Sitting of 18 February 1970

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
NEW WRIT
For Bridgwater, in the room of Sir Gerald Wills, M.B.E., deceased.—[Mr. Whitelaw.]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  PLYMOUTH AND SOUTH WEST DEVON WATER BILL (By Order)

    YORKSHIRE DERWENT WATER BILL (By Order)
    BRITISH WATERWAYS BILL (By Order)
    CUMBERLAND RIVER AUTHORITY BILL (By Order)
    Order for Second Reading read.
    To be read a Second time upon Wednesday next.

LONDON TRANSPORT BILL (By Order)
Read a Second time and committed.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  SCOTLAND

    Atlantic Salmon
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what further action he has taken in the last month to protect the Atlantic salmon.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Norman Buchan): I asume that my hon. Friend refers to the threat posed by the development of high seas fisheries for salmon.
    My Department has engaged in consultations with some of the countries which share our views on this matter to determine what further action can best be taken to secure a satisfactory solution to it.
    Mr. Dalyell: Is there any indication of a change of attitude by the Government of Denmark?
    Mr. Buchan: The Danish Government are continuing to provide valuable assistance in the scientific investigation into the effects of high seas fisheries, and when they objected to the Commission's recommendations they indicated their willingness to consider less far-reaching measures, other than a complete ban.
    Mr. Stodart: Has the hon. Gentleman any information about the latest recorded Greenland catch of salmon? Has it gone up sensationally? Does the hon. Gentleman accept the view of the Director of the Atlantic Salmon Research Trust that in three years salmon will have reached the point of no return on the way to extinction? What precise action is the hon. Gentleman contemplating?
    Mr. Buchan: That is a three-point question. First, I have no figures additional to those which have been published. Second, I am aware of the statement, but I do not think that the scientific evidence so far available suggests that the Atlantic salmon, as a species, is in danger of extinction. The third matter is one for negotiation between friends. The disagreement between us and the Danish Government is a disagreement between friends, and

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    has to be settled by international discussion, which is what we are doing.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. There are many Questions on the Order Paper.

    New Houses (Condensation)
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has had from the Scottish Special Housing Association and local authorities on the problem of condensation in new houses; and what replies he has sent.
    The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Dr. J. Dickson Mabon): None, but from time to time local authorities or the S.S.H.A. ask for help with particular cases of condensation and are given technical advice by my Department or by the Building Research Station.
    Mr. Dalyell: As condensation, and related mildew, often leads to most depressing and terrible human problems, sometimes even going as far as contributing to the break-up of a home and marriage, could not the Government take some initiative to get together the firms, such as I.C.I., which now think that they have some answer to these problems?
    Dr. Mabon: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his persistence in this matter. We have issued leaflets, we have encouraged some local authorities to run film shows—as a matter of fact the film is being shown elsewhere in this Palace today—and we are anxious to try to get this matter over to people. I shall look into the point raised by my hon. Friend.
    Mr. Edward M. Taylor: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many families are living in misery because of the problems of condensation in new homes, and also because of rain penetrating through inadequate window frames? Will the Minister take further steps to hold a special inquiry to see whether some local authorities can help others?
    Dr. Mabon: I do not think that there is much need for a further special inquiry. The Minister of Public Building and Works has looked into this quite thoroughly, and the reports on it are clear. There are certain basic causes, some of which could be remedied by the tenants. Some defects are due to bad building, at which my hon. Friend hinted.
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    Other defects can be remedied only by public awareness of what to do.
    Sir M. Galpern: Is my hon. Friend satisfied that there is a remedy for this defect in some of the houses'? Is he aware that in my constituency a whole scheme of not very old construction has had to be demolished because those concerned are unable to cope with this problem of condensation? Can my hon. Friend assure us that research is being done into this problem?
    Dr. Mabon: Yes. I can assure my hon. Friend that the Building Research Station, which has done a great deal of development work, is willing to look into special problems such as my hon. Friend has mentioned, if it is so requested.

    Employment
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many representations he has received to date regarding the decline in the number of persons in employment in Scotland since 1964, and the decline in the proportion of total United Kingdom male jobs arising in Scotland over the same period; and what replies he has sent.
    The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): As Secretary of State I receive many representations about employment in Scotland but I recall comparatively few which bear directly on the points raised by the hon. Member. These matters have, however, been fully debated in the House on a number of occasions.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: If the Secretary of State has had comparatively few it is presumably because most people have long since come to the conclusion that it is not worth spending fourpence upon him for this or any other purpose. If the run-down in employment in Scotland has resulted from the decline in the old industries—as he regularly tells us—can he explain why the run-down should be particularly marked in the service sector, which is a growth sector in most other advanced industrial economies?
    Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that there is more than one reason for the decline; indeed, if he examines the situation in the distributive sector he will find that modernisation

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    there has had a considerable effect on the number of people employed.
    Mr. Woodburn: Will not my right hon. Friend have an analysis made to show how modernisation in the mines, in agriculture and in many other industries has reduced male employment? Is not this a penalty for going into the scientific age?
    Mr. Ross: Yes. These figures have been produced. I cannot guarantee that the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) has been able to read them.
    Mr. Gordon Campbell: Will the right hon. Gentleman make representations to the Chancellor of the Exchequer before his Budget about the heavy impact of the selective employment tax on the building industry in Scotland and upon rural areas, such as the Highlands?
    Mr. Ross: That is a customary exaggeration on the part of the hon. Member. If he will examine the situation in the building industry in Scotland he will find that it has been a considerably expanding one, and that the load on it is still very high, thanks to central Government expenditure.

    Farm Rents
    Mr. Eadieasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many representations about farm rents were drawn to his attention in 1969; and what action he has taken.
    Mr. Buchan: No representations on farm rents were made to my right hon. Friend in 1969.
    Mr. Eadie: Does not my hon. Friend agree that farmers are concerned about all types of increase that they may have to meet? Is he aware that when I met farmers in my constituency recently they informed me that they had rejected Mark III of the Tory agriculture policy? They want controlled marketing and guaranteed prices.
    Mr. Buchan: Yes, I am well aware of that. We saw the burial of Conservative farming policy in South Ayrshire only two weeks ago. I have sympathy for the hon. Member who suffered that bereavement. It will be of interest to hon. Members to know that during the last three
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    years the average annual increase in rents has been 4·6 per cent., whereas in the last three years of government by the Conservatives the annual increase was 7·7 per cent.

    Council Tenants (House Purchase)
    Mr. Gordon Campbellasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether his Department has undertaken a survey, similar to that undertaken by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and made an estimate of the number of council house tenants in Scotland who have means sufficient to buy their own houses with mortgage facilities.
    Dr. Dickson Mahon: The study referred to was based on the Family Expenditure Survey, which covers the whole of Great Britain on a sample basis. It is not possible to make from the Scottish sample a reliable estimate for Scotland.
    Mr. Campbell: Can the hon. Gentleman explain why, according to the Scottish Press, it was possible to make an estimate for England but not for Scotland, and thus add useful information, even if only approximate, to our general knowledge of the housing situation?
    Dr. Mabon: This statistical example is very small. Any statistician would concur about that. But that does not mean that we have ignored it. In 1965 we carried out a survey—which the hon. Member may recall—which gave us some information about tenants' incomes. We hope to carry out a more substantial survey this year.
    Mr. Adam Hunterasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many local authorities in Scotland have engaged in the sale of local authority houses; what number has been sold and in what areas; and what prices have been obtained.
    Dr. Dickson Mabon: No local authority sold any of its houses in 1969. In the previous two years, the burghs of Edinburgh, Findochty, Lockerbie, Lossiemouth, Stirling and Turriff and the counties of Banff, Dumfries, Inverness, Perth and Ross and Cromarty sold a total of 29 houses. I have no information about prices.
    Mr. Hunter: Is my hon. Friend aware that it is gratifying to know that the practice is not widespread? Does not he agree that it is far better to put the emphasis on council houses for rent rather than for sale?
    Dr. Mabon: I hope that my hon. Friend is aware that consent to sell houses has been given only where a need no longer exists for houses to let in the area concerned, or where all the foreseeable needs can be met by relets, or where a particular house was not part of the general pool of local authority houses—for example, the renovated houses on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.
    Mr. Gordon Campbell: Does the hon. Member agree that the reason for the small number of houses sold in Scotland is that Government approval is necessary, and that the Secretary of State has been refusing approval, and that local authorities know this? Will he consider—as he did in his first two years in office—regarding each proposal on its merits, especially where the sitting tenant is prepared to pay in cash, which can then be used for building new houses?
    Dr. Mabon: Despite the fact that the hon. Gentleman's party operated no policy of principle such as that which I enunciated in my last answer, if the hon. Member will put down a Question I will give him an answer, and I think that he will be surprised at the small number of houses that the Conservatives allowed local authorities to dispose of.

    Rate Relief
    Mr. Smallasked the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) what was the total amount paid to Glasgow in domestic rate relief up to the most convenient date;
    (2) what was the total amount paid to Scottish local authorities in domestic rate relief up to the most convenient date.
    Dr. Dickson Mabon: By the end of the current local financial year Glasgow domestic ratepayers will have received almost £3 million in rate relief out of a total of about £18 million distributed to Scottish local authorities through the domestic element of rate support grant.
    Mr. Small: My hon. Friend will recognise that that is a substantial sum. Can
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    he give any estimate, to a convenient date, of the saving to individual ratepayers within that sum-total?
    Dr. Mahon: It would be very difficult for me to make a guess about that just now. I should not like to do so. But since the inception of the domestic element in 1967 there has been a net rise of 2s. 9d. in domestic rates in Glasgow, which is a little more than half the rise of 5s. 3d. in non-domestic rates.

    Road Schemes
    Mr. Manuelasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what will be the mileage and value of road schemes which will be commenced during 1970.
    Mr. Ross: About 106½ miles of major schemes for trunk and principal roads, costing over £40 million, together with many smaller improvement schemes, and schemes financed wholly by local authorities, for which I cannot at present give firm figures.
    Mr. Manuel: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware that in no period of Scottish history has provision for roads been made at the volume and at the standard that we have today?
    Mr. Ross: Yes, Sir. That is reflected in Central Government expenditure. Since 1964–65 expenditure on new construction and major improvements has more than doubled.
    Mr. David Steel: Am I right in thinking that these figures do not include any provision for a ring road round the south side of the City of Edinburgh?
    Mr. Ross: The hon. Member knows some of the difficulties in respect of that project. We shall need to know what the route is before we get down to it.
    Mr. Manuelasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the number and cost of new roads and road improvements carried out in the county of Ayr from 1965 until 1969, inclusive.
    Mr. Ross: During this period 144 schemes wholly or partly financed by specific Government grant were authorised. They cost over £4 million, and the Government's share was 0·7 million.
    With permission, I shall circulate a full list in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Manuel: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the people of Ayrshire are expressing universal appreciation at the width and scope and excellence of road improvements and new roads constructed in Ayrshire since 1965, with the possible exception of the two Tory M.P.s in Ayrshire who have slim majorities and perhaps think that my right hon. Friend is doing too well?
    Mr. Ross: I think that when my hon. Friend and other hon. Members see the list they will appreciate that we have been paying the attention which this merits to those parts of Scotland hard hit by colliery closures and those which require road improvements for growing industry. I hope to be able before too long to

    GOVERNMENT-AIDED ROAD IMPROVEMENT SCHEMES AUTHORISED IN AYR COUNTY, 1965–69*

    I. TRUNK ROAD SCHEMES

    Year of authorisation

    Route

    Description

    Estimated Cost

    £

    1965

    …

    A78

    …

    …

    Improvement at the Linn, Eglinton Road, Ardrossan

    4,347

    A76

    …

    …

    Kilmarnock-Dumfries—5 small schemes

    20,318†

    A77

    …

    …

    Stranraer-Glasgow—8 small schemes

    38,330†

    A78

    …

    …

    Gourock-Largs-Monkton—4 small schemes

    12,000†

    Total for 1965 Schemes (18)

    £74,995

    1966

    …

    A76

    …

    …

    Dumfries-Kilmarnock—7 small schemes

    23,034†

    A77

    …

    …

    Provision of dual carriageways at junction with A719

    101,895

    A77

    …

    …

    Provision of dual carriageways at Eaglesham Road Junction (B764)

    101 693

    A78

    …

    …

    Widening, etc., of St. Fillan's Bridge, North of Largs

    12,521

    A77

    …

    …

    Stranraer-Stirling—6 small schemes

    43,340†

    A78

    …

    …

    Widening of Seamill Bridge and Seamill Lade Bridge

    10,778

    A78

    …

    …

    Greenock-Largs-Monkton—6 small schemes

    11,250†

    Total for 1966 Schemes (23)

    £304,511

    1967

    …

    A76

    …

    …

    Dumfries-Kilmarnock—5 small schemes

    3,400†

    A76

    …

    …

    Skerrington southwards for ½ mile

    8,000

    A76

    …

    …

    Auchinleck-Cumnock

    14,000

    A76

    …

    …

    A719 Crossroads to Barleith Bridge

    14,800

    A76

    …

    …

    New Cumnock-Lochview

    8,200

    A77

    …

    …

    Kirkoswald Village to Dowhill

    24,500

    A77

    …

    …

    Provision of dual carriageways between Dutch House and Coodham

    860,788

    A77

    …

    …

    Ayr Bypass (Improvement)

    15,750†

    A77

    …

    …

    Stranraer-Stirling—4 small schemes

    15,000†

    A78

    …

    …

    Kilwinning Bypass (Improvement)

    12,250†

    A78

    …

    …

    Largs-Fairlie

    6,500

    A78

    …

    …

    Seamill section

    6,500

    A78

    …

    …

    3 small schemes

    6,000

    Total for 1967 Schemes (22)

    £995,688

    1968

    …

    A76

    …

    …

    Crossroads-Bargower

    24,675

    A76

    …

    …

    Mauchline to B744 junction

    20,370

    A77

    …

    …

    Dowhill to Bridgemill, Girvan

    22,575

    A78

    …

    …

    Ardrossan-Seamill

    21,210

    Total for 1968 Schemes (4)

    £88,830

    come to some conclusion with the development corporation in respect of the Irvine by-pass.
    Mr. Brewis: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the grave dissatisfaction about both the roads leading to Wigton-shire, the Stranraer and Newton Stewart roads? Will he endeavour to do something about them?
    Mr. Ross: If the hon. Member looks at the list and takes note of what is being done, he will see that we are improving roads in that direction, and he will agree that he had to suffer under the Tories for 13 years with nothing being done.
    Following is the information:

    389

    Year authorisation

    Route

    Description

    Estimated Cost £

    1969

    …

    A76

    …

    …

    Rottenyard to Midlowcs Diversion

    …

    …

    152,107

    A77

    …

    …

    Monkwood Bridge, Ayr-Maybole

    …

    …

    226,834

    A77

    …

    …

    Ayr Bypass Stage III

    …

    …

    470,346

    A77

    …

    …

    Improvement at Nether Culzean

    …

    …

    49,134

    A77

    …

    …

    Improvement at North Drummurran

    …

    …

    169,063

    A77

    …

    …

    Improvement south of Kewnston-Grange

    …

    …

    104,578

    A77

    …

    …

    North of Minishant

    …

    …

    36,757

    A77

    …

    …

    Improvement at Damhoose, Kirkoswald

    …

    …

    47,227

    A78

    …

    …

    Reconstruction of Highthorne Bridge

    …

    …

    2,477

    Total for 1969 Schemes (9)

    …

    …

    £1,258,253

    * Including the Burghs of Ayr and Kilmarnock.

    † Includes some maintenance.

    II. PRINCIPAL/CLASSIFIED ROAD SCHEMES

    Year of authorisation

    Route

    Description

    Estimated Cost £

    Grant £

    1965

    …

    A70

    …

    …

    Lugar-Muirkirk I and II realignment

    32,800

    24,600

    A714

    …

    …

    Pinwherry to Barrhill

    11,012

    8,259

    A737

    …

    …

    Kilwinning to Dalry

    29,806

    22,354

    A70

    …

    …

    Lugar-Muirkirk III

    40,036

    30,027

    B730

    …

    …

    Dreghorn-Tarbolton-Patna

    17,521

    10,512

    Tanyard Lane, Cumnock

    20,147

    10,073

    C132

    …

    …

    Mill Road, Irvine

    5,500

    2,750

    B706

    …

    …

    Dunlop-Beith Road

    7,155

    4,293

    A738

    …

    …

    Stevenston-Saltcoats-Ardrossan

    3,045

    2,284

    A719

    …

    …

    Ayr-Galston

    37,286

    27,964

    Fowlds Street Junction Clark Street, Old Mill Road

    11,098

    5,549

    Witchknowe Road/Whatriggs Road junction Kilmarnock

    A77

    …

    …

    Ayr Road, Kilmarnock

    1,225

    919

    New access Road to Ardeer at Stevenston

    150,787

    72,472

    Total for 1965 Schemes (14)

    £367,418

    £222,056

    1966

    …

    B728

    …

    …

    Ardrossan Link Road

    19,977

    11,997

    A737

    …

    …

    Kilwinning-Beith Road

    109,947

    82,460

    A714

    …

    …

    Girvan-Newton Stewart

    20,511

    15,383

    B714

    …

    …

    Hill Street, Saltcoats

    4,670

    2,802

    A759

    …

    …

    Bus draw-in Gatehead

    800

    600

    A735

    …

    …

    Rig Street, Stewarton

    760

    570

    Unclassified

    …

    3 minor schemes—

    Flatfield/Symington loop: Gottries Road/ Portland Street

    10,300

    5,150

    New Street, Kilmarnock

    6,770

    3,385

    Widening of King Street, Ayr: land acquisition

    21,250

    15,938

    Total for 1966 Schemes (11)

    £194,985

    £138,285

    1967

    …

    B780

    …

    …

    Ardrossan-Dalry

    37,625

    22,574

    A758

    …

    …

    Ayr-Mauchline

    13,580

    10,185

    B706

    …

    …

    Dunlop-Beith

    14,022

    8,413

    A713

    …

    …

    Ayr-Dalmellington

    17,316

    12,987

    A70

    …

    …

    Lugar-Muirkirk

    18,361

    13,973

    A70

    …

    …

    Ayr-Edinburgh

    39,754

    29,815

    A719

    …

    …

    Gauchalland Bridge, Galston

    9,850

    7,388

    A719

    …

    …

    Ayr-Galston

    23,441

    17,580

    —

    Grassyards Road, Kilmarnock

    90,357

    45,179

    Total for 1967 Schemes (9)

    £264,306

    £168,094

    Year of authorisation

    Route

    Description

    Estimated Cost £

    Grant £

    1968

    …

    A719

    …

    …

    Turnberry-Ayr-Galston

    30,257

    22,692

    A713

    …

    …

    Ayr-Dalmellington

    31,403

    23,552

    A713

    …

    …

    Ayr-Dalmellington

    12,882

    9,662

    A71

    …

    …

    Irvine-Kilmarnock-Edinburgh

    62,118

    46,588

    A719

    …

    …

    Turnberry-Ayr-Galston

    14,897

    11,173

    —

    John Street, Ayr

    14,000

    10,500

    —

    King Street, Ayr

    34,750

    26,062

    —

    John Street, Ayr

    5,500

    4,125

    —

    Hill Street, Kilmarnock

    9,500

    7,125

    —

    Installation of Traffic Lights, Kilmarnock

    7,515

    5,637

    —

    Installation of Traffic Lights, Ayr

    3,067

    2,300

    Total for 1968 Schemes (11)

    £225,889

    £169,416

    1969

    …

    A713

    …

    …

    Ayr-Dalmellington-Castle Douglas

    22,714

    17,036

    A719

    …

    …

    Ayr-Galston

    32,558

    24,418

    A71

    …

    …

    Edinburgh-Irvine

    57,500

    43,125

    A737

    …

    …

    Road lighting from Kilwinning-Stevenston

    1,850

    1,388

    (Land Acquisition, Lugar)

    2,030

    1,523

    A79

    …

    …

    Road lighting at Loop Road, Ayr

    1,400

    1,050

    Total for 1969 Schemes (6)

    £118,052

    £88,540

    Argyll (Steamer Services)
    Mr. Nobleasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether the new schedules of times and charges for steamer services affecting Argyll have been discussed and agreed by the Transport Committee of the Scottish Economic Planning Council or by the Highland Development Board.
    Mr. Ross: No, Sir. It is not the practice to refer detailed matters of this kind to these bodies. The operators discussed and agreed the new time-table with Argyll County Council. There were no changes in freight charges and rates, except for vehicles.
    Mr. Noble: When large amounts of taxpayers' money are being spent on rather doubtful projects of this sort,

    393
    should not somebody independently ensure that the amount of money is reasonable? On the question of charges, will the right hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that he will table the results of this new service at the end of six months? As for schedules and times, will he use his influence to ensure that people who are using these services are told more than a few hours before the new service comes into operation?
    Mr. Ross: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we try as far as possible to meet the convenience of the public in this matter. He will be aware that for the first time, with the passing of the Transport Act, there can be reference to the Scottish Transport Users Consultative Council in respect of complaints about these matters. That body is the right one to receive such complaints. As for publishing details of the results, the right hon. Gentleman will be the first to know that commercial considerations and questions of commercial confidentiality arise.

    Crofter Counties (Forestry Commission's Employees)
    Mr. Nobleasked the Secretary of State for Scotland the total number of employees of the Forestry Commission in the crofter counties and in Scotland, respectively, in 1960 and at the latest convenient dat.
    Dr. Dickson Mabon: At 31st December, 1969, the Forestry Commission had 3,864 employees in Scotland of which 1,667 were employed in the crofter counties, The corresponding numbers for 1960 were 4,925 and 2,154.
    Mr. Noble: Does the Minister of State not think that this is a rather depressing result, because part of the importance of the Forestry Commission, particularly in the Highland area, is the provision of labour? Will he discuss in detail with the Forestry Commission at an early stage whether something cannot be done to attract people who live in the Highlands to work in the forests rather than operate through contracting firms on a different basis coming in?
    Dr. Mabon: That certainly is a matter which the right hon. Gentleman is entitled to have considered by us, and I give him
    394
    an assurance to that effect. I should like to make the point that of the well over 1,000 employees who have left the Forestry Commission, only 45 were discharged under the redundancy procedure. The rest was achieved, to the credit of the Commission, by what might be called natural wastage. The right hon. Gentleman is also keenly interested in the economics of the Forestry Commission. He would, I think, be the first to recognise that these improved working methods and techniques help to make the Commission a viable undertaking.
    Mr. Manuel: Is my right hon. Friend aware that what the right hon. Member or Argyll (Mr. Noble) is advocating, much to my surprise and pleasure, is that more direct labour should operate throughout forestry? I have been trying to do this for many years. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I deplore the growth in sub-contracting.
    Dr. Mabon: This is a case where the right hon. Gentleman has become a Conservatocialist.

    House Building Costs
    Mr. Buchanan-Smithasked the Secretary of State for Scotland when Professor Sidwell's Report on House Building Costs, which he commissioned, will be published.
    Dr. Dickson Mabon: This study is not due to be completed before the autumn. My right hon. Friend recently received a report on the work done so far and he is considering arrangements for publication.
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Is the Minister aware that prices of houses in Scotland still persist considerably higher than anywhere else in the United Kingdom outside the South-East? Will he also acknowledge that responsibility for these higher costs rests firmly upon his Government because of their impositions on the building industry through selective employment tax and B.S.T. and in so many other ways?
    Dr. Mabon: If that were true, that fact would apply only while the present Government were in office, but that is not so. If the hon. Member looks at preceding reports of building society associations, he will see that this has

    395
    been the case for a long time this century. The suggestion contained in the supplementary question does not, therefore, apply.
    Mr. Dalyell: In any discussions which take place, can the Department make the point that it is wrong to skimp on costs if the architects' designs do not take condensation problems into account?
    Dr. Mahon: Absolutely. There are later Questions on the Paper the answers to which also explain these points.
    Mr. Monroasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the cost of building an average three-bedroomed house in 1964 in Scotland; and what is the cost for building a comparable house today, or at the latest date for which figures are available.
    Dr. Dickson Mabon: The average cost of building all types of four-apartment houses in the public sector, inclusive of land purchase, site development and servicing and fees, was about £3,300 in 1964 and £4,400 in 1968. A figure for 1969 is not yet available.
    Mr. Monro: Is that not a staggering increase? Is the Minister of State aware that Government policy, S.E.T., Bank Rate, devaluation, the Land Commission, transport costs, B.S.T. and so on have had an enormous impact on house building? When does he intend to relieve that burden?
    Dr. Mabon: The hon. Gentleman will know that the standards of houses and their layouts have risen and changed substantially in that time. Houses are bigger in area and there is whole or partial central heating as a common feature. Much more use is made of pedestrian segregation in layouts, and this contributes to the costs. As for the bullfrog argument about S.E.T., I hope that Reddaway and Sidwell will puncture that.
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: The hon. Gentleman has referred to houses in the public sector, but is he not aware that prices in the private sector have risen even more because of the tremendous costs imposed there? Does he realise that this denies many young people the chance of buying a house of their own?
    Dr. Mabon: The hon. Gentleman has the tremendous advantage over the rest
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    of us of having a crystal ball and being able to read reports that we have not yet published.
    Mr. Dalyell: Is it not strange that this kind of question should come from people who are financially committed to open-ended commitments east of Suez and many other forms of public expenditure?
    Dr. Mabon: Yes, and this is from a party which is committed to reducing housing subsidies.

    Electoral Register
    Mr. Buchanan-Smithasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will conduct an inquiry into the procedures carried out in the preparation of the 1970 Electoral Register; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Buchan: No, Sir.
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Is the Minister aware of reports that the names of up to 100,000 young people who are eligible to vote have not appeared on the register? Can he confirm or deny this or will he do neither, as he has done recently? Will he end his complacency and get on and do something about finding out?
    Mr. Buchan: I am delighted to hear hon. Members opposite so enthusiastic about this major step which we have taken in emancipating our young people, which the party opposite might have done during their very long period in office. Secondly, we have no indication of the precise figures—
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Then find out.
    Mr. Buchan: —but we intend to find out. [HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] We intend to find out now that the register has been published. There is nothing further that I can add now except to say that I would have liked 100 per cent. registration, as I would have liked 100 per cent. registration of adults. Neither is possible in a democratic society.

    Scottish Ports Authority
    Mr. Youngerasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received from individuals or organisations in Scotland concerning the establishment of a Scottish Ports Authority.
    Mr. Ross: I have had representations from the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Scottish Council (Development and Industry) and Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and have had discussions with the Chairman of the Clyde and Forth port authorities.
    Mr. Younger: Is the Secretary of State aware that he is out of step with virtually every organ of opinion throughout the whole of Scotland on this issue?
    Mr. Dalyell: No.
    Mr. Younger: In what respect does the Secretary of State think that it will help the operation of Scottish ports to have decisions on them taken to a centralised, nationalised body in London?
    Mr. Ross: I am not aware that I am out of step with organised opinion in Scotland. I have had probably a little more discussion with people than has the hon. Member. I simply refer him to the answer I gave on 21st January to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) and remind him—I think that he will be aware of this—of the discussions in Committee on the Ports Bill which is presently before Parliament.
    Mr. Rankin: In recollecting the answer given by my right hon. Friend on that occasion, may I ask whether he does not think that recent developments on Clyde-side warrant fresh thinking about the need for a Scottish Ports Authority operating and controlled in Scotland?
    Mr. Ross: My hon. Friend will be aware of my feelings about a Scottish Ports Authority. The question whether it should be isolated and come under the province of the Secretary of State is an entirely different matter. The Bill reconciles the need for unified long-term planning of the ports of the United Kingdom. It should be remembered that we have had imaginative reports dealing with Europe and elsewhere. This is an international matter and is not purely local. The Bill also makes provision for local management and initiative.

    Murder (Punishment)
    Mr. Youngerasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will now seek to amend the law relating to murder, so that the punishment for this crime
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    shall be greater than that for any other crime.
    Mr. Ross: The punishment for murder is already greater since the court is obliged to impose life imprisonment, which is imposed only very exceptionally for other crimes.
    Mr. Younger: Is the Secretary of State aware that, in practice, a murderer may well serve a lesser time in prison than someone who is convicted of another crime not involving murder? Is he aware that his complacency on the subject is causing the Scottish public to be very angry indeed? How many innocent people have to be murdered before the right hon. Gentleman wakes up and does something?
    Mr. Ross: I must deplore this blatant exploitation of emotionalism for political purposes. The hon. Member knows nothing whatever about the circumstances of any individual case, in respect of which responsibility eventually rests with me for the release of a person who has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Each case is considered on its merits. There has to be consultation with the Lord Justice General, there must be a recommendation from the Parole Board and eventually the decision is made. Every case is different. It is wrong for the hon. Member to create the impression that everyone is released after eight years. It is quite disgraceful that he should try to propagandise on that basis.
    Mr. Woodburn: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would not the hon. Member's Question amount to a criminal offence outside this House of murmuring the judges, who are not responsible to the Executive for the administration of justice?
    Mr. Speaker: If the Question had been out of order, I would have disallowed it.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is just as much concern on these benches about the increasing incidence of crime, and particularly murder, in Scotland—and anywhere else—as there is on the other side of the House? Does he not agree that the important point, however, is to find out the causes and seek to remedy them rather than display the noose for

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    the purpose of party political propaganda?
    Mr. Ross: Yes, indeed. I think that we all feel very strongly about this, but passion is a poor judge in a matter of general legislation and we should be careful of it. Of course, we must look into the causes of crime, and that is what we are doing. I sincerely hope that people will reflect before they speak on this matter and impute motives to other people whom they pretend to call honourable.
    Mr. Wylie: Without imputing any motives to the right hon. Gentleman, may I ask whether he is fully aware of the widespread feeling of anger, particularly among the wives of police officers? Have the Government ever considered, for example, amending the 1965 Act to enable the presiding judge to specify the period of detention in appropriate cases to other than simply to make a recommendation?
    Mr. Ross: We have got to have confidence in our justiciary. The other day a presiding judge exercised his discretion to recommend, and this is right.

    Electricity (Coal Prices)
    Mr. David Steelasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about the effect on the electricity boards in Scotland of the proposed increases in the price of coal.>
    Dr. Dickson Mabon: The recent increase in the price of coal will cost the Scottish electricity boards about £3 million in the financial year 1970–71.
    Mr. Steel: Does the Minister not think it deplorable that domestic and industrial consumers of electricity should have to subsidise the cost of keeping uneconomic pits going? If there is a case for keeping uneconomic pits open for social reasons, why is there not a proper subsidy from the Treasury for this purpose?
    Dr. Mabon: There is rather a long history to this, which I could not possibly attempt to give at Question time. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the recent report by the National Board for Prices and Incomes discussed the economics of the National Coal Board. That is accepted, and the consequence of
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    this is the 10 per cent. increase in the pithead price of coal as of 19th January, 1970. I could not go into all the explanations of the case. It would take too long.
    Mr. Eadie: Is my hon. Friend aware of the new-found interest that the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) has taken in the coal-mining industry, to the extent that he is prepared to write it off? Will my hon. Friend give an undertaking that he will resist this campaign of blatant defamation against coal and the miners?
    Dr. Mabon: The Government are trying sincerely to get the right balance between the four different fuels that we use in the economy. For that reason we are allowing conversions of certain coal-fired stations, such as Braehead, for example, on clean air grounds, while at the same time promoting a large one like Longannet for consumption of coal.

    Sheep (Prices)
    Mr. David Steelasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what has been the increase in sheep prices obtained by the farmer in Scotland over the past 10 years.
    Mr. Buchan: The guaranteed price for fat sheep is now 11 per cent. higher than 10 years ago. Market prices for store sheep vary according to breed and class of stock. Average prices of hill lambs at the autumn sales in Scotland have risen by about 18 per cent. and of draft hill ewes by about 20 per cent.
    Mr. Steel: Has the Joint Under-Secretary seen the figures that I have sent him from the Border auction marts? Will he accept that over the whole farming industry it is the sheep farmers who have fallen behind most in their income levels over the years?
    Mr. Buchan: I have always recognised the problems within the Scottish agricultural complex. It is for this reason that over the last three years we have increased the end price by 5¾d. to try to compensate for the effect of the drop of 1·d per lb. which hon. Gentlemen opposite introduced.
    Mr. Stodart: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that lamb prices before and after

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    Christmas were lower than they were 10 years ago? Will he take steps to try to stop the rise in imports of this commodity, which were higher last year than the year before?
    Mr. Buchan: I cannot discuss the entire agricultural policies of the party opposite and my own just now. The party opposite had the Answer to their policy from the farmers of South Ayrshire. We are paying attention to all aspects of the problem and have given a good deal of assistance over the last few years, including support for the upland areas.
    Mr. Grimond: As the Minister recognises that the industry has failed to keep up with the rising prices, does he also appreciate that in my constituency lamb prices are now less than they were 10 years ago, while every other price has risen? Will he ensure that the income of crofters, which greatly depends upon this, is increased?
    Mr. Buchan: I have given an assurance that we attach a great deal of importance to this, and I think that we should leave it at that.

    Doctor-Patient Ratio
    Mr. W. H. K. Bakerasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the average number of patients per principal doctor providing general medical services in Scotland at the latest available date, and at the corresponding date in 1964.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Bruce Milan): On 1st October last the average was 2,086, compared with 2,005 in 1964.
    Mr. Baker: Can the Joint Under-Secretary say whether the position is worse in country districts rather than urban districts, and can he also say what proportion is from abroad?
    Mr. Millan: By and large the lists in country districts are lower than in urban districts, as they obviously ought to be. The Scottish position is very much better than that in England because there the average list is about 350 more than it is in Scotland. If the hon. Gentleman would like to put down a Question about the second part of his supplementary question I will answer it.
    Mr. MacArthur: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that these figures reflect the fact that the number of principal doctors in Scotland is still considerably lower than it was in 1964? What steps does he propose to reverse this trend?
    Mr. Millan: I am glad to inform the hon. Gentleman and the House that the trend has been reversed and that the decline, which started before 1964, has been halted. The position has been stabilised as from 1966.

    Newbattle (Employment)
    Mr. Eadieasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received from Newbattle District Council in relation to employment opportunities as a consequence of its statutory meeting of January, 1970; and what reply he has sent.
    Mr. Ross: None, Sir.
    Mr. Eadie: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a genuine concern in this part of my constituency about the increase in unemployment as a consequence of contraction in the coal-mining industry? What is he prepared to do to assist?
    Mr. Ross: My hon. Friend will know that we have had discussions about this with him and others concerned. He will be aware that in respect of the closure of the Easthouses Colliery, the run-down of which is now proceeding, although over 800 miners are affected, actual redundancy when the colliery is closed down will be about 200. In the travel-to-work area it is expected that just over 1,000 jobs, of which 435 will be for men, will arise over the next few years.

    Teachers (Pay)
    Mr. Monroasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received this year from the teaching profession concerning salaries and the teachers' pay structure.
    Mr. Millan: Only one teacher has written to my right hon. Friend this year about salaries. The profession's collective views are expressed through its representatives on the Scottish Teachers Salaries Committee.
    Mr. Monro: In view of the forthcoming statement on English salaries and the worsening situation in Scotland, has the management side really made its last offer? Can the hon. Gentleman try to further negotiations so that we can avoid strikes which are so damaging to everyone?
    Mr. Millan: Negotiations are, of course, going on, and I do not quite understand what the hon. Gentleman means by this. I very much deplore the fact that the teachers have decided to take strike action while negotiations are continuing.
    Mr. Hannan: As these negotiations have been conducted all along under the threat of a strike, due to start next week, can my hon. Friend give us information about this new development of teachers striking today? Was he informed, was the employers organisation informed, and were any of the other parties to the negotiations informed that the teachers were striking today?
    Mr. Millan: As I understand it the strikes that have taken place have come on at 24 hours' notice, called by one of the teachers' organisations, and I must say that I consider it grossly irresponsible for any teachers' organisation to go on strike at such short notice. It is absolutely deplorable because it so much affects the children concerned.
    Mr. MacArthur: Would the hon. Gentleman try to encourage negotiations? Does he not agree that the strikes will harm education and spoil the professional status which teachers seek?
    Mr. Millan: I have already said that I deplore the strikes and the predicted strikes. As for negotiations, the Salaries Committee meets again on 20th February, this Friday. Negotiations are continuing. What we shall have to wait for is a reaction from the teachers' side to the offer made by the management side on 6th February. As I say, negotiations will be taken from there.

    Teachers (Shortage)
    Mr. Edward M. Taylorasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what estimate he has made of the current shortage of teachers in January, 1970 in Scottish schools; and what was the comparable
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    shortage in the same month of 1964 and 1960, respectively.
    Mr. Millan: On the staffing standards of 28·9:1 in primary schools and 14·5:1 in secondary schools, the national supply of primary teachers would be just about adequate in 1969–70 but there would be a shortage of about 1,300 secondary teachers. The application of the same staffing standards to previous sessions brings out total shortages of 2,600 in 1963–64 and 3,600 in 1959–60.
    Mr. Taylor: In view of this welcome improvement—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] —does the Minister still think that it will be feasible and practical to increase the school leaving age on the proposed date? In view of the increased number of children who stay on voluntarily at school, might it not be wiser to make provision for them rather than increase the school leaving age while there is still this substantial shortage?
    Mr. Millan: No, Sir. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government's commitment to raising the school leaving age is absolutely firm. I have never disguised from the House that there will be particular problems of teacher supply, not throughout Scotland generally but in certain areas, but I have also made it clear to the House that I believe that the problem is manageable, and that it would be absolutely disastrous to Scottish education to defer the raising of the school leaving age.
    Mr. Dempsey: Will not a great deal of the success of raising the school leaving age depend on the Minister's ability to steer teachers into areas where they are at the present moment in serious short supply? Does he not agree that unless that is done there is grave danger that an educational crisis could occur, and that in particular areas the service could break down?
    Mr. Millan: I agree with what my hon. Friend said in the first part of his supplementary question, and I know that he has a Question on this subject on the Order Paper. I can assure him that we are very much concerned about getting a more equitable distribution of teachers, and are actively working on that problem at the moment.
    Mr. MacArthur: The hon. Gentleman says that there is no national shortage of

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    primary school teachers, but he must be aware that 5,000 children in Scottish primary schools are receiving part-time education because of a shortage of primary teachers in certain areas. Will he not recognise the need for very urgent action to overcome this shortage, which is also affecting secondary schools?
    Mr. Millan: I have already said that in the primary school field we are dealing with the problem which is one more of distribution than of total supply, though I would not for one minute say that there were not problems in the general primary field at all because I think that classes are still too large and we would like to see them reduced.

    Murders and Crimes of Violence
    Mr. Edward M. Taylorasked the Secretray of State for Scotland how many murders and crimes of violence were reported to the police in 1969.
    Mr. Ross: This information is not yet available.
    Mr. Taylor: As the most recently published figures show that assaults on police officers have increased by about 81 per cent. since the abolition of capital punishment in 1965, and as net recruitment last year was only 12, will the Secretary of State consider taking steps to give further protection to police against assaults? As the Government have given time for Private Members' Bills on divorce and abortion, will not the right hon. Gentleman use his influence with the Cabinet to enable a Private Member's Bill on this subject to be presented?
    Mr. Ross: The Question on the Order Paper asks
    "how many murders and crimes of violence were reported to the police in 1969."
    The hon. Gentleman will be happy to know that the indications are that the number of crimes of violence went down last year. For instance, the Chief Constable of Glasgow provisionally estimates a decrease in crimes of violence of 10 cent. in the last year, and the tentative figure for murders in Scotland also suggests a drop. I take note of the hon. Gentleman's particular point, and will give it consideration.
    Mr. Hugh D. Brown: Knowing my right hon. Friend's concern with the prob-
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    lem, and recognising the immense improvement that there has been, may I ask whether he would speculate on what he thinks is the dominating motivating factor in the campaign being conducted by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cath-cart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor)—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Ministers cannot speculate on Opposition Members' motives.
    Mr. Brown: Then may I ask my right hon. Friend what he thinks is the motivating factor behind the attitude of certain hon. Members; whether it is because there are votes in it, or because—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member cannot ask the Minister that kind of question.
    Mr. Brown: I am asking my right hon. Friend whether he would care to advise the House on what conclusions, if any, he has come to regarding the campaign being conducted by certain hon. Members; whether it is because there are votes in it, or because hon. Members opposite have some financial interest in representations—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister is not responsible for the motives, if any, behind some hon. Members' words or actions. Mr. Gordon Campbell.
    Mr. Gordon Campbell—
    Mr. BrownOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Having been directed by you that the phrasing of my supplementary question was not in order, I thought that I had got into order by asking my right hon. Friend what conclusions he might have come to arising from a certain campaign. It seemed to me that that was quite in order.
    Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman made every attempt to get in order, but did not quite succeed. Mr. Gordon Campbell.
    Mr. Campbell: Has the Secretary of State been infected by the complacency of the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister over this situation? Because the relative severity of particular sentences seems to be widely misunderstood, will the Secretary of State ensure that more information is made available about the

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    effects, in practice, of certain kinds of sentence? Will he himself make a start by recognising the difference between the recommendation by a judge and a specification, as was suggested a short time ago by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie)?
    Mr. McNamara: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. When my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) sought to put a supplementary question to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, he was seeking information about conclusions, and attitudes drawn from conclusions, which my right hon. Friend might have made. The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. Gordon Campbell) started his supplementary question by asking what conclusions my right hon. Friend had reached, and referred to the attitude of my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. You disallowed my hon. Friend's supplementary question, but allowed that of the hon. Gentleman opposite.
    Mr. Speaker: It is a very good point of order. The difference is than an Opposition Member is asking a Minister about something connected with the Minister or the Government to which the Minister belongs. Mr. Ross.
    Mr. Ross: I can hardly congratulate the hon. Gentleman the Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. Gordon Campbell) on the way in which he read his carefully spontaneous supplementary question.
    I certainly deplore the attempt to bring law and order and the police into the political arena. I prefer the facts. The facts are that in Scotland we inherited a sharply rising tide of violence. We first checked that rising tide, and are now reversing it, and some of the stunts of the hon. Gentleman and his Friends have hindered rather than helped us and the police.
    If the hon. Gentleman asks for figures, I have them. He should prefer to get accurate figures. Police strength since 1964 is up by 282. Total police manpower is up by 1,075. Expenditure on police vehicles has doubled, and that on police radios has trebled. We have been giving concentrated attention to this
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    problem, and I wish that hon. Members opposite would help us instead of hindering us.
    Mr. Speaker: Mr. Manuel.
    Mr. Manuel—
    Mr. Taylor: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the wholly unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter again.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Further to that point of order. Has there not been raised several times the desirability of hon. Members declaring an interest in particular matters when they are asking Questions? The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) is in the pay of the Scottish police, and this is inspiring some of his Questions in this House.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. It has been ruled that an hon. Member does not have to declare his interest when asking a question.
    Mr. Taylor: Surely I am entitled to say that I have made public in every debate on the police in which I have spoken that I am the honorary consultant of the Scottish police, similar to the position previously honourably held by the right hon. Gentleman who is now Home Secretary. [Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. There is too much heat. Mr. Manuel.
    Mr. Taylor: What did the hon. Member mean by his remarks?
    Mr. Hamilton: That you are a squalid little man.

    Rates
    Mr. Adam Hunterasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the total yield from local authority rates in Scotland in the years 1964–65, 1965–66, 1967–68 and 1968–69.
    Dr. Dickson Mabon: In the five years 1964 to 1969, the yields were successively £112·4 million, £122·5 million, £144·2 million, £146·3 million and £158·6 million.
    Mr. Hunter: While acknowledging that the total yields have become higher over the years, may I ask my hon. Friend if he agrees that had it not been for the generous assistance by this Government

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    the total yields required by local authorities would have been very much higher?
    Dr. Mahon: That is quite right, because local expenditures have been going up quite substantially, and, unlike the position under the previous Government, the rate support grant formula is based on a rising share being borne by the Government. The Green Paper on local government finance will go into this matter very thoroughly.

    White Fish (Prices)
    Mr. Stodartasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has come to a decision with regard to a statutory minimum prices scheme for white fish to apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Buchan: I regret that I cannot yet add to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) on 22nd January.—[Vol. 794, c. 187.]
    Mr. Stodart: Is there anything wrong with the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend, because every time fish is mentioned, be it salmon, migratory trout or white fish, they get complete and absolute indigestion and are unable to act? Does the hon. Gentleman realise the effect that the delay in the decisions by Ministers on the statutory scheme may have on the voluntary scheme which Aberdeen producers are putting up and which they may be forced to abandon if a decision is not come to?
    Mr. Buchan: I am very interested to find that the hon. Gentleman is changing his balance of interest from agriculture to fish. There may be reasons for that. We are, of course, consulting the authority about certain modifications that we have proposed to the scheme. Perhaps it is as well that there were no fish at his meeting in South Ayrshire. A further announcement will be made shortly.
    Mr. Hector Hughes: I thank the Secretary of State for the attention he has hitherto paid to representations made to him by the Aberdeen and North Sea Fishing industry. Will he look again at those representations with a view to effecting a still further improvement?
    Mr. Buchan: My right hon. Friend looks at every representation from the point of view of making still further improvements.

    School Building
    Mr. W. H. K. Bakerasked the Secretary of State for Scotland from how many local authorities in Scotland he has met delegations from education committees with reference to the capital allocations for school building within the past six months.
    Mr. Millan: I have met delegations from eight education authorities.
    Mr. Baker: Is not that a measure of the grave disquiet that is to be found among local education authorities in Scotland at the paucity of the first announcement of the two-year period 1970–72? Can the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the primary side of school building will be looked at very carefully in addition to secondary school building?
    Mr. Millan: The number of meetings I have is the measure of the care we are giving to the views expressed to us by education authorities. I have already made clear that roofs over heads must be the first priority for the school building programme over the next two years or so, and within that heading a certain amount of primary accommodation finds a place. There is also a certain amount of improvement in primary accommodation.

    Hunterston Peninsula (Development)
    Mr. Galbraithasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what reason has been given to him by oil and other industries for their application to develop in the Hunterston Peninsula.
    Mr. Ross: Reasons were summarised in the written statement accompanying the development plan amendment, submitted to me by Ayrshire County Council —and have been developed at the public inquiry into that amendment, on which I will be receiving a report.
    Mr. Galbraith: Is not the most important reason the unique depth of water? Does not this mean that developers who wish to come to this area cannot do so

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    unless they can use large ships, and, therefore, the attraction of this area to those who wish to use large ships is such that the right hon. Gentleman should be able to impose conditions protecting amenity on developers who wish to come to the area?
    Mr. Ross: I think the hon. Gentleman knows that I am in a rather difficult position at present because the inquiry has taken place and I am awaiting the report. It would be foolish to comment on anything in the inquiry.
    Mr. Gordon Campbell: While I recognise the right hon. Gentleman's position in this matter, may I ask that he should bear in mind that the object must be to try to make full use of this deep water and at the same time to cause the least amount of damage to the coastline?
    Mr. Ross: This is something to which I have referred before in discussions with the hon. Gentleman.

    Housing (Improvement Grants)
    Earl of Dalkeithasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many old houses in Scotland have been brought up to date by means of improvement grants in each of the last three years; and what is his estimate for 1970.
    Dr. Dickson Mahon: Approved applications for grant covered 7,307 houses in 1967, 13,679 in 1968 and 14,951 in 1969. I cannot forecast a figure for 1970, but I look for a further increase following the provisions of the Housing (Scotland) Act, 1969.
    Earl of Dalkeith: Would the hon. Gentleman agree that the rather slow progress made is partly due to ignorance about the improved improvement grants? Will he launch a crash programme of advertising to let people know and make better use of the 21,000 in the building industry who are at present out of work?
    Dr. Mabon: Despite the fact that the noble Lord is committed to a programme of reducing public expenditure still further, I inform him that we are engaged in trying to promote the spending of more money in improvement of houses. If he looks at the Written Answer to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie) on 4th February he will see the compari-
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    son of previous years with this present year, which is remarkable.
    Mr. Manuel: Can my hon. Friend inform the House of the number of these old houses which have received improvement grants which are estate houses belonging to noble families and other landed gentry? Does he not consider that there should be an incomes test such as that applied to local authority tenants before they can get houses?
    Dr. Mahon: One must always remember the poor souls who must live in these houses.

    Central Heating (Improvement Grants)
    Earl of Dalkeithasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will take steps to include central heating as an improvement qualifying for grant aid under the scheme for modernising old houses.
    Dr. Dickson Mabon: Where the installation of central heating is an incidental part of work to bring a house up to the full improved standard for an extended life, my right hon. Friend is now prepared to allow for grant the cost of installing a reasonable amount of central heating.
    Earl of Dalkeith: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very encouraging answer. Does he think that property owners are sometimes inhibited from carrying out this form of desirable improvement because of the fear that they will have their rate levy increased?
    Dr. Mabon: That is something which is endemic in the Scottish system, as it is in the English system, and there is no way round the problem.

    Elderly Persons (Welfare Homes)
    Mr. Hannanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the number of welfare homes and the number of beds therein provided by local authorities in the last five years for old folk; and if he will estimate how many beds are still needed.
    Mr. Millan: During the last five years, local authorities in Scotland have provided 1,477 places in 40 new homes and four extensions. No firm estimate is at

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    present available of the number of additional places needed, but more than 1,200 places are now under construction or have been approved to start within the next two years.
    Mr. Hannan: I appreciate the great progress being made in this field by this Government, but will my hon. Friend take note of the accepted fact that there are still many people in hospitals who could well be discharged into residential accommodation? Will he pursue the programme of providing alternative accommodation to relieve hospitals?
    Mr. Millan: I agree with what my hon. Friend said in the first part of his supplementary question. It is also true that there are some people in residential accommodation who ought to be in hospital accommodation. I am most anxious to improve the amount of residential accommodation because that would improve the overall position in a very desirable way.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that long questions and long answers mean fewer questions and fewer answers.
    Mr. Edward Short, statement.
    Mr. John Wells: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has not sought to answer Questions 75 and 76 or the associated unstarred Questions, I give notice that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment at an early opportunity.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Statement, Mr. Edward Short.

TEACHERS' PAY
The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Edward Short): I wish to make a statement, Mr. Speaker, on the present state of the negotiations for an interim increase in teachers' pay.
At the last meeting of the Burnham Committee on 13th February, the Management Panel reaffirmed its previous open offer of an 11·6 per cent. increase for the lowest-paid teachers, tapered to 5 per cent. on the maximum of the basic scale, together with the contingent commitment to arbitration on it under the conditions
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offered by my right hon. Friend the First Secretary and myself. These conditions were:

1. The chairman would be a person of the highest possible status and unquestionable independence—possibly a judge.

2. A firm assurance that the Government would not seek under the Remuneration of Teachers Act to set aside the award.

3. An assurance that paragraph 94 of the White Paper on Prices and Incomes Policy, which specifically mentions teachers, enabled general comparability with other groups of workers as well as all other factors to be taken into account by the arbitrators.

4. An assurance that Burnham itself could redistribute the global sum awarded if it so desired.

The teachers again rejected both the open offer and arbitration.
The Management Panel then offered to begin an immediate review of the structure of teachers' salaries, and, secondly, to bring forward the next general settlement from 1st April, 1971 to 1st October, 1970. It said that it had in mind an overall substantial increase, provided that it was based on a structural review of salaries from 1st October and that in the financial year 1970–71 this would produce a substantially greater increase than the open offer from 1st April.
I believe that this offer would give teachers, particularly those who make teaching a lifelong career, much better salary prospects than they have ever had before. The teachers neither accepted nor rejected this proposal until they had more information. It was agreed that there should be informal exchanges between the two panels and a meeting of the full Committee on 11th March.
This delay of one month between the meetings of Burnham appears to me to be too long, and I have written to the chairman and the leaders of both panels to see whether an earlier meeting can be arranged. I have also told the Teachers' Panel that immediately the present dispute is settled I am ready to open talks with all parties on the reform of the Burnham machinery.
In the meantime, and in spite of the latest offer, the teachers' organisations

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have decided to continue with their strikes; and, indeed, there are reports of plans to escalate them. I very much regret that the teachers have not agreed to call off their industrial action in view of the new offer which has been made to them; to do so would be in accordance with accepted negotiating practice.
I now invite them to look at the matter again so that serious consideration can be given to working out a solution in a calmer atmosphere and damage to the education of thousands of children avoided.
In making this appeal, I believe that I shall have the support of the whole House.
Mrs. Thatcher: is the Secretary of State aware that we warmly welcome his efforts to bring forward the Burnham meeting to an earlier date and share his concern that the educational welfare of children may be damaged if the present situation is allowed to continue? Is he aware that when we heard that there was to be a statement from him today we hoped for a more positive initiative to resolve the present deadlock, in which a responsible profession feels it is being driven to take action which is alien to its nature?
Is the right hon. Gentleman also aware that we hope that both sides still remain ready to negotiate so that a satisfactory settlement may be reached in time for it to be paid on 1st April?
Mr. Short: A very positive initiative has been taken by the Management Panel. It has agreed to bring forward the next two-yearly settlement from 1st April, 1971, to 1st October of this year—that is, to advance it six months—and to make a substantial increase then, which will have to be negotiated but which would certainly give the teachers more money in the next financial year than the open offer on their interim claim for 1st April. I very much hope that a solution can be worked out along these lines, because it would herald a new era in the whole question of teachers' pay.
Mr. Roebuck: Arising out of the supplementary question asked by the hon. Lady the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), is my right hon. Friend aware that he has shown far more sympathy for
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the members of this devoted profession in the very proper representations they have made than has any previous Minister of Education in any previous Administration? Will he confirm that there are no strings whatsoever to this arbitration offer? Will my right hon. Friend ask the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers to meet him so that the possibility of no further strikes until a settlement of the present negotiations has been reached can be discussed?
Mr. Short: I am grateful for what my hon. Friend has said. There are three things on offer to the teachers now. There is, first, the 11·6 per cent. for the lowest-paid teachers tapering to 5 per cent. for those on the maximum, or, if they prefer it, they can have it across the board. Secondly, they are offered arbitration under almost unique conditions. Thirdly, they are now offered the new package by the Management Panel which offers excellent prospects for the future.
Mr. Eyre: Under the Government's prices and incomes policy, which has now collapsed, the teachers, like many other salaried workers, believe that their status has been reduced. As this is a national problem, it is very unfair that punishment should be specially inflicted upon parents and children in Birmingham. In these circumstances, to reassure people in the city who are suffering, will the Secretary of State now say what steps he personally will take to bring this unhappy situation to an end?
Mr. Short: That is precisely what my statement was about. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will read it. I do not employ the teachers. They are employed by the local authorities. The local authorities on the Management Panel, on which I am represented, have tried to meet the teachers. They have made this very generous offer, which could result in extremely large increases for career teachers on 1st October of this year.
Mr. Rhodes: As a member of the teachers' union, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his painstaking efforts to solve this very difficult problem? In his approaches to the teachers, will he bring to their attention the feelings of many hon. Members on both sides, amongst whom are many who support the

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teachers' pay claim in full, that their claim has been seriously damaged by tactics which are alienating public opinion in general?
Mr. Short: I would not like to comment on the teachers' tactics. I think that they have as much right to strike as anybody, but they must bear in mind that in all industrial action there comes a point when they get diminishing returns from the industrial action. I rather think that they have reached that point in their present action.
Mr. Jennings: Would not a constructive way out of the present impasse be for all parties concerned to allow the question of the interim award to go to arbitration, where teachers could reasonably expect to get an amount fairly equal to the £135 they are asking for, and then, after that, to consider the whole restructuring of the salary scales and accepting the offer of the authorities to bring forward such results from the negotiations to 1st October?
Mr. Short: I agree with the hon. Gentleman up to the very last part of his question. Clearly, if they are to get a very big increase from arbitration, the next increase cannot be brought forward to 1st October. They cannot have it both ways—
Mr. Jennings: It would be a happy compromise.
Mr. Short: It may be, but that would give them twice the amount that they are asking for.
Mr. Pardoe: Before asking the right hon. Gentleman a question, I should declare an interest as an adviser to one of the parties involved in the dispute.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, on both sides, his attempts to solve the dispute will be welcomed—because none of us like strikes by teachers or anyone else—particularly his attempt to bring forward the meeting to 11th March? Can he now confirm that this offer to bring forward the meeting will involve an offer of about £42½ million? Is that the figure that he is considering as a substantial overall increase? Does he consider this amount enough to "buy off" the interim award and restructure salaries?
Mr. Short: How much the Management Panel would be prepared to offer on 1st October I do not know, but this is the purpose of the informal discussions between the two sides between now and the next full meeting of Burnham. But the authorities have said that, in their view, this would give the teachers in the financial year 1970–71 substantially more than their open offer.
Mr. R. C. Mitchell: My right hon. Friend has said that the offer to the lowest-paid teachers would be over 11 per cent. Could he give us the percentage figure overall and tell us how this compares with increases granted to ether groups in the community over the last few months?
Mr. Short: Overall, it would be between 5 and 6 per cent. on basic salaries. They offered either to give it across the board or tapered, giving more to the younger teachers, because the publicity of the teachers' organisations had been based on the so-called "£13-a-week" teacher, who, in fact, gets £860 a year.
I cannot answer the second part of my hon. Friend's question off the cuff.
Mr. Orme: To offset some of the political advantage which the Opposition are trying to make out of this, would my right hon. Friend say that he would recommend to any arbitration that the prices and incomes policy would in no circumstances apply? Is it not a fact that the teachers feel that they are being unjustly treated under the policy which has patently failed? Should not my right hon. Friend recognise this position?
Mr. Short: I do not recognise it at all. The policy has not failed miserably. The policy applied over the last few years is responsible for the turn-round in the country's economy.
Mrs. Knight: Since delay seems to be inevitable before this matter is finally settled, and bearing in mind that the Minister has told us what he has done to meet the teachers' demands, would he now consider doing something specific for Birmingham children who are left without books? Could he not at least direct books to be made available, so that these children may continue their studies?
Mr. Short: I cannot send my staff there to teach the children in Birmingham. The position in Birmingham is that, of 327 primary schools, 260, I believe, will be closed down and about half the 134 secondary schools. But I should have thought that the hon. Lady could have helped best by adding her voice to my appeal publicly in the House today to the teachers to call off their industrial action while the negotiations are going on.

TEACHERS' PAY

  BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS FOR FRIDAY 6TH MARCH
  The following hon. Members were successful in the Ballot:

  Mr. Stanley Orme.

  Mr. John Fraser.

  Mr. James Dickens.

