Sitting of 10 November 1970

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

MESSAGES FROM THE QUEEN
The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answers to the Addresses, as follows:
I have received your Address praying that the Secretary of State for the Environment Order, 1970 be made in the form of the draft laid before your House.
I will comply with your request.
I have received your Address praying that the Transfer of Functions (Overseas Aid) Order, 1970 be made in the form of the draft laid before your House.
I will comply with your request.

PRIVATE BUSINESS
  PORT OF TYNE BILL
  Lords Amendment considered and agreed to.
  WEST END BAPTIST CHURCH, HAMMERSMITH BILL
  Read the Third time and passed.
  READING CORPORATION BILL [Lords]
    AMOCO (UK) BILL [Lords]
      TEESSIDE CORPORATION (GENERAL POWERS) BILL [Lords]
      Read a Second time and committed.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  SOCIAL SERVICES

    District General Hospitals (Transport)
    Mr. Juddasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will make a statement on the arrangements which have been made for the transport of patients, visitors and staff to and from district general hospitals following the closure of smaller local hospitals.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): Boards have been asked to give particular attention to any expected transport difficulties and to enlist the help of transport undertakings to overcome them.
    Mr. Judd: I thank the Minister for that helpful reply, but will he undertake that his Department will do everything possible to encourage hospital authorities to answer the problems which arise because of the anxiety and inconvenience which people may suffer in this respect?
    Mr. Alison: Hospital boards are alert to this need, but I note the hon. Gentleman's request.
    Miss Quennell: If my hon. Friend aware that it takes seven hours for constituents from certain parts of my constituency to travel by public transport, for example, from Headley parish to Basingstoke, to the new general hospital, and does he consider this reasonable?
    Mr. Alison: The problem is not a new one, but accessibility is now a prime factor in the location of new hospitals.

    Retirement Pensioners
    Mr. Martenasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a variation in the scale rates of supplementary benefits to enable a reduction to be made in the cost of television licences for certain retirement pensioners.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean): No, Sir. The cost of television licences is included in the index of retail prices which is taken into account in

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    determining the scale rates for supplementary benefit; and the rates themselves allow a margin for amenities which people can choose to spend on things like television licences. The rates were increased on 2nd November.
    Mr. Marten: That is the whole point. Would it not be better to turn it the other way round, adjust the cash benefits to exclude the element of the television licence, and then reduce the television licence fee for old-age pensioners who are living alone, which is what they want?
    Mr. Dean: I appreciate the point which my hon. Friend makes, but we think it better to provide the cash so that people may spend it as they choose.
    Mr. Gorstasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will now increase the pensions for retirement pensioners to enable them to meet the increased fuel bills before the onset of the colder winter months.
    The Secretary of State for Social Services (Sir Keith Joseph): No, Sir. The increase in supplementary benefits which came into effect last week will help over two million of the poorest retirement pensioners this winter.
    Mr. Gorst: While appreciating the difficulties facing the Government in the present economic situation, may I urge the Secretary of State to bear in mind the dire and distressing difficulties which old-age pensioners are facing, with rising costs and so on? Will he give a firm forecast of when something tangible can be done to relieve the difficulties of this age group, particularly those over 70 and, indeed, over 80?
    Sir K. Joseph: We are pledged to review pensions every two years. It is the elderly who suffer most from inflation.
    Mr. Sillars: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that just before the General Election the Conservative Party spokesmen denounced the supplementary benefit increases as totally inadequate because of the rate of inflation? Will he deny that the rate of inflation has accelerated? Will he tell the old people what he will do for them this winter?
    Sir K. Joseph: The fires of inflation which were lit by the previous Government are flaming, as we warned they would, and it is the elderly who are suffering.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: But the right hon. Gentleman must be aware that his own colleague, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade, has made it clear that the Government are not prepared to intervene on higher fuel prices. I must press him to see whether he cannot do what he himself urged the Labour Government to do—that is, to make a fuel supplement available this winter.
    Sir K. Joseph: That is a different question. The supplementary benefit went up last week, and in real terms the pension is still better than the pension it replaced from 1968.
    Mr. Ridsdale: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is very real despair amongst the pensioners? Much as we welcome the increase in supplementary benefits, will my right hon. Friend make a statement soon about the position of pensioners, particularly as a single pensioner is 5s. 6d. a week worse off than in November, 1969, and a married pensioner is 8s. 10d. a week worse off?
    Sir K. Joseph: I cannot accept my hon. Friend's figures, though I accept entirely his sincerity. I can give the House no hope of any acceleration of the pledge to review pensions every two years.
    Mr. Blakerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what study he has made of the effects of inflation on the standards of living of retirement pensioners.
    Sir K. Joseph: Movements of prices are closely watched and, as my hon. Friend knows, we are pledged to review pensions every two years to ensure that they at least keep pace with the cost of living.
    Mr. Blaker: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some trade union leaders have recently stated that they propose a campaign for the raising of the standards of living of retirement pensioners? Would not the best way for them to do this be to

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    moderate the excessive wage claims which have accounted so much for rising prices?
    Sir K. Joseph: It certainly would.
    Mr. Wellbeloved: Will the Secretary of State meet the representatives of the National Federation of Old Age Pensioners who are lobbying the House this afternoon and explain the mean, niggardly attitude of his Government towards an increase of pensions?
    Sir K. Joseph: I hesitate only because I have met one representative body of pensioners and I am due to meet another. I am not sure whether the body to which the hon. Gentleman refers is the one I have met or the one I am about to meet.
    Mr. William Priceasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will now announce an increase in retirement pensions.
    Mr. Spearingasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement on the basic retirement pension, in view of the cost of living.
    Sir K. Joseph: We are pledged to review pension rates every two years.
    Mr. Price: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that whoever is responsible for inflation and whatever its causes, many old people will be suffering grievous hardship this winter? Could he tell us what is sacred about a two-yearly review?
    Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman would agree that a rise in pensions is necessarily accompanied by a rise either in contributions or taxation and that that is a factor to be considered. The supplementary benefit scales for the poorest and the elderly were increased last week.
    Mr. Spearing: The right hon. Gentleman has made several references to a two-yearly review. Is he prepared to put this into statutory form rather than leaving it as a manifesto pledge?
    Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman must wait to see our proposals on National Insurance.
    Mr. Farrasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will introduce a scheme to make it possible for retirement pensioners to have their pensions
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    paid monthly or quarterly, on request, direct into a bank account.
    Mr. Dean: Arrangements already exist under which, on request, retirement pensions can be paid quarterly in arrear by crossed payable orders negotiable through banks. We hope to be able to offer the alternative of payment at four-weekly intervals by this method in the course of the next year or so.
    Retirement pensions are subject to certain continuing conditions and before each payment is made pensioners have to sign a receipt confirming that these conditions are satisfied. This precludes payment of the pension direct into their bank accounts.

    Vehicles for the Disabled
    Mr. Martenasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if, in view of his recent studies of the problems of the disabled, he will now make a further statement on three-and four-wheeled vehicles for the disabled.
    Mr. Alison: I have nothing to add at present of the replies I gave to the hon. Members for Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie) and for Birmingham, Lady-wood (Mrs. Fisher) on 2nd and 9th November.—[Vol. 805, c. 272; Vol. 806, c. 39.]
    Mr. Marten: My hon. Friend will realise that I find that a disappointing answer. Will he assure the House, nevertheless, that he still has under examination the whole question of giving better transportation to disabled drivers and, in particular, making the new three-wheeler a two-seater?
    Mr. Alison: My right hon. Friend is pushing ahead with the review of the invalid vehicle service—not without reference to the impetus imparted by my hon. Friend—and an announcement will be made as soon as possible.
    Mr. Alfred Morris: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that it is the view not only of hon. Members on both sides of the House but of motor manufacturers that one could have a four-wheeler at the same cost as a three-wheeler? Is he aware that the present three-wheeler very much disrupts the family life of disabled people, and will he institute an urgent inquiry into this matter and publish his findings?
    Mr. Alison: These factors are being taken into consideration. The hon. Gentleman will note that unit costs, although they may be comparable, are not necessarily the same as total cost.

    Family Allowances
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will now make a statement about his proposals for improvements in family allowances.
    Mr. Barnesasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what plans he now has to increase family allowances.
    Sir K. Joseph: Our immediate proposals for helping poor families with children are contained in the Family Income Supplements Bill, which the House is to debate this afternoon.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Will my right hon. Friend at least assure us that the use of the family allowance instrument as a means of helping families with young children is not excluded from his thinking as his social policy develops?
    Sir K. Joseph: I can give my right hon. Friend that assurance. I hope to explain this afternoon why we chose a family income supplement for the first step.
    Mr. Barnes: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept the reasons given by the Chancellor for not introducing increased family allowances with claw-back? Does not he agree that that could perfectly well have been done if the Chancellor had been prepared to give a higher priority to raising the threshold at which people start to pay income tax, rather than taking 6d. off?
    Sir K. Joseph: Yes, Sir—that is technically possible. I shall try to develop the arguments about this subject later this afternoon.

