expressed on the report would make anybody diffident in responding to them.
I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Hendon, ended her speech by reference to paragraph XXXI of the committee's report. It is its last recommendation and basically ends on an extremely optimistic note in relation to the Civil Service. When listening to the debate today one could have been forgiven from time to time for thinking that the Civil Service and the public service are under some sort of threat. That is profoundly not the view that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, and his committee expressed. Though it is perhaps repetitive, it is worth reading again:
"The evidence we have received has shown that the current Civil Service has coped in the highest traditions of the Civil Service with the change of Government which occurred in May 1997. We have also received much evidence testifying to the continuing high standards of efficiency, integrity, impartiality and intellectual rigour which characterise the Civil Service. We pay tribute to the Civil Service for maintaining these qualities so well".
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Those views were echoed by the Prime Minister when he paid tribute to the Civil Service shortly after this Government came to power.
We should therefore approach the debate not on the basis that there is danger and trouble, but on the basis that the Civil Service has proved itself to be very effective in the past few years and since this Government came to power in withstanding any sort of attack on its ethos and in fulfilling the highest traditions of public service. It is important and valuable that the Government express—and I do so today—that they are fully committed to maintaining the key principles of impartiality, integrity, honesty and objectivity which underpin a permanent Civil Service. I make clear also that this Government hold the Civil Service in the highest esteem and that I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said; that is, that one of the things that undermines the ethos of the Civil Service is if it believes that it is not held in the highest esteem. That is not the position. This Government hold it in the highest esteem.
Perhaps I may deal also with the point in relation to special advisers. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Hendon, that it is appropriate and sensible for Ministers to have special advisers. Nobody has seriously suggested that that is not the case, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale. With the greatest respect to their arguments, I believe them to be wrong. It is entirely appropriate that a Minister, in fulfilling his office, should be assisted by a special adviser to give help both in relation to the political direction of the advice that he is given and also in relation to the presentation of policies with which he is concerned.
From my experience—it is not in any way contradicted by the report of the committee—there is no danger to the impartiality of the Civil Service. Moreover, as has been made clear, the Civil Service code requires Ministers to give due weight and fair consideration to the advice that civil servants give to them. It is an arrangement between special advisers on the one hand and the Civil Service on the other that can provide a better overall service to Ministers than the position without them.
The matter must also be put in context. How many special advisers are there? There are 70, not 64 as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, modestly suggested in her speech. There are in the region of 3,500 senior civil servants and in the region of 450,000 non-senior civil servants. That sort of ratio is a wise and sensible one; it is the sort of ratio where the two can work together effectively.
The committee said that it received no evidence that the system of political advisers had been abused or had caused resentment from the established Civil Service. Indeed, that is my experience. Of course, there may be difficulties, as has been referred to in the course of the debate, when new governments come to power. But there can be no organisation where a whole new layer comes in when there is not some difficulty in relation to the early stages. It would be wrong and unwise therefore to draw any conclusions from whatever initial difficulties there may have been. The arrangements complement each other and serve the country well.

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It is important to emphasise that the ethos of the Civil Service and the specific qualities it brings are so precious that it is extremely important that its preservation is monitored. How that is done is obviously the responsibility of Ministers. In relation to the response given by the Government, we made it clear that we accept an obligation to monitor the preservation of the ethos and values of the Civil Service, and I repeat that undertaking.
I appreciate that it is for a political government to do more than pay lip service to those principles. I hope that by our actions we prove that we accept the principles, that we value the ethos and that we will do all we can to ensure that the virtues of the Civil Service continue. That is our basic position and it is one that practically every speaker shares.
I believe I have dealt with the major thread that ran through the debate and through the report. Perhaps I can deal with a number of more specific points raised by certain speakers. First, in relation to the Recruitment and Assessment Service, it is not appropriate or necessary for me to go over the debates that took place in 1996. For better or worse the decision was made by the previous government to privatise the Recruitment and Assessment Service. The result of that privatisation was that the mechanics of recruitment are now in the hands of a private company. That private company has a series of contracts that expire in the year 2001. Obviously the Government will keep those arrangements under appropriate review. I do not think that there is much more that I can say about that tonight.
Secondly, questions were asked as to what was the appropriate sort of activity for the Civil Service to perform, and what the appropriate activity would be for intermediate agencies and private enterprises. In the course of their response to the noble and learned Lord's report, the Government have not attempted to try to produce their own definition of where the lines must be drawn. I noted with interest the persuasive proposal put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, as to where the line should be drawn. I had not heard such arguments before and it would be wrong for me to comment on them and say whether they are right or wrong. I agree with the noble Lord that there is a huge grey area here. Indeed, the way to approach it is not with a bias for or against privatisation or for or against executive agencies, but to do so on the basis of what it is that effectively delivers the particular service, having regard to a number of factors, one of which is the need in a particular case to provide the appropriate degree of accountability.
As far as concerns the executive agencies, the conclusion of the report was that they had broadly been beneficial. The noble Lord, Lord Croham, acknowledged that they had not led to an inappropriate fragmentation of the Civil Service. We accept the point made by a number of speakers in the course of today's debate; namely, that there should be proper accountability in relation to these matters. As regards the constitutional position, the chief executives of those executive agencies are all accountable to a Minister, who, in his or her turn, is accountable to Parliament.
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Therefore, although it is sensible to raise such a point, I do not believe that there is any real doubt about the fact that there is the appropriate amount of parliamentary responsibility.
I move on to the question of the Civil Service Act and whether or not the Civil Service code should be put into such an Act. The Government's response to the noble and learned Lord's report was that, in principle, we accept the idea of a Civil Service Act. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, was being somewhat unkind to us when he said that our response to it was lukewarm. We have said unequivocally that we should have it. I think the noble Lord may have taken the fact that we have put no time limit on when it is coming as indicating lukewarmness. He, of all people, will know that we have a very busy legislative programme ahead of us. As to how busy it will be, that will depend upon the difficulties created in this place in that respect. As noble Lords will understand, I can give no commitment as to when such a Civil Service Act might appear. However, in principle, we think that it is a good idea. I also agree with the noble Lord, that, when such an Act is produced in Bill form, the drafting will be incredibly important and great attention will need to be paid to it.
The noble Lord, Lord Butler, also said that the Government should not delegate functions to non-elected quangos merely to avoid democratic accountability. I entirely agree with that view. Government are committed to using quangos only where strictly necessary; for example, where some sort of independent arm's length body is the appropriate one to deal with the particular function which is to be delegated.
Throughout the debate two other matters were raised which I believe require particular attention. First, the question was raised as to whether the Civil Service was continuing to attract the right quality people. Some views were expressed tonight that the people who are now going into the Civil Service were not as good as in, "my day". There is a feeling in that respect, which I am sure is felt by practically every generation. Indeed, when I was a young man at university, all the best people became barristers and civil servants. I believe that that remains the position, but perhaps that is not necessarily so in the case of barristers. The entirely commendable changes to access to justice may well reduce the number of barristers.
As far as concerns civil servants, from my experience as a Minister—which is short and unrepresentative—it would appear that the quality of new entrants to the Civil Service is extremely high. In fact, I can do slightly better than simply rely upon my own experience. When looking at the figures in relation to the fast stream of the Civil Service, one can see that something in the region of 7,000 applicants were received in 1997 for 170 places. Therefore, although that does not necessarily indicate the quality of the people applying, it indicates that there is still very high demand for what are very good quality jobs. I very much believe that the standard of new entrants now is just as good as it was in my day, in my father's day and indeed in my grandfather's day. So such fears may be exaggerated, but I do not put that

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forward scientifically. We are also encouraged to some extent by the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, brings news from Oxford that there are at least one or two people from his college applying to the Civil Service. Moreover, despite the fears of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, we understand that there is still active talk going on—for example, by way of seminar and dining—in which government is discussed.
The second important point raised is whether there has been too much change. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Tanworth, dealt with that aspect. I do not think that the change which has taken place over the past 30 years has in any real sense been voluntary. The Civil Service has obviously decided what it has to do, but the idea that the service could or should have done nothing for that time about the changes in the world which went on around it just has to be stated in order for us to realise how ridiculous it is. Broadly, although one would not necessarily agree with all the changes, one can say that the Civil Service as a large organisation has responded well in the way that it has sought to cope with the many changes which have occurred. In particular, I have in mind the ones to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred; namely, the greater expectation of the people as to what they expect from their elected government and from a permanent Civil Service.
I believe that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn suggested that perhaps we should put a stop to change and consolidate. I do not believe that the question of change is entirely in our hands. Indeed, we must move by reference to how society moves around us. Therefore, in a sense, you cannot say that we will have a bit of change for 30 years and then stop for a period of time. One has to be realistic about what is possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, asked me specifically about the Civil Service College in the light of the central management arrangement that was set up in July. I was given a note in that respect by the Civil Service which I have now lost. I apologise to the noble Lord, but perhaps I may write to him in relation to that point.
I have not answered all the points that have been raised tonight. However, I should like to make one final point. The one thing that seemed to arise throughout the whole debate was the fact that every speaker recognised the importance and the vulnerability of the ethos and virtues of the Civil Service. I end by saying that the Government recognise that and that we will do all we can to protect those qualities.
7.58 p.m.
Lord Slynn of Hadley: My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have listened to and participated in this debate. It has been one of the most informed and constructive debates that I have heard since I came to the House. In fact, it was so good that I wish we could have had the debate on the report before we wrote it; so many important points have been raised. It is just the kind of discussion that Lord Bancroft, whose absence from our committee and in today's debate we greatly
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regret, would have wanted. Indeed, so many points have been raised that it would be undesirable and perhaps even unnecessary for me to try to deal with all of them.
However, the extent to which we all recognise that the key to the strength of the Civil Service relates to and depends upon the health of the Civil Service ethos has come out very strongly in the debate. I wholly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, and the noble Lords, Lord Hayhoe and Lord McNally, about the significance and importance of our visit to Leeds. I wish that all your Lordships could have been there that day to see what has to be dealt with on the ground.
As has become obvious, our task was to report on things which we saw had gone wrong and to give warning signs of things which might go wrong and which needed to be monitored; accountability and the importance of ensuring that the role of the special advisers, which is very important, should be kept in legitimate areas. I was so persuaded by what the Minister said about the usefulness and importance of having specialist advisers that I shall apply for one or some when I sit on the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House. They would be an extremely valuable adjunct to the work we had to do. With the risk of fragmentation, obviously that was important. As to that, I absolutely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Tanworth, said about the importance of monitoring.
I want to comment briefly on three points which were raised but with which I am not entirely happy. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, it is not right to say that we underestimated the anxiety of those who had come into the Civil Service with the expectation of an on-going career for life. We were very conscious of that. We examined the matter without it having been raised by others, and all who came to us recognised that nowadays a career for life no longer exists in the private sector and cannot be justified in the public sector.
Secondly, I do not believe that it is right to say that we asserted or assumed an antithesis, a clear distinction between efficiency and money on the one hand and integrity and loyalty on the other. I have said today, and as is said in the report, the qualities of the ethos are as essential to the private sector as they are to the public sector. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, efficiency is essential to both.
I must insist that we did not say—and I did not say today—that the changes which have taken place have not been discussed in Parliament. I said that they had not been discussed except in Parliament. It is quite obvious that during the years when changes have been taking place there have been important discussions in your Lordships' House and the other place.
I accept the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, that it might be possible to look at the link between departments when there are forays abroad and that there should be an increased facility with foreign languages. We went into that, to some extent, in relation to the European Union, even though I agree that it could have been taken on a broader basis if we had been looking at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