  BILLS PRESENTED
    EMPLOYED PERSONS (HEALTH AND SAFETY)
    Mrs. Secretary Castle, supported by Mr. Secretary Crossman, Mr. Secretary Ross, Mr. John Silkin, Miss Alice Bacon, and Mr. Harold Walker, presented a Bill to authorise the establishment by the Secretary of State of an employment medical advisory service, to amend the Factories Act 1961 in relation to medical arrangements and related matters, to further the making in factories and elsewhere of arrangements for persons representing employees to participate in promoting the safety and health of employees, and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 104.]
    FISHING VESSELS (SAFETY PROVISIONS)
    Mr. Roy Mason, supported by Mr. Secretary Ross, Mr. Cledwyn Hughes, Mr. Goronwy Roberts, Mr. Evan Luard, and Dr. Ernest Davies, presented a Bill to make further provision for the safety of fishing vessels: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 103.]

TREES
3.45 p.m.
Mr. Sandys: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law relating to the making of tree preservation orders and the grant of felling licences.
This Measure has the support of sponsors in all parts of the House and has been drafted with the help of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing, whose keen interest in trees is so well known.
The Town and Country Planning Acts, the Forestry Act and the Civic Amenities Act provide various powers to safeguard our fine heritage of trees and woodlands. On the whole, these provisions have proved pretty effective, due, to a considerable extent, to the co-operation of the woodland owners. Experience has, however, revealed two limited but none the less serious loopholes which need to be stopped. That is the purpose of the Bill.
Both these weaknesses in the law are primarily concerned with the control of woodlands which are subject to forestry dedication covenants. Under these covenants, an owner dedicates land for the purpose of forestry and undertakes to manage it and, when necessary, to replant it in accordance with a plan agreed with the Forestry Commission. In return, the Commission pays him grants to meet some part of the cost.
Under the Town and Country Planning Acts, the local planning authority is precluded from making tree preservation orders on amenity grounds in respect of woods which are subject to such a covenant. The purpose of this restriction is to avoid dual control and the possibility of overlapping between the planning authority and the Forestry Commission.
But it seems that, in the drafting of the law, it was not appreciated that, when dedicated woodlands are sold, the new owner is under no obligation to implement the plan of management and replanting agreed by the previous owner with the Forestry Commission. Therefore, unless the new owner enters voluntarily into a new agreement, the Commission ceases to make any grants and

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may have little further interest in the land from the standpoint of forestry. Nevertheless, the forestry dedication covenant still remains technically in being and, in consequence, the planning authority is still precluded from issuing a tree preservation order in respect of that land for the protection of amenity.
Thus, a provision which was designed to avoid dual control by the two authorities may, in practice remove such land from the effective control of either authority. The result is that clumps of fine trees and small woods, which can contribute so much to the charm of the rural scene and which may be well known and treasured features of the skyline, cannot be safeguarded by tree preservation orders.
To correct that position, the Bill would empower a local planning authority to make a tree preservation order in respect of trees and woodlands, notwithstanding the fact that they are subject to a forestry dedication covenant, in cases where the management and replanting agreement has lapsed owing to a change of ownership or for some other reason. However, before making such an order the Bill would require that the local authority should obtain the consent of the Forestry Commission.
A similar difficulty has arisen in connection with the grant of felling licences. Under the Forestry Act, an owner of woodland who wishes to fell trees is normally required to obtain a felling licence from the Forestry Commission; and the Commission is entitled to attach conditions to the grant of the licence, including the condition that, after felling, the land must be replanted. However, the Forestry Act provides that the Commission may not impose any such conditions in the case of land which is subject to a forestry dedication covenant.
The reason for this is that it was rightly considered unfair to impose additional
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obligations upon owners of dedicated woodlands, which are already being managed and planted in accordance with plans agreed by the Forestry Commission. But this provision clearly should not have included woodlands in respect of which management and planning agreements have lapsed as a result of change of ownership. As a result of this oversight, the purchaser of dedicated woodlands, which have been benefited from past grants to a previous owner, has been exempted from the normal obligations of owners of undedicated land on which no grant has been paid.
The Bill proposes to remedy this anomaly by restricting the exemption to those woodlands which are actually being managed and planted in accordance with plans agreed between the owners and the Forestry Commission.
Those are the two simple amendments which the Bill seeks to make. During recent years, I have tried unsuccessfully to bring in Bills to restrict immigration, to deal with industrial disputes and to restore capital punishment. I hope that this somewhat less controversial Measure will be accorded a more favourable reception.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Sandys, Sir Tufton Beamish, Mr. Blenkinsop, Mr. William Deedes, Mr. Michael Foot, Mr. Gibson-Watt, Miss Harvie Anderson, Mr. Douglas Houghton, Mr. Carol Johnson, Mr. Angus Maude, Mr. George Strauss, and Mr. Jeremy Thorpe.

TREES
Bill to amend the law relating to the making of tree preservation orders and the grant of felling licences, presented accordingly, and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday 20th February and to be printed. [Bill 106.]

LOCAL GOVERNMENT, ENGLAND (REFORM)
Mr. Speaker: Before I call the Secretary of State to move the Motion on the Order Paper, I want to make two observations.
First, I have not selected the Amendment, which stands in the names of the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) and his hon. Friends, in line 1, leave out from House to end and add:
'rejects the Government's White Paper Reform of Local Government in England, Command Paper No. 4276, on the grounds that it establishes metropolitan area authorities; entrenches non-elected regional economic planning councils; obstructs the creation of democratic provincial councils; fails to devolve power from central Government; makes inadequate provision for local democracy; takes no proper account of the special administrative needs of rural and semi-rural areas and dodges the central question of finance'.
This will not cramp the debate in any way. The points of view expressed in the Amendment, together with many others for or against the White Paper, will be expressed during the debate.
Secondly, no fewer than 35 right hon. and hon. Members have notified me of their wish to speak in the debate. All of them are especially qualified to do so because, in many cases, of their experience in local government, and also because, even more important, every right hon. and hon. Member is affected in some way by the provisions of the White Paper. I hope, therefore, that those I call to speak will think of others and be reasonably brief.
Mr. John Pardoe: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. While not in any way quarrelling with your decision not to select the Liberal Amendment, may I ask whether it has been brought to your attention that it represents the only opposition in the House to the Redcliffe-Maud proposals and, indeed, to the Government's White Paper?
Mr. Speaker: I am aware of the factor mentioned by the hon. Gentleman—that this is the only Amendment on the Order Paper—and that it is opposed to the Redcliffe-Maud Report. However, I have a suspicion that more opposition to the Report will be expressed during this debate besides that expressed in the Amendment by the Liberal Party.
Mr. Eric Lubbock: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You have just said that 35 right hon. and hon. Members wish to take part in the debate. You will recall that, last Thursday, during Business questions, I drew the attention of the Leader of the House to the widespread interest which the debate has aroused and asked him to provide two days for it. He said that it would not be possible to do that, but that he would be prepared to consider an extension of time on the one day chosen. May I ask whether the Leader of the House has had any discussion with you about postponing the vote until 11 o'clock tonight?
Mr. Speaker: It never does happen that Mr. Speaker is taken into consultation when the Government are deciding how long to give to a debate. I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman, but the debate is confined to the time on the Order Paper. I must follow the Order Paper.
3.56 p.m.
The Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning (Mr. Anthony Crosland): I beg to move.
That this House takes note of the White Paper on Reform of Local Government in England (Command Paper No. 4276).
I did not wholly like your ominous remark, Mr. Speaker, that there might be more opposition to the White Paper than appears on the surface. I was hoping that the atmosphere in the debate would be the same as the atmosphere which accompanied the Ten-Minute Rule Bill just now. Indeed, I have some support in thinking this from history, because when the last great Measure for the reorganisation of English local government was debated in this House on 19th March, 1888, Mr. Ritchie, the President of the Local Government Board, said:
"The desirability of dealing with the question of local government is, happily, acknowledged by both political parties …"
In following him, Mr. Gladstone, as Leader of the Opposition, replied that the
"… Government … would find on this side of the House no disposition to treat their proposals … in any other than a broad and candid spirit. … The good and profit of these principles I should be sorry that Parliament and the country should lose through the existence of any grudging or ungenerous spirit on the part …"
of the Opposition. I hope that similar sentiments will animate our debate today.

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Our present system of local government dates in its essentials from the 19th century. We can all agree at least on two propositions: first, that tribute is due to those thousands of councillors and officers who have done so much to make the present system work; secondly, however, that this system has now become anachronistic.
We have today no fewer than 1,210 authorities administering local government services in England outside London; these 1,210 are split between 5 different types of authority, each with a different set of powers—79 county boroughs, 45 county councils, 227 non-county boroughs, 449 urban district councils, and 410 rural district councils.
County boroughs are of course all-purpose authorities, but all the others are only some-purpose authorities. The division of functions between them is not the result of any coherent plan, but has emerged over the years from a variety of separate decisions about individual services.
This patchwork effect is heightened by the great variety and illogicality in the size of authorities. There are 98 county districts with populations ranging from 50,000 to 123,000; but as many as 42 out of the 79 county boroughs are also in this population range. This overlap is, to say the least, hard to defend when we remember the big difference between the functions of county boroughs and county districts.
If we look at the size of authorities responsible for particular services, we find that the City of Birmingham, with a population of 1,100,000, and the smallest rural district, with a population of 1,500, are both housing authorities, with exactly the same responsibility for dealing with the housing problems of their areas.
Bootle, jammed tight up against Liverpool, has the full powers of a planning authority for an area of 5 square miles. Devon County Council has exactly the same planning powers, but for an area of more than 2,500 square miles.
This mosaic pattern produces fundamental weaknesses. The first stems from the division between town and country in the organisation of services. This no longer bears any relation to reality. It is not that town and country have become
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identical, or that their interests have become identical. But they have become socially and economically interdependent, and their interests are intermeshed.
The towns need—and increasingly need—the countryside for housing space, for leisure and for recreation. Indeed, they cannot breathe properly within their present borders. Those who live in the country increasingly work, shop and find their entertainment in the towns. And as the number of cars doubles in the next 15 years, these links will grow still closer.
So to try to administer town and country separately for planning, transport and development, as happens today, becomes more and more impossible. There is not a county borough in England which can solve its housing and planning problems within its present boundaries. Nor can most rural districts claim to be self-contained when, as the last census showed, nearly half of those who live in rural districts work outside the district boundaries.
To have one planning authority for a county borough and another for the county around it means that each can deal with only part of a problem which ought to be seen as a single whole. Any new system must bring town and country together for planning purposes. I do not think that anyone who has thought about the matter seriously holds a contrary view.
The second weakness of the present system is that it separates services that should be administered together. County councils, although planning authorities, have no responsibility for housing; so although they can make plans they lack one of the most important means of carrying them out. The personal social services come under the county councils, but housing under the county districts—a division which the Seebohm Committee strongly criticised.
Thirdly, many of the present authorities are too small. The Redcliffe-Maud Commission was very candid about the relationship between size and efficiency. It said quite plainly that no statistical relationship could be proved to exist. This was an important negative conclusion; it showed that there is not one single, optimum size for particular services. But that does not mean that we can wash our hands of the problem, and

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leave things as they are; not even the urban district councils and the rural district councils suggested that we could.
The weight of advice received by the commission was that a population of about 250,000 is necessary for the effective provision of the main services. This is also the view of the Government. One can, of course, find authorities with smaller populations than this which provide individual services at a high standard. But when we take an overall view of the right size for authorities adminstering a wide range of services, we believe—and I shall return to this question later—that a minimum population in the region of 250,000 is required. This in itself involves a reshaping of the whole structure.
Lastly, the present system greatly confuses the public. When a person can walk along a city street and pass from one local authority area to another without knowing it; when he can find the offices of three distinct authorities—county council, borough or urban district council, and rural district council—each with its separate jurisdiction, in the same country town; when he cannot understand why different authorities exercise different functions, it is hardly surprising if people do not know who is responsible for what service in which area. This confusion leads only too easily to apathy and indifference.
All this means that local government as a whole is too weak. Because there are so many different types of authority, each with its own national association, local government cannot speak to the central Government with a united voice. Because there are so many small authorities with limited resources, the central Government are forced to maintain checks on their performance that would be unnecessary if every authority commanded adequate resources. Because of the division between county councils and county boroughs, there is hardly an authority in the country which is responsible for an area that ought to be planned as a whole. Therefore, the central Government, under either party, are constantly having to intervene in planning decisions which local authorities should take for themselves.
When people complain about Government interference in local affairs, the
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fault is by no means wholly that of the Government. It is often that only the central Government can take the necessary action, because local authority resources and areas do not correspond with the scale of the job to be done. The trend towards centralisation has occurred partly because our local government structure has remained fixed in an out-of-date mould.
It was a recognition of these weaknesses which led to the appointment of the Royal Commission. We should not forget now that the decision to set it up was generally—indeed, almost universally—applauded.
The evidence to the commission reflected the feeling that radical change was essential. Virtually no one recommended that we should retain the status quo. Obviously, witnesses varied in the proposals they made, but the main bodies of opinion all suggested the union of town and country and a drastic reduction in the number of authorities. The Redcliffe-Maud Report has been criticised as revolutionary. In fact, it did not go so far as some authoritative witnesses would have liked.
When we held our consultations on the commission's report, there was, again, no serious argument in favour of keeping things as they are. The need for change is accepted. The debate is about what form it should take.
My contribution to this debate this afternoon will cover mainly the general structure and the relationship between central and local government. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, when he winds up the debate, will deal with other aspects of the White Paper and we shall both try to avoid repeating what is said in the White Paper.
There cannot be a single right answer to the problem of how to organise local government. Reasonable men are bound to hold different views, the more so since we are not creating a new system from scratch but are reorganising a system which has deep roots in history.
To begin with, there cannot be the same structure for the entire country. To impose a uniform system everywhere would do great violence to basic social and economic facts. What matters in

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our increasingly mobile society is the distribution of population, the pattern of employment, the system of communications, the journeys people make from home to work, the business and industrial links in an area, the pull of shopping centres and the way that people spend their leisure.
The more one looks at the map of England, the more one sees, as the commission did, that these "social and economic facts" points to different structures for different parts of the country. Many commentators have said the same. The Association of Municipal Corporations, which strongly favours the unitary principle, accepted the case for a two-tier authority in the areas round Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.
Mr. Senior, who wrote the Memorandum of Dissent and who is generally an enthusiast for a two-tier system, accepted some unitary authorities. Again and again, people stressed that there must be flexibility—that to have the same system everywhere would be over-rigid and unrealistic. So like the commission, we propose a structure which is part unitary and part two-tier.
Just as there are different views about structure, so there are about the right size of authority. The fact is, again, that there is no one size which is uniquely right while all others are wrong. People's views about size are often coloured by the particular services in which they are most interested. Planners go for the wide expanses—the city region or even the province.
Educationists also like large areas, in which every demand can be catered for, and every subject have its quota of specialist staff. In the personal social services, people used to prefer the small authority, whose members could be in intimate touch with those in need. This is much less so today. There has been a growing realisation—strongly reinforced by the Seebohm Report—of just how much expertise modern social services require, an expertise that must be organised in teams to operate over sizeable areas if we are to make full use of their skills.
Though there is no uniquely right size or right structure, there must be certain basic principles. In the Government's
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view, they are as follows. First, the areas of the new authorities must be large enough for planning. Secondly, to be able to afford the skilled manpower and other resources needed to provide services of the highest standard, an authority should have a population, in our view, of no fewer than about 250,000. Thirdly, wherever possible, each authority should be responsible for all the services in its area.
"Unitary" may be an ugly word, but it conceals an important truth. Local government services interact on each other, and the links between them grow closer every year. An authority responsible for the full range of services can look at them all in relation to each other, and to the needs of its area as a whole. It can work out a general policy for its area, and give each service the right rôle and the right priority. It can plan capital expenditure more sensibly, and co-ordinate investment in the different services to get the greatest benefit. There is also a great gain for the public understanding of local government, without which there can be no effective democracy.
Fourthly, however, an authority responsible for all services clearly should not be so large as to be unmanageable or unresponsive to the wishes of the electors. In our view, this means that it should not normally have a population of much over a million. There is no magic about this figure; perhaps there are areas where we might have gone rather more above it than we have. But it does mean that we are not creating the "monster authorities" that some critics have talked about. Most of the unitary authorities would have populations of under half a million Birmingham today has over 1 million. Only one, Sheffield and South Yorkshire, would have a bigger population than Birmingham—and it would be bigger by only 6,000.
In certain parts of the country the size of the area to be planned as a whole produces a population well above this limit of 1 million, and so a unit that is too large for single-tier administration. The commission found that this was the case round Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham; and we concluded, for reasons given in the White Paper, that it was also the case in West Yorkshire and South Hampshire. In these areas,

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services must be divided between two tiers.
These, then, are the principles on which the White Paper structure is based—wherever practicable, unitary authorities with populations in the range from 250,000 to 1,000,000, but a two-tier metropolitan pattern around certain actual or potential conurbations.
I turn to functions. I do not need to spend time on the functions of the unitary authorities, since they will have statutory
We cannot achieve such simplicity in the metropolitan areas. But we can get away from the present situation in the counties, where services that ought to be administered together are administered separately; where responsibility for a particular service, such as roads, is divided between different authorities; and where statutory schemes of "delegation" mean that education, the social services and planning can be administered in different ways in different parts of a county.
Generally, we have accepted the commission's views on the division of functions in metropolitan areas. Planning, transport, major development, general housing policy and the power to build houses in the interests of the whole area are at the upper tier. The districts will be responsible for the other housing functions, all the local authority social services, and a large number of other services that are best administered at district level. This means that districts must be of a substantial size.
We have disagreed with the commission on one major function. The commission followed the Seebohm Committee in thinking that education and the personal social services should always be with the same authority: so it allotted them both to the metropolitan districts. We take a different view and have allotted education to the upper tier. This is not because we believe in size for its own sake in education. But there is a minimum size below which an education authority cannot provide, for example, specialist further education courses or teacher training, an adequate range of special schools, physical education facilities, computers or closed circuit television, and a full range of advisory and inspection staff.
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The argument is especially strong in the field of further and higher education. It would really not make sense to divide responsibility for this between nine metropolitan districts in Selnec—I use the commission's term—and seven in the West Midlands. In putting education at the upper tier we have, I think, the support of the great majority of educationalists.
Mr. Edwin Brooks: Before my right hon. Friend leaves this extremely important point, has he any evidence at all from the major counties such as Lancashire and Cheshire, which for years have worked on a two-tier basis, that this particular arrangement is working unsatisfactorily between primary and secondary, on the one hand, and further education on the other?
Mr. Crosland: Personally, ever since I spent some time at Curzon Street. I have been a strong believer in what is there called the seamless robe of education; in other words, that one could not divide the schools of further education and higher education. The view I have expressed is also the view of the County Councils' Association.
I should now like to say a word about our forthcoming consultations on structure. The White Paper lays down the basic structure. There will be five two-tier metropolitan areas; the remaining authorities will be unitary. We do not propose to reopen these basic decisions.
The White Paper also says that the 51 unitary areas are of broadly the right shape and size; that there is no unitary area which can simply be divided in two and that the decision to allot education to the metropolitan authorities does not call for a radically different pattern of metropolitan districts.
But within this broad framework there will be full consultation on the boundaries of the new areas. If strong arguments are advanced for joining certain unitary areas together we shall consider them. If a case is made for a different pattern of unitary areas in any particular part of the country, we shall consider that, also. And we would not rule out some variation in the pattern of metropolitan districts.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer Mr. Eric S. Heffer (Liverpool, Walton) rose—
Mr. Crosland: I am disturbed about the matter of time since, Mr. Speaker, you spoke of the 35 Members who wish to participate in this debate. Therefore, I will proceed further with my speech simply in fairness to the House as a whole.
We shall now discuss with the associations the best procedure for these consultations. We do not want them to be excessively formal, but they will be thorough. They will give ample opportunity for views to be expressed and, within the broad framework of the White Paper, we shall consider most carefully any suggestions for improvement and any proposals for detailed boundary adjustments.
Mr. Heffer: I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] This is important when we are discussing boundaries and the establishment of two-tier authorities in metropolitan areas. Is my right hon. Friend, even at this late stage, open to a suggestion that perhaps there should be all-purpose authorities in those areas rather than two-tier authorities, or has the matter, as is said in the White Paper, been definitely decided upon by the Government?
Mr. Crosland: I must disappoint my hon. Friend. We would not be open to a suggestion that the metropolitan areas we propose should now be altered and become unitary areas.
There is one level of structure on which we have not taken a decision, namely, the provincial council. We have said that we shall wait for the report of the Crowther Commission. There has been some criticism of this which I believe is misplaced. The Redcliffe-Maud Commission was already well advanced in its work when the Crowther Commission was appointed: and it was never intended, as the Prime Minister made clear at the time, that action on Redcliffe-Maud should await the report of the Crowther Commission. Indeed, the Crowther terms of reference Teak of "having regard to developments in local government organisation", so making it clear that these would go ahead.
In any case, the task of the Crowther Commission, as far as England is concerned, is to examine the relations
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between the central Government and the regions; and while the regions can and must have a strategic planning function, it was not proposed by the Redcliffe-Maud Commission that they should take over the operation of main local government services.
So it makes perfectly good sense, and, indeed, was always the intention, that we should proceed with local government reform without waiting for the Crowther report. It makes equally good sense to wait for that report before taking a final view on the question of provincial councils. This does not mean that we have rejected the Redcliffe-Maud proposals on provincial councils; it means only that we think it foolish to reach decisions on them while the Commission on the Constitution is at work.
In the meantime, I want to strengthen the work of the regional economic planning councils and also their co-operation with local government; and I am meeting all the chairmen of the councils next week to discuss this. When the Crowther Commission reports, the whole question of the right organisation at provincial level will of course be considered again.
The main anxiety which has been expressed about the new structure—it is perhaps rather a group of anxieties—relates to the alleged size and remoteness of the new authorities, the reduction in the number of councillors, and the supposed weakening of truly local democracy. I sympathise greatly with these anxieties, but believe them to be unfounded.
First, remoteness. This might refer to a number of things. It might refer to accessibility of the town or county hall. The headquarter centres of the new areas will be for local decision. But there are obvious candidates, and a study of these shows that out of a population of 38 million in England outside Greater London, 35 million—over 90 per cent.—will live within 20 miles of a likely centre.
It might refer to size. The largest proposed unitary area, Exeter and Devon, covers 2,227 square miles. But this is less than the existing administrative counties of Devon and the West Riding, each responsible for major services and each covering over 2,500 square miles.
It might refer to population. The largest proposed unitary authority,

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Sheffield and South Yorkshire, will have a population of 1,081,000. But this is less than the present populations of the counties of Lancashire, West Riding, Kent and Essex. It is only fractionally larger than that of the county borough of Birmingham.
It might refer to representation—that is, the number of electors whom each councillor represents. Even with a maximum of 75 members—and we do not accept this maximum—the largest unitary authority, Sheffield and South Yorkshire, would have, on average, one councillor for every 14,000 inhabitants.
But the present Kent and Lancashire County Councils have, on average, one councillor for 19,000 inhabitants, the West Riding one for 18,000; and individual constituencies go up to 30,000 or 40,000. And in none of the proposed metropolitan areas would we approach the present ratio in the Greater London Council of one elected member to 78,000 inhabitants.
I do not argue from all this that no problem of remoteness exists; indeed, our proposals for district committees and local councils, to which I come in a moment, are intended to meet it. But I do argue that, contrary to much public comment, we are not creating a new type of giant authority which has no equivalent today. On the contrary, there are equivalents, and interestingly they are to be found amongst the most highly regarded of our present authorities.
Secondly, the number of elected members. It is not in dispute that there will be a drastic fall in the number of councillors exercising statutory responsibility for services. There are now about 32,000 councillors of county boroughs, county councils, non-county boroughs and urban and rural districts. There would be between 6,000 and 7,000 councillors on the new main authorities.
But there would be a drastic fall under any proposed scheme for reorganisation. Take, for example, the proposals of the Urban and Rural District Councils Associations, supported perhaps by some hon. Members and generally thought to be much less radical than our own. The U.D.C.A., which wanted a two-tier system throughout England, thought that the second-tier authorities should normally have a population of 60,000. But only 55
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of the present 1,086 county districts have a population of over 60,000. The R.D.C.A. was even more draconian. It suggested that a second-tier authority should have a population of over 100,000. On this basis, only four existing second-tier authorities out of 1,086 would be big enough.
I do not quote these figures to disparage in any way the arguments put forward by these associations. I quote them only to show what a drastic reduction in the number of councils and councillors is involved even in proposals which may seem conservative when compared with our own White Paper. It is part of the price we must pay for any serious reform.
But whatever its precise extent, the fall in the number of councillors is a serious matter. We have tried to mitigate it by suggesting that members of local councils should belong to district committees and take part there in the running of main services. Our proposal to create two more two-tier areas will also slightly increase the number of councillors with operational responsibility. Moreover, as I have already said, we do not accept the commission's recommendation that no authority should have more than 75 members. In our view this is a matter which needs further study.
Thirdly, the question of local democracy. This is a term to which different people attach different meanings. In the Daily Mail recently, Mr. Longland, one of the members of the commission, said that when people spoke about local democracy what they were really talking about was holding on to power. Now I think that this was unfair. But it is perhaps true that in local government, as elsewhere, people tend, sincerely and naturally, to equate institutions that they know and love with genuine democracy and to regard all other institutions as its enemy. I do not think that in representative local government there is something which makes a small unit inherently more democratic than a big one.
Mr. Longland made what is surely a valid point in his note of reservation when he said that it would be meaningless
"to claim that the Isle of Wight has been governed more democratically than Hertfordshire, or Rochdale than Birmingham".

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Nor must we idealise the extent of public interest or democratic participation in the present system. Only about 40 per cent. of the electorate vote in local government elections. A study done by the commission showed that only 13 per cent. of people have ever contacted their local councillor; many, as we all know, contact their Member of Parliament instead. Nearly half the county councillors, and two thirds of rural district councillors, are returned unopposed. I say this not to condemn the present state of affairs, but to show that we are not comparing some horrific future with a perfect and ideal present.
Nevertheless, the problem of local participation, even though we have not solved it under the present system, remains one of profound importance. For reasons I have given, I do not believe that the answer lies in having small, weak second-tier authorities exercising statutory functions. The statutory functions are best kept separate from the function of representing the local community and caring for the local environment.
This brings me to our proposals for local councils. I am not sure, incidentally, whether these proposals differ from those of the party opposite. I note that the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) has supported
"the principle of the existence of a bottom tier to look after genuinely local amenities".
I shall be glad to hear how he thinks this differs from our own proposals.
The commission's proposals on the subject were widely misunderstood. But I have noticed, since the commission's report was published, a growing awareness that unitary authorities must have local councils as their counterpart. I personally cannot conceive of a system in which there was no elected body at a more local level than that of the main authority. We cannot forbid a council of any kind to Dover and Deal, Woodstock and Chipping Norton, King's Lynn and Cirencester, Clacton and Skegness, Warwick and Bury St. Edmunds.
People in these places will want to make their voice heard on a proposal for a gasworks or a motorway; they will want to spend money on local amenities—a car park, a playing field, a local museum, a "Come to Skegness" campaign; and they will want to make
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appointments to school governing bodies and other local bodies.
All these things we propose, as did the commission, that local councils should be able to do. But I think that we have also improved on the commission's proposals. True, we have rejected the suggestion that the larger councils should be able to play a part in some of the main statutory services. This would have brought back fragmentation of responsibility, confusion of the public, and all the unsatisfactory features of the two-tier system in an even worse form than now. Almost all informed commentators have agreed that on this point we are right.
But local councils must be involved in the work of the main authorities. We propose to achieve this through membership of district committees. In the new system, the main authorities would have to decentralise their administration, even if there were no local councils. But district committees will provide a method of decentralisation that allows members of local councils to take a direct part in the operation of services.
This is not a resuscitation of the second tier. The district committees will not be independent bodies, but committees of the main authority, staffed by officers of that authority. They will have responsibility devolved to them in certain services—for example, parts of planning, housing and the social services. And local councils will appoint members to them as of right. District committees will thus reflect the broad view of the elected member of the main authority, the local knowledge of the local councillor, and the expertise of the main authority's staff. I think that this is a good recipe for combining functional efficiency with sensitivity to local conditions.
A lot of the criticism has sprung from the proposed size of local council areas—the idea that the Sheffield local council should have the same powers as a parish. Here again, we have developed the commission's proposals. We have to accept its view that local councils must initially be based on the areas of existing boroughs, urban districts and parishes. It would be impossible to do anything else. The reorganisation of the main authorities will be the biggest upheaval that English local government has ever faced. To try to define fresh areas for

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local councils at the same time would bring the whole operation to a standstill.
But whereas the commission thought that the areas of local councils should not be changed for a further five years while the new system settled down, we think that changes should be made as soon as practicable after reorganisation.
The problem of areas will not be acute for the smaller local councils. The village and the small or medium-sized town are usually communities in the sense that matters here. The problem arises in Sheffield and Bristol, Coventry and Hull.
When a town gets above, say, the 100,000 mark, it should be a matter for local decision whether it is represented by a single local council or whether the different communities which compose it should each have their own local council. I personally hope that many of them will choose to have neighbourhood or community councils. Such councils might bring new people and fresh strength into local democracy.
We have seen a massive growth recently of what I might call "one-purpose" interest groups in local affairs. This is partly due to a vague but real discontent with the channels open to people to influence events and perhaps an inchoate but often real demand for "participation", if that word has not been over-used. I believe that neighbourhood councils could focus this in a constructive way.
Of course, the whole idea of neighbourhood councils is an experiment, and there are violently differing reactions to it. Some, especially, though not only, amongst officials, see them as a potential threat to good administration—yet another annoying pressure-group getting in the way of sound government. Others will think them simply absurd, as did all the respectable, established people in G. K. Chesterton's "The Napoleon of Notting Hills".
I do not know how many hon. Members remember that novel, but it is worth remembering, perhaps, the answer given by Adam Wayne, the Provost of Notting Hill, where I am happy to live. You will recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that he was asked by the King:
"'Don't you really think the sacred Notting Hill at all absurd?'
'Absurd'? asked Wayne, blankly, 'Why should I?'
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'Notting Hill', said the Provost simply, 'is a rise or high ground of the common earth, on which men have built houses to live, in which they are born, fall in love, pray, marry and die. Why should I think it absurd?'."
There may be more people than we think who feel like that. I believe in an era of increasingly and inevitably larger units. More and more people are becoming concerned with the neighbourhood in which they live, with the parish in which they live, and even with the street in which they live. I believe that this idea, experimental though it is, could contribute something very constructive in our total democratic system.
But whatever the future of urban neighbourhood councils, we must certainly have a system of local councils along the lines proposed in the White Paper. They are a new concept in English local government, but a basic part of a structure which puts services in the hands of much larger authorities—as any reorganisation must do. Any system in which towns and parishes lost the right to have their own representative councils would, I believe, be wholly unacceptable.
I turn to the relationship between central and local government. The White Paper states that
"… the Government believe unequivocally in greater freedom for local authorities within the framework of national policies laid down by Parliament."
I stress that last clause in view of certain comments on the alleged inconsistency between the declaration in the White Paper and the recent Education Bill. This is a matter which had better be cleared up.
No one has ever suggested that local government should be free to depart from major national objectives. The Redcliffe-Maud Commission was by no means tender towards central government. When it discussed the relationship between central and local government it always favoured the greatest possible freedom for local authorities. But it recognised, as everyone must, that national policies must have priority. It recognised
"the responsibility of central government to settle the policies to be followed in the provision of services of national importance."
It said that local authorities
"must conform to current national policies"
No one seriously disputes this. In education, for example, there are many matters which must be the concern of

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central government. It is not suggested that local authorities should be allowed to set the school-leaving age in their areas. We on this side of the House believe that the abolition of the 11-plus comes into the same category. It is an objective of national policy, and should be declared as such by Parliament. There is no inconsistency here.
Within the framework of national policies, the White Paper makes positive proposals for giving local authorities greater freedom from central control. With reorganisation we can get rid of detailed controls that have to be kept in force when there are over 1,200 separate authorities. We propose—and this will he much welcomed in the world of local government—to end the control of capital expenditure through the tiresome medium of the individual loan sanction. And for something like a quarter of local authority capital expenditures we shall give authorities complete freedom to decide, within a total figure, their own projects and their own priorities.
We also want authorities to have the greatest possible freedom to manage their own affairs in the way they think best without being confined in a straitjacket of obsolete statutory provisions which require them to set up separate committees for this purpose or that. For obvious reasons, this cannot apply to the police, and the Seebohm Committee's recommendations will call for special treatment. But we aim, to quote the words of the White Paper, for
"a minimum of general rules and plenty of experiment."
We intend, moreover, to go beyond a mere relaxation of controls, and to give local authorities a general power to spend money for the benefit of their areas and inhabitants. This is something they do not have at the moment—except in the form of a power to spend the product of all of a penny rate.
These are serious and positive proposals; and if anyone doubts our intentions let me quote two specific decisions which have already been taken. First, when we set up the four passenger transport authorities, we placed them in effect under the joint control of the local authorities in the areas concerned, because we think and thought that decisions
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on public transport in the large conurbations are essentially a matter for local government. After reorganisation, the P.T.A.s will be handed over entirely to a single local authority in each area; and, of course in London we have already handed over London Transport to the G.L.C.
Secondly, we took powers in the 1968 Planning Act for devolution to local authorities; and we have already used these powers in some places. After reorganisation there will be automatic devolution to all the new planning authorities. These examples are both an earnest of our intentions and an illustration of how if we can enlarge the size of authorities we can also increase their powers.
I want, finally, to say a word about finance. It has been argued that reform of finance should logically precede decisions on structure. I do not agree. The logical course, and the right one, is to settle the structure, to decide on the size of areas and the allocation of resources and then make the financial arrangements that are appropriate to the new structure. We cannot take sensible decisions on finance until we know—and unless we know—how many authorities there will be, of what size, with what functions, and what resources. The structure must determine the financial arrangements and not the other way round.
In any case, even the present financial arrangements, less than perfect though they are, would be adequate to sustain the new structure proposed in the White Paper. And, indeed, I doubt whether, in practice, any new study—and we have had plenty of studies both inside and outside Government in recent years—will lead to a wholly revolutionary new method of financing local government.
Following the decisions now taken on structure, the Government wil publish a Green Paper setting out our detailed proposals for local government finance and taxation. There will have to be central grants under any system of local government, but no one likes the present situation in which authorities depend on such grants for so much of their revenue. The Green Paper will, therefore, discuss possible supplementary sources of revenue for local authorities. But I must say now that the Government agree with

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the commission that rates must remain the chief local tax.
Rates are certainly unpopular and in many ways unsatisfactory. But the present Government have taken a number of important steps to make them fairer and more palatable—payment by instalments, special relief for domestic ratepayers through the rate support grant, and rate rebates, for which the income limits will be raised on 1st October. I am sure that with hard work and ingenuity we can do still more to make them less regressive. But I am equally sure, as was the commission, that they must remain the principal local tax.
Mr. Deputy Speaker, I do not want to deal more fully with other important proposals in the White Paper—for a major review of allowances and expenses, a liberalisation of the present rules on disqualification, the establishment of local ombudsmen, and the abolition of aldermen.
To conclude, we are all agreed that a major reform of local government is needed. We are probably all agreed that there is no uniquely right solution which will satisfy everybody. Any solution will cause upheaval and disturbance. Any solution will be unpopular with some critics and in some parts of the country. Any solution will cause a large reduction in the number of councillors. So none of us who believes in reform can be or should try to be, competitors for popularity; and those who differ from our proposals must spell out frankly the implications of their own.
I claim for our proposals that, in their variety they fit the different needs of different parts of the country; that they create a pattern of main authorities better able to meet the public demand for efficient local services; that they create the possibility, in the local councils, of a virile and genuinely local democracy; and that they provide the necessary condition for greater freedom from central government control.
I know that the House will debate the proposals constructively. I know, also, that the existing councils and councillors will continue to carry out their tasks loyally and diligently, but we owe it to them to proceed with all practical speed to the next stage.
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I have already referred to the debate on the last major proposals for reform in 1888. Commending those proposals, the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, in the House of Lords, said that
"the evil of leaving things as they are seems to me much greater than any evil that could possibly come from the Bill."
I would put it today more positively. People want two things from local government. First, they want housing, education, the social services, transport and amenities to be provided at the highest possible standard. Secondly, they want to make their voices heard loud and clear when those in authority propose things which offend their local feelings.
I claim that our proposals will, more effectively than either the present system or any proposed alternative, satisfy these two objectives.
4.47 p.m.
Mr. Peter Walker: I never expected to see the Secretary of State take on the mantle of Lord Salisbury with such enthusiasm and pleasure. I am not quite so certain that I am equally pleased to take on the mantle of Mr. Gladstone. The House will be grateful for the detail in which he dealt with a number of major proposals. Both in opening and ending his speech he said that this was the first major reform of local Government since 1888, that it had had the broad agreement of the House, and that he hoped the same would apply now.
In fact, there have been some major reforms of local government—not nationally, but in individual instances—since that of 1888, particularly the major reform of London government, when, alas, there was not that same unity in the House. That reform was similar to some of the proposals for the metropolitan areas now propounded by the Labour Party.
To a party in opposition, it is a great temptation to take a purely negative attitude to local government reform. It would have been easy for the Opposition to endeavour to launch an anti-Maud campaign. I do not think that there would have been any lack of audiences of enthusiastic rural district, city, and county councillors supporting such a campaign. We have not done that, mainly because

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we agree with the Royal Commission and the Government that there is a genuine need for a major reform of local government. We shall, therefore, endeavour to be constructive and to suggest lines on which local government should be sensibly altered.
The prize of doing it successfully is important for the national interest. At present, about £8 a week is administered for each family of four by local government and about 4,000 people in every constituency are employed in local government. There is, therefore, a need to try to obtain a proper balance between the influence of democracy and efficiency.
It has been easy for some people to cry that democracy should always come before efficiency. Some of those who utter this cry cannot boast of a particularly healthy democracy at work in their own local authority areas. I remember one chairman of a council who wrote to me a plea on this topic, but, on inquiry, I discovered that in his ward there had not been a contested election for seven years. There is a considerable prize to be won.
The developments since the war are interesting. In 1945, the then Coalition Government set up a boundary commission to try to tackle this problem. In 1949, the then Minister responsible, the late Mr. Aneurin Bevan, decided to dissolve that Boundary Commission and it ceased to function. Nothing occurred in local government reform until the White Papers of 1956 and 1957 and the Local Government Act, 1958, which set up two commissions to look into the existing boundaries and patterns of local government. These commissions were stopped in 1965 by the present Secretary of State for Social Services, who was then the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
The only piece of reform which occurred was a result of the Royal Commission led by Sir Edwin Herbert on the reform of London local government, and that legislation went through in 1963. When we consider local government, and especially the problems of the metropolitan areas, we should pay a little more attention to both the weaknesses and successes of that reform. I hope that, whichever party is responsible for local government reform, a careful study will be made of the experience of the new
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major authority in the Midlands, which was created two or three years ago, the new Tees-side authority, and the G.L.C. and the London boroughs. A considerable lesson is to be learned from their experiences about the use of existing resources and handling such difficult questions as staff in such major reforms.
We then had the Royal Commission, which has now reported. Basically, we can summarise the gist of its argument as being that the existence of 1,210 separate authorities has brought about four major disadvantages in local government. First, the boundaries of these authorities are out-dated by modern developments. Local authorities which were suitable 50 or 100 years ago are now out-dated because of developments such as the expansion of authorities, population changes and great improvements in transportation and communications.
Secondly, the present system is bad for some of the wider planning decisions. County boroughs and counties, both having planning powers, can frequently make decisions contrary to each other's interests. Thirdly, there is the problem of seeing that comprehensive services are readily available to every family. Finally, smaller authorities lack the resources and the ability to attract the calibre of staff required to make them as efficient as they ought to be. These are the four criticisms of the existing pattern, and all have considerable weight.
My criticism of the manner in which the Royal Commission proceeded is that it was unable to look at the existing functions of the Government as well as local government, and part of its report shows this limitation. One of the main purposes which the Government expressed in a number of phrases in their White Paper was to give more power to local government when reformed than it now has. The Minister pointed out the disadvantage of local government as now organised in its lack of unity against the Government. I quote this as an example.
But if we are genuinely to reform local government with the purpose of giving it more powers, it is contradictory for the Government to make a number of functions which are now local government functions subject to national policy. This

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is where there is the main division between the Opposition and the Government. If local government is to flourish, the Government must say that there are certain functions which Conservative-controlled councils at the time of a Labour Government can undertake against the general wishes of that Labour Government and, likewise, Socialist councils at the time of Conservative Governments can undertake against the general wish of the Conservative Government.
A number of actions have been taken in this very year when the Government have decided to transplant the decision of local authorities and say that from now on these will be matters of national and not local policy. One of my major regrets about the right hon. Gentleman's speech is that he does not even concede that some of the functions that the Government have taken from local government will be given back to it when it has been reformed. The Royal Commission was unable to make any such suggestions, because it was unable by its terms of reference to consider the existing functions of the Government.
A major item of local government policy is housing policy. Local authorities may wish to pursue a particular type of policy towards the sale of council houses, or towards council house rents, or towards advancing council mortgages. Local authorities may wish to apply a certain pattern of secondary education. But the Government have said that in all these matters they no longer want democratically elected councils to make the decisions, because the Government are making them as matters of national policy.
This is a great discouragement to those in local government who are actively propounding a sensible reform, for they will see reform being introduced by a Government who basically wish to lay down national policies for local decisions. The first criticism is of the Government in that respect. Secondly, there is the problem of finance. This is an extremely difficult problem. I would like to be able to come to the House with an easy solution. I remember that when the Secretary of State for Social Services was Minister of Housing and Local Government he promised that within a short
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time there would be a complete reform of the rating system. It is a difficult matter.
But I would have thought that if one was introducing a major reform of local government, so much of the effectiveness of the reform would depend upon the financial arrangements. A tremendous handicap is put on the freedom of local authorities if there are systems of financing, as now, which restrict their freedom of decision taking.
I give an example of the present financial system which works against a number of major and smaller authorities. Under the present overspill policies, local authorities in major cities which are losing population immediately lose specific rate grants on losing population. The authorities obtaining the overspill obtain certain capital allowances. The present system discourages overspill by major authorities, because the impact of the loss of grant is a major factor in the finances of those authorities. The receiving authorities find that their rates soar on receiving the overspill population to service the capital cost entailed before their own rateable values increase. This one item has an important effect on major and minor authorities, probably to the detriment of the major rehousing schemes involved.
It is urgent that the Government make proposals about the financing of local government. I hope that tonight the Minister will be able to give a more specific indication than at Question Time last week of when the Green Paper on the subject may be expected.
The third criticism is that neither the Royal Commission—and this may have been due to the facilities available to it—nor the Government have given sufficient attention, in looking at the boundaries, to the existing resources of local government. Because of the limited resources that are always available to the Opposition, I have, since the publication of the Royal Commission's report, endeavoured to visit local authorities, and to hold meetings, in each of the regions of the country.
I sometimes question whether any thought has been given to the reality and sense of breaking up major local authorities. I refer to the position in the North West. I concede the need for the creation of major metropolitan areas which bring

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a reality to the boundaries of the major conurbations, but beyond that I do not think that it will be to the benefit of the people concerned to break up authorities such as Cheshire and Lancashire, with their considerable resources, and the centralisation of certain services, and redistribute those resources to two or three other authorities.
I hope that in looking at the boundaries, and at the pattern of local government, further attention will be given to what exists now and to the damage that can be done if the boundaries are drawn wrongly and the functions are given to the wrong levels.
Mr. Denis Coe: If the hon. Gentleman agrees with the conurbations being made into metropolitan areas, and he does not want to see Lancashire broken up, is he saying that he does not want to see the establishment of Selnec, which takes in a large part of Lancashire?
Mr. Walker: My views on that will become clear when I deal with the second tier and metropolitan areas.
My fourth comment on the Royal Commission and on the White Paper is that the commission was faced with the real dilemma confronting anybody considering local government reform; namely, the disadvantages of having an effective bottom tier. The Commission's view was that the Ministry itself was concerned about this matter. Commenting on the evidence given by the Ministry, it said:
"The Ministry appeared to us to be in the following difficulty. Though well aware of the democratic case for another level of local government below large city regions, the Ministry was on the one hand reluctant to give authorities at that level responsibility for any important functions, and on the other hand uncertain whether they would be worthwhile bodies without it."
That is the dilemma, and I come down on the side of saying that we must ensure that the bottom tier has worth-while functions to perform, and I reject the concept of local councils as envisaged in the White Paper.
They have not made their position clear, but if the Government follow the Wheatley proposals for Scotland, Scotland will have a two-tier system of local government. The White Paper for Wales suggests a two-tier system of local government for Wales. The White Paper for
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England, which we are discussing today, suggests a two-tier system of local government for 42 per cent. of the population of England. Therefore looking at the United Kingdom, Scotland, Wales and 42 per cent. of England will have a two-tier system of local government.
Mr. Arthur Probert Mr. Arthur Probert (Aberdare) rose—
Mr. Walker: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but some other hon. Members wish to take part in the debate, and I should like to proceed with my speech as quickly as possible
Only 58 per cent. of England will be left with one tier of local government. I do not believe that the Government or the Royal Commission have made out a strong enough case for that to be the position.
Looking at the various levels of local government which are suggested, and dealing with provincial areas, I think that it was a mistake for the Government to set up Crowther after Redcliffe-Maud. We are going ahead with reforming local government without knowing the relationship to yet another tier of government which may exist in two or three years' time. I should like the Minister to tell us when the Crowther Report will be completed and published, and whether the evidence given by the Government will be published prior to the publication of the report.
As regards provincial areas, I am dubious about the final rôle of another level of elections in a country the size of the United Kingdom. This depends very much on what functions we decide to give to these provincial areas. These are fundamental decisions of Government in different spheres of Government Departments, the classic ones being hospitals and roads. Regional hospital boards are appointed by the Government, there is regional government in certain economic consultative plans, and there are road construction units, but these regional bodies are devoid of democratic influence. The decision to be taken is whether there should be direct democratic control at each area or not.
In terms of planning, there is an urgent need to get more co-ordination between what will be the new democratically

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elected local authorities on matters of regional planning. For example, if one considers areas where there are certain advisory bodies with little power, I think that the Government should give careful consideration to the ways in which the future planning authorities can immediately be co-ordinated over a wide area to come to agreement on some of the major planning strategy and decisions.
What concerns me about the Redcliffe-Maud proposals for the metropolitan areas is the possibility of a dramatic change in the overall planning of future housing. The danger of drawing a metropolitan area as widely as some of these metropolitan areas have been drawn is a relatively small rural area within a metropolitan area will be dominated by the major cities and towns, with the almost certainty—an understandable certainty—that these new metropolitan areas will make planning decisions to solve their housing problems by utilising areas of rural land.
I am not sure that this is Rood overall planning for the country. I think that a decision to create a complete urban development within one of the suggested boundaries of the metropolitan areas would probably be a mistake. A positive policy of new town overspill programmes may have a better impact on overall planning. Therefore, in looking at the boundaries of metropolitan areas, I should want to examine carefully the outer boundaries of the conurbations as they exist, and then to try to settle planning decisions to meet the housing problems of the metropolitan areas concerned.
My other criticism, and this applies particularly to housing, is that not enough power is given to district councils within the metropolitan areas. I think that there is a lot to be learned from the experience of the London boroughs. As far as I know, there is no controversy between the parties about how the London boroughs are operating. Obviously, the Labour Party will consider that Tory-controlled boroughs are operating badly, and vice versa, but in terms of the functions of those boroughs there is general agreement between the boroughs and the G.L.C. that in terms of housing and one or two other facilities the need is to see that more power goes to the district councils than to the higher level.
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That brings me to the unitary authorities, and here I mention the problem of councillors. The White Paper avoids the difficult question—and it is a desperately difficult one—of payment to councillors. Whichever Government are in power will have to face this problem before the reform takes place. If a local authority meets in the daytime, with the chairmanships of its committees occupying a considerable proportion of the time available, and those chairmanships go to people who are sponsored, retired, or wealthy enough to do the job, it is narrowing the sphere of operations.
I recognise the unpopularity of doing anything which tends to take away from the voluntary spirit in local government, but we must measure the tasks that we are asking to be carried out by at least some leaders of democratically-elected local authorities in future. We believe that people who come to the House to help govern the country should be able to do so, and we must enable the major authorities to take similar decisions.
I ask the Government, as a token of their genuine interest in the reform that they are making, to take action immediately to repeal that part of the Representation of the People Act which will prevent many councillors from continuing in office. There are 24 councillors in Birmingham, 18 in Manchester and 14 in Nottingham—not all Conservative by any means—who, under present legislation, will have to leave those councils. Many of them are experienced, and if the reform goes through they will be able to stand for election again. It would be wrong to break their continuity of service, and I hope that the Government will take the necessary action to avoid it. If they do not, the Conservative Party will do so when it comes into office.
My point of major disagreement with the Government concerns their suggestion about the future organisation of local councils. The Minister claimed that the White Paper proposals strengthen the position of local councils. I maintain that they weaken them. I also maintain that they were already too weak. I completely reject the Minister's contention that there was general agreement that local councils should play no part in the main functions of the unitary councils.

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When she was asked to comment on the White Paper, Lady Sharp said:
"I am less happy about the Government's intention to whittle down the power of local councils by refusing to them any part of the provision of major services. Maybe it looks confusing; but I believe it provided a flexibility which suited the immensely varied pattern of regional communities. I simply do not believe that the 'ensuing division of responsibilities would be harmful to the services concerned and could only cause confusion.' On the contrary, I believe it will be harmful to the services if local councils, where they have the resources, cannot make their contribution; and confusing to the public if, notwithstanding that these councils are supposed to look after local amenities and utilities, they have to stop short at anything that happens, technically, to be part of a 'main service'. So many relatively minor things can fall under this heading. …"
The proposals for local councils as put forward in the White Paper just will not work.
Let me give an example of what might occur in one constituency. My constituency is almost perfect for somebody in local government. It has a shire hall. Worcester is a county borough. There is the ancient Borough of Droitwich and a rural district council. Each body considers itself to be a perfect form of council, which should be allowed to continue. My constituency could have 37 local councils or none. It is an optional extra. The White Paper does not say that there must be local councils; it says that anybody who wishes to have one can have one.
Under the Government's proposals, the parishes can have their local councils. Droitwich can have its local council. Worcester can have several. But in reality it will not serve local authorities well to create hundreds of local councils, each having only limited powers, and each having as the main object of acting as a lobby group and a protest group in relation to the main authority. There is a real difference between the existing situation and the one envisaged after the reform. After the reform, if we have our unitary authority, the local council will be the only other voice that could be raised against it—and it would be a voice devoid of power and unable to participate in the management of the main facilities.
District committees are unspecified in terms of size or the area that they will
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cover. The type of matters upon which they will consult are unspecified, as is the manner in which representatives from local councils will be elected to serve on them. What happens in a locality with 10 or 12 local councils covering a small area? What representation do they have on the one district committee which covers an even wider area? These questions must be faced. We cannot leave the local council proposal in its present loose form. We should have a much more appropriate system over a large part of the country, under which, instead of having the option of creating hundreds of small local councils with limited powers the existing local councils would be rationalised and reduced to a smaller number which would be able to participate in some of the tasks of management of the main authorities.
There are two spheres in which this would be important. One is housing. Local councils are better at understanding the problems of the allocation of houses than is a major tier authority; in planning, although major planning decisions must be taken over a wide area there are literally hundreds of minor planning decisions, concerning such matters as infilling, improvements to houses, and the building of garages and similar extensions, which are better made by local people.
The Government advocate a second tier in Wales, Scotland, and 42 per cent. of England, and in my opinion the other 58 per cent. of England would in most cases be better served by a smaller number of authorities, participating much more fully in some of the decision-making. There could be a much better rationalisation for the bottom tier.
If we operate in that way we can make some progress towards a system of local government which can adopt a flexible approach to the problems of the regions. There is not sufficient flexibility in the present proposals. The Government have said that they are showing flexibility by providing two-tier government in one part of the country and one-tier government in the other. We believe that there should be a similar pattern all over the country. There is some difference between the problems of the North-West and the South-West. These problems cannot be dealt with effectively by the one-tier pattern that is

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being imposed on large areas of both localities.
That is where our proposals differ from those of the Government. If we have the opportunity we shall proceed with the creation of reformed local councils. In certain areas the smaller councils will disappear, and there will be boundary changes. We realise the difficulties involved. I agree with the Minister; there is much more scope for participation at the smaller community level. Some functions currently being carried out by local authorities could be carried out far better by the people in the communities. I have always thought that, in things like art galleries, there could be much more participation by those affected. Also, in community areas, whether private or local authority owned, there is scope for people doing much more about the genuine local amenities. The Minister of Housing and I recently saw a film about a particular improvement area. The community estate concerned, which is basically privately owned, had a community with particular problems and there was tremendous scope for some sort of residents' organisation with these powers.
On local authority housing estates much more could be done to see that decisions are taken by the people on the estates rather than by the local authority. If they made such decisions, they would recognise the responsibility which went with them, but they could do more in amenity planning and provision of services than is done under present local government systems. Therefore, I agree about the scope for increased participation at community level, but there are functions in which it is essential to retain some sensible basis of government nearer to the people than is envisaged in the unitary authorities.
This debate will continue. The Government are committed, if they are in power to do so, to introducing legislation as soon as possible and they have suggested 1971 or 1972. If there is a change of Government—I do not know the date of any such change—we would wish to proceed with a sensible local government reform in the early period of such a new Government. A real difficulty is caused for local authorities by a long waiting period, but whether it is the Government's
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timetable of 1971–72 or if, of necessity under a change of Government, it had to be a little later, we must give real assurances to local government staff.
I hope that the Minister will be able to say something more about the staff commission proposal and some basic guarantee to those employed in local authorities, who are naturally anxious about the effect of changes. Whether the Government's date or ours applies, there is still time for constructive discussion on the set-up and future of local government. I hope that whichever Government have this responsibility they will do it well, for democracy at local levels is of immense importance for the future of the country.
5.22 p.m.
Mr. F. Blackburn: I am sorry to disappoint my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning, but it will come as no great surprise to him that my views are somewhat different from his. There is general agreement in government, both central and local, if not among the general public, on the need for some reform of local government, but there is not the same agreement about what that reform should be. I believe that reform is necessary, but I cannot subscribe either to the Redcliffe-Maud Report or to the gloss put on it in the Government's White Paper.
We are all indebted to the Royal Commission for its exhaustive inquiry, but it unfortunately came down with the wrong solution. One good thing that it did is get rid of all-purpose authorities within the area of another major authority. Of course, it has made a nice pattern which would make it very easy for Government Departments to deal with local government—there would not be so many authorities—but there is more in life than making life easier for Government Departments.
When my right hon. Friend introduced his White Paper, I said in a Supplementary that the Government were making the same mistake as the Redcliffe-Maud Commission in trying to equate efficiency with science. The examples which my right hon. Friend gave today were not valid comparisons, because he was comparing areas which are subject to two-tier government with areas which will have one-tier government.