    Old Persons' and Widows' Pensions
    Mr. Kaufmanasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many pensions are being paid to men aged 87 years and over, and to women aged 82 years and over, under the National Insurance (Old Persons' and Widows' Pensions and Attendance Allowance) Act, 1970; and how many of these are receiving the full pension of £3 for a single person and £4 17s. for a married couple.
    Mr. Dean: Up to and including 9th November, over 101,000 awards under Section 1 of the Act had been made. Of these about 550 are at less than the full rate and about 38,000 involved adjustments to supplementary pensions. Claims are still being received.
    Mr. Kaufman: What is the saving to the Government in payments on supplementary benefit as a result of the introduction of this scheme?
    Mr. Dean: As I mentioned, in 38,000 cases some adjustments have been made, but that means that in over 62,000 cases the full rates of benefit are being paid. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and the House would wish to pay tribute to the staff of the Department and those who have helped us identify these claimants for the very speedy operation which has been carried out.

    Married Women (Repayment of Contributions)
    Mr. Kaufmanasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will amend the National Insurance (Contributions) Regulations, 1969, (S.I. No. 1696) so as to provide for the repayment of contributions to married women who, having made insufficient contributions, fail to qualify for retirement pension under the half-test condition; and if he will make this repayment retrospective in any cases which may be drawn to his attention.
    Mr. Dean: I do not think it is necessary to amend the regulations, but I am writing to the hon. Member about the particular case which he brought to my notice.
    Mr. Kaufman: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that in considering the case he will be kind enough to take into account the fact that a constitutent of mine has paid more than 500 contributions but does not qualify for retirement benefit in her own right and has no right to the return of her contributions.
    Mr. Dean: I think that the hon. Gentlemena will be pleased with the letter which he will receive from me shortly.

    Blackpool and Fylde Hospitals
    Mr. Blakerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what steps he is

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    taking to improve the provision of hospital beds and associated facilities in the area of the Blackpool and Fylde Group of hospitals.
    Mr. Alison: Capital improvement schemes costing over £450,000 are in progress at hospitals in the Group. Construction of a 120-bedded maternity unit and additional nurses' residences at the Victoria Hospital is planned to start next year. Further schemes for improvement to the Victoria Hospital and Wesham Park Hospitals are intended.
    Mr. Blaker: While those plans are very welcome, is my hon. Friend aware that the area contains a high proportion of very old people who have retired there and therefore cannot rely on help from their families, and that this imposes an unusally heavy demand for hospital services? Do his Department's plans take that factor into account?
    Mr. Alison: I note my hon. Friend's point. I understand that current plans for the next few years include capital improvements to geriatric services.

    London Teaching Hospitals (Resident Doctors' Quarters)
    Mr. Pavittasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what was the total number of resident doctors' quarters in the 26 London teaching hospitals and the numbers of these allocated to married accommodation.
    Mr. Alison: A total of 1,229, of which 184 are allocated as married accommodation.
    Mr. Pavitt: Is not that a ridiculously low proportion? Will the hon. Gentleman look again at the plight of the junior hospital doctors, who seem to be plagued by an antiquated Victorian attitude that they are not entitled to marry?
    Mr. Alison: Good married accommodation is being provided in new hospitals, and my Department has made every effort to advise and encourage hospitals to provide such accommodation in existing or adaptable premises.
    Dr. Summerskill: Does the Minister agree that one important factor in stemming the continued emigration of doctors is to offer them married accommodation so that they are not deterred from taking up resident hospital posts in this country?
    Mr. Alison: I note the hon. Lady's point, and repeat that we are specifically making provision for good married accommodation in new hospitals.

    Guardian's Allowance
    Mr. Roy Hughesasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will seek powers to amend the regulations to ensure that guardian's allowance is paid in respect of children immediately one parent is sentenced to life imprisonment, irrespective of the right of appeal, and where the other parent is already deceased.
    Mr. Dean: This matter is being considered as part of a wider examination of the provisions under which guardian's allowance can be paid for such children.
    Mr. Hughes: Does the Minister agree that the welfare of innocent children should be the first consideration in such matters, and that therefore the allowance should be paid immediately sentence is passed, particularly bearing in mind that so few of the appeals succeed?
    Mr. Dean: I fully understand the hon. Gentleman's point. This is one of the features to which he has drawn attention which is being considered.

    Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield
    Mr. Pardoeasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) what improvements have been made in the training of people likely to use anaesthetic machines as a result of a recent incident at Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield;
    (2) if he will publish the further advice and warning which has been given to all those likely to operate anaesthetic machines in hospital as a result of an incident at Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield.
    Sir K. Joseph: While nothing can totally eliminate all risk of human error, we have taken the tragedy at Enfield very seriously; special attention has been drawn to the existing advice on the use of anaesthetic equipment, and further advice will shortly be issued to hospitals.
    Mr. Pardoe: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there have been too many similar incidents over the past few years? Is he also aware that there have been repeated warnings to his Department on

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    the use of those machines? Will he publish the instructions so that the public can see that they are being obeyed?
    Sir K. Joseph: In this case there was a faulty connection, which would not have been possible if modern equipment subject to British Standards had been used. We are trying to replace the old equipment as rapidly as possible. I take note of the hon. Gentleman's point.

    National Insurance (Government Proposals)
    Sir B. Rhys Williamsasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish a White Paper setting out his proposals for the future of National Insurance.
    Sir K. Joseph: I will announce my proposals in due course.
    Sir B. Rhys Williams: Since we understand that my right hon. Friend is to put National Insurance contributions on an earnings-related basis, and that they will be collected through the mechanism of Pay-As-You-Earn, can he assure the House that he is giving his full mind to the enormous advantages of a complete amalgamation of National Insurance with income tax?
    Sir K. Joseph: Very deep issues are involved, but I will bear in mind my hon. Friend's suggestion.
    Mr. Lawson: If the right hon. Gentleman puts contributions on an earnings-related basis, will he also ensure that he puts benefits on an earnings-related basis, too?
    Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman and the House had better wait for the proposals to be announced.

    Supplementary Benefits
    Sir B. Rhys Williamsasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what steps he will take to reduce the number of people dependent upon supplementary benefits.
    Sir K. Joseph: I must ask my hon. Friend to await publication of my proposals for the reconstruction of National Insurance.
    Sir B. Rhys Williams: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is appalling that
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    more than four million people should be dependent on such supplementary benefits? Will he undertake to take urgent measures to reduce that number?
    Sir K. Joseph: Yes, Sir. It would be rather more appalling if we were to have a lower standard of supplementary benefit and therefore reduce the number of people on it. The number on it to some extent reflects the level which the country regards as the tolerable minimum. Certainly, by raising the other resources of the elderly the Government desire to reduce the number on supplementary benefits.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the effects of the decision not to do anything about inflation between now and the next up-rating of old age pensions will mean in practice that a larger number of people will be dependent on supplementary benefits, unless the Government are prepared to intervene in the price increases?
    Sir K. Joseph: We shall certainly try to abate the pace of inflation which we have inherited. It is some comfort in this situation that the Supplementary Benefits Commission exists to help people in need.
    Mr. David Steelasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will introduce an isolation allowance in computing supplementary benefit for those who live in very isolated parts of the country.
    Mr. Dean: No, Sir.
    Mr. Steel: Would the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a real, though admittedly minority, problem here, and that if people feel that they they cannot maintain themselves in isolated parts of the country they are likely to move into the towns and be an even greater charge on the taxpayer and ratepayer combined? Is he aware that very real hardship is caused to those whose cost of living is substantial because they live well away from areas of communication?
    Mr. Dean: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it would be difficult to define the cases, but I can assure him that additional benefit can be granted in individual cases where there are exceptional needs.

    Food Prices
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what steps he intends to take to protect those on low incomes from the effect of increased food prices consequent on the proposed change of method of financial support for the agricultural industry.
    Sir K. Joseph: Social Security benefits are due to be reviewed next year.
    Mr. Hamilton: Does not the right hon. Gentleman accept that the patterns of personal expenditure of people on low incomes, particularly old-age pensioners, are very different from those of other people, and that therefore they will suffer more than proportionately as a result of the Government's new food policies? Will he give an undertaking that all the measures the Government have introduced so far, allegedly to reduce poverty, will not be used as an excuse for not protecting people on low incomes from the wicked policy on which the Government are now embarking?
    Sir K. Joseph: The Government's food policy is unlikely to have as much effect on food prices as the Labour Party's performance on prices generally, including food, during its period of office. I have made inquiries into the relativities of the pensioners' index and the general retail price index and I find that they are marching almost identically together.

    Hospitals (Economic Construction)
    Mr. John Hallasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will undertake research on the economic construction of hospitals designed for a limited life span and capable of being adapted or rebuilt at no great cost to accommodate future technological developments.
    Sir K. Joseph: Designs are being developed to enable hospital activities of all kinds to be accommodated in building units of the same basic structure so that the units may be used for different purposes during the life of a hospital. This requires permanent structures. I am also considering extensions of the present uses of short-life building where this is appropriate.