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I wholeheartedly agree with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, that a lot had happened without people being aware. When one goes into the whole history of what happened, it is absolutely plain that there have been extraordinary developments of which people were not really aware.
I am very grateful for the comments on the contents of the report. I am very happy that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, will be able to distribute in Oxford a copy of our report as a working document for seminars in government, politics and whatever else. That gave me a heartening confidence in what has happened.
I am very grateful that the Minister read out the last paragraph of the report. It really sums up the beliefs that we reached at the end. We can be reasonably content with most things, but we should certainly not be complacent. Finally, I join in with all the tributes paid to the Civil Service by Members on all sides of the House. Again, I thank your Lordships for participating in the debate.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Cannabis: Select Committee Report
8.4 p.m.
Lord Perry of Walton Lord Perry of Walton rose to move, That this House take note of the report of the Science and Technology Committee on Cannabis: the Scientific and Medical Evidence (9th Report, HL Paper 151, Session 1997–98).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, although I used to be a pharmacologist I knew very little about cannabis when I was invited to be Chairman of this inquiry. Since then, I have learnt a very great deal from those who gave written and oral evidence. It was a fascinating experience.
I am enormously indebted to my colleagues on the sub-committee who gave unstintingly of their time and their skills. I am especially indebted—as we all were—to our specialist adviser, Professor Leslie Iverson, for his experience and expertise and for the work that he did with outside organisations. It almost goes without saying that our clerk, Andrew Makower, and his staff gave us their usual invaluable assistance.
I want to start by pointing out that the members of the sub-committee were completely unanimous in their recommendations. Also, the members of the Select Committee on Science and Technology were equally unanimous in endorsing the recommendations of the sub-committee. I do not think that this opinion—the opinion of two groups, which include quite a number of distinguished scientists and doctors—can be ignored. Nor do I think that it deserved to be dismissed out of hand by the Government on the very day that the report was published. I shall return to this point later.
Let me first describe the structure of the report. It starts with an introductory chapter describing the reasons why we undertook the inquiry. In the second chapter, we give a history of the use of cannabis over the years. It was first referred to in Assyrian tablets
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2,600 years ago and it has been in continuous use since then in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. It was included in the Herbal, the pharmacopoeia of the time, of Dioscorides in Greece in about 60AD and was still included in the British pharmacopoeia of 1914. It is, indeed, said to have been used by Queen Victoria for period pains. Like all herbal medicines, it was recommended for a wide variety of illnesses for which it was virtually useless, but for some few it may well have had an effect.
In 1968, after the tragedy of Thalidomide, the Medicines Act was passed. This led to a system of licensing new drugs for use, imposing strict safety and efficacy requirements in addition to the quality controls imposed by the pharmacopoeia. These tests, including clinical trials, work well with new synthetic chemicals. They would not have worked with the herbal remedies such as the extracts of digitalis and raw opium which preceded them.
After a series of legislative changes, promoted by the rapid growth of the misuse of psychoactive drugs in the 1960s and 1970s, the current Misuse of Drugs Regulations 1985 became law. It classified controlled drugs either in Schedule 1, which banned their prescription altogether, or in Schedule 2, which permitted prescription by doctors for named patients. Heroin, which had well-known medical uses, was put in Schedule 2. Cannabis, however, because it was held at the time to have no known therapeutic value, was put in Schedule 1, although it was much less toxic than heroin. Had the pharmacological activities of cannabis been discovered at that time, this decision might well have been different and we would not have the problem we have today.
In Chapter 3, we describe these recent pharmacological discoveries. First, we describe how cannabis consists of a family of 66 chemically related cannabinoids plus some 400 other substances. Its main psychoactive ingredient is Δ9- Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC for short. Cannabinoids are insoluble in water but soluble in fat. This limits the number of possible formulations for their administration. Smoking cannabis gives very rapid absorption, virtually in seconds. Administration by mouth leads to slow and irregular absorption and much cannabis is degraded as it passes through the liver.
The recent work that I referred to shows that there are receptors—specialised molecules—that are activated by cannabis. One set of receptors is in the brain, another in the immune system. There are also naturally occurring compounds in the brain that activate these receptors. They are called endogenous cannabinoids. Activation of these receptors leads in animals to potentiation of the action of morphine so that a smaller dose becomes effective. In the light of this new evidence, it is difficult to believe that cannabis has no therapeutic value since large doses of morphine not only relieve pain but also depress respiration—and cannabis, by allowing the use of a smaller dose of morphine, would help to prevent this.
In Chapter 4, we examine the evidence about the toxic effects of cannabis. There are two physical effects. It causes a mild increase in heart rate and a fall in blood

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pressure. This would affect adversely only people with heart disease. The second physical effect is on the lungs if the cannabis is smoked. There is in regular smokers of cannabis an increased incidence of cough, bronchitis and asthma and, possibly, of pre-cancerous changes. There has as yet been no case of cancer of the lung, but it seems a fair bet that this will happen once people have smoked cannabis for long enough. Cannabis smoke contains all the carcinogens and as much tar as does tobacco smoke.
The other toxic effects are all psychological. In the short term, there is impairment of psychomotor function. This may affect driving, flying or operating machinery. But unlike alcohol, cannabis seems to make drivers careful rather than over-confident. Cannabis occasionally causes a psychotic episode lasting a day or two, but in the longer term heavy users can certainly develop severe cognitive changes and can become permanently stoned and incapacitated. This may happen in up to 5 per cent. of regular heavy users. It is not seen in those who use cannabis for medical purposes. Similarly, heavy users can exhibit tolerance of and physical dependence on the drug. It can also exacerbate schizophrenia in patients already affected by that disease.
All in all, the evidence shows that, on the one hand, cannabis does have serious toxic effects after heavy and prolonged use for recreation. But, on the other hand, it is easy to exaggerate its dangers when used medically. It has never caused death. It is easy in most cases to give up its use. It has fewer and less serious side effects than most of the active drugs used in modern medicine.
In Chapter 5, we review the medical uses of cannabis. Since all use is illegal, it is very difficult to obtain firm evidence. Nevertheless, we were impressed by the sheer volume of the anecdotal evidence for its successful use in treating the distressing symptoms of multiple sclerosis, and by the experimental evidence for its use in treating intractable pain. We found the evidence for its usefulness in treating epilepsy, asthma and glaucoma less convincing.
The British Medical Association of 1998 estimated that there were many thousands of users of cannabis for medical purposes. The Multiple Sclerosis Society estimated that at least 1 per cent. and possibly many more of the 85,000 sufferers from multiple sclerosis used cannabis illegally; that is, at least 1,000 patients. The Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics has records of more than 200 patients who benefit from cannabis. In a postal survey of more than 100 patients, 90 per cent. reported alleviation of symptoms, especially of incontinence, muscular spasms and pain.
We warmly welcome the planned clinical trials of cannabis and the cannabinoids for both multiple sclerosis and for intractable pain which were announced during our inquiry. Indeed, our first recommendation is that such trials should be promoted as a matter of urgency. Both trials will, however, use cannabis and cannabinoids by mouth, not by smoking.
In Chapter 6, we discuss the use of cannabis for recreation. It is estimated that one in three of all those aged between 16 and 29 have tried smoking cannabis at
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least once and that 7.5 million people in the UK have smoked it at one time in their lives. We felt, however, that the potential toxic effects of heavy and prolonged use were such as to justify maintaining the policy of keeping cannabis as a controlled drug.
In Chapter 7, we discuss the effect of changing the law about the medical use of cannabis. On the one hand, we agree with the Government that, to get a licence from the Medicines Control Agency there must be a standardised preparation of cannabis or a cannabinoid that is of approved quality and that has been tested by clinical trials for its safety and efficacy. Furthermore, we agree that any such licensed product should not be administered by smoking. On the other hand, we know that clinical trials will take at least five years to be completed. Was there any way that patients could be given cannabis legally without waiting for a licensed product?
It is indeed already possible for a doctor to prescribe THC because THC is in Schedule 2. This itself is anomalous since it is thereby held to have therapeutic value while cannabis, which contains it, is held to have none. Yet many users find cannabis more effective than cannabinoids in relieving their symptoms. Thus there is a logical argument why cannabis should be in Schedule 2. There was, as I showed earlier, an historical argument for it. We also felt that there was sufficient evidence of its safety in medical use, and of its efficacy, albeit anecdotal, in multiple sclerosis and for intractable pain for it to be so transferred. This was our main recommendation.
Finally, let me turn to the consequences of such a move. Doctors and pharmacists could manufacture and prescribe cannabis legally. The doctor could prescribe it in any form he chose—for oral administration, for smoking or for administration by any other route. We do not approve of smoking cannabis over a long period because of the potential risk of cancer. This is clearly, however, of no importance in patients dying from terminal cancer or AIDS. It is at least arguable that if one suffers from the distressing symptoms of a chronic disease for which there is no known cure, one would put the advantages of a better quality of life ahead of the misgivings about the potential risk of cancer. That is not to argue against the desirability of finding an alternative way of achieving rapid absorption without smoking. Indeed, we recommend that research to that end be promoted. It was recently reported that an aerosolised extract of cannabis will be used in one trial. That is, however, to put compassion ahead of anti-smoking principle.
I return to the fact that the Home Office Minister in the other place saw fit to reject our main recommendation on the day that the report was published, in the following words:
"The Government would not be prepared to countenance any move to allow prescription before clinical trials and safety tests have been completed. The safety of patients is our first priority and the Government would not allow prescription of any drug which had not been tested for safety, efficacy and quality through that clinical process.".
Even if we accept that patient safety is the first priority, our report shows that if cannabis is used to treat patients on the prescription of a doctor, the risk to the patient

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is vanishingly small. Furthermore, many patients would regard their safety as only their second priority after the quality of their lives. Should not the Government share that view? Is their attitude coloured by social, economic and criminological considerations to which our inquiry was not addressed? Those considerations are only pertinent to the recreational use of cannabis and should not be allowed to influence decisions about its use for medical purposes. The well being of patients ought to be paramount.
I call on the Government to give more mature consideration to our recommendations. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House take note of the Report of the Science and Technology Committee on Cannabis; the scientific and medical evidence (9th Report, HL Paper 151, Session 1997–98)—(Lord Perry of Walton.)
8.22 p.m.
Lord Winston: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, and congratulate him on chairing the committee in such an excellent manner. The committee sat for eight months and it was a pleasure to be part of those serious deliberations under the noble Lord's chairmanship and with the advice of Professor Iversen of Oxford. I thank also, as did the noble Lord, Andrew Makower, the Clerk to the Committee, who made its members swear a vow of chastity and silence over whether they had ever partaken of cannabis themselves.
This excellent report is modest in its remit and recommendations, and extremely contained and confined. It states simply that it is seriously important to consider the therapeutic applications of a potentially useful drug and that the drug may give some insight into neurological transmission because of its curious actions within the brain and the rest of the nervous system.
Control of pain is not an easy matter. There never has been and, I suspect, never will be a single drug that will control pain—particularly where it is neurogenic in origin.
Because the report is limited and the committee's aims objectives and considerations were constrained, this debate may be repetitious.
The British Medical Association, in the briefing that some of your Lordships may have seen, perhaps erroneously gave the impression that the committee did not distinguish between cannabis and the cannabinoids. That is untrue. We did make that distinction. We understood the difference between a pure form of the drug and a dirty drug—a drug having just the active compound or one that is contaminated. There is nothing wrong about using a dirty drug if it going to do the job. We use such drugs all the time. For the past 20 years, my own practice has been using FSH—follicle-stimulating hormones—which is not pure but derived from human sources. It has all sorts of proteins in it that are not wanted and which have unwanted effects. But until the recombinant drug was available this year, that was the only way we could stimulate ovulation. We did so successfully and many thousands
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of babies have been born throughout the world without serious problems. So clean versus dirty drugs is not the issue. The principle of the use is key to the argument.
Are cannabis and cannabinoids so dangerous and potentially so devastating as to be more carefully and rigidly restricted than virtually any other drug—including methadone, morphine, cocaine and heroin? The answer must surely be no. Cannabis may have some rare dangers, possibly including cancer, neurological damage or psychological damage in certain susceptible individuals—but those risks are clearly much less than with many other drugs. Despite anecdotal claims, there is little evidence that cannabis will cause schizophrenia—although people who are predisposed to that condition, either genetically or for other reasons, may develop it during extensive use.
It is clear that toxicity of the compound is extremely low, causing perhaps four or five deaths in the past few years. Aspirin kills perhaps 50 people annually and so does paracetamol, which is widely available and can be bought over the counter at any pharmacist. Alcohol is responsible for far more deaths than any of those painkillers.
None of those limitations or worries about risks applies to carefully supervised risks. Many witnesses gave evidence of potential benefit. It seems that the few cannabinoids that are available in Britain on prescription have a limited effect on patients with the sort of pain that we are talking about. The patients in question are often desperately ill and dying of disease, and for them we must have great sympathy. Our report simply calls for proper evidence about the use of such drugs. We are not asking for recreational use. There is not the slightest evidence that, given proper controls, the implementation of our recommendations would increase recreational use in the slightest. Even if it did, there is no serious evidence to suggest that the consequence would be as dangerous as the misuse of existing drugs such as aspirin. The committee recommends that cannabis and allied compounds may be given by doctors orally, by pessary, by suppository or by another appropriate method on a named-patient basis. That would be the most modest change possible in the law.
It is disappointing that my honourable friend the Minister, who is a good and excellent Minister and a thoughtful man, was reported as saying that, essentially, the Governments position is inflexible. One report quoted him as saying:
"It would be irresponsible to say that it's OK to use it but there is no scientific evidence that it will work".
That is always the dilemma faced in the use of any drug. One actually has to test it. It is equally irresponsible, if not downright hard-hearted, not to offer such drugs if there is the slightest evidence that they might work.
We need clinical trials. However, the Government's response issued within hours of this report being published was,
"We have not got rigorous scientific evidence that gives us absolute confidence that it is actually beneficial".
That is our position. That is exactly what we are trying to establish; namely, evidence that these are beneficial drugs. As we have reported, that cannot be done with