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I have spent what seems to be a good deal of my life arguing against the idea that great size means efficiency, that the bigger the better. That is not true of people or of local government or of countries. If it were, this country would have a less glorious history than it has. The Government agree with me about the danger of over-sized local government units. On paragraph 45 of the White Paper, they say:
"The reorganisation of local government will increase the size of the main authorities and substantially reduce the number of councillors directly concerned with the main services. Hence the well publicised danger of 'remoteness', of loss of contact between the citizen and his authority, and of a tendency for people to think of government of all kinds, however democratically based, as separate from themselves. This tendency is strengthened if fewer electors have the opportunity of knowing their elected representatives as individual persons."
Of course, the Government may say that they are adding resources to mere size, but on that basis one finds that some of the second-tier authorities in the metropolitan areas will have more resources than some of the unitary authorities. It could be argued that some of the unitary authorities are not large enough to carry out some of the functions of local government—for instance, planning and transport—but since I am not in favour of unitary authorities I will develop that part of my speech later.
I have been spending a good deal of my life considering this question of local government reform. In the 1940s I did a good deal of speaking and writing on this subject, and in 1946, I think, I was invited to give a paper on the subject at the A.M.C. conference held at Eastbourne. We thought then that the country was ripe for some reform. I do not know whether, 25 years later, it is any riper than it was, but there will be still as much disagreement now as there was in those days.
I have always maintained that, in any system of local government reform, the word "local" is the most important word. I would be prepared to sacrifice a little efficiency in order to get a local government in which people were interested and which was close to them. I have not changed the views which I held in the 1940s, when I was advocating local government reform. I believed then and I believe now that the only sensible system of local government reform is a
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two-tier system covering the whole country. Here I seem to be in some agreement with the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker).
Local government functions are of two types, those which are personal services, which must be kept near the people, and others which need to be planned over a much wider area. I cannot object to the metropolitan authorities, because I was the originator of the scheme long ago for a Manchester county council. In those days, I was advocating areas much smaller than are being advocated today. Perhaps then I was advocating areas which were too small, but I am certain that today both the Maud Report and the Government White Paper are advocating areas which are too large.
I would like to show how, for a metropolitan district, the second-tier authority is too large. I take as an example the one with which my constituency is concerned. First, however, I should like to call in aid in connection with the two-tier system the help of the Government. They state in paragraph 31 of their White Paper that
"There must be a large authority for some services, and several smaller ones for the rest."
I agree. That is why I advocate a two-tier system. The hon. Member for Worcester was quite right in saying that if we are to have a two-tier system in Wales and a two-tier system in Scotland, it is sensible to have a two-tier system in England.
My second quotation from the White Paper is from paragraph 52 concerning the local councils:
"Fourthly, the Government believe that another important function can be added, namely, that members of local councils should serve on district committees to which the unitary authorities would decentralise some of their administration."
Surely, that is two-tier local government the wrong way round.
I should like to explain why I consider that some of the second-tier authorities are larger than is necessary and are taking away the participation of the people. If we want participation, about which we hear so much today, it seems to me to be nonsense to make authorities much larger than is necessary.
My constituency is situated in the area of one of the second-tier authorities. That authority covers 107 sq. miles and has a

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population of 254,000 and a rateable value of £7,928,000. It covers part of Lancashire, part of Cheshire, part of Derbyshire and part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. It comprises six non-county boroughs, four urban district councils plus part of one, one rural district council and part of another.
When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says that education functions are being taken away from the metropolitan districts, and when we have a Green Paper which proposes to take away health functions from the local authorities, no one will convince me that we need 107 sq. miles and a population of 254,000 to carry out the functions of local government which are to go to the second-tier authority. Quite a number of Parliamentary constituencies seem to me to be of a suitable size to carry out the proposed functions of a second-tier authority. There might be something to be said for an approximation of second-tier authorities and constituencies.
I do not think that any thought has been given to the heavy expense that will be entailed in implementing the suggestions which have been put forward. I wonder whether thought has been given to the siting of the new local government centres. How many new town halls will have to be built? None of the existing town halls will be sufficiently large to have a council chamber big enough to accommodate the number of councillors. What will be the cost of redundancy payments to a good many local government officers? We are told that with the proposed bigger areas, there will be a better choice of local government officer. There will be exactly the same choice as we have now. We will simply pay them more. Therefore, more thought has to be given to the question of cost. Under my suggestion, a two-tier system throughout the whole country would be less expensive than the Government's proposals.
I do not agree with the need for the local councils, because they would not be necessary if we applied a sensible solution in the reform of local government. Since, however, I doubt whether I am likely to get my way, I ought to comment about the local councils. It is true that today there are growing up a number of community associations and the
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like consisting of people who are interested in what is taking place in their localities. Those authorities are ad hoc bodies; they are not elected. From the list of items which are thought suitable for expenditure by local councils, as given in Appendix 2, it appears that the local councils will have quite a good job to do—until one realises that they cannot carry out any of those functions unless they obtain permission from the unitary authority.
One can visualise the sort of election address that will be sent out by candidates if we are to have local councils which have no power:
"Dear Elector, Whoever you elect will have no power to do anything but talk. I am as good as anybody else at shooting-off with my mouth, so I hope that I shall have your support.
Yours faithfully".
What else can a potential local councillor do? It is no good expecting people to stand for election when they will have merely the power to recommend to another authority. I hope that the Government will have second thoughts.
I am sure that we should get a much more efficient system of local government if we had better participation by the people and if we had the second-tier authorities of suitable size and able to carry out the functions that have to go to them. It might be that if we had two-tier authorities, some of the proposed unitary authorities would have to be extended in size. Under the proposed system, we are likely to have all the difficulties that now arise with regard to county council elections. The hon. Member for Worcester mentioned the difficulty of selecting candidates. Are we to be reduced to retired people, housewives, self-employed people and trade union officials? We do not have a great selection. The larger the authority, the more difficult the problem will be. It is no use talking at present about paid councillors. All the other costs will be enough to carry on with for the time being.
Therefore, while I am not hopeful that I have convinced my right hon. Friend, hope springs eternal and I am sure that there is a better solution to the problem than that which has been put forward by either the Redcliffe-Maud Commission or the Government White Paper.
5.38 p.m.
Mr. R. Bonner Pink: I cannot agree with the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) in his passion for two-tier Government. My experience in local government has been entirely with a single-tier, all-purpose authority, and I still feel that that is the best way.
To revert to what the Secretary of State said about finance when he opened the debate, I am rather surprised that he has not yet been able to produce his Green Paper. He has not even been able to say when it will appear. The right hon. Gentleman said that rates must continue to remain the principal source of local revenue. We have had a system of rates for something like 400 years and throughout the whole of that time they have been recognised to be an extremely unsatisfactory form of taxation. I should have thought that in that time every possible alternative source of income had been canvassed, and I am surprised that the Minister has not been able to decide which way he will go and which source of local government revenue he will use. Perhaps we will be told what form the Government grant will take and whether it is proposed to continue the present formula or whether, as I hope, some other formula is in mind. Speaking for Portsmouth, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman has worked out some other formula, as the present one bears extremely hard on us.
I want to speak particularly on the proposals for the new metropolitan area of Southampton. It is proposed that the area should comprise the Portsmouth and Southampton unitary areas and the Isle of Wight. I agree very broadly with the Commission's recommendation of two all-purpose authorities for the area, but I do not agree with the recommendation of including the Isle of Wight in either. My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Woodnutt) can speak for his constituency if he gets the opportunity, but I do not think it appropriate for this purpose to attach an offshore island to the mainland area.
I am opposed to the whole concept of two-tier government for the area. Two-tier government is slow, unwieldy, costly, inefficient and remote. Other hon. Members may not agree, but I believe that with the present system of county council
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a councillor perhaps 40 miles from an area being discussed can be far more remote in knowledge than can one much closer in a single all-purpose authority.
In this area there is a real division between the two authorities of Portsmouth and Southampton. The River Hamble makes a clear-cut physical division, and there is also a division in community interest. People standing on the west bank of the river look to Southampton and those on the east look to Portsmouth; they stand back to back. This is one of fastest growing areas in the country, and it is very necessary to have overall planning there, but, apart from that aspect, I see no need for an overall authority for other functions.
We have in this area two large and efficient county boroughs which are bound to form the nuclei of the two unitary authorities. Apart from this overall planning, they could be independent and efficient. There is at present a joint planning committee composed of representatives from Portsmouth and Southampton and from the Hampshire County Council. Although this is a voluntary concept, as it were, it works well, but I believe that for overall planning a statutory authority would be needed.
I suggest that the amalgamated police force for the area forms a precedent. A similar statutory authority might be established for overall planning, and the remainder of the functions could quite easily fall in place—the two single-tier authorities could perform them efficiently and well. I see no purpose in having this large authority superimposed on the two smaller authorities. Perhaps the Minister will, after reconsideration, look favourably on the idea of having two single-tier authorities, with a statutory body for the overall planning.
5.45 p.m.
Mr. Peter Mahon: We are told that the soft answers turn away wrath, but I am very dubious whether the good answers given by my right hon. Friend will succeed in doing that in all parts of the country. The anger of many of my friends in local government will not be so easily assuaged.
I have been a member of a county borough council for the past 37 years. For 17 years I was chairman of the

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finance committee, and during my long period of service in local affairs I have been chairman of every other local government committee. In the natural order of things, I shall no longer play the same part in the future, so I can claim very fairly to be able to view the situation dispassionately. I can even face the losing of my aldermanic seat in the very near future with a degree of equanimity. In short, I have no vested interest. A future in local government is not for me.
Having endured the heat and burden of the day in local government, it makes me sad to see many prophets coming to judgment with the hope in their hearts that the trials and tribulations, the vicissitudes and difficulties experienced through the years by rural district councils, parish councils, urban district councils, borough councils, county borough councils, city councils and county councils will with the new arrangements vanish like snow from the mountain top.
I sincerely trust that no hon. Member is sufficiently naive to believe that. The vast army of dedicated men and women, councillors and officials alike, who have served their councils for so long in fair weather and in foul, and to whom my right hon. Friend justifiably paid tribute, will certainly not believe it. They know enough to realise that whatever the future holds and whatever the set up, the difficulties and complexities of administration will, like the poor, always be with us. They know well enough that they are being invited into the garden by Maud on the assumption that the "black bat night" has flown. They also know that they could be left at the garden gate singing "Baby"—or rather "Maudie"— "it is cold outside".
In considering reform of local government, one must always reflect on the imponderables and enigmas of the past in an endeavour to project one's mind into the future. With all its faults and failings, British local government as an institution has been the envy of the world, one of the best features of our democracy and unrivalled in the steadfastness and honesty of purpose of its officials and members, but bedevilled, it is true, by poverty without ever being able to devise the means of overcoming that poverty. Had we in the first instance been able to
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establish local government and the provision of homes, schools, libraries, police, fire brigades, health and social services on the basis of repayment without interest charges, local government in this country would have achieved unparalleled success and would not have deserved some of the criticism that has been levelled at it this afternoon.
Even in the days of the availability of cheap money there was no possibility of the millenium. There is no possibility today under any other set of circumstances or under any other arrangements. Out of the long experience I have had, I can put my hand on my heart and advise that this is so. [Laughter.] I am glad that we are deriving a little pleasure from the proceedings, but I am afraid that some friends in the County of Lancashire and in Preston are not deriving much pleasure.
For the ordinary people, there never has been in existence, and never will be, a fairy godmother's wand or an Aladdin's lamp. My years as finance chairman left me under no illusion as to how much or how little success in local government or the social advancement of the people could be achieved with the only means of acquiring capital through the Public Works Loan Board or on the open market, or by taking up loan sanctions from a never too-beneficent Government, whichever party was representative of the Government in the House of Commons.
Local government has developed down the years in this country on the basis of financial arrangements which no borough treasurer, however well qualified, no finance committee chairman, however well qualified, or committee member or council member, however well qualified, has ever completely understood. For viable units of local government, this was difficult enough; for the larger unitary or regional authority, it would be complex indeed. A constant source of embarrassment to local authorities has been the rating system. There has been shortage of capital resources, the extension of services and the inevitable financial embarrassment to local authorities in facing capital debts, interest charges and repayments.
Under the new arrangements in the much larger areas of administration which are envisaged the baling out processes of the central administration, like

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Topsy, will have to grow to facilitate the development of social advancement throughout the country. I am not altogether sanguine about it. Long-term application may do the trick, but in the process I believe there will be greater travail than ever before.
Experience has grown up with the local authorities, and this history and tradition attached to local government through the years has enabled it to grasp the nettle however difficult the problem was. I think these facts are being very largely lost sight of. In smaller, well-knit authorities, there has grown up the family spirit and now the ecumenical spirit which is of so much value in human relationships today. How much of this will be lost in the vast remoteness of the unitary provincial and, may be, regional authority of the future? I believe these considerations add up to a matter of fairly grave consequence.
In the words of Tennyson, there are two things which have not changed since the world began—the beauty of the wild green earth and the bravery of man. We are not considering the affairs of Welsh authorities today, but what would have happened in Aberfan in the terrible tragedy which befell that little community without the never-to-be-forgotten courage, resourcefulness and kindly spirit of those people? We recall the tremendous bravery of individual men and women in small communities and the heroism of unknown citizens when Hitler's Luftwaffe was raining down bombs on the well-nigh defenceless people in our communities in the early periods of the last devastating war. The tremendous spirit of true local government and the people who co-operated so magnificently and manned the services revealed local government organisation in all its glory. They could and always would, and always would in future, have raised their standards and coped with any difficulty.
Local government—is this a misnomer? Are we entitled to make it something else, to extend it on a grandiose scale and call it local government and expect the same or better results? I was most impressed when the Prime Minister's wife revealed that on average there were no fewer than 900 callers daily at No. 10 Downing Street. This is precisely what is involved in service to the people, the sort of service which is symbolic in the
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sight of the local person, the poor old lady, the poor old-age pensioner or a sick person who has nowhere else to turn, knocking at the door of the local councillor or the local justice of the peace to get a form signed.
My right hon. Friend envisages the difficulty and said something similar to what I am about to say. To coin a phrase, we can please some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but we cannot please all the people all the time. My right hon. Friend and those responsible have to make decisions. We understand that. In Lancashire the demise of Lancashire County Council will be justifiably considered by many to be an unprecedented disaster. The two-tier system for Yorkshire and extinction for Lancashire is hardly playing the game. This is a recommendation that some people cannot comprehend. They maintain that the White Paper does not provide for effective local government outside the major conurbations. They consider that outside the two proposed metropolitan areas there would be confusion confounded in the complete fragmentation of five relatively small unitary authorities.
Lancashire County Council is hopeful that there will be reconsideration of any proposal to destroy it on the basis of too little knowledge. There seems no dubiety about what the decisions arc. My constituency has been the home of fairly effective, if by no means perfect, local government. One cannot expect perfect local government if we do not have perfect government in the central administration. I again speak with my hand on my heart and ask whether central administration is justified in sitting in judgment to the extent it has done on local government.
Having served for so long in local government, and having served as well as I could serve in this mother of Parliaments, I would award the palm to local government. It has done better than Parliament could ever do in administering to the people's needs. It has not always had the help, advice and sustenance which it might reasonably have expected from the Mother of Parliaments, but all things considered, it has done well, and I am glad that my right hon. Friend was very fair and did not utter any strictures.

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However, even though no strictures were uttered by my right hon. Friend, it remains the fact that there are many people in local government who will be superseded, because hundreds of good local government people cannot consider service in the new strata; they will be lost. It is all very well to talk about abolishing the aldermanic system and starting anew. What is needed in local government more than ever, in view of the complexities and problems concerning it, is the service of experienced people.
In view of what happens at elections, and in view of the proposed new arrangements, many of those who have served almost all their lives in local government will be out. As happened in London, a conglomeration of new people will come in. This is the natural order of things, and it is as it should be. However, when they come in in one fell swoop, without having had any experience apart from academic knowledge, the community is bound to suffer.
I hope that the sands have not run out and that Preston will be the focal point of the third largest city in Lancashire, and that the Lancashire County Council will deservedly continue to figure in the scheme of things and will not be eradicated from the scene; I hope that it will remain to a considerable degree as a first tier of local government.
6.3 p.m.
Mr. John Pardoe: This debate is about democracy: I hope that the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Peter Mahon) will forgive me if I do not follow him into the paths of Lancashire except for saying that I shall be happy to lend him some young Liberals to dig any number of "tiers" at Old Trafford if he wants them.
Democracy is where it counts—in people's lives. Democracy is not static; it is a developing concept. Increased education changes the demand of people for democratic participation. The increase in the population and the very complexity and scale of the services and operations that are needed in local government also change the requirements for the organisations of local government.
I entirely accept, as the Secretary of State said, that change is essential. I do not for one moment support those in
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the country who suggest that all is right with local government and that we can leave small councils to jog along as they have for so many years. We have become an over-centralised society. We have become a society in which the decisions that affect people's lives are taken in a place far too remote from them. We are in danger of having an impersonal form of government.
I accept the Maud Commission's analysis of what is wrong. Broadly speaking, the Government have accepted the analysis. Where I depart from the Maud Commission and from the Government is as to what sort of change is needed as a result of the analysis. We are dealing with something which is of the utmost importance in people's lives, possibly even more important than the organisation of central Government. Yet on this great issue we have not had any constructive proposals from the Opposition.
Mr. Joe Rogaly started an article on local government reform in yesterday's Financial Times in this way:
"Mr. Heath has not done his job. While he has been Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Wilson's Administration has been redesigning our form of government, yet, apart from a few odd speeches, the Conservatives have avoided responsibility for contributing to any form of serious national debate about this half-obscured revolution."
[HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] These are not my words. They are the words of a responsible, independent commentator. I thought that this passage would rankle. These are the words of an independent commentator in a responsible financial newspaper. He goes on to say:
"This is a dereliction of duty…. The silence from the official Opposition has been embarrassing."
Mr. Arthur Jones: The hon. Gentleman would do far more justice to his case if he were to give us his own opinion and not quote from yesterday's Press, because he knows as well as the rest of the House knows that my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) has held a number of conferences throughout the country, as he pointed out in opening the debate for the Opposition. There has been the greatest consultation in the Conservative Party on the question of local government reform.
Mr. Pardoe: I have plenty to say about the Conservative Party, but none of it could be said in the House. I reserve it specifically for the platforms of North Cornwall, where the people do not have such delicate constitutions about these matters.
As I have already made clear, this is the view of a responsible newspaper and a responsible commentator about the Opposition. [HON. MEMBERS: "Say it again."] I could go on reading the article, except that I do not wish to take up all the time.
We feel strongly that the Maud Commission and the Government, although they have reached the right analysis, have got the wrong answer. I should have liked today to have accepted in detail the challenge which the Secretary of State issued to those who opposed his proposals to spell out their exact alternative. I intend to spell out the outlines of that alternative on behalf of the Liberal Party which was published in 1968 in a pamphlet entitled "Power to the Provinces". This goes in very considerable detail into an alternative form of local government—not only a reform of local government, because to reform local government only is to miss what is required in the extension of democracy in our society.
The title "Power to the Provinces" symbolises its contents and aims. Three years ago I introduced a Ten-Minute Rule Bill to make provision for members of economic planning councils to be elected. I then said that we wanted to add one phrase to Lincoln's classic definition of government—"government of the people, by the people, for the people". Yes…but also government near the people. That is what "Power to the Provinces" is about.
Its authors approached the problem from a different viewpoint, as I do, from that which was adopted by the Maud Commission and by the Government. Both the Maud Commission at least the majority of its members—and the Government have approached the problem from the point of view of those who already hold the power and are handing it out, or are not handing it out, as the case may be. We would like to approach the problem much more from the point of view of those who do not have the
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power and want to have it and ought to have it.
Why not start again with a new social contract? Let us imagine that an individual has the power. How much does he wish to hand over, in return for what, and to whom? These are the questions we must answer in arriving at a satisfactory democracy for the latter part of the 20th century. The Government's greatest blunder was to appoint Maud without Crowther. I do not believe that the reform of local government can be completed, or even attempted, unless one has made the fundamental decisions about removing power from the central government back to the people.
There are arguments about bigness and efficiency which will be heard throughout the debate. The Secretary of State admitted that he could not produce statistical proof of the correlation between efficiency and bigness. But if we are to have bigness and to stress the need of efficiency in local government, there must be a quid pro quo for the people as well, and that quid pro quo is bringing the power back to them. Without it, we are taking power away from them by reforming local government in the way in which the Government and the Maud Commission have indicated. It may, for instance, be a tenable position to suggest that we should transfer powers from Camelford, a small town in North Cornwall, to a unitary authority in Truro, but it is really only sensible and acceptable to the people who live in Camelford if at the same time considerable powers are brought from London to Truro. Otherwise there is an increase in remoteness with no compensation. We oppose the formation of the metropolitan authorities because they are extremely powerful bastions against the future development of provincial government. There is no doubt that if we create these very large plums in the pudding of our democratic system it will be extremely difficult for the provincial governments to swallow the pudding. They will be a positive obstacle to the development of democratic provincial government.
Moreover, there is a contradiction in their creation, because they will increase the conflict between town and country. The Government have decided to introduce a metropolitan authority in Yorkshire, but Yorkshire has no need of it.

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What Yorkshire really needs, and Liberals want to see is an elected council for the whole county or region. Yorkshire now has three separate county councils and 13 county boroughs. We certainly do not think that the formation of a metropolitan authority will help to bring better people into local government or solve any of the problems which Yorkshire faces.
Mr. Peter Kirk: I have great sympathy with the hon. Gentleman over the creation of provincial councils. Is not the problem here that if one does not include the metropolitan areas even the new provinces will themselves be overborne by the heavy concentration of population in certain areas? Therefore, one should include them even in a provincial system.
Mr. Pardoe: I do not think that that is necessarily true. There are differences between different parts of the country. No one wants to see one system of local government established everywhere. If we had 12 or more provincial councils they could be drawn in such a way as to overcome the problem the hon. Gentleman has stated.
I now turn to the problem of the planning councils. The Secretary of State said this afternoon, re-emphasising what is said in the White Paper, that the Government wish to strengthen the planning councils' work and their cooperation with local councils. It cannot be done, for precisely the reasons I set out in introducing my Ten Minute Rule Bill three years ago. A planning council does not derive any authority from a democratic process. Unless it does so the people whose lives it is planning will not listen to the plan it produces. Why should they? That is the built-in weakness of the whole Government regional planning system. I would like to see at least the election of the members. I said three years ago that the danger of appointed members was that those who were appointed all too soon thought that they were annointed. The appointment system takes no account of the views of the local council. I have a wodge of correspondence that I have carried on with the Chairman of the Cornwall County Council and the Secretary of State about recent appointments to the South-West Economic Planning. Council.
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The amount of consultation with Cornwall over those who replaced certain people from Cornwall on the original Council was negligible. It is no wonder that the County Council feels that it has not been consulted and that the Planning Council can have no real say in the future of Cornwall.
The planning councils have complete impotence in planning. My hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Richard Wainwright) recently asked the Secretary of State what advice he had received from the Yorkshire and Humberside Economic Planning Council on the operation of the Clean Air Act in relation to local shortages of smokeless coal. I would have supposed that if one had a planning council it might at least consider that part of its function was to decide how far to extend the smokeless zone in line with the amount of smokeless fuel available. That is a planning function for an area. The right hon. Gentleman's answer was very terse and to the point:
"None."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1970; Vol. 796, c. 90.]
There had been no consultation. No advice had been sought and none had been given on that important matter.
The trouble with the planning councils is that they are merely an attempt to extend central Government into the regions. That is why I believe they are doomed to failure in their present shape.
Mr. Simon Mahon: We are all aware of the tremendous influence those bodies have on society. Would the hon. Gentleman include great private bodies with an equal effect on society; would he want their members to be elected rather than selected?
Mr. Pardoe: Yes, indeed. The Liberal Party has produced extensive proposals for democracy in industry. I do not think that I should be in order in delving into the whole question of election in industry, the election of boards of directors, that we have proposed. That is merely one other facet of democracy, which we want to extend into every sphere of our national life.
We set out in "Power to the Provinces" the clear line that we wanted to see democratically-elected provincial councils with considerable powers. It may be that when the Crowther Com-

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mission has reported the Government will decide to hand out some of the power now held in Whitehall to such councils. I think that if they go ahead with the proposals before us the chance of doing so will be postponed for a very long time. The devolution of power from Whitehall is the whole centre of this question. Such provincial councils are a higher tier of local government. We cannot conduct reform of local government until this question is settled.
Then again, we maintain that there is not adequate provision for local democracy. It is true, as the right hon. Gentleman indicated, that many local councils are not exactly democratic today. There are far too many aldermen around—either because they really are aldermen, or think they are, or merely because they have not been elected for several years. But even these councils—and many of them are undemocratic now—are by no means as undemocratic as the new system will, unfortunately, turn out to be.
Are we likely, under the new system, to get a lot of new people trying to get elected so that we can get better decisions and more talent? Will we achieve this without proper consideration of election expenses and remuneration? Making these election areas bigger and reducing the number of councillors means that we shall virtually have to depend on party finance to fight local elections. The Liberal Party does not have large financial resources, but what about the Independents? Thank goodness, almost all local government in Cornwall is in the hands of Independents.
Mr. R. W. Brown: Members of the Liberal Party are elected in my constituency and the first thing they do is join the Tories, so what is the point?
Mr. Pardoe: There is a certain degree of swapping around in all parties. I will not say what my political origins were, but they have changed in the past. The point I was making in particular was about the Independent in politics. He will find it difficult to fight elections in these very large areas. Merely paying for the election addresses in such areas is a considerable factor. Unless we pay these councillors, as is done, for example, in the United States, quite considerable sums of money to make it worth while,
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we will not get a lot of new blood in local government. I do not think that we shall get better councillors or the better representation of all interests in the community which we ought to have in local government, unless the councillors are paid.
Mr. Lubbock: They will not be working people, anyway.
Mr. Pardoe: When it comes to the question of very local councils, the Liberal Party wishes to see district councils over areas of perhaps 60,000 people. That would not be a hard and fast rule. We want to see flexibility in different parts of the country and the rural situation is different from the town situation. We would like to see neighbourhood councils within district councils. The right hon. Gentleman said that he, too, wanted to see local councils arising out of the wishes of the people. But he fastened on to the point that we must somehow maintain the areas we now have because it would mean too big a reform altogether if we were to change all these local areas as well.
I do not see why this should be so. I think that we could leave to the democratic choice of the people the area of the neighbourhood council in which they live. In some areas, small rural districts want neighbourhood councils, and in other areas perhaps whole towns may want to have neighbourhood councils. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the problem that, in some areas, one may find in one country town three local council administrative offices. But that is not such a bad thing. Under his proposals, my fear is that the individual will have to search among many towns to find even one administrative centre for the local council and will have to save up several weeks for the train fare to get there.
Mr. Richard Wainwright: No trains.
Mr. Pardoe: It is true also that we have rather few railway lines in rural areas, particularly Cornwall.
I want to deal with the local situation in Cornwall and to put one or two points which have been made to me by local councillors and individuals there. I welcome the recognition, both in the

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Redcliffe-Maud Report and in the Government's proposals, of the fact that Cornwall has certain unique characteristics and should remain self-governing. I have not got my "Mebyon Kernow" tie on, but perhaps I should have for this debate.
South-East Cornwall is part of Cornwall and not of Plymouth. It was not right for the Government to decide, as they did, that this part of Cornwall could be just tossed across the Tamar, metaphorically speaking, and landed in Plymouth's lap. There is considerable anger amongst the great majority of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell)—indeed, almost unanimous opposition to this proposal.
A recent referendum conducted in Tor Point, which is part of the area concerned. 3 months ago registered a poll of slightly over 50 per cent., and 2,300 people voted to stay in Cornwall and only 163 voted to go into Plymouth. Again, without wishing to offend my right hon. Friend the Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe), I recall that it was suggested at one time that Bude, in my constituency, should join North Devon. This was put to a local referendum at the wish of the local council and was routed completely. I was delighted. There is the strongest opposition in Cornwall, both at county council and local council level, to any proposal that South-East Cornwall should be transferred to a unitary authority based on Plymouth.
I turn now to the question of finance. I have said that it is impossible to reform local government without the devolution of power from Whitehall, and it is also impossible to reform it without reforming the whole financial system. There is no time now to discuss the full implications. New revenues have to be found. It may be sensible to say that rates must remain the bastion of local government finance. There are certain things to be said in favour of that. But what is really wrong with the rates is indicated in the form sent to me recently about my house in Cornwall.
There is a question about central heating, which is no one's business except mine. I am asked what the "drainage rate" is. I do not know. Indeed, I do not even know what it is about. I am asked who the other occupiers are.
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Whose business is that? What is all this information required for? In whose computer does it go? I am asked details about leases or agreements. I cannot remember and I have not the time to find out. This exemplifies the sort of opposition one gets to the rating system. Having to pay more rates because one improves one's property is a nonsense, and is seen to be a nonsense by everyone except the Government—and that means every Government, of whichever party. Governments go on and on with a rating system which everyone abhors and detests.
I beseech the Government not only to produce their Green Paper but, long before they decide to reform local government, to go over the whole structure of local government finance and come up with firm proposals.
6.27 p.m.
Mr. Niall MacDermot: As I shall have a number of critical things to say about the White Paper and some of the Redcliffe-Maud proposals on which they are based, I begin by paying tribute to the courage of the Government, first of all, in setting up the Royal Commission at all. They grasped a nettle which had been avoided by previous Administrations for years. Everyone has known that reform, and radical reform, of local government was needed for a very long time and great credit is due to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services for the initiative he took as Minister of Housing and Local Government in setting up the Royal Commission.
Secondly, the Government are to be congratulated on their courage in producing this White Paper and taking a firm stand, as a Government, on the proposals which they support and recommend. I do not agree with many of them myself, but it was a right and courageous action and will ensure that the momentum is maintained on this issue. I was also glad to hear the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker), speaking for the Opposition, saying that, in the event of their being returned to power at the next election, they would also maintain the momentum and would bring about radical reforms based, broadly speaking, on the proposals in the Redcliffe-Maud Report.
Mr. R. B. Cant Mr. R. B. Cant (Stoke-on-Trent, Central) rose—
Mr. MacDermot: I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not give way. I would rather not, since so many hon. Members wish to speak.
When I joined the Army, on the first day I was issued with a uniform. I complained to the quarter-master sergeant that it did not fit very well and received the reply, "In the Army we do not make uniforms to fit the man; we make the man to fit the uniform".
My complaint about the main Maud proposals is that they tend too much to try to make the man fit the uniform—the uniform being what I would regard almost as a straitjacket, that of the unitary principle when it is applied so as to set aside almost all the other principles which have to be borne in mind in deciding the right structure of local government. We are agreed on certain basic principles. Reform must proceed from a recognition of the interdependence of town and country; we are agreed that all the environmental services should be with one authority; we are agreed that the personal services should be with one authority; we are agreed that the authorities should be larger than most of the existing local authorities so that they will have the resources and skilled manpower to provide proper services.
We are agreed that there are great advantages to be got from having a unitary authority, where we can get that without sacrificing everything else. We are also agreed, at least it is said in Maud and supported, I think, by the Government, that where the area required by the planning and environmental services contains too large a population for administering personal services there must be a two-tier system of government.
It is the application of this principle that is the crux of the whole matter. What are the areas that are required for the planning and environmental services? It is here that Maud has gone wrong in suggesting that it is only in the metropolitan areas that a two-tier system is needed. The proof of this is in the number of cases where planning authorities have had to set up joint planning studies to produce coherent plans for areas which must be planned together. For the most part, it will be seen that
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those areas will still be separated by different authorities under the proposals of Maud and the Government. This principle has been largely brushed aside to give excessive weight to the unitary principle.
It is essentially a matter of approach. If we approach this as a social scientist, trying to look at what are the geographic, economic and social realities of our society and build on them, then we get one solution. If we look at it as an administrator—I avoid the pejorative word "bureaucrat"—looking for a tidy and supposedly "efficient" administrative structure, we get another solution, namely, that which gives this overwhelming weight to the unitary principle.
There are three principles here from which I dissent. The first is that the minimum population should be 250,000 and the maximum population 1 million. I do not believe these to be principles at all. They are a judgment, in my view erroneous, about what is the size required to give effect to the principle that the unit should be large enough to command the resources and skilled man-power it requires. Population size is only a criterion when we are looking at personal services. It is irrelevant when looking at environmental planning. I do not believe that we need a minimum of 250,000 for the personal services, particularly if, as the Government propose, in a two-tier system education goes with the higher tier.
I also disagree with the principle that the new pattern should so far as practicable follow the old. The advantages of maintaining tradition where possible can be seen, but we are seeking to make a clean break. Surely, as Mr. Senior said in his remarkable dissenting memorandum, the surest way to prevent the making of a clean break with ingrained management habits is to create a successor unit so nearly coterminus with the old one that a majority of the same councillors would he in a position to carry on in the bad old ways.
The Royal Commission's fanatical attachment to the unitary principle has led it to ignore the realities of modern social geography at almost every level. This happened at the lower level where the commission's studies show that in urban areas the community to which people feel they belong is not the towns

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in which they live, unless it happens to be a very small town; it is the neighbourhood unit. Although it recognises this fact, the commission proceeds to recommend local councils based not on neighbourhood units but upon the existing county borough, borough and urban district pattern. Then at the level of what I call the town region, as opposed to the city region, the commission's researches show that this country can be divided into something between 130 and 140 areas based on a town with the associated rural areas around it, which have a coherence because of their internal social and economic ties.
Having discovered that, it set it aside and rejected it as a unit of organisation because it says many of these areas have a population too small to enable them to employ the range of staff needed for the efficient provision of any of the main services. In my view, that is only true if we are wedded to the unitary principle. The personal services without education, assuming education is given to a higher tier, exercising only limited housing functions, including housing management, can be perfectly adequately provided by a unit with a population of 150,000. All of us know of county boroughs and other authorities administering excellent personal services with that sort of size.
Of the 148 districts which Mr. Senior proposes, only 12 would be less than 150,000 and most of those in rather dispersed rural areas. A further 28 would be between 150,000 and 200,000—I am giving 1981 estimated populations—and 108 would be over 200,000. These are perfectly adequately sized authorities to administer proper and efficient personal services. Thirdly, at the regional level the Ministry of Housing and Local Government evidence to the commission argued for 30 to 40 large city regions. These are the areas which it recognised should be looked at as a whole and grouped together for the purposes of environmental services and as environmental planning areas.
I agree with the strictures which the commission made on the evidence of the Ministry. I do not think it thought the matter through and I do not believe that its proposals for having 30 or 40 unitary authorities would have worked. It would have been top-heavy. This is why I support, almost without qualifica-
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tion, the proposals in the remarkable dissenting memorandum of Mr. Senior.
It seems to me that there are at least six major distortions which will be producted by the excessive rigidity of Maud's uniform unitary principles. First, we will still be left with areas which should be planned as a whole and which will be divided between rival planning authorities. For a short period, only one year, I was a Minister of State responsible for planning. I learned a lot during that period and one of the things I learned was that nearly all the serious environmental planning problems of the country are bedevilled by the division of responsibility between planning authorities.
I think that I can say without exaggeration that most of those problems will still remain, under the Maud proposals and the Government proposals. Now they will be divided between two strong rival planning authorities, whereas at present there may be one strong and two or three rather weak ones. I am not sure whether the change will be for the better. It must be realised that it is not enough to set up a joint planning study to produce a joint plan, to get that approved and expect everything to work fine afterwards. There must be an authority with the power to take the crucial investment and other decisions to give effect to that plan. Otherwise, each democratically elected area representative must fight for his own area. This is a destructive attitude to the proper implementation of the plans.
For an example of this I need not go beyond my own constituency. One of these joint planning study reports appeared recently on the future planning of Derby and Nottingham and the Erewash Valley area. This is one of the fastest growing future conurbations in the country. It is now at the same stage of development as the Black Country was around 1900, and is growing twice as fast. It should be planned as a whole and its environmental planning should be enforced and operated by a planning authority responsible for the whole area. What does one see from the Maud and the Government proposals? The wholly anachronistic boundary is maintained between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire running down the middle of the Erewash Valley.

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There are plenty of other examples. One has only to look at Mr. Senior's report to see examples of them. I mention, in passing, the Bedford, Milton Keynes and Northampton complex; North and Central Lancashire, and so on. The argument that the unification of these areas is premature and is not so urgent as West Yorkshire and South Hampshire—and I approve of the Government's decisions on those matters—fails to recognise the time scale within which environmental planning must operate. Environmental planning is not meant to clear up the mess and mistakes of the past, but to so plan future development so that it works in favour of the future of all the people in the area. That is the first grave disadvantage.
The second is that where Maud has recognised the need to adopt areas which make sense from the point of view of environmental planning, it has to deprive its constituent town regions of the right to run their own personal services. A very clear example of this is Unit 44, as it is called, embracing Ipswich, Suffolk and North-East Essex. It is right that it should be planned as a whole from the point of view of environmental planning. But why should Ipswich, with a population of 370,000 in 1981, Colchester, with a population of 312,000 in 1981, and Bury St. Edmunds, with a population of 151,000 in 1981, be deprived of the right to run their own personal services? Two of them are well above Maud's own 250,000 minimum.
Thirdly, to achieve the minimum figure of 250,000 Maud proposes what I can only describe as some riotously incongruous forced marriages: Eastbourne and Hastings, Salisbury and Swindon. Durham and Darlington, Grimsby and Scunthorpe, Aylesbury and High Wycombe, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, Dewsbury, Wakefield and Pontefract. As Mr. Senior says, they are:
"not merely lacking in coherence; they are positively fissile."
Fourthly, for the sake of preserving historical tradition it ignores the geographic, economic and social changes that have taken place so as to render present boundaries anachronistic. Again, to give an example from my own area. The north of the county of Derbyshire in
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particular, Chesterfield and the surrounding area, belong without any shadow of doubt to the Sheffield region. The same applies to the Worksop and East Retford part of North Nottinghamshire. But this is not recognised. For historical reasons they are to remain part of Derby/Derbyshire, Nottingham/Nottinghamshire respectively. They will be separated not merely by a unitary area boundary, but by a provincial boundary area as well.
Fifthly, the adoption of Maud's unitary authorities will produce a hopeless dilemma when the time comes to determine the true functions and powers of provincial authorities. Because of the division of responsibility of environmental planning it will be necessary to give those provincial authorities the power to do the necessary job of planning. The question is: will they have power to enforce the plans? If they do not they will be a wholly ineffective planning authority merely producing the lowest common denominator, a weak compromise plan giving effect to the degree of agreement they have been able to achieve between the constituent authorities. If they do have power to enforce them, such as the building of new towns or roads or whatever it may be that each individual authority does not agree to, then the unitary principle will go out of the window. A two-tier system will result, with the two tiers being much too high up the scale.
Sixthly, the size of unitary authorities which has been adopted, again to quote Mr. Senior, "obliges them to wreck the concept of the community council". It does so by preserving the existing county borough, borough and urban district councils, deprived of all real power, as ineffectual eunuchs left to voice their peevish frustration in the name of local democracy.
I will mention briefly the things in the White Paper that I welcome. I welcome the decision about West Yorkshire and South Hampshire. I hope that in spite of what the Secretary of State has said he will be prepared to think again about other areas. I welcome the decision to give greater independence and power of decision to local authorities, including greater financial independence, and I wait their proposals in the Green Paper with great interest.

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I welcome the decision to put education in the top tier in metropolitan areas. I welcome their decision to reorganise the health service so as to conform to local authority boundaries. I think that they were probably right not to integrate them with local government at this stage, but I predict that it is a change which we shall see in our lifetime.
I very much welcome what has been said about local councils, but there was an apparent contradiction in what my right hon. Friend said just as there was a contradiction in what was said by the hon. Member for Worcester on this subject was contradictory. At one moment, he was welcoming the Maud proposal to base the local councils on existing local authorities and then, at the next, he wants to create neighbourhood units. These are two totally irreconcilable ideas.
I believe that it would be crass folly in setting up the new structure to perpetuate and maintain these existing local authorities with the sense of frustraion that they will nurse. The quicker they can be got rid of the better. Let us replace them with local councils, neighbourhood units, community councils, whatever they are called, which give a real opportunity for people to participate in the care and concern for the area in which they live, which they can understand and recognise as their own area. We see this in the parish councils in rural areas. I believe that there is a great future for the same idea in urban areas.
There is a great deal to be done and to be thought out about this matter. Therefore, I very much welcome the setting up of the Association for Neighbourhood Councils which will co-ordinate this work. I urge that this concept at least should be made to apply to London just as much as to the rest of the country.
6.48 p.m.
Mr. John M. Temple: I particularly welcome the flexible approach of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker). I feel that he has learnt, just as Lord Salisbury's Commission learnt, a great deal by moving around the country. It is a criticism of the Maud Commission that it did not move round to take evidence. I feel that had the commission done so its report might have been very different
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from that which we are discussing today.
We are tonight discussing essentially the matter of local government, by which I mean something that is really local and near to the citizens in the streets. We are discussing such matters as homes, schools, dustbins, drains, roads, rats and rates, which are very local matters indeed, and matters which should be kept as close as possible to the citizens.
I was most interested in the splendid speech of the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn), who represents a part of the County of Cheshire. There was almost nothing in his speech with which I disagreed. He was Chairman of the Standing Committee which deliberated on the Bill which became the Local Government Act, 1958. That local government reorganisation plan was fiercely opposed by the Labour Opposition. It got under way, but unfortunately the commissions were wound up, and we had the Royal Commission. I am not at all sure whether the proposals of the Maud Commission, when they are enacted, will be in anything like the form in which they have been laid before the House or as they are envisaged by the Government in the White Paper.
I should be very upset if the local councillors failed to be local. People are having to live close together in increasingly difficult circumstances as our population increases. It is important that there should be a network of local councillors on the ground in their own areas, living among their own people, and then they will be able to increase the area of understanding. Many local questions are brought to me as a Member of Parliament, and now I have recourse to the local councillors and local officials who deal with these local matters at local level. With unitary authorities, a vital link in the chain of communication will be destroyed.
The Secretary of State rather derided the present administration—not the councillors, but the system. But in West Germany, an advanced and well organised State, there are 20,000 local authorities. In the State of California there are 3,500 independent taxing authorities for a population of 20 million. Therefore, size will not be the complete answer to a more effective local administration. In

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fact, I am frightened of the sheer size of the unitary authorities.
I had the opportunity the other day to visit N.A.T.O. headquarters, in Brussels. They do not actually have walkways in N.A.T.O. headquarters, but I am sure that they have power-assisted trolleys for moving the files around! I came away wondering whether this was the shape of things to come at a unitary authority's headquarters. Would we have buck-passing and a gigantic monolithic structure covering acres and acres of ground designed for the passing of files for all the local matters which today are dealt with at local level and by local administrators who know about the circumstances of the localities and the people who live there?
Over the weekend I spoke to a very adroit administrator in the social services. He said to me something which I took to heart. He said, "If I was offered double the salary to administer an organisation double the size I would not think of taking the job, because the size of my administration is already big enough for me to operate efficiently".
I do not know how many hon. Members have studied the effects of mergers in industry. On 15th December last there was a very interesting article in the Financial Times on how mergers had worked in this country and in the United States. It said, in effect, that only one in four of the great mergers which had taken place in the United States recently and only one in nine of those in this country had brought about a more efficient organisation. I am afraid that these super-administrators who cannot be obtained even by what I call the "transworld" companies will just not be available to local government. It is in this respect that the proposed vast authorities will break down, because there are very few people who have the capacity to administer such gargantuan organisations.
I should have liked to say a few words about local government finance, but I will not do so because many hon. Members wish to speak. However, I am disappointed that the Government have done so much to wreck the rating system by not having regular revaluations.
I move to something very close to my heart, namely, the administration of local
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government in the North-West. Hon. Members have paid tribute to the county councils of Cheshire and Lancashire. Lord Redcliffe-Maud is reported to have said, when speaking at Keele on Saturday:
"The district of Cheshire was one of the things which most disturbed us."—
that is, the commission. He went on to say:
"The Commission's proposals for Cheshire may well have been wrong".
In other words, the head of the commission is having second thoughts about the proposals for Cheshire.
I cannot for the life of me understand why Lancashire County Council is to be disbanded and destroyed. The central Lancashire proposal of four authorities for 1 million people is absurd and inconsistent with the rest of the Maud Commission's recommendations. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) was right: there must be a major rethink about the reorganisation of local government in the North-West That reorganisation could be built on the firm foundations of efficient administration which already exist in Lancashire and Cheshire.
Since the last war, counties have been precluded from grouping their district councils together, otherwise long ago we should have had in Lancashire and Cheshire district councils with populations of about 100,000. That should still be our objective. It could easily be achieved on the basis of amalgamation which would probably be welcomed, and, thinking of the citizen, I would go firmly for a two-tier administration such as that envisaged by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde.
The Royal Commission did not cost its proposals or work out a pattern of divisional functions. It was not a study in depth, regretfully, which was carried out by the commission; it was what I call a very top study lacking in depth. If it wished these enormous organisations to be created, it should have gone into detail about the divisional structure which would have operated beneath the unitary authority. I am happy to say that the Cheshire County Council has commissioned a very detailed study of the costs of the Maud Commission's proposals as they will affect their area, and that study will be available next month.

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There is a case for amalgamation of units of local government but not unless there is a real affinity of interest between the town and the country districts concerned. Liverpool has been generous enough to say that it does not feel that it has a clear affinity of interest with the County of Cheshire which is envisaged in the Maud Report.
I have a few words to say about the ancient and historic County Borough of Chester, which I have the honour to represent. Under the Government's proposals, it is to be put down to the status of a local council. The people of Chester—and I imagine that this goes for the people in many county boroughs—are not amused by this proposal. They do not wish to take part in what will, in effect, be a powerless talking shop. I cannot understand how anyone can imagine that there will be in local government officers and administrators who will serve a council which has about the power of a transport users consultative committee. I believe that grouping and evolution based on sensible amalgamations of existing authorities is the basis upon which we should proceed.
I was interested when the Secretary of State spoke about the devolution of powers from central government. I thought that he was very touchy indeed about the proposals of his right hon. Friend for dictating exactly what local education authorities should do. I believe that the local authorities will have taken fright at the recent proposals of the Government about dictation in terms of the administration of their education functions. If that is a taste of what is to come, they cannot look for much real devolution of functions from this Government.
I find the Royal Commission's Report and the White Paper extremely disappointing. The proposals will not be any substitute for the personal service that we now get. In this day and age personal service is important. The impersonal is no substitute whatsoever for the local Government which we have at present.
7.1 p.m.
Mr. Dan Jones: In deference to the Chair, I intend to confine my remarks to 10 minutes and, in so doing, to confine them to my own "neck of the woods"—North-East Lancashire.
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I congratulate my right hon. Friend on accepting the Redcliffe-Maud Report in relation to North-East Lancashire. I am in the unique position on this occasion of speaking not only for the Labour Party, but for the Tory Party and for the Liberal Party, whose benches are now empty. That is an extraordinary situation which may never be repeated.
I must emphasise that the leader of the Tory Party in Burnley would utterly condemn the speech of the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) if he were as consistent in this House, if he ever got here, as he is in Burnley. There can be no doubt about that.
Not only the three political parties, but the trade unions, industrialists and commercial interests have one voice, one firm recommendation to the Minister, namely, "Get the Bill into and through the House as quickly as possible". I strongly suspect that this firm recommendation from those parties and bodies is simply because they do not trust the Tory Party, in the unhappy event of it being returned to power after the next political crunch. I can only assume that such will not be the case.
That does not mean that we have accepted either Redcliffe-Maud or the White Paper uncritically. I will mention four definite points upon which we would like some firm assurances from the Minister: first, the significance of the merging of unitary authorities; secondly, services for which special arrangements may be needed; thirdly, the significance of provincial councils; and, fourthly, local councils and the proposed district committees.
On the first point, we in North-East Lancashire do not think that the merging of Unit 21 with the West Riding of Yorkshire would be at all welcome, for some of the reasons mentioned by the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple). That identity of interest would not apply. Similarly, any merging with Blackburn would not be very welcome by either Blackburn or Burnley and North-East Lancashire. For that reason we note with approval paragraph 39, page 14, of the White Paper, which clearly states that merging will only be considered if strong local government arguments emerge. I can assure the Minister that, from what I have been able to

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deduce, I am convinced that those strong arguments will not emerge in that direction.
On the second point—reorganisation regarding services with special interests—I refer briefly to the police, water and sewerage. It must be within the knowledge of my right hon. Friend that recently the police in that part of the country were reorganised. I very much hope that whenever any further organisation is carried out it will be done only after very close consultation between the Home Office and the local authorities.
On the question of water and sewerage, we hope that similar consultation will take place between the local authorities and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.
My third point concerns provincial councils. If we are serious about directing more authority from the centre to the provinces it might be better that the responsibility should remain as much as possible with local authorities rather than with the Minister's nominees. We note that we are awaiting the Crowther Report. We hope that Crowther will report in favour of this kind of authority being wielded more and more by the local authorities rather than by the centre.
The fourth point concerns the significance of the local councils and the district committees. The belief is held that where the responsibilities are for a large authority it might be possible for district committees to operate; but where they are medium and compact, as they are in North-East Lancashire, we hold the view that that might not be so necessary.
Those are the four points upon which there are certain misgivings. They are by no means major points, but we sincerely hope that heed will be taken of them.
The hon. Member for Worcester, who thinks that this is a laughing matter—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is a relief, anyhow. If the Tories in Burnley had been listening to the hon. Member for Worcester when he made his points, there can be no doubt that he would have created intense dismay amongst them, because of the desire to preserve the sanctity of the Lancashire County Council at the expense of North-East Lancashire. The hon. Gentleman, while
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he made copious references to London and the metropolitan areas, seemed to sweep Lancashire to one side, in only a few phrases, for which there would be complete dissatisfaction in my part of the country.
When the hon. Member for Worcester was in Manchester recently, we found that his policies were utterly bankrupt of value to our part of the country. When I listened to the hon. Gentleman making his speech from the Dispatch Box I found it similarly bankrupt of value to North-East Lancashire. It will find no support amongst people there.
7.10 p.m.
Sir Lionel Heald: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for calling me after the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones). It enables me to beat his time record, because I shall deal only with one point which particularly concerns the County of Surrey in which my constituency is situated.
Paragraph 39 of the White Paper says that the Government have decided that the unitary areas proposed by the Commission are of broadly the right size and shape. It adds:
"However, the Government do not exclude the possibility of joining certain of these areas together, if in the course of further consultation with the authorities concerned strong arguments for doing so should emerge."
I was glad to hear the Secretary of State say that he was prepared to have consultations and to listen to any arguments generally and particularly about this paragraph where the matter is specifically mentioned.
The County of Surrey, according to these proposals, is to disappear, and in future it is to be known as units 53 and 54. That suggestion has caused much concern. It would not be right to go into detail now, and all I am asking now is that the people of Surrey should have an assurance that their views will be carefully considered.
The duplication that will result will be serious financially apart from anything else. Buildings constructed to deal with the whole of Surrey will have to be wholly or partly abandoned and others built. There will be complications with staff about status and more staff will be

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required. There are many other difficulties which will occur to anyone who considers the matter. There will be complications with the police, the fire brigades, and so forth. There is also the broader principle. I hope that the matter will be considered with an open mind.
We have the benefit of the views of Mr. Longland, a member of the Commission, who expressed the clear view that the severing of Surrey required careful consideration. His reasons were related to education, and again I must not go into detail.
I have made all such inquiries as I could. This is not just a question of the amour proper of those who serve on the county council so well. The people of Surrey are very concerned. I hope and believe that we can leave it in the hands of the Secretary of State to see that careful consideration is given to all the views expressed.
7.16 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: I am a little distressed that there does not seem to be in the House tonight the sense or urgency for the need for change which I think is really warranted by the situation. There are a whole range of views and arguments which we are all bound to have and many of them have been expressed. What would be most unfortunate would be if we all appeared to be saying that we accepted the need for change and then made it clear that we wanted to keep a great deal of what is at present causing a lot of our difficulties and do not will the means of carrying out the change. We do face the need for major change.
The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) was congratulated on making a flexible speech, but I do not know whether that is enough. I am all in favour of flexibility in the right place, but I like to see a fairly clear and positive lead and a sense of real urgency. I am not yet satisfied that we have it and I very much fear that in the unfortunate event of the return of a Conservative Government a great deal of the whole of the exciting possibilities of change and development would be dropped.
Although I have criticisms to make of the White Paper proposals, they constitute a very major improvement over
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the present situation and I would certainly be willing to accept them rather than go back to "muddling on" with the position as it stands today. We must, therefore, make quite clear what alternatives we have if we make criticisms.
I share some of the views of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot) and some of his anxieties. I feel that a number of our problems would have been more satisfactorily solved had we accepted the need to establish at least the beginning of a provincial authority with the kind of responsibilities set out in the Maud Report. I should have also wished it to be some kind of appeal body—an elected body I would have said—at a provincial level which could have performed the appeal function from the lower-tier most purpose authority as it would have been.
One would then have a great deal more flexibility about the size of the most purposes authority that would be carrying out the greater proportion of the functions now suggested for the unitary authority. As it is, I agree with my hon. and learned Friend that there is something a little too rigid about the structure of the unitary authorities as they are put forward. I accept completely that at least the proposals bring a great deal more clarity and that there will be far more comprehension about such a system than we have at present.
There can be no real question about this. I want my local government to be efficient as well as democratic and I do not believe that one contradicts the other. The great bulk of people are desperately eager that our local government should be a great deal more efficient than it often is today. We are mistaken if we take our views about local government entirely—although this is natural enough—from those who are deeply involved in it themselves.
There are many others who do not exhibit all that great enthusiasm or belief that it is really expressing a great modern democratic rôle. We have only to look at the number of people who vote and the great difficulty experienced in getting people to stand for local government today to see the need for change.
I was interested to hear my right hon. Friend the Minister laying a great deal of

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stress upon the importance of combining urban and rural areas for planning purposes and saying how vital that was. I completely agree with him, but I also emphasise—as I am bound to do coming from the North-East—that that is a place where this principle has not been carried out either in the Maud Report or in the White Paper. There, we have established a complete isolation of the urban area of Tyneside from the rural Northumberland. That is a pity and some way must be found of overcoming that difficulty.
I lay most stress on what I believe to be an important opportunity for developing new channels for democratic expression at the grass roots. It is what are sometimes called local councils. They are far better called neighbourhood councils, for that name makes a clear distinction between the councils which may be left as relics of the old system when the changes are made and the new bodies which will offer new opportunities for local expression.
I doubt whether it is wise to base them initially, or even temporarily, upon the old town halls and local authority structures. I immediately see the difficulty in a city like Sheffield. I, too, doubt whether we can expect to get from such a base the new concept of participation that we want. Many people are eager to play a part at local level and take a genuine interest in local affairs, but do not necessarily want to commit themselves to whole-time membership of a vast organisation in the structure of local government. They want to take an active part in their own local affairs and they can be given the opportunity to do so through the development of neighbourhood councils.
On balance, I believe that it is right that these councils should be elected. I am a little more uncertain whether it is wise for them to be able to send representatives to the new district committees. I am a little anxious lest these new committees fall into the sort of difficulties which education and other bodies of which we have experience have found. Far from it being difficult to recruit people for this kind of limited rôle, I think that there will be many who will be glad to play a part in the local affairs with which they are closely associated.
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We had the experience of parish councils in rural areas, and not only in rural areas. A number of parish councils are now actively operating on the outskirts of, if not actually in, urban areas as towns develop, and these are among the most active and lively. They have no problem about getting people to serve, and they do a useful job.
I see no reason to discount the possibility of spreading this principle more widely through our towns. This might begin to break down some of the cynicism and doubt about the value of the functioning of our local and national democracy, and it may bring in a new sense of liveliness and vigour. Like others, I welcome the establishment of a body to help to promote this concept of grass roots democracy and able to make its voice heard locally and to do much for local communities.
The hon. Member for Worcester complained that the Government were proposing that local authorities should have wider powers while, at the same time, they proposed to take powers from local government in specific areas, such as education. This is a conflict affecting all of us. I am not sure that it was not the hon. Member himself who, not long ago, vigorously campaigned for rent rebate schemes to be made mandatory on local authorities, a proposal which was resisted by the Government side on the ground that this was a matter in which local option should be retained. We will always have these conflicts. It is no use flinging criticisms across the Floor of the Chamber; this is a conflict which must be resolved practically.
I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has included in his White Paper a useful comment about the future administration of our national parks. Now that we are beginning to pay more attention to the whole problem of environment, I am delighted that at long last there is some hope that our national parks will be what we originally intended them to be when we set them up many years ago.
7.25 p.m.
Sir Tatton Brinton: The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) is one of the few speakers who, on the whole, have welcomed the Redcliffe-Maud Report. I have kept

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careful check and I think that the majority opinion on both sides of the House is that the Maud proposals would produce a form of local government too remote and much too impersonal. What we are all asking for, some of us rather vaguely, is a two-tier system throughout the country.
I strongly support what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker), that in any case the Maud Report accepted two-tier government for 42 per cent. of the population. If it is reasonable to have two-tier authorities within the scope of the metropolitan areas, is it not equally possible for other areas?
I am not qualified, and not many of us would claim to be, to produce an overall plan for the whole country, but I should like to refer to the area about which I know something—where I live and where my constituency lies. We are faced with a problem which is not common to all the areas represented by other hon. Members who have spoken. We are largely a rural area with moderate sized or small towns, and it is proposed to include the area in a metropolitan area.
The whole of North-West Worcestershire, consisting of most of my constituency and virtually the whole of the constituency of Bromsgrove—and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Dance) shares my sentiments—the rim round the lower part of the great conurbation which contains Birmingham and new Black Country boroughs, is to be taken over, reft away from its traditional association with Worcestershire, and added to the conurbation. The same is true of a large part of mid-Staffordshire, a rural area containing some very fine farming land.
The total population of these two areas to be included under the Maud proposals would be about one-fifth of the population of the conurbation. It is clear that the largely country dwellers who are to go into this metropolitan area will be completely outnumbered when it comes to the exercise of any powers which the area as a whole may have. The only way in which they will be masters of their own fate is in the administration of those powers which may be delegated to the lower-tier authority.
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Obviously, the conurbations have considerable problems. Much has been made in the Maud Report itself and in the White Paper of the interdependence of town and country. This is either a tendentious statement made for certain specific purposes, or merely a truism. We are all dependent on one another, but that does not mean that we all have to wear the same clothes, or the fat man and the thin man would all be wearing the same sized suits.
The principles on which the boundaries are laid down are given in the Maud Report. First, there is the pattern of living. Second, there is the question of efficiency versus representation. Third, there is the present pattern of local government. In North-West Worcestershire all three criteria would be equally well met by including that area in the proposed unitary authority of Worcestershire and Herefordshire, as they would be by putting that area into the metropolitan authority. That is from the point of view of the inhabitants of the area.
We must, therefore, look for some other reason why interdependence here should be interpreted as the interdependence of North-West Worcestershire with Birmingham and the Black County, rather than with its natural home, which is Worcester. There are two towns with which we could be regarded as being interdependent, and as one who has lived all his life in North-West Worcestershire I look to Worcester as our natural and spiritual home much more than to Birmingham. Given the present difficulties of travel, getting in and out of Birmingham is quite an adventure for everybody.
There is some other motive, and it is plain to see, though it is dodged throughout the Maud Report and in the White Paper. The real reason is that the metropolitan areas must have attached to them some unwilling slaves in the form of rural areas, because the metropolitan areas must have an expansion area to enable them to solve their housing problem. It is this to which we strongly object. This is not to say that the areas surrounding a metropolitan area should shirk their responsibility to assist in the problem of overspill from the conurbations. They must help, but they must do so in a way in which they will be represented in the negotiations

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by authorities who speak with an equally powerful voice to that of the conurbations, and not from a position in which they are the captives, to be dictated to by the conurbations.
The obvious result of the proposals for North-West Worcestershire is that the long-defended green belt, which the Worcestershire County Council has endeavoured to keep to prevent the urban sprawl spreading southwards and ultimately engulfing the northern Worcestershire towns, will disappear, and become, as was made clear by certain indiscreet statements by members of the Birmingham City Council, a wonderful building site for the houses which Birmingham wishes to build.
I contend that the only proper solution to the housing problem of the great conurbations is that new houses must be exported a reasonable distance from the conurbation. The alternative must be a spread at the edges, so that the conurbations gradually extend like an oil slick over the surrounding country. The built-up area becomes larger and larger, and more unmanageable. Rather than that, the surplus population ought to be moved well away from the conurbation and housed in new or expanded towns well away from the conurbation. The alternative is to turn Birmingham and the Black Country into a London and South-West Lancashire into a solid urban mass corresponding with it.
It is not only against the interests of the rural areas to hand them over bound hand and foot, but also against the interests of good planning. This is not to deny the obvious truism about the interdependence of town and country, but the problems of a moderate-sized town such as Kidderminster, or Worcester, or Evesham, or any other of the moderate-sized Worcestershire towns, are entirely different, both in scale and type, from the problems facing the conurbations. These towns will not suddenly expand by one, two, or three miles at a leap in 18 months or two years. They will spread gently, and they can be accommodated easily in their surrounding country areas with the necessary housing land. It is the conurbations which present a special and different problem, and it should be regarded in a different light.
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It is a false analogy to say that because it is reasonable to form a viable lower-tier authority out of, say, Kidderminster, Bewdley, Stourport and their surrounding rural districts, therefore the conurbation should have surrounding country areas attached to it. North-West Worcestershire can provide the expansion area for its own towns, but should not be left to bear the conurbation's expansion alone with mid-Staffordshire. This is a matter for all the surrounding counties up to 50 miles from the edge of the conurbation to solve.
Without accepting the Maud Report, because I do not on the whole, I veer very much towards a general two-tier system, but I should like to hear arguments and to see an alternative plan. In the meantime, even within the context of the Maud Report, I protest most strongly on behalf of my area, and, indeed, on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove, and also to an extent or behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maude). We all feel the same about this. We wish to protest, for the message which is coming loud and clear from North Worcestershire to the Government and to the author of the report is, "Stay out of our garden, Maud."
7.36 p.m.
Mr. R. C. Mitchell: It is a tribute to the courage of the Government that the White Paper has appeared at all. Courage was not the word used by some of my right hon. Friend's supporters last weekend after they read the White Paper. The reform of local government is long overdue. The first Labour Government ducked it in 1949, and Conservative Government ducked it during their period of office.
Unlike my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot), I support basically the philosophy both in the Maud Report and in the White Paper. In other words, I support the unitary principle. I must declare a bias here. This is not surprising, because I spent 13 years as a councillor in a county borough, an all-purpose authority, and naturally one likes what one knows best.
I am convinced about the worth of the unitary principle, and it was, therefore, rather a shock when I saw that one way in which the Government had