    Domiciliary and Local Health Centre Facilities
    Mr. John Hallasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what plans he has to increase domiciliary and local health centre facilities in order to reduce the demand being placed on hospital beds and services.
    Dr. Summerskillasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what plans he now has for the establishment of more health centres; and whether he will make a statement.
    Sir K. Joseph: No loan sanction for a sensible health centre will be refused and I am considering other steps to encourage local authorities to provide more centres and community services.
    Mr. Hall: Will my right hon. Friend pursue his efforts to encourage local authorities in this respect, because there is no doubt, in view of the shortage of nurses in particular, that anything done to relieve the pressures on hospitals must be to the benefit of the community as a whole.
    Sir K. Joseph: Yes, Sir.
    Dr. Summerskill: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the future of the health centre is the future of general practice? We welcome his reply. Will he maintain the welcome increase in the number of health centres from 30 to 159 which has taken place since 1964?
    Sir K. Joseph: Yes, Sir. I welcome the changing trend, the changing acceptability of the health centres, that has occurred in the past few years, and I shall do my best to maintain the pace.
    Mr. Pavitt: When will the right hon. Gentleman publish his review of the hospital building programme, in view of the need completely to recast it to take account of the points made by his hon. Friend, apart from the effect of the district general hospital?
    Sir K. Joseph: I hope to make a statement shortly.

    Industrial Disputes (Supplementary Benefits)
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Social Services

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    what was the total cost to public funds of supplementary benefits for the families of persons involved in industrial disputes, and of administrative arrangements related thereto, in the first 10 months of 1970, 1965, 1960, 1955 and 1950, respectively.
    Mr. Dean: As the reply contains a table of figures I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Would my hon. Friend not agree that at the present rate of progress the amount of strike subsidy next year will be running at about £1½ million? Has not the time arrived to suggest to the unions that they finance their own strikes, instead of expecting the taxpayer to do it for them?
    Mr. Dean: My right hon. Friend is looking at all the problems involved here and I must ask my hon. Friend to await his consideration of them.
    Mr. O'Malley: Since it has been the policy of successive Governments not to attempt to get at strikers by starving their families and denying them benefits, would the hon. Gentleman confirm that, in this respect at least, the neutrality of the State will remain as it has remained?
    Mr. Dean: There is no question of getting at strikers, I can assure the hon. Gentleman and the House. But we have to take into account the figures, in view of the very bad strike record under the previous Administration.
    Mr. Heffer: Would the hon. Gentleman not agree that the answer to the strike problem is not to get involved in taking away assistance from the families of the strikers but to improve the existing conciliation machinery in the various industries? Is he aware that the Government are starting from the wrong end?
    Mr. Dean: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman appreciates that that is not a question for me.
    Following is the table:
    National assistance and supplementary benefit payments to families of persons involved in industrial disputes.

    Year

    £

    1950

    9,000

    Estimated

    1955

    120,000

    1960

    65,000

    1965

    62,000

    1970

    867,000

    (to September)

    Psychiatric Research
    Mr. Mayhewasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what alteration in expenditure he proposes on psychiatric research during the current year.
    Sir K. Joseph: My Department's estimated expenditure in 1970–71 on research in mental illness is £96,000 and in mental handicap £110,000. The figures in 1969–70 were £72,000 and £43,000.
    Mr. Mayhew: Now that a decision has been taken to help the mental hospitals, on which the right hon. Gentleman should be warmly congratulated, will he turn his attention to the proportion of our total research resources which is devoted to mental health? Would he not agree, in view of the urgency and scale of the need and of the opportunities in this area, that this proportion is ridiculously low?
    Sir K. Joseph: It is only sensible to spend money on research when there is an effective object in mind. The hon. Gentleman will realise that the M.R.C. as well as my Department is involved in providing research.

    Health Education
    Mr. Mayhewasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what expenditure he proposes on health education in the current year; and what proportion of this will relate to mental health education.
    Sir K. Joseph: Local authority expenditure is not collated centrally. The Health Education Council will spend about £456,000 in 1970–71, of which no part has been reserved specifically for mental health.
    Mr. Mayhew: While paying tribute to the work of the Health Education Council, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to bear in mind that probably at least 20 or 30 times more is spent on education about physical health than on education about mental health, which is almost wholly done by some admirable voluntary associations? Will he assure the House that he will give his support to those associations?
    Sir K. Joseph: I do not underestimate the importance of public education, but mental health does not lend itself to

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    quite the same facility for mass communication as do some of the other health subjects.
    Sir D. Renton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that if more education were given to the parents of mentally handicapped children dealing with how to care for their children, less money might need to be spent within the National Health Service and the hospital service on caring for such children?
    Sir K. Joseph: I agree with that proposition wholeheartedly, on grounds of both humanity and effectiveness.

    Abortion
    Mr. Croninasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will institute a formal inquiry into the working of the Abortion Act, taking into consideration, amongst other relevant matters, the rights of an unborn child.
    Sir G. Nabarroasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will now introduce legislation to amend the law relating to abortion.
    Mr. Willeyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will now set up a Committee of Inquiry to report on the working of the Abortion Act.
    Sir K. Joseph: I hope to make a statement on this subject shortly.
    Mr. Cronin: When the right hon. Gentleman is considering his statement, will he bear in mind that there is widespread public disquiet at the extensive loss of human life that takes place, even though there may well be good medical and sociological reasons for the termination of pregnancy?
    Sir K. Joseph: I have come to realise that there are strong elements of disquiet on all sides of this question.
    Mr. Deedes: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind before he makes his announcement that some of the difficulties to which this Act is subject can bring no joy to those who supported or opposed the original Measure? Is he aware that it is not a question of which side one is on but a matter of whether the law is working satisfactorily?
    Sir K. Joseph: There is much in what my right hon. Friend says.
    Dr. Summerskill: Would the right hon. Gentleman, when he reports, refer to regional differences in the operation of the Act and also to his investigations into costs and conditions in abortion clinics?
    Sir K. Joseph: I will bear that point in mind.
    Mr. Biggs-Davison: Pending the statement, would my right hon. Friend give an assurance that he will do everything possible to see that nurses with conscientious objections to abortion are not put under pressure to make them assist?
    Sir K. Joseph: If my hon. Friend is aware of any such pressure I would be very grateful to be told of it because it is abhorrent to the Government, obviously.
    Mr. David Steel: Would the right hon. Gentleman consider, before making his statement, whether members appointed to such an inquiry will be widely representative of different views expressed both before and during the passage of the Act? Will he consider the differences in the availability of abortion under the National Health Service in different parts of the country and will he also consider the apparent demand for abortion caused by inadequate family planning facilities?
    Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman is jumping to premature conclusions, but I will note all that has been said.
    Mr. Ross: Will the statement which the Minister is to make cover the workings of the Act in Scotland or will the Secretary of State for Scotland be making a statement on it?
    Sir K. Joseph: The right hon. Gentleman will have to wait for a while.

    Cigarette Smoking
    Mr. Croninasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what his policy is with regard to the problem of cigarette addiction, in view of the fact that more than 50,000 people in England and Wales die annually as a result of it and the widespread and disabling ill health it causes.
    Sir G. Nabarroasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will introduce legislation to strengthen health warnings relating to cigarette smoking.
    Sir K. Joseph: I would refer the hon. Members to the reply given to the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) on 2nd November.—[Vol. 805, c. 270.]
    Mr. Cronin: Could the Minister take rather quicker and more effective action than his reply envisages? Is it not an extraordinary situation that the Secretary of State's Chief Medical Officer in his report protests against the lavish use of advertising for promoting cigarette making? Are not the Government to some extent conniving at what amounts to mass slaughter by the tobacco companies?
    Sir K. Joseph: I take the subject as seriously as does my Chief Medical Officer.
    Mr. Alfred Morris: May I press this matter of advertising? Will the right hon. Gentleman look again at his reply in view of the widespread concern that has been expressed, with a view to suggesting an entirely new code for arrangements in this sensitive area?
    Sir K. Joseph: I am considering this subject very seriously. I can assure the House on that.

    Immigration Authorities and Medical Officers of Health (Liaison)
    Mr. Molloyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what administrative arrangements are made for liaison between immigration authorities and Medical Officers of Health in areas of immigrants' destinations.
    Mr. Alison: The destination addresses of immigrants arriving at ports and airports in the United Kingdom for permanent settlement are sent by Medical Inspectors to the Medical Officers of Health of the areas to which they are going so that visits can be arranged.
    Mr. Molloy: May I thank the hon. Gentleman for that reply? Does he recall the incident in Perivale, in my constituency, which caused some concern when a young child arrived in this country and within 24 hours was going to school when he had typhoid fever? Does he realise that but for the remarkable way in which the Medical Officer of Health and his staff in the London
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    Borough of Ealing dealt with this, there might have been a very serious situation? Has anything been learned from that incident which might be of benefit to the country as a whole?
    Mr. Alison: I am grateful to the hon. Member for the immediate action he took in bringing this detailed case to our notice. He will recall the Answer I gave him in detail about this case in my letter to him on 31st July. We have learned a number of lessons from this, but wholesale holding back from school we believe would be too Draconian a measure to obviate this hazard.