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the rigid controls that are currently in place. We need blinded, controlled, possibly crossover studies—standard pharmacological methods of examining drugs. That simply cannot be done with the current regulatory position. It is interesting to note that the proper use of these drugs could improve our understanding of the nervous system.
Currently we have a ludicrous catch-22 situation. I fear that the Government's response on this occasion was too hasty. It was an understandable knee-jerk reaction, but I fear that it is wrong. This is a serious committee whose membership comprises Fellows of the Royal Society, a Nobel prize winner and other distinguished members. If the Government are not prepared to take serious notice of this committee and are not carefully to consider its findings, it has to be said that perhaps there is no point in such a committee sitting at all. To ignore the careful and well-considered findings of such a committee would diminish an important function of your Lordships' House. It could also damage the esteem and respect in which the Government are held.
8.31 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I must admit that there were times yesterday afternoon when I thought perhaps I might be high on a cannabis trip! Fortunately I knew that that was not the case.
I undertook this study with a considerable lack of enthusiasm. I could not become interested in the subject. However, by the end of our deliberations I became fascinated by the subject and I learnt a great deal about it, as one so often does on these committees. It is one of the great privileges of taking part in such committees that one gains insights into subjects of which one formerly knew absolutely nothing. I am most grateful to the chairman of the committee and to the other members for tolerating me. I echo the disappointment of the noble Lord, Lord Winston, at the Government's apparent immediate rejection of the report. I hope that they will give the matter more mature consideration and will consider seriously the rather limited but specific and deliberate recommendations of the committee.
This is an unusual report as a large part of what we have recommended depends on what is essentially anecdotal evidence. We had to spend some time arguing about the nature of evidence and whether anecdotal evidence could be considered to be scientific evidence, and, if it was not, whether it could be considered to be evidence, and if it was not evidence, what was the point of hearing it anyway. Some 2,500 years of use of this substance must suggest something.
There is another aspect of the report I wish to mention; namely, that we do not recommend that something be made available for use which is not already available for use. It may be all too regrettable, but cannabis is virtually freely available, provided one can afford it. The price is not particularly high but undoubtedly the desire to possess the substance leads to a certain amount of criminal activity. However, for those who need it, cannabis is available. The report seeks to make legal what is at present illegal for those in
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desperate need of it. We need to bear that distinction in mind. For some individuals, such as those who suffer from multiple sclerosis, cannabis is the best pain reliever they can have. It is good for pain relief and it is good for spasticity.
There is the recommendation to reschedule cannabis out of schedule 1 into schedule 2. That matter apparently will have to be considered by the World Health Organisation. I find it fascinating that a small change can have such wide implications. If it is accepted that cannabis can be prescribed by doctors on a named patient basis for a defined condition, then surely we are not doing anything to endanger the social fabric of society at large through a possible leakage into the general community that may occur as a result of that action. The idea is preposterous when one can buy a small amount of cannabis on any street corner if one wishes to do so. In any event the evidence we heard suggested that where legal action was taken for this offence, the courts treated those cases compassionately and they were generally discharged. I am immensely relieved that that is the case. I believe it would be grossly wrong if that were not the case. However, we have to deal with what is in effect an inconsistency in the administration of the law.
The chairman has already mentioned my next point; namely that the cannabis plant contains 66 separate cannabinoids. The evidence suggests that they work in combination and not individually. Rather like the vine, the make-up of the cannabis plant seems to vary with climate, geography and the system of cultivation. Cannabis is an immensely complex plant. Although it is wrong to use this comparison, I compare the cannabis plant with the vine. Two vineyards in separate locations will produce two dramatically different wines from exactly the same vine. One has to take into account that variation with regard to cannabis.
It seems to me that there are two ways to research this matter. One is to produce a standardised, consistent product which, of course, can be done by cloning plants. One then examines what effect that product has. The other way is what I call the lottery approach to research; namely, one recognises that there are 66 substances working in combination and one identifies each one and examines them. One then tries to sort out the ideal combination. Every week in this country the National Lottery is held with permutations of 50 numbers. Every week one or perhaps two people have the correct numbers. It seems to me that to apply that kind of approach to a critical examination of 66 separate cannabinoids is an immensely hazardous operation which is not likely to lead to quick success.
People with certain conditions need immediate relief. We believe five years of research may be needed to begin to discover in scientific terms the medical effects of cannabis. However, if we take the long route, we are not talking about five years but about a lottery. I do not think that is satisfactory. An MS sufferer needs something which gives immediate relief. MS sufferers have a condition which goes downhill from one plateau to another over the years. If their quality of life can be improved, that is worth doing.

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In this regard, the method of application is critical. Cannabinoids dissolve very quickly in fat. Taking them orally is not very effective. It appears that pessaries are more effective, but all the evidence that we received was that smoking is the most effective way to dose with cannabis. One takes the smoke into the respiratory tract; it goes straight into the blood and then straight to the brain, where it acts, as the noble Lord the chairman of the Select Committee said, on the appropriate receptors and the pain is relieved. Relief is quick, but, on the evidence that we heard, not instantaneous, although one does not need to smoke even half a cigarette, in many instances, before pain is killed. The sufferer then stops smoking until the pain unbearably reasserts itself.
Each individual is different. Some will need a bigger dose than others. There is no way in which a standard dose will work. In all humanity, I conclude that if the choice is between insufferable pain, which is what these people are enduring, and smoking (with perhaps the risk of cancer 25 years down the line), I think that smoking is the tolerable alternative.
Considering all that, the committee still came to quite a clear view; that there could be no reason for relaxing the general restriction on recreational use. That was clearly stated in the report. It seems to me that in all humanity we should accept the recommendations of the report. I am glad to support the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton.
8.41 p.m.
The Earl of Carrick: My Lords, I would like to start by saying how deeply impressed I have been witnessing your Lordships' House at work. Surely if all politics could be conducted with the same unfailing courtesy, care for detail and sheer commitment, society would be all the richer. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Officers of the House for their kind helpfulness from the moment I arrived last year.
It was with some trepidation that I put my name down for this debate and I sincerely ask for the indulgence of the House because I have chosen a subject for my maiden speech in which it is hard to say anything meaningful without being in some way controversial.
I was fascinated by the Select Committee's report on the scientific and medical evidence on cannabis. I shall not pretend to understand it all as I am neither a scientist nor have any medical knowledge, but certainly I have learnt plenty.
First, I should like to take this opportunity to say a few brief words about the whole question of drugs in general. I know that this is wide of the specific debate, but I believe that the subject is of vastly greater importance, economically and socially, nationally and internationally, than is reflected by the time and attention given to it by legislators.
I was staggered to read that in June last year the United Nations drug control programme estimated that the world trade in illicit drugs now stands at one quarter of a trillion pounds, which is to say, it accounts for 8
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per cent. of all international trade, making it of greater economic importance than international trade in iron, steel or motor vehicles.
Of course, it is a fiendishly difficult problem where there are no right answers, which goes a long way to explaining a natural reluctance to confront the issue in the detail it demands. But it will only be through the most detailed discussions, with open minds, that progress will ever be made.
What we can say is that that quarter of a trillion pounds of world trade manifests in all manner of undesirable social consequences and costs. Unfortunately, the same old actions and attitudes that have failed—indeed, are likely, ironically, to be contributory to that failure—still hold sway, yet no matter how many resources are mustered, the problem gets worse.
We desperately need fresh thinking. So my first point is simply a heart-felt plea that greater time is given and action taken to make the situation better.
An editorial in the Lancet recently noted, echoing what we have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Perry of Walton and Lord Dixon-Smith, that,
"The desire to take mood altering substances is an enduring feature of human societies world-wide and even the most draconian legislation has failed to extinguish this desire … and this should be borne in mind by social legislators".
Amen to the latter.
Speaking of our law-makers, to my mind one of the most important points, which is a legal and social one, rather than scientific or medical, raised in the document we are debating came in Chapter 8, where it states:
"If statute law is not enforced, Parliament is brought into disrepute; either enforcement must be tightened up, or the law must be changed".
Austin Mitchell is quoted in similar vein, when in response to the fact that people who use cannabis for medical purposes face prosecution if caught cultivating or possessing cannabis, he was prompted to say:
"It is bringing the law into a certain amount of difficulty and disrepute because either the police are cautioning or the courts are giving very lenient sentences".
This is indeed a dilemma for any government. If there are, as the report estimates, 7.5 million adults who have tried cannabis—approximately one-sixth of the entire adult population—and between 1.5 million and 2 million regular users, it stands to reason that legal foundations are being severely undermined. Either society is making a mockery of the law by disobedience on such a massive scale, or the law is making a mockery of society by criminalising over half a million people over the past 25 years, with all the attendant problems that implies for the individuals concerned.
Surely common sense tells us something is deeply awry here. Again, I return to my main point: all these issues must, for the good of us all, be given proper time for research and discussion with unprejudiced thinking.
Finally, turning to the purely medical aspects of the report, my abiding impression is that there are compelling reasons for further detailed medical study of what appears to be a source of enormous potential to ease suffering. A substance that, even in its crude form,