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departed from the Maud Report was in respect of the area which I represent, South Hampshire. The Maud Report recommended two unitary authorities, whereas the White Paper combines these two in a metropolitan area. At first sight, I was rather horrified, but I confess that, having given this more thought, and having got down to rather more detail, I think that the Government have made their case for a metropolitan authority in South Hampshire.
Having said that, I should like, briefly, to examine the size of the second-tier authority. Where the proposals in the White Paper go wrong is that they recommend that there should be only three second-tier authorities under the whole South Hampshire metropolitan area. It recommends the two unitary authorities which the Maud Report proposes, with the Isle of Wight outside as a third.
The unitary authority for the Southampton area is too large to be a second-tier authority. What we need in South Hampshire—and I hope that the Government will remain flexible about this—is five lower-tier authorities. Southampton should be one, Portsmouth another, at least two in Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight as the fifth. I hope that the Government have not closed their mind about the number of second-tier authorities.
I was surprised that some of my colleagues argued last weekend that if we were to have the metropolitan area why must we have second-tier authorities at all. They seem to think that the powers left to second-tier authorities in the White Paper are not sufficient to justify them. I dispute that. When one looks at Appendix C of the White Paper, one sees that second-tier authorities, even with education coming out, will have a great deal of work to do. The Government are right to depart from the Maud recommendation and to place education in the top-tier authority.
There is one more thing that I urge on the Government. Now, when they are considering local government reorganisation, let us consider the future of higher education. I define higher education as education where most of the courses are full-time over the age of 18. I am not convinced that the unitary authority, or even the metropolitan area, should be responsible for higher
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education. It is possible that when the new provinces are set up higher education, including universities, will be passed to them on a regional basis.
Alternatively, I would like to see all higher education taken away from local authorities and financed in the same way as are universities. A recommendation of this kind was made by the Select Committee on Education and Science last Session, but the House has not yet had the opportunity of debating its report.
I turn to certain proposals which have hardly been mentioned. They are dealt with in the White Paper in paragraphs 74 to 87. The points that I am able to raise may be of lesser importance than the ones about which we have been talking, but they will create tremendous amount of local discussion and disagreement. Paragraph 76 refers to the Government's agreeing to the abolition of aldermen. I have never been an alderman, so I can speak with an open mind. I believe that they are among the most maligned people in local government.
There is a case for electing a group of people at less frequent intervals than those at which councillors are elected, in order to provide the continuity necessary in a local authority. Most aldermen perform a valuable job. They are apt to consider the council as a whole, rather than from the point of view of the ward they represent. I hope that the Government will reconsider the question of aldermen.
Paragraph 79 deals with the expenses of councillors and the question whether or not they should be paid. There was much controversy when the chairman of the G.L.C. finance committee announced that he was resigning his job because it took up too much time. He thought that he should be paid £5,000 a year. That is utterly absurd. It indicates what I believe to be prevalent among local government representatives, namely, that too many councillors are trying to do the jobs of their local officials. I do not believe that even the chairman of a powerful committee of the G.L.C. needs to spend all his time in his job. If he does, it is clear that he is doing the job of his officials.
Mr. Martin Maddan: How does the hon. Member square what he

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is saying with the recommendation that the chairman of area health boards should be paid £3,250?
Mr. Mitchell: I am not arguing about the chairmen of area health boards. That is another issue. I want to continue with my theme. If the hon. Member will wait he may find that I come to a conclusion different from that which he expected.
The idea that being a councillor is a full-time job and, therefore, paid a full-time salary, is wrong. I suspect that some Conservative young business men getting on to councils thought that they could run their councils in the same way as they ran their business and interfered too much with the work of their local officials.
Nevertheless, there is a case for paying a relatively small salary. I do not want to fix a figure—it would vary according to the size of the authority—but it could be between £1,000 or £1,500 a year, and could be paid to a limited number of chairmen in the larger authorities, who spend much more time than most of their colleagues in local government work. But it should not be thought of as a career job, with a salary of £5,000 or £6,000 a year. That is nonsense.
It is also important that the right relationship should be established between the chief officers and the councillors. Local government service has produced some first-class officers. If a chief officer is doing his job properly—and most of them are—he should be producing policy documents for consideration by his chairman. He should not wait until the chairman says, "What would you do about so and so?" He anticipates the chairman's views. I suspect that at this moment many civil servants in the main Ministries are studying the speeches of the Leader of the Opposition and other Front Bench speakers and drawing up plans which they will lock up securely in their bottom drawers. Assuming that there is an October election, I imagine that those documents will be used to light the pipes of the Permanent Secretaries during the dark winter months—whichever party wins the General Election.
I very much welcome the proposal for setting up a number of local ombudsmen. Many hon. Members, on being asked by their constituents to send cases on to
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the ombudsman, have found that those cases do not come within his remit, because they are connected with local authority affairs. I am not convinced of the advisability of providing that all complaints should be routed through councillors. There is a case for providing that some complaints should be allowed to go to the 10 or 12 ombudsmen via Members of Parliament.
On the whole, I welcome the philosophy behind the White Paper and I pay tribute to the courage of the Government in bringing it forward. I hope that the debate will ensure that whichever Government wins the next General Election will go ahead with much-needed local government reform.
7.47 p.m.
Mr. Peter Kirk: This has been something of a two-tier debate—one tier being the parish pump, working fast, and the other being concerned with the much more difficult problem of how to organise local government generally. I suppose it is inevitable that we should all fall for the temptation of trying to straddle these two mutually contradictory things. It is right that my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple) should defend the interests of Chester, but it is difficult to do so if one is also trying to envisage long-range, deep-rooted local government reform. I do not want to fall into that trap tonight.
Nevertheless, there is one parish pump point which I can make and which the Secretary of State may appreciate. It bears on the general case that I wish to put forward. It is rather a remarkable thing—I do not know whether any other hon. Member is in the same position—but if this reform goes through with the boundaries proposed in the Redcliffe-Maud Report my constituency will be divided into no fewer than four of the new unitary authorities. Taking a fairly closely-knit community in North Essex and proceeding to carve it into four in order to fit into a new scheme indicates to me that something is wrong. It seems to be ignoring the need for people to feel a sense of identity in local government. I find no reference to such a need in the White Paper.
The problem of identity is one of the root causes of the disease about which

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we are talking. What is wrong with local government? Why are we trying to reform it? It is not just because the present pattern was laid down in 1888 and that it is time for an overhaul. There is something seriously wrong, as is reflected by the few people who vote in local elections and the fact that more and more local councillors become frustrated and more and more local government officers leave the service. One thing which we should have been considering today and have perhaps not considered enough is what the disease is and whether this is the cure.
The disease, I think, is that we have a local government system which, at its effective level, which is roughly the county borough-county council level, is too remote from the electorate and yet too weak to cope with the central Government and its encroaching power, particularly financial power. I am afraid that the solution of Lord Redcliffe-Maud which the Government have adopted will not cure this disease. The unitary system is neither strong enough to stand up to the central Government nor small enough for people in the local areas to identify with.
I would even be prepared to accept a two-tier system based on Maud; it is better than the present proposal. I cannot understand the logic of the Secretary of State's proposition that those areas which have the most need of local identity, that is, those which are not closely knit metropolitan areas, are the ones to which he denies a second tier. This is wholly illogical. But even if we gave all the unitary authorities a second tier, we should not be curing the disease.
The only answer is that one mentioned by the hon. and learned Member for Derby, North (Mr. MacDermot) and the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) and the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop)—some form of provincial system. The one good thing in Maud, which was the proposal for a primitive form of provincial or regional government, is the one thing which the Government have dropped. They may be right to say that they cannot take a decision on this until they have the Crowther Report, but in that case there can be no logical decision on anything until then. But I do not believe this. After all, Crowther is trying to sort out problems
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which are not local government problems in England but, much more, nationalist problems in Scotland and Wales. Neither of these is affected by the Maud Report.
It is perfectly possible, in the light of what Maud has recommended, for the Government to decide one way or another now on a provincial or regional solution to this problem. I will not argue tonight exactly how I would like to see it, although it is important that any solution on these lines must be an elective and not an appointive solution. As the Secretary of State himself said, more and more power has had to devolve on to irresponsible—I use the word in its purest sense: they are not responsible to any elected body—councils, boards, divisions and God knows what, all of which tend to be on a regional and not a local basis. These are hospital boards, gas boards, water boards; even the police are now developing along these lines.
The boundaries at the moment may not happen to coincide between the various authorities, but there is no doubt that the tendency over a whole area in regional and other planning and the functions I mentioned is towards bigger units than we have at present, but smaller than the central Government. This is a natural development and one which any Government, of whatever party—I did not set any great enthusiasm for such a solution from my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) either—must take into account.
I do not see how this House or the Government responsible to this House can take a decision on principle of the kind which they are asking the House to take by approving the White Paper, until we know precisely what they have in mind for eventual provincial and regional development. I do not believe, and would have to be convinced, that we have to wait for Crowther. It is possible that a decision in principle on the need for some regional reorganisation can be taken and must be taken before anything else can be seen to fall into place.
If we took that decision and transmitted to a larger unit, of which there would be, say, eight or nine in England, these wider powers, we could then have a second tier, which would make much more sense in terms of identity, popular participation. Then, too, we could

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tackle the thorny question of finance, which will not be solved even on this unitary system. Then we can consider other methods of financing local government. The rates may be one of them, although I hope not, because they are a retrogressive and backward form of taxation. Then we could cope with these other methods.
What we are trying to do now, if we approve the White Paper, is to destroy an identity, which may be tenuous but which nevertheless exists, and substitute for it something which is purely artificial in nearly every case—certainly in the case of my constituency—and give it powers which are allotted, in the metropolitan areas, it seems, almost on a lottery basis. This is wholly wrong. The danger is not so great that we cannot wait, if we have to wait, for the Crowther Report, which may be another year or two. I would much rather do that. If we cannot wait, I would rather that the Government made up their minds that the only way to decide this matter is to decide what the first tier should be: then the second tier would fall into line.
7.55 p.m.
Mr. Denis Coe: The debate has already shown that whatever solution the Government had put forward would have had its critics, and many of them. I therefore congratulate them on having had the courage to bring forward a solution. I have some criticisms, as my right hon. Friend would expect, but on the whole I welcome the general approach which they have taken.
I say that despite what I could gather from the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker). I listened to him, their chief spokesman, carefully, but got nothing which added up to a policy on local government reform. I asked the hon. Gentleman what he would do about Selnec. He had already told us that he was anxious that Lancashire County Council should remain and he said that he would deal with my question later—but he conspicuously refused to do so. So we do not know what they feel about these metropolitan areas and the surrounding areas. One is bound to go into surrounding counties, so there are two questions on which we got no information.
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On local councils, we were told that they would have to be rationalised but were given no figures, so we have no indication from the party opposite as to how many such councils they are talking about and, therefore, we cannot judge what services they would have to run. Perhaps the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Chataway) will answer these questions. They talk about being the next Government, but they must be rather more forthcoming and not quite so flexible about their intentions.
On one or two points, I fully agree with the White Paper. First, I am very pleased that aldermen will disappear from local government. My hon. Friend is worried about this, and I was horrified to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. R. C. Mitchell) support them. This bastion against democracy, as it was when aldermen were introduced in the 19th century, can no longer be justified. People do not disappear overnight from councils when there is an election, except very rarely. There is an element of seniority and continuity. I see no reason why we should keep aldermen in the present form.
I welcome also the Government's intention to do something about the disqualification provision for councils. I am thinking particularly of people like teachers who for many years have been prevented from serving on councils when they should fairly and properly have been able to do so.
I am glad that the Government have supported the management proposals of the Maud Report. Councils should eventually deal specifically with policy and the problems of intimate detail can be left with the chief officials. That is their job, for which they are paid, and they should be properly left to do it. I also welcome the local ombudsman proposal. This is a magnificent step forward in giving people a knowledge that their local grievances can be dealt with as they now are at a national level.
I hope that the Government will agree that, on election, all councillors are retired together, that councillors should sit for single member divisions and that elections should take place for all the main authorities on the same day. I also welcome their agreement that there should be greater financial responsibility

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for local authorities; and I am looking forward to the Green Paper on Finance. All these facts together add up to a considerable reform in themselves. Therefore, the Government are to be congratulated on taking such steps.
I have, however, detected during the debate a tendency by some hon. Members to talk about local government in somewhat idyllic terms, as though the grass-roots democracy is marvellous and we must see it purely in these terms, when, if we face what is happening in local government, there is quite a lot wrong with it. I do not need to go over this because at the start of his speech this afternoon my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State clearly demonstrated the faults which exist.
That does not deny the enormous contribution which local councillors have made, and are making, to the local government system. It is fairly obvious, however, that what the people want above all else is to know that the services which are being run by local authorities are efficient. This inevitably means that the local authorities have to be of a size that can support those services. They must also be of a size that will attract officers of high quality to run them. They must be of a sort that will be relevant to the people. In other words, there must be a democratic element to them.
All this inevitably leads to the creation of much larger local authorities. We may regret that some of the local democracy has to disappear, but the fact remains that if we are to run effective local government services of the size we want, we must have fairly large authorities. Therefore, I welcome the Government's general approach in advocating large authorities.
My difficulty, like that of one or two other hon. Members, concerns the provincial councils. I agree that the Government cannot come to a final decision on provincial councils until the Crowther Commission has reported; and as my right hon. Friend said, much of the Crowther proposals will be concerned with transfer of central Government powers to the regions rather than the other way round.
The fact remains that the Maud recommendations are to the effect that
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the provincial councils should have at least some control over matters like further education, specialist education, child care, cultural and recreational services, which I should regard as local authority matters. If one takes up the point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mr. MacDermot) concerning the whole question of planning, one then has a level of government which is extremely important. I would have thought that the Crowther Report would come to this sort of suggestion.
Furthermore, the White Paper accepts that special arrangements may be needed for such services as police, fire, passenger transport authorities, water, national parks and the youth employment service. All these are other services which have still to find their proper niche in the disposition of services operated by local authorities. That suggests to me that the Government must remain flexible over the whole question of regional authorities, whether or not they are called provincial councils. There must be at that level a commitment that certain overall services will be run by something like a regional authority. I hope that the Government will take this into account.
In spite of my right hon. Friend's answers concerning the metropolitan areas to my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) and myself, when he introduced the White Paper on 4th February, that there would not be any more metropolitan areas, I hope that the Government will be flexible on this question, too. Certainly, they have increased the number from three to five.
I apologise to my hon. Friends from Tyneside if I say as a Geordie who does not live there any more, and whose late father was mayor of one of the North-East county boroughs, that I believe that Tyneside also must be a metropolitan area. It is nonsense to carve out of Tyneside the centre piece on either side of the River Tyne—the Tyneside unitary area—and separate it from Northumberland. That is administrative nonsense. Perhaps I had better say no more about that, however, because I am treading on an area which is not now my own. I mention it purely as a principle. Those who wish to read a very good account of why

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Tyneside should be a metropolitan area should read the Minority Report of Mr. Derek Senior, who puts the case far better than I am able to do.
My own area will be part of Selnec. It follows that I agree with the overall structure of a two-tier authority in that area but, there is some extraordinary reasoning as to which area goes with which. I do not have four areas; I am split into three. The Redcliffe-Maud Report says that 10,000 people in Middleton work in Manchester. Chadderton has links with Oldham. Some people in Middleton have links with Chadderton. Therefore, it is said, Middleton should go with Oldham. If hon. Members can work that one out, I cannot. I have yet to find anyone in my constituency who wants to join Oldham, with due respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp). Again, therefore, the allocation of the metropolitan districts needs attention.
Three points, therefore, seem to me to be important. First, early clarification is needed of the powers of the provinces or regions. Secondly, there must be the possibility of more metropolitan authorities. Thirdly, there is a need for redrawing some of the boundaries in the metropolitan districts. Looking ahead to the Report of the Crowther Commission, this suggests certain guidelines, which may not commend themselves to others but seem to me to make sense.
In my view, the establishment of provinces is essential, both to take on certain central Government functions and to carry out the sort of tasks planned for it by the Royal Commission. I also visualise the provinces assuming powers such as control of services like passenger transport authorities, water and, possibly, even fire and police. I should also give them responsibility for full-time further education, including the universities, which I do not suppose will be a popular suggestion, but one would then have a major top authority with major services. In my view, these authorities should be directly elected and should have powers of co-option.
If the proposed metropolitan areas were then enlarged, it would be possible to make the top-tier authority—the metropolitan authority—into a province. Thus, instead of having eight provinces, one could have as many as 13 or 14 if
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all the others are included. There might have to be slight alteration in the allocation of services in that type of metropolitan area, but this could be worked out. It would provide a logical pattern of local government structure.
It would also help to meet the objections of county councils, such as the Lancashire County Council, which have pointed out that outside the metropolitan area in the Selnec region, the unitary areas would not be strong enough to carry out all their tasks. Under my proposal, Selnec would be enlarged and become a province. If the North-East was similarly enlarged, it could extend from the northern border of Northumberland even to include Tees-side.
Mr. Ted Leadbitter Mr. Ted Leadbitter (The Hartlepools) indicated dissent.
Mr. Coe: I am not surprised at that reaction from my hon. Friend.
I end by saying a word about the local councillors. I commend to the House the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, who dealt with the problem of local councils, or community councils, as he called them. Here we have to do a great deal of work. Like other hon. Members, I welcome the establishment of the body which is to look into this matter.
What the people want are effective channels through which their views are brought to the notice of elected representatives and opportunities to serve on bodies which affect their everyday lives and those of their families. There is here an exciting new concept for the community councils. I welcome this and I hope that we follow it through. We need new structures and I am glad that that is happening.
Much will depend on how we can get this whole concept of local government across to the electorate. It is desperately important that we do.
I echo the view that there must be a sense of urgency. We cannot afford to want any longer. The structure is out of date, and we must face that fact and get on with the restructuring as best we can. We pay tribute to those who have worked in local government: the future of the new authorities will be desperately dependent on the quality of those whom

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we attract into them. We must also very soon face the whole question of their payment, and not run away from it as we may have done in the past.
I congratulate the Government on their courage in going ahead, but I ask them to be a little more flexible. In considering this White Paper, I ask them to put a few more green edges to it so that they do not get to a state of being absolutely and firmly attached to one point of view. I ask them to realise that they can afford a little more time to listen to further views. I am sure that as a result of a little more discussion we shall get a structure of local government of which the country will be proud for many years to come.
8.11 p.m.
Mr. David Price: Two points, if I may sum up, have so far emerged in the debate. First, every hon. and right hon. Member who has spoken agrees with Lord Maud and his colleagues when they say:
"…local government in England needs a new structure and a new map."
From that point on, agreement ceases; each of us has his own idea of the new structure and the new map.
But I think that everyone who has spoken wants a two-tier system. There are those who want the 42 per cent. metropolitan area two-tier structure suggested by Maud applied to the whole country, and there are others who want a two-tier structure but on a more provincial basis for the top tier.
I suggest that we have a little too simply accepted the 10 general principles in the report, and I want to question just two of them. The second principle reads:
"The areas must be based upon the interdependence of town and country."
It all depends on what one means by interdependence, and how far one takes it. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Sir T. Brinton) made a very fair point when he said that in respect of a rather small town and the surrounding countryside we agree on the idea of interdependence, but he drew a distinction between that position and the interdependence of a major conurbation and the surrounding country.
As I read the logic of the Royal Commission's principles, here we would be
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driven to the conclusion that the area covered by the G.L.C. is quite inadequate. For instance, the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Chataway) who commute to London should come into the G.L.C. Following the logic of interdependence we would have a G.L.C. of a minumum of 50 miles radius round London. If we applied that standard to the major conurbations we could settle the whole thing now, have about six G.L.C.s, and that would be that. I do not believe that to be the right solution.
I also challenge the commission's fifth general principle:
"If possible, both the environmental and the personal groups of services should be in the hands of the same authority, because the influence of one on the other is great and likely to increase."
There is, of course, an interconnection, but if we accept that they must for efficiency and democracy be run together there is no hope of second tiers.
I believe that this is the point of break. Many of those who have spoken today have emphasised the need of the personal services being as close as possible to the citizen. So I do not accept that principle of Maud.
The other matter which is absolutely determinating is local government finance. I disagree with the Secretary of State when he says that it can follow from reorganisation. With great respect, I suggest that one cannot talk sensibly about the reform and reorganisation of local government without talking about—to use the proper word for it—local taxation.
If any hon. Members feel that the simple solution is that the Exchequer should pay even more, let me remind them that the Exchequer already pays, according to Maud, 57 per cent.—let us call it 60 per cent. If we want more local democracy, by one device or another local authorities must be capable of raising more of their own revenue.
It is, therefore, no answer to say increase, percentagewise, the Exchequer contribution because, inevitably, however wise and beneficent Ministers and senior officials are, with an increasing percentage of local government revenue coming from the Exchequer they are bound to interfere more. That is an inevitable rule of life. Therefore, however we restructure our local government

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to make it more local and more selreliant, we cannot dodge the questio of local finance. I believe that the rating system has virtually come to the limit of its flexibility in what it can bear in terms of the domestic ratepayer. To discuss local government reform without having proposals for the reform of local government taxation is like attempting to act the Prince of Denmark without Hamlet.
We can appreciate that by looking at the product of 1d. rate in any of out areas. I can illustrate what that means by reference to my constituency, where I have the New Forest R.D., in which 1d. rate produces £17,700. At the other end of the scale, I have the ancient Borough of Romsey, where the product is £1,500. That sort of spread in the product of 1d. rate must influence the restructuring of local government.
If we are to implement the restructuring of local government along the lines of Maud, modified by the White Paper, I see no reason for provinces. I believe that there was an alternative approach to local government, at which I think the hon. and learned Member for Derby North (Mr. MacDermot) hinted, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Waldon (Mr. Kirk), whereby one could imagine 14 or 15 provinces and, below them, nearly all most-purpose authorities
We could have done it in that way, but if we are to implement the restructuring along the broad lines of Maud, whether by extending the number of metropolitan regions on the two-tier structure or by unitary areas, I do not believe that there is room for a provincial tier coming in between. I therefore strongly recommend the Government to ask Lord Crowther and his colleagues not to look at provincialism in England: the problems of Scotland and Wales are of an entirely different order.
All of us inevitably look at the Maud recommendations and the White Paper in terms of our own part of the country. This is not pure parochialism; it is just that we know how the system works in our own area. I believe that, by implication, we have been accepting too easily that what we have is bad and that any change would be for the good. In my part of the country things work much
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better than some critics of the system would have us believe.
Lord Maud's criticism of county boroughs and counties as being in a permanent state of hostility is just not true. In my area, we have the interdependence of the fire services between cities and counties. I also quote the work that we in Hampshire have been doing with our colleagues in Portsmouth and Southampton on the South Hampshire Study, which is a unique effort between adjacent local authorities not only in co-operation, but in thinking ahead. So do not let us think that merely because we have common problems we must, if I can use the language of industry, look for a provincial Arnold Weinstock to take us all over.
In South Hampshire, I am glad that the Government have seen the light. May I be one of the few hon. Members who has spoken so far in this debate to praise the Secretary of State? He has seen the light and we have been given a two-tier structure in South Hampshire which is very much better than that proposed by Lord Maud and his colleagues.
One of the very important benefits of having a top-tier structure for the whole of South Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is that it is possible to plan the water resources of the Solent, Southampton and Portsmouth Harbour as a whole. While we are now more concerned and interested in conservation and the quality of life, it is very important to improve the whole planning and conservation of that part of the country. But I have, unfortunately, to make one or two criticisms on other proposals and I hope that they will be rectified.
I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. R. C. Mitchell) that if we are to have a metropolitan area for South Hampshire and the Isle of Wight it is ridiculous on the mainland to leave the two Maud authorities which are now to be only second-tier authorities. There is the Maud Unit 57—thank goodness we can call ourselves Hampshire and not Unit 57—where the population in 1981 will be 559,000 and this is proposed as a second-tier authority. Unit 58, the Portsmouth one, will have an even larger population, 731,000. I seriously counsel the Secretary of State

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that we need at least five or six second-tier authorities, the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, Southampton, and three others.
There is an opportunity to re-examine the geography. The good Lord Maud and his colleagues took complete leave of their senses when they suggested that the New Forest should be divided in half. Not only did they say that it should be cut into two different units, but into different provinces, so that Brockenhurst went to Bournemouth and into the South-West province. Lyndhurst three miles away, would be put into Southampton, which itself would be in the South-East province and include 40 per cent. of the population of England. If that is not recreating the heptarchy it is recreating the ancient Danish hegemony.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman and the Parliamentary Secretary will look at the problem of Andover, stuck away to the north, and why Basingstoke is stuck in with Berkshire. There is palpable nonsense in the Maud Report when it says:
"This area as a whole has relatively few economic links with the rest of Hampshire, and is more associated with Reading and nearby areas in Berkshire."
That is just untrue. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will write to me to explain on what factual basis that statement was made.
On the proposals for South Hampshire, we need to have a good look at the division of functions between the top-tier and the second tier. More functions should go to the second tier. When in doubt, give them to the second tier. Will the Minister of Housing and Local Government explain this, because I cannot tell my constituents whether, under the White Paper proposals for the County of Hampshire or any other county where there is a three-tier structure upon which the local councils are to be based, parish councils or R.D.C.s are to go—or are both to carry on?
Finally, there is the little matter of the wishes of the people. No hon. Member has so far drawn attention to paragraph 53 of the White Paper where, speaking of local councils, these felicitous words appear:
"full regard must be paid to the wishes of the local inhabitants."
That is splendid, but I ask four questions. Is this happy democratic thought to be
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limited to local councils, or are the wishes of the local inhabitants to be applied to the whole of the White Paper proposals? If they are Ministers might be surprised at the result they would get. If not, why not? How will this pious intention be implemented? Are the Government to use their researchers from the social survey to do sample polls? Are there to be elections? Is it to be like local option in Wales for Sunday opening? If the result of paying full regard to the wishes of the local inhabitants is, as I expect it would be in most parts of the country, against the White Paper, where do the Government go from there?
8.24 p.m.
Mr. Peter Archer: If I resist the temptation to follow the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. David Price) into some of the interesting topics he invited us to consider at the beginning of his speech, I hope that he will accept that this is in deference to the injunction of Mr. Speaker and in view of the lateness of the hour. But I am grateful to the hon. Member for calling attention to the words in paragraph 53 of the White Paper, for that is my theme. I do not propose to make a profound contribution. In a debate of this kind, it is important perhaps above all to pay heed to the voice of localities. If this is frankly a parish pump contribution, it is because we are talking about parish pumps.
I must confess that on matters of general principle my right hon. Friend has carried me very much along with him when he introduced this debate. Of course, we live in a time of rapid communications and of complex patterns in industry and commerce. And, of course, there are some concerns which can be conducted only at a national level, and some indeed only at an international level. The Secretary of State for Education and Science had no more vigorous supporter than I when he sought powers to enjoin local authorities to conform with national policy. Local authorities are no more entitled to cock a snook at the law and order than are protesting students. And in an age when many people live and work and take their evening leisure at places over 20 or 30 miles apart, many services can be administered only over a fairly wide area.

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Of course, we cannot administer the world of 1970 with the machinery of 1835. But there is another side of the picture which has been stated more than once in this debate. There are many services which benefit from a local man's knowledge of an area, and of its people. Paragraph 43 of the White Paper is well-founded, because to many people it is a precious safeguard to know that these services are administered by men whose door knockers are available to them at tea time, and with whom they can stop for a word on their way from work. This is what local government is about. I agree with hon. Members who have said that there is a connection between size and efficiency. But if efficiency were the sole consideration, there might be a strong argument for administering everything from Whitehall. It can command the resources and the expertise, but most of us believe that it is worth paying some price in efficiency to know that ordinary people have ready access to the very people who are taking the decisions which affect their lives so closely.
The problem is not a matter of deductive logic but how to weigh and balance these factors. The Opposition have not produced a better method than have the Government. They have been a little more reluctant to commit themselves to paying a particular price.
Now I want to say a word for the Black Country. Here indeed there is a special case. On 1st April, 1966, a number of tightly knit authorities with ancient names were amalgamated into five county boroughs. I nearly said five giant county boroughs, because that is how it looked at the time, although by Redcliffe-Maud standards they are of modest size. This was not a party issue for the previous Government laid the egg and the present Government hatched it. There was something of a case for change at the time. But it was not a popular event. Many things which have happened since have confirmed those original misgivings. In the clubs, churches and supermarkets of the Black Country the new county boroughs are blamed for a number of shortcomings of which undoubtedly they are guilty, and are made the scapegoats for a number of others which are not of their making. But it is generally felt that the town hall is too far away.
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The town hall, whatever its official name, means the place from which most of the important services are administered. My right hon. Friend's earlier statement that in most cases it will be only 20 miles away will not pacify my constituents.
I have a feeling that I shall stand tonight in the guise of someone who is normally a great reformer of local government, except in the area which most affects him. I plead with my right hon. Friend to delay a little the reform which we all agree must take place at some time.
In 1966 all of us who discussed the future of the Black Country agreed that it would take from 10 to 15 years to sandpaper down the rough edges, to coalesce these county boroughs into real, living communities, to turn people's thoughts from the past to the future. Now, four years later, we are threatened with further upheaval. As I understand it, the reason the London area was excluded from the terms of reference of the Redcliffe-Maud Commission was that it had undergone an upheaval in 1963. The Black Country underwent an upheaval in 1966.
In any event, I wonder whether the Government would look again at these recommendations. We are one of the metropolitan areas. The proposal is that our second-tier authority should be a metropolitan area extending from Uttoxeter to the Vale of Evesham. To anyone born north of Watford a distance like that seems like the universe. It is called "The West Midlands Metropolitan Area"—a most unevocative name to people living in the area. The West Midlands has nothing in common except its location. Some hon. Members opposite—for example, the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Sir T. Brinton)—will agree with me that the term "the West Midlands" is a purely geographical one.
The proposal is to leave the first tier authorities with a shadow of their former powers. This is a special tragedy, because it was in 1966 that they were given for the first time these powers which are necessary if they are to be able to plan the community life as a whole. Now, before they have had a chance to taste the dish, it is snatched away from them. They are to lose education—and this after what seems to be

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a general agreement in both Seebohm and Maud that education and personal services should be administered very much together. I believe that some of these authorities even now could, given time, cover the whole range of educational services, except possibly university education.
The position in consequence is that West Bromwich, which at present administers an annual budget of about £10 million, will lose 60 per cent. of it at one swoop when it loses education. After the other services have been deducted, it will be left, apart from possibly some finances arising from its very shadowy housing powers, with an annual budget of £1·3 million.
One is left wondering whether local councillors will come forward to serve on an authority which will administer housing management without rent policy, and whether full-time officials of sufficient calibre will be found when the borough surveyor will be concerned with cleaning of drains.
The people of the Black Country are not a nomadic people. They have a strong attachment to the paving stones of their own district, to their relations, and to the friends of their youth. Already the people of Tipton do not want to be on a council housing list for the allocation of a council house on the borders of Birmingham. The people of Rowley recall with nostalgia the days when a resident on a council housing estate could go round and knock on the door of a council workman who lived on the estate, and know that he had the blessing of the town hall.
The size of the authorities and the timing of all this are matters of judgment. But whether they will work will depend to a great extent upon the good will of those who are to operate them and of those who are to be governed by them. They have very strong feelings on the subject, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will take note of this.
They do not regard it as absurd to be attached to their homes and the areas which they have known. Black Country people are a curious people: they are not unreceptive to reason, but if they just decide that something will not work, they can become mulish to a quite incredible degree. I have reason to know—my
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chief qualification for representing them is that I am one of them, and so typical of them.
There are a number of possibilities as to how this can be dealt with. I ask my right hon. Friend to consider giving us a few years more reprieve, so that the first upheaval can shake down before we become involved in the next one.
But if that is not possible—I am something of a unitarian in these matters—I adopt the suggestion of the Black Country Society that we might have a single-purpose authority covering the Black Country. It would embrace people with a great deal in common. It would leave an authority with power to plan virtually the whole of the communal life. It would cover a population of a little over a million. Although powers relating to the wider aspects of planning might have to be exercised from outside, it would cover broadly the services which would be needed. It would also satisfy the hon. Member for Kidderminster, who does not want to be part of us, anyway.
I hope that the reply that my right hon. Friend gave earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) was not a considered last word on the subject. I hope that the Government's mind is not completely closed—not tightly closed beyond any possibility of its being reopened. When this matter was being discussed at a recent conference in the Black Country someone said, "We know that there are things wrong with our local government. Everyone is always saying so. These things must be put right. But nobody suggests that someone with a toothache should cut his head off".
I do not ask my right hon. Friend to accept that as a fair analogy, but it is how the people feel about it in the Black Country. If the Government have ears, as paragraph 56 suggests, to hear the voices of ordinary people, I invite my right hon. Friend to listen to their voice on this.
8.38 p.m.
Mr. Oscar Murton: I believe that there is no hon. Member who does not deeply regret the dismantlement of local government in England as we know it. Any suggestion that local government in England in its present form has proved inefficient should be removed.

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I think that everyone recognises, however, that the growing complexity of modern society points to a need for reorganisation, and that is why the Royal Commission was set up. I regret that two specific points were surprisingly omitted from its terms of reference—the vital question of the future relationship of central and local govenment in a reformed pattern of local government and the omission of local government finance. If local government is to be reorganised we should begin from the financial side, because local government is deeply concerned with finance.
Although the question of the relationship between the central and local government has been left to the Crowther Commission, it is important to note that the Prime Minister was at pains to stress the importance of the subject in a speech he made to the Association of Municipal Corporations last September, which has a lesson for any party which may form the central Government. He said:
"The existing systems which we and our predecessors have operated mean that Ministers and other Departments are called on to intervene unnecessarily, both as regards the way in which authorities organise their domestic affairs and the way in which they carry out their statutory functions."
My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) suggested that there had been some interference with local government affairs. What we want to avoid is the interference with rent schemes, the matter of the qualification of local government representation, interference with the sale of council houses and so on.
In dealing with the problem of education and the effect of central Government policy on local authorities, the Secretary of State did not make a very convincing case. But this has been gone over already. What I wish to do is to reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk) said about the provincial councils. The Government were very wrong to duck that question. It is impossible to set up an organisation without starting at the top. It could well be that when Crowther reports the provincial set-up will not fit, or possibly could not be made to fit, what has been put in train in the next tier below it. The Association of Municipal Corporations has stressed very strongly that there should be an additional number of unitary areas.
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I believe that this is necessary, and that it could be achieved with a sensible system of provincial councils.
I notice a suggestion in the White Paper that as a stop-gap measure the existing regional economic planning councils should play some part in the place of provincial councils. I pray, "Please no—never them." What can one do with bodies which have been appointed by a Minister, are not elected, conduct their business behind closed doors and are bound by the Official Secrets Act? That is no way to conduct affairs. I cannot see those councils playing an important part in a permanent structure. We want proper locally-elected provincial councils. Nothing else will suit.
Having those provincial councils would make sense of the suggestion that we can reduce the size of the unitary area. My constituency, an ancient borough going back to 1371, when it received its first mayor, already has the greatest difficulty, with a population of 100,000, in dealing with all the planning applications which pour into that rapidly developing area. Under the proposals, Poole is submerged in an unholy, forced alliance between the whole County of Dorset and the County Borough of Bournemouth. Can one huge unitary area of 584,000 people cope with the planning problems which Poole finds it very hard to cope with? I do not know how it will manage it.
By tradition, Dorset looks west and Bournemouth looks east. If we have provincial councils it should be feasible to divide Dorset in two and link Bournemouth westwards. That would give Poole and East Dorset as one unitary area, Dorset North and West as a second, and Bournemouth and West Hampshire as a third. This pattern could be repeated all over the country, and we would then have real local self-government with an effective democratic voice for each area, a sense of cohesion and common purpose, less offence to tradition, which is vital, and great industrial advantages where there are centres of industry.
Local pride has been overlooked in this, which is a very important factor in democratic representation. The Secretary of State said that under the White Paper proposals the number of local councillors would be reduced from 32,000 to 7,000. I must not argue with such an authority, but I thought that the reduction would be

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from 35,000 to 5,000. How remote the remainder will seem to the electors, when there is approximately one councillor for each 10,000 persons.
The councillors will be part-time and many of them will have to deal with very scattered areas. There can only be one answer. I have been a local councillor. I was one of three representing a ward of 11,000, and if one does the job properly it keeps one fully occupied. That was in a tightly-knit urban area. How is the single councillor representing a wide area with 10,000 voters going to be able to cope? Many of them will want to see him, and surely the whole principle of the reform of local government should be to bring the people and their elected representatives together so that they have a sense of one-ness. I do not see how this can be achieved with unitary areas of the size envisaged.
If they were doubled in number, it would make sense of what one might call the "third tier", but instead we are to have these ridiculous and, one might call them, emasculated local councils—a compromise which I do not think can work. If we had a sensible unitary area coping with, say, 150,000 to 200,000 persons, we could do away with local councils below them and in their place have a number of small units—as many as one wants—based on individual districts. I am sure that the key to the problem is to get the provincial areas into being as quickly as possible. I fear that, if that is not done, the whole system will break down.
8.47 p.m.
Mr. Ted Leadbitter: At this time in the debate it is difficult to say something new, but one can ask some questions. By what test have the Government or Redcliffe-Maud arrived at the fantastic conclusion that the larger the authority the more efficient it is likely to be? Where is there any example in the United Kingdom of the larger authority being more efficient, more economical, more satisfying to the community than the smaller authority?
If we exclude the poles at the extremes, which can blur an argument—the massive authority, on the one hand, and the rural district council, on the other—without indicating any unnecessary criticism of them, and consider the
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question of the average large county council, comparing it with the average-sized county borough, I suggest that the unit costs of providing services in the county boroughs are far more favourable than those in the county councils.
I would say that the ability of the electorate to get to the municipal buildings in a county borough is greater than that of the electorate in a county council to get to the county hall. I would say, also, that the elector in a county borough knows his councillor far better than the elector in a county council knows his. I would say, as well, that this kind of condition arises because the circumstances in each in the local government are different and I would point out that the voting capacity of the electorate in county boroughs is higher generally than that in a county council area.
Therefore, if this is a general trend in terms of democratic consciousness, if the evidence in terms of efficiency and effective costings of social services supports my assumption, why have Maud and the Government come to conclusions which appear to be contrary to that evidence? With Maud, the answer is simple. Whom did the Maud Commission consult? I do not know whether it consulted any councillors, with grass roots in their localities, with vast knowledge of their areas. I do not know whether it discussed this with Members of Parliament. I have 21 years' service in local government and in Parliament. My opinion has not been taken into account by this commission nor has that of any councillors I know. It has not visited my area but, rather miraculously, it has answers which appear to be far better than any which we could produce. I wonder whether such an approach would be acceptable to industry or commerce.
While it would be wrong to be critical of the general conclusions of Maud, while it would be unbusinesslike and improper to throw its recommendations of the court and go back to conditions which appeared to be cosy and satisfactory to all, it is, nevertheless, right to say that there is nothing final about Maud. There is nothing so perfect that it must be accepted from A to Z. There is nothing about Maud which suggests that decades of experience can be put aside in a matter of two or three years when legislation is introduced in 1971–72.

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The British character has not grown up within a climate of sudden change. We abhor dictatorial attitudes. One of the struggles in society today is concerned with preserving our liberties and freedoms against the managerial content of our society. We like to think that we can evolve, approach things gradually, following the Latin precept, festina lente—approach without haste, or, more literally, hasten slowly.
We are dealing here with the most intrinsic and valuable thing in the United Kingdom. There are certain things that we must preserve. My right hon. Friend said that there is nothing totally right about any particular solution. If there is no right solution to the problem of reorganisation, shall we, when dealing with the generality of principles relating to boundary divisions take into account the criteria of population characteristics? Shall we take into account the sociogeographical considerations, the economic and industrial factors, and the matter of communications? These are highly sensitive and important matters requiring special and detailed examination.
What is certain is that a uniform treatment arising from an agreed principle of local government reorganisation is a denial of criteria essential to the best interests of a viable, efficiently functional and democratically-based system of local government. Boundaries based on a population content alone, in this case the range of 250,000 to 1 million, cannot be right. By what test are these figures more acceptable than any others? The White Paper states:
"Whatever solution is chosen must sacrifice some things in the interest of others and further changes will be needed from time to time to match the changing pattern of work, life settlements and society."
That sounds very logical, until one asks what things are to be sacrificed and what other interests are to be gained? Further, if changes will be needed from time to time to match the changing patterns of life, by what test has this been applied in some areas in the present proposals?
My right hon. Friend might tell me, since legislation is not proposed until 1971–72, whether, if any area—and mine is one of them—can show that the sacrifices are greater than the gain of other interests, he will consider alternative proposals which will seek to avoid such an
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eventuality, but which will not be in conflict with the reforming zeal of Maud. I feel that that is a reasonable challenge if people in local government, after years of experience, and with minds prepared to examine objectively the need for local reform of local government, are prepared to make available to this or any other Government considerations based on an objective examination of sacrifices and gains without conflicting with the principles of Maud, will this or any other Government accept the rightful rôle of reconsidering some of the proposals again without conflicting with the need to reorganise local government?
The Maud Commission made great play with certain general principles towards solving problems of local government. One of those principles, to quote from Maud, was
"Areas must be large enough to enable these authorities to meet the pressing land needs of the growing population—and their inhabitants must share a common interest in their environment because it is where they live, work, shop and find their recreation."
I have no quarrel with that. But will my right hon. Friend say how this makes sense when the commission makes boundary recommendations without consulting those who know their areas best, without studying the nature of the lives, work, shopping habits and recreational pursuits of the people affected? By what judgments are the boundaries drawn, in areas such as mine, in which the commission has not even favoured us with a visit?
I have submitted to my right hon. Friend a 5,000-word report on my area. I hope that he has read the report and will accord it the attention that the subject deserves. That reference to Hartlepool has taken up 30 seconds of my speech. I hope that the points which I have raised on the conclusions of the Maud Commission and of the Government will be taken into account and that instead of adopting a rigid position on the White Paper my right hon. Friend will accept the will of the House and will encourage the flexibility which is greatly needed in the interests of local government.
9.0 p.m.
Mr. Martin Maddan: In the few minutes available to me before my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Chataway) replies from the Opposi-

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tion Front Bench, I should like to say that a rather striking unhappiness with the Maud proposals, and, in particular, with the Government's manner of accepting them, has been expressed. I do not think that it is right to say that this unhappiness is on account simply of protecting existing local interests, because I have observed that every case which has been put forward has been bedded in a philosophy. The House, debating these proposals for the first time, has shown concern at the Government's acceptance hook, line and sinker of the Maud proposals.
My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk) referred to the difficulty of straddling parish pump interests with the philosophy of the need for reform. I commend to hon. Members the wise words of the Hove city fathers, assembled in the Hove Borough Council, who resolved this, inter cilia:
"It is felt that nowadays residents are much more concerned about the efficiency of local services and equality of the rate burden than they are about preserving the individual identity of their own town as a local government unit."
I make that quotation to underpin the fact that when hon. Members speak in a critical sense they are not just seeking to preserve some local existing structure. That is not what interests them or councillors throughout the country.
One of the fundamental respects in which the Maud Commission went wrong lay in its terms of reference. This was a point which I put to the Prime Minister when he made a statement on the publication of the Maud Report. I emphasised then that the terms of reference included no reference to finance. In many countries money is raised by local government in forms other than or in addition to a property tax. Examples are to be found in North America—in Ontaria and in many States of the United States—in Germany and other European countries. To imagine that the locally raised contribution to local government finance must come from the rates and nothing else is absolute nonsense. It is said that Royal Commission after Royal Commission has examined this matter and found no answer and that departmental committee after departmental committee has examined it and the Treasury has knocked any proposal on the head.
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This problem will be solved—and I commend this to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench—only when a party comes into government and issues a fiat in Whitehall that the situation will be different. When it is understood that it will be different, ways and means will be found, as they have been found in many other countries.
Today, over half the money is being contributed by the Government. This will inevitably rise well into the 70 per cent. range in a few years, as I feel certain the Minister knows, by the natural growth of services. That must mean death to the localness of local government. The weakness of Maud and its terms of reference stems from the fact that it decided local government areas without regard to finance.
I mention two possible forms of alternative or additional finance. One is a local sales tax, practised in many parts of the world; the other is a local petrol tax. There are important considerations in both cases, when considering practicability, of the size of local government unit which is to levy them. We could not conceivably have differential taxes of that kind based on very small local government units. I doubt whether we could have them in Maud units. Anyhow, it would constrict the possibilities severely. Yet, if it is important to preserve the independence of local government, financial considerations must play a large part. Because Maud stuck to one tier, it has severely limited the opportunities in this respect. If Maud had accepted two tiers, it would have been possible for a higher tier to operate over a larger area than the unitary authorities which the report proposes with more opportunity of effectively levying local taxes, and deciding their levels, in addition to the rates.
Many of my hon. Friends, though not all, have rather pooh-poohed the idea of provinces. But, because of the financial considerations, my plea is for going slow on ruling out provinces as they provide an opportunity for the really intelligent and effective levying of revenue on a non-Governmental basis, which is more difficult in small units. If we believe what we say about local independence and having confidence in local people to decide their affairs, we may not have to rule out provinces too quickly if we are to

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give local people the money necessary to make good that policy.
Therefore, my plea is that we make haste slowly, to echo the words of the hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. Leadbitter), that we do not go nap either on Maud or on the White Paper, and that we consider the fundamentals, which go far beyond the mere boundaries of local interests into deep matters of the health of local democracy and its independence.
I do not know whether the Government have been surprised at the tone of the debate—perhaps not—but I hope that the word will go out that in this Government's mind, as I am certain in the minds of my hon. Friends, decisions are not fixed, that they are prepared to collect evidence about financial implications if reform is to be made to work, and that they will consider the implications of the Crowther recommendations on the constitutional relationships between central Government and different tiers of local government.
My plea is to put finance at the forefront of those considerations and to give ourselves time to do the job properly instead of ramming down the throats of the next couple of generations a rather hasty decision, because once we have made some great change we will not change things again very soon.
9.10 p.m.
Mr. Christopher Chataway: This has been a constructive and thoughtful debate. I cannot help contrasting it with some of the debates which were held in 1962–63 about the reform of local government in the Greater London area. I think that on both sides of the House there has been a determination to try on this occasion to look in a really thoughtful way at some of the principles which must underline a major reform of local government such as this.
I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) has played a considerable part not only today, but over the past months in furthering this debate and in trying to concentrate attention on a search for constructive solutions. Certainly, at the many conferences he has held throughout the country he has been anxious to encourage people to look for solutions
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rather than simply to defend the status quo.
I think that the Government will have been impressed by the extent, the volume and the depth of criticism of the White Paper. Of course, this is an area in which judgments are bound to be subjective. There are few acceptable tests by which to decide whether local authorities are efficient. The hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. Leadbitter) said that the county boroughs were more efficient than the county councils because they spent less on the maintenance of services. That would be an argument which many others would cite as proof that county councils were better—because they spend more on desirable services.
Another hon. Member—it might have been my hon. Friend—mentioned that in one or two places council seats go uncontested for many elections. There will be many in rural district councils who would say that there could be no better proof of the fact that a council is giving satisfaction to all than that nobody wants to stand against the local representative. This is bound to be an area in which judgments will be subjective, an area in which there will be a considerable grinding of local axes.
None the less, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Madden) that many of the critical speeches to which we have listened have been grounded in a philosophy. Hon. Members have argued not from electoral expediency, but from a considerable knowledge, that in some respects the White Paper is unsatisfactory.
One conclusion which has emerged from the debate is, I am sure, that the evidence is not yet in. One of the difficulties of political life is that Governments are often called upon to take decisions before all the evidence is available. In a moment of crisis, this is inevitable. Governments may subsequently argue that if they had had all the evidence, they would have come to a more sensible decision. But this is an instance when the Government have so far seemed to be determined to take decisions deliberately before some of the most important evidence is available.
In particular, the debate has shown that there are four areas in which the House needs more information before it can rationally take final decisions.

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The first and perhaps most important relates to the Crowther Committee, regional government and the provincial councils. In an extremely closely reasoned speech, the hon. and learned Member for Derby, North (Mr. Mac-Dermot) had some interesting things to say on this subject. The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) and the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Mr. Coe) also pointed to the importance of resolving, at least to some extent, the arguments about the finance of provincial councils before one took final decisions about the reform of local government.
I do not go all the way with the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich. For example, I do not believe that provincial councils should be charged with responsibility for further education. From my own experience, I can think of nothing more damaging than to divide educational responsibility in this way.
But the point made by the hon. Member, and it was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk), was that one could not begin to decide whether one wanted a metropolitan authority, or begin to decide what size the main authority should be, until one had decided what kind of regional government or provincial council one was to have. The hon. and learned Member for Derby, North suggested that if we had unitary authorities of the size now planned, it would become inevitable over the years that the provincial council would, among other things, take on major responsibility for environmental planning. He asked whether if it had that responsibility it would have the power to implement those plans.
As, until fairly recently, the Minister responsible for planning within the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, he argued that one of the major defects of the present system was that the joint committees engaged in the formulation of plans often did not have the power themselves to carry them through. The Government must accept that it would be irresponsible to take final decisions about the structure of local government until we know what is intended in the way of provincial government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden suggested that the Crowther
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Committee might be concerned only with Scotland and Wales, but, of course, it has been charged with considering provincial and regional government in England. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us when the Crowther Report is expected and whether there is any thought of asking for an interim report giving the committee's preliminary ideas about the kind of provincial councils, the kind of regional set-up, if any, which it proposes for England. It would not be sensible to take final decisions along the lines proposed by the White Paper until that is cleared up.
Secondly, the system of financing has attracted a good deal of thoughtful and informed comment. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Pink), my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mr. David Price) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hove all made the point that the system of financing had a profound effect on structure. If there is no material change in the system of financing local government, we should not entertain many hopes for the rejuvenation of local government.
So long as we go on financing local government as it is now financed, a progressively larger share of total expenditure will fall to the Government. If we go on financing it in exactly the same way, almost inevitably powers will continue to flow to the centre, whatever Governments may say, because if the Government have to meet 60 per cent. of the bill and that becomes 65 per cent. and, over the years, 70 per cent., local authorities will naturally be given progressively less freedom. This, too, is a matter of fundamental importance.
However, as several hon. Members have suggested, final decisions about the structure cannot be taken until the possible means of financing have been considered. For instance, to take an example already mentioned, a sales tax could be levied only in an area of substantial size. We shall look forward to the Green Paper. As it is to be a Green Paper, I hope that the Government will accept that the White Paper today must be regarded as just as "Green".
Third, there is the question of the cost of the changes proposed. This is not perhaps as important as the two previous considerations which I have mentioned,

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but it is obviously sensible and businesslike to know something about the cost of the alterations proposed in the White Paper. This should not be too difficult to provide. A good deal has been learned about these things from the reorganisation of government in Greater London. A substantial cost is involved, in many cases, in new building, in the provision of town halls, in the payment of compensation, and so on, and in many instances the cost involved would have a considerable bearing upon the final decision taken.
Fourth, and perhaps most important of all, is the question of powers, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester has consistently, and in my view rightly, laid emphasis. We must have a clearer idea of the powers which the central Government are prepared to devolve. This question is bound up with the provincial councils. If they are to be important and powerful provincial councils, presumably not much in the way of new functions will come down to local government. They will stop at the provincial council stage. But if, at the provincial level, over most of England there are merely to be consultative arrangements, one would expect, and indeed the White Paper leads us to suppose, that there would be a considerable devolution of power, and this is a matter to which I shall return in a moment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester said today, as he has on a number of occasions, that we ought not necessarily to be wedded to the notion of the unitary authority outside the metropolitan areas. Indeed, one notices in the White Paper less of an attachment to the unitary authority principle as a principle which overrides all else. It is now recognised on both sides of the House that nobody is saying that there is any magic in the unitary authority. Nobody is saying that in the conflict of considerations which, inevitably, are involved in local government, the desirability of having a unitary authority overrides all other considerations.
I accept that there are advantages in having a unitary authority, but, with the proposal in the White Paper that 42 per cent. of England should be administered by two-tier authorities, with the White
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Paper proposing two-tier authorities for Wales, and with the Wheatley Commission proposing two-tier authorities for Scotland, there is no reason to suppose that the unitary principle is inevitably right outside the metropolitan areas in England. I hope, therefore, that in winding up the debate the Minister will be able to give us an important assurance, because if there is one point that has come out of the debate it is that many hon. Members believe that in their areas outside the metropolitan areas the two-tier arrangement would make more sense than what is proposed.
The assurance for which I ask is that in the further consultations which are to take place over boundaries the Government will be prepared to consider proposals for a two-tier set-up, rather than a unitary authority, because, once the Government start to talk about boundaries in an area, in many cases the local authority concerned will want to propose an alternative arrangement which may involve a second tier.
For example, if, in Sussex, it is thought—and there are good arguments for this—that the unitary authorities are too small for many functions, and that a larger, top-tier authority is required, for environmental planning, and so on, the case for a proper second-tier authority will be extremely strong.
Mr. Crosland: With what powers?
Mr. Chataway: With the powers given to the second-tier authorities in metropolitan districts at the moment. I am talking about an area immediately adjacent to the proposed so-called metropolitan area of South Hampshire. Nobody could say that there were enormous differences between the rural areas there and in adjacent Sussex.
The alternative that should be studied seriously—it has not been studied seriously yet, and nobody on the ground has been consulted—is the alternative of the much larger top-tier, with functional executive second-tier authorities. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that these consultations will not be limited simply to boundaries, but that where a consideration of boundaries leads on to a consideration of structure the Government will also be prepared to talk about that.

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I hope that the debate will have shown clearly that there is a determination to make the local council a reality; that it should be not an optional extra but a mandatory element in the revised system of local government. Where necessary there should be amalgamations of parish councils to make local government more of a reality, and this should be done at the same time as the general reorganisation is carried out.
In this connection, some of the work done in Haringey, as reported in "New Society" by Michael Young, is very interesting. I agree with those who argue that there are some extremely exciting possibilities here, and that it seems to be a feature of modern society that more and more people are anxious to play a part in an authority which is really local to their area. To dismiss their functions and range of interests as being cosmetic planning is to make a great mistake. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester, I believe that they should be given the powers proposed in the Redcliffe-Maud Report, as well as certain other powers, and that it is very wrong, as Lady Sharp argued, that they should be precluded from taking part in activities, simply because these are also a part of main authority services. It would be absolutely wrong to say that they may not be involved at all in any of those matters for which a higher-tier authority has an overall responsibility, because that would seriously emasculate them.
The debate has inevitably been concerned largely with the question of boundaries. My hon. Friend made it clear that we accept the concept of the metropolitan areas, but believe that they should be drawn more nearly to coincide with areas that are really urban and metropolitan. It may be that too much has been made by hon. Members opposite of the objective of bringing town and country together. There is a fair degree of acceptance that in many instances the division that has previously existed between the county borough and the county should not be perpetuated, but it is nonsense to suggest, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh said, that any reform of local government can possibly bring under one planning umbrella the rural areas that are now dependent upon towns.
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Of course, this cannot be so. If one wanted to bring town and country together in the South-East, it could only be in a local authority area of the size of the whole of the South-East, with a population of 17 million. There are dangers in drawing a metropolitan boundary, as is drawn around Birmingham, around Liverpool and around Manchester, which has a very small amount of rural land in conjunction with a very large amount of urban. There can be no balance in that.
Mr. Coe: How do you square that point with the point which your hon. Friend made earlier.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must address the hon. Member in the third person. I am the second person.
Mr. Coe: The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) said earlier that he wanted Lancashire County Council to remain as it is, but it cannot do this.
Mr. Chataway: He did not say that. What he said was that the whole of the North-West should be looked at again. There is a great deal of criticism, from that side as well as from this, of the current proposals, and quite independently of forming a metropolitan area for Manchester—[Interruption.] Yes, there was one hon. Member who spoke in favour of it—I will give the Government that—but only one, and about five hon. Members spoke against. It is by no means self-evident to many people that it can be right to divide the rest of Lancashire into four separate areas. The County Councils Association, in its evidence on the White Paper, had a good deal to say about this.
I thought, incidentally, that the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich was unreasonable to chide my hon. Friend for not producing not only a detailed plan for the whole North-West, but boundaries for the local councils as well. He asked us to say how many local councils there should be. This is exactly what an Opposition cannot and should not do—[An HON. MEMBER: "Not that Opposition, anyway."] I believe that this Opposition has been a good deal more responsible in the way that we have approached this than hon. Gentlemen

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opposite were in 1962–63, when, with a succession of "demos" up and down the Greater London area, they campaigned for the status quo and swore blind that they would restore it if they ever got back into power. That has not been the tactic of my hon. Friend. He has laid down, and clearly, the principles which we should follow. He has not tried, with the resources available to an Opposition, to draw boundaries.
I come back to the question of powers. Perhaps the weakest part of the White Paper, and it is very weak, is Chapter 5, dealing with the delegation of powers from central to local government. The suggestion is that there should be planning by programme rather than local authorities being required to get loan sanction for each item. Anyone with any experience of local or central government knows that that does not confer a great deal more responsibility. I have been involved on both sides in school building in determining the programmes. Of course, although the control of school building planning is already done by programme, it is over the individual items which make up the programme that the local authorities have to do battle.
This Government have a record of withdrawing powers from local authorities—and from reformed local authorities, like the Greater London Council, which, after all, is an authority of the kind which it is proposed to duplicate in a number of other places now—withdrawing the power to sell council houses, withdrawing the power to determine the shape of secondary education, withdrawing the power to determine rents, and, in the Education Bill, withdrawing, apparently deliberately, the power which has been exercised by both parties in London to ensure a balanced ability intake into comprehensive schools.
I hope, therefore, that after today's debate the Government will recognise that the White Paper should have been a Green Paper and that they will now consult local authorities about boundaries and functions. There has been absolutely no consultation yet with local authorities about boundaries. I hope that the Government will bring to the House their conclusions about provincial councils and regional government, about financing, about devolution of powers and
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about the cost of the proposed changes. I believe that in the light of that information the House would then, and only then, be in a position to take final decisions.
9.35 p.m.
The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Anthony Greenwood): Before I turn to the main body of the debate, I would like to pay two tributes. The first is to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for his handling of all the necessary consultations before the White Paper was published. They were carried out with a combination of courtesy and firmness which enabled us to keep to the timetable which the Government had thought appropriate. I think that the House will be grateful to my right hon. Friend for having crystallised issues in this way. Secondly, I would like to pay tribute to the local authority associations for the constructive co-operation they gave throughout the discussions. They do not all agree with the White Paper, but I think that all of them will agree that they had a fair hearing.
The debate today has been of very great interest. It has produced interesting, conflicting views which have cut right across the normal party lines. I must confess that I was distressed, when the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Pink) was speaking, to hear one of his hon. Friends call out "Rubbish", "Nonsense" or words to that effect.
Sir Douglas Glover: That is democracy at work.
Mr. Greenwood: We have had a most useful discussion.
Inevitably, all of us have drawn upon our constituency experience, not in any parish pump spirit, because every hon. Member who has spoken has drawn upon his personal experience to deal with the rather broad philosophical aspects which the problem inevitably involves. All of these are matters of judgment. As my hon. Friend said in opening the debate, there is no uniquely right solution.
It is interesting that no hon. Member today has defended the status quo exactly as it is. There are differences about how far we should go, how quickly we should go or when we should go, but everybody has agreed that radical reform is necessary.