    National Health Service Administration
    Dr. Summerskillasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will undertake a reorganisation of the National Health Service on the lines of the 1970 Green Paper.
    Mr. Orbachasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he will make a statement on his Department's time-table with regard to the reorganisation of the National Health Service, either in accordance with, or in modification of, the Green Paper.
    Sir K. Joseph: I would refer hon. Members to my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading (Dr. Vaughan) on 5th November in which I said that the Government intend to unify the administration of the National Health Service.—[Vol. 805, c. 437–9.]
    Dr. Summerskill: Would the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the present system of making appointments to hospital management committees and regional hospital boards is undemocratic and self-perpetuating? Will he bear in mind that the Green Paper proposes a scheme for replacing the present system and that such a change is long overdue?
    Sir K. Joseph: The details of how to carry out the recommendations are now being urgently studied.
    Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Will my right hon. Friend in examining this do his best to remedy the blatant political imbalance caused over the past six years in appointments to hospital boards?
    Sir K. Joseph: I will certainly be looking at the quality of management. That will be my main criterion.

    Renal Dialysis Units
    Mr. Pavittasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will now consider giving a special increment to nurses working in renal dialysis units in respect of the danger they incur from infective hepatitis and the specialist training needed for this work.
    Mr. Alison: I am aware of the hazards present in the treatment of chronic renal failure and it is for this reason that an expert group under Lord Rosenheim has been set up to consider the medical problems involved. Nurses' pay is a matter for the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council.
    Mr. Pavitt: Is it not wrong that a nurse who is nursing in venereal diseases gets an extra £50 a year when she is in no danger at all, yet nurses dealing with kidney machines may well die? Will the hon. Gentleman do two things? First, will he make sure that these nurses get a danger money increment and, secondly, will he look at the whole situation of what happens when a nurse who has probably got a form of dermatitis is infected and as a result is off sick for some time, suffering financial hardship?
    Mr. Alison: I note what the hon. Gentleman said. I must repeat that the specific details that he brings to our attention must be left to the relevant Whitley Council.

    St. Goss Hospital, Rugby
    Mr. William Priceasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he has reached a decision on the future development of St. Goss Hospital, Rugby.
    Mr. Alison: No, Sir.
    Mr. Price: In view of that Answer, would the Minister pay a Ministerial visit to my constituency? Is he aware that we have waited many years for this improvement, which is now desperately needed? How much longer are we supposed to wait?
    Mr. Alison: The answer to the first part of the question is "with great pleasure", and to the second part I can say that action is imminent.

    Council Workers' Strike (Supplementary Benefits)
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what has been the total cost to date to public funds of supplementary benefits paid to the families of men involved in the council workers' strike, and of administrative arrangements necessitated by such payments.
    Sir K. Joseph: Supplementary benefit payments to the families of local authority manual workers engaged in the dispute totalled approximately £75,000 up to 3rd November. I regret that administrative costs cannot be calculated.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: That is a formidable sum. Does my right hon. Friend recall the Chancellor's appeal to the public to stand up to blackmail from inflationary wage demands? Would he not agree that one does not need to have the vested interests in inflation of a Jack Scamp—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—to feel that it is difficult to stand up to blackmail when one is being required to subsidise that blackmail?
    Sir K. Joseph: My hon. Friend has already been told this afternoon that the Government are considering all the interrelated problems involved in this subject.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Could the right hon. Gentleman suggest to his hon. Friend that he should not make allegations of that kind in the Chamber against a well-known public servant? Would he also consider very carefully the fact that taxation has been paid by those involved for supplementary benefit and that they therefore have an entitlement to it?
    Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Lady must recognise that there are large areas of public disquiet in this whole subject.
    Mr. Rose: In view of the vindication of the council workers' claim, would it not be more appropriate for the hon. Gentleman to ask what amount of money was spent on engaging private contractors during this period? Would the right hon. Gentleman affirm that the Government do not intend to punish the families of those involved in trade disputes and so attach a stigma to a dispute which may have arisen for a variety of causes?
    Sir K. Joseph: We are studying the whole of this subject. It is certainly no part of the Government's policy to cause any risk at all to children.

    Nurses
    Mr. Boydenasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what new measures he is proposing to recruit more nurses to the hospital service.
    Sir K. Joseph: Recruitment is primarily a matter for individual hospital authorities. I have no new measures to announce at present in support of their activities.
    Mr. Boyden: That is a very complacent Answer. In view of the consider able progress made under the Labour Administration in recruiting nurses and improving their conditions, will the Secretary of State give special attention to geographical areas where it is difficult to recruit the full complement and to medical fields like mental nursing for which it is also difficult to recruit?
    Sir K. Joseph: Yes, Sir.
    Dr. Summerskill: Would the right hon. Gentleman act on the report of Professor Briggs' Committee as soon as it is available because there is strong feeling among nurses and potential nurses about education, training and conditions of work which must be affecting recruitment?
    Sir K. Joseph: I wish that the Committee had been set up earlier. It will be some time before the report is available, and I cannot commit the Government in advance.

    Hostel Accommodation
    Mr. W. T. Williamsasked the Secretary of State for Social Services in view of the need for hostel accommodation for girls and young women in London, if he will take steps to provide financial assistance for existing hostels in order to prevent their closure.
    Mr. Dean: If the hon. Member is referring to the powers given by Schedule 4 of the Ministry of Social Security Act, 1966, this enables grants to be made only to hostels providing temporary accommodation for persons without a settled way of living.
    Mr. Williams: The hon. Gentleman will know that my Question refers to homeless young women who come to London and therefore are very vulnerable. Even if it meant enlarging the scope of Schedule 4 of the Ministry of Social Security Act, would it not be better to do that so that adequate grants might be made to support young people before they get into trouble rather than incur the expense of dealing with them, both inside and outside prison, after they have got into trouble?
    Mr. Dean: I assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that individual applitions are considered, and will be considered, on their merits.

    Health Services (Expenditure)
    Mr. Hugh Jenkinsasked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether in view of the fact that expenditure on health services in this country is a lower proportion of national income than in other advanced countries, and the rate of increase is slower he will propose substantial increases.
    Sir K. Joseph: International comparisons of this sort are not reliable guides. The Government have already announced an additional £110 million over the next four years.
    Mr. Jenkins: The Government always use international comparisons when they redound to their advantage. Will they occasionally use them when they go against them? When the right hon. Gentleman introduces his new scheme, will he make sure that it does not include any element of necessity to disclose means to secure benefits? Many people object in principle to this. Will the right hon. Gentleman assure us that none of the benefits will involve disclosure of means to obtain them?
    Sir K. Joseph: Our health charges and the remissions from them will be based on exactly the same principles as those in use under the last Government.

    Wellingborough (Community Hospital)
    Mr. Fryasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if the will consider Wellingborough as the site of one of the pilot schemes for a community hospital.
    Mr. Alison: Research continues. I cannot yet say which hospitals will be in pilot schemes.
    Mr. Fry: Does my hon. Friend appreciate that my constituency is rapidly growing and that the hospital services are being reduced rather than increased? Therefore, will he consider my constituency's case with great favour in the immediate future?
    Mr. Alison: I note my hon. Friend's point and that the Oxford Regional Hospital Board is a pioneer in community hospitals.

    Hospital Building
    Mr. Boydenasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what alterations he is making in the hospital building programme.
    Sir K. Joseph: I have nothing at present to add to the Answer I gave to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) on 4th November.—[Vol. 805, c. 403–4.]
    Mr. Boyden: Surely the Secretary of State can give more details about the nature of the expansion of the hospital service. Surely he can say whether he will improve casualty services and services of that description.
    Sir K. Joseph: I hope to make a statement shortly.

    Southern Leicestershire
    Mr. Farrasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will provide factilities for elderly inhabitants and others in the villages of southern Leicestershire, who are prevented by the absence of public transport from drawing their retirement pensions and receiving other social services.
    Mr. Dean: There are already facilities for pensioners who cannot easiy get to a post office to nominate someone else to collect their payment for them.
    Mr. Farr: Is my hon. Friend aware that in Leicestershire some people have to walk up to three miles to get their pensions? Will he arrange either for the pensions to be delivered by post or for a mobile post office service to be provided?
    Mr. Dean: We hope to improve the arrangements when the payments are fully computerised. However, if my hon. Friend would like to send me details of the particular point he has in mind, I will gladly look into it.

  UNITED NATIONS (PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT)
  Mr. McNamaraasked the Prime Minister when he next plans to visit the United Nations.
  The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): I have no plans at present for a further visit to the United Nations, Sir.
  Mr. McNamara: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I rather thought that that would be his Answer? There was one glaring omission from his last speech at the United Nations. When he was talking of the growth of political violence and legacies of past errors, he might have considered the past of other Conservative Administrations in selling arms to South Africa and decided not to go forward with selling arms to South Africa in future.
  The Prime Minister: That is irrelevant to the hon. Gentleman's Question about a future visit.