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can be used with unquestionable effect—although to differing degrees—to help sufferers of MS, cerebral palsy and glaucoma, surely demands attention and study. Add to that anti-emetic effects, analgesic properties and the ability to assist prevention of weight loss in anorexia, cancer and AIDS and we have a substance already of value.
No matter that in some cases there are better drugs currently available: the fact that cannabis has such a wide range of beneficial effects is extraordinary. Even if my understanding is far from that of a scientist, it is strikingly obvious to me that Professor Wall is right when he says (in Chapter 4):
"It is a paradox that a subject of such intense scientific interest should receive so little clinical attention … this is regrettable since there is a wide range of possibilities and massive opportunities for research".
Add to that, Dr. Robson's (in Chapter 7) remarks that:
"The present licensing system and policy has severely limited research and should be reviewed",
prompting the observation that the United Kingdom's academic community and pharmaceutical industry may miss the opportunities if the research licensing regime is not relaxed.
Given the high standing of our academic community and our world-leading pharmaceutical firms, this is surely unwise. It is noted in the report that the United Kingdom's attitude towards cannabis is one of the most restrictive in the world, so too many other countries are being allowed a head start. Surely in this, as in most matters, the government of the day must strive to provide an environment for intellectual clarity and business advantage.
To me, the authors of the report are motivated purely by a compassionate wish to allay human suffering and a proper desire for unfettered scientific exploration of cannabis in all its component forms. On that basis, I wholeheartedly support the Select Committee's specific recommendations.
8.48 p.m.
Lord Kirkwood: My Lords, it is my pleasant duty to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Carrick, on his excellent maiden speech and wise words. We hope to hear a great deal more from him in the remainder of his shelf-life, as he is, like me, an hereditary Peer.
First, I should declare that I too was a member of your Lordships' Select Committee which, under the able chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Perry of Walton, inquired into cannabis and produced this report.
The report's recommendations are few in number. They are brief and succinct. Some refer to the need for proper clinical trials of cannabis and alternative modes of administration of the drug. We have recently learnt that such work has already started with the grant of a Home Office licence for the cultivation of cannabis plants of known provenance, grown under carefully controlled conditions to produce a drug of reliable consistency. All that is to be welcomed.
The most radical and controversial proposal, however, has been greeted by the Government with distinct coolness and, as the noble Lord, Lord Perry,
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said, almost instant dismissal by the Home Office Minister. I refer to the rescheduling of cannabis from schedule 1 to schedule 2, from a position in which it cannot be prescribed by a doctor for a patient as a medicine for the relief of distressing symptoms such as pain, nausea, muscle spasms and so on, to one in which it is permissible on a named-patient basis.
It has to be said that in making such a radical change one must be careful not to send out the wrong signals. There is evidence that the abuse of cannabis can lead to health problems, particularly if it is smoked, and in some cases psychological disorders. For those reasons the committee could not support the general legalisation of the drug—and the rescheduling recommendation has nothing to do with that. On the contrary, by clearly distinguishing between the therapeutic use and the recreational use of cannabis, the committee believes that the problem for the law enforcement authorities of tackling abuse should be made easier.
The Government maintain that they need hard scientific evidence as to the efficacy of natural cannabis as a drug before they can act. But there is ample evidence, and ancient evidence, that relief is obtained by people who are suffering pain even using small dosages of the drug, and in many cases relief comes rapidly. Admittedly, the evidence is anecdotal, not hard scientific fact. But at present people are willing to break the law and run the risk of being prosecuted, with all that that entails, because they can find relief for their condition in no other way. In many cases their GPs are sympathetic to their practice.
There is no question that the whole situation is highly unsatisfactory. People who are normally law-abiding citizens are being made into criminals, and the illegal drug trade profits from selling cannabis of unknown and possibly harmful quality. Certainly there is a need for properly controlled research into the benefits and hazards of cannabis use, and thankfully that has now started.
However, it is estimated that it will take at least five years before sufficient trials have been carried out and for the Medicines Control Agency to recommend to the Government, if the results are positive, the rescheduling of the drug. In the meantime, 85,000 people in this country will be left to suffer, some in great pain, and perhaps needlessly.
It all comes down to the need for hard evidence. As Professor Joad might have said, "It all depends on what you mean by hard evidence". I work as an experimental scientist, and I am fully aware that evidence for many scientific conjectures is often slight. One-hundred per cent. certainty in science does not exist, although many scientists would suffer martyrdom for their belief in the laws of thermodynamics. Certainty in the medical sciences is even more tenuous, because they deal with notions such as pain and its relief where rigorous objective testing and measurement are difficult. Often we have to act where we have less than certainty, even while we endeavour to improve our knowledge.
I urge the Government, in this situation, while they strive to encourage further research, also to feel compassion for those sufferers—often from terminal

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illnesses—and also to show courage in facing the inevitable reaction of those who talk about a small step opening the floodgates to wholesale drug abuse, to allow doctors to provide this relief to those suffering the distressing symptoms of multiple sclerosis, AIDS and terminal cancer, by allowing the prescription of the drug in a controlled manner and on a named-patient basis.
8.55 p.m.
Lord Porter of Luddenham: My Lords, it has been a privilege to serve on your Lordships' sub-committee on cannabis, under the wise and expert chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton. The problems that we discussed were largely medical, and the committee had no shortage of expertise in this area since half of its members, six out of 12 including its chairman, as well as its specialist adviser, are medically qualified, all of them very distinguished in their field.
We had experienced advice in some of the other areas which bore upon our problems, such as the law and the special problems of prescribing by general practitioners. We also owe much to the committee's Clerk, Andrew Makower, for his drafting skills in preparing an account of our views which we could all accept—not an easy task.
I am not medically qualified, and speak only as a chemist. In that capacity I noted with interest and pleasure that the chairman of your Lordships' first committee on science and technology, in 1979, was my noble friend Lord Todd. Even more to the point, when he was a professor of chemistry in Manchester and at the Lister Institute, he carried out some of the earliest research on the chemical composition of the active components of cannabis. If noble Lords will allow me to introduce just a little levity into what is of course a very serious matter, they may be interested in Lord Todd's encounter with the Home Office and his own possession of cannabis.
In 1936, Professor Todd went to the Lister Institute, where, among other biochemical problems, he began work on the active principle of cannabis sativa. The starting material for his studies was a distilled resin extract of hashish which had been seized by the police in India. It was obtained from them by a chemist, Fritz Bergel, who transmitted it to Germany in the diplomatic bag and thence in a suitcase to Edinburgh through the port of Leith. The Customs showed no interest.
In the Lister Institute, Professor Todd isolated cannabinol (not tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the active component) from the resin and showed that it was pharmacologically inert. That work was published in Chemistry and Industry ("Blue Bits" as we used to call it) and within a few days some interest was shown—by the Home Office! They invited Todd to meet their inspector at his earliest convenience.
When asked where he got the hashish, he had to reply, "from the Indian police". "How much of the stuff have you got?". At this point his answers became even more startling: "Two-and-a-half kilograms". "Good God!", exclaimed the inspector. But he recovered his poise and agreed to make Todd a licensed holder of cannabis on
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condition that the professor would send 25 reprints of his publications. "Certainly. Where shall I send them?" asked Todd. "Send them to me", said the inspector, "at the bureau of drugs and indecent publications".
Today the Home Office seems to be less liberal in these matters. Indeed, as we have heard, within hours of receiving the report of your Lordships' committee on cannabis, with its recommendation that, for the time being, cannabis should be transferred from schedule l to schedule 2, the Minister had made up his mind to do nothing of the kind. This was known to be the most controversial of our recommendations, but it was made after taking evidence lasting some seven months, and it was unanimous. The government reply to our earlier report on antibiotic resistance took eight months to arrive, which is much too long, but at least the Minister had time to read it.
I confess that personally I have found it difficult to decide on this matter. As a chemist, I have no difficulty with the prescription and trial use of well-specified pure chemical substances such as cannabinoids, whether synthesised or extracted from cannabis resin. But the medico-chemical study of a natural cannabis of variable composition containing more than 60 cannabinoids and several hundred other chemical compounds is, to put it mildly, a daunting research project and one which is likely to take a very long time.
There was no doubt in the committee that any relaxing of the regulations on cannabis should apply to medical uses only on prescription. We are all aware that scientific proof of safety is not available and probably will not become so until after five or more years of clinical trials.
In spite of the difficulties, we regard the clinical trials which are being launched by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as the first priority. If these are to be licensed, further research will be necessary into new, safer methods for delivery, such as inhalation, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, and others. Until these are successfully completed, however, we believe that, on compassionate grounds, as well as removing restrictions which bring the law into disrepute—which is almost equally important—justice would best be done by the rescheduling of cannabis so that, like its active ingredient Δ9-tetra-hydrocannabinol, and like cocaine and morphine, it could be prescribed on a named-patient basis, to relieve the pain of sufferers from, for example, multiple sclerosis. Genuine users for medical reasons could then be distinguished from recreational users simply by producing their prescription.
In conclusion, we heard encouraging evidence from our witnesses of new research on the pharmacology of cannabis and how the body contains naturally occurring "endogenous" compounds—to which the chairman of our committee referred—that can activate cannabinoid receptors. There are two known receptors called CB1 and CB2. Only CB1 exists in the brain and CB2 is therefore not expected to have the unwanted pyschoactive effects associated with cannabis, while agonists to CB2 may well have beneficial effects in modulating immune responses.

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As understanding of the brain advances apace, these discoveries have transformed the character of scientific research on cannabis. But, although there is increasing scientific interest in cannabis pharmacology, there is little clinical research or commercial development work at present. Some attribute this to the added difficulties of working with a schedule 1 drug—the Royal Pharmaceutical Society refers to the "burden of licensing". A further advantage of moving cannabis to schedule 2 of the regulations would be that licences for research in this new and exciting area of medical biochemistry would no longer be required. I hope that the Minister will give a little more time to considering some of these matters before he persists with his blanket restrictions.
9.4 p.m.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate: My Lords, I welcome the report of the Select Committee dealing with the scientific and medical evidence on the use of cannabis. I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Carrick, on his maiden speech, which I particularly welcomed because, apart from myself, he is the only speaker so far who was not a member of the committee. I suspect that, had I been a member of the committee, there might have been one dissenting participant. I do not share the disappointment of previous speakers at the Government's response to the report.
I should perhaps declare an interest, although I have some trepidation about doing so in view of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Porter. I am the former head of a police drugs squad. I am not a scientist or a medical expert, and I bow to the learned witnesses who gave evidence to the committee. The fact that a law is broken regularly is not an argument for legalising the activity. If it were, we should not have laws against speeding.
I speak from my experience as a police officer dealing with the effects of drug abuse, both on the abuser and on the wider community. Cannabis is an intoxicant—or, more accurately, THC, the active ingredient, is an intoxicant. It alters perception and, as the report says, after smoking, which is the most common way of using the drug, the psychoactive effects are perceptible within minutes. The report reminds us that the drug persists in the brain longer than in the blood, so the psychological effects persist for some time after the level of THC in the blood has begun to decline.
It is my experience from reading—certainly not from personal knowledge—that the THC in cannabis has increased dramatically in the past few years, and there was evidence before the committee to this effect. I have seen reports that in the 1960s it was 1 per cent., whereas now in some products it is almost 30 per cent.
There is evidence that use causes mood changes, loss of memory, psychosis, impairment of co-ordination and so on. The report tells us that no one has ever died as a direct result and immediate consequence of recreational or medical use, and I accept that, although there are doubts in relation to some road accidents. The report points out the dangers of driving a vehicle or flying an aircraft while intoxicated following usage of the drug. I
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believe that liberalisation of the law will increase the number of people who use the drug. In Holland it is estimated that the use of cannabis has trebled since the 1980s when it was decriminalised.
The report points out that cannabis intoxication is difficult to monitor, and that is true. There can be no equivalent of a breathalyser for alcohol since small amounts of the drug continue to be released into the blood long after any short-term impairment wears off. Therefore, for the reasons that I have outlined, I am delighted that the committee endorses the Government's statement in Tackling Drugs that,
"The more evidence becomes available about the risks of cannabis … the more discredited the notion that it is harmless".
Recreational use is therefore ruled out quite correctly.
What causes me greater difficulty is the recommendation that cannabis should be transferred from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations, thereby allowing doctors to prescribe and pharmacists to supply the drug for medical purposes. The committee has in a sense jumped the gun. There is a contradiction. Throughout the report, it is stated that the most common method of taking cannabis is to smoke it. For example, that is why in paragraph 8.4 it is recommended that research be promoted into alternative modes of administration because of the well-known dangers of smoking. Professor Heather Ashton of the University of Newcastle is reported as saying that,
"smoking cannabis leads to three times greater tar inhalation than tobacco. Chronic use increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, bronchitis, emphysema and lung cancer".
The report itself states in paragraph 5.54
"… there are anecdotal reports that those who use cannabis for medical purposes favour smoked cannabis over orally administered cannabinoids".
If the authorities change the scheduling of, say, cannabis resin how does the committee envisage users will administer the prescribed drug? I would have no objection at all to pills being prescribed to be taken orally but the report is unclear as to how it is envisaged cannabis is to be administered before clinical trials have taken place. I do not believe that any responsible person would suggest the use of a disease-causing and life-threatening method of treatment in order to alleviate pain and suffering caused by any medical condition. If prescription for smoking were allowed history tells us that it would be abused.
I have often said that the ardent campaigners for the decriminalisation of this drug for medical use see such tactics as a Trojan Horse for the eventual legalisation for recreational use of not just cannabis but all drugs. Having spoken to law enforcement officers in the US, it is apparent that in those states where it has been legalised for medical use it has become increasingly difficult to enforce the law generally. Contrary to the argument of my noble friend Lord Kirkwood that law enforcement would be made easier, the experience in the US is the other way. I believe that we go down that road at our peril.
The Government are surely right to wait until the results of proper clinical trials are forthcoming before cannabis is made available for medical use. Cannabis is