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In the White Paper, the Government have set out to reform the main structure of local government, to create a new pattern of authorities which will meet the needs of the next few decades and to provide rather simpler machinery than at present for further changes to be made if they become necessary. Certainly, over the next 10 or 20 years, it would be quite wrong to exclude the possibility of further change in boundaries.
It is wrong to criticise us for having deferred certain conclusions. When the Royal Commission's report was published, we announced that we aimed to reach early decisions about the main structural changes that were needed. We have done this and the White Paper contains the essential decisions which define the outlines of the new system, with unitary authorities, with two levels in the metropolitan areas, with allocation of functions between them settled, and with local councils, but there are still outstanding issues. It would have been quite wrong to try to work out the new financial proposals until we knew what the structure of local government was to be. One must have an idea of the size of the authorities, of the sort of areas they will cover and the kind of functions they will discharge before one can create the necessary infrastructure.
That is why we have not yet produced the Green Paper on finance. Local government finance is an extremely complex subject, and I ask the House to remember that it covers not only the area of England on which the Maud Commission reported but Greater London as well. It has very wide repercussions. I cannot say at this stage at what date the Green Paper will be published. A great deal of work has been going on, but all I can say in honesty to the House is that the Green Paper will be available well in time for consultations to take place before legislation is introduced.
Another of the aspects which have inevitably been left over is that of the areas and functions of local councils. We have set out in the White Paper their general rôle and it is right that the details of the rôle of local councils should now form the subject of discussions with the associations. But I must say that I had hoped that the fact that we had deferred a number of decisions so that
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we could have fuller consultation would be regarded as an act of virtue on our part and not something for which we should be criticised by the House. We have to make major decisions, and it would be quite wrong to rush into decisions without proper consultations being carried out over a period of time.
I trust that I shall not embarrass the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker) if I say that I very much enjoyed his speech. I have been worried for the last few months that it appeared as though we were not to get any clear guidance from the party opposite of their views on these problems. The hon. Gentleman, who missed the quotation from the Financial Times which the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) read out, will no doubt have read the leading article in the Guardian of the same date, which said:
"So far the Conservative spokesman on local government, Mr. Peter Walker, has merely emphasised the emptiness of Conservative thinking on local government."
Having heard the hon. Gentleman speak this afternoon, I half acquit him of that charge.
I am glad that The Guardian spurred him into activity and into disclosing to the House some of his ideas on the subject, because it would be extremely serious if there were a lack of positive and constructive response to the challenge of local government reform. It would be extremely bad for local government as a whole, and it would be particularly bad for the people working in local government, if there were any doubt that both sides of the House were equally committed to the need for local government reform.
I thank the hon. Gentleman if, as I believe that I am right in supposing, he told the House that there was a substantial measure of agreement between us on the timetable to be followed. In the unlikely event of hon. Members opposite being returned at a General Election, it will be a comfort to the pessimists who may be anticipating that event to know that even if that unlikely event should happen local government reform would still go ahead.
A number of questions have been put to me during the debate. I will try to answer some of them, but I very much doubt whether, in the time available, I

541
will be able to answer all. I hope that any hon. Gentleman who does not get an answer will acquit me of discourtesy.
The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Chataway) asked, as did his hon. Friend the Member for Worcester earlier, when the Crowther Commission would report, and whether there would be an interim report in the fairly near future. It is much too early in the working of the Commission for it to say when that work will be finished, or whether an interim report will be possible, but I will draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary what the hon. Gentleman has said because, as the hon. Gentleman will realise, the Crowther Commission comes under my right hon. Friend.
We had an interesting teaming up between my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones) and the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald), both of whom pressed that there should be careful consideration before merging of unitary authorities. I understood that my hon. Friend wanted to avoid it, whereas the right hon. and learned Gentleman wanted to bring it about. I give both hon. Members the assurance that we shall most certainly give the most careful consideration before any decision of that kind is taken.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) referred to Tyneside and spoke of the possibility of Tyneside and Northumberland merging into one authority. If both authorities wished to go ahead and made a good case for merging, we would consider any suggestions they made. I am also happy to offer a word of comfort to the hon. Member for Cornwall. North, who raised the question of South-East Cornwall across the river from Plymouth. I am happy to tell him that this is just the sort of problem which consultations will cover, and I have no doubt that the authorities concerned will be able to reach a conclusion by which they can put forward a good case.
The hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple), who courteously apologised to me for not being able to be present for the winding-up speeches, my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) raised the question of metropolitan districts inside
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metropolitan areas. I fully take the point which the three hon. Members made. Certainly we are prepared to look at the question of the pattern of organisation inside the metropolitan areas, but I want to make clear that we cannot consider an alteration in the boundaries of the metropolitan area itself.
I was interested to hear what the hon. Member for Chichester said about merging town and country in a metropolitan area. That is exactly what was done in the London Government Act, and now we have large sections of the Green Belt inside the Greater London Area. I believe they have a much greater measure of protection than would be the case if they were under a different planning authority.
Sir T. Brinton: Are we to take it that the boundaries of the West Midlands conurbation are, so far as the Government are concerned, absolutely fixed? That will be a matter of grave concern to my constituents.
Mr. Greenwood: Perhaps I did not make the point clearly enough. It is not that we would not consider any alterations of the boundaries, but that we would consider variations in detail but not major alterations.
The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South asked what form the grant arrangements would take. We have to wait for the Green Paper and also to know what the structure will be because the grant is very much related to structure and it would not make sense to answer that question on this occasion.
My heart went out to the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk), who was disturbed that his constituency would be divided into four areas. Mine would be divided into three; to have one's constituency divided into four would be worse. I have every sympathy with the hon. Member, but that, I am afraid, is all that I can offer him.
I was also asked why when Scotland and Wales, it was said, were going ahead with two-tier government, we were introducing it only in part of England. No announcement of Government policy has been made on the Wheatley Report and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has said that he is looking at the geographical counties of Monmouth and Glamorgan in the light of the

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Redcliffe-Maud Report. It would be quite wrong to assume that England, Scotland and Wales must inevitably conform to the same pattern. The situation is quite different in each of the three countries, and particularly in Scotland and Wales where in large parts of the country there is a very low density of population which would make unitary authorities impossible.
I was asked about consultations on the pattern of areas for the Bill. We shall be discussing the procedure for consultations with the local authority associations. The timetable is a rather tight one, because we must keep up the momentum; but at present our belief is that representations in writing will be welcome from anyone who wishes to submit them but that the conferences themselves, which will be open to the public, should be restricted to the local authorities, which are both the representatives of people in the area and the bodies responsible for local services.
I hope that the hon. Member for Chichester will not be too disappointed by my saying that it is not intended that in the course of consultations about boundaries the whole structure should be altered and that two-tier Government should be introduced sporadically throughout the country.
I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Worcester for what he said on the subject of staff, because this is one of the most worrying aspects of the problem. I have been very conscious all along of the need to consult the interests of local government staff. I have no doubt that in the long run the better career structure which will result and the new responsibilities that local authorities will be carrying will redound to the advantage of local government staff, but the transitional period is bound to be one of great anxiety.
Clearly I cannot give a blanket assurance that no individual officer will be disadvantaged, but I believe that the number who will be disadvantaged will be very small. To protect the staff we propose to follow the precedent of London reorganisation and establish a staff commission. The House will remember that in the case of London this was presided over by Sir Harold Emmerson and the two
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independent members were Lord Hemingford and Lord Geddes.
Sir D. Glover: There is a problem here, even if it is not real redundancy. As all the authorities will be redrawn, if people change their jobs in such circumstances will they all qualify for redundancy pay?
Mr. Greenwood: We are setting up the local government staff commission to give advice to the Minister and to local authorities upon the problem. It will be an advisory body, but it was greatly appreciated in the case of London reorganisation and N.A.L.G.O. has very warmly welcomed our proposal to follow the same procedure on this occasion. We have agreed to follow up the Royal Commission's suggestion that we should reconsider the present arrangements for paying compensation for loss of office or reduction of salary. So we have done everything possible, and we will keep the matter under very close review.
I listened with interest to the suggestions which were made by a number of hon. Members on the subject of salaries and expenses. The hon. Member for Worcester described it very accurately when he said that it was a desperately difficult problem. Over the past two or three years all of us must have been increasingly disturbed at the financial obstacles in the way of those who want to give public service—not least the effect of loss of earnings on superannuation prospects.
As a token of my own concern, I recently approved new Regulations which came into force on 6th February and which increased the maximum rates of councillors' financial loss, travelling and subsistence allowances. The two last are almost exactly what the associations asked for, and the financial loss allowance is appreciably higher. I hope that they will have helped a number of councillors who were otherwise in very difficult circumstances.
We still propose to have consultations on future allowances; because we are firm in the view that nobody should be debarred from public service for financial reasons.
I would like to make two points on salaries. First, we have not taken a firm decision against them. I think that every hon. Member agrees that it is a difficult

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problem, and we have no clear guidance from the bodies which have given us advice. The Maud Committee on Management came out against salaries for all councillors but in favour of salaries for those with special responsibility. The Royal Commission was not opposed to the latter recommendation, but said nothing about salaries in general. We have not had a clear lead from the local authority associations as to what they would like. There is no general pressure in the local government world, but we certainly have not closed our minds. We have simply said that it would be wrong to break with the long-standing principle of voluntary service until we are convinced that public opinion is in favour and—this is important—we know more about what is involved in serving on the new authorities. In the meantime, allowances must be adequate.
The hon. Members for Poole (Mr. Murton) and Chichester both raised the important question of balance between central and local government. I hope that I shall be forgiven for inserting a personal note by saying that local government has been one of my main interests for the past 25 years, first as a councillor and later for many years as a Vice-President of the A.M.C. Throughout that time I have been concerned to get right the balance between local and central government, because I regard it as essential to the health of our democratic system. But I think that everyone must agree that national policies and standards must be laid down by this House. Within that framework, my view and that of the Government is that local authorities should be as free as practicable to settle their own priorities and take their own decisions. I have tried during my time as Minister to further this objective. The

Division No. 67.]

AYES

[10.0 p.m.

Bessell, Peter

Pardoe, John

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Davidson, James(Aberdeenshire, W.)

Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy

Mr. Eric Lubbock and

Grimonrt, Rt. Hn. J.

Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)

Mr. David Steel.

Hooson, Emlyn

Winstanley, Dr. M. P.

Lawler, Wallace

NOES

Nil

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Mr. James Hamilton and

Mr. R. F. H. Dobson.

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER declared that the Question was not decided in the Affir-mative, because it was not supported by the majority prescribed by Standing Order No. 32 (Majority for Closure).
Town and Country Planning Act, 1968 was a great step forward.
The hon. Member for Poole raised the question of council house rents. Control over them was and is a temporary measure. In the Act which the House has just passed we have chosen to rely largely on the voluntary co-operation of local authorities. But if Parliament lays down a prices and incomes policy all sectors of our national life have a rôle to play. I do not believe that either side of the House has a wholly unblemished record here. Many hon. Members can recall the time when Florence Horsbrugh appeared to be interfering with the London County Council in the case of the Kidbrooke Comprehensive School, and it is only two years since, in debates on the Housing Subsidies Act, I resisted claims from hon. Gentlemen opposite that we should make a rent rebate system compulsory for all local authorities. I said that it was grandmotherly and nanny-like, and I still think that that is true. It is good evidence that when hon. Gentlement opposite want to interfere they do not hesitate to do so.
The hon. Member for Chichester was unwise to under-estimate the importance of what we are doing in giving greater financial control to local authorities. We are evolving new and simplified arrangements which would have two aspects, and we shall he consulting the local authority associations—
Mr. Jeremy Thorpe Mr. Jeremy Thorpe rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question he now put.
Question put, That the Question be now put:—
The House divided: Ayes 9, Noes 0.
It being after Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned

MEDICAL CENTRES
10.8 p.m.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Harper.]
Mr. John Pardoe: On a point of order.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I would remind the hon. Gentleman that his point of order is taking time out of an hon. Member's Adjournment debate.
Mr. Pardoe: I would like some guidance as to whether we have now taken note of the White Paper.
Mr. Speaker: The Question is not decided, we have passed the prescribed time for debating it.
10.9 p.m.
Mr. Edward du Cann: There comes a matter now which I hope we can, with the help of the Joint Under-Secretary, who I am glad to see here, answer in the affirmative. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise tonight the subject of the provision of medical centres, that is premises where three or four doctors work in association from a main surgery on the usual group practice basis, with additional accommodation for local authority nurses, health workers, social visitors and the like. This may seem a pedestrian subject, but it is none the less of great topical interest to the medical profession as the hon. Gentleman will know. Regrettably, it is also a subject which at present involves uncertainty and also inevitably some anxiety. This is unfortunate and I believe unnecessary. I hope that it will be possible for these Parliamentary Secretary to dissolve the clouds of uncertainty and difficulty.
To put the subject in context, I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary would agree with me when I say that good practice premises are a valuable aid towards the organisation of a high standard of medicine. I would go further and say that they are invaluable.
During the negotiations on the "Charter for the Family Doctor Service" in 1965 and 1966, the profession's representatives expressed to the then Ministry of Health the need for the family doctor
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to have adequate, up-to-date premises to enable him to provide the standard of service he wished to give the public. As a result the Ministry agreed to introduce a scheme of direct payments for rent and rates intended to secure reimbursement by reference to what each doctor paid or was deemed to pay. In certain cases there are notional assessments. All this was instead of undifferentiated gross fees on a per capita basis. In addition, the Government agree to establish the General Practice Finance Corporation to lend money to doctors to enable them to purchase their own premises. The rate of interest now charged by the Corporation is 10 per cent.
At the conference of representatives of local medical committees in June last year, there was some discussion of this matter and a good deal of emphasis was given to problems connected with the provision of premises. I recall in particular, as I am sure will the Parliamentary Secretary, Dr. Cameron's speech. However, the total amount of money lent to doctors by the General Practice Finance Corporation since it was established in 1966 is very substantial. I understand that it has now reached some £5¼ million to nearly 1,000 practices, which means that in excess of 3,000 general practitioners are involved. It demonstrates the continuing involvement of the general practitioner in the provision of capital for their practice premises. This will be in addition to money they raise privately from building societies, bank loans, or from their own capital resources. I suggest this demonstrates the wish of general practitioners to attempt to improve their premises.
I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary will agree that it has been generally recognised for years that the encouragement of group practices with the obvious advantages of doctors working closely together in circumstances in which it is easier to provide for the adequate and optimum use of ancillary staff and facilities, must be right.
In theory, all this is wholly admirable But how does it work in practice? I have already inferred that there have been some difficulties which have been raised in various public discussions. The fact is that the scheme of direct payments for rent and rates has proved to involve anomalies in many cases. I have no doubt that the Ministry

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is aware of those anomalies and I suggest that it has been aware of them for a long time. Equally I am in no doubt that the profession as a whole is seeing to it, and will see to it, that the Ministry is aware, and will he made aware, of these anomalies in all their various forms. But I am concerned to get action in this matter, and hence am raising this subject tonight. Again I express my gratitude for the opportunity to do so.
My special interest in the subject derives from the wish of four doctors in my constituency to establish a medical centre, that is to say modern group premises in Taunton. Dr. Dodson came to see me on their behalf as long ago as August, 1967, some 2½ years ago. At that time he and his colleagues had the agreement of a developer to build, they had a site, planning permission and they had the executive council's agreement. They also had the backing of our local medical officer of health, Dr. Parry Jones, who is an excellent and practical man, and the co-operation of the town clerk and local town council.
So far so good, it may be thought. All they needed was a meeting with the district valuer to establish what should be a reasonable rent for the premises assuming they were equipped to the required standard. This was in order that they could make their calculations and evaluate the financial consequences of the decision which they had taken, and so on.
To take the story a little ahead, the premises were opened on 7th July, 1969. I visited them on 1st August and I found —and this is agreed on all sides—that they were first class. They were well equipped, practical and efficient. They were involving public health staff as well as the staff of the doctors—Drs. Dodson, Skene and Collins.
All this was described in an issue of the magazine "Pulse" on 18th October, 1969, so I need not go into detail. It was a good plan, and it was well executed. Yet they have still not met the district valuer. They still do not know what reimbursement they will receive—two and a half years after I first saw them and two and a half years after I first put the matter to the Minister, the last time on 3rd February, and seven months after the centre came into operation. My point is
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simple: these delays are not good enough. However, your decision, Mr. Speaker, to allow me to raise the subject on the Adjournment has provoked the Ministry to some activity.
I am grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for the correspondence which I have received from him. One paragraph is worth quoting. He said that the Minister
"received a deputation last August from the representatives of the medical profession about many aspects of the rental payments made by Executive Councils and, since then, the Department has been actively engaged on the matter."
I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will not mind if I ask, why only "since then" when the matter had been raised by me much earlier? If this is activity
seven months with no result—I wonder what would hapen if the Department had not been so "activity engaged on the matter."
The letter continued:
"…these questions are very involved and affect more than our own Department and any changes possible will be changes in the remuneration system and as such will have to be negotiated with the representatives of the profession".
That is absolutely true. The letter continues:
"We hope it will not be long now before we have some proposals to discuss with them, but meanwhile I am afraid that I cannot say what these are likely to be".
All that is required is a simple administrative process. I hope that no one will think me pompous when I say that I have had responsibility in the Treasury and as a Minister in another spending Department. I am a director of a property development company. There is nothing in these matters which could not be settled in the course of an afternoon or less than that.
The House may think, as I do, that the financial risk which Dr. Dawson and his colleagues have accepted, and are still accepting seven months after they opened their centre, is an unreasonable and poor comment on their initiative, public spiritedness and keenness on higher standards. Had it not been for these qualities the people of Taunton, or at any rate those associated with this practice and patients of it, would certainly have been the poorer and would inevitably have received less good treatment.

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My argument in effect is an argument for higher medical standards in general practice and the acceleration of their provision. When doctors enter into a long term capital commitment, it is not satisfactory if they cannot obtain in advance an indication of payments likely to be made to them under the repayment scheme. These are not people asking for profits. All that we are concerned to do is, if possible, to improve standards in the Health Service.
I turn from the particular to the general. As at the end of last year, there were 148 health centres provided by local authorities in use and 95 were being built. Plans had been approved or accepted for 201 but building had not started or been authorised. That is a total of 444. This leads one to the conclusion that when they have all been finished in three or four years time they will accommodate, at the most, between 4,000 and 5,000 doctors out of a total population of 20,000—in other words, at most, 25 per cent. That means that 75 per cent. of doctors will not be accommodated in that time. It is therefore certain that problems connected with servicing and financing general practitioner premises will be with us for a long time. This is all the more reason perhaps for encouraging self-help.
Indeed, the case of Dr. Dodson and his partners is by no means unique or isolated. I am astonished that I have had, in correspondence, pleas from 20 or more practices—in the West Country from Helston, Exeter and Taunton. I am grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for dealing, in advance of the debate, with the case of Dr. Spare and Dr. Crosby. From Basingstoke to Blyth, from Great Missenden to Glasgow, and from Breconshire to Welwyn Garden City letters have come to me, to my astonishment, showing the concern of the medical profession.
I quote from one letter from three doctors in Wickford, Essex:
"We feel that we have made an act of faith with the N.H.S. by going out on a limb financially and should have the right to know to what extend we are expected to subsidise it. In the event of the District Valuer deciding on a figure lower than 11 per cent., we could find ourselves with a substantial sum to pay yearly from our own pockets. We would, therefore, be most grateful for your assistance in helping us to solve this situation."
552
Frankly, this correspondence has not only surprised me, but to a degree, it has moved me.
If there has been some demonstration, as I hope, of the need for speed, for more realism and co-operation on the part of the Minister, I would argue, too that the quality of service by general practitioners in the next twenty years really depends on a favourable decision being made as a result of tonight's debate, either now, if possible, or, at any rate, shortly. The profession has already waited a long time.
Yet it is not only a matter of speed and certainty. It is essential that the district valuers—we know how hard worked they are at presentx2014;produce realistic and fair rents. There is evidence that this is not happening. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary, together with the Minister, to see that they are given a new or, at any rate, a particular brief.
There are problems here and I will mention some quickly.
There is no doubt that good medical premises have a high unit cost. They have to be purpose-made, and this involves certain difficulties. The high costs are well out of line with the much lower costs of building ordinary office accommodation because of soundproofing, the need for privacy, heat, special lighting, plumbing and the rest. From evidence that I have seen, it appears that rent assessments by district valuers have sometimes been based on cheap office accommodation. That is quite wrong.
It appears, too, that district valuers sometimes assess a rent by working out the net usuable area. This can be very unfair, especially in rural areas.
Perhaps the Minister, his colleagues and officials will have a good look at the position relating to owner-occupied premises where rents do not always cover the interest charges.
Again, district valuers sometimes compare unlike with like when they compare medical centres with local authority-owned health centres. These are not comparable, the latter sometimes involving a degree of subsidy.
We probably need a new system, but we also need some of these special factors to be taken into account.
I was somewhat sweeping a moment ago when I said that I was certain that

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the problem could be solved in an afternoon. I still think that is right, and I will suggest a modus operandi to the Minister. At the planning stage could not final detailed plans be submitted to the executive council for approval having regard to local conditions—it is always important to remember them—and advice from the Ministry of room area standards in general?
Could not competitive tenders then be sought, and these again submitted to the executive council for approval?
After that, could there not be a round table conference and negotiations between the parties allowing them to be reconciled and allowing agreement to be reached before work is commenced? I hope that that might be possible. I hope, also, that those special factors, some of which I have mentioned, will be taken into account.
It may be thought, from what I have said, that the standards of general practice are, alas, lower today than they could or should be. If so, there is a golden opportunity now to provide a new impetus to improvement—indeed, to make a great step forward.
General practitioners have already shown their eagerness, as always, to serve the public, and to serve the public well. I hope very much that they will receive new backing and new encouragement from the Ministry.
10.25 p.m.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Security (Dr. John Dunwoody): I am pleased to be able to take nail in a debate on the matters raised by the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann) as it affects the provision of general practitioners' practice premises and therefore the development of medical services in the community. Even if the matter affected only a few general practitioners in the right hon. Member's constituency, it would be important, but other general practitioners, too, are affected and the implications spread wider still.
General practice is changing in that more and more general practitioners are working in groups. We, in the Department and the profession see this as the pattern of the future and I welcome this trend, first, because it breaks down the isolation of the individual general prac-
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titioner and makes it easier for general practitioners to keep up to date with developments in medicine. Each member of the group can take a special interest in some field, perhaps geriatrics or obstetrics, and the whole group benefits from each practitioner bringing his special knowledge to bear in the consultations between the doctors on the treatment of their patients.
Dr. M. P. Winstanley: It may be true that in a group practice different practitioners can specialise in different subjects, but is it not the essence of general practice that practitioners are not specialists in different subjects? Is not the actual fact of the matter that the practitioners specialise in that Dr. A. specialises in having Mondays off and Dr. B. in having Tuesdays off? I am not against this, but is not this administrative, welcome though it may be, rather than clinical specialisation?
Dr. Dunwoody: I cannot accept this. I was careful about the words I used. I did not use the word "specialise". I said that they could take a special interest, and there is a difference. I was not trying to make general practitioners into second-grade specialists, but it is right for them to be able to take a special interest in sonic part of their work.
Secondly, and no less important, it enables doctors to work more closely with health visitors, nurses and midwives in the local authority services and to bring them into the consultations about patients. This way of practising medicine is best conducted in premises designed for, or adapted for, the purpose and we regard the provision of such premises as something we should do all we can to encourage.
The right hon. Member wrote to the then Minister of Health in 1967 and more recently to my right hon. Friend asking that the district valuer should give an estimate of the payments the executive council would make in respect of rent for surgery premises that were or are being planned by his constituents, two different groups of doctors. In both cases, the premises are purpose-built and are have been given very serious consideration planned to the doctors' specifications, and seem to be admirable developments. I can assure him that his representations by both us and the Inland Revenue, whose

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concern in the matter I will explain shortly.
I want to say a few words about the rent and rates scheme for general practitioners and the reasons for it. The point of departure—and this is fundamental—is that the general practitioner is an independent contractor. For a long time, the remuneration paid to general practitioners, first under the old insurance scheme and, since 1948, under the National Health Service, has included reimbursement of practice expenses as well as payment for services.
Until 1966, the expenses were reimbursed through fees. The total expenses of all general practitioners were estimated from a sample and included in an aggregate amount for the profession as a whole, this aggregate amount being distributed to individual practitioners through the fees. Each general practitioner therefore received an amount for reimbursement of expenses related to the fees he earned and not necessarily to the actual expenses he bore. If he spent more than average on his practice, his net remuneration was reduced.
Since premises are expensive, the reduction in his net income could be considerable if he spent above average on them, so that this method of payment tended to discourage, instead of acting as an incentive to, modernising premises. During the discussions with the profession in 1965–66, it was decided, therefore, to reimburse the cost of premises directly, relating the payments as far as possible to the actual expense incurred.
Giving this decision practical effect was not so easy. To begin with, as the general practitioner is an independent contractor, it is his responsihilty and right to run his practice in the way that seems best to him. On the other hand, the National Health Service could not be expected to foot any bill presented by the practitioner without consideration of the need for, and the value for money represented by, the premises. So the scheme adopted had to leave the general practitioner as free as possible to please himself without removing the incentive to get good value for money. The system also had to cover many different circumstances. Location plays a big part in the cost of premises. Some of
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the premises were brand new and some old. Some were separate premises, others houses or shop or office premises converted to surgeries and some were houses partly used for practice and partly as a residence either for the doctor himself or someone else, like a caretaker. The property might be rented or it might be owned by the practitioner, the partnership, one member of the partnership or a relative. It was not practicable to devise different schemes for all these different circumstances and it did not seem equitable that the payments by the Executive Councils in respect of rent should vary depending on the form of tenure between one practitioner and another. A single solution which would meet all these requirements was therefore sought and the answer found was to base payments by the Executive Councils on current market rent.
I shall not go into the procedure of the rent and rates scheme in detail. It is sufficient for the purpose of this debate that the aim of all the mechanics of the system is for the location, size and so on of the premises to be approved by the Executive Council in consultation with the Local Medical Committee and for payment of the current market rent of the premises as assessed by the district valuer of the Inland Revenue. This can only be firmly assessed when the building is ready for occupation by the doctor. Current market rent is the rent which might reasonably be expected to be paid for the practice premises following negotiation at the date when the assessment becomes operative.
I hope I have made the point that we want to encourage in full such developments as the medical centre at Taunton and to help general practitioners who are providing them. However there are sometimes practical difficulties some of which are related to the method I mentioned earlier of paying expenses directly.
I can understand that when a general practitioner is acquiring new practice premises he wants to know before he commits himself how much the Executive Council will pay under the rent and rates scheme. The possibility of the district valuer giving an estimate of the current market rent has been discussed very thoroughly and on a number

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of occasions between the Department and the Inland Revenue. As a result the Inland Revenue agreed to authorise district valuers to give estimates of current market rent in connection with loans made by the General Practice Finance Corporation.
I should like to confirm the figures mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman. In England and Wales alone this corporation, in a period of just over three years, has loaned more than £5 million, which has provided a significant improvement in doctors' working conditions, very much improved conditions for patients, and, I believe, a higher quality of service and higher standards of care for the patients. This is a record of which both the profession and the Government can be proud. This corporation was set up as a statutory body under the National Health Service Act, 1966, to provide finance for these purposes, and these loans are made at the stage when the site and the plans for the building had been approved by the executive council. It did not, however, feel able to extend this facility to other premises.
The main distinction between these and other cases is that in the G.P.F.C. case the site and plans have already been approved, so that the district valuer is dealing with something pretty concrete and definite and is moreover advising a public body. In the other cases he is likely to be faced with more tentative proposals in respect of premises which may or may not be suitable, and proposals which may be modified in any case, but may well be altered also in the light of what he has to say about the possible market rent.
In these cases the district valuer is likely therefore to be drawn in consequence into providing an advisory service for doctors who are planning new premises, which is not only more appropriate to a private professional surveyor, but would impose on him a considerable extra burden of work. However, I am considering, in conjunction with the Inland Revenue, whether estimates could be provided in other cases where the premises are in fact available and the doctor clearly intends to go ahead with the scheme.
One has to bear in mind that the district valuer is already very heavily burdened. The rent and rates scheme
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placed a considerable extra load on the Valuation Office of the Inland Revenue, which nevertheless has gone out of its way to be as helpful as possible. The service is stretched over the country as a whole, and if a facility is given to general practitioners in one place, general practioners in other parts of the country will, quite rightly, expect the facility to be afforded them as well.
There is a feeling, which the right hon. Gentleman has expressed, that only the district valuer's estimate is a realistic basis on which to proceed, as perhaps a local valuer's estimate might differ greatly from the district valuer's and it is the district valuer's assessment which determines how much the executive council will pay. I can understand the feeling, but any estimate of the probable value of premises which is made before they are put up is bound to be tentative whether it is given by a local valuer or the district valuer.
The right hon. Gentleman wrote to the Minister of Health in 1967 about group practice premises being erected by a developer for renting to Dr. Dodson and his partners. His request was discussed with the Inland Revenue, and it was a matter of regret to the Inland Revenue and to the Minister that it was not possible to agree to it.
He has also written recently supporting a similar request from two other doctors in his constituency, Dr. Spare and Dr. Crosby. We have made enquiries of the executive council about this case and it appears that the doctors have already applied for a loan from the General Practice Finance Corporation, in connection with these premises. If this is so, the situation is different from that of Dr. Dodson and his partners so far as con-concerns the district valuer's ability to give an estimate on the plans, and I am glad to say that Dr. Spare and Dr. Crosby's proposal falls within the class for which an estimate can be given.
A part of these premises is to be used for dental suites and these are not covered by the rent and rates scheme, which applies only to doctors' premises. If our information is correct, therefore, Dr. Spare and Dr. Crosby should submit their plans for the centre to the executive council for approval of the portion to be

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be used for medical services, and ask the council to approach the district valuer for an estimate of the rent payable under the scheme. I should emphasise that the estimate will be provisional and the district valuer will need to reassess the premises when they have been completed to arrive at his final figure.
There are other issues relating to the rent payable under the scheme for rented premises and for those owned by the practitioners and the position of doctors in health centres. All these matters are included in the representations which the profession raised with my right hon. Friend in August last year. The Department has been working with the other Departments concerned on proposals designed to meet certain deficiencies which the profession found in the scheme as it stands.
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The Department had in fact been considering some of the points the representatives made before the meeting with my right hon. Friend, and matters are now well advanced. The Department's ideas will, however, have to be presented first to the representatives of the profession, and we hope to reach this stage in the very near future. I cannot anticipate tonight what might be the results of these discussions and I have therefore had to confine myself to the scheme as it actually operates.
Despite this, I myself have found this debate useful and of interest. The right hon. Member can be sure that I have taken note of what he has said and that his views will be taken into account in the discussions that are proceeding.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes to Eleven o'clock.

SCOTLAND
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  A4046 Road, Ebbw Vale
  A4046 Road, Ebbw Vale

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

PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT BY UNQUALIFIED PERSONS
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they believe the public are sufficiently protected against unqualified practitioners of psychoanalysis and psychiatry.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DE-PARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (BARONESS SEROTA): My Lords, the law allows unqualified persons to practise medicine, including psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and to treat those who choose to consult them, provided that they do not pretend to be registered medical practitioners and do not per-form certain specified services, including the prescribing of certain drugs. I am not aware of a need for further provisions to protect the public, but I will gladly look into any specific problems the noble Lord may have in mind.
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask whether she is aware that there are some unscrupulous people and organisations who are making money out of what might be called "amateur psychiatry"? Further, does the Minister believe that there are adequate safeguards inside the provisions that she has described to prevent disturbed or muddled people from being taken advantage of by such unscrupulous groups?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, the Medical Acts provide for substantial penalties on any unregistered person who wilfully or falsely pretends to be a
1146
registered medical practitioner, and I believe that they protect the public in the way the noble Lord desires.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether it is legally permissible for persons to call themselves psychiatrists, as distinct from psychotherapists or psychoanalysts, unless they have a medical degree?
BARONESS SEROTA: No, my Lords. The term "psychiatrist" should be taken as applying to a medically qualified person, but psychoanalysts and psychologists are not necessarily medically qualified.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, is it not a fact that even those whose judgment is not impaired are attracted to "quacks"?

HEDGEROW LOSSES AND TREE PLANTING
2.38 p.m.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government to what extent the recommendations of the Merthyr Report of 1955 have been implemented; whether since then any further systematic investigation into the loss and preservation of hedge-rows and small woodlands has been undertaken; and whether planting and afforestation have counterbalanced the destruction of trees in the United Kingdom during the past ten years.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I would refer my noble friend to the detailed Answer given to a Question on the Merthyr Report by the then Minister of Agriculture on March 13, 1958. Government action promised in that Answer has been undertaken. The question of loss of hedgerows has been receiving close attention recently and is the subject of a number of investigations at the present time.
With regard to the final part of the noble Lord's Question, following the afforestation of 440,000 acres by the Forestry Commission, and about 350,000 acres by private owners, there are now more trees in the United Kingdom than there were ten years ago.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for his reply, and also for the particulars which he has so kindly sent me and to which he referred in his Answer, may I ask him whether the Government of to-day and their predecessors in office have implemented the statement made on that occasion in 1958, that they proposed to take such steps as might be appropriate on the detailed recommendations? Could my noble friend say exactly how that statement has been implemented?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there are a number of recommendations—47 in all. I think I might say, without being unkind, that a number of them are more in the nature of exhortations than recommendations, and it can be claimed, as I have said, that action has been taken.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, while again thanking my noble friend, may I ask him whether he is aware that even though one appreciates the need for the more economic development of agriculture, it is alleged that in certain parts of the country many hedgerows are being dug up and many woodlands are being destroyed quite needlessly?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, my Lords, I understand my noble friend's interest, and indeed the interest of the House generally, in this subject. It has sparked quite an interesting exchange recently, but the Ministry of Agriculture do not advise the indiscriminate removal of hedgerows; although on occasions there is a clear agricultural need to remove them.

GLOUCESTER PLACE TRAFFIC LIGHTS
VISCOUNT NORWICH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what practical purpose, if any, is served by the traffic lights controlling traffic filtering from Gloucester Place into Rossmore Road, N.W.1; and whether they will arrange for the lights to be removed.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords,
1148
these signals are the responsibility of the Greater London Council as the traffic authority. I understand that the Council considered that control of filtering traffic was necessary to provide a break in the traffic for pedestrians wishing to cross Rossmore Road.
VISCOUNT NORWICH: My Lords, will the noble Lord believe me when I tell him that for the last ten years I have been living in Paddington and taking that road back every single night, and I have, more often than not, been stopped at these traffic lights where there is no cross stream of traffic. Never once, to my recollection, have I had to wait for a pedestrian to cross the road. Pedestrians never seem to use that crossing.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, would the noble Viscount ask a question? Asking somebody on the Front Bench whether he believes something is not really a question.
VISCOUNT NORWICH: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Lord how he feels I should have framed that question while wishing to make the point I made.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, only the noble Viscount can possibly answer that question.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, all I can suggest is that the noble Viscount conveys his thoughts and views to the Greater London Council, which is the traffic authority.

LESOTHO ADMINISTRATION AND BRITISH RELATIONS
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether recognition has been given to the unconditional administration in Lesotho; whether British officers are to be withdrawn from the mobile police; and whether financial aid will be withheld until the King and leaders and members of the Congress Party are released from detention and the constitution re-established.]
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, as soon as it became clear during the week-end of January 30-February 1 that what had occurred in Lesotho amounted to a seizure of power—as was indeed admitted by Chief Jonathan—Her Majesty's Government took immediate steps to make it clear that British/Lesotho relations could not continue as though nothing had happend and that the question of our relations with any new Government would have to be decided in accordance with our normal criteria for the recognition of new regimes. The British High Commissioner was promptly instructed to restrict his contacts with the Lesotho authorities to the official level and to necessary dealings affecting the safety of the British community and other interests for which he is responsible.
United Kingdom citizens serving as members of the Lesotho police have contracts with the Government of Lesotho and are not subject to withdrawal by the British Government. As regards British aid to Lesotho, it has been made clear that this is one aspect of our relations which has to be reviewed in the light of recent events. As regards the position of the King and members of the Opposition in Lesotho who are under arrest, I can confirm that their position is certainly one of the factors which we shall have to take into account in reaching a decision on the future of British/ Lesotho relations.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while welcoming that very full reply, may I ask whether it is not the case that while the Commissioner of Police and the Commander of Mobile Police—who have been responsible for carrying out these illegal arrests—are British but employed by the Lesotho authorities, their salaries are actually paid for by aid given from this country in the overseas aid programme? Will the British Government use their influence in relation to aid for these matters, to try to bring about a solution of this problem which will enable constitutional government to be reinstated?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord again raises a dilemma. Lesotho is an independent country, and the extent to which the United Kingdom Government should be involved in the internal affairs of another country is something which it is difficult to judge.
1150
In regard to the police, the officers there are British subjects but they are under contract with the Lesotho Government. The only area in which the British Government are involved is that under the Overseas Service Aid Scheme agreement they provide supplementry salaries.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that I thought the balance of his original reply was excellent? Is he also aware that I say that because I do not regard the balance of his second reply as so excellent? Does he not agree that, despite the appeal for no violence of the Leader of the Opposition Party who has been imprisoned, surrounded by South Africa, as Lesotho is, there could be a very dangerous situation? In those circumstances, may I ask that Her Majesty's Government will use all their influence to try to bring this situation to an end without that potential danger being realised?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I must say that I shall be a little concerned when I get back into my office, in view of the fact that my noble friend found my original Answer excellent. I say that because that is the one which my office wrote for me. But I hope that the situation is not dangerous, although it is certainly difficult. Chief Jonathan is aware of our own strong views on the action that he has taken, but it is an internal matter and I think it is for those in Lesotho to find a solution.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, has it not always been our practice to recognise any Government which satisfies us that it is in effective control of the country concerned—perhaps after a period of time—whether we approve or disapprove of its conduct?
LORD SHEPHERD: Yes, my Lords. But there are two other provisos—and perhaps the noble Earl should be reminded of them—whether the régime in power has the obedience of the mass of the community; and whether it has a reasonable prospect of retaining control of that territory. That is the area in which we have not yet been satisfied.
LORD WADE: My Lords, is the noble Lord in a position to say what other countries, if any, have recognised the new régime?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think only South Africa, who have said that their relations are now normal.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, can my noble friend tell me what has happened to the judiciary there? When the Constitution was suspended, were the courts suspended from functioning also?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think the courts are still in operation. I say that with qualification, and I shall look into it.

TEACHERS' PAY
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at a convenient moment after half-past three, my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a statement on the present situation in regard to teachers' pay. May I also remind your Lordships that dinner will be available this evening between 7 and 8.30.
HOOKER ESTATES LIMITED (TRANSFER OF REGISTRATION) BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and referred to the Examiners.
IPSWICH DOCKS BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to a Select Committee.
MERSEY DOCKS AND HARBOUR BOARD BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
PORT OF LONDON BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

THE POLICE SERVICE
2.49 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR rose to call attention to the importance of the morale, the numerical strength, the efficiency and equipment of the Police as the principal protection of the law-abiding public against criminals; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords,
"… we cannot escape the fact that a greater proportion of the public is unfortunately becoming more dishonest each year and more and more people are prepared to break laws relating to offences against the person and against property. The greatest deterrent is the certainty of being detected but police action to that end alone cannot cure this rise in crime. We shall not, in my view, see an appreciable reduction in the amount of crime committed unless and until the commission of crime again becomes socially unacceptable and, a cause of concern to all law-abiding members; of the community.
"In the meantime, the continuing rise in crime is a warning that we cannot without risk relax our efforts to build a larger and more efficient police service."
My Lords, that is not an expression of view by any politician: it is a statement in the most recent report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, who of all people is qualified to speak with authority on these matters. My purpose in to-day's debate is to suggest to your Lordships that that statement should be taken very seriously. Your Lordships will recognise from what I have read that it is a problem for both Parliament and the nation. It is, in fact, two problems intertwined. It is for the Government and for Parliament to see that the necessary measures are taken so that the police will have the strength necessary to carry out the job which is entrusted to them by Parliament; that is, the enforcement of the law as laid down by Parliament. But as the Chief Inspector says, the police cannot do that alone; they can do it only with the support and the backing of the public opinion of this country; and the police will only be enabled to serve us as we look to them to serve us if public opinion has the strength and the good sense to give them the backing which they require.
My Lords, it is some two and a quarter years ago that we last had a major debate on violence, and that was introduced by that friend of all of us in all parts of the House, the late Lord Rowley. It

1153
was a valuable debate. Since then we have on more than one occasion debated questions of penalties and punishments. We have debated a non-Party measure which became the Criminal Justice Act 1968, and we have debated, very recently, the penalty for murder. Indeed, we meet to-day under the shadow of successive murders of policemen in England and in Scotland. I am not intending to-day to revive or repeat that recent debate of ours on the death penalty. My point in this regard would rather be that those murders of policemen are but the most terrible facet of the carrying of firearms in the course of crime, and what we require to do as a nation is to pay very serious attention to the growing habit of criminals carrying firearms.
If I may quote from the most recent report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis—and I should mention that, naturally, only the reports of the Chief Inspector of Constabulary and the Commissioner of Police for the year 1968 are yet available, so all the statements and figures which I have cause to quote will relate to 1968—he said that in 1968:
"Over one-seventh of all robberies and assaults with intent to rob were carried out with the aid of firearms. … There was a rise of 17 per cent. in the number of indictable crimes in which firearms were used but in the case of robberies or assaults with intent to rob, the increase was 31 per cent."
I am not for one moment wishing to disparage the importance of the protection of the lives and safety of the police in the war against crime: I am arguing only that we should look at the picture as a whole, and recognise that it is the sheer carrying of firearms which we must take far more seriously than ever before. This carrying of firearms can in my opinion be stopped only by exemplary sentences on all who are caught with firearms in their possession.
I said that two and a quarter years ago we debated the subject of crimes of violence. I wish, with respect, to put to your Lordships to-day that by now a special debate concentrating on the position of the police is justified, and that is what I am venturing to initiate. At the very least, such a debate in your Lordships' House would convey fresh assurance to the police that their needs, their problems, their requirements, their
1154
difficulties, their dangers, are fully recognised by Parliament. This Motion which I have tabled has attracted a notable list of speakers, including three noble Lords who are going to make their maiden speeches. I know that we all look forward to them with pleasure and with expectation.
My theme, my Lords, is this. We have reached a situation which a country with law-abiding traditions cannot tolerate. We must plan a massive effort to help the police put down crime. It is no longer enough to tinker here and there; to seek to improve in one direction, to spend a bit more money in another. We must now conscientiously measure what is necessary to win this war against crime. We must plan, and Parliament and the public should call upon the Government to plan, as thoroughly and as comprehensively as we planned for D-Day. The public will, I am certain, back any Government who do this. The ordinary member of the public is sick of insecurity, and is longing for protection such as the police used to be able to give.
I said that on several occasions in the last two years we have debated penalties. Penalties are very important; but whatever the penalty may be, it is that much less a deterrent if the law-breaker feels confident that he has an excellent chance of not being caught. The statistics, alas!, show that at the present time the odds are against his being caught. Indeed, in London, the Metropolitan Police area, the odds are actually 3 to 1 against the man who has committed a crime being caught. In those circumstances— when, although the police are doing their very best, the detection rate, as it is called, is so relatively low—is it any wonder that crime is increasing? The number of indictable offences known to the police in 1958 was 626,000. By 1963 it was 978,000. By 1968 it had gone up to 1,289,000. It may be that the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, will be able to give us the provisional figure for 1969, but such information as I have indicates that the figure for 1969 will again show a considerable increase.
My Lords, it is fashionable in these days to decry the 1930s and those who carried responsibility then. There have been many advances of all sorts in the last forty years, but in those last forty years respect for the law has disgracefully diminished, and we should honestly

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face that fact. This Britain, where crime and violence are increasing year by year, would be hardly recognisable, hardly believable, to people forty years ago. Crime is now four times as common; four times as many people are in prison. We cannot make any effective excuse for ourselves by saying that there is a crime wave in other countries too. Of course there is. But that does not justify in-action on our part. The situation here is bad enough to make all of us ashamed. No post-war Government can feel any satisfaction at all over the crime wave— the present one, I am bound to say, least of all, for in the 13 years of Conservative Government the average increase in indictable crime was 42,000 a year, whereas since 1964 it has been 55,000 a year.
My purpose to-day is not to make Party points but to insist that crime and law breaking have reached a pitch at which a counter effort of altogether new intensity is necessary. The essentials are: first, a rapid strengthening of the police; secondly, assurance to the police that the full good will and backing of the nation are behind them, and, thirdly, a return to the older, keener recognition by the whole of the public that the police are the friends of freedom and that those who resort to violence and crime for their own ends are its enemies and must be overthrown. The revolt against all forms of authority which is popular nowadays has led to a certain sympathy with wrongdoers. If that sympathy went too far, it could progressively undermine law and order. History tells not only of great countries destroyed from without but of great countries eaten away from within. We have twice in the last sixty years rescued ourselves from the first peril; now we must save ourselves from the second.
I say this, my Lords, to guard against being charged with arguing that if only we have enough police we can leave it all to them. That is not true; certainly it is not the whole of the truth. Changes in national attitudes are needed, and improvements in Press, radio and television, if we are to create the tone of society in which an impossible job for the police becomes a possible one. In the meantime we can, and must, act quickly to reduce the strain on the police collectively and individually, the strain
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which now is growing towards breaking point.
I have listed in my Motion, "morale … numerical strength … efficiency and equipment". Police equipment is being rapidly improved. Unit beat policing has raised productivity—if one may use that term. The regional crime squads, which I got established as my last act as Home Secretary, have greatly strengthened the efficiency of the police in their powers against large-scale mobile crime. The Police Act 1964 paved the way for Mr. Roy Jenkins, as Home Secretary, to carry out a major reorganisation of the provincial police forces—for which I give him full credit. Those new forces are only just settling down. I am perturbed to see that in the White Paper, The Reform of Local Government in England, which has just been published, it is forecast that we shall soon have a further reorganisation of the police. Appendix D of that White Paper seems to make it all too clear. My Lords, I pray that we are not going to have shortly a second reorganisation of police boundaries and police forces. I honestly do not believe that the police can stand it. There must now be time for consolidation of the new provincial forces, for studying the jobs in hand, for establishing the circumstances in which unit beat policing can be applied with the greatest success, and for perfecting the regional crime squads.
But the overstrain on the police cannot be mitigated until they get their numbers up. The strain is caused not only by the crime wave but by the spate of demonstrations which has flowed so strongly and continuously, with so much help from the organs of publicity, in the last two years. May I quote from the last Report of the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis. It said:
"Perhaps the most troublesome and persistent manifestation of 1968 was the development of the technique of public protest. Between Spring and Autumn, culminating on 27th October, few weeks passed without some public demonstration or procession which threatened, or regrettably in some cases resulted in, actual disorder. Whatever the reason, and many were offered … there was invariably the same underlying motive, a revolt against authority and the establishment signifying social and political unrest. The great majority of the people taking part were sincere and pacific but increasingly a militant element came to the fore, whether Maoists, Trotskyists or anarchists, who felt that their aims could only be achieved by violence and who hoped

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that by the hysteria and excitement generated on these occasions they could carry with them many of the uncommitted."
It is not only London which has been the scene of these demonstrations; there have been similar demonstrations—it may be on a lesser scale—in other big towns and cities where, lacking the resources of the Metropolis, it has been necessary to call in police from other neighbouring forces, thereby denuding the public in all that area of their normal protection against crime.
Demonstrations which necessitate the presence of large numbers of police for the
maintenance of public order give burglars their opportunity. That is well known; and in that sense those who organise these demonstrations, whether violent or non-violent, would do well to bear in mind that the inevitable concentration of the police opens the way to crime being more easily committed in the whole area around.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question? What conclusion does he draw from this? Would he have us ban these demonstra-tions?
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I think that my speech would be shorter if I were allowed to complete it uninterrupted. I was about to deal with that very point. The very next item on my notes was to make it clear to your Lordships that I was not speaking about the case for or against demonstrations. I am quite sure that peaceable demonstrations are a necessary part of democracy, and I hope that the noble Lord will agree with me that violent demonstrations are a slur upon democracy. All I was seeking to do in this speech was simply to put on record the effect of large demonstrations, whether peaceful or violent, on the police, whose unquestioned duty it is to be present in sufficient numbers to ensure that there is no breach of the peace.
My Lords, the police in England and Wales—I do not dare to speak about Scotland because I have not the necessary knowledge—are at the present time some 16 per cent. under strength. That average naturally covers inequalities. I know that the Government will agree that this shortage of police is worst in the big cities. In London and other centres of criminal activities—because necessarily it is the big cities which become the
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centres of criminal activities—the deficiency is 20 per cent. or more; I think it is just 20 per cent. in the Metropolis at this time. One may be blinded by percentages, but a deficiency of 20 per cent. means in fact that four policemen are having to do the work for which five are needed, or else leave part of that work undone. Inevitably that creates overstrain and tension. The effect is probably worst on the C.I.D. It is common knowledge that detectives are grossly overworked, and have been for a long time. It is common knowledge that frequently they have to drop one important investigation because another still more important investigation has come along through news of another crime.
My Lords, this was the situation in which, two years ago, the Government placed a restriction on the growth of numbers of the police. It is well known— indeed we debated it in this House less than two years ago—that two years ago, with the Police Service something like 17,000 under strength, the Government insisted that not more than 1,200 of that deficiency could be made up by March 31, 1969, and not more than another 2,000 by 1970. What is less well known is that in pursuance of this economy measure the expenditure permitted by the Government on recruitment publicity was cut back in each of those two years. The result of this reduction in recruitment publicity was that the police did not manage even to bring their strength up to the permitted limits.
May I, with permission, read what the Chief Inspector of Constabulary said about this in his 1968 Report. He said:
"The announcement of a restriction on recruitment, together with the suspension of the national advertising campaign, had the effect of reducing considerably the total number of applicants for the service. There was by the end of the year a loss in total strength of 237 compared with an increase of 3,004 in the previous 12 months."
The Commissioner of Police of the Metro-polis likewise reported, for the same reason, a fall of something like 40 per cent. in the number of applicants to join the Metropolitan Police. All this happened at a time when recruiting had been going well and when the gap between current strength and establishment had been rapidly closing. The two-year restriction has stopped that process and has kept the gap wide. It is no good the

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Government saying that now they have taken off the restriction. It is quite true that less than three weeks ago they belatedly issued a circular removing those restrictions. In the two years of restriction they have lost several thousand potential recruits to the police. And how the police would love to have those extra thousands of trained men in their ranks to-day!
Nor is it any good the Government claiming that police strength is 13 per cent. higher than when the Conservatives were in power. That is perfectly true; but in the same period indictable offences have gone up, not by 13 per cent. but by 30 per cent. It is like a football manager claiming that his club is doing much better and scoring more goals; they used to lose 2–1, and now they are only losing 5–2. Recruitment had been going so well. There was a net gain to the Police Service in every year from 1961 to 1967. Then, through the decision of the Government, the net gain in 1968 was reduced to a couple of hundred. That is what causes me to ask whether the Government have been sufficiently alive to the necessity to give very high priority to the war against crime. I have no doubt that it is the wish of the public that that should be done.
Are the Government now going to try to make good the evil that, maybe unwittingly, they have done? Are they going not only all out to attract recruits but also to take more seriously than ever the need to reduce wastage from the Police Service? That wastage is particularly serious because it tends to happen with men around 30 years of age who are fully trained, and who have justified themselves in the Police Service. Those men find the pay and conditions of service are not sufficient to compete with the attractions offered to them outside. My Lords, that should not be so, and that is something which Parliament alone can correct.
Wastage is largely a matter of pay; it is partly a matter of overwork and irregular hours and partly, in some cases I know, a matter of the old-fashioned police stations in which men have to work. I happened by chance to hear yesterday of a constable who had his Christmas leave last December altered five times in three days. Compare that with the experience of a man doing an ordinary job who knows exactly when
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he will be off for Christmas; and consider not only the attitude of the man, who may be a most loyal policeman, but the attitude of his wife who has to bear with that.
Some of your Lordships may have heard what I thought was a most telling interview with a policeman's wife on sound radio after the 10 o'clock news on Monday night. She was wonderfully loyal to the service, but I noticed particularly the phrase that she used about the isolation of a policeman and his family from society. Right reverend Prelates and the noble Lord, Lord Soper, may know some-thing about the isolation of clergy and of ministers, who are looked on as being separate from ordinary people; as some-one in whose presence one has to be careful about what one says. The police are looked on in exactly the same way, and they and their wives may have less power of resistance to that kind of pressure. This policeman's wife said that the police and their families "live in no-man's-land on their own". That is a very true comment. I suggest it is something that we should all bear in mind when we are thinking of the handling of police questions, because we need to ensure that those who are serving the public are able to regard themselves and be regarded as full and normal members of the public.
A policeman is bound to have less regular hours than people in many other professions. It is all the more necessary that that hard fact should be recognised and reflected in their pay. Your Lordships may have noticed that I used the word "professions". We ought to recognise more actively that the Police Service should be looked on as a profession, and as a most honourable profession. Police work should be looked on as an essential social service like nursing, teaching and other professions. People in those professions have very responsible tasks, even though, unhappily, the teachers are spoiling their reputation for responsibility just now. I am not going into the intricacies of police pay, now under negotiation, although personally— and I speak only for myself now—I should like to hasten the day when constables are treated on the same basis as salaried staff, not as weekly wage earners.
Police morale is not particularly high just now. Many of your Lordships may have read in the papers yesterday the

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remarks of the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire on this point in his annual report, and there are other chief constables who would feel themselves forced to say much the same. This situation as regards morale is due fundamentally to overstrain, a feeling among the police that their job is growing ever more formidable and yet they are not getting the recognition and help that they deserve. It is essential to raise police morale without delay, after these two difficult years, by vigorous action on recruitment, on wastage and on pay.
It is also essential to attract to police work, which is rapidly becoming a more sophisticated service, its fair proportion of the nation's brains. That is not happening sufficiently at the present time. There is a scheme to recruit university graduates into the police, though it has not got far as yet. Better progress has been made with the plan of sending promising young policemen to the university at police expense, and many of those who have gone on to the university after passing through the Police College at Bramshill have done extremely well there. But there is no escape from the fact that the police are not yet attracting nearly enough sixth-formers, either boys or girls.
What is the reason for that? Largely, I believe, it is through dissuasion from parents, who would like to see their sons and daughters aiming, as they think, rather higher than the police. And that is why I laid so much stress a minute or two ago on an improved status for the police. If police work can be widely enough recognised as a social service, I think it may help the parents to change their view and cease suggesting to their sons and daughters that they might be able to do better elsewhere. In fact, that suggestion is not likely to be correct in the case of some of the able ones among them, because the Police Service offers rich rewards at comparatively early ages to those who show themselves really good. There is no reason why a man should not aspire to be a chief constable or deputy chief constable at 35. But all this has to be conveyed to parents and to the public, if we are not to get this unhappy brake on sixth-formers going into the police.
As for the boys themselves, I think there is a certain fear that if they go into
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the police their academic qualifications will not be recognised. That, too, we must change, because, after all, there is competition nowadays for sixth-formers. One has only to look at the advertisements to see that. The police must offer to the able boy or girl as promising and as exciting a career as any other service or profession or industry can offer. I wonder whether we could now guarantee that a boy or girl who had sufficient "A" Levels to get him or her into a university could be assured of a place at Bramshill Police College at the end of two years if he or she was accepted into the police. I believe that it is that kind of assurance which is badly needed if the police are to recruit a sufficient number of our more able boys and girls.
There are other ways of relieving the present overstrain on the police, all of which need to be thoroughly and fearlessly studied in the course of this massive effort to correct the situation for which I am calling. To give one example, I am convinced that there are large numbers of people who would be prepared to enrol as special constables, if there was a clear call to them that this was a national service which they could perform. The numbers of special constables now are at relatively low levels. We all know that special constables cannot relieve the trained police of all their duties, but we do know that, like traffic wardens and other civilians, they can take over many jobs which otherwise would have to be done by a uniformed policeman or would not be done at all. I cannot help thinking that it would be good for police morale and for public morale if the recruitment effort for the Police Service generally could be extended to include more special constables.
I strongly suggest also that we need to embark more extensively and wholeheartedly on management studies, to see how it is possible to cut out unnecessary procedures and paper work in the Police Service, and also to cut out the use of police on non-policing duties. Much has already been done, I entirely agree, in these directions, but not all has been done that would be possible. I certainly feel that the situation of strain on the police is so serious that we ought now to put great pressure behind the furtherance of management studies of the kind that I have mentioned. I am