  GOVERNMENT PATRONAGE
  Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Prime Minister if he will recommend the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into governmental patronage.
  The Prime Minister: No, Sir.
  Mr. Hamilton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of, I presume, the inspired "leak" in this morning's Press that he is resume the giving of political honours and hereditary peerages? Is the appointment of Lord Cromer an example of his extending his patronage for services rendered? Would he help himself by appointing the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) as ambassador to South Africa?
  The Prime Minister: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will await my statement on honours after Question Time.

  CABINET COMMITTEES
  Mr. John Fraserasked the Prime Minister whether he will publish details of the number of Cabinet Committees which he has established.
  Mr. Sheldonasked the Prime Minister what Cabinet Committees are at present in operation.
  The Prime Minister: It has long been the practice not to disclose details of the arrangements within the Government for the discussion of public business.
  Mr. Fraser: The Department of Employment has said in Parliamentary Answers that increases in wages must be significantly lower in the next year. Therefore, will the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is a Cabinet Committee considering the level of wages, how significantly lower increases must be in the forthcoming year, and what means the Cabinet intends to employ to effect decreases in wage claims?
  The Prime Minister: As I said in my Answer, it has long been the practice not to disclose these details.
  Mr. Sheldon: Is the Prime Minister aware that, following his Answer, no Questions can be tabled asking for details of Cabinet Committees for the rest of this Parliament? That is the rule of the House. Does he not realise that the time has come when this absurd secrecy must go? If decisions are being made, we should know the names of the people making them.
  The Prime Minister: It has been the practice, not only in this Parliament but in many previous Parliaments, not to reveal these matters. I have not been able to find any occasion on which details of Cabinet Committees have been publicly revealed. Ministers are responsible for their own Departments and the decisions affecting them.
  Mr. Harold Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I could let him have one or two precedents? Nevertheless, I feel that it is right that this should be a decision for the Prime Minister of the day and that there should not be general disclosure, certainly of the personnel of Committees or, in some cases, of their existence. However, I think that
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  it would be right for the right hon. Gentleman to look at each case on its merits and that when he feels there is advantage in giving details, he should give them.
  The Prime Minister: I think that what the right hon. Gentleman is referring to is the fact that on previous occasions—and perhaps on future occasions—there have been unofficial disclosures of the Cabinet Committee structure.

  FOOD PRICES
  Mr. John Fraserasked the Prime Minister how many letters he has received on the subject of food prices.
  The Prime Minister: About 350 Sir.
  Mr. Fraser: When dealing with the letters, how does the right hon. Gentleman square his statement that he will act directly to reduce prices with the proposed increase in the price of bread? Does he tell the writers of the letters that he has removed all control, does he explain that he is putting levies on imported wheat, or, like Marie Antoinette and the Minister of Agriculture, does he recommend them to a competing product?
  The Prime Minister: Information of that sort is not requested. Most of the letter writers realise that the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson) and his colleagues were responsible for putting the country in its present position and that the Opposition failed to deal with the matter and are now busy supporting any inflationary wage claim they can find to make it worse.
  Mr. Arthur Davidson: Will the Prime Minister explain why he has wound up a body which greatly helped the housewife, namely, the Consumer Council? Is he aware that in the "Conservative Campaign Guide", which is admittedly a document I seldom read, tribute was paid to the work of the Consumer Council? Why has he gone back on the praise which he lavished on it during the election campaign?
  The Prime Minister: There are a number of other organisations which provide this information for the housewife and for all shoppers, and the information is widely distributed in the Press. This is an admirable service, and if the

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  Government can economise in money it should do so.
  Mr. Buchan: Why does the right hon. Gentleman insist on the hypocrisy that he is concerned with keeping down food prices when he has appointed as Minister of Agriculture a man who thinks that the nation has been mollycoddled by cheap food and acts, as a matter of policy, to raise food prices? Why cannot he come to the House and say that this is his policy?
  The Prime Minister: Because, as my right hon. Friend has explained, he wishes, and the Government wish, to give British farmers the opportunity to expand food production and save on imports. This was the declared policy of the last Administration which they never had the courage to carry out.

  MINING AREAS, SCOTLAND
  Mr. Eadieasked the Prime Minister if he will make an official tour of mining areas in Scotland.
  The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so, Sir.
  Mr. Eadie: If the Prime Minister should change his mind, bearing in mind that at one time he was concerned about prices, is he aware that the miners would probably tell him that it costs more to distribute coal than to produce it? Does he not think it ridiculous that the process of selling coal should be more expensive than that of producing it? When will he face the situation and give miners and consumers a fairer deal?
  The Prime Minister: The distribution costs of coal are naturally particularly heavy when the coal comes from Scotland because of the distances which are often involved. That can be avoided only if one is prepared to embark on a large programme of subsidies for transport as well. Subsidies have proved not to be the saving grace but the undoing of this country.
  Mr. Michael Foot: If the Prime Minister is not prepared to visit the Scottish coalfields, or the Welsh coalfields, to find out the situation for himself, will he ask his colleagues to report to him on how the "package" introduced by
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  the Chancellor of the Exchequer has contributed to the sense of anger and frustration throughout the coalfields? Will he tell us what he will do to meet this situation, which arises partly from the direct action of his Government?
  The Prime Minister: At no time have I said that I was not prepared to go to the Scottish coalfields or the Welsh coalfields. What I said in my Answer to the hon. Gentleman was that at the moment I am not planning to do so. In reply to the second part of the supplementary question, would not the hon. Gentleman be much better engaged in urging those on unofficial strike while the ballot is being taken to go back to work in the meantime?
  Mr. Orme: Would not the right hon. Gentleman be better engaged in urging the Department of Employment not to stand back, but to play its rightful rôle and use the conciliation machinery so that the miners can negotiate and receive the increase to which they are entitled?
  The Prime Minister: At the point at which a ballot is being taken of the membership of the union and the leaders of the union have recommended their members to accept the award, it is right for the Department of Employment not to take any action but to wait for the result of the ballot. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would join his colleagues in urging those on strike to get back to work while the ballot is being completed.

  NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE
  Mr. Ashleyasked the Prime Minister if he will pay an official visit to North Staffordshire.
  The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so, Sir.
  Mr. Ashley: Will the Prime Minister consider making a visit to North Staffordshire where, although the unemployment rate is not particularly high, special problems are caused by the area's dependence on coal mining and the potteries, both of which are in process of being rapidly mechanised. In view of the local anxiety about future employment prospects, will the Prime Minister consider reassessing

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  the issue of industrial development certificates to encourage the attraction of modern industry to North Staffordshire?
  The Prime Minister: Yes, I would enjoy going to North Staffordshire. As I emphasised to the House last week, I believe in operating the i.d.c. policy flexibly, and it is desirable to do this.
  Mr. Jennings: If the Prime Minister were to visit Staffordshire, would he consider visiting Burton-on-Trent, which is also in Staffordshire, where he would be given a right royal welcome? This would enable me to show him the condition of the River Trent in this Conservation Year and to ask him to help us to clean the river.
  The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for this suggestion. He might have added at the end that, after a great deal of hard work at Stoke-on-Trent and Burton, he would be willing to refresh me with some of the products of his area.

  ECONOMIC DECISIONS (MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY)
  Mr. Barnettasked the Prime Minister if he will appoint a Minister to be responsible for all economic decisions of his Government.
  The Prime Minister: No, Sir.
  Mr. Barnett: Without some new Ministers or policies, how will the Prime Minister deal with the problem of inflation? He has ruled out, for example, dealing with it through increasing growth, devaluation and intervention by himself in a prices and incomes policy. What does he propose to do? Will he confirm that the only policy left, and the one which he will pursue, is a further monetary squeeze and raising unemployment to a level which is contrary to everything he said before and during the election?
  The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is far too intelligent a man to ask a question of that kind.
  Mr. Roy Jenkins: Will the Prime Minister tell us whether the reaction of the gilt-edged market and the Stock Ex-
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  change to the package of a fortnight ago, and today, apparently as a reaction to his broadcast last night, the foreign exchange market, has or has not been in accordance with the Government's plans?
  The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman would be better occupied in looking at the longer-term position and the measures being taken to deal with the longer term, which he so signally failed to take, and not in carrying his instant politics into instant economics.
  Mr. Roy Jenkins: Will the right hon. Gentleman, as I hope he will, deal with both the long term and the short term, not just one or the other, and consider answering the question?
  Hon. Members: Answer.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Jeremy Thorpe.
  Mr. Molloy: Further to the point of order which you raised, Mr. Speaker—
  Mr. Speaker: I have raised no point of order.
  Mr. Molloy: Are you aware, Sir, that the indignation from the Opposition benches is because the Prime Minister continues to find amusing questions on old-age pensions and unemployment? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Indignation will continue from these benches until he is removed.
  Mr. Speaker: I am aware of indignation and irritation on both sides of the House from time to time. Neither do any good.
  Mr. Thorpe: I must confess that I have never before been regarded as a point of order. Since the Prime Minister has overall responsibility, as Prime Minister, for economic problems, is he aware that the whole House would very much welcome a speech from him on economic questions? Is he aware that if he made a good speech—an experience for once for which we should be grateful—he might even have a good hearing?
  The Prime Minister: I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's invitation to address the House, and I shall certainly accept that invitation when I think it appropriate.