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defined by the United Nations as a dangerous narcotic. It should remain such here until we are properly satisfied by evidence to the contrary. I believe that the response of the Government is absolutely right.
Lord Winston: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, perhaps I may put one question. First, is he aware that it is possible to administer drugs nasally or by rectal suppository? Secondly, does he agree that if he reads the evidence that is set out carefully in the report one of the matters constantly referred to by many of the people who currently use cannabis illegally is that they try to avoid becoming intoxicated by the drug if at all possible? They want pain relief but do not want the "high" about which my noble friend complains. Perhaps my noble friend would like to address that issue briefly.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate: My Lords, I am grateful that my noble friend raises that point. I am aware that there are other means of administering the drug. My point is that the prescription system will be abused. Unfortunately, doctors, policemen and many other people in society break the rules. In response to my noble friend, perhaps I may quote the words of the British Medical Association:
" … the report's recommendations are contradictory. The report rejects smoking as a suitable method of taking the drug and wants doctors to prescribe an 'appropriate preparation of cannabis', probably an oral capsule. However, in the accompanying press release the House of Lords Committee envisages that producing a prescription would be sufficient evidence in defence against a charge of possession of cannabis. That clearly implies that patients will continue to use crude cannabis, a route the BMA rejects because of the harmful effects of smoking and the unpredictable nature of its effects".
I believe that that answers the point. The prescription system would unfortunately be abused. I believe that clinical trials are essential before we go down that road.
9.14 p.m.
Lord Butterfield: My Lords, I rise in the lull after that devastating bowling attack on our wicket, but I believe we shall shortly be able, with the passage of time, to recover ground and come back into the game. Perhaps the next speech will achieve that.
I wanted to say first of all, like the others, how much I enjoyed sitting on the Committee with my old friend Lord Perry of Walton. He used to play cricket for me: perhaps that is why I am speaking of great bowling efforts from the last speaker. We used to play cricket together for the Medical Research Council and do our best to defend our reputations and our castles in that way. May I just say also that we were immensely lucky in our Clerk? He had a very clear mind and I do not think anyone could fault the logic of the way he presented the material and the boxes he constructed in the report. In Professor Leslie Iverson, an expert witness, we were very fortunate to have someone who is at the absolute forefront of modern cannabis pharmacological research.
What I was hoping your Lordships would let me do—and I do not want to take up too much of your time—is to say that I have been reminded since going into all
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this about cannabis and pain that a very long time ago—50 years—when I was in the Royal Army Medical Corps I did some work on pain from radiant heat. I will not bore your Lordships with my descriptions of how a hard-working young doctor found himself in such a circumstance, but the sound advice of the SA/Army Council led me to be transferred to his care, that is, for his use in the corps. The problem that he put to me was that he wanted to know what radiant heat from air-burst nuclear weapons could do. And we got busy. It did not take us very long to show that it could ignite inflammable clothing. That set us off on the great drive to help the Army find uninflammable materials from which to make the uniforms of the British Army. I like to believe that we made a contribution in that field.
However, as a young group of physiological Army research workers, we were really much more interested intellectually, looking back I now realise, in the effects of the other end of the intensity of the radiant heat story. We became very interested in the pain you can get from radiant heat. You may well, for example, lie for some time in the sunshine in your garden and suddenly be woken up by the sharp focus of light on your leg by one of your naughtier children.
When we were looking at this one of the very first things we realised we had to find out was how big an area of the skin of our volunteers—not policemen but soldiers—should we irradiate to see what were the threshold doses of radiant heat which could produce the effects we might be interested in. This, I now realise, led us to a most interesting situation because we found that if you irradiated an aperture of say 3cm in diameter you got a threshold for pain—you felt it and it hurt—but if you reduced the size of the aperture you could give more heat before you got the painful sensation; and if you reduced it even more you could give even greater amounts.
The only report we could write for the scientific advice of the Army Council—we did not use it very much—was one that we called Studies and Observations in the Royal Army Medical Corps on the Central Summation of Pain. As you can imagine, the authorities wanted to know what on earth that had got to do with the atomic bomb. I now realise in retrospect that this central summation of pain could be a very quick way of looking for an effect from the cannabinoids; I am not going to say smoking marijuana or THC and other products which we could take as a tincture, I suppose, or whatever. In this way we might perhaps be able to come up with a quick piece of evidence that this compound, which is reputedly graced with all kinds of important qualities, indeed has some.
I am pleased to realise that there are people such as Professor Wall at the United Medical and Dental Schools of St. Thomas' and Guy's Hospitals, who is a big worker in the field of pain. While I am not up to date with the names, I wish to have these in the record because people in the research world do not receive their just deserts. There is a lady at Hammersmith called Dr. Holdcroft. Dr. Stewart of Dundee has worked on phantom pain in limbs. There is a Dr. Lambert at Leicester; and Professor Notcutt is very interested in these problems. I wish to have their names in the record

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not least because I believe that the time comes—and this is such a time—to give encouragement to those who work in the field.
By doing some physiological experiments on pain we may be able to find out whether the cannabis cannabinoids could have an effect on pain. If so, it will give a great thrust to bringing a reasonable proposition to the Government for ongoing research.
I noted the words in the report about there being a certain stigma about research into cannabis. It is most unfortunate. Before too long, I hope that we shall without too much stigma be able to take Professor Mackenzie along with us in the search for suitable preparations. Perhaps patches, pills, or inhalations such as I take for my asthma may bring necessary relief on to the sites—the nerves—for those people who have these painful and worrying conditions.
I feel guilty if I obstruct relief for pain for people towards the end of their years. We have to be careful about cannabis when dealing with young people. However, I think that older folk can take bigger risks with the effects of the compounds. I thank noble Lords for listening to me.
9.22 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, it was a particular pleasure to have served on the sub-committee which produced the report for your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology which we are now debating. Like other noble Lords, I wish to pay a warm tribute to the outstanding leadership and chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, whose judicious handling of the evidence and whose guidance was outstanding throughout, as indeed was the advice given to the sub-committee based upon his encyclopaedic scientific knowledge and experience by its adviser, Professor Leslie Iversen. As others have said, we must not overlook the exceptional drafting skills of our clerk, Mr. Andrew Makower, with whom I have had the privilege of working several times in the past. His command of the English language, his ability to interpret evidence and comprehend and analyse complex scientific arguments have been impeccable.
Let me say, first, as others have done, that we were in no doubt that cannabis should continue to be a controlled drug, since, although it is not highly addictive, it can lead to psychological dependence; and in some dependent individuals regular heavy use can produce a state of near-continuous intoxication making normal life impossible. In addition, it is sufficiently intoxicating so as to impair the ability to carry out critical tasks such as flying, driving or operating machinery. That effect lasts for several hours, and possibly for much longer after taking it.
My especial concern relates to the evidence that the drug impairs cognitive function during its use and may indeed, in heavy dosage, produce long-term cognitive decline. From my long experience as a neurologist, I can also confirm that it can clearly exacerbate pre-existing mental illness. Indeed, in heavy dosage, it can produce a delusional psychosis with hallucinations which can lead to a mistaken diagnosis of schizophrenia.
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Many years ago I met a bright medical student from overseas in whom such a psychosis developed due to heavy cannabis consumption of which his doctor and family were totally unaware. Schizophrenia was diagnosed. He was treated with powerful neuroleptic drugs and developed severe and irreversible side effects which made it impossible for him to continue what had seemed likely to become a promising career in medicine.
Those who argue that cannabis may be no more dangerous in the long term than tobacco, for example, must recognise that if tobacco were now to be introduced into UK society for the first time, it is my view that because of its appallingly harmful effects, it too would now be a controlled drug.
Those facts indicate clearly that recreational use of cannabis must continue to be illegal. Its effect of lowering blood pressure, a particular risk in individuals with cardiovascular conditions, is another important factor.
If, then, the drug has such important and troublesome side effects, why did our sub-committee recommend that it be moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 under the Misuse of Drugs Act, allowing its prescription by doctors for named patients only? Why did we suggest that, since the synthetic cannabinoid analogue nabilone is licensed for use under Schedule 2 while dronabinol, pure THC, although not yet licensed in the UK, is also in Schedule 2 and could be prescribed for named patients?
I must reluctantly admit, having been a fervent supporter throughout my professional life of the controlled clinical trial, and having organised and conducted several such trials in the treatment of neurological disorders, that there is logic in the suggestion that it might be better to await the outcome of the trials now being planned by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society with the collaboration of GW Pharmaceuticals.
Many scientists and doctors, whose opinion and professional expertise I respect, such as Sir William Asscher, who will be supervising those trials, have argued that the sub-committee should have awaited the completion of those studies and that the Government should delay moving cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 until the results have been analysed.
Why then did the sub-committee appear to fly in the face of informed pharmaceutical and clinical opinion by making the recommendations that we did? Our reasons were fourfold. First, there is increasing evidence that cannabis and particularly its constituent cannabinoids have some predictable effects upon the central nervous system where, through their action upon cannabinoid receptors, they may potentiate, as the noble Lord, Lord Perry, said, the effects of analgesics. In consequence, in patients with terminal cancer, the doses of drugs such as morphia or heroin required for pain relief may be less if cannabis can also be given. There would then be a consequent reduction in side effects.
Secondly, it now appears that cannabinoids, combining with such receptors, can have a beneficial effect upon spasticity—the cause of the painful spasms