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aware that a great deal has already been done in the civilianisation of police work (to use a word on which I know that my noble friend Lord Conesford has particular views), but civilianisation could still be carried further.
The police—and here I am certainly not making any Party point—are a conservative service, with a small "c". They change slowly. They need to be persuaded to change. I feel sure that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, with all his experience at the Home Office, will con-firm this. We have to break down this conservatism in many police practices and procedures, because in fact all kinds of novel methods will work which in the past have been supposed to be unthinkable. I know that when I first became Home Secretary it was considered impossible in London to employ women traffic wardens or coloured people as traffic wardens; there were none at all. Those inhibitions have been broken down, and now they are working admirably at that job.
My Lords, I go back to my plea for a massive planned policy to make sure that the police end up on top, whereas there are too many signs to-day that it is the law-breakers who are on top. There is splendid leadership in the police; there is excellent material in all ranks. What we want here in this country is certainly not a police state, where the police repress opinion: what we want is a democratic state of liberty, where the police are granted the strength to enforce the law as made by Parliament. That is the condition; that is the very
touchstone of liberty. It cannot be achieved by the police alone. Strength and health in public opinion are needed, too; and in introducing this important debate I have sought to get the balance right.
There is a story of a young man, recently elected to a borough council, who was talking to the mayor and said to him in the course of conversation: "Mr. Mayor, how long has the town clerk been with us?" And the mayor replied, somewhat gloomily: "He is not with us; he is against us." My Lords, what Parliament and the public have to do is to convince the ranks of the police that we are with them; that so long as they themselves observe the law, they have our strong support and back-
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ing. They are our principal protectors against crime. If they lost confidence in us, if their morale were to break, we should realise, and realise too late, that they had been the protectors of our liberty, too. I beg to move for Papers.
3.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT NORWICH: My Lords, I see from the list of speakers this afternoon that your Lordships are going to have a long debate, and therefore 1 shall not take up too much of your Lordships' time. Before I begin, I should like to make a brief personal apology, in that I think it is unlikely that I shall be able to be here at the end of this debate. I shall read it all in Hansard, and if I am in any way controversial I shall be only too pleased to take up any points and defend them as best I can at the earliest opportunity.
It has long been a truism, a cliché, that our police are wonderful: and so I think they are. I am sure that I echo the thoughts of virtually all your Lordships here this afternoon when I express at the outset my admiration and gratitude for the magnificent job which I believe the police to be doing in the teeth of appalling difficulties. But magnificent as the job they are doing is, the fact remains, as we heard two days ago from the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire and as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has reminded us, that at least some sections of the police are seriously demoralised. I should like, in the few minutes that I propose to detain your Lordships, to think just a little about why this demoralisation should have occurred, and to suggest some possible measures by which, we may, if not eliminate it, at least in some measure diminish it.
The first, and I think we all agree the most important, task which faces the police to-day is the fight against crime. Although the figures are not encouraging, as we have just heard from the noble Lord, I think we can put them into some kind of perspective. First of all, let us remember that the really
major crimes that hit the headlines are almost always solved by the police fairly quickly. I can think of very few major headline crimes in the past two or
three years which have not been solved within a week or two. We still think back after five or six years to the great train robbery,

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which at that time caught the public imagination in a way that few crimes have. We all thought about those master criminals, the brilliance with which the crime was planned and the superlative technique with which it was executed. We did not notice so much that the police "licked" that one within 48 hours.
It seems to me that where the police record is less successful is in relation to the minor crimes. The little semi-amateur housebreaker is the one who often gets away. To some extent that is obviously explicable, because these crimes are so much more numerous. But I think there is more to it than that. Before I go further I should like to lay a point that is bound to come up in this debate even more than it has already. Much has been said and written in the last two or three days of the price which has had to be paid for the police successes: the fact that in the last three days yet another policeman has been murdered in the course of his duty. One realises that it is inevitable that such tragic events should cause an immediate new agitation for the return of the death penalty, at least in the case of murdered policemen. I think that can only mean that perhaps on both sides—that is, on the side of the public and on the side of the police—there is an insufficient awareness of what seems to me to be a vital point about the entire concept of the Police Force; namely, that the Police Force is, must be, and always will be a dangerous profession.
I hope that it will not be construed in any way as lack of sympathy for the wives and families of these men when I say that this is part and parcel of the Police Service, in the same way that it is part and parcel of a soldier's life, a sailor's life, a test pilot's life or a bomb disposal expert's life: it is a dangerous life, and it must be accepted as such by us and reflected in the pay of the police and in the terms of service which we offer them. I do not believe that any of the most enthusiastic abolitionists—of which I like to think I am one—ever believed that the abolition of the death penalty was going to stop police from being killed; and it is well-known that a great many police were killed while the death penalty was still in force. But this is no reason not to accept the fact that something must be done to give the
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police, not additional security, because that can never be guaranteed, but at least some recognition for the dangers which they run.
In the case of the smaller crimes, where I believe the police record is less good, I think that one of the reasons for this is the fact that the general public themselves are, I will not say insufficiently aware, but insufficiently educated in the ways in which they can help the police in their task. To
illustrate that I should like to tell your Lordships a brief story. A friend of mine happened to be visiting a house at the moment when it was broken into by four burglars. She fought the burglars, but inevitably she failed. All she got for her pains was a blow on the head, and serious concussion followed.
A few days later the police got into contact with her and said: "We think we have caught those responsible for the burglary and we should like you to come to an identification parade to see whether you can identify anyone. "She went. She was told that she need not be hurried but could take her time and could ask the men lined up before her to say any words that she might have heard spoken when the crime was committed, to see whether their voices corresponded. But when she got there she hardly had time to go down the line before she was asked: "Do you recognise them? Do you recognise them?". This slightly rattled her. Then she saw the man who she was almost certain had been responsible, and she said: "Say ' Come on, Charlie ' ", or whatever it was she remembered being said. She saw that the man was trembling all over and that sweat was standing out on his brow. She suddenly thought: "What am I doing? Am I 100 per cent. certain? If I say that this is the man, am I condemning him to 5, 10 or 15 years' imprisonment? How many children has he? What is his wife like? Should I be doing this?" At the critical moment her courage failed her, and she said: "I am not sure."
The policeman drove her back home afterwards and he said to her:"What can we possibly do with people like you? Here we are; we do our work as best we can and we find the man. You know that that is the man, and I know that that is the man. We need you to identify him, and you let us down. Can anything be more demoralising than that? ". That

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story was told to me by the woman, who by this time was feeling ashamed, and almost feeling remorseful, at having let the police down in that way.
Here is a point on which people might be educated: first of all to look at the criminals with whom they may come in contact. She also said: "If only I had spent the time looking at them instead of trying to fight them, which was quite ridiculous; if only I had spent the time taking in their faces, voices and special marks and peculiarities, the colour of their hair, that would have been much more useful than trying to fight them." Those are the matters in which the general public are not educated. There are endless stories which any policeman will tell you of people who dial 999 and say that their house is being burgled or is on fire, but they put the telephone down without giving any address. Every school should give special tuition in what to do in an emergency and if you are suddenly faced with a crisis. I am perfectly sure that that would diminish the number of unsolved small crimes to a very considerable extent.
That brings me to the second main point that I wish to raise this afternoon, which is the relationship between the police and the general public. There are two principal problems here We have already heard one from the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. It is the question of demonstrations, which used to be rare but are now everyday occurrences. Obviously, there is nothing one can do to stop them—the cure would be worse than the disease. The fact remains that they exist. The police are forced, two or three times a week in many cases, to run risks, not of death but of being hit, kicked and generally getting into fights —a state of affairs which must in the long term have a terrible effect on their nerves, on their families and on their satisfaction in the force. This is made worse when demonstrations are political, as they often are, for the police may feel just as strongly about race, about Vietnam, about the Springboks, or what-ever it is, as many of the demonstrators, yet they are forced to take this line against them, frequently in the knowledge that many of the onlookers are against them. They are fighting in a minority—at least until somebody hurts one of their horses, then the whole situa-
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tion changes. But until that moment, they fire fighting in a minority.
The other point concerns the police and motorists. We have not yet managed completely to appraise this subject, because the very fact that the motor-car is now part of our lives means that there is an enormous new class of potential malefactors and potential law-breakers. If we use our car every day in our lives none of us can hops to get through his lifetime without having been brought up against the law in one way or another. This must also inevitably slowly alter the outlook in our attitude towards the police, and indeed the attitude of the police to the normally law-abiding public.
What can be done? This is obviously a question where both sides have to do their work: both sides have to make their contribution. Here is a case where, certainly in my experience, the police are to some extent to blame. They are not as aware as they should be of the immense harm that is done by paying attention to the letter rather than the spirit of the law, by imposing police traps on open stretches of road where they know that a great many infractions of the law are bound to occur. If many infractions of the law occur on the same stretch of road it is almost certanly because that stretch of road is safer or straighter, and where the speed limit is unrealistic. If one knows in one's heart that one is not driving dangerously or carelessly when driving at 10 m.p.h. above the limit, then one is tempted to do so. One can drive dangerously at 15 m.p.h. and safely at 60. If a person is going to be allowed on the roads at all, he should be given some credit for knowing when he is driving dangerously and when he is not. If people get their licences endorsed for a misdemeanour of this kind, it is not going to increase their love of the police or their respect for them.
I should like now to refer to another matter of which we have seen two or three examples in recent weeks: I refer to the sudden police swoop, which I am afraid more often than not is apt to be quite tragically misdirected. This is the moment—which I invariably deplore— when, for reasons which seem good at the time, they are apt to set themselves up as guardians of public morals. This is what happened when they seized the lithographs of Mr. John Lennon. They

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did that a month ago, but to this day, I understand, no charge has been preferred. All they have done is to give Mr. Lennon a great deal of publicity— to which I suspect he is not entirely averse —and they have also enabled him to double or treble the prices of the lithographs that he still has to sell.
Similarly, when they swooped, as they did three weeks ago, on the Open Space Theatre—an entirely reputable organisation—they seized the film which was being shown, the projector which was showing it and the screen upon which it was being projected. But they have preferred no charges. They have also seized the membership list of the club, on which I have the honour to have my own name. Once again I am afraid that they bring themselves unnecesarily into disrepute. I understand that this particular occurrence was probably due to a telephoned complaint by a member of the public, who probably remained anonymous. If this was the case, then it seems to me that the whole practice relating to anonymous telephone calls, or those which are not anonymous, to police stations should be tightened up.
I should like to tell your Lordships one more personal story of an incident which occurred two years ago at my mother's house. She was away at the time, but
her house was raided at two o'clock in the morning by the police, who thought that a drug orgy was taking place there. In fact at the time my mother was in Brighton, and there was nobody in the house but the elderly maid. The police came the next morning with an extremely polite, civil and sincere apology, and they explained their action by saying that they had received an anonymous telephone call. My Lords, if anybody can telephone the police anonymously at two o'clock in the morning, and tell them to go and raid a house, where do we end? I am saying this not in a spirit of criticism of the police, but simply as a suggestion, so that their relations with the general public, and the general public's relations with them, may be improved. This is a sphere in which there is room for very considerable improvement and rethinking with regard to the functions of the police in these circumstances.
My Lords, I conclude by saying that contributions must be made on both sides.
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We, the general public, have to give the police greater respect, and must strive to ensure that they receive pay and conditions of employment proportionate to the risks which they run, to the duties which they perform so well, and to the vital part they play in the community. With respect, I suggest that the police have to realise that we are to some extent at their mercy; that we want to love them, that we want to respect them (and on the whole we do) but that in return for that we expect in some spheres slightly more understanding and consideration than we at present receive.

TEACHERS' PAY
3.50 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, with permission, I should like to repeat a Statement being made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education on the present state of the negotiations for an increase of teachers' pay:
"At the last meeting of the Burnham Committee on February 13 the Management Panel reaffirmed their previous open offer of an 11·6 per cent. increase for the lowest paid teachers tapered to 5 per cent. on the maximum of the basic scale together with the contingent commitment to arbitration on it under the conditions offered by my right honourable friend the First Secretary and myself. These conditions were:

1. The chairman would be a per-son of the highest possible status and unquestionable independence—possibly a judge.

2. A firm assurance that the Government would not seek under the Remuneration of Teachers Act to set aside the award.

3. An assurance that paragraph 94 of the White Paper on Prices and Incomes Policy, which specifically mentions teachers, enabled general comparability with other groups of workers as well as all other factors to be taken into account by the arbitrators.

4. An assurance that Burnham itself could redistribute the global sum awarded if it so desired.

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"The teachers again rejected both the open offer and arbitration. The Management Panel then offered to begin an immediate review of the structure of teachers' salaries, to bring forward the next general settlement from April 1, 1971, to October 1, 1970. They said they had in mind a substantial overall increase, provided it was based on a structural review of salaries from October 1 and that in the financial year 1970–71 this would produce a substantially greater increase than the open offer from April 1. I believe that this offer would give teachers, particularly those who make teaching a lifelong career, much better salary prospects than ever before.
"The teachers neither accepted nor rejected this proposal until they had more information. It was agreed that there should be informal exchanges between the two Panels and a meeting of the full Committee on March 11. This delay of one month between the meetings of Burnham appears to me to be rather too long and I have written to the Chairman and the leaders of both Panels to see whether an earlier meeting can be arranged. I have also told the Teachers' Panel that immediately the present dispute is settled I am ready to open talks with all parties on the reform of the Burnham machinery.
"In the meantime and in spite of the latest offer the teachers' organisations have decided to continue with their strikes and indeed there are reports of plans to escalate them. I very much regret that the teachers have not agreed to call off their industrial action in view of the new offer which has been made to
them; to do so would be in accordance with accepted negotiating practice. I now invite them to look at the matter again so that serious consideration can be given to working out a solution in a calmer atmosphere and damage to the education of thousands of children avoided. In making this appeal I believe I shall have the support of the whole House."
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, the House will be very grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating that Statement. I know that all of your Lordships are deeply concerned over this strike, particularly as its effect
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is not on anybody's pocket but on the education of the children. Already to-day in the Press we read that over 300 schools are indefinitely closed in Birmingham. I am sure it would be most unwise of me to be in any way critical of any of the parties to the dispute at this stage. All I should like to do is to welcome most warmly the Secretary of State's wish to push the negotiations forward as quickly as possible. I can see no reason for the Burnham Committee's delaying this meeting until March 11.
If I may ask just one question, it is this. Have the Teachers' Panel totally rejected arbitration, or are they willing to accept it on certain conditions?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, so far the Panel have rot accepted arbitration. I would hesitate to use the word "total" but the rejection appears to be total as of now. The. form of the arbitration proposals which are put forward is of the kind which I should have thought had met some of the objections that might have been brought to bear on this matter. But so far they have not accepted it.

THE POLICE SERVICE
3.55 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, all of us in this House recognise and respect the continuing interest which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has in all matters concerning that great Department of State, the Home Office, in which he once served with distinction. I accept, immediately and completely, the absolute sincerity of his concern for the police forces of this country. At the same time, we cannot fail to notice that this Motion coincides with a quite cynical campaign to exploit proper concern with problems of law and order, for the narrowest of political Party purposes. Many of us recall the days when Tories tried to cover up their political bankruptcy with a Union Jack. Those days, I am glad to think, are now largely over. But they have no more right to claim special concern with the concept of law and order than they had proprietorial rights for our country's flag.
Although, understandably, the popular Press have not failed to extract all possible human interest out of the terrible

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tragedies which have recently afflicted policemen and their families, it is noteworthy—and I am glad to think this— that the serious Press have not exactly welcomed this new Tory election"gimmick "and I was especially interested to see that, according to the Observer, a spokesman of the Police Federation commented that:
"This is the first time that areas of police responsibility … have been taken as party political propaganda …".
And that:
"The last thing we want is to be propelled into a political argument".
That is a sentiment which I think in this House we would all respect. For myself, I propose to state facts and get the record straight. If we look at the record objectively we shall see that there is as little need for panic and alarm as there is for complacency. And if the Shadow Home Secretary insists on comparing Party records, and if he wants a past record against which to judge present performance, I cannot be fairer than to quote for him the "Conclusions on Manpower" reached in paragraph 79 of the Interim Report of the Royal Commission on the Police, presented to Parliament in November, 1960, in which it is said:
"Our survey of the manning of the police forces of Great Britain has led us to conclusions which can only be described as grave. In conditions which demand a standard policing as high as that required at any time in this country's history we have found a shortage of police manpower seriously affecting nearly half the country's population; a resort to methods of patrolling which, making all allowances for the technical advances of recent years, have the appearance of an expedient rather than a policy; and, perhaps most disturbing of all, a practice of estimating police requirements which, we believe, obscures the present realities and encourages resignation to a situation which ought not to be tolerated."
It is worth recalling that the present Home Secretary was at that time uniquely placed, with his connection with the Police Federation, to exploit that paragraph for political Party purposes. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, will agree with me that Mr. Callaghan at that time never once made the kind of criticism in the public Press that we are now getting, and that in fact he did his utmost constructively to help the Home Secretary of the day.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I was not Home Secretary at that
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time, so I cannot speak with authority; but I think it is also worth noting that the Royal Commission was set up by the Conservative Government, who asked it for an early report on police pay.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am suggesting that we compare, and I am going to compare, the present situation with the situation disclosed in that paragraph which required the setting up of the Royal Commission. So I now turn to the present record.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked me for the total number of indictable offences in England and Wales in 1969. I can give him only the figure for the first nine months of the year, which was 1,115,627. The noble Lord suggested that a bigger increase occurred after the Labour Government had taken office. In fact, from 1955 to 1964 there was a continuous increase. A 13 per cent. increase was recorded in 1957 and 1958. Since 1965, although there was still an increase —and on that I agree with the noble Lord—the increase rate has in fact been lower. That is some improvement. It is not something that will give us complete satisfaction, of course; but if we are to get the figures down, as I hope we shall, we have first to lower the rate of increase.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt again, but I do not think we shall get very far with this choosing of selected figures. For reasons of his own the noble Lord took 1955 as the base year; I took 1951, so as to give the picture over the whole 13 years of Conservative Government, which seemed to me to be the fairest way of making a comparison with the four years of Labour Government.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Lord chose to compare one period with another period, and I have tried to fill in the facts in between.
The noble Lord referred to the proportion of crimes cleared up and said that in the Metropolitan area the chances of being caught are about one in three. But here again, although I readily agree with him that the proportion is too low, the fact is that it has been increasing steadily. It has not been a significant increase, but the trend has been in the right direction; and in fact the overall figure for 1968

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was that 41·9 per cent. of crimes were cleared up.
Larceny constitutes the largest single group of offences, followed by breaking and entering. Clearly, however numerous and efficient the police are and I think this was what the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, was saying), they cannot do everything to prevent theft, and the responsibility to take reasonable preventive measures rests upon householders and owners of property, especially of motor vehicles.
Offences of violence against the person comprise less than 3 per cent. of the total crimes committed, but there have been— and here we come to the worrying feature —serious increases in recent years, even after allowance is made for the fact that the community now regards casual violence more seriously than it did, with the result that offences are much more likely to be reported and to result in a charge. Understandably, the public are concerned about this kind of offence. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that this category of offences embraces acts ranging from homicide to relatively minor assaults, and it needs to be noted that the increase in recent years has been more marked in the less serious crimes of violence. Moreover, a large proportion of these crimes are not committed against strangers but result from domestic disputes or neighbourhood quarrels.
My Lords, two other factors contribute to the growth and the statistics of crime. One is that with personal radios and panda cars a policeman can reach trouble much more quickly than before, so that affrays which would previously
have gone unreported now result in charges and figure in the statistics. The other factor is that amalgamations and the supervision of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary have led to a higher standard of recording crimes. But I have warned against complacency, and I emphasise that these factors do not account for the whole increase, which remains a serious one and of which the Government take an extremely serious view, particularly where violence is involved.
That brings me to the question of police manpower. Since the Labour Administration took office at the end of 1964 the number of police officers on the strength in England and Wales has
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increased by 11,082, an average annual growth of 2,216. This is not as much as we should have liked, but it is a bigger increase than the impression which is created by certain other people. More-over, this rate of growth is almost half as much again as it was during the 13 years of which the noble Lord spoke earlier. Contrary to some assertions, this Government have never stopped recruiting; and although police authorities were told previously that there was a limit on the number to be recruited, they have since been told, as the noble Lord himself has said, that increases provided for in the 1970–71 Estimates have been authorised in full. Moreover, to-day not only is the quality of recruits as import-ant as ever but the opportunity is avail-able—more now than ever before—for an individual member of the Force to develop his potential ability.
I was rather sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, did not find it possible to pay a tribute to the present Home Secretary for his encouragement of the Bramshill scheme. At present there are 164 graduates serving in police forces in England and Wales, and there are also some 60 police officers who are now being given a chance which, but for this new development within the modern progressive course, they would never have had before—a chance to go to a university and to read for a degree. Our hope is that these figures will grow. My information coincides with that of the noble Lord: that the quality of these men is something of which we can be eminently satisfied.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said something about the possible development in the recruiting of civilians and traffic wardens to help out the available police strength. I agree with him that this is important, but again the facts show that much has been done in this field. In the 13 years of which the noble Lord spoke the total increase was 10,700 traffic wardens and other civilians—a rate of increase of 800 a year. In the five years since the Labour Party have been in power the increase has been 13,400—a rate of growth more than three times that which took place in the earlier years. Under this Government the total manpower devoted to the police role in England and Wales has increased by practically 25 per cent.

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But, of course, manpower is only part of the story. As the noble Lord said, equipment is essential for maximum effectiveness. In 1963, the last full year of the previous Administration, about £5½ million was spent annually on equipping the police; to-day we are spending £12 million. In the same period—that is, from 1963 to now—we have nearly doubled the number of police cars on the roads. In 1963 a mere £500,000 was spent on radio communications for the police. This has been increased nearly five times, to well over £2 million. Twice as many police cars are now equipped with radio, and the police now have 23,000 personal sets operational—about one set for each nine policemen. I understand that this compares with fewer than 500 sets when the noble Lord himself was in office.
All those concerned are entitled to take credit for this, because the fact is that the last few years have seen a complete tranformation in the operational methods used by the British police. The money spent on cars, radio communications and other equipment has been invested to produce an entirely new method of basic policing, the so-called unit beat policing, to which the noble Lord himself made a passing reference. The noble Lord asked for comprehensive planning. But this new system results from comprehensive planning: panda cars did not come out on the streets by chance. They form part of a remarkable change in the pattern of policing which was deliberately planned. I have heard it described as the biggest break-through since Peel set up the Metropolitan Police in 1829. The system is now giving a better service to the public, measured in terms of time, and it is bringing the police into closer touch with the public than has been possible for very many years in the past.
The noble Lord asked about management techniques, and I agree with him that these are important. They are now being used. There has been a greater concentration of resources and efforts on these matters during the past six years than at any time in the whole history of the police forces of this country. When the Government took office there existed only the rudiments of a police research and development organisation, consisting of four scientists and five police officers. This has been built up, encouraged and
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strengthened, until to-day there are some 50 officers in post, including nine police officers and 34 scientists, with more shortly expected. The results have manifested themselves in a number of ways including the unit beat system, and other improvements are likely increasingly to show themselves as the various aspects of police activity are brought under scientific scrutiny, and other advanced techniques, including the use of computers and other specialised forms of equipment, are being brought to the aid of the Service.
Because of the promise of this work, and of the importance which the Government attach to it, it was decided to concentrate responsibility for it in a new Police Planning Organisation. This Organisation got under way towards the end of last year. It now brings together the work previously done by the Police Research and Development Branch, mainly in the field of operational research and equipment, with other work which has more recently been developed to provide police forces with a management information system, based upon programme-budgeting, as an aid to the more effective allocation of resources. The two aspects are complementary, and are to be used to support and enhance each other.
This is a co-operative venture with enormously hopeful prospects. The Organisation is administered by a senior civil servant acting with the advice of the Inspector of Constabulary who pioneered the work of the Police Research and Development Branch. It comprises a group of scientific officers, with a senior scientist in charge; a group experienced in accounting and managerial techniques, under the direction of an economist; and, as important as any, a group of senior police officers seconded from forces, which is to be under the control of an officer of the rank of assistant chief constable. The particular responsibility of the police group will be to interpret the needs of the service to the Organisation and its work to the Service, but its members will also be closely teamed with the scientific and other staff in the development of particular projects, so that police experience will continue to permeate the whole work of the Organisation. Close contacts are also maintained with the universities, industrial research groups, and research units

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in other Government Departments. My Lords, we do not regard the work of the Organisation as in any way an intrusion on the independence of police forces; essentially it is intended to concentrate their experience, and to harness it with the necessary scientific and economic skills, so as to give effect to their common purposes.
Probably there is no more significant example of applying scientific aids to police problems than the police national computer project which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced at the end of last month. The policeman, and particularly the detective, needs to have ready and speedy access to police records on crime and criminals if he is to carry out his duties with the utmost precision—the sooner he can get information, the more likely he is to bring those responsible for crimes to justice. Police records dealing with these matters are at present dealt with manually at the Central Criminal Record Office at New Scotland Yard and at regional criminal record offices. But the task of maintaining these records and handling inquiries—which exceed one million each year—has created very considerable problems. With these problems the computer is best fitted to cope. The Government have, therefore, decided to put these records on a central computer complex and to provide a special police communications network throughout England, Wales and Scotland which will enable forces to obtain very rapid response to their inquiries.
When this complex is in full operation a police constable investigating some incident in a quiet country lane can get information from the computer in a matter of minutes—through his personal radio via the H.Q. computer terminal. To do all this will cost money; some £16 million or more is to be spent over the next ten years; but it opens up remarkable prospects and no one will deny, I am sure, that we should find the money required. This computer installation will be the biggest police project of its kind in the world and there is no doubt that it will have far-reaching effects on many aspects of police organisation.
As a result of what the Government have done within the last few years the British police now lead the world in the application of scientific techniques to
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their problems; and the computer is yet another example of projects which this Government have nurtured through their planning stage and are now bringing into full operational use. Within two years from now the benefits of the aid of this computer will be at the disposal of all policemen in this country.
The record that I am putting before your Lordships also shows equally outstanding achievement in the field of crime prevention. Within the last two years members of industry and commerce, and the T.U.C., have for the first time been closely associated with the work of crime prevention. They have been brought into consultation and we now have the benefit of their advice on all aspects of crime prevention work, including the difficult but important field of industrial and commercial crime prevention. In addition, crime prevention panels have, with their assistance, been set up in every large town in the country: by this means the police and leading members of local communities come together round a table to plan to prevent crime in their localities. Under Government auspices, there have, during the last four years, been national and local crime prevention campaigns—including broadcasting, television, advertising in the Press and wide distribution of publicity material. These developments, we shall all agree, are of considerable importance to them, since they serve to bring the public and police in closer contact in dealing with crime.
My Lords, I have confined myself to facts about the police and their work, for that is what the Motion before us deals with. I have not gone into the causes of crime, nor have I attempted to deal with the different social attitudes and atmospheres within which crime may be encouraged or discouraged—though I have my ideas and that is a most fascinating field. If I have tended to compare one set of facts, covering one chronological period, with another, it is only because we need to set the record straight after recent unfortunate Party propaganda. I have set out to show that not only do the Labour Government and the Labour Home Secretary care about law and order, but they care efficiently and effectively.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, that the numerical strength, the efficiency, and the equipment of the police are the prime protection of the

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law-abiding public against criminals. I claim that, as of to-day, under the present Government the numerical strength of the regular police forces is greater, the efficiency higher, the equipment vastly better, than at any previous time. But I add immediately that the policeman's task has never been more formidable. To the extent that this debate gives us all an opportunity to acknowledge the debt that we owe to the policeman in discharging his task, we are particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. Whether we watch on the television screen the steady way in which a policeman moves off to search for an armed desperado, or whether we see the relatively good humour with which he holds back the fans at a theatre first-night or the fanatics at some demonstration, we can but be grateful to the British "Bobby".
I recognise that mere words of gratitude are not enough. I know that it sometimes seems that far less essential members of our community appear to be grabbing bigger financial rewards, simply because they can exploit economic power. I am glad to think that although the agreed Pay Review for the police is not due until September, an interim increase is being considered. An immense amount has been done in the last few years to increase the effectiveness of the police— much more, I suggest, than any of us realise. No doubt more still can be done. I liked the last few sentences in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. I liked his references to the career prospects in the police forces of this country. I believe that if our newspapers devoted a little more time to that aspect of the situation they could render a considerable service to us all. In the meantime, if there are any constructive ideas from any side of this House, I assure noble Lords that they will be studied.
4.24 p.m.
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: My Lords, at a time when it is fashionable to denigrate all forms of authority it is right that we should give tribute where tribute is due. I would therefore say, quite shortly, and agree with the noble Lord's remark, "Thank God for the British ' Bobby'!" To the average person going about his lawful business the policeman is a friend and, I have always found, a very friendly friend. I
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think that is true of all our police forces all over the country.
We in Northern Ireland are very fortunate that Sir Arthur Young, so recently directing police affairs in this capital City, is now head of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Noble Lords may have noticed that he recently recommended an increase in the R.U.C. establishment, from the figure of approximately 3,000 men to a new figure of approximately 5,000 men. I might add that no noble Lord knows more about this subject, after his most careful investigations, than the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It is ironic that Northern Ireland, so often described as a "police State" by those who are perhaps unfriendly to its continued existence, has in fact been operating with this tiny force of dedicated men. I am reliably informed that when there was a "spot of bother" some time ago in Grosvenor Square, London, 7,000 police were there to deal with the situation, and another 7,000 were in reserve. We in Northern Ireland, when there were "spots of bother" in Londonderry involving many thousands of demonstrators, often found that there were only 500 police available to deal with the much more difficult task of trying to keep two rival factions from seriously injuring each other.
I see my noble friend—I suppose I should not use the word "friend", but he is a very old friend—Lord Stonham, sitting opposite. He, like Lord Hunt, knows a great deal about this matter and has been most helpful to Northern Ireland in the past. I feel that the terms of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, stressing the importance of the morale, the numerical strength, the efficiency and the equipment of the police is therefore equally applicable to the situation in Northern Ireland as to that in the rest of the United Kingdom.
At the same time as supporting my noble friend's Motion, which I do wholeheartedly—and how could I do anything else when he was good enough, along with my noble kinsman the noble Lord, Lord Rathcavan, to act as my sponsor the other day?—I feel, nevertheless, that despite our worries and our anxieties we should appreciate how very fortunate we are in this country in dealing with a law and order situation which in many respects is the envy of the world.

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Two small stories come to mind to illustrate my point. I hope that the first will not be thought too lighthearted, because I believe there is force in its point. A branch of my wife's family have for long lived in Sicily, and a cousin has from time to time been in the habit of visiting London to keep in touch with relations. One Sunday morning on a recent visit she saw outside her hotel a pile of Sunday papers. Passersby dropped the correct sum of money into a bowl and took the paper of their choice. This is something with which we at home are perfectly familiar. Her comment to us was that in Italy people would not only take the papers but the money as well.
My second story is more personal, and concerns my first visit to the United States, in 1959, when I have a shrewd suspicion that my old friend Lord Roberthall (who I am glad is to make his maiden speech to-day) was probably at the World Bank Meeting at Washington on that occasion, too. Arrangements had been made to show me round the building on Capitol Hill. It was a lovely warm afternoon at the end of September. Everything in that beautifully laid out city looks deceptively close, and I decided to walk down through the park in front of the building on my way to the National Gallery, which appeared from the top of the Hill to be only about a quarter-of-a-mile distant.
I suppose I had covered about 200 yards when a very large man, some 6 ft. 6 ins. tall and weighing about 18 stones, appeared from behind an oak tree. "You've got an interesting face", was his opening remark. When he told me that, I spoke really nicely and explained that I was British and had only just arrived on my first visit to America. By this time I realised that he was an educated chap who had perhaps gone off the rails: "Well", he added, "I hate to do this, but I've just got to have the price of a drink". An ominous bulge in the back pocket of his jeans seemed to indicate that, if necessary, a certain persuasive power was being held in reserve. In a last effort at composure I mumbled something about having only small change in my pocket, the denominations of which I was not familiar with. In a fairly friendly way he said, "But I guess you've got a quarter". I had, of course, no idea, on this my first full
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day in America, to what coin he referred; but by this time I was fully persuaded that discretion was the better part of valour. I produced a handful of change and the gentleman courteously picked out a quarter of a dollar, advising me that in future I would doubtless remember what a quarter looked like. He apologised once more for troubling me, and ambled amiably away. Now that frequent subsequent visits have taught me more about the most powerful country in the world. I realise how fortunate I was to have been subjected only to this gentlemanly encounter. "Why", said my American host that evening. "you actually walked across the park?" —and then a long pause—"You must be crazy!"
Fortunately noble Lords can still walk across St. James's Park in broad daylight without let or hindrance, and they should be thankful that that is still the position in Britain to-day. Crime is certainly on the increase, and we must support our forces of law and order as well as we can. We have, however, not yet reached the position which exists in suburban areas of American cities where people are equipped with lights which go on automatically in their living rooms in the evening—in that way, of course, they can make a possible intruder think that they are at home—while at night their gardens are floodlit so as to discourage a burglar who has already poisoned their guard dog.
I should like here to touch, if I may, on a related point. There is in Britain today—and I am coming back now from America altogether—a vast decline in the adherence to any religious morality: and I feel that one of the problems of the 'seventies is to consider how some new morality, some new modus vivendi, can replace the convictions commonplace in our parents' day. The ever-declining figures of church attendance, which I heard referred to last week by the noble Lord, Lord Soper—ever-declining figures, at least in the established Churches— make this a matter for urgent consideration. Just to hope that there will be a return to organised and established religion is flying in the face of published trends. I therefore feel that people of all, and no, religious convictions should try to make this one of the "in" things to discuss, alongside environmental pollution, drugs, abortion.

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and all the other fashionable topics of the moment.
Last week this House debated youth and community work in the 'seventies, and made a valuable contribution to perhaps the most important problem facing the country today. Those who embark on a life of crime usually start young. Modern industrial society produces conditions which were absent in the English village one hundred years ago. There were, of course, other problems in those days—grinding poverty and a short expectation of life, to mention but two—but because the country was still close to the town, some of today's problems were absent. I realise that many noble Lords, especially on the other side of the House, will disagree, perhaps even violently, with what I am about to say, but I sometimes regret that National Service was abolished altogether.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, who abolished it?
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: Even a period of six months, though doubtless too short to produce really efficient Servicemen, would give a young chap a new look at life outside the urban area in which he had been raised. If that could include service abroad as well for as little as three months prior to starting on a civilian life, he might then have a wider outlook on life and feel that he had a role to play in society without adopting a life of crime.
In the job I was performing until last year I often had to make unpopular decisions and unpopular statements, and so I shall not be entirely shocked, or surprised, if what I now say does not find universal favour with all my noble friends on this side of the House. I am against capital punishment, and I played no small part, with whatever influence I 'then had, in ensuring that Northern Ireland followed the law in Great Britain. I today still have no regrets on that subject. I am glad that we in Northern Ireland achieved that change by a free vote of the Northern Ireland House of Commons. But it is now my solemn duty to draw the attention of your Lordships' House to a vital difference in the legislation as it exists here and the legal situation in Northern Ireland today; a person who kills a policeman there will face the possibility
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of capital punishment. Surely, my Lords, that is a sensible provision.
In my view the Government should take a long look at this pressing problem. If they ignore this grave situation, or procrastinate as policemen are murdered month by month, they will be faced with such mounting anger that they may be forced to reintroduce capital punishment right across the board. That, in my view, would be a tragic and retrograde step. So, my Lords, that is why I urge them, not in the interests of reactionary Right-Wing views but in the interests of forward looking, sensible administration, to give the police the protection they deserve. We are utterly dependent upon the police, and as demonstration succeeds demonstration—some policemen were seriously injured in Cambridge last week—and as violent crime succeeds violent crime (I think I am right in saying that three policemen have been killed in three months) we must surely appreciate that we owe a great debt of gratitude to this magnificent force, which is the envy of the world.
There is a small additional point which I have not mentioned. If someone kills a person who is in the service of the Crown and is acting in the course of any duty, that person can also find himself in danger of facing a capital charge. I have some reason to believe that that particular provision at home in Northern Ireland has made it possible for me to address your Lordships to-day. But let me assure the Government that I am not suggesting that they should seek this additional protection for themselves at the present time, even though their popularity has perhaps passed its peak. I, for one, should be content if they would protect the police who protect us. Let us then, my Lords, see to it that this noble House makes it unmistakably clear to the Government of the day that it speaks not only for the police but also for the people; for it is to Westminster that the people look for some clear understanding of their anxieties and for some alleviation of their present problems.
4.42 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF COVENTRY: My Lords, for the first time in my life I find myself standing between two noble Lords who are making a maiden speech, and I regard it as a very special privilege

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to pay not only my own tribute but a tribute on behalf of all noble Lords here to the speaker who has been addressing us during these past minutes, because he is a man of such outstanding distinction. The talents of this House will undoubtedly be enriched and enhanced by the advent of such a national figure; and in view of his long, and often painful, experiences of disorder and riot it was surely particularly fitting that his maiden speech should be made on such a subject as we are considering to-day. That we listened with such rapt attention to a speech which was both humorous and, at the same time, in places deeply moving is, I am sure, an indication of the respect which all of us have for such a leader. I am sure that I voice the convictions of all your Lordships, when I say that I hope he will find many opportunities of taking part in the debates in your Lordships' House.
My Lords, I speak to-day in two capacities: first, as a member of the Church which during these past years has played a not unimportant part in seeking to deepen the relationship between the police and the total community. In response to an invitation as far back as 1964, issued by the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Joseph Simpson, and the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, the Churches were asked to establish a Commission under the leadership of the then Bishop of Birmingham, Dr. Leonard Wilson. That the findings of that Commission were of value is I think indicated by the fact that five years later, in 1969, at the International Police Conference held in Beirut the presidential address consisted almost entirely of quotations from the report issued by that Commission.
Following the publication of that report there have been three important developments. First, a continuation committee was set up, under the auspices of the British Council of Churches. That Committee, now called the Committee on Police in the Community, is still functioning and doing its work extremely valuably. Secondly, a consultation was held at Bramshill Police College in March last year, attended by leaders of the police, the Home Office and the Churches, the purpose of which was to set up groups in every area covered by the 47 police forces to deal with this
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whole question of a better understanding by the community of the police and their work, and to attempt to do what the noble Viscount so ably mentioned; that is, help the community to play its rightful part in dealing with the increase of crime to-day.
As recently as this, year, a series of courses have been held for police officers, clergy and social workers in William Temple College, Rugby, in my diocese. These courses, attended by no fewer than 150 police officers, have briefed police and clergy to play their full part, and an integrated part, in the changing social conditions of our day. I mention this merely to show that the Churches have been deeply involved in these important and unprecedented initiatives, which I think have assisted in the development of the new conception of the role of the police in the community.
There was a time—I think we must face this—when the public tended to believe that the police were exclusively responsible for public order and the containment of crime, with the public merely lending a hand occasionally. But
the report which I have already mentioned insists that the real responsibility rests with the community, which is assisted in carrying that responsibility by the Police Service. With this in mind, it is vitally important to break into the growing isolation of the police and to establish ever-growing links between the police and the community. It is interesting to note that the police have now created a community relations office, devoting very special attention to racial tension and to those situations in which young people are involved.
At the outset of my speech, I said that I was speaking in two capacities. I have already covered one aspect, and I now want to speak as a member of the public who has felt it is high time that the people of this country woke up to the fact that the members of the police force are doing an onerous, demanding and highly responsible piece of work, which demands first-rate pay and more than adequate pension, and conditions of work and promotion that will compensate for the inconvenience of overtime, shift work, weekend duty and danger, In the past, men joined the police force because of the security and status of the job but this

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situation has been largely eroded by inflation. To-day, in a high wage-earning area like my own city of Coventry, it is not long before the idealism of the young policeman is eroded by the disillusionment of their senior police colleagues and the tempting financial prospects offered by industry.
With regard to status, in the past men joined the police force because it afforded them an interesting, exciting and responsible piece of work—naturally, with the prospect of bettering themselves through promotion. But to-day the police force does not appear to have the same status in the life of the community that it once had. I wonder whether the general public realise the gravity and seriousness of the situation at the moment. This debate may do something to enlighten the public in this respect, and the speeches already made will, I am sure, have done so. But it is serious that the number of resignations during 1969 has been estimated as 2,000 police men and women with less than three years' service; that 6,700 personal assaults were made on police in England and Wales during that year; and that the take-home pay of many policemen was, at the worst, £11 per week, and at the best, £15 per week after deductions. Furthermore, I wonder whether the public realise that the police forces of this country are 17,000 short of their official establishment, and that that figure relates principally to the big cities. If one combines these facts with the conditions under which many policemen have to work—long hours and overtime; shift work; frequent weekends on duty; an increase in crime, with malicious woundings amounting in 1968–69 to a very high average, not far short, I think, of 100 a week—it is not surprising that recruitment is not coming up to the total that all of us, I think, would like. This points to a very serious situation.
I listened, as one outside Party politics, with very great respect to the remarkable record put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick; and I should have thought that anybody must have been deeply moved by what he had to say as to the Government's part during these past years. Nevertheless, I am sure that he would be the first to agree that we must not settle down into the mere (as it were) happy belief that everything is well, be-
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cause I feel sure that it is not. To-day the police need to be still better equipped —educationally, physically and mentally —to cope with the complexity (and I underline the word "complexity") of the human problems that can be found in any one area of a city. Furthermore, the public is better educated and more aware of their rights—and the public includes the criminal, big or small time. The policeman to-day is dealing with highly organised crime, which is the result of the activities of intelligent, astute men with ample resources. These activities are widespread, and range, as we well know, from complicated company frauds to the stealing and exporting of works of art; and to counteract all this there is needed a very high level of expertise.
Furthermore, the dangers confronting the men and women of the police force are to be seen in the increasing use of shotguns and violence in bank raids, which are becoming almost commonplace. The majority of the police are more than prepared to accept these risks and injuries, but we should not be surprised if they feel that their material rewards still do not reflect this hazard; and, furthermore, it should make us seriously to think, realising that the policeman has to rely on voluntary funds to look after his wife and family if he is killed on duty. Again, there is another side of the picture which the public needs to have in its mind as it considers the police force of to-day. I refer to the very high level of character which the public, quite rightly, expects of the police force, and the immensely high level of punishment that is meted out to a policeman if he fiddles his expenses to the extent of a few shillings more than his entitlement. For this he can get a three-months' suspended sentence of imprisonment, a substantial fine and be dismissed from the Service. Quite naturally, he compares this with the very small fine, which can be as little as £4 or £5, which a member of the public receives for kicking a policeman.
Furthermore, the nature of the life of a policeman to-day is becoming increasingly difficult, over against the background of a fabric of social behaviour which, alas!, as we all know, and to which reference has been made, is becoming increasingly threadbare. The level

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of moral life, in certain respects but not in all—I would venture to underline that: not in all—is declining visibly. Crime undoubtedly is increasing with enormous speed, thus throwing an extra load on a seriously depleted establishment; all of which puts an immense strain, as we have heard, on the fewer, individual officers. Furthermore—and this is something which is happening throughout the whole of life—the nature of their work is becoming increasingly difficult. The law, for instance, if I may dare to say so, is becoming increasingly more detailed and complex, which makes it necessary to recruit men with a capacity and ability to absorb and understand the numerous Statutes, regulations and orders. All this necessitates having men with a broad, well-educated and intelligent outlook upon life. But is the police force likely to obtain men of high intellectual calibre if the rate of pay is so comparatively small, and where the conditions of work can be so demanding?
Two things are needed urgently: first, that the public shall be alerted to the facts of the situation. They must be made aware that the police force to-day demands a highly intelligent, competent man of great moral integrity who, in a society in which vice is increasing with alarming rapidity, will carry out a job of increasingly heavy responsibility. Therefore, for this, he must receive a better rate of pay than at the moment he is receiving. I was most interested to hear Lord Beswick's hope that an interim increase will be made shortly. I hope indeed that that is carried out. Further, the policeman must know, my Lords, that his future years, after retirement, will be adequately catered for, and that his family will be provided for adequately in the case of tragedy. That, first, is what is needed.
Secondly—and this is very important —the image of the policeman in the mind of the ordinary citizen must be improved. On the whole, it can safely be said that it is very wide of the mark at the present. A good many people still think of the policeman as a man who directs traffic or enforces parking laws. These are highly important functions; but, in addition to this, the beat patrol man in a congested high crime area is called upon to make highly sophisticated judgments which have a major impact on the lives of individuals. Such judgments are not
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mechanical in nature, and such men are engaged in the difficult, complex business of human behaviour. Therefore, as I have said, their intellectual armament must be no less than their physical powers and protection.
With this in mind, police training must be related to these requirements, and this training must be based on a far wider and deeper study of, and research into, criminology. If all the reputable writings on that subject were collected together, they would not occupy a very large shelf in any library. Attention, I should think, though, must be drawn to-day to the quite excellent developments in this direction which, thank God!, are now happening in the University of Bristol; and already note has been made that the police have themselves made substantial provisions for scholarships to universities, and there are also some excellent courses for the police at Bramshill. All this is good, but it is not enough because the training of the police is of such crucial importance, and emphasis must be placed upon the difficult but positive social tasks which the police have to perform in helping, advising and protecting the public. The Service therefore requires these gifts and qualities of men of a very high calibre—and only the best will do, my Lords.
If at times in this brief speech I have overestimated what may appear to be the blackness of the situation, at the same time there is much that is very hopeful, as the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, indicated. While, on the one hand, the police force to-day is in a very serious situation—it might almost be said alarming—and while it is also true that authority is being increasingly questioned and undermined, that moral standards in certain directions are falling and vice increasing, there is still before us the picture of a police force which is understaffed, not too well paid, in need of still better training and of stronger supportive backing from the general public. But, on the other side, there are hopeful signs that improvement is just round the corner, and that the public is slowly becoming aware of the immense importance of the Police Service to-day. So I should like to join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for calling attention to this very important subject.
5.0 p.m.
LORD ROBERTHALL: My Lords, in addressing your Lordships for the first time, I hope I may be allowed to express not only the sense of privilege that I have in finding myself here at all but also my gratitude for the great kindness which the House extends to "new boys" and which makes being here so agreeable an experience. I ought also to say that, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, and most of the other noble Lords who have spoken, I cannot claim to have any special knowledge of the police. But the subject is too important to be left to the experts. It is as important that we should improve the public attitude towards the police and the law as that we should improve the police morale and numbers and efficiency. As I am sure we should all agree, these are two sides of the same coin, and it is in the frame of mind of an ordinary member of the public that I have tried to formulate my remarks. As my old friend Lord O'Neill of the Maine reminded the House, the British public have a reputation as a law-abiding people who think of the police as their friends; and, as he also reminded us, that is something for which we are envied all over the world. But it is not a gift of Providence like the climate or the Channel; it is something which we can keep only if we work for it.
Young people are not to be expected to be thankful for what they have inherited; it is their business to be critical and to try to change things. But as we grow older we become more conscious that, as Winston Churchill said— and it moved me very much when first I read it—we are only life tenants and we should try to hand on the national heritage in a better shape than we found it. If we think something is valuable we should say so and try to foster it. In this context, whatever the young may think of some of the things about them, I do not believe that many of them really want an anarchistic society. I do not believe that any of them would like such a society if they found it.
It is an essential for a law-abiding society that its members should respect the law and should wish to see it enforced. It is an alarming feature of our present situation that we have so many laws which are enforced in an arbitrary
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and capricious way. The most obvious example that I can think of are the motoring offences to which the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, referred. I am ashamed to confess that some years ago, before I was raised to this dignity, I was myself convicted of exceeding the statutory speed limit and was, very properly, fined for it. I was chastened by that experience and, perhaps conscious that I had lost one of my three lives, tried to do better thereafter. But in the next few years it seemed to me that I was passed by all the motorists of southern England. I know that that is an exaggeration and that many of them were law-abiding; but I was passed, and still am passed, by a very large number. And when I am hooted at or when people flash their lights at me, I must confess that I find it a little trying as I move out of the way, and I wonder whether I am not an accessory to the offence that they are committing.
If one stands for a few moments at traffic lights one sees a number of drivers who accelerate when they see the amber and go through on the red. Bus lanes are excellent things; but if one stands at the bottom of Park Lane in the rush hour one sees a great many drivers besides bus drivers who think that they are excellent things. This is in no sense a criticism of the police. The rapid growth of motoring has placed on them what must seem an insuperable task. There are not enough of them; and, as several noble Lords have made plain, they have much more important things to do. But I do not think we should be so complacent as to let even motoring get the better of us in this way. It is my impression, both from observation in America and from what happened here after we introduced traffic wardens, that once it becomes likely that people will be caught the whole problem becomes very much easier, the number of offenders diminishes and it becomes much more apparent who they are. Although this may seem trivial, I believe that there is a real danger in the cumulative effect of our whole attitude to the law. It must be damaging that people who think of themselves in general as respectable should come to regard those parts of the law that they do not like as something like a lottery or football pool in reverse —where you are unlucky if your name

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comes out of the hat. We could all give other examples.
My second one, which was also referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, is that of the demonstrations which become more frequent and more violent and attract many young people. As I have said, it is right that young people should be critical, and it is a good thing that they should be willing to demonstrate
for their beliefs. But there is a very widespread feeling that it ought to be
plainer than it is whether these demonstrations go beyond the law or not. I am told that the law on this subject is very confused and complex. There is a very widespread feeling that if the people concerned do go beyond the law more should be done to limit the inconvenience, or worse, which they cause to the law-abiding citizen. It weakens his respect for the law, and it must be harmful to the characters of the demonstrators themselves that, when they are allowed to disturb or assault others, or even the police, they should then appear to be asking for sympathy or protection, or complaining about police brutality. Those who take the sword— I will not say, "shall perish by the sword", but at any rate I think no harm would be done if they felt the flat edge occasionally.
In these ways I feel that there is a danger that respect for the law will be eroded from both sides. The feeling that some offences cannot be checked makes us apathetic about the law; the feeling that demonstrators can cause great inconvenience, assault the police or occupy other people's properly with impunity makes us angry. I have spent many years of my life in the university world, and I regard the present system, in which a university education comes much more from ability than from means is an enormous improvement. But I wonder whether any of us would dare to-day to support a referendum on the future of students' grants. I support the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, in his wishes for better morale and better equipment, and for a larger Police Force. I feel sure that the Home Secretary shares his wishes in this respect.
What I have been endeavouring to say, my Lords, is that we should also do more to cherish the public support for the police and for law and order. There is widespread sympathy for the police. I
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sometimes think that it would be pleasing if we could organise a demonstration to show this sympathy. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, need worry that this would require so many police that the criminals would have a good time. The police have to do the work, and I am sure the public would like to feel that the police themselves were consulted about the problems and about the way in which they are dealt with. I have no doubt that the Home Secretary also is conscious of this, and that he does consult them. Nevertheless, I think it should be made more clear to the public that this is done, and particularly if it is known that police wishes have not been complied with for reasons—but I will not refer to the recent debate. Certainly attempts should be made to explain to the public why the advice of the police has been overridden.
My Lords, my last point is one that was made in a recent article by Mr. David Watt, the political editor of the Financial Times. Not only should we uphold the law, but we should constantly review it, especially in what one might call the sensitive areas where public opinion is changing or where the problems of enforcement are getting more difficult. There are some laws which we must have, and although we cannot enforce them in the way in which we should like to do, the public can see that we are all trying our hardest. But if there are laws which the public can see are enforced by hardly anyone, then I think we should ask whether it does not do more harm than good to keep them 0:1 the Statute Book.
5.12 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, it is my pleasant privilege to thank the noble Lord, Lord Roberthall and to congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. I do so with very great pleasure. He achieved in his speech something which, despite the three "maiden speeches" that I have made in this Chamber, I have never been able to achieve: he managed to be direct and short, and those are highly desirable attributes. Your Lordships will be aware that because of his very wide and great experience the noble Lord, Lord Roberthall, could have spoken as an expert on academic, industrial, Governmental and oilier subjects. Instead, he chose to speak about the police, as he said, "as an ordinary man", I

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am sure that we look forward to further speeches from the noble Lord in either capacity, ordinary man or expert.
May I also add a word to what has been said already about the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine. I looked forward to it, and I hope that we shall hear him on many future occasions. The noble Lord was good enough to refer to me as his friend, and that is so. I had a "front seat" during the months, in fact during the years, when the noble Lord conducted the affairs of Ireland; when they were extremely difficult and dangerous and afflicted us with deep concern. I had great admiration for the courage, skill and self-sacrifice which the noble Lord showed then, and I am very glad that we may look forward to further contributions from him in your Lordships' House.
My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Beswick, I would thank the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for introducing this debate today. I agreed with many things that he said. I agree that we must conscientiously measure what is needed to meet the crime wave. I imagine that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, was thinking not only about police forces and police strength but of the possibility of strengthening the law. In that connection I would say that when it was looked at in an endeavour to meet particular difficulties which have arisen recently, it was not found easy to devise new powers which would not at the same time destroy or endanger what we all regard as essential liberties and freedoms. I also agree with the noble Lord that the police are the friends of free-dom and that those who resort to crime are its enemies.
I was rather unhappy to hear in the last speeches made in the debate references to feelings—genuinely held, of course—that something needed to be done about the image of the police in the public eye. One thing which we can all
do is to speak truly and give the facts about the police. As some of your Lordships may know, I am Chairman of the Appeals Committee of the Police Dependants' Fund and so I am in a position to know something of the image and the standing of the police in the public eye. I can say that it is very
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high indeed; I do not know of any time when it was higher. Of course, no situation that one reaches is ever good enough, and we must strive more. But I feel very strongly on this particular point, and I often think that some criticisms and comments that are made are perhaps ill-judged. I wonder sometimes whether all the facts and figures, and all the real things, have any effect.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry, in his very interesting and eloquent speech, said that he was glad to hear the facts given by my noble friend Lord Beswick. One of the facts was that although crime was still increasing, the rate of increase had lessened and was in fact some 6·8 per cent. Yet the right reverend Prelate went on to speak about the ever-rapidly ascending volume of crime. My Lords, we should stick to the facts and not say things which give pain to those who spend long hours, days, and even weeks, and give everything they have, to getting the crime figures down. Although I agreed with so much of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and although I thank him for the fact that he did not, as might have been the case, start this as a Party political debate but made a balanced and very fair speech, nevertheless, implications and criticisms of what the present Government have done did creep into it and I feel that they should be answered. One of the criticisms was on the question of the recruitment of police officers. I know that my noble friend Lord Beswick has given some important figures and I would give others.
This Government took over in 1964, after 13 years of Conservative Government, during which period we did not have acute economic problems. Your Lordships will recall that Mr. Macmillan assured us that we had "never had it so good." During that period, the total strength of the police forces in England and Wales was only 77,800; that is, officers available for duty. That was after what was then an unprecedented crime wave. To-day, there are not 77,000, but 91,762 officers in the police forces; that is, an increase of more than 15 per cent. in five years. It is an annual increase of more than 2,200, a rate which was never achieved by the Party opposite. This is important when we consider the increased tasks. Because of the efforts of this

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Government there are now seven police officers on duty for every six who were on duty when we took over.
There has also been an immense increase in civilian aids to the police about which my noble friend gave the figures. Recruitment has never been less than 5,000 in any year, and for the coming financial year the police authorities" estimates have been met in full. Everyone in this House agrees that the numbers must be still further increased as rapidly as possible, but the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, knows that there are limits to the number of suitable, high quality young men who can come forward in any one year and to the number who can be properly trained and assimilated. It is not only a question of money: we just cannot get suitable men. I leave it at that. We all know that if men who were unsuitable were taken on, or were only semi-trained, it would be a bigger disaster than not having them at all.
I would ask: is it too much to hope that responsible critics and critical opponents of the Government would acknowledge that the Government have done a good job in this field—adding, if they wish, that the national interest demands even better? It is only half the truth to base arguments to the contrary on a comparison of the present police strength with establishment. The right reverend Prelate did this when he said that the police were 16,000 men short. My Lords, when we took over in 1964 the total authorised establishment of the police forces in England and Wales was 86,500. That was the establishment which the then Government thought was sufficient, although they had enlisted some 10,000 men fewer than that establishment. To-day, our actual strength is 5,000 above that establishment. Quite properly, however, we have sharply increased the total establishment, which is now 104,500—an increase of some 18,000 in the paper establishment, which has not yet been wholly taken up. So do not let us put this point about the establishment as if there were some great failure. Establishments should be kept under continuous review, as has been done by this Government. In my view, there must always be a gap between establishment and actual strength, and
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we must keep adjusting establishments to expanding needs.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, the noble Lord has suggested that as Home Secretary I had thought that 86,000 was a proper number for the police. Believe me, that was not so. Many establishments badly needed revising, but there were many other things to do which were more urgent at the time, and it seemed to me wrong to divert people on to the job of revising establishments which were already well above existing strength. I give the present Government credit for having revised them. But in my time I certainly did not regard 86,000 as a satisfactory figure.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord tells me. He was too busy with other things to revise establishments. My answer to that is that the establishment was then 86,500 and there were only 77,800 men and women in the forces, so that he was 9,000 under
an establishment which he now agrees was too low. I am prepared to accept that, but it does not affect the point I am making. What matters is not the paper figure of establishments but the number we have in the forces. Of course we have to watch the question of establishment, since it is no use having it force which cannot increase because the paper figure has not been properly adjusted.
Another thing that must constantly be looked at—and the noble Lord referred to this—is wastage, by which I mean resignations other than by normal retirement. The wastage figures are regrettably high. Last year, some 3,000 men left prematurely, and the figure has been high for many years. It is not a new phenomenon and it is not surprising, because of the arduous and difficult nature of police officers' duties. If we study the figures of premature wastage for the last ten years, we find that in 1960 there were 2,745 resignations without pension or gratuity, and I take that to mean resignations of officers who were dissatisfied, otherwise they would not have resigned without taking pension. Then there were fewer resignations in each subsequent year until 1968, when the total was 2,842. Because of the larger force, this meant that the actual percentage of resignations had fallen.