POLITICAL HONOURS
The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about political honours.
It is my view that the services of those who work for political parties, thus contributing towards the functioning of our democratic system, should not be excluded from recognition by the Sovereign. Nor, if there are to be honours for political and public services, do I consider that they should be confined only to members of the party in power.
I have therefore made a recommendation to the Queen, which Her Majesty has approved, that the forthcoming New Year Honours List, and future lists should include a number of awards for political and public services to members of political parties.
I have also invited the right hon. Gentlemen the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberal Party to agree in principle to make recommendations for such honours, which I can then submit for the Queen's approval together with my own recommendations.
All recommendations for honours for political and public services will be considered by the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee before they are submitted to the Queen.
Mr. Harold Wilson: The right hon. Gentleman will be aware from the contacts that we have had that I feel, as he clearly does, that such a decision must be a decision for the Prime Minister of the day. Having said that, he will know equally that I very much regret the decision he has announced this afternoon reversing, as it did, a decision that I took in 1966 to end these honours and for good reasons which were explained to the House at the time.
With regard to recommendations for honours for Members of the House of Commons, is the Prime Minister aware that there will be some feeling that it can have some effect on the workings of the House and that we may want to debate this issue, a fact of which I have given him notice.
With regard to both those honours and party servants of different parties
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throughout the country, again the Prime Minister will know our views and will not be surprised to know that I reject his invitation to suggest names to him.
Finally, as the right hon. Gentleman will recall that when I ended this system of political recommendations for that particular citation I increased the number of local government honours, irrespective of political affiliations, to be chosen by an impartial method, about which the right hon. Gentleman will know, will he give an assurance that these will continue and that there will be no diminution in the number of honours recommended for local government service.
The Prime Minister: I respect the right of the right hon. Gentleman when he was Prime Minister to take the decision he did, and I think that he respects the one that I have just announced to the House.
I have never understood why those who give voluntary or paid service to political parties to enable and help our political system to function, as they undoubtedly do, should be the only group that are excluded from recognition by the Sovereign for the work which they do.
On the other hand, I myself felt—this is a decision for which I take responsibility, and it is a new decision—that, as our political system depends on all parties helping to make it function, it was right that, if there are to be political honours and honours for public service of this kind, the opportunity should be given to members and workers in all political parties.
As for local government, the same system will continue. There will be recognition of those who give their work in local government service. I cannot give an undertaking that exactly the same numbers will prevail. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the number in different categories in the list changes from time to time and there is a system for dealing with this. Broadly, that system will remain.
Mr. Harold Wilson: As the number was increased correspondingly with the reduction in political honours when political honours were abolished, will the Prime Minister give an assurance that, although there may be fluctuations of half a dozen or so from list to list, he

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will not cut down as a matter of practice the numbers given for local authority service just because he is inflating the list by restoring political honours?
The Prime Minister: I do not regard this as an inflation of the list. I regard this as including those who work for political parties as being just as eligible for consideration as other citizens.
As to the questions of numbers in local government, of course public service in local government should be recognised, and will be recognised, but I have always believed that it is not right to use this as a guise for recognising political work because such people take part in local government. Therefore, as to numbers, we shall have to balance this up, but there will be full recognition of local government service.
Mr. Tapsell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in addition to the announcement he has just made, which I believe will be widely welcomed, the London evening newspapers also report that he is recommending to the Queen that there should be no further creations of hereditary honours other than for members of the Royal Family? Before my right hon. Friend makes any such recommendation, will he bear in mind that, if he were to do so, it would seriously invalidate the position of all holders of hereditary titles in the House of Lords?
The Prime Minister: I have not made a general recommendation of that kind to Her Majesty. On the other hand, I do not accept the conclusion in my hon. Friend's remarks. I would not be proposing in fact to recommend hereditary honours in the normal course of events but, on the other hand, I do not absolutely exclude the possibility.
Mr. Thorpe: Is the Prime Minister aware that many of us who recognise the value of work, particularly outside the House of Commons, by people in all political parties as a means of keeping our democratic system alive, none the less supported the decision of the Labour Government to abolish political honours in 1966? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we did so because we felt that the system had been abused in that honours were bestowed only on the party which happened to be the Government of the day and we had
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reached the stage that 15 years of senility and docility in the House were almost automatically rewarded by a knighthood?
Is the Prime Minister, finally, aware that, if this is to be on the basis that it is a sparing exercise which transcends all political parties and is not to be on a hereditary basis, it would be wholly wrong to exclude from recognition those who make this contribution to our political life?
The Prime Minister: I think that the last part of the right hon. Gentleman's question is the important part. I have myself stated that I do not believe that it is right to exclude those citizens who take part in political work from the honours list. I hope that in that we are in agreement.
Mr. Costain: Can my right hon. Friend explain to the House what appears to be a difference between the view expressed by the Leader of the Opposition today and the views he expressed in the Dissolution Honours List.
The Prime Minister: I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has taken full responsibility for the recommendations in the Dissolution Honours List, because I as Prime Minister accepted the list exactly as it was and passed it on to the Queen as a recommendation for honours.
Mr. Michael Foot: Does the Prime Minister appreciate that the country will understand that, instead of dealing with awkward subjects like rising prices or strikes, the Prime Minister has now applied his mind as a former Tory Chief Whip to a subject he really understands; and, in view of the possibilities of prospective corruption on his side of the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—such as Tory Prime Ministers have exercised over the generations, will he give an undertaking to the House that before he proceeds with this action, which specifically affects the House of Commons, he will arrange for a debate on the subject so that Members can give their views?
The Prime Minister: As for a debate, if the Leader of the Opposition wishes to arrange that through the usual channels and use the facilities open to the Opposition no doubt he will choose to do so.
The country outside will note that the hon. Gentleman, having been thoroughly

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clobbered for his support of unofficial strikers, has now on this subject descended to the gutter in order to make unjustified accusations of corruption which he could not possibly substantiate for one moment, and he should withdraw.
Mr. Foot: If the right hon. Gentleman—
Hon. Members: Withdraw!
Mr. Foot: In order to—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have said already that indignation and irritation do not help.
Mr. Foot: To assist in substantiating the case that I have put, would the Prime Minister care to publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT the names of all the Conservative Members of Parliament who were given knighthoods during the period when he was the Tory Chief Whip?
The Prime Minister: They are all available in the London Gazette. The hon. Gentleman need not be disturbed. His own Leader has refused to put forward nominations, and I can assure him that he is in no danger of having a nomination from me.
Mr. Kilfedder: Leaving aside the anguish of the Opposition, may I ask the Prime Minister to consider ending recommendations for hereditary honours, and to accept that this would be one dramatic way of showing the people of this country that we must reshape Britain for the 1970s?
The Prime Minister: I have already told the House, in answer to a supplementary question, that I was not proposing, in the normal way, to make recommendations to Her Majesty about hereditary honours. But I also said that I did not absolutely exclude the possibility, which is exactly the position that was taken by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, for reasons which he knows full well and with which I agreed.
Mr. William Hamilton: Does not the Prime Minister think that it is a reflection on his Government's priorities that he should come to the House at 3.30 and make a special announcement on such an absurdly trifling irrelevance in the country's
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present difficulties? Whilst I appreciate the need for him to protect himself by extending patronage, may I ask him to give an undertaking that he will not give anybody on this side or anybody in our party outside the opportunity to grace themselves with these gongs, patronage, medals and things, and that if any on this side dare to accept they will be expelled from the party?
The Prime Minister: If the matter is so irrelevant, it is strange that the hon. Gentleman should have put down so many Questions on the matter.
Mr. Harold Wilson: The right hon. Gentleman just now, I think, called in aid a decision which he attributed to me relating to hereditary honours. I think that it is a little unusual to do that. Am I right in thinking that he was referring to a point raised earlier by one of his hon. Friends to make an exception in respect of members of the Royal Family? If that is to what the right hon. Gentleman was referring, all right. But if he has anything else in mind concerning hereditary honours, will he tell us?
The Prime Minister: I was referring to that, and it was a statement of fact.
Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: Will the Prime Minister tell us which party has kicked more hon. Members upstairs: the party on this side of the House or the party opposite?
Hon. Members: Answer.
The Prime Minister: I will gladly look up the figures for the two parties. The achievement of the right hon. Gentleman, when Prime Minister, was quite remarkable in the creation of peerages generally.
Mr. Harold Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this was done only when our numbers in the Lords were too low?—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, if he thinks that is very funny, that the first invitation to me to do this came from his right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, when he moved from another place into this House, who expressed his concern that there were not enough Labour peers there to keep the job of the House of Lords going and generously invited me to recommend six names to him for that purpose. The initiative came from the party opposite.
The Prime Minister: I recognise that—and no doubt it proved to be a continuing need.
Mr. Ross: Does the Prime Minister appreciate that there is danger in this reversion of bringing the whole honours system into disrepute? Does he recall that prior to 1964 we had reached the position of calling the Government side on the Scottish Grand Committee the "knight shift"?
The Prime Minister: That example of the right hon. Gentleman's particular sense of humour had not escaped me in the past. I do not accept that this will lead to abuse. I believe that politics, whether in this House or outside, is an honourable calling and ought not to be excluded from recognition by the Sovereign.