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in the lower limbs which may afflict patients with advanced multiple sclerosis. Recent scientific studies reported in Nature and reviewed in the September/October 1998 issue of BrainWork, a newsletter of the international Dana Alliance for Brain Research, of which I am a UK member, has raised the possibility that another cannabinoid called anandamide, not yet available for medical use, may relieve nerve pain when injected peripherally, as CB receptors are also present in the limbs. That would mean that pain relief could be achieved while avoiding any psychoactive effects. The international tide of medical and scientific opinion is moving rapidly in favour of our recommendations.
Thirdly, while I must accept that virtually all the clinical evidence presented to us in the course of our inquiry was anecdotal, nevertheless, we found it convincing. Therefore, we think it likely, although by no means certain, that cannabis may be an effective remedy for the painful spasms of MS and that it may also have a significant potentiating analgesic effect as well as offering effective control of the nausea and vomiting which may complicate AIDS and chemotherapy for advanced cancer.
The fourth reason underlying our recommendations was not based solely upon compassion for those suffering from the disorders to which I referred who have found the illegal consumption of cannabis beneficial. But we heard much evidence—yet again anecdotal—strongly suggesting that natural cannabis, however administered (usually at present through smoking), had proved effective when the synthetic tetrahydrocannabinol analogue, nabilone, had not. And for this reason we did not regard it as being fair or reasonable to wait five years for major trials to be completed before making cannabis available.
I understand fully the strictures included in recent statements by officers of the BMA and by Sir William Asscher; they stressed that herbal cannabis, containing a mixture of more than 60 cannabinoids, is not yet available as a pure preparation. In their view natural cannabis, however administered, could have unacceptable toxic effects. In response I can but say that the evidence which we received—for example, on behalf of patients with multiple sclerosis—was, first, that the level of dosage of herbal cannabis required to relieve their symptoms produced relatively few psychoactive effects; and, secondly, that the amount required was not such as to carry a risk of producing the major toxic effects which high doses of cannabis are known to cause.
We were much encouraged in our view by the knowledge that Dr. Geoffrey Guy of GW Pharmaceuticals has obtained a Home Office licence to cultivate natural cannabis with the intention of producing a purified herbal preparation which, it is hoped, will produce consistent or at least reasonably consistent blood levels of THC when specific doses are administered. Proof that this will be feasible will take some little time to achieve; but in the meantime, in the interests of the patients with the conditions I have mentioned, I am now persuaded—against my original
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scientific judgment—that limited trials in known patients should be allowed on medical prescription using such a natural preparation when available. Clearly the drug should not be used in individuals with cardiovascular disease in whom the effects upon the heart and circulation might prove damaging.
Another powerful reason for suggesting that such a herbal preparation should be made available under Schedule 2 was based on evidence we received that, because of the presumed beneficial effect of natural cannabis, as others have said, some doctors have apparently connived at its illegal use. Whenever evidence of such behaviour on the part of doctors and patients has been brought formally to the attention of the law, the individuals have usually been treated leniently. In other words, much of society seems now to be condoning illegal use specifically for medical purposes; it was our conclusion that that position should now be regularised without waiting for the results of lengthy clinical trials.
The question then arises as to how such a natural preparation should be administered. Here it is clear, as our report confirms, that much research is needed as smoking of cannabis could be tolerated only in the very short term since smoked cannabis carries just as much risk of causing cancer of the respiratory tract as does tobacco smoking; indeed, as Professor Ashton said, it may be even more harmful. Hence any natural preparation made available for prescription must be tested in alternative formulations. Inhalation of an aerosolised extract is the method most favoured but sublingual administration or administration by a pessary or a suppository must not be overlooked. Each of those techniques should produce more effective blood levels of cannabinoids than would ingestion, in view of the inevitable delay resulting from absorption through the gastro-intestinal tract with metabolism in the liver.
Of course, the question will inevitably be raised, as it was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, as to whether legalisation for medical purposes might be regarded as a stalking-horse for legalising recreational use. I am satisfied, as our report makes clear, that we must reject that suggestion. Similarly, we are well aware that even in the most carefully regulated societies there will always be a possibility that a prescribed drug will be diverted to illegal use as has sometimes happened with morphia, heroin and their analogues. That is a matter of which, as a former president of the General Medical Council, I am only too well aware. But I believe that the professional regulatory authorities are fully aware of that potential problem and would be expected to deal just as harshly with those involved in diverting prescribed cannabis to improper use as they already are in relation to the diversion of heroin, for example.
Like many other members of the sub-committee, I was dismayed by the immediate knee-jerk reactions of the Government and the BMA to our report at a time when surely neither could have read it fully so as to comprehend the cogent reasons underlying our proposals. So compelling, I believe, is the anecdotal evidence which we heard, and to which we have referred in depth, that I firmly adhere to our recommendations.

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I urge the Government now to consult the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and to delay their formal response to our report until after they have received and considered the advice of that council. We trust that that body will agree with our conclusion that an appropriate preparation of herbal cannabis should be transferred to Schedule 2 under the regulations and that the Government should raise the matter of rescheduling the remaining cannabinoids as they become available, with WHO in due course in order to facilitate research into their use.
All who served on the sub-committee were well aware that, in making the recommendations that we did, we were in a sense flouting conventional medical and scientific practice. At the risk of undue repetition, I can only say that we would not have done so were it not for the volume of written and oral evidence presented to us, relating to the experiences of individual patients, but also to current scientific knowledge. We are convinced that it is important for the well-being of many individuals that limited amounts of natural cannabis should soon be made available for prescription by doctors to named patients only. I trust that the Government and those professional bodies in medicine which have commented adversely upon our report, in striking contrast to the almost universal support that it has received in the public media, will now think again.
9.36 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I should like to say, first, what a privilege it was to be yet again co-opted on to the sub-committee and to serve under our excellent and learned chairman and specialist adviser. I say "learned" in this case in the scientific sense. Of course, I shall not neglect to mention the work of our excellent Clerk and his team.
Apart from our report and recommendations, with which I fully agree, I should like to point out that the volume containing the evidence presented to the committee is, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Perry, a fascinating and valuable read in itself. It is extremely cogent and quite difficult to put down, as some of its pages are so fascinating. It will prove to be a most valuable source document in the future for anyone interested in the case for or the case against making cannabis legal and more accessible, whether this be for medical or so-called "recreational" purposes. It is also an accessible and well-referenced account of the whole subject.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Walton, I should like to mention that we looked at the adverse effects of the drug in great detail, as well as looking at its possible medical benefits. Those adverse effects are summarised in paragraph 8.19 of the report. Our final recommendation, which the noble Lord, Lord Walton, iterated—and I shall repeat—is that,
"cannabis and its derivatives should continue to be controlled drugs".
That does not mean that the sub-committee felt that cannabis was more dangerous than tobacco or alcohol. In fact, we felt that both of those substances were more harmful to health than cannabis. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Walton, stole the phrase which I was going to
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attribute to Virginia Bottomley, but which she actually got from ASH; namely, that if tobacco were to be introduced today, with our current knowledge of its dangers to health, it would not receive a licence.
The committee was surprised, at least I was, that there were no deaths—I repeat, no deaths—directly attributable to cannabis toxicity either from acute overdose or prolonged use in the years 1993 to 1995. That is certainly not the case with many medicines which are obtainable over the counter. My noble friend Lord Winston mentioned paracetamol and aspirin, suicides from which we heard about during Question Time about two weeks ago on (I think) 18th November. So cannabis really does seem to be safer from the point of view of its lethal consequences than aspirin. Indeed, this very safety was a major factor in our recommendation that it should be moved from schedule 1 to Schedule 2. But because of its psychotropic power and possible long-term neurological effects, which have been described so well by the noble Lord, Lord Walton, it was felt that it should remain a controlled drug.
I would like to add a personal view here. If the possession of cannabis were ever to be decriminalised or legalised—which some may say is a sensible policy, but that is well outside our committee's remit—its supply should still be controlled and monitored carefully. This would be much easier if it was classified as a controlled substance, only available from licensed sources.
As I have said, the committee's remit did not include consideration of the "recreational" use of cannabis, yet our deliberations and recommendations always had to bear in mind the sort of criticisms that the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, has brought forward—that our recommendations might be misinterpreted as being the "thin end of the wedge", a "stalking horse" or, as he said, a "Trojan horse", leading to the medical prescription of cannabis for its psychotropic effects.
There is little or no problem when discussing the prescription of purified cannabinoids since they are not, as far as I know, ever sought by recreational users. But cannabis itself may seem, on the face of it, to be more problematic. This is not necessarily so. As other noble Lords have pointed out, heroin is a prescribable drug, being a schedule 2 preparation, but there is no evidence that it is now being prescribed by doctors in any more than a small number of cases for other than genuine medical reasons. Until the early 1970s it could be prescribed by general practitioners, in the National Health Service or privately, for the treatment of heroin addiction. For the past 15 years that has not been allowed and it has been available only in specialised drug clinics. Whether that is the right policy is arguable, but there is no reason why the same prescribing restrictions should not apply to cannabis, which is not as highly addictive as heroin in any case.
The MRC states at page 144 of the evidence that:
"It is particularly important that the potential for new medicinal drug development raised by the likely existence of cannabis receptors is not stifled by considering all cannabis-like compounds as medically unacceptable because of the abuse potential of the natural product".

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Our report states in this regard at paragraph 8.17:
"As with any medicine which is open to abuse, safeguards must be put in place by the professional regulatory bodies to prevent diversion to improper purposes … These might include a system of declarations to be signed by the doctor and the patient".
The committee is aware that, despite the considerable anecdotal evidence that was presented to it—and also described in the BMA's report of 1998—the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of cannabis to alleviate the symptoms of a number of conditions is still inadequate and further research is urgently needed. All noble Lords who have spoken have said that. The Government's opinion, however, is that this further research needs to be completed before they can consider altering the present status of cannabis. As many noble Lords have pointed out, that was the knee-jerk reaction of the Home Office.
May I make an aside at this point and ask why it is that the Home Office has the last word on this. When we are considering the therapeutic benefits of a possibly extremely valuable drug, the Home Office should at least consult with the Department of Health before making off-the-cuff statements like this.
However, the Home Office is to be congratulated on its relatively speedy granting of licences for the two important studies by Dr. Guy and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. But, as many noble Lords have said, it will take at least five years before these trials are completed and fully assessed. Meanwhile, a number of patients—particularly those with multiple sclerosis—have found that cannabis leaf or resin is the only substance or medicine that gives them relief. They will continue to have to break the law while obtaining supplies of variable strength from irregular and illegal sources.
It is interesting to see how the committee, which included such distinguished scientists, reacted to the anecdotal evidence which was presented to it, both personally by actual sufferers and by doctors who described the experience of their patients. I can best illustrate the compelling nature of this evidence by quoting a little from a few cases. Perhaps I may start with a more lighthearted one. Dr. Robson, director of the drug dependence unit at the Warneford Hospital, Oxford, related the following anecdote. He said:
"two weekends ago I was playing golf with an 80 year old retired physician. We were held up on the twelfth tee and I was astonished when he took out of his pocket a battered tin and rolled himself up a cannabis cigarette. I said, 'What on earth is happening?' He said, 'I find it helps with my balance and coordination'. I really cannot comment except to say that he did beat me, so it certainly did not do him any harm".
Someone who had a much more severe problem was Clare Hodges, Director of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics. The gist of some of her testimony has already been quoted. She has had multiple sclerosis for 15 years, with spasticity, nausea, poor appetite and great discomfort in her bladder. For some nine years she
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received no relief from a range of medication. When she smoked cannabis it was effective within about five minutes. She said:
"The tension in my bladder and spine melted away, and I felt less sick and stiff. I could move and generally function with greater ease and I slept soundly that night without medication".
She had been getting up as many as 12 times to empty her bladder. What is more, she found smoking the cannabis leaf with herbal tobacco the best way to regulate the dose. Oral nabilone made her confused and clumsy and did not help her symptoms.
Many more examples were given to us. An interesting case was described by Dr. Fred Schon, a consultant neurologist and neuropharmacologist. His patient had a rare eye complication of multiple sclerosis called pendular nystagmus which was resistant to all standard treatments including nabilone. The patient reported a dramatic benefit from smoking cannabis which he said completely abolished his symptoms. In trying to replicate this with cannabis oil capsules, which was the only preparation Dr. Schon was allowed to prescribe by the Home Office, he obtained no benefit. He was unable to get a licence to study the beneficial effects of the smoked product.
When full chemical and pharmaceutical attention is focused on cannabis it may be possible to isolate the most effective cannabinoids in the most effective combination and to administer them by a less crude method than smoking and inhaling this semi-combusted product of cannabis leaf or resin. However, it appears that a significant number of patients with various degrees of neurological damage get remarkable relief from their unpleasant symptoms by inhaling that particular concoction of cannabinoids.
I share the belief of Dr. Robson, as I think do the other members of the committee, that compassionate reefers, despite the adverse effects of smoking itself, are fully justified if a patient has severe symptoms and is suffering from an illness, such as cancer or AIDS, which may shorten life in any case. But I would go further and suggest that these reefers or other preparations of smoked cannabis should be available on prescription on a named basis to patients with less immediately life threatening conditions. Of those, sufferers from multiple sclerosis will be much the most numerous.
The Earl of Strafford: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, and his committee on their landmark report and conclusions, which are both humane and pragmatic. Because of its illegal status, few chemical trials have been done on the medical use of cannabis, but there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence. Anyone who doubts that should read Marijuana—the Forbidden Medicine by Grinspoon and Bakalar, which makes compelling reading and charts the medical use of cannabis from its earliest mention, not on an Assyrian tablet but in a Chinese herbal 5,000 years ago, to its present-day use. Of special significance is the store placed on cannabis by the Victorians when it was introduced into modern western medicine in the mid-19th century. Between 1840 and 1900, more than 100 papers were written recording its therapeutic uses.