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In 1960 there were 3·7 per cent. of premature resignations, and in 1968 3·2 per cent. That is a little better but still too high.
I would now make some suggestions which I hope may help to reduce the number of early resignations of experienced officers whom we cannot afford to lose. Although numbers are important, no less important, as my noble friend Lord Beswick demonstrated, is the efficient deployment and equipment of the available forces; and in this field there has been very great progress. Certainly in my time at the Home Office, when this was a matter in which I took a considerable interest, I was delighted with some of the things that we were able to do. There were the unit beat system, the great investment in panda cars, and in personal radios—and there are now 23,000 such radios available, My noble friend said that that represents one for every nine police officers. Even arithmetically it is one for four, but, as my noble friend pointed out, it is one for every officer on duty, which means that every officer is in immediate touch with his own station and headquarters. And when the computer is working on a national scale, I hope in two years' time, there will be instant aid and information to a constable anywhere, which is bound to mean a great improvement in the reporting and detecting of crime.
It is only a large and continuing increase in the number of crimes committed that has obscured the great progress that has been achieved. I agree that it is a breakthrough. We are inclined to talk all the time in terms of the total number of crimes, and that is what has been done in this debate. But so far as the police are concerned, the only measure of their success is to pay attention to the number of crimes cleared up. That is the true measure of the burdens carried by the police and the measure of their success in coping with them. For example, in the four years from 1960 to 1964, the average number of indictable offences cleared up annually was some 386,000. In 1968, the total was 540,000 —that is, an increase of 40 per cent. When we talk about productivity and what the chaps are doing it means they brought 40 per cent. more offenders to book than they had done in the preceding four years. I do not know of any other
1202
service with a comparable record. We who are politicians and support the police, and the newspapers who support the police, would perform a useful service by drawing attention to this success and using it to illustrate the great importance of the police to every one of us.
It is with this record in mind, my Lords, that I think we should examine the proposals we have to face for a political campaign on law and order. The courts
which dispense justice and the police who maintain order have always been, and in my view must continue to be, outside Party politics. I therefore regard it as deplorable that the Party opposite have decided to make this a Party political issue. In my view, it can only do harm to both law and order No one can complain about the very proper concern of the Party opposite at the state of crime, a problem which affects us and most industrial countries in the world. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, that it is no good talking about what the position is in some other country—we are concerned with the position here. But I strongly object to the way in which this subject has been made a Party political football by the speeches of some Conservative leaders, and notably Mr. Quintin Hogg, who is reported, at a time when he should have been speaking with all the weight of a Shadow Home Secretary, as saying that Mr. Wilson, the Prime Minister:
"is presiding complacently over the biggest crime wave of the century".
Frankly, I say that this was despicable, and I hope that noble Lords opposite will feel that, in their speeches, in this House and in the country, they owe it to the country and to themselves explicitly to reject this statement.
In 1964, before Labour took office, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, in a speech referring to the current crime figures, said:
"Burglaries and housebreakings have increased two and a half times; crimes against women four times; crimes of violence five times ".
He did not then say, suggest or imply that Mr. Macmillan or Sir Alec Douglas-Home were "presiding complacently over the biggest crime wave" in history—as indeed it then was. No Minister or Party, and no Member of your Lordships' House, is or could be complacent about

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this evil. The politician who declares otherwise is in my view acting with disgraceful responsibility, and it is bound to recoil on his own head. Indeed, it has recoiled on Mr. Quintin Hogg, because to support his case he referred to the Richardsons and the Krays. He forgot that they committed their crimes under Tory rule, and were brought to justice, under Labour, by two of the most painstaking, courageous and brilliant actions of the century. This is something that we can say again and again. The officers concerned have to take the can back every time: and when they do this kind of job, which takes well over a year, with endless work and struggle, and they finally succeed, nobody says a word for them.
One only has to state these facts to illustrate that what Mr. Quintin Hogg said, and apparently tried to do, is dangerous, squalid nonsense. There should be no Party strife on this subject. We should all work together to strengthen and support the police; give them the men and the equipment that they need, and let them get on with the job—a job which they do better than any other force in the world. Home Secretaries sometimes have to take political decisions, as Mr. Callaghan did over Grosvenor Square and again in Northern Ireland, and they must suffer the consequences if they are wrong. But they are not to blame for individual crimes or for the level of crime. These are matters for society as a whole, irrespective of Party, and only society as a whole, by a sustained effort, can so change the climate that the level of crime will be reduced.
Finally, my Lords, I want to make some suggestions which, in my view, if implemented will help to reduce wastage in the police. There is a tendency for most people to believe that money is the sole, at least the main, answer. I do not think it is. Advertisements for the Metropolitan Police say that the starting salary for a man of 21 is over £1,000 a year, plus a free house or tax paid rent allowance up to £400 a year. They earn every penny, of course; but it is not a bad start. A man can be a sergeant in three years and an inspector in five years, earning over £2,000 a year. Men are applying in satisfactory numbers on these terms. Of course the level of pay is important, and the Police Council are now considering an interim settlement. The machinery is there and is being used, and I trust
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that a satisfactory agreement will be reached. I hope, however, that included in any overall settlement there will be some changes to meet points of difficulty from which early resignations arise.
Only a minority of officers can hope for promotion, but all experienced officers are of great value, and they should be given more recognition for experience. A constable is thought to reach maximum efficiency with six years' service, but he cannot get a long service supplement until he has served for 14 years. If the supplements could be increased and another one introduced after, say, ten years' service, we should probably retain many officers who now leave just when they are most valuable. Similar arguments apply to officers who are promoted. Some sergeants are leaving the service without pension after 15 or even 20 years' service. They are usually men who have failed to pass the examination for inspector, and having reached their maximum pay they see no prospect for the future. A supplement after eight years in the rank would meet this difficulty.
A similar case can be argued for inspectors and chief inspectors. Inspectors and chief inspectors also have a legitimate complaint in that they are excluded from the payment for normal overtime. They should either be paid for overtime on the same basis as the lower ranks or the difference should be recognised in their salaries, as it is, or is supposed to be, with superintendents. I say "supposed to be", because a longstanding and indefensible anomaly lies in the fact that, because of a different basis for payment of hours worked and for expense allowances, some chief inspectors now suffer a loss of income when they are promoted to superintendent. This is insupportable, and it has been going on for a long time.
There are other anomalies, such as the fact that, because of the different basis of payment for hours worked, some detective constables are paid more than inspectors. These things must be cleared away, and if pay is under consideration they should be cleared away now. I would ask my noble friend to take note of another cause of anxiety, which is the belief that the new National Pensions scheme will devalue police pensions. I trust that this anxiety is ill-founded. If it is, I urge Her Majesty's Government

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to give an assurance that the police will not be asked to pay more to receive less.
Police officers are, as we all agree, a special class of people; but they are also men. Part of their duty is to supervise and control demonstrations, and they do it remarkably well. From all that has been said in this debate I, for one, want to let the British police go on handling demonstrations without too much interference from us or from anybody else. But in the process of handling these demonstrations they learn about militancy and what it can sometimes achieve. Political militancy by the police is unthinkable to most people, including the police themselves, but that is all the more reason why any proper cause for grievance should be investigated and dealt with. There should be really constructive action at national level, with the maximum of consultation and trust. Our police forces are part of the very essential fabric of the British way of life. They are the finest in the world. It is our responsibility to create and maintain conditions to ensure that they go on keeping that place.
5.40 p.m.
LORD GRAY: My Lords, in asking for the indulgence customarily accorded to maiden speakers in your Lordships' House, I promise to try not to be controversial and, which is easier, definitely to be brief. In thanking my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor for introducing this Motion, I must confess that as I come to speak to it any confidence which I derive from foreknowledge of your Lordships' generosity is not unattended by feelings which might appropriately be likened to those of a young constable who, on going to "feel a collar" for the first time, finds that a bevy of chief superintendents have got there before him. Nor am I unaware of the shadows of my noble friend Lord O'Neill of the Maine and the noble Lord, Lord Roberthall.
My Lords, I am neither involved in police work nor in the administration of the law. My interest is general, and my remarks addressed to morale and numerical strength in conjunction. That the law-abiding public is fortunate in its police and in the protection they afford is, I think, as unquestioned, as is the counter proposition that our con-
1206
stabulary are fortunate in the majority of our public. Evidence in support of the first proposition has of late been dramatically provided by Press and television coverage of troubles in other democracies. Support for the counter proposition can be deduced from the sympathy for the Service in its present difficulties, and the continued good relations generally, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has just said.
The official 1968 crime statistics show that, despite an upturn in the percentage increase in the indictable offences from the marked low of 1967, police success, in terms of such crimes cleared up, again showed a marginal improvement, as did the 1967 percentage in comparison with that of 1966.
Success, my Lords, achieved despite below strength establishments. I have no head for figures and I have failed, I fear, to find how to compare the differently set out statistics for my native Scotland with those for South of the Border. But it appears that in Scotland there has been a drop in crime, and the police forces there have achieved similar improvement to that in England in the percentage of crimes cleared up. That is on the one hand. On the other there is recorded evidence to support the contention that morale in the Service is not all that it might be. There are the facts of low recruiting figures and below strength establishments and, I am told, an apparent upswing in the number of seasoned officers leaving the force—some resigning without pension or gratuity.
To help me form some perspective, I did some "leg work", and sought opinions on the beat in an effort to reduce the issues to levels at which I might feel competent to form judgments. Since I have promised to be brief, I will not go into the detail of the several lengthy conversations I have had with officers in and out of town. I will instead offer for your Lordships' consideration the two conclusions to which I came, and which I feel bear most directly on morale. I claim no particular scientific justification nor scholarship for reaching them, but for what they are worth they are as follows. The first concerns manpower. It is that with fewer men to share with paperwork and chores, and that with the increasing amount of time spent dealing with demonstrators of various kinds, there is a frustrated feeling that the constable

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has less opportunity individually to get on with his preferred everyday basic policing. The second is that there is a feeling that in terms of pay, conditions and leisure opportunities, there increasingly are aspects of the affluent society in which the constable is steadily and progressively dropping back in comparison with his civilian contempories.
The first point can be dealt with by increasing manpower, civilian and uniformed. The second may, on the face of it, sound merely like a claim for special consideration, often met in wage negotiations. However, I invite your Lordships, as I have tried to do, very carefully to redraw the balance sheet of pros and cons of the constable's way of life, not just his job, in terms of 1970 and the events of recent months. If on doing so you reach conclusions similar to those that I have drawn, you will, I respectfully suggest, find that it is fair to say that there is a strong case for a fundamental rethink about police rewards and conditions or, as it was put in the fourth instruction to the 1960 Royal Commission:
"The broad principles which should govern the remuneration of the constable having regard to the nature and extent of police duties and responsibilities and the need to attract and retain an adequate number of recruits with the proper qualifications."
As justification for my view I quote from Lord Macaulay, who wrote in his critical essay, Gladstone on Church and State as follows:
"We consider the primary end of government as a purely temporal end, the protection of the persons and property of men …"
And further what he wrote in an illustration of this point in these words:
"… and that no part of its efficiency for that end should be sacrificed in order to promote any other end however excellent."
On these grounds might it not be suggested that the excellence, variety and complexity of the many social and welfare provisions of the past 25 years, with which I am certainly not quarrelling, have by virtue of their merit and the demands they have made, along with the charm and claim of measures concerned with amenity rather than welfare, drawn the attention of all of us away from the just claims of a Service which continued to produce results, and consequently drawn attention away from the civil aspect of Macaulay's contention.
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My Lords, I have inevitably oversimplified a vexing and complex issue. I recognise that the individual constable is neither necessarily paragon nor superman, but remember too the often grim and sometimes dangerous nature of his job, and the outstanding quality of the force he is proud to serve. My Lords, I hope that for his sake and ours we can improve his lot.
5.50 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, the whole House will agree that we have listened to a maiden speech of singular clarity, cogency and charm. Had we not seen on the Paper that this was a maiden speech, I do not think any of us would have believed it. The whole House will expect to hear from my noble friend on many future occasions. Perhaps I may also say how glad I was to hear the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord O'Neill of the Maine, which fully came up to our great expectations.
My Lords, so excellent and comprehensive was the speech of my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor in opening the debate, and so many are those who have put their names down to speak, that I think I shall be complying with the wishes of the House if I confine myself to a single topic. My noble friend Lord Brooke mentioned various previous debates on this subject or related subjects, all of which I heard but in none of which, I think, did I take part. But I remember some of those debates and hearing from my noble friend Lord Brooke, and from the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, and from others, a great number of statements with which I fully agreed. Yet there was an aspect of this matter which I, as a lawyer, thought had never been sufficiently explored. It is to that aspect that I wish to address myself. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, paid tribute to the sincerity of my noble friend Lord Brooke. Perhaps he will allow me to pay the same tribute to his sincerity. I do not know how far he will agree with me in some of the matters I am going to explore, but I hope he will at least consider them.
The matter with which I am going to deal is the additional strain on the police and the addition to their task which are caused by demonstrations and by the threat to valued liberties that these demonstrations involve. I believe that

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the problem has been increased and exacerbated by the spread of some false doctrines by many who ought to know better. I am not sure that any other lawyer is taking part in this debate, and my approach and interest is that of a lawyer who has been all his professional life very much concerned with the subject of constitutional law and our civil liberties. One of this country's greatest boasts and greatest claims to international fame for a very long period has been its contribution to the preservation of human liberty and individual liberties; and we have been a free and law-abiding country. These matters have depended, as our greatest constitutional writers have pointed out, on the prevalence of the rule of law.
I am certainly not going to weary the House with the main considerations in a famous chapter of Dicey, but there are certainly three elements in that rule of law. The first is that no man can be punished except for breach of the law; he cannot be punished at the discretion of the executive Government or any tyrant. That is perhaps the first quality of the rule of law. The second is that no man is ever above the law; everyone is subject to the decisions of our courts and the ordinary tribunals. The third great principle is that our great rights under the Constitution have been determined as a result of judicial decisions on the rights of private persons.
In contrast to many other countries, we have believed not in great declarations of principle but in the provision of remedies. Our liberties owe much more to the decisions of the courts and such remedies as the writ of habeas corpus and the Acts of Habeas Corpus than they do to any general declaration of principle. So it was, as has often been pointed out, that when Voltaire visited this country his predominant sentiment was, in Dicey's words, that he had
"passed out of the realm of despotism to a land where the laws might be harsh, but where men were ruled by law and not by caprice".
I now come to the matter on which I think so much nonsense has been spoken: the alleged right to demonstrate. If there were such a right to demonstrate, do your Lordships not think that we should find some reference to that right in the great works on our Constitution or in some of the famous declarations of human rights?
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I am coming later to how far it can be truly said that there is a right to demonstrate. But I do not believe in inventing new names for old rights, which lead people astray by making them think that this right is so overwhelming that they can ignore the law. The right which is nearest to it is the right dealt with in the chapter of Dicey called "The Right of Public Meeting", and there is a very important decision on that subject to which I will refer later in my speech. It may be that some noble Lords are not only interested about the right of public meeting but may also remember the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the Assembly of the United Nations, of December 10, 1948, and nearly two years later, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of November 4, 1950. Both those great Conventions deal with the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, the first in Article 20 and the second in Article 11. So that is well established.
There are these valuable rights of assembly and others, but they do not give the slightest right to override anyone else's right, or to break any criminal law. The great mistake of talking about the right of protest is the suggestion that there is something so noble and splendid about protest that, unlike all these other great rights of free speech and assembly, and so on, it may have to be satisfied in some way at the expense of the law. It is perfectly true that it may be said that there is in England a right of protest; but just as one might say there was a right to spit, you are not entitled to do either if you thereby break the law or contravene other people's rights. My Lords, there are these rights of assembly and they are very important, but there is not now, there never has been and, if we are wise, there never will be, a right to demonstrate which entitles anybody to destroy the freedom of other people or to break the criminal law.
I now come to the great error to which all this discussion and, as I think, misrepresentation of the right to demonstrate, has led. There has been a great deal of discussion: fake, for example, the proposed attempt to prevent a South African cricket team from playing here

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later in the year. There has been some discussion by journalists and by members of all Parties on a subject that is completely and absolutely irrelevant; namely, whether the people who want the cricket matches to take place are in a majority or a minority. It does not matter in the least, because the nature of the law is that everybody is entitled to exercise his rights under the law and it does not matter whether these people are in a majority or a minority. So if this subject is further discussed in the Press or on any of the other well-known media I hope people will get it into their heads that, when human rights are invaded and lawful activities are interrupted, it does not matter a tinker's cuss whether those activities that are interrupted are activities which a majority desire or only a minority.
My Lords, that brings me to the case which I said I would cite. I regard it as an extremely important case in our constitutional history. I have quoted it before in your Lordships' House. It is the cast of Beatty v. Gillbanks and it was a case that came before the Court of Queen's Bench in 1882 and is reported in 9 Q.B.D. at page 308. The case is an amusing and short one to read and has very simple facts, like so many of the great cases on which our liberties depend. It arose in the following circumstances. The Salvation Army, with which many of us are familiar, formed processions and paraded through Weston-super-Mare, with band, flags and banners. It had done this on various previous occasions. Its aims were perfectly lawful; they were thoroughly reputable people. There was another body of men who hated the Salvation Army like poison and who called themselves the "Skeleton Army", and they decided that they would obstruct these processions, induce fights and cause a general commotion. This was done on various occasions and it alarmed the inhabitants. So the magistrates eventually issued a notice saying that the Salvation Army was not to conduct its procession through Weston-super-Mare. The Salvation Army, with splendid knowledge of the nature of English liberty, had a procession through Weston-super-Mare, and continued even when asked by the police to desist. One member of the Salvation Army was arrested, whereupon the others carried on.
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The case came before the Court of Queen's Bench and the only judgment is the judgment of Mr. Justice Field, because the other learned Judge simply concurred. I will read these famous sentences from his judgment:
"What has happened here is that an unlawful organisation"—
that is, the "Skeleton Army"—
"has assumed to itself the right to prevent the appellants and others from lawfully assembling together, and the finding of the justices amounts to this, that a man may be convicted for doing a lawful act if he knows that his doing it may cause another to do an unlawful act. There is no authority for such a proposition."
My Lords, I hope there never will be.
Now let us think what is being suggested for this coming tour of the South African cricketers. Nobody disputes the right of the hosts to play cricket with them; nobody disputes their right to come; nobody disputes that the cricket grounds cannot have their turf destroyed without breach of the law. Yet there are various bodies that are threatening to disrupt and to make this tour impossible by assault, by attacks on property and various other illegal acts. My Lords, I cannot pretend that I am wildly interested in cricket, with the exception of village cricket which I love watching; but whatever the case may have been for having this tour or not having it when it was first suggested, my view, as the view of one who loves English liberty, is that it would now be an absolute disaster if the tour did not take place.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I am not in the least deterred by the fact that the young hooligan section of the Liberal Party has come to a different conclusion. That is the affair, and possibly what is nowadays called the headache, of the Liberal Leaders (if any). But those of us who are interested in the survival of English liberty must really say that we have had enough of this illegal disruption of perfectly lawful activities.
That brings me to this conclusion: if we do not insist on the preservation of rights to everybody who possesses them under the law, then there is no purpose in political action at all. Those of us who enter politics—and I now include

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members of all Parties—do so with the intention of trying to improve the law and to alter it from time to time as we believe to be in the public interest. But suppose that the law, when it has been made, has no effect whatever; that any hooligan who dislikes it can arrange a demonstration in order to make it impossible for lawful activities to take place. If that happens it defeats the purpose of politics altogether.
That leads me to my concluding thought, and that is the almost unbelievable folly of those Communist and other Left-Wing demonstrators, the extraordinary folly in believing that if they succeeded in making force effective against the law they would be the ultimate winners. Have they never heard of the Fascists? The only thing that gave the Fascists even a temporary influence in this country, and the only thing, in my opinion, which could conceivably bring them back, would occur if it were widely thought that these were the only people prepared to stand up to the illegal violence of the Left. I care passionately for human liberty and the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution. I know that the evils of these demonstrations may seem small in comparison with the great crimes with which most of this debate has been concerned. Yet if we study what lies behind these demonstrations, I believe we shall find that I am not being imaginative or saying anything farfetched when I say that they are threatening the survival of the rule of law in this country.
VISCOUNT BARRINGTON: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I, if it is not out of order, ask him one factual question? I cannot claim to represent either the hooligan element of the Young Liberals—because I am not young—or the leaders of the Liberal Party: both would equally reject my ideas on the subject of demonstrations, on which I agree with him. But on the general proposition that there is no right to demonstrate, to advertise one's views or advertise one's grievances, where in the great Charter is there any right to advertise one's goods?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, there is the most ample right to undertake what is generally called demonstration.
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If the noble Viscount will read the chapter that I have mentioned in Dicey, he will see that the right of public meeting (I have given one leading case: there are others; and I have simplified it) of course permits a wide range of demonstration. What it does not permit is breaking the law or interfering with the rights of others. There is no right whatever of thronging the streets to prevent people from getting to Lord's; there is no right whatever to destroy the turf in Lord's; there is no right whatever to do any of those things that certain gentlemen whose names will be known to the House are intending now to do.
6.15 p.m.
LORD SALTER: My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lord Brooke, and also my noble friend Lord Conesford, in what they have said. In view of the long list of speakers I propose to trespass upon your Lordships' time for only a very few minutes. I ought perhaps at the beginning to say that I was one of those who both voted and spoke against the abolition of capital punishment. I only mention that now, because I do not mean to discuss the question; I accept of course that Parliament has decided. But I ask your Lordships not to depreciate what I am going to say because of the fact that I took that position at that time, having then at the top of my mind the memory of how for many years the special privilege given to the police in this matter had the effect of saving many innocent lives because as a consequence burglars came without firearms. But of course I accept that decision, and I am not going to reargue it this evening. Nor am I going to argue the question as to whether some people have tried to take political advantage of the situation.
I want only to say this. It is the case —and everyone knows it is the case— that quite a number of groups and professions have obtained very great advantages by acting in a way that is some-times contrary to the previous traditions of their profession, and they have had priority in consideration as a consequence. I am not going to argue the intrinsic merits of their claims, but
will only say that the priority so given must have been observed by the police.
They did not have this priority, but they have nevertheless behaved in the way to which

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they have long been accustomed. I think it right to say that in view of all these considerations, and of course of the many other things, besides the danger of being killed, which have been referred to in the course of this debate, imposing special strains upon the domestic life of policemen and their wives, we should recognise the fact that up to this moment the police have continued to maintain the traditions of behaviour to an extent which I think calls for our sincere congratulations and recognition. They must sometimes have been under very great strain when they have observed what has happened in other cases. Perhaps at no distant date the strain on them might become insupportable.
I was therefore extremely glad to hear that apart from the mechanical aids which they are given to assist them in the course of their ordinary duties the Government intend to advance to an earlier date the reconsideration of their pay and conditions. I should like in this connection to say how sincerely and strongly I agree with my noble friend, Lord Brooke in speaking not only of actual payment but also of status and recognition as a profession. We ought to recognise gratefully not only that the police have borne all the dangers and difficulties, the disturbance of their domestic relations and so on, that have been mentioned, but that up to this moment have maintained the traditions of their profession as to their work and behaviour. And I would express the very strong hope that the Government will, by the measures which they are now contemplating, hasten the time at which they will reconsider the conditions, the payment and the status of the Police Service and give full consideration to the status advocated by my noble friend Lord Brooke. I would ask your Lordships' House to recognise how greatly strained the police must have been and must now be, but how up to this moment they have not succumbed to those strains.
6.20 p.m.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: My Lords, I will follow the good example of the noble Lord who has just sat down and detain your Lordships for only a few minutes. Since we debated the abolition of capital punishment just before Christmas three policemen have been murdered. My noble friend Lord Brooke, in opening the
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debate to-day, said that he had no intention of getting involved in the question of the abolition of capital punishment. That has been fully debated and a decision has been come to by this House and by another place, and certainly I am not going to reopen it. At the same time, I think that we have seriously to consider whether in appropriate cases some further penalty can be imposed on criminals who murder policemen.
Only a few days ago the criminal who shot the two policemen in Glasgow was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation from the Judge that the sentence should be not less than 25 years. I must admit that this is from only a Press report, but it is, reported that on receiving that sentence the criminal remarked that he was surprised that it was not heavier, and that, with good conduct, he could earn remission which would secure his release in 16 years. He is at present aged 31. On that reckoning he should be out when he is 47. That is a quite different prospect from that of being hanged next week. One may ask: what is your suggestion. I must confess that it seems pointless to continue to give longer and longer sentences, but it seems to me quite illogical that one can impose or recommend 25 years for the murder of a policeman when one imposes 30 or 40 years imprisonment in respect of a train robber.
LORD SALTER: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? He recognises that if one looks at the past record in regard to how many years, in practice, life imprisonment has meant, it is very much less than that number of years and therefore is quite a small deterrent.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: My Lords, I of course recognise that. I think the noble Lord is quite right; I believe the average is 12 years. But has not the time come when we have to think up some other punishment for the murder of policemen and, if you like, prison warders? The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, said that any suggestion would be listened to. The only suggestion that I can make—I do not pretend that it is a very good one—is that some new form of penal settlement should be considered. This was, and may still be, a method tried for many years by the French Government—highly civilised and practical people. This

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added penalty would almost certainly mean that the prisoner would be deprived of visits from his family. I agree that that is a serious deprivation, but that penalty seems to me to be as nothing compared with the suffering which that person causes to the family of the victim.
The obvious reply to the suggestion of a penal settlement is: where could you establish such a place and how could you staff it? To that question I agree there are not many convincing answers. But I hope that Her Majesty's Government are giving some thought—perhaps they have already done so—to introducing some new instruction, or to amending the law, so that those convicted of the murder of a policeman on his lawful duty shall suffer some exceptional penalty.
6.24 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR OF GRYFE: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate, and I am sure that we are all grateful for the restrained and reasonable manner in which it was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. I hope that elsewhere and throughout the country this issue will be discussed in the same atmosphere. I welcome, too, the opportunity of hearing new voices in the House. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Roberthall, for being absent when he spoke, but I was delighted to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Gray, speaking from his experience in Scotland, and also the voice of the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill. I sometimes wish that Lord O'Neill had not exported some of the tensions of Northern Ireland to the West of Scotland, because otherwise our crime rate might be considerably lower than it is.
I want to deal specifically with the position in Scotland, for while Lord Brooke and Lord Beswick inevitably quoted the statistics supplied by the Home Office, these refer exclusively to England and Wales. I want to assure your Lordships
that the concern which has been expressed in this House by Lord Brooke and by other speakers is shared North of the Border. I regret to say that my native City is a city of violence and of crime. The City of Glasgow has a crime rate per head of the population in excess of all other cities in the United
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Kingdom. Looking at the statistics for last year of crimes involving malicious woundings, I see that Glasgow had about three times as many crimes of violence as Birmingham. In Glasgow the figure was 933; in Edinburgh it was 96, and Liverpool had just about half the number of crimes of this type recorded in the City of Glasgow.
It is not the purpose of this debate to analyse all the reasons for such crimes. These are special situations and features in the West of Scotland. There is a long tradition of conflict and violence, and a long history of poverty which has contributed to violence in the City of Glasgow. I want to say that, recognising this as a major problem in this City, the Government have taken substantial measures to improve the recruitment of policemen to deal with the situation. But despite the special provisions that have been made in this City, such as special allowances for policemen and so on, the force is still around 500 deficient in regular police officers. This is a large number.
The question we are discussing to-day is, what can we do to make the police more effective, and to improve recruitment? The Government have been mindful of that need in Scotland. In looking at the figures for 1965, I see that the authorised establishment for Scotland was 11,077, and the actual establishment was 10,346. In 1967 the authorised establishment was 11,200, and the strength of the force had fallen to 10,200. I am happy to say that last year there was an improvement in the number of police officers serving in Scotland.
Why is it that the strength of police in Glasgow is deficient to this degree? Many noble Lords have ventured advice on this matter. There is no doubt that the conditions of policemen are a contributory factor; it is no longer an attractive job. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said, there is a need to elevate it to a profession. I speak with some personal experience in this regard; my daughter married a policeman, and I have a somewhat intimate knowledge of what life with a policeman means. It means very irregular shifts; it means that sometimes this young man, who has a young family, is on duty from 2 until 11; another week from 10 to 6; and another week from 6 to 2. The

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occasional demonstrations and other activities demand that he frequently works 11 and 12 hours a day.
When these young people come home they frequently, as a relaxation, turn on television, and they are conscious of the kind of wages explosion that is taking place throughout the country. They realise that, despite having their domestic life disturbed with the shift system, being in a position that many of the amenities of social life are denied them because of the shift system, and also their isolation in so far as the husband is a member of the police force and is in a rather special social category, their wages are much lower than the national average for industrial workers in this country. We demand from the police that they, in their actions, carry out a loyal service to the State and to the community; but if the State, in return, disregards that commitment and does not reward these people as they should be rewarded, then the kind of loyalty which is necessary in a force of this kind cannot be encouraged.
There is one other factor. We must face the fact that in society people are rewarded not simply by the amount of money they receive at the end of the week, but that there is also a question of social status involved. As I say, I speak with some personal knowledge on this matter and I regard some of the young people in the police as excellent, devoted citizens, but in our society do we give these young men the respect that we give to other professions? I must confess that I find that this is an important factor in so far as recruitment to the police and loyalty within the police is concerned.
The Government in Scotland have tried to make the force, despite the deficiency in numbers, a more effective instrument. They have done so, as we do in industry, with a greater degree of capital investment in order to ensure higher productivity. Reference has already been made to the greater mobility of the police through the provision of Panda cars, and these now cover the area in which live three-quarters of the population of Scotland. There is also the amalgamation of the police forces from 31 separate forces in 1966 to 20 forces to-day. This makes them more effective; and by the creation of a centralised crime squad the
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detection of crime is also made more effective.
Attention is being given, somewhat belatedly if I may say so, to the career structure in the police. I "eel that the police should be looked at as we would look at any other business and great opportunities provided for the bright young men in the force to emerge to positions of leadership, without the necessity of serving so long on the beat, and so on, and in the various aspects of the Service. I am glad that we have now a central selection scheme which sponsors young men for degree courses at the universities. All of this adds up to making the police a more attractive form of service and elevating it to being a career.
Inevitably this debate has spread over many other issues, and I hope that the House might consider the basic issues which have been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. The use of firearms has been raised. The police themselves do not wish to be armed, and I think we would make a great mistake if we were to encourage the idea that our force should be armed. One look at the United States should convince us that this type of action might cause a deterioration in our social life and in the relationships between the police and the public.
I am sorry to say that the death penalty has been once more raised in this debate. May I say just one word in this regard? I was very concerned with the incident that took place in Glasgow in which two policemen lost their lives, and I resent the intrusion of the B.B.C. and other people into the private agony of these young people after they had relived the agony of their husbands' deaths. The trial had gone on for two or three days and the people involved had read the reports in the Press of what had happened on the death of their husbands. Within a short time of the judgment being given, the inevitable B.B.C. were on the doorstep with eager young men prompting the reply to the question, "Are you in favour of restoring the death penalty?" I regard that as an intrusion on privacy, and I regard it as an undesirable way to secure comment on this important subject. What did they expect the young people to say?
With this feeling, I should perhaps say no more other than this: if we want to keep crime down, it is not only a matter

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of recruitment to the police. I think we ourselves must examine the kind of society we are building and the kind of things we are encouraging in our society. Are we acting wisely in encouraging a kind of Bingo, lounge bar society—the kind of society in which people feel that they can get things without making substantial contributions? I think that in our consideration of crime, which is beyond the particular reference we face to-day, we should consider whether the pressures of advertising, the kind of Bingo society, the encouragement of consumption of alcohol, are desirable in our society, or whether we should consider giving our society a national purpose and a sense of direction, fostering values that are more important than these which are being encouraged. In this way we could, perhaps, lighten the burden of policemen.
6.39 p.m.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, it seems to me that although the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said he was not in any way going to speak for Scotland, Scotland has rather"barged in"on this debate. I should like to start by saying that, being also a native of Glasgow, while I would not in every way support what the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, has said I should at least be prepared to stand with him in the robe of the penitent for the sins of the dreadful City of Glasgow, which I left many years ago.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, spoke about the degree courses for police constables, a point which my noble friend Lord Brooke raised in the first place. If I understood him aright, the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, replying to my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said that there were 160 graduates in the Police Force. What I should like to know is how many police constables there are at the present moment who are going through the universities. I wonder whether the police force could take a look at what the Armed Services are doing in this respect and. more especially, at what the R.A.F. is doing. The Services have their cadetships going and, while I understand that there is a similar cadetship (although it may not be called a cadetship), or grant, available to policemen, I wonder whether in fact it is being put across with the same vigour. Since the R.A.F. decided in the last 18
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months that, so far as possible, it would have graduate entry, cadetships have gone ahead very fast. I would draw that point to the attention of the Government.
I have one other point to make, and I hope that I shall not take too long. I think we are inclined nowadays to take for granted too many things which were not taken for granted by our forbears. I think it is rather a paradox that, as civilisation advances, we have to fight to keep for our own day and generation other things which for centuries were taken for granted. I would cite the two examples of air and water. That also goes in the case of law and order, which we used to take for granted. The advance and complexities of civilisation, and the other competing claims, are such that we now have to fight for the maintenance of law and order in this country. We have, as it were, suddenly woken up to discover that we must do something about it. I submit that we must get our priorities right, and that order precedes law. Without order, law cannot rule, law cannot be effective; and it is upon the police that order depends.
Many suggestions have been made to-day about how the police may be helped and encouraged. May I add one more? There should be stiffer penalties for those who defy the police or who refuse to obey the orders of the police. I can take this one step further, with my tongue a little in my cheek, knowing that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will profoundly disagree with me. I should like to see a law which states that anybody resisting arrest by the police forfeits his right to complain against the police, at least until he is charged in the police station. At the present moment, the type of person who assaults a policeman has no respect for the policeman as such. But such a person knows what power is, and even if he will not treat law with respect, he will treat with great respect the power that enforces order.
I was much taken with a remark made in his maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Roberthall, that those who take up the sword should at any rate feel the flat side of it. I thought that a very sensible remark indeed. My noble friend Lord Brooke said that we do not want a police State, but I do not think that would in way lead to a police State. It is a bit

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of common sense that the man who defies the police would very quickly understand. I come back to a statement made by my noble friend Lord Brooke, that the police are the friends of freedom.
6.46 p.m.
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, Parliament has been active, to put it mildly, in introducing legislation, and over the last two years the volume has increased. It is a sobering thought that, when it goes down the line, there is often only one policeman on his lonely beat who actually has to enforce many of those laws. His knowledge has to be almost encyclopædic, and his abilities and virtues comparably extensive. It now takes two years to train him, and an estimated further four before he reaches peak efficiency. He has to live by a strict disciplinary code, and has many restrictions statutorily placed on his private activities. The hours he has to work are long and, in many cases, unrewarded by overtime. Danger is a part of his life.
We require virtual supermen to do this often thankless job. yet their remuneration is decidedly modest. It is no wonder that the police forces feel that they are being given a poor deal. Morale must suffer when so many grievances are left uncorrected year after year. The situation is getting very serious and, despite Government reassurances, something is wrong when it is estimated by the Police Federation that 3,000 officers will have left the Force during 1969, without pension or gratuity. In other words, they have reluctantly decided to give up the police as a career. This wastage is not only expensive; it is very dangerous.
Pay is a major grievance. It took the abortive 1919 strike, with its repression, to produce the Desborough Report. This brought pay and conditions up to a satisfactory level, but only two years later the situation was again fast deteriorating, the right to strike being statutorily and permanently removed, and the Federation were left to fight their case with few teeth. Over the years succeeding Administrations failed to keep faith with the police. To-day the police are constantly having to deal with militants but are not allowed to be militant themselves. A police strike is unthinkable, as we are so dependent on their services. But—and it is a big"but "—
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to those whose labour is indispensable, society must in return give a satisfactory basis of pay which automatically keeps up with the cost of living.
Admittedly, the Willink Report set out to do this, but even on straight terms police pay was down 13·8 per cent, on the Willink scale as at December 31, 1969. With imminent massive wage increases, this figure could be doubled by the autumn. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, promised a. rise at the April interim report. I hope that it will be the 10 per cent, increase which the Federation are very realistically requesting. Pensions are also troubling police officers. Their pension scheme has always been contributory, unlike that of the Services. It is restrictive, as no money already contributed can be taken out if a police officer decides to leave the force before completing 25 years, or 30 years, as it is now. The National Superannuation scheme now worries police officers, as they feel that they may well have to contribute more to get less.
The fact that the police are something like 16 per cent, below authorised establishment has meant that much overtime and extra strain has been placed on police officers. Compensating time off does not pay the grocer's bill. These officers felt that they had been dealt with in a mean way when the Police Council official side proposed that the annual leave should be reduced with the introduction of the 40-hour week. Also, forces not able to introduce the 40-hour week from April 1 this year are compensating officers for overtime at only plain time rates. Again, inspectors and chief inspectors do not get normal overtime. Either they should get it or they should have larger salaries to compensate for the mass of overtime that most of them are always working.
Police pay has become so complicated that it is fast becoming very unfair. The undermanning and oilier allowances are inequitable. It must be desirable to return to a simple national standard of pay which is fair. Of course policemen have to work long hours, at odd times and in all weather conditions. This they accept; it is the job they take on. There should be a straight rate of pay to compensate them for this; and in view of the danger and restrictions it should
be generous. The present undermanning is placing an

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ever-increasing workload and strain on police officers. This results in family stresses. The officer may have a vocation for police work; but what about his poor wife, who sees less of him, has fears for his safety and has to do the shopping, bearing in mind his relatively modest salary? Differentials are a constant bone of contention. I was going to raise the same examples as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, raised, but he took the wind out of my sails in this respect, so I shall move on to my next point.
The Police Advisory Board Working Party on rank structure has a hard but very necessary task ahead of it. It is extremely difficult to determine exactly a policeman's job. It will be necessary for this job to be evaluated before determining any future rank structure. Operational Research has already done a splendid and similar job in creating and developing the dramatically successful unit beat policing system. Presumably the Working Party will draw heavily on the services of the excellent Police Planning Organisation to give job evaluations for any new rank structure. It is an urgent matter, but with large basic rates of pay the differentials will restore themselves to a degree. Rent allowances also crop up as a source of discontent. They are advertised as tax-free, but because of the rebate system not all the allowances come back. Finally, when a policeman retires he expects to get the outstanding balance; but this is not paid back, since rebate is paid only to serving officers. The amount is not very big, but this is yet another irritation that undermines morale.
Another aspect of the present unfair system discriminates against young men who either join the Force after serving as police cadets, or join when they are 19 years old. They have to wait until they are 22 before going on to the 22-year-old rate of pay, which applies to anyone joining at that age. It would be better to start everyone at the 22-year-old rate and to increase the increments, at the same time dispensing with the age pointing system. This would prevent the men with five to six years' service from leaving at this stage of their careers. Talking of wastage, of course there is the problem that will arise in 1971, when those officers who joined the Force in
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1946 and who will have served their 25 years will be due for retirement. Unless some inducements are given to them, the Police Force will lose a great many officers at that time.
The abstract of the New Police Act 1829 states:
"The absence of crime will be the best proof of the efficiency of the police."
One hundred and forty years later, the demands on the police in the way of other services have greatly increased, but that original definition still holds good. The Act was good and well conceived in its aims, one of which was that a constable should cover any one point in his beat at least once in every ten minutes or quarter of an hour. This gave a satisfactory response time which over the years, with the increase of population and areas covered, steadily declined, until the introduction of cars and, now, the pandas, with the unit beat policing system, have improved the response time to, on average, about nine minutes. Ironically, greater efficiency and better response times have increased the number of incidents in which the police are involved. For instance, in earlier years a fight would have been over before a policeman arrived, but now he gets there more quickly and the incident appears in the statistics as an affray. More cases of carrying housebreaking implements, of receiving, and other offences are discovered, which increases the statistical totals, and can in some cases cloud the issue.
The advent of computers must lead to proper crime evaluation, which will greatly assist in crime prevention. The central computerised records system will help when it finally arrives, but that is only a start. Computerisation of fingerprint records is essential, and one hopes that the research and development on this project will bear fruit and that as soon as it is a working proposition money will be forthcoming to implement it. The increasing level of crime must be halted, and to do this it may be necessary for everyone in this country to be fingerprinted. I know that this is an abhorrent idea to some people, but some very minor personal liberty has to be given up as our society gets bigger and more complicated—
Lord PEDDIE: My Lords, may I draw the attention of the House to the

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fact that the noble Lord is reading every word of his speech? It is exceedingly difficult to follow, and if he persists in doing it will he kindly speak in a louder voice?
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for drawing my attention to that. I am sorry; I had written down a certain amount of my speech because I did not want to cover ground that other noble Lords covered. I am sorry if I was not speaking distinctly.
I have already mentioned the work that has been done with Operational Research, but this again can be regarded only as a start. The major companies that are successful and are expanding at the moment spend round about 10 per cent, on research and development. It would seem that if a figure equivalent to some 10 per cent, of the amount of money that is spent on police forces were spent on research and development over a short period of time, the benefits would soon become very evident. The Planning Organisation to which I referred earlier has done a splendid job, but it could certainly do with an extra 40 or more scientists. I should be very interested to know how the noble Lord considers this will be affected by the Green Paper on Industrial Research and Development which has recently been published.
Finally, new techniques, methods and equipment are requiring higher standards of training. The greatest praise should be given to Bramshill College, which has done so much in introducing management techniques and other operational training for police forces. My Lords, we have the finest Police Force in the world. I feel that it is up to us to show its members that we appreciate them by remunerating them in a sufficiently generous style.
6.58 p.m.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I want to resist the temptation to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, because I intend to deal with only one point which so far has been touched on only slightly by the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, and the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Coventry. I could say to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that this may well be a case where one could begin to count the
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advantages rather than list the disadvantages. It will be understood by certain people in your Lordships' House if I say that there is a very high percentage of professional social workers, including probation officers, who have university degrees and who work many more hours a week than the police and get at the age of 27 or 28 only what the policeman starts with at the age of 22. But that does not make it right.
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, would the noble Lord be kind enough to give way for just one moment? Those very worthy people do not have restrictions placed on their private lives. They can have other business interests, and they do not work to a disciplined code.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I do not know what the noble Lord means by"restrictions", but, so far as I know, for the large number of professional social workers or for probation officers there is no time to have outside interests, by virtue of the fact that they are working morning, noon and night. But if the noble Lord will allow me to leave it there, I want to deal with only one matter and that is the public image of the police. If I say anything which appears to be critical, may I say, very sincerely, that I have worked for many years in a service very close to the police and there is no one in your Lordships' House who has a greater respect for the value of the contribution they are making to the community at the present moment. But we have to face the fact that many people are very concerned at the deteriorating relationship between the public and police and the growing and continuing hostility towards them. The criticisms which are made of the
police from time to time cannot be ignored if, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said, we want a police force where the morale is high. I do not think that the matters which we have been discussing this afternoon will be solved by higher pay, by greater opportunities for advancement or by better working conditions, whatever they may be. The real solution lies in the main with the police themselves, with some help from the Government—and I will come back to that later.
The role of the policeman in our society has changed considerably over the years from that of a neighbourhood friend to

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that of—I say almost exclusively now— a law enforcement officer, a role which I am sure it was never intended that he should undertake. The multiplicity of our laws, not always clearly understood, if I may say so, by the most informed members of the community, and the continuous increase in crime which makes the apprehension of most criminals impossible, combine to give the police officer a discretion as to whom he will question, investigate and report upon. And many people to-day are asking: how does he make his choice and whom does he choose? The role of the policeman in our society is a difficult one and I am the first to acknowledge it. He is called upon to deal with many different and difficult types of situation. It is not an easy task and can be performed to the satisfaction of the individual member of the community only if he, the policeman, makes certain that he is not motivated by his own attitudes and prejudices.
Many people to-day think that this is the position with many members in the police force. Rightly or wrongly—I do not know whether it is right or wrong— many coloured people also feel that they are unnecessarily harassed by the police. Many people feel that there are other forms of discrimination—and here I refer particularly to the"out" groups in our society, those groups who are supposed to have opted out. I think that we must face the fact that the longhaired young men and the shorthaired girls, the wearers of peculiar clothing, are often the subject of attention by the police because it is felt that there may be fertile ground there for investigation.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, rightly referred to the growing sympathy with the
criminal. That is another fact which I think we must face. We must ask ourselves why so many people in the community tend to sympathise with the wrongdoer as distinct from members of the police. Here I feel very strongly that the mass media do not help in getting over the right kind of picture, the kind that I feel is due to the police. If one looks at television—and I am thinking of"Z Cars"and"Softly Softly "—one gets the impression that the top brass in the police force are little more than bullies to those underneath them. That
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seems to go right the way down the whole structure of the police force as represented in those two programmes—programmes which are seen by millions of people. Notwithstanding the fact that there has been an appreciable improvement in recent years, it does not surprise me that there is difficulty in recruiting. I do not think that anyone can see either of those programmes on television without getting a false impression of the police force. The interpretation which the mass media tend to put on the police and the sort of picture that they present to the public leave much to be desired.
A successful policeman is one who knows how to handle people, and I think there ought to be a great deal more training in the field of personal human relations. His training should include some seminars, some discussions, some understanding of what we mean by personal relations and human relations; because in the last analysis that is what is going to count. It is not whether a man can take down a very good story, not whether he can accurately record something. In the last analysis what really matters is what his relationship is with the person he is interviewing or investigating or is about to report on. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, talks about the community seeing the police force as a social service. I think we have to see the police force as a social service, but it has to be staffed by men and women who not only see it as a social service but see it fulfilling the functions we require of a social service.
We must face the fact that a large number of policemen are to-day very much opposed to modern methods of treatment of delinquency. Very often I have heard a policeman say, when a person has been put on probation, "This is a let off." It is not a let off; it is a method of treatment. The police themselves must see that if we are going to reform delinquents we must have various methods of treatment, and they must be among the first to recognise the value of them. But, having made this critical comment, I would pay tribute to the contribution which the Metropolitan Police are making in various parts of London in working with professional social workers, with probation officers and with children's officers in dealing with the youngsters who are"pre-delinquent"

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and likely to become delinquent, and in dealing with the situation in consultation with the professional social workers, without bringing the matter to the court.
But many people believe that the way a situation or an inquiry is dealt with by some policemen depends on the standing and status in society of the individual whom they are investigating or dealing with. Perhaps the House will allow me to draw attention to a letter in The Times dated January 21 last. It was
written to the editor by a doctor from Guy's Hospital. It was headed, "Parking for some." It reads:
"At 10.45 p.m., inadvertently and in error (yes, I confess) I parked my tiny red ' Mini' in the last available space on a taxi-rank (not realising this to be the case, since amongst the Mercedes, Rolls-Royces and other salubrious cars there was not a single taxi). Needless to say, the area was off Park Lane, between the Dorchester and the Hilton. 5iome thirty minutes later—"
this is a doctor, my Lords, from Guy's Hospital—
"I returned and found that my car had been towed away and impounded. Adjacent to my car site there still remained the same Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce and the same Mercedes (the only two I remember). I am forced to pay £4 10s. removal fees and £2 fine. As a hospital house physician I can hardly afford the petrol to run a Mini. Perhaps it would be of value to invest in a larger car."
That kind of thing is by no means isolated. It is the kind of thing that happens, and we all know it happens; and it is the kind of thing that brings criticism upon a police force, many members of whom, as I recognise, are doing a magnificent job.
My Lords, I believe that there is one thing that the Government could do to improve the police image and I ask the Government to do it without further delay. It is to establish a civilian board, or boards, to deal with allegations made against the police, irrespective of whether the allegations are made by members of the public or from within the Force itself. The referring of complaints to a chief constable who, in turn, may bring in a high ranking officer from another police force if he thinks it necessary, does not allay the feeling that the police are both judge and jury in all matters of complaint against them. I believe that the setting up of such a board, or boards, to be the most important single factor in improving the public image of the police and for stimulating morale.
7.12 p.m.
LORD MOWBRAY and STOUR-TON:My Lords, it seems to be my fate to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell in these debates on the police: I remember doing so on the last occasion. As the first speaker from the Dispatch Box on this side of the Chamber since we had the three maiden speeches, two from the Benches behind me, which were such a useful and valuable contribution to the debate, I should like to say how delighted I was to hear them. It is an honour for me to be able to speak in support of the Motion moved by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, and it is more than pleasant to be able to say how glad one was to hear from the Minister all that is being done to strengthen the morale of the police and assist in their work.
Nevertheless, my Lords, we have to contend with the fact that crimes of violence against the person were up by some 20 per cent, in the first ten months of last year, and there were over 1,124,000 indictable offences, a 6·8 per cent, increase compared to a similar period in 1968. These figures were recently
announced by the Home Office. Your Lordships will recall that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, was talking about Scotland, and when I was there yesterday all the papers contained the announcement that in the last few years since hanging was abolished (and I speak as an abolitionist) nine policemen have been murdered, compared with about 27 policemen murdered there over the last 50 years. People are struck by these figures, and they are worried. There is a genuine desire for action to be taken. As the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, said, the question is what action shall be taken. Should we have more police and better equipment? More police merely in increased numbers would, we agree, be meaningless; they must be properly deployed.
I have read the book entitled, The Police—A Study in Manpower, by J. P. Martin and Gail Wilson. It is a fascinating book. They state the facts and leave the reader to argue them, They concentrate on the fact that money spent on training is almost completely wasted through premature resignations. One of the objects of this debate, as I see it, is to try to get a consensus of opinion about

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why resignations take place and how we may stop them. It is a proven fact that police recruits who come from the police cadet forces have a very much better record of continuous service in the Force than recruits who come from outside. One would therefore like to be able to have confirmation from the Government that they will encourage the recruitment of more cadets. Hitherto, cadets have been a bit of a bogey for police forces, because they cost money when they come on to the establishment instead of policemen; but in the long term they are cheaper because they stay longer and do not need training when they are constables. Their services may then be used almost immediately.
The House of Commons Estimates Committee recommended that police forces should be encouraged to recruit a minimum of 40 per cent, from the cadet forces. I understand that the Home Secretary is considering this, and I should like to endorse the Committee's recommendation because it seems to make good sense. We have heard about civilianisation, and again this has been recommended by the
Estimates Committee. One of the sad things the Committee noted was the fact that in the slowdown of recruiting the civilian people suffered, as well as members of the uniformed force. We all know that traffic control and parking troubles such as are experienced by Lord Wells-Pestell's friend could be dealt with by traffic wardens if they were trained. I believe that something like 500 policemen are used as ushers in police courts, which seems unnecessary. Clerical work and photographic work, and all these duties, could be assisted by civilian staff, so that uniformed police were released for specialist duties.
Let it be said at once that noble Lords on this side of the House always give credit where it is due, and we welcome the announcement by the noble Lord, Lord
Beswick, confirming what was mentioned by the Home Secretary about a computer.
understand that it will be a £2 million Burroughs computer and that it has already been ordered. This computer will deal on a national scale with all sorts of things, including fingerprints, and will provide an enormous technical advantage for the police. The computer will not be installed for two years, and
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it will take a long time to feed into it the 3½ million statistics held by the Criminal Record Office. I am sure that during the two-year initial period the Home Office will be training the police to use the computer.
Criticisms have been made of programmes on television, and I suggest that we might look to the Continent for one form of comfort and for a suggestion of something that we might do here. There is a programme on the Continent called, "Dossier X Y unsolved ". It is a programme which has been shown there for two years. It is beamed ten times a year, and each programme lasts for about an hour. The programme is broadcast to the German-speaking people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The police find it enormously useful and the public seem to like it. I am told that the viewing ratio is about 62 per cent., which means that on average some 25 million people watch it.
In these broadcasts, which take the form of short film sequences, of which there have been 19 programmes so far, they have presented 127 unsolved crime cases and of these 73 have been subsequently solved with the help of viewers. 1 gather that after every programme over 2.000 calls come into police headquarters. Of 108 people wanted for whom the police have put out calls on these programmes, they have actually picked up 75. I would merely ask whether it is possible for some noble Lord, perhaps some television expert like the noble Lord, Lord Willis, to give a nudge to the Government, because this seems an idea worth pursuing.
Coming to the point of the contempt for law and order, only 13 days ago we had the principal of Edinburgh University complaining that when there was a five-day"sit-in"of some students in the university buildings he appealed to the police for help. They felt that they were unable to do so because they were frightened that they would not be upheld if they helped to evict the students. The principal then felt obliged to organise what he called a"Dad's Army"of senior staff at the university and they had to go into their own premises to rescue confidential files and documents. I think this is a case where a university authority ought to be able to expect the police to help them in time of trouble.