GENERAL DE GAULLE (TRIBUTES)
4.45 p.m.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): Mr. Speaker, the House will have heard with sadness of the news of the death of General de Gaulle. I know that I speak on behalf of all Members of this House in paying tribute to him and in offering our deep sympathy to Madame de Gaulle and all her family.
Over the centuries France has produced many great men, and Charles de Gaulle stands amongst the greatest of all of them. At times he seemed to personify France. Inevitably we think first of 1940, when so much around him seemed to lie in ruins. In that crumbling world his unconquerable determination to restore France to her proper position amongst the nations was one of the few sure and certain things, and we remember with pride and affection all those Frenchmen who then fought alongside us.
The same determination to re-establish the greatness of France marked his period of office as President of the Fifth Republic. Looking back on those years, we can recognise the magnitude of his achievement, even when we remember that his policies were sometimes in conflict with our own. He brought to the conduct of his office an unmistakably Gallic and, at the same time, individual style. Never was it more brilliantly dis-
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played than in that splendid address he gave during his State visit in 1960 to both Houses of Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall.
He was sustained by an austere faith; inspired by an unswerving patriotism; and guided by an uncompromising loyalty to the service of France.
Those of us who met him and talked to him will never forget his personal charm and the unfailing kindness and courtesy he showed to us.
Mr. Speaker, we in Parliament today pay tribute to a man who was a great statesman and a great Frenchman.
Mr. Harold Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I should like to associate my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself with the tribute paid by the right hon. Gentleman to the memory of General de Gaulle.
Over the past years there have been many occasions when members of successive Governments and other right hon. and hon. Members have felt it necessary to express their disagreement with some of his actions or some of his policies, whether on Anglo-French issues or in the context of the wider world issues. But none of that detracts from the universal recognition that the statesman whose passing we mourn today was a towering figure in his own country and a man whose authority was respected throughout the world.
As we pay tribute to him today for his whole life of service to France, of which he was for so many years the embodiment, we pay tribute to him equally for his gallantry in the defence of freedom 30 years ago.
His death marks the passing of the last of the four great world leaders in the fight against Hitler, and while about his life there seemed a certain inevitability in all that he did, what he did in 1940 could not have been forecast and none should under-estimate the courage which was required of him when he took that decision to come to England to establish and rally the Free French Forces, just as none could or would deny him the pride which he felt when he led those forces back into a Paris liberated from the German yoke.
Then there were the long years in political exile which soon followed, and his return to power in 1958. None but

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he could have solved the problem of Algeria without tearing France asunder in the process. It was some of his later actions which led to controversy here and abroad, and Mr. Harold Macmillan has given his own account of some of these events in what we have read this week.
But there is a personal note which is as relevant today, in this, our first brief assessment as a House of Commons of his contribution to the history of France and Europe and the world. Those right hon. and hon. Members who had the privilege of frequent, perhaps lengthy, discussions with him will remember his manner on those occasions. Still more, those of us who were allowed to enter into his family circle, if only briefly, for private meals which I recall, for example, with only the President, Madame de Gaulle, my wife and myself, will remember, though apparently unbending, how unutterably courteous and friendly he was, how different from the public image drawn of him, when we heard him and his wife talking of their family and home, and how he spent his leisure.
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman referred, as we would all want him to do, to his superb speech in Westminster Hall, when he came to this country in 1957 on that Presidential visit. I had the privilege between 1964 and 1970 of meeting him for five meetings or series of meetings. On every occasion, what was noticeable, as the right hon. Gentleman said, was his great courtesy, the great trouble he went to for his guests, his great basic love of this country and our people—and everything he said expressed in that superb, uncompromising, classical French of which he had so great a command.
It happened that, yesterday morning, the day he died, I was writing an account of one of my most memorable meetings with him. The words I wrote then, without of course today in mind, would express what I want to say:
"The President thanked me with his usual courtesy, and then opened up. As ever, he was relaxed, he spoke very quietly, fluently, in his measured classical French, without any notes, yet the whole speech as logical in its framework and order as if he had written down every word. This he could not have done as he replied almost point by point to what I had said."
The President of France in his broadcast to the French people today has expressed a sense of mourning—his word was
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"widowhood"—through which France is now passing. Our thoughts will go to the French people and Government and all of us would associate ourselves with what has already been said by the right hon. Gentleman in the message that he has sent of our sympathy for one who has shown great kindness to many of us, Madame de Gaulle, and to her family.
Mr. Thorpe: May I briefly associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition? Charles de Gaulle was always a controversial figure. He challenged conventional ideas about nearly all the great questions of war and peace. He often shocked those who thought that they were in agreement with him, and he often pursued policies which many of us here deplored, but some things about him are beyond dispute and above controversy.
First is his moral and physical courage, which he displayed first as a young officer in the First World War, as a critic of the military establishment between the wars, as the founder, leader and inspirer of the Free French in 1940, as the ferocious defender of French interests as he saw them in the inter-allied wrangles of the Second War, as the man who defied the assassins' bullets in newly liberated Paris, in the long-drawn out agony of the Algerian war. For sustained, lonely courage, it is a record with few parallels in history.
Second, I think, is his willingness to accept defeat with dignity. Although authoritarian by temperament and training, he accepted the loss of power in 1946 and again in 1969 with as little hesitation as he had assumed great responsibilities in 1940 and 1958. Few men who have held great authority have exercised such self-restraint and received such disappointments so stoically.
Third, no one can dispute his sense of style. His memoirs will be read as literature so long as the French language is appreciated, and his speeches had a power which was sometimes prophetic. It is told that, when Charles de Gaulle came to London, to Downing Street, in June of 1940, Winston Churchill, with his customary percipience, said, "Here comes the Constable of France". The Constable of France in the Middle Ages was the champion of the French King, and as such, the upholder of national honour.