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The heart of that book is an anthology of case histories of people suffering from severe or terminal illness who found that cannabis was the only substance that really helped. They were suffering from a variety of chronic conditions and there was a pattern of trying recommended drugs that did not work or, even if they did, produced unpleasant side effects. They turned to cannabis only as a last resort—sometimes with great reluctance and seldom with any expectations of improvement. Clearly their lives were transformed. Their physical and mental state improved and the quality of their lives was enhanced. Sometimes, it saved their lives.
The cumulative weight of evidence from those personal testimonies is compelling but all anecdotal—and here is the rub. Anecdotal evidence is considered substandard and is disallowed because it is not scientific. The phrase "anecdotal evidence" means personal experience and in this context it cannot be brushed aside. It is too extensive and authentic. Each case says, "Cannabis works for me". It can be argued that a good case history provides the smallest research study of all.
A classic example and an especially illuminating account of how one multiple sclerosis sufferer's life was transformed by cannabis is given by Clare Hodges to the Select Committee, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rea. As the Director of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, her organisation has received 200 letters from MS sufferers, giving detailed accounts of the benefits that they gain from its use. She also received 50 letters from people with spinal injuries and 20 with epilepsy, depression, arthritis, AIDS or cancer. Only five people responded who had either gained no benefit or suffered unwanted side effects.
Last year's BMA report, The Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis, was significant and reflected the frustration felt by a growing number of doctors because they could not prescribe cannabis to patients who might benefit, who were forced to break the law to obtain it. What has to be questioned is the BMA statement that,
"the information is meagre, but nevertheless it can be concluded that cannabis is unsuitable for medical use".
Those who use it often in preference to the few cannabinoids available would disagree, and that point was commented on by Dr. Notcutt, with his work on nabilone, and by Clare Hodges. Using crude cannabis may not be ideal, but it works.
Eventually, the exact cannabinoids or combination of them that do benefit people will be unravelled, but that is at least five years away. Meanwhile, people who use cannabis remain criminals and often face a stark choice. A good example is the man crippled by rheumatoid arthritis who was registered as 97 on the arthritis severity scale. That rating dropped to seven after using cannabis. He said:
"My problem is that I don't want to flout the law deliberately. What can I do? Get better and break the law or feel worse?".
The committee's recommendation that cannabis should be transferred from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 and that doctors should be able to prescribe it to named patients, as they can morphine or amphetamine, would
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give immediate help to people who need it and would make further research less complicated. That is also in line with public opinion. Polls have shown a clear majority in favour of medical legislation. That was highlighted a fortnight ago when AOL, the Internet service provider, organised an on-line survey asking, "Should cannabis be legalised to ease serious and terminal illness?". The result was a resounding 81 per cent. in favour and 19 per cent. against.
This issue is summed up for me by a letter written to the Independent on Sunday, which stated,
"I have multiple sclerosis and use cannabis to relieve unpleasant muscle spasms. It makes me very angry that I have to become a criminal to obtain and take this safe, cheap and very effective drug. Where is the sense?".
I believe that the Government should take notice of these views and have the courage to implement the committee's recommendations.
9.55 p.m.
Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, this has been an extremely interesting debate. I particularly wish to thank my noble friend Lord Perry of Walton and his colleagues on the committee for a report that we on these Benches consider shows enormous humanity and good sense. As we have heard tonight from many members of the committee, the report examines with enormous care the evidence and the arguments for the medical use of cannabis.
As regards the medical benefits, the committee makes no bones about the fact that cannabis has quite a number of adverse effects. The committee has admitted that it has relied on anecdotal evidence. It seems clear that there is potentially a major role for cannabis to play in the care and treatment of MS sufferers, and that there may be other important uses—for example, the relief of pain of terminally ill patients, and for those undergoing chemotherapy.
As my noble friend Lord Perry of Walton made clear, the report concludes unanimously that, having balanced the risks with the benefits, the case is made out for clinical trials to be carried out with cannabis and its derivatives and analogues such as THC and nabinol, as the BMA suggested in its 1996 report. As we have heard, the report also—this is more controversial—concludes that cannabis should be moved from schedule 1 to schedule 2 of the dangerous drugs regulations. That would allow GPs to prescribe cannabis at their own risk for those such as MS sufferers who find it beneficial. In itself this recommendation goes further than the BMA was prepared to go in its evidence and in its original report, or indeed, subsequently in its response to the committee's report.
I say at once that I and my health spokesmen colleagues in the Commons back the committee's recommendations. I am particularly fortified in that view by the fact that one of our number, Dr. Peter Brand, MP, is a GP of many years' experience. He certainly believes that it is practicable to implement the recommendations of the committee. I am heartened also by the support of practitioners in this House—for example, the noble Lords, Lord Winston and Lord Rea—who also take that view.

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The argument used by those who wish simply to wait for the results of clinical trials is, in my view, inhumane. They argue in summary that there are more than 60 cannabinoids in cannabis and it would be dangerous to allow cannabis to be prescribed until we know precisely which elements of cannabis cause the beneficial effects. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, made an analogy with the lottery which I thought was particularly apposite. The fact is that such trials could take five years and more to identify those elements if one had to try all the different combinations.
There have been few trials to date, as we have heard. We have also heard about trials that are now in prospect. But shall we really see an upsurge of interest by the pharmaceutical companies when cannabis will still have the stigma of Schedule 1 status attached to it? Should we leave multiple sclerosis sufferers and others deprived for this period at a vital time of their lives, or do we in effect force them to become criminals? It is a cliché to say it, but it is nevertheless true that we all have only one life. Do we not have a duty to ensure that patients have as little suffering as possible? Are we really saying, after all this time, that we know so little about cannabis that we cannot risk terminal patients taking it rather than morphine, which we know is far more potent and addictive?
Pain management was a new science when my late wife was in terminal care 10 years ago. Now it is much more sophisticated. Do we think that palliative and terminal care doctors and nurses would behave irresponsibly? Would MS sufferers abuse the system? Is it not better that they should just simply have to produce a prescription if prosecuted rather than having to be taken to court and have the indignity of making a plea of mitigation? I do not accept what the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, said. Why does he simply assume that because doctors may be prescribing cannabis for smoking, there will be abuse of the system?
I found the last paragraph of the evidence of the Multiple Sclerosis Society particularly poignant:
"The … Society does not encourage people with MS to break the law. We do however understand why some people who face intolerable symptoms have chosen to make their own decision about cannabis use, recognising the implications of their choice. Where the medical evidence warrants it, we hope that the police and the courts would deal with such people in an appropriately compassionate fashion".
I do not believe that such a situation would be at all humane for MS sufferers. After all, what we are asking them to do is to throw themselves on the mercy of the courts.
We have heard that cannabis is not new on the medicinal scene. We believe that Queen Victoria used it, as my noble friend Lord Perry of Walton mentioned.
My Commons colleagues and I are particularly disappointed by the immediate negative response of the Minister Mr. Howarth, who with indecent haste indicated disagreement with the committee's report. Ministers should be quite clear about the precise recommendations of the committee. It is not saying that doctors should immediately be able to prescribe, but it
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is saying that consultations—as is proper—should first take place with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
The committee also very clearly states that the medical profession should provide clear guidance on the prescription of cannabis. This would deal with aspects such as those suffering from schizophrenia. That is the sensible way forward, but it is not that being taken by the Government.
I believe that the Government's decision is less of a medical than a political decision. Medical considerations have become tangled up in the Government's mind with the recreational aspects which the committee was scrupulous in not getting confused. The Government appear to be terrified of appearing to be soft on drugs. They appear to be terrified of an adverse headline in the Daily Mail. As a result of the Government seeing the issue purely as one of law and order, a great many patients who could have benefited from cannabis to relieve their condition will suffer.
As regards the wider agenda and the recreational use of drugs, I note the committee's final conclusions. However, my party has strongly advocated for some years now the setting up of a Royal Commission which would provide a thoroughgoing investigation into the effects of drug use and misuse generally in this country. Such a Royal Commission could also examine the best ways in which to tackle the problem at its roots.
My party believes that that is the sensible way of dealing with the recreational aspects. which are entirely separate from the medical aspects. On the medical front, I very much hope that the Government will change their collective mind. Even if I had not been persuaded before this debate, I would be doubly persuaded now.
10.3 p.m.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, I too add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, for presenting the report and for all the valuable work involved.
As a member of the medical profession for the past 40 years, I have always taken a particular interest in the care of those who are dying. In the past 13 years, I have been intimately involved in the Mildmay Mission Hospital, which was the first hospice in Europe devoted to the care of men, women and children dying of AIDS.
I have never had any problem in seeing my task as relieving distress, whether that distress was pain, nausea, respiratory distress, anxiety, depression or whatever. Nowadays that is a much more precise practice as we have a host of different drugs to deal specifically with each symptom, rather than showering them with crude compounds containing scores of different chemicals of unknown quantity and unknown effects.
With chronic incurable diseases of all kinds, the search continues for more precise drugs which can deal with a variety of symptoms. But the medical use of cannabis in Europe and North America has declined this century, first, because there is no standardised preparation of cannabis and, secondly. because of its unreliable absorption when taken by mouth.

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Cannabis has a very complex structure and even for a given strength produces irregular, widely varying, and thus unreliable, results. That is why it was ejected from the British Pharmacopoeia in 1932; its dismissal was in no way related to its legal status on the street, its so-called recreational use.
We support the committee's view that evidence-based findings fully justified the rejection of the recreational use of cannabis and that its present controlled status should be maintained. We also fully support the committee's recommendation that there is a great need for scientifically rigorous trials, and that the notion of smokable medicines should continue to be rejected.
In referring to the smoking of cannabis, the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, might have emphasised that smoking cannabis is even more dangerous than smoking ordinary cigarettes because it contains a greater concentration of cancer producing substances. It results in a five-fold greater increase in carboxyhaemoglobin concentration, which makes that haemoglobin molecule less available to carry ordinary oxygen, and that places an additional burden on the heart; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, mentioned, a three-fold greater increase in the amount of tar inhaled. Also, it leads to retention in the respiratory tract of one-third more tar than the smoking of ordinary cigarettes.
Controlled clinical trials are difficult when one is comparing the smoking of cannabis with something else. It is difficult to find a suitable placebo.
One of the cannabinoids, nabilone, was licensed as a drug to help control the nausea and vomiting produced by chemotherapy in cancer patients. Apparently it is not much used for that purpose because it is not nearly so good as the new and more powerful anti-nausea drugs such as ondansetron and others with names that are difficult to pronounce. The other advantage of these compounds is that they can be given intravenously, which is useful for patients who are vomiting.
The committee has argued that it "received enough anecdotal evidence" to convince it of the medical value of cannabis, although it concedes that "there is not enough rigorous scientific evidence". The committee says its "principal reason is compassionate". I am not sure that it is really compassionate to expose sick people to unproven drugs with psychoactive side effects; there are approved protocols for the introduction of drugs, and even then mistakes are made and problems arise. The only people likely to benefit would be the legal profession, advancing claims for damage by this improperly approved compound.
When we examine the anecdotal evidence, it consists largely of people who have smoked cannabis saying that they prefer smoking it to having it in other forms. First, I think we should remind ourselves that the word "anecdote" means in Greek "not published", which is arguably what most anecdotes should remain. Secondly, I remember well patients telling me in the 1950s that they much preferred digitalis leaf to the new-fangled preparation digoxin. They said that the leaf, which we prescribed in grains, as I think my former tutor, my noble friend Lord Butterfield, will confirm, was much
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more effective than the pure digoxin. The truth of the matter is that the amount of pure digoxin in each digitalis leaf varied a great deal. In fact, it is thoroughly bad medicine to use that preparation.
I work on the principle that the customer is always right, but sometimes he is not right, and in this case he is quite wrong. After all, only 1 per cent. of people suffering from multiple sclerosis are believed to use cannabis, so it cannot be described as a "widespread experience". Further anecdotal evidence is that cannabinoids are not as good as crude cannabis because they do not make the patient "high".
It is the job of the Opposition to oppose the Government over policies that it thinks are wrong but to support them over policies it thinks are right. We on these Benches agree with the Government that cannabis should not be rescheduled to allow doctors to prescribe it until the safety, quality and efficacy of a medicinal form have been established by rigorous scientific means and until the Medicines Control Agency issues a marketing authorisation.
We fully support the stand taken by the British Medical Association. I think it is worth saying that the BMA today is more helpful and constructive than I have ever known it. The BMA summarises this situation well when it says:
"Cannabis contains over 400 chemical compounds including more than 60 cannabinoids, with considerable variation in the concentration present in different preparations".
Even if cannabis were shown to have therapeutic benefits, it would not be possible to know which particular agents were beneficial and medical knowledge would not be advanced or treatment improved. For those reasons, as well as because of the known toxic constituents in cannabis smoke, the BMA consider that cannabis is unsuitable for medical use. They say that such use should be confined to known doses of pure or synthetic cannabinoids. We agree with that.
I should like to emphasise a point made by the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office in January 1997 when he said that many of those calling for the medical use of cannabis are using it as a stalking horse to promote the campaign for its legalisation. The noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, mentioned that point.
Paul Boateng, the Health Minister, said that we should not accept a lesser standard of evidence in the case of cannabis because of pressures on behalf of people who are convinced of its therapeutic value.
It is worth stating that in the United States organised campaigns to legalise cannabis have usually started by launching a debate on its medical uses. There are, of course, many sincere people who advocate the use of cannabis for medical purposes and whose only concern is to alleviate suffering. But many believe that the efforts of these sincere people are being cynically deployed by other groups seeking legislation. These groups are well aware of the propaganda value in gaining ground in the medical cannabis debate.