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This point was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Conesford.
The last Royal Commission on the police stated that the maintenance of law and order ranks with national defence as a primary task of government, and every speaker to-day has supported this contention. In 1960 the Commissioners said that there was grave cause for concern. What would they say to-day! They said that there were not enough police then, and it is a known fact that there are not enough to-day. At that time the average deficiency was 14 per cent. To-day, according to the Police Review of a fortnight ago, the deficiency is 16·23 per cent., which means some 17,000 police vacancies of which we know some 5,500 are in London. If we accept the fact that there are 11,000 more police now than when the Government took office, since 1964 the establishment has also gone up by some 15,000, so that although there are more police the gap is that much greater. We seem to be running a race in which the tortoise gets ahead and we never catch up.
The point that worries mo is that, taking into account the resignations of police, including many recruits, far more than 11,000 have come in. This figure represents the net gain. What we have to stop is this wastage. I was looking at the figures for England and Wales, which do not include the Metropolitan Police, and for the first 10 months of 1969 there were 4,350 resignations. Of those, only 1,370 were normal retirements after 25 to 30 years of service. The number who retired with less than 25 years' service but more than 3 years was 1,600, and what is most upsetting is that 1,356 resigned with under 3 years' service. That is why my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, this Party, the Government Party, Peers on all sides of the House and all citizens are frightened.
In April of this year the basic working week of the police will come down from 42 to 40 hours, and with the present uncertain policy on undermanning allowances and shortage of police for duty, conditions are going to be made worse rather than better. But we were glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, say that an interim payment announcement is to be made soon. Obviously this will help to stem the wastage. At the moment police pay is appalling. It was worked
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out last month, taking a sample of 1,800 policemen, that one in seven were taking home less than £15 a week. This is for a body of men who have to be whiter than white among so much corruption around them, and in this affluent age where so many people have so much with which to bribe and tempt.
The recruiting situation is better, but in fact in 1968 there was a net decrease of 0·4 per cent, in the establishment strength, which means that recruiting was not keeping pace with wastage and increasing establishment strength. Admittedly, in 1969 the situation was better with a 1·3 per cent, net increase on authorised establishment, but establishment has been held down a little artificially and soon will have to go up again.
My noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor mentioned the report of the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire who talks of a force in a state of unrest. He also says that demonstrations and counterdemonstrations have made the police feel that they are a permanent buffer. One has every sympathy here. We on these Benches arc in favour of the right to demonstrate, which is one of the oldest rights of democracy. In a civilised country such as ours we hate to think that this would ever suffer, but, as my noble friend Lord Conesford brilliantly pointed out, the hooligan element docs not have the right to break up lawful assemblies, whether for debate or sport or—at a certain university— for eating in a Mediterranean atmosphere. Most of us would agree that only Lenin and his Communist successors, and Hitler's Nazi Movement have subscribed wholeheartedly to the view that political ends justify any means, but it is in fact what some of these extremists who want to break up all assemblies they do not like are trying to practise.
We have to stop bodies such as the M.C.C. being put in the pillory and made to feel that they are doing wrong by asking people of whom a minority do not approve to come and play games. I dare say they do not approve of what is going on in certain parts of the world, which is perhaps at the back of the minds of some wreckers, but the right to play games and to meet people is an inborn right of the law. If the police find a lot of people attacking the things they have to defend it does not improve their morale. I

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should like to ask this question. If the law does not give the police and magistrates' courts sufficient power to deal with these things, cannot the Forcible Entry Act of 1831 be looked at and used and, if not strong enough, strengthened? Again, why cannot the Public Order Act 1936 be enforced? And if
not strong enough, strengthened? None of us has any wish to make Party capital out of national issues, but everyone has a duty to draw attention to the weak links in the chain of law and order. That is what we are trying to do. Some people perhaps do it more colourfully than others. The sporting public, we know, have received strong verbal support from the general public. There are a few
people who support the rabble rousers and who have high intentions. We all know that they are very good.
The noble Lord, Lord Soper, who unfortunately is not here, said in this House quite recently that he found our policemen outclassed in argument by these demonstrators. I think that since the noble Lord last marched and countermarched, with his genuine religious fervour and sincerity, these affairs have got out of control. The last thing the hooligans want to do is to argue—they want a fight; and we all know that they do their best to inflame mob riot. We must do our best to see that they do not have any success, and that the police get the support of the public. On Monday of this week the result of a poll carried on in a national newspaper showed that 82 per cent, of the people thought that public demonstrations ought to be more strictly controlled, or banned. So the police know on whose side the public are, and that must give them comfort.
Sir Eric St. Johnston, the Chief of Constabulary, in his Report last year (and his Report does not cover the Metropolitan Area) draws attention to the fact
"that more people are becoming more dishonest each year and are prepared to break laws against the person and property. A most disquieting feature of recent years has been the increased tendency to violence, not only in political demonstrations, but in assaults on police officers in the execution of their duties. Figures available show an enormous increase from 1964 to 1968 of some 67 per cent, in these crimes."
Therefore, my Lords, we on these Benches reiterate that, in no Party spirit
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but out of pure duty for the preservation of the Queen's Peace, there should be an honest advance to making the job of a policeman attractive, both financially and by the quality of his working conditions, and not least in giving him full moral support in dealing with the unruly elements with which he has to deal.
7.33 p.m.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, the House must feel grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke' of Cumnor, for initiating the debate this afternoon on the state of the police. As a former Home Secretary he can speak with great authority, and I believe that we should be well advised to pay particular attention to everything he said, with the exception of the Party points: I think he was rather naughty in introducing those. I shall probably be underlining some of the observations he made in the course of my remarks.
With the exception of the Armed Forces, the Police Force is the only body of men and women prohibited by Statute from enforcing their demands and aspirations by strike action. It is therefore only right and proper that we, as the nation's legislators, should evince an interest in their welfare, and periodically in this fashion discuss their affairs. I believe we can make the proud boast that we have the best police in the whole world. I have been reading the last published Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary. As a one time chairman of a police committee, I have had the privilege of accompanying these inspectors on their tours, and I can assure the House that they miss nothing in the course of their inspections. I was therefore struck by one observation of the Chief Inspector in his Report. This is what he says:
"As a result of these visits and our close contacts with forces, my colleagues and I continue to be impressed by the high sense of duty shown by members of the police service, and in reporting that the police forces of England and Wales are efficient I must record the unanimous confidence of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary in the service."
Such tributes are not confined to people directly connected with the police force. I frequently read the Police Review. In the issue of January 9 I saw a photograph of Mr. Denis Howell, M.P., the Minister for Sport. At first I wondered what crime

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he had committed to have such prominence in that magazine, but I am pleased to say that he had committed no crime. As a matter of fact, as Minister of Sport, he had sent a special message to the Police Review to pay a personal tribute to all members of the police force for all they do to ensure the continuance of top-class sport in this country. This is what he says:
"I, myself, am fully aware of the great courage and skill shown by the police in dealing with difficult situations in tightly packed crowds caught up with emotional fervour, and I hope all ranks of the Force will accept this message as a token of appreciation of their work. I express it both as the Minister responsible for sport and as an active sportsman who has often had cause to admire the efforts of our policemen."
I think that is a very worthy tribute by the Minister of Sport.
I was also pleased to read some time ago the tribute paid by Mr. David Ennals, who was Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office. He was referring to the work of the police in breaking down the barriers in connection with race relations. They are called upon to undo the evil that is wrought by Enoch Powell—and we all know what Enoch has been up to. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, would tell us that there is a certain Enoch mentioned in the Bible, and it is said of that one:
"Enoch walked with God."
My Lords, I do not know who the devil this other Enoch has been walking with. I am certain that he has not been walking with his Leader, Edward Heath—he is out of step with him, and he is yards behind the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. Well, let us face it: the inflammatory speeches of Enoch Powell create a nasty situation in many parts of the country, and it is the police who have to tackle the problem of racial misunderstanding and secure law and order. Mr. Ennals said:
"It would be a tragedy if at the same time as the police are making a determined effort to break down the barriers others were to stir up prejudice against the police. There is some evidence that this is happening, and lasting damage to race relations could result."
Any discussion on the state of the police to-day has to be carried out against the background of current concern, which has been expressed here so many times this afternoon, with the law and order situation generally. Year after year in
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the 'sixties the criminal statistics have shown depressingly regular increases. The total of indictable crimes, which in the mid1950s had stood at half a million, topped the million mark for the first time in 1964. By the end of 1969 it was heading for one and a half million.
The first priority in dealing with the problem must be the police. Some important steps to improve police efficiency have been taken in the past few years, as was emphasised by the noble Lord. Lord Brooke of Cumnor. There cannot, for example, be any complaint about the Government's response to the call made some years ago to improve the equipment and efficiency of the Service, and particularly the increased expenditure on vehicles and radios. But attempts to increase the police numbers by recruiting, and by retaining the men already serving, have been entirely disappointing. In 1968 there was a tiny net increase of only 207, compared with a net increase in 1967 of 3,768. From April to September of 1969, there was an actual net reduction of 174 men. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, dealt at length with the morale of the police, and praised it—and, indeed, the morale has been highly praiseworthy. Nevertheless, I want to utter a word of warning. Morale among police is lower to-day than it has been for years past. I will go further and say that it is rapidly reaching the breaking strain. That can be proved quite easily. Only one conclusion can be drawn from all this: that something is seriously wrong when the Police Service cannot recruit more men than the numbers who are quitting for other employment. That is perfectly true.
It is ludicrous to expend large sums of money on recruiting or advertising when the persons who respond do not even take the trouble to fill up the application forms when they see the conditions of service; when they see what they will be actually taking home at the end of the week for their services. I was told only last weekend that a policeman in my part of the world, which is of course the most civilised part of the world— and a good policeman at that—had left the Police Force to work in a factory and is now earning £8 more at the factory than he was as a policeman. Naturally enough, he tantalises his former colleagues by showing his pay packet

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to them at the end of the week. My Lords, let us face the situation squarely, and say quite frankly that the men and women in our Police Force are badly paid, and underpaid. It is this fact that lowers their morale. I do not have to listen to the nonsense which we have heard this afternoon about not emphasising too much the matter of wages and salaries. Let us be honest with our-selves: that is the point that counts with most of us. There are very few people in this country who do not take note of the wages or salaries they can earn in their profession. Do not let us be hypocritical in a matter like this.
I am aware that the Police Council are busy at the moment negotiating an interim award before it is finally decided later in the year how much the actual rise in salary must be. I agree that it would be very wrong for this House, or anyone else, to interfere with any negotiating body in what they do. It would be wrong for us even to suggest what this interim award should be. I am, however, going to ask my noble friend who is to reply on behalf of the Government whether he can give an assurance tonight that when the Police Council make their recommendations next week, or next month, they will be immediately implemented by the Government. If he answers "Yes", the news will be passed throughout the Police Force by tomorrow morning, and nothing will steady their morale so much as to be told that the Government intend immediately to implement whatever recommendations are made by the Police Council.
I would instance another reason for the decline in morale. There has been a report that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may be intending substantially to reduce the amount of pension that may be commuted for cash; and, furthermore, that the present rules may be changed so that the whole, or a large part, of any lump sum which may be taken will be taxable and not, as at present, tax-free. I do not expect my noble friend to deal with that point tonight, because it is rumoured that it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer who has these things in mind. Nevertheless, this report has caused consternation, and any such action is regarded not only as unfair, but personally disastrous to those concerned. The Chancellor of the Ex-
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chequer would be well advised to leave well alone. As a Welshman, I should not be surprised if, as a compatriot, he takes my advice.
So far, my Lords, I have mentioned only the material rewards necessary to effect an improvement in police recruiting. In the long term, however, there are other, and equally important, considerations. The community as a whole should assess with sympathy and intelligence the job it expects the police to do. We must all carry some responsibility for the education of the public concerning the role and function of the police in our society. There is a lack of knowledge about their real work and of the whole world of crime. This is accentuated by the fact that the mass media—particularly television—distort the real thing, and are basically hostile. I am making that charge here tonight, but I believe that even the B.B.C. and the I.T.A. are basically hostile towards the police, with the result that what we have heard from my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell is true: it is creating a wrong impression on the public mind.
It is, therefore, necessary to restate the functions of the police in the community. They are fourfold: first, the prevention of crime and the deterring of law breakers; secondly, the protection of life and property; thirdly, bringing criminals and those guilty of antisocial behaviour to justice and, through justice, to rehabilitation; fourthly, safeguarding the democratic rights of minorities. It is felt that your Lordships' House would want to endorse those aims. Indeed, the police can function adequately only if the whole community believes they are good aims. In an imperfect world, such as the one in which we live, it is surely accepted that moral, social and, if necessary, physical force will have to be exerted if those functions are to be carried out.
I should like to say a word on law enforcement. It is the duty of the police, as part of the civil authority, to maintain an orderly society. Young people to-day believe in flamboyant demonstrations; and they have the right to demonstrate. I was rather surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, question the right of these people to demonstrate. It is good for us to-day that our ancestors demonstrated. But for the demonstration of the suffragettes we should not have my noble

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friend the Baroness on the Front Bench tonight—I am sure of it. It was the demonstration of the suffragettes that earned rights for women so far as Parliament is concerned. And it is good for us that our ancestors struck work on many an occasion to secure better terms.
It is a dangerous doctrine, however, and one that puts the whole fabric of organised society in jeopardy, to argue that demonstrators are justified in resorting to violence to achieve their aims, however praiseworthy those aims may be. Violence on the street is certain to get publicity; it is bound to. That in itself is a dangerous trend. The fact that violence makes the headlines and that television cameras never fail to be there —we have all noticed that—means that violence comes to be regarded as an accepted, and indeed an essential, part of any demonstration. Processions and demonstrations, particularly those which have political objectives, can create real problems in police/public relationships.
There has been a great deal of comment upon police handling on these occasions. Demonstrators come to believe that the police support authority at the expense of the law, which of course is quite untrue. Provocation on the part of demonstrators may be considerable and often is deliberate. A person who sits provocatively in the street, technically for the hindrance of traffic but in fact in order to oblige the police to remove him, invites rough handling; of course he does. That is part of the price he must expect to pay if he chooses to assert his opinions in that way. He is breaking the law by obstructing the highway, and the police must remove the obstruction. That is what the police are doing when handling demonstrators. Television gives us the picture in order to show us, I am sure, how cruel these men are when handling a man or a woman, particularly a woman, who has been lying on the road. But that woman has done that deliberately and is there to obstruct the traffic, thereby breaking the law; and the policeman is there to protect the law and consequently has to remove the demonstrator in the manner he does.
The protestor or the demonstrator knows all this in advance, and the enforcement of the law does not bring into question whether his cause is right or
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wrong. It may be the demonstrator's right and duty to seek to change the law, but it is not that of the policeman. The policeman cannot change the law; he may think that the law is wrong, and may have every sympathy with the demonstrator, but he would not be doing his duty if he did not carry out the law and protect the law, whatever his personal opinions may be. Ugly scenes may arise in situations of this kind, but no one should blame the police for it. I wish that the television authorities (I am perhaps repeating myself), both the B.B.C. and the I.T.A., would be less anxious than they are to portray a policeman as a rough handler when he is obliged, for instance, to remove a man or woman who is lying on the street. All that that policeman is doing is to protect the law, which we have made— we here and Members of another place are the legislators—and in doing so he protects the public at the same time.
My Lords, one final word. Referring to something that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, mentioned, I wonder whether some breakdown of police customs needs to be carried out. I am referring to promotion. As we all know a policeman cannot be promoted unless he passes a written academic examination. Many a policeman who is not an examinee is in consequence prevented from being promoted, although in every other way he is all that a policeman could be. I am wondering whether the chief constable should not have the right to promote such a man, irrespective of a written examination, if that man has proved himself to be an excellent police officer. It is done in other professions. In the teaching profession one cannot teach in a county school unless one carries a degree, but if the director of education finds a non-degree teacher in the junior school to be a first-class teacher, able to put a lesson over better than the majority of teachers, he would not have the slightest hesitation in placing that teacher in a secondary school, in spite of the fact that he or she has not a degree. That should be done so far as the police are concerned also.
Before resuming my seat, I should like again to thank the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for initiating this debate. From what he said in his speech it is obvious that society gets the police it deserves. It certainly gets the police

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it is prepared to pay for. It is for us to ensure that we have the kind of policing that we desire. Once we achieve that, we must sustain and support the police both morally and in material terms.
7.58 p.m.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, I know that we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor for raising a subject which is of profound importance to all law-abiding citizens— and, indeed, to those who are not. Last week I had the chance to talk to a senior officer of the police and he lent me the Report of the Commissioner for the year 1968 and several copies of the Police Review, the weekly news magazines of the British police. From the Report of the Commissioner (this is the latest Report available to me) it appears that at the end of 1968 the Metropolitan Police were 5,441 under establishment. It also appears, apart from the ceiling put on the recruiting of the police by the Government—which has now been raised but at the time seemed most unfortunate —that the greatest problem is the wastage through resignations prior to retirement age. In the Report it is estimated that the value of property stolen was £22 million and that, of that total, 10·5 per cent. was recovered. In the Police Review the cost of crime is estimated at £500 million a year, and the cost of accidents at £215 million. These are staggering figures, and in studying them we must draw conclusions.
May I attempt to give your Lordships the factors that are evident in considering the future of the force? First, there can be no doubt that we cannot in this country—nor, indeed, can any other country—have a Police Force on the cheap. Secondly, I understand that equipment has improved to a great degree, and the proposed national computer will be of infinite value. It is generally felt that helicopters would be of great assistance in crime prevention and also in traffic control. Thirdly, it is a fact that although there is now no difficulty, I understand, in recruitment, wastage is, as I have said, exceedingly high. This would appear to be due to inadequate rates of pay, especially for the married man; to the fact that there are few opportunities of promotion and also to
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the fact that situations offered by private firms for security jobs provide better facilities than does the Police Force.
My Lords, may I come to conclusions on the factors about which I have spoken? I sincerely believe that the police must be treated an an élite Force in our country, especially as, by tradition, they are unarmed; and it is essential that they should be brought up to establishment. In order to achieve this pay must be brought up to a standard which will ensure continuance in the Service. It takes a good deal of money to train a police officer, and it is pure waste if shortly after he is trained he resigns for another job.
I understand that an interim supplement to the biennial review of pay is to be announced soon. This review should take into account not only the increasing wastage but also the great increase in crime, and hence the added responsibilities of the police. Many of us have noticed, as we go on our way, something suspicious and have passed on with a slightly guilty feeling that perhaps we should have reported what we saw. The policeman (or it may be the policewoman), on the other hand, has a duty to inquire, and takes great risks in inquiring on his own initiative, knowing full well that he may be wrong and may be criticised by his superiors for his action.
Although equipment has improved it is manpower that is required to man that equipment, which should be used not only for the detection but also for the prevention of crime. We all know the immediate effect on drivers of the near proximity of a police car. We all know the immense value of the constable on the beat, especially equipped, as he is to-day, with a two-way radio. But, my Lords, let us remember that the police car and the radio set are quite useless without well-trained men ready to use their initiative and to take risks in operating them. Above all, these men must feel certain of the backing of the public; and they must be satisfied that their profession is really worth while. As in the Army, their morale is highest when essential and dangerous work is to be done. I feel sure that the comradeship within the Force is excellent, but the members of the Force must have the assurance that should things go wrong they will have a

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fair inquiry, and if they should in the course of duty lose their lives, or be permanently crippled, they will have the full support of the State for their families.
The ever-increasing traffic problems and the terrifying crime siuation can be fought only by having an adequate and élite Police Force. And we can have this Force only if we treat the men in it as élite and pay them on a scale commensurate with their work. This country will get the Force it deserves. My Lords, I hope that we shall choose wisely and, by our choice, shall ensure the safety and happiness of our people.
8.6 p.m.
LORD WOLVERTON: My Lords, I should like strongly to support the Motion of my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor and to thank him for allowing us to debate this most important subject about which we in this House are all most concerned. My only excuse for intervening for a short time in the debate tonight is that for approximately five years of the nine years which I spent as a member of the West Suffolk County Council I was on the Police Committee and therefore I learned something of the workings and the problems of the police. Now that the police reorganisation of three years ago has been completed, the West Suffolk Police have been amalgamated with the East Suffolk and the Ipswich County Borough Forces. Before this important debate, I took the opportunity of seeking an interview with the chairman of the Suffolk Police Committee and the Chief Constable, who very kindly gave me some of their valuable time to discuss the problem as they see it in the Suffolk Police Force. I wish to put those views before your Lordships to-night.
The morale is fairly good, but it would be better if the pay claims could be settled as early as possible. I was glad to hear tonight that negotiations are actively proceeding, and we hope that something may be done at least before September. We also hope that the rent allowance extra claims may be agreed at an early date, because this force, which includes the old Ipswich force, has 22 per cent. of the men living in their own houses. That was the policy of Ipswich County Borough. As the men in the police force did not move outside the
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borough, the police authorities wanted the policemen to have their own houses for retirement.
Next is the all-important question of the establishment. The establishment of the Suffolk Police force is about 980 men. They are about 115 men short of establishment and, I think, 5 women. That is not a large number, but the chief constable told me that if the restriction, which I understand is going to be taken off, were to be taken off straight away, he could not recruit that number of men quickly. It would take perhaps two years to do it, because, as we know, it is not only a question of getting the right type of men—we must have the highest type of men, and men of very high class are coming forward from the training schools —but of housing them. We have to build either police quarters for single men or married quarters for the married men. The Chief Constable also told me that it is vital to get a new police force headquarters built at the earliest possible date, because he has quite inadequate training arrangements now that the three forces are amalgamated. They would like an additional divisional headquarters for the old area of East Suffolk, which is growing rapidly. It is the area in which is situated the port of Felixstowe, which is growing particularly rapidly.
All this brings me to the vital problem of finance, with which I am not unfamiliar, having spent nine years on the West Suffolk County Council. Somehow or other the Government must find the extra finance which will be involved. They must try to get their priorities right. I know they have done a lot, and I give them praise for it, but a great deal more must be done. I have been looking at the public expenditure shown in the White Paper which was issued in December for 1968–69 to 1973–74. On page 47, in the expenditure under the heading of "Law and Order" and which covers England, Scotland and Wales, the current expenditure on police is estimated to rise from £274·2 million to £289·3 million— a rise of £15·1 million. The capital expenditure is estimated to rise from £25·7 million to £28·1 million, a rise of £2·4 million. The two increases added together amount to £17·5 million, a sum which I think is quite inadequate to meet our modern needs, with a greatly increased crime wave, especially in crimes of

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violence, nearly always involving arms, which we are so worried about in this House.
May I end by quoting a short paragraph from the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, who has kindly given me permission to quote him. On the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, which we debated in this House on Thursday, December 18, 1969, the noble Lord said:
"There is always pressure to increase expenditure on the social services—on the other social services—but very little pressure to increase expenditure on the fundamental social service of protecting the public from violence." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18/12/69, col. 1290.]
I profoundly agree with that important observation of the noble and learned Lord, and I only hope that Her Majesty's Government will give earnest consideration to finding more money for this vital need at the present time.
8.13 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I make no hesitation in saying that I, like the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, will refer to Scotland; and Scotland is of course included in the terms of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. I have good reason to join with other noble Lords in expressing my admiration for the police, for their skill, for their patience, for their physical fitness and their sense of civic duty, as I find it. The particular points I want to make concern the importance of the morale of the police, which is the very first section of Lord Brooke's Motion. I believe from my experience that, depressed as they may be over their conditions, and worrying in the present troublous times, with doubt about their future housing, remuneration and the like, the true morale, in terms of their willingness to serve and the civic sense to which I have already referred, is as high as ever.
I speak as coming from a country area where the policemen are more able, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, to be neighbourhood friends rather than only law enforcement officers. The other day I was listening to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, on the wireless, and I am only sorry that he is not here to-day, because I expected him to urge what he said on the wireless, which was an appeal for a programme of mass co-operation by the public with the police. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said much
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the same thing. He concluded his speech, I think I remember rightly, by emphasising the importance of the support and backing of public opinion in this country in order to maintain the morale of the force. There are one or two factors which to my mind are worthy of attention to that end, and I would respond to the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, who said that he would take note of suggestions made in the course of this debate.
One important point, to my mind, is the severe disadvantage to individual members of the public if they volunteer or are expected to give evidence in a court. This results in a consequent reluctance to support the police by offering to give evidence or even appear to be witnesses of an incident. I should like to cite, purely as an illustration, an incident I have in mind. An investigator of a fatal road accident approached a witness who had seen the crash, without being involved in it. The witness described what had taken place, and when asked his name and address immediately asked whether the inquirers were likely to give the information to the police. Being official people, they said that it was more than possible. Immediately, he withdrew what he had said and refused to give his name, saying that he could not afford to be subpoenaed as a witness. He was a self-employed market gardener from, let us say, Wiltshire, who was driving his own produce to Covent Garden, a trip which he did daily during his harvest, and he knew that by having to attend court, for instance in Slough, he would receive compensation quite derisory as compared with the financial loss to him. That is my first point. Can anything be done to improve conditions of compensation?
That leads me to another point. One of my contacts described to me how he had to go to court as a witness, and after waiting through a number of cases the accused pleaded guilty. My contact was not even called. He received the bus fare to and from his place and the usual small sum, but the day's absence put him to very considerable loss. That brings me to make this suggestion. Could the law be altered so that such evidence, admittedly in trivial or minor incidents, could be given on a tape recording on the spot? There would have to be suitable safeguards, of course, as to the

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subsequent certification of the transcription, and perhaps on oath, but it could be done at or near the witnesses' place of residence or work. This would avoid the necessity for the loss of time for the witnesses involved. I suggest that this might apply to witnesses of all sorts of incidents; I do not mean necessarily traffic accidents. I appreciate that the legal implications of such a suggestion, as to the acceptance of such evidence by the courts, may be complex.
I would go all the way with the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, in his demand for stiffer penalties for insulting or injuring the police.
I turn to another point arising out of recent violent demonstrations. I was deeply interested, as other noble Lords were, in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and I am only sorry that he did not go further on a point which I have raised before in your Lordships' House and perhaps will raise again; namely, where in law we stand in regard to incitement to violence; whether, if a demonstration is obviously going to lead to violence, anybody who promotes such a demonstration is in fact inciting violence. I take the view, as do others, that this is the case. To many people, and presumably to the police, it is incomprehensible that steps have not been taken under the common law to clip the wings of those who invite people to take part in demonstrations which they know are going to be violent.
I would go even further. If the Common Law and, shall we say, in the case of the Springboks demonstration, the Race Relations Act, do not provide that right, is it not time, in the light of what has been said by my noble friend and others about the basic threat to our whole way of life of this violent demonstration trend, that such powers should be taken quickly? I cite, for instance, the Public Order Act which was passed at high speed through both Houses of Parliament at the time when the Fascist troubles became serious in about 1936.
One other small point before I leave the question of demonstrations. I shall never forget the scene at Murrayfield when 700 policemen, out of a force which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, described as being only some 10,000, drawn from all over central Scotland, were required for a really
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miserable task; and they were put to such trouble and difficulty that one cannot blame their wives for complaining at the hours, in terms of sacrifice, that demonstrations mean to them.
On a separate point, how can the public be encouraged to help further in tracking down "fences" and receivers? I believe that if the appeal of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, for full support from the public is implemented, this is one way in which the public can help.
The subject of modern sophisticated equipment has been referred to by more than one noble Lord to-day. I have personal knowledge of the difficulties which face the police in obtaining skilled personnel to handle "walkie-talkie" wireless, computers and the like. This is a very complex matter, involving the high rate of pay which a skilled technician can obtain in the open market compared with what he may get as a policeman. It also involves the professional insistence that the men engaged in this work should also be trained policemen. This is a matter of great difficulty, which I cite only as an example of my sympathy with the powers-that-be in the problem of staffing the police with the money available when such technical work commands such high salaries.
Finally, coming as I do from Scotland, I should like briefly to refer to the problem of the abolition of capital punishment. I will only say that I am convinced that the threat of the ultimate sentence is a deterrent. Perhaps this is the moment at which to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, on his maiden speech, and also the other noble Lords who have spoken for the first time. Particularly do I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, upon using his right as an Irishman to declare his disapproval of capital punishment, yet to recommend it for the murder of a policeman. This is something for which I have contended in your Lordships' House not just once or twice, but on many occasions. I think that far too much is made of experience in other places, whether it be in Denmark or in Detroit. We are legislating here for Great Britain. I am chiefly concerned with Scotland and the Scottish character. I reject the tendency to treat experience in other countries as applying necessarily

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to the United Kingdom, or to Scotland, or particularly to the character of the Scots. This is not Chauvinism on my part. It is simply facing the fact that there are a number of traits, bad as well as good, in the Scottish character which, in their amalgam, are unique. I have no doubt that in Scotland the death penalty is a deterrent.
LORD TAYLOR OF GRYFE: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but there was a period when we had the death penalty for special categories of murder. Would he agree that this did not indicate that it was in fact a deterrent?
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I think there is evidence to that effect. But it is a long story, as the noble Lord and, I am certain, the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will realise, in view of the way the capital sentence was applied in Scotland, which was quite different from that in England and Wales. I take the view—I may be wrong—that it is a deterrent, and I have yet to meet anybody in Scotland with whom I have consulted who does not agree with me.
Here I lead up to the question of murders of police officers. I have no doubt that for such murders the death penalty is a deterrent. Certainly its existence would cause the malefactor, who knows his own weaknesses as well as anybody else, not to carry arms. I believe that this is an additional and important factor in the existence of the death penalty for a murder of a policeman. As noble Lords will appreciate, the recent murders in Glasgow have caused in Scotland an upsurge of indignation at the situation, which in the past few days, unfortunately, has been so tragically repeated at Pudsey.
I have said in your Lordships' House before, and I say again that, although I was opposed to the abolition of the death penalty, I am prepared to give in to the wiseacres, or call them what you like, who wanted it abolished. But, like the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, I feel that to retain it for the murder of a policeman or of a warder acting in the execution of his duty, or for the murder of a member of the public going to the help of such an officer in the execution of his duty, would be worth while in terms of sustaining the morale of the police.
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This brings me full circle to what I was saying about the importance of the public's supporting a programme of good will towards the police and their work. I do not mind saying that if it ever fell to my lot to "have a go", as we were recommended to do, and still are, my willingness to do so, to go to the help of the police, would be reinforced if such a penalty existed on the Statute Book. My Lords, that brings me back to where I began, that everything possible should be done to associate the public with the police as urged by the noble Lord, Lord Willis, in his broadcast, and by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, in his opening speech to-day.
8.30 p.m.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has been very welcome to me, and I am sure other noble Lords, as a new crime wave seems to be setting in, and our policemen are being shot and killed in this country, and hundreds of policemen are being used to track down the killers. Some of these policemen are armed and some are not, as your Lordships are all well aware. The ones that are not armed have dogs. My Lords, I think they should all be armed, whether they have a dog or not.
I also should like to congratulate the very eminent and noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, on his maiden speech, as well as the noble Lords, Lord Roberthall and Lord Gray, and to support the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, in his remarks about National Service.
The Government have done a good deal to improve the standards and efficiency of our Police Force. The increase in crime rates has not been halted, but it has been retarded, largely as a result of measures introduced by Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Callaghan. The main measures have been the amalgamation of police forces that were too small to be efficient; the centralisation of criminal records; the introduction of personal radios, and the organisation of the neighbourhood beat system under which officers in cars can patrol their areas as and when they think it best and not according to a timetable.
These measures, mainly proposed by the Royal Commission on the Police, have made the increase in the crime rate

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smaller than it would otherwise have been. I think I am right in saying (though I stand to be corrected) that 1968 was the first year in which virtually all policemen in towns were using the new equipment and the new beat system, and in that year the overall crime rate (though not the rate for crimes of violence) showed a 1 per cent. decline. Crimes of violence in Britain numbered 5,689 in 1955, 14,549 in 1963, and 21,046 in 1968. From 1958 to 1968 the strength of the police in Britain and the establishment figure both increased annually, but a shortfall of 8 per cent. in 1958, when the strength was, I believe, 71,300 men, had become a shortfall of 17 per cent. by 1968, when the strength was 89,881 men.
My Lords, our Police Force is the best in the world, and it must be kept up to full strength, be well paid, and have all the necessary equipment at its disposal in order to combat crime in all its ugly forms. This is not a Party issue, for I am sure that all political Parties are equally concerned to suppress crime. The Government cannot afford to relax their efforts to build up a larger and more efficient Police Force. The morale of the police is tending to become lower, according to reports by several chief constables; and if this is so it is a bad state of affairs, since it could, and to my mind inevitably would, lead to trouble.
I should like to say a few words about the Port of London Authority Police, the second oldest police force in the country. It operates in an area that is used every day by some 50,000 to 80,000 members of the public, both to work in and, in many cases, to live in. Experience has shown—and it has been proved by history —that it is necessary and essential that an area as vast as the Port of London should be efficiently and adequately policed, and to the same high standards as any other area in the United Kingdom. The duties of dock police, as your Lordships well know, at the present time include enforcing the law for such varying offences as those under the Dangerous Drugs Acts, the Road Safety Act, the Road Traffic Acts, the Diseases of Animals Act, aliens, smuggling, the minor and serious assaults and breaches of the peace, and so on.
Before I sit down I should like to remind the House that the responsibilities
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of the police, their constitutional position, and the role of the constable were examined by the Royal Commission on the Police in 1962. An Interim Report was published in 1960, and it was stated categorically in paragraph 11:
"The maintenance of law and order ranks with national defence as a primary task of Government. It is an essential condition of a nation's survival and happiness."
My Lords, it is the duty of this Government, or any other Government, to uphold law and order, and to make the policeman's lot a better one, for the people and the country as a whole.
8.35 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, I have stayed here so long to-night listening to this most interesting debate in order to affirm one point: that I am openly and unashamedly concerned with the efforts of many of my colleagues to organise and provide help of various kinds to men who have been in prison. The point I wish to make —and I cannot make it too strongly— is that we who take an interest in this sort of work are not soft so far as the police are concerned. I think we believe as one man that the speed and certainty of detection and arrest are the only deterrent worth anything; that a strong, mobile and well-equipped Police Force, with a good morale, and working in close co-operation with a willing public, is the only way to enforce the law. I have stayed all this time to make this point, so perhaps your Lordships will forgive me if I make one or two others which have crossed my mind in the course of the debate.
One of the rather endearing characteristics of this House is that whenever we have a debate on youth everybody says how marvellous youth is, and whenever we have a debate on the police everybody says how marvellous they are. And indeed they are marvellous—but not, I think, always in exactly the way that some of your Lordships may think. I believe that we are a nation at war. I do not know how big organised crime is in this country. Perhaps 10 per cent. of the 50,000 discharges a year are of professionals, and I suppose that there are twice as many outside who do not get caught, though I do not know the actual figure. However, these men are dangerous, ruthless, well backed by

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capital, by science, and by everything else. The police are our frontline troops and if, as such, they sometimes behave in a way reminiscent of commandos during the war, it is "all right with me". If you are dealing with very ruthless people, I think you have to deal with them in a pretty ruthless way.
There are complaints about the police, and it is absurd to pretend that there are not. Most of the complaints I get talking to prisoners are of this order, which I ignore: they are not true. If they are true, of course, they are fully justified. But the fact is that 90 per cent. of crime is committed by inadequate and inefficient people, who cannot even commit crime without being captured, and who go round and round on the steady prison roundabout and are no good at all. I do not hear complaints from these people, particularly complaints about the police being brutal. In fact, more often than not they say, "The 'copper' gave me a cup of tea in the police station", and that sort of thing. I think we must face the fact that we cannot have frontline troops fighting a relentless enemy with kid gloves. The police are not winged cherubs—personally, I do not want them to be.
May I apologise at this stage to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, for missing his opening speech? I shall read it with my usual pleasure and inevitable edification in the morning. I should like to congratulate the three distinguished maiden speakers. Only one is left here, so only to him need I say that I blushed to the roots of my hair when he raised the point about driving as fast as you can on the amber light. It was a familiar experience for which I am deeply ashamed.
I imagine most of us would agree with the desire expressed by most speakers, and perhaps expressed most eloquently by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry, that the police should have better terms of service, higher pay and all the rest of it. Of course we want that. But let us not kid ourselves. It is opening up the main economic problem of the day: how to keep the conditions of nonproductive citizens in line with the conditions of productive ones. Probation officers, the Armed Forces
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musicians, doctors, nurses, teachers—they are all in the same category as the police. Their results cannot be measured by productivity, and so they have no hope in competition with industrial workers. It is the business of places like this to keep steady pressure on any Government to see that they get—surely too late, but not too much too late— what they ought to have.
My noble friend Lord Stonham asked us to stick to the facts, and one fact which
he could begin with is that the crime statistics are in no sense a measure of police efficiency. In so far as there is a correlation, it is a reverse correlation. Clearly, the more efficient the police are, the more crimes reach the statistics; and the more people are ready to co-operate with the police and report to them, the more crimes there are on the list. Also, of course, the police do many other jobs besides detecting and arresting criminals.
I must say one word to the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, neither of whom are here to listen. Of course they are right in being worried at the absence of a fierce deterrent for murder. Nobody is satisfied with long imprisonment. However, I should like noble Lords to pay a little attention to the meaning of words. A noble Lord on the other side said that nine years is not very long. But I was away from home for 4½ years during the war, and I assure your Lordships that it was an eternity. I had a friend who came out of Dartmoor after a second term of five or six years, and he said that there is no point in sentencing people to more than two years, because nobody can visualise what it means. Nobody ever suggests letting out somebody who has committed a heinous crime, unless people of good intelligence and scientific background say that there has been a change —and sometimes there is. So I think that long sentences are very unsatisfactory, and are already a good deal longer than they need be to have the maximum effect.
Before we consider the whole question of capital punishment, which this is not the time to discuss, may I suggest that we pay more attention to prevention? I should like to see any criminal caught with a firearm on him having a mandatory addition to his sentence of something like three years. I should also like

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to see any citizen found with a firearm on his premises and without a licence— certainly on a second offence—subject to a fine of £1,000. I would make it simply impossible for anybody but a determined criminal to carry a gun.
Deterrents have to be applied when reason is working and not in passion. One has a far better chance of stopping a thug from murdering a policeman if that thug does not have a gun in the first place or does not take it with him. If he takes it in case a situation arises, he will certainly use it. I feel that that is something on which universal agreement could be obtained. My figures may be wrong, but something of that kind could be done at once. If that completely fails and we get an enormous increase in this kind of savage killing, then we shall all have to think again.
In conclusion, I would ask those who are interested to read what I think is a very remarkable book. It is called The Frying Pan and it is written by a man called Tony Parker, who is a journalist specialising in studying delinquency. It is about the inmates of a prison which I know very well, and I can recognise a number of them. It gives a kind of spread between the man whose only idea was to get in and hit first, and the other, absolutely different, people at the other end for whom the sanctions were obviously ineffective. It gives the whole spread of criminality and I think noble Lords will be interested to read it. I was very much encouraged by the list of achievements, not of this Government but of all Governments—I do not regard this as a Party matter at all. We have gone a long way in the last twenty years in better equipping our police, and so on. Finally, I should like to thank 'the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, once again for giving us the opportunity for this discussion.
8.46 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I always find it difficult to know how to wind up for the Opposition. After all, it is not my job to answer the debate; that is the job of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick. I deem it my duty, therefore, to stress certain points that have been raised and, if possible, to bring forward one or two others that have not been raised—which is usually unlikely. However, I believe I have one or two which I
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consider rather successful. I intend first to do something that has already been done by many noble Lords, and that is to congratulate the noble Lords, Lord O'Neill, Lord Roberthall and Lord Gray on their maiden speeches. I have been quite a long time in this House, some twenty years or more, and although one would think one would get bored with maiden speeches, I find that as time goes on they get better and better. I find that very refreshing and I congratulate the noble Lords on their contributions today. We shall be very disappointed if they do not come and speak quite often.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, started by making an election speech, followed by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, explained why he did it, but I think it is a pity that it should be done in your Lordships' House. There are other places where one can do it. There is one indictment against the Government, perhaps of a comparatively minor kind, which I shall deal with later. The noble Lord was careful not to answer the point made by my noble friend Lord Brooke. I shall repeat it so that the noble Lord gets another opportunity of answering it., although he will not be able to do so.
I think all noble Lords have agreed that it is essential to get better pay for the police. Several speakers mentioned something that used to be of tremendous importance in getting recruits for the police, and that was the differential in their scale of pensions compared with the ordinary corresponding pension for a person in other walks of life. In the Welfare State that differential has virtually disappeared, and I do not think it should. If we want recruits it is a great pity that it should have virtually disappeared, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, will be able to say whether this question is being considered as seriously as the question of pay.
Another matter that has been raised quite widely is the question of wastage. That is becoming even more important than recruiting. It is particularly bad, because experienced officers are leaving. In certain circumstances a policeman can earn better pay as—shall we say?—a dustman. A dustman has regular hours, he knows what is; his time off, his wife sees him when she wants to see him, he has enough work to keep him out of the

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house when she does not want him there and so on—quite unlike a policeman's life. I am certain that a lot of the wastage arises when wives can really stand their husband's work no longer. When I was at the Home Office and went round police forces and met some of the wives I was amazed at what extraordinarily fine women they nearly all are, how they support their husbands and the amount they have to put up with. It is quite astonishing; and many women would not put up with it.
There is one point that has not been mentioned. We have had mentioned the difficult hours and the wife not knowing, when the children are at home at the weekend, if she was going to see her husband although he was supposed to have that weekend off—and that is increasingly happening with demonstrations and other maters. We have heard all about those difficulties, and they are all perfectly true and are very hard on the wives. But I wonder whether the general public realises that the wives themselves are under discipline. That does not happen to wives in most other walks of life. I wonder whether your Lordships realise that if there is a tiresome next-door neighbour—it may even be the policeman's wife who is tiresome; it does not matter—and they have a row, or if the policeman's dog rushes out and bites the dog of the next-door neighbour, and if the next-door neighbour goes to the senior police officer (the superintendent, or who-ever it may be) and complains, the whole rigmarole of a police inquiry has to start, because if the wife is unsuitable it may affect her husband's career. That is the sort of matter which you and I, or our wives, may take in our stride as one of the ordinary things of life, but we would not have an official inquiry about it, though if it went too far there might be a civil action. I wonder whether that is necessary in the case of these policemen's wives. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, can say something about it, though I doubt if he can do so without notice. But I am sure that this sort of pinprick on the wives, who are themselves under discipline to some extent, could be modified.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to interrupt. Surely this is a matter for the
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police themselves. They do not have to have this kind of inquiry; it is not
imposed upon them by law. They can remedy this at any time they like.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am told that it is almost imposed, because anything that affects or might affect the husband's career has to be looked into officially when there is a complaint. I am told that in fact it is compulsory, and that it is not really left to the senior officer. He has to do it, because the wife may be unsuitable and this may affect her husband's career—perhaps he ought to be moved and so on. But there must be an inquiry. So whatever the law may state, this is in fact what has to be done. That is what I am advised, and I think I am right. That is the only additional matter I wanted to bring up about wives, although we have all heard to-day of the other difficulties they have; and I am sure they are responsible for a lot of wastage.
My Lords, outside pay and the ordinary conditions of service, what are the sort
of things which rile police officers themselves and persuade them to leave? There are various points that have been put to me, and I think they are unfortunate. The first one concerns complaints against a police officer. The vast majority of complaints have no substance in them— and, of course, it is now common form for any thug who is caught (he may not be a thug, but any criminal who is caught) to say at once that he has been beaten up, that he has been offered a bribe, and so forth. It is absolutely common form now. If that was said against any one of us and then disproved, if we were wise we would bring an action for civil libel. I am advised that except in the most gross circumstances police officers are not allowed to bring these actions. It is all very fine, but it appears in the local paper that he has been accused of asking for money. He is found not guilty; the local paper may or may not publish that fact; the neighbours whisper, and he has no redress. If I am wrong I hope to be told, but that is what I am advised. I believe that in very serious cases the police can bring an action, but it is very difficult for them to do so. In ordinary cases they are not supposed to do so, and I believe they find it very difficult.

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The only other irksome thing I want to talk about is the question of expenses. I am advised that the ordinary lodging and food allowances are perfectly adequate, and if in the course of duty the allowances have to be overspent there never seems to be any difficulty in getting the additional amount. I am talking now about lodging and food allowances. But where this causes a great deal of distress, in some cases, and where there is a great temptation to cheat—and it is extraordinary how seldom that temptation is given way to—is in the case of detective officers. They may have to sit in a pub for hours, keeping observation. They cannot sit with just a glass of soda; they have to drink something. They may even have to go into a cafe to keep observation on a house opposite. They have to have a coffee, anyhow, or something like that. In some police forces the chief constable looks on these things with a generous eye. In other police forces it is almost impossible (perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but it is very difficult) to get these unexpected expenses; the chief constable does not allow it. The detective officers are frequently very much out of pocket, and that is where the temptation comes in.
My Lords, things have now reached an absurd situation, because since the creation of the Regional Crime Squad detective officers from different forces have come together and one gets—not may get, but gets—two officers from different forces working together on the same case, going to the same pub to listen to conversation, one of whom gets his extra expenses allowed while the other does not. Really, something must be done about this. I do not know quite what the Government, as a Government, can do, but I put the point seriously to the noble Lord. This is causing a lot of annoyance, and there have been cases of detective officers leaving the force because they think that they have been badly done by whereas the fellow next door has been fairly treated. That is a point which I hope the noble Lord will take notice of.
My Lords, there is one other matter, more or less under that heading, to which I want to refer. It was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Brooke; and it is the question of status. I am quite certain that no longer should the police
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officer be classed as an hourly-paid worker, with overtime, with boot allowances and all that sort of nonsense. He should have an annual salary. His should in fact be a profession. I will not go into details—and the details are fairly complicated, I agree—but he should be treated much the same as a doctor, who is on 24-hour call but has his time off except in an emergency. If the police officer is paid by the year, his status will at once be raised. He will become professional. I believe that if we want the right type of police
officer, that is what we have to do. With hourly-paid workers, there are so many potty restrictions; they do not know what they are going to get until the end of the day, and all that sort of thing. I think that is unsuitable for a modem police force.
I want to say one word about the murder of police officers. I say quite frankly that I was in favour, and still am in favour, of keeping capital punishment for the murder of a police officer or somebody who goes to his help, but at the moment it is not practical politics. But the fact remains that for a criminal who has had many offences and several long sentences there is nothing whatsoever left to deter him from shooting a police officer if, by that means, he is going to get away with a crime.
I have a suggestion to make which may not be practicable. I like it rather less than that made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge. Involved in the matter of crime is—especially to-day—the question of firearms. I do not know whether your Lordships realise the sort of figures: four times in every three days, on average, in London a firearm is used to murder, to attempt to murder, to rob or to assault. I think those are the right figures. It is really a terrible situation, and particularly so as regards armed assaults on the police.
As all suggestions are going to be considered, may I put forward another which, again, may not be as good as that of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge? Would it not be possible in this particular crime, the murder of a police officer or of somebody going to his assistance, to do away in the first place with the life sentence and to leave it to the Judge to give a fixed sentence, and—I repeat in this particular form of

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crime only—to provide that once a sentence has been given (subject to the Appeal Courts, of course) nobody, neither the Home Secretary nor the Parole Board, could interfere with it? The prisoner should serve the full sentence less the usual remission for good conduct. I think that that should be possible. There is not the slightest doubt that it would be deterrent. I know that it will be argued against it that it will affect the prisoner mentally; but I think that a man who shoots a police officer is already affected mentally—although perhaps not sufficiently to plead insanity. But I feel certain that some special deterrent must be devised against the use of firearms.
There is one other small point. My noble friend Lord Brooke pleaded: For Heavens sake, do not mess the police about again! They are only just getting the amalgamation going. If Redcliffe-Maud, with its alterations of boundaries, came into effect in a year or two— although I strongly suspect that it will not—it would mess up the police again. It is quite unnecessary and I think it would be disastrous to coincide the boundaries. I know that that would be tidier from the Whitehall point of view, but the existing police committees could continue to function with representatives of two different local authorities on the committees. I beg the Government not to mess up the police again with a new reorganisation.
I mentioned that there was still one indictment against the Government. I think that at one moment they got their priority wrong—and not for the first time. I think it was disastrous to curtail recruitment at the moment when it was going well. That, I think, was a mistake. I know that it is being rectified now; but if those extra men that were not recruited were now available, life would be much easier for the police force. I would strengthen that indictment—although it is not a very great one; for we all make mistakes—by saying that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has told the House repeatedly, and rightly, that the greatest deterrent is the chance of being caught. I agree with that entirely. But in spite of increasing numbers—and numbers are the essence of this matter; whatever equipment you give to the police it is
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useless without the numbers—the Police Service to-day is suffering more overstrain than it was five or six years ago.
The criminal to-day stands more chance—more, not less—of getting away with his crime than he did five or six years ago. The ordinary citizen and his property are more in danger now than was the case five or six years ago. In my view, and I see no reason to alter it in spite of what I think the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, is going to say, this overstretch would not have been as bad if the Government had had their priorities right and had considered that law and order came before other things—came first, in fact—and had not restricted recruiting. Nobody has ever suggested that they stopped it. The word is "restricted", which is the word they used.
9.4 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I vowed to be brief, but I fear that it will be a vow taken in vain if I am going to answer all the questions that have been put to me. May I first join in the welcome extended to our triumvirate of maiden speakers. They have already been very warmly and sincerely congratulated and I add my congratulations to those already made. It occurred to me that while we welcome these new Members of your Lordships' House because of their personalities, there was a delightful flavour about the names which they bring with them: Lord O'Neill of the Maine; Lord Roberthall of Silverspur in the State of Queensland and Trenance in the County of Cornwall. I could not wish for a better title to bring to your Lordships' House.
To the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, I say this. We have followed in this country and in this House, with sympathy and anxiety, the events in his country and the part he has played in them, and we listened intently to the personal account which he himself has given. We look forward to the wisdom of what he will say later on. The noble Lord, Lord Roberthall, claimed to be
speaking as an ordinary member of the public. Looking at his record—and I am not using the word in its police sense—I should have thought that the last thing that he could claim was to be an ordinary member of the public. I thought that what the noble Lord, Lord Gray, said

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was practical, moderate and sensible, and I greatly appreciated what he had to say on this particular subject.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry, who had to go, made what I thought was an especially valuable speech. Coming after some of the things that were said about the efforts of my right honourable friend, I particularly welcomed his balanced approach. He made one point which I thought ought to be corrected; namely, that the widows of policemen, in the event of the death of their husbands in service, were dependent on nonpublic funds for their pensions That is not true. Policemen's widows get a pension however their husband's die, and if they were killed on duty the pension is, in fact, an enhanced one.
My Lords, another of our noble friends who has had to go, for reasons we understand, is my noble friend Lord Stonham. 1 should like to say how pleased I am sure we all were that he should have spoken to-day on a subject about which he knows so much and with which he is so closely identified. My noble friend had an interesting exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, about establishment. I was particularly interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, was moved to say; namely, that he when in office had not the time to change the establishment of the police force. That I can understand, and he gave
me good reasons for it. But because the increase in the establishment had to be made later when others came along, I thought it unfair of the noble Lord to say that the gap between the strength and the establishment had been increased in the time of the Labour Government. The fact is—
LORD BROOKE of CUMNOR: My Lords, if I gave any impression of that sort I certainly did not intend to. Neither did 1 say that I did not have time to revise the establishment. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, quoted me as saying that, but what I said was that there was not time, among the many duties of the qualified people who could have revised the establishment, for them to undertake that when there were at the moment more urgent tasks.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it is customary, of course, that the Minister
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in charge of a Department accepts the credit and the responsibility for what is done or is not done in the Department for which he is responsible. But the point I am really getting at is the unfairness of the criticism of the gap between the strength and the establishment. It did increase, certainly, but it increased principally because the establishment had been put on to a more realistic level.
My noble friend Lord Stonham, and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, spoke about the importance of pension considerations and so, I think, did the noble Lord, Lord Derwent. The review of the police pension scheme is a somewhat complicated business:, but the Home Department and the Working Party set up by the Local Authority Associations have put to the Staff Side as a basis for discussions their proposals for the main features of a revised pension scheme. A meeting of the Police Council Working Party has been arranged for March 6 to give preliminary consideration to these proposals; and the general aim of that review will be to ensure that the new scheme will mean that broadly the same amount of the total pension provision, including the State element, will be available after the changes take place. Assurances have already been given to the Police Council to this effect.
A number of points were made by my noble friend Lord Snonham, and by others,
about certain anomalies in the rank structure of the police. In 1969 the Secretaries of State of the Home Departments, in consultation with the Local Authority Associations and Police Associations, set up another Working Party to review the rank structure of the Police Service from constable to chief constable. When this Working Party's Report has been accepted by the Secretaries of State, in consultation with their police advisory boards, there will be discussions about a new pay structure; and then, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, the question of pay differentials between ranks will be one of the more important issues in the review of the pay structure.
My noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell referred to that interesting case reported in The Times about the"Mini"which was towed away and the Rolls-Royce which was not. There was, in fact— although probably my noble friend did

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not notice it—another letter in a later issue of The Times which gave a possible reason, but I will check on the matter and see whether I can give him any other information. My noble friend also asked that there should be some new system of investigating complaints made about members of the police force. I hesitate to keep mentioning these Working Parties, but at the end of last year a Working Party of the Police Advisory Boards, comprised of representatives of the Local Authority Associations and of the organisations representing the various ranks of the Police Service, was set up to examine the working of the present procedure and to advise whether any changes should be made. The Working Party has had three meetings but has not yet reported. The Home Secretary has also sought advice from other bodies, including critics of the present system. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend and others will be assured that this matter is being looked into.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, emphasised, as did other speakers, the importance of the social regard and the social image of the policeman. I agree with him, and I agree, too, with what he said about the T.V. exploitation of personal grief. The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, asked how many police constables are going through the universities. I did give the number; at present there are 60 taking degrees. I am not sure of the ranks from which they come, but they go to the university with the rank of inspector. He asked, as did a number of other noble Lords, about the possibility of stiffer penalties. The position here is that the penalties, which we in this House and another place lay down in legislation, are stiff enough but the difficulty arises when the possible
penalty is not passed by the court concerned. In this connection, I was interested to read the advice given by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor at a recent meeting of the Magistrates' Association, in which he emphasised the importance of adequate sentencing. I am sure that most of us with any experience of this will welcome what he said and hope that magistrates will take heed of it.
The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, made a number of specific suggestions, which must be considered. He dealt with the possibility of taking tape recordings of
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evidence. I understand that the Criminal Justice Act 1967 makes provision for documentary evidence to be used, except when one of the parties objects to this.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, that is in civil courts. I was talking of criminal offences.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, this is something which must go through the machine and must be considered.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, my object is simply to cut down the paper work, which many noble Lords have said is such a burden to the police.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Lord understands that I cannot give him an assurance on that matter, except to say that it is something which ought to be borne in mind. The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, made an extremely interesting speech. I was particularly interested in what he said about the experience with T.V. programmes on the Continent. Possibly he was overlooking for the moment the fact that the B.B.C. regularly broadcast information direct from Scotland Yard and that provincial forces are being encouraged to use provincial radio stations similarly. I believe that this way of giving out information about crime and inviting the co-operation of the public has proved useful. The noble Lord, like other noble
Lords, quoted what was said by the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire. I am not going to comment particularly on that, except to say that never in my experience have I known a commanding officer to complain about the morale of the troops under his command. Commonly the officer in charge has something to do with the state of morale of those under him.
The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, also asked about police cadets. I am glad to say that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has informed police authorities that he is ready to allow them to recruit as many cadets as they wish, regardless of the establishment figures. I hope that that satisfies the noble Lord on that point.
On the question of the death penalty, I would only say to the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, whose admirable and entirely non-controversial speech

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touched on a subject which I assure him has created a certain amount of discussion in your Lordships' House, that this is not a matter into which at this time of night I can be expected to go in any great detail. In fact we came freely to a decision on the abolition of the death penalty, with no Party Whips on, in both Houses. As the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, said, it just is not sound practical politics to try to reverse what we have so recently decided. I would add this one observation. I doubt whether many of us want to go back to the time when we had a tariff for hanging, even if any amendment were made. In any case, when we look at the recent killings of policemen, we find that since 1957 three have been determined to be manslaughter, two to be Common Law manslaughter, one to be diminished-responsibility manslaughter; and quite conceivably one, at least, of the recent cases will turn out to be manslaughter with diminished responsibility. So that hanging clearly is not a deciding factor in these cases. In the recent tragedy in Yorkshire, once that man had killed the watchman, even if he stood to hang there would have been no further deterrent to his shooting a policeman who sought to catch him.
I come now to the question of manpower, but first 1 should like to say to my noble friend Lord Donaldson how grateful I was for what he had to say, especially as his observations sprang from such great experience. He made one or two suggestions, particularly about firearms, which I shall read again with great care. The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, said something about my speech. I have a little difficulty in understanding why, if I set the record straight, it is an Election speech, but if the noble Lord criticises the Labour Government it is a reasonable indictment.
LORD DERWENT: My noble friend Lord Brooke had pleaded that we should try to keep the debate non-Party, which he in fact did. I merely said that I thought the noble Lord was not doing so.
LORD BESWICK: I am sure that the noble Lord and his noble friend have great capacity for assuring themselves on this point, but I think an objective observer would take a somewhat different
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viewpoint. In any case, I was not replying, in the main, to what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said. I think he made a speech suitable to this House, and one which we should have expected in this House. But it was a speech far removed from those of some of his political friends outside, and I took this opportunity to say what I thought about what his Party managers were doing and saying.
Having said that, let me refer to what the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, had to say. He asked me about the position of the wives of policemen. I am afraid that I cannot give him an answer to his question tonight, but I will write to him on the matter. He then asked about the possibility of policemen bringing an action when they have been wronged, or when it is alleged they have been wronged. My advice is that they are in exactly the same position as any other citizen, and they can bring an action if they so choose.
The noble Lord said in his peroration that there was more chance of the criminal getting away with a crime now than there was before. That just is not true. I gave the figures of the crimes cleared up, and the fact is that in recent years the proportion of crimes cleared up has increased. So the noble Lord is just repeating, out of habit, something that is not borne out by the facts. Several
noble Lords quoted snippets from newspapers which again arc contrary to the facts. The noble Lord, Lord Mowbray, said that there was a net decrease in manpower of 0·4 per cent, in 1968. There was, in fact, a net increase of 142 in that year.
LORD MOWBRAY and STOURTON: With respect, I said a net decrease of 0·4 per cent, of the official establishment strength, not of the actual manpower.
LORD BESWICK: That is so involved that I shall have to read it in Hansard tomorrow; but I feel that, even so, I can probably find some figure to controvert the noble Lord. There was also a figure used by my noble friend Lord Maelor, who spoke about a manpower reduction in 1969. In fact, during the calendar year there was a net increase of 980. I feel that noble Lords who wish to follow these issues with care ought to be absolutely certain about the facts they garner.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: If the noble Lord looks at Hansard (col. 1434) of the other place for February 12 he will see the figure. There is a figure of 4·8 per cent, increase in the recruitment of establishment strength and a 5·2 per cent, decrease—wastage. That was made up by the increase of the establishment, plus wastage; it did not equal the increase of manpower.
LORD BESWICK: If I have given the noble Lord information which is not accurate 1 will apologise to him. My advice is that in that year there was a net increase. Whatever was the juggling with the establishment, what really matters is how many bodies we have in the Police Force. I am told that there were more bodies at the end of the year than there were at the beginning. That is what I am trying to hammer home.
The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, asked about allowances, especially to detectives, and I have sympathy with what he said. The Home Secretary makes regulations about allowances, but only after consulting the Police Council, which exists among other things so that grievances can be discussed and be put right. The Police Federation has the means to bring to the notice of the Home Secretary any cases of injustice which they want to raise. So, while I do not deny there may be cases where complaints can be made, there is a machinery now which I hope will work satisfactorily.
In answer to the noble Lords, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, Lord Redesdale, Lord Grenfell, Lord Wolverton, Lord Maelor, Lord Brooke and Lord Derwent, who referred to the matter of wastage, I would say that of course this is something which needs to be looked into. The Government have carried out a scientific examination on the problems of wastage. They have had it looked at, not on a Party political basis but by skilled, experienced and scientific minds. To the extent that pay is a factor, noble Lords have already been made aware that the Police Council have decided in principle to recommend an interim increase in pay. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Maelor, that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will deal without delay with the recommendations of the Police Council when they make their detailed recommendations.
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The Government entirely agree that the strength of the police needs to be substantially increased, and they are giving every encouragement to this end. We have increased the level of expenditure on the national recruiting campaign to the highest figure ever, and the Home Secretary is now discussing with the local authority associations what the expenditure should be in the next financial year. The amount spent this financial year in publicity on recruiting campaigns is £390,000, and if necessary the amount will be more next year. The Home Secretary has invited police authorities and chief constables to review their own arrangements for recruiting so as to make sure that strengths are built up as quickly as possible. I have already made it clear that the Home Secretary informed the police authorities that he has authorised in full the increases in manpower which they had included in their estimates for next year.
I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, for what he said in his opening speech about the Special Police, and I am sorry that I made no reference to it in what I said when I followed him. We have the special constables who, without pay and in their spare time, reinforce the police and sometimes enable them to take a well-deserved Saturday or Sunday off. The splendid work of the special constables is appreciated, and the Home Secretary and chief constables would be glad if many more men and women would come forward to serve the community in this way.
I said at the beginning that I was not purporting to deal with social causes of crime. Several noble Lords have since referred to that—the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, for example, and the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Coventry, in particular. My own view is not that material poverty is the cause of crime— as once it was—but that spiritual more than material poverty is at the bottom of a lot of our trouble. Affluence, rather than deprivation, has nurtured some forms of modern crime. A social purpose is more essential in an affluent society than in any other, and a stronger sense of social purpose would no doubt do much to squeeze out and eliminate criminal activities. At the same time, I am bound to say to the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, that when he talks about strong

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religious convictions being needed, sometimes I wonder, when I read of accounts in Northern Ireland—
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: My Lords, may I just come in there? I drew attention to the fact that there is a great decline in religious convictions. I was not saying that this was a bad thing. What I was saying was that there was a great decline, and I thought that notice should be taken of it and that we should consider how we could introduce some new morality. I am only too conscious of what the noble Lord has just said so far as Northern Ireland is concerned.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not quite sure that I now understand what the noble Lord is saying. I was going on to say that in the same way as strong religious convictions do not appear always to damp down conflict in some parts of our country, similarly the strong social purpose I have been talking about sometimes leads to difficulties in some parts of England and Wales and Scotland.
Despite the fascinating speech, if 1 may say so, of the noble Lord, Lord Conesford. I am not proposing this evening to go into the question of demonstrations. We had, I thought, a most interesting and a most useful debate on that problem. I still feel, with respect 1o the noble Lord, that he, no more than the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, when I asked him, has not come forward with any solution as to the point at which we prevent people, who are about to embark upon a lawful demonstration, before they go over the borderline and become a lawbreaking demonstration. We had that debate and I thought the message that went out on that occasion was that we were all in favour of demonstrations provided they did not resort to violence.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord and of course I do not want a further reply I might, speaking from memory, mention one point of criticism of him on that last occasion. His only criticism of the people who misused the demonstration was that what they did was counterproductive. I think that was true, but it is equally important, and even more important, that it was illegal.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, what I said on that occasion was that others too had their rights—which is what the noble Lord said in much better words. I believe a man has a perfect right to run from one end of a football field to another, even if the ball is not a round one. That is a right and we ought not to stop it, and if somebody else tries to stop it I think they are breaking the law. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord on that point.
I make just one other observation on this question of the social climate in which crime has developed, and I make it because my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has sometimes been criticised on these issues. It is relevant to note that the Home Secretary has done much to deal with some of these factors in the social climate that have given rise to trouble. We have had two pieces of legislation dealing with firearms. And I might say, too, that when at least one of those measures was going through this House there were criticisms from the other side of the House that we were restricting personal freedom, when we were trying to enforce the control of firearms. What my right honourable friend has done, and is proposing to do, about drugs, what he has done with the gambling establishments to prevent them from moving into the area in which criminal elements are encouraged, also is greatly to his credit.
My Lords, this has been a useful debate. I should like two things to emerge from it. One is that if we get the national crime picture in perspective, alarm and complacency are equally out. But as for the Police Force, I hope we shall
recognise that there are some grievances which should be put right, and I know that my right honourable friend hopes to put some of them right. But let us stress also that the police have a share of our national resources, technical and scientific resources, behind them, greater now than at any time. And I repeat again what I said earlier and what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said: that there is now in the police forces a greater opportunity for men and women to serve than ever there was and there are better career prospects than ever; and if that fact can be emphasised I am sure that this debate will have served a particularly valuable purpose.
9.35 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, this has been the most serious, interesting and valuable Parliamentary debate on the police to which I have ever listened. I want to express my warm and sincere thanks to every noble Lord who has spoken and has helped to make it so. Particularly I wish to offer my sincere congratulations to what has been described as the"triumvirate"of maiden speakers—the triumphant triumvirate I would call them—my noble friends Lord O'Neill of the Maine and Lord Gray, and the noble Lord, Lord Roberthall, who has been a respected friend of mine ever since, 15 years ago, he was senior economic adviser to the Government and I was a junior Minister at the Treasury.
I greatly hope that what has been said in the debate will permeate afar and will be read not only in the Home Office, as I am sure it will, but also within the Police Service. If it is, it will give considerable reassurance in police quarters, and that was one of my hopes in introducing the debate. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

ROADS (SCOTLAND) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read la, and to be printed.

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES BILL [H.L.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to amend the law relating to societies and branches registered under the Friendly Societies Act 1896, to make other amendments to facilitate the consolidation of the Friendly Societies Acts 1896 to 1968; and for purposes connected therewith. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a. —(Lord Beswick).
On Question, Bill read 1a and to be printed.

INCOME AND CORPORATION TAXES BILL [H.L.] TAXES MANAGEMENT BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills with Amendments, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twenty-three minutes before ten o'clock.