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Another disadvantage of legalising the use of cannabis for medical reasons is that the United Kingdom would then find itself out of step with many other countries. In this field I do not think we should be pioneering in that way.
In conclusion, I again thank the committee for this valuable report which has highlighted the difficulties of the subject. I very much hope that the Government will support the plea of the committee for more rigorous and scientific research in this field.
Lord Rea: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, he said that at the moment only I per cent. of multiple sclerosis sufferers used cannabis. However, according to the Multiple Sclerosis Society—I look at page 84 of the report—there are 85,000, sufferers which means that 850 of them now use cannabis. That is probably a minimum figure because there are many who can benefit from it. A lot of people might well use it if it were legal.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, I entirely agree. I read the report and the figure is 1 per cent.
Lord Rea: My Lords, that still amounts to 850 people, which is quite a large number.
10.16 p.m.
Lord Hoyle: My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, and the Select Committee on Science and Technology on producing a very interesting report on cannabis. No one who has listened to the debate this evening can fail to be impressed by the findings of the committee.
I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Carrick, on his excellent maiden speech which was listened to with interest and attention. I hope that it will not be too long before we hear from him again.
The Government must examine the scientific and medical evidence to see whether there is a case for relaxing some of the current restrictions on the medical uses of cannabis and to consider whether the prohibition on the recreational use of this drug is justified on the scientific evidence of adverse effects.
There is a huge volume of literature on cannabis. I believe that the committee has done exceptionally well in refining all of this material and producing a readable report. However, the purpose of this debate is not to provide the Government's full response to the committee's report because these proceedings take place before the Government have replied to the report. But all of the contributions that have been made today by noble Lords will be taken into account by the Government in their reply. In that respect. I believe that the purpose is a very useful one.
We are all aware that, according to convention, the Government reply to the reports of Select Committees within two months. However, as has been mentioned in the debate the committee made a recommendation that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs which advises the Government under the Misuse of Drugs
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Act 1971 should be consulted before they responded to the report. It was recognised by the committee that this might take a little time. As the noble Lord, Lord Perry of Walton, said in opening the debate, the committee is prepared to wait longer for a reply.
The council meets twice a year but it had a meeting on 19th November. Therefore, it was possible for the council at that meeting to consider the report briefly. One of the general comments that has been made is that the Government should not have responded so quickly. While it may not be the general custom to respond immediately to the Select Committee's report—I do not believe that anyone questions that—it is acceptable for the Government to do so. They do so in this case because the Government have a clearly established and logical position on the medical uses of cannabis. That is a position from which they would be willing to move only—I stress this—if scientific evidence to support the change were available. That evidence is not available, and indeed the report admits as much in paragraph 8.1. In those circumstances the Government thought that it was better to remind everyone of their position and the reason for it rather than to leave a gap, because that gap might have created the impression that we thought a case for change had been made.
It was against this background that the advisory council, in view of the Government's position, took the view that cannabis should not be rescheduled. If the time comes when a cannabis-based medicine has been developed the advisory council will, under the terms of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, have to be consulted before any change is made to the legislation.
As I have said, this debate is not the occasion when the Government are giving their full reply to the report, but at this stage I would like to reiterate what the Government said about some of the recommendations after the report was published. The last words in the main report are that the committee recommends that:
"cannabis and its derivatives should continue to be controlled drugs".
In making the recommendation, the committee referred to a statement by the United Kingdom Anti-Drugs Co-ordinator in the Government's White Paper, Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain. Mr. Hellawell said that:
"the more evidence that becomes available about the risks of, for example, cannabis and ecstasy the more discredited the notion that any of the substances currently controlled under the 1971 Act are harmless".
This is something that the Government have always believed, and we believe that the committee's recommendation supports our position. We believe that the general legalisation of cannabis would be a serious mistake, and indeed we heard tonight a very powerful speech from my noble friend Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate pointing out the dangers that could arise from legalisation. We are not prepared to be a party to making any mistake in that regard.
The Government also welcomed the committee's recommendation that more work is needed on the possible medical benefits of cannabis. However, the

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Government found themselves unable to agree—I say this to the members of the committee—with the recommendation that:
"steps should be taken to transfer cannabis and cannabis resin from Schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations to Schedule 2 so as to allow doctors to prescribe an appropriate preparation of cannabis, albeit as an unlicensed medicine and on a named patient basis and to allow doctors and pharmacists to supply the drug prescribed".
Put another way, we believe the recommendation is that doctors should be allowed to prescribe cannabis: that is what we believe is being said by the committee. Where it is not explicit about what is meant by "an appropriate preparation of cannabis" the Government have assumed that this could, in the committee's view—and we have discussed this tonight—include smoked cannabis, despite the acknowledged dangers of that form of administration. I can see the noble Lord, Lord Perry, is agreeing with me in that.
In principle, the Government have no difficulty with the proposal of a cannabis-based medicine or medicines containing individual cannabinoids. However, we do not agree that any prospective medicines which contain these substances should set aside the standards required of prospective medicines. The case for that was made very clear by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench. These standards are that the quality, safety and efficacy of the medicine have to be scientifically proven. There are good reasons for having those standards. I do not need to say this because all noble Lords who spoke tonight—many of them expert in their fields—are aware that it is necessary to ensure that inferior quality, unsafe or ineffective medicines are not prescribed to patients. I think that we can all agree on that.
The committee also acknowledged that there was not enough scientific evidence to prove conclusively that cannabis has or has no medical value of any kind. Nonetheless, we get back to the anecdotal evidence that cannabis almost certainly has a genuine medical application, in particular for the treatment of muscular spasms and symptoms of multiple sclerosis and the control of other forms of pain. Much has been said on compassionate grounds. The Government are not unsympathetic. No one could ignore the plight of these people. If they cannot be helped by existing medication, should we look to cannabis to help them? Sufferers of certain ailments might be able to obtain relief lawfully by using cannabis. However the development and licensing of medicinal forms might take five years. Although the Government have enormous sympathy for those patients whose conditions do not respond to existing treatment, and we understand why the committee has reached its view, we do not believe—and I think that many people would agree with us—that an exception should be made for cannabis.
We believe that one of the consequences of accepting the recommendation would be to undermine research into medicinal forms. We believe that a good deal of the incentive would be swept away if crude cannabis was prescribable. That view was also shared from the Opposition Bench.
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However, we are making progress on research into cannabinoids. The Medical Research Council (MRC) the main agency through which the Government support medical and clinical research, has awarded a grant to Dr. Kendall of the University of Nottingham to undertake two studies. While those studies do not directly address the value of the therapeutic use of cannabis, they could prove important in informing any further, more applied research.
Lord Winston: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I apologise for the lateness of the hour. Those studies do not address the therapeutic issues. Does the Minister agree that the current regulatory framework is a Catch-22 situation? It prevents any controlled study of the type that we feel would be appropriate. One cannot gain the evidence without undertaking the studies; and the current regulations prevent scientists and funding authorities from supporting such studies, so there is a real problem intellectually.
Lord Hoyle: My Lords, my noble friend spoke about a Catch-22 situation. He says that the studies would not directly address the therapeutic use. We believe that they could be informative. However, as has been said throughout, we are in favour of more clinical studies taking place. Perhaps I may say to my noble friend that we have to overcome that Catch-22 situation.
The final reports will be submitted to the council in due course, and Dr. Kendall will be expected to publish his findings in the scientific press in the usual manner. In addition, the Medical Research Council is committed to an evaluation of the therapeutic use of cannabis by clinical trial and is working closely with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to enable research in that area to be put on a better scientific footing.
However, the Government are not alone in believing that crude cannabis should not be made available. As has been said this evening, that position is supported by the BMA. In addition, the Royal Society has said that there is not enough evidence to justify either a ban on or the legalisation of cannabis for medical use and that proper clinical trials are necessary before reaching conclusions.
I believe that this debate has been invaluable because not only have we had the benefit of the opinions of all the committee members but it has also provided an opportunity to look at the committee's report. The Government will provide a full reply in due course and we shall also study what has been said during this debate.
In conclusion, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part this evening. In particular, I thank all the committee members and especially the chairman of the committee. It is quite apparent from what I have said that we feel unable to agree with one of the report's central recommendations. However, there is no doubt about the value of the report, which has been acknowledged on all sides of the House. The report will be valuable in the future in relation to the study of cannabis and it will

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help to inform debates which surround the use of cannabis. We are extremely grateful to the committee and this has been a very useful debate indeed.
10.31 p.m.
Lord Perry of Walton: My Lords, I too thank all those who have taken part in the debate this evening. In particular, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Carrick, who made a splendid maiden speech.
I have only three points that I want to make, because it is late. First, as the Minister said, moving cannabis into Schedule 2 would undoubtedly allow doctors to prescribe it for smoking. Indeed, they could prescribe it in any way they liked because moving it to Schedule 2 allows them to do that. As I said in opening the debate, we do not believe that that is quite as bad as it sounds because—and this is my second point—I am quite hopeful that the clinical trials which are about to take place will be successful. I believe that they will be successful both for the cannabinoid that is being used
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and for the crude cannabis that is also being used in a standardised preparation. It will probably be made by cloning the plants so that at least the content will be the same. If it is successful, that will lead to a licensed product which has the approval of the Medicines Control Agency.
My third point relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, said. If that happens, it will create precisely the same difficulties as those the noble Lord outlined. They will still arise. It is illogical to assume that putting cannabis into Schedule 2 will be more dangerous than licensing the product in terms of spreading the level of abuse of the drug. I do not believe that in either case, there would be that spread of abuse which has been referred to. I believe that most doctors are responsible and the medical professional bodies would take good care of those who transgressed. I commend the Motion to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at twenty six minutes before eleven o'clock.