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That, I believe, is how Charles de Gaulle would wish to be remembered, and that is how he deserves to be remembered. The honour of a great nation like France touches us all, and de Gaulle was a great European figure who stood at the heart of the crises of our age. He was the last of the dominant political figures of the world's most terrible war, and his record is enduring proof of the power and the strength of the individual man to defy and sometimes to turn the tides of history.
Mr. Turton: May I, as one who, in age, was rather closer to General de Gaulle than most right hon. and hon. Members, add a word or two? The first mention that I heard of General de Gaulle was when I was serving under General Martel, who was the commander of the 50th Division and was the greatest armoured expert in Britain. He used to talk of "this Charles de Gaulle" he used to write to, who in his view was the greatest exponent of the tactics of armoured formations then in the whole of Europe. At that time, or shortly after, we witnessed a loss of spirit of France, and those of us who came across the Channel in 1940 felt that that great France had been destroyed in its spirit and its soul. A few months later, at Bir Hacheim, when the Free French were fighting side by side with the 50th Northumberland Division, we realised that a transformation had been achieved by one man.
I should like to remind the House of what General de Gaulle wrote at the close of the first volume of his memoirs. This gives an indication of the inspiration:
"Poring over the gulf into which the country has fallen, I am her son, calling, holding a light for her, showing her the way of rescue. Many people have joined us already;
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others will come, I am sure. I can hear France now answering me. In the depths of the abyss, she is rising up again, she is on the march, she is climbing the slope. Our mother, such as we are, we are here to serve you."
Those are great and noble words and they describe the inspiration of the man we mourn today.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has mentioned the divergencies between policies of successive British Governments and General de Gaulle. I think that there is a little misunderstanding. General de Gaulle was always an admirer and friend of Britain. He always felt that Britain, with her triple rôle as a bridge across the Atlantic, as the leader of a great maritime, multi-racial Commonwealth, and as an ally of Western Europe, would not make a good member of the European Economic Community, nor of his conception of one Europe, stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. I perhaps understand that view, because I share it.
The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have both mentioned the speech that the General made and which we all heard just 10 years ago in Westminster Hall. Surely that gave a measure of his affection and admiration for this country. He ended that speech with these words:
"I declare, at this very important juncture, France feels herself shoulder to shoulder with Britain. What other countries have as much as ours, and, over and above their divergencies, such similar aims? What peoples know better than France and Great Britain that nothing will save the world except just those qualities of which they are, par excellence, capable: wisdom and resolution?"
It is appropriate that this great leader has died just at a time when we are all here commemorating the fallen in two World Wars. We mourn him as a great soldier, as the architect of the French revival and as a Friend and admirer of Britain.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  FAMILY INCOME SUPPLEMENTS BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  4.0 p.m.
  The Secretary of State for Social Services (Sir Keith Joseph): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The subject with which the Bill is designed to deal is one of the greatest interest to both sides of the House. Family poverty is not a subject as easy to penetrate as many people would tend to think, and we shall this afternoon, I hope, try to understand some of the difficult interrelations and interactions which make the subject one of absorbing difficulty as well as of commanding interest.
  During the election campaign, this Government pledged themselves to tackle family poverty over the lifetime of this Parliament. The Bill now before us is the first step in our policy. We are, naturally, starting with that part of family poverty with which it is most urgent to deal, namely, the poorest of the poor who are in work. The fact that relatively small numbers will come within the benefit of the Bill is not a reflection of a lack of interest or lack of proportion on the Government's part but, rather, a reflection of a series of steps taken by previous Governments which have together brought about an improvement in the standard of living of the people, coupled, alas, with a fierce inflation from time to time which has sharply reduced the value of money.
  The number coming within the benefit of the Bill, so far as we can estimate—we are erecting estimates on the basis of outdated surveys and on the basis of very small samples—will be about 134,000 couples with children, including 24,000 unemployed on wage-stop, and about 54,000 single persons with children, a total of nearly 190,000 households containing, probably, about 500,000 children. All these people, except the 24,000 households whose wage-earner is unemployed and wage-stopped, are in full-time work and are, therefore, disqualified from the supplementary benefit which is available as a long-stop for all who, when unemployed,
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  sick or elderly fall below a certain standard.
  In opposition, we who are now on this side thought that the right way to bring benefit to those in family poverty would be by a continuation of the device invented by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, an increase in family allowance coupled with claw-back. As soon as I came into my present office, I at once requested an examination of the possibilities of moving along that path. I asked not only for an examination of an increase in family allowance with claw-back but also for an examination of all the variants of that possibility. Rapidly, I came to realise that, for a number of reasons, this was by no means as effective a first step as we had in opposition assumed.
  First, I realised when I came closer to the figures that family poverty is not afflicting only families with large numbers of children. About one-third of families whose breadwinner is in work who are living below the supplementary benefit level are families with only one child, and these households could receive no help from an increase in family allowances as they are at the moment. Hon. Members may say that one could easily change family allowances in order to pay a benefit in respect of the first child. It could be done, but it could not be done quickly. There are probably about 3 million households in which there is one child, and their names are not automatically known to the social security machine. It would take far more than even the time we shall take to bring the family income supplement into being to bring benefit to them, quite apart from the question of cost and the fact that 90 per cent., or even more, are not in urgent need.
  Second, an increase in family allowance at any level which has been discussed, whether taxed or tax free, could not provide the scale of help which the very poorest of wage-earning households desperately need, that is, not without going into astronomic figures, because the family allowance would be payable to all households with children, even with a claw-back provision were it available.
  Third, we found that the scope for claw-back was much smaller than we or, I think, the whole House on both sides had realised. Claw-back, as the House will recall, is the device by which

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  the entire extra payment of an increase in family allowance is recovered from all who pay tax at the standard rate. What I do not think either side of the House has appreciated is that the last Labour Budgets, by their progressive lowering of the standard rate tax threshold, have together sharply lowered the remaining scope for an increase in family allowance coupled with claw-back. The figures are startling. A married couple with three children came into the standard rate of tax in 1967 when the household income was £23. By 1970, after those three Labour Budgets, a married couple with three children began to pay tax at the standard rate when earnings reached not £23 but £16 ls. Moreover, this figure cannot be judged just as £7 below the 1967 level because inflation had debased the value of the £ in the intervening years. Thus, people who are in the category of family poverty are now bearing tax at the standard rate level.
  This is a problem which the Labour Party would have faced had it returned to Government. It is a problem which we faced on inheriting office. It presents us with a grave problem for those who are not very poor but poor, far we all realise that the problem of poverty cannot be neatly identified. It is a problem at the extreme, at the levels we are trying to deal with today, and it gradually tapers off into a hard-pressed multitude who are now substantially above the standard rate threshold. Because of the construction of the claw-back operation, anyone who is paying tax at the standard rate gains nothing from an increase in family allowance coupled with claw-back. I find that this point was precisely taken by Professor Abel-Smith in this week's New Statesman, page 590, where, talking of the present day, he says:
  "Thus many poor families would gain nothing from a further dose of 1968-type claw-back".
  That is the position, therefore, as we inherited it.
  I can put the problem to the House in even more dramatic form. When, in 1968, the Labour Government first used the device of an increase in family allowances coupled with claw-back, they were able to provide an extra £47 million for the poor, that is, left in the pockets of
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  the poor, at a gross cost of £180 million. Thus, it was 25 per cent. effective. There are all sorts of ways in which one can use the word "effective". I use it in a highly technical sense here. That is to say, for every £4 spent gross, £1 net stayed in the pockets of the poor.
  It is a sad commentary on the facts that since then, the Labour Government took back most of the benefits that they had provided for the poor by lowering the rate of tax and by inflation. Because of what has happened since 1968, if we were to use the same technique now, we would be not 25 per cent. effective but 3 per cent. effective, because we would leave £1 net in the pockets of the poor for every £30 gross we spent. To leave £6 million net in the hands of the poor would, by using an increase in family allowances plus claw-back, now cost £180 million gross.
  Hon. Members may say, "But it is only £6 million net", but I hope the House will recognise that this not only increases public expenditure—which is more or less important, according to one's point of view—but lowers the tax threshold sharply, which has unknown implications for incentives. It also shifts £180 million from the pockets of the men to the handbags of the women. That is the point of view that may be underestimated or overestimated, but at least it has implications of which no Government can be absolutely certain.
  Mr. Neil Kinnock: The Secretary of State says that the men are being emasculated financially by the removal of money from one point of the family purse to another. Would the right hon. Gentleman explain to the House what he sees so manly about a man on a low income having to apply for a family income supplement?
  Sir K. Joseph: I will try to deal with all those points. I am afraid, for such a short Bill, it needs a fair amount of complicated presentation and argument.
  Facing all these changes in circumstances, the Child Poverty Action Group, which has done much to educate the country—
  Mr. Michael Foot: Everybody but the Government.
  Sir K. Joseph: —which has done much to educate the politicians on both sides

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  of the House on the problems we face, has varied its original strategy, understandably, and has proposed a tax-free element in the family allowance. This would certainly reduce the gap between the net and gross cost of what was done, but only, of course, at the cost of giving a tax-free bonus at all levels of income, while being very expensive. The Child Poverty Action Group proposed that we should withdraw all child tax allowances. Those are very large proposals.
  The Government are embarked on a study of how to tackle family poverty comprehensively and effectively, and I undertake that the Child Poverty Action Group schemes will certainly be considered by the Government with the others which we are assessing. But it is not for immediate use, because, as I have said, it would lead to a sharp lowering in the tax threshold, with disincentive implications, which would mean a big shift of income from men to women. Perhaps the most important point of all is that, even if we were to adopt the increase of 10s. in family allowances, or even a bigger figure, coupled with claw-back, we would not be able to put into the very poorest working households as much as the Bill intends and proposes to put.
  The need at the poorest end is extremely urgent. The one thing about which I am thoroughly apologetic in presenting the Bill is that even when the House has passed it, we shall not be able to get the money into payment until 1st August, for reasons which are resistant to all the administrative drive that my hon. Friends and I and the Department wish to put into this subject.
  Mr. Brian O'Malley: The right hon. Gentleman says that this money cannot be put into the hands of these very poor people before 1st August. Will he confirm that, if he had chosen one of the other alternatives, he would have been able to do it at least six months earlier?
  Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman knows better than that. We would have been able to provide more for the second and subsequent children. But at least a third of the children in the households we are trying to help are single children, and we would not have been able to help
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  those households perhaps even by August, 1972, let alone August, 1971.
  The Bill proposes to spend, after administrative expenses, something like £8 million in helping the larger part of the very poorest of the working population, coupled with most of those not working but wage-stopped. I hope that hon. Members opposite will accept with some satisfaction that the Bill provides help for the households on wage-stop and will take many thousands off the wage-stop altogether.
  The case I must meet, among others, is that the late kin Macleod, during the last Budget debate, proposed as a priority for his party when in government an increase in family allowances, which he said would be of the order of £30 million to succour the working poor. What I have to explain to the House is that the figure of £30 million which kin Macleod used was one of three relevant figures.
  I am afraid that I have to go into considerable figures to explain much of the Bill. I will give the House the figures concerned. Except on one occasion, and that was the second increase after devaluation by the Labour Government in 1968, every increase in family allowances since they were conceived at the end of the last war has been accompanied by an offset in reduction in the dependency scales for children of families in unemployment, sickness and on supplementary benefit.
  We thus have one gross and two net figures for increased family allowances. The gross figure that would have been associated with the £30 million proposal of Iain Macleod would now be £187 million, out of which now, if we were to adopt his proposal of an increase in family allowances of 10s. for second and subsequent children, £49 million would go in taxation on the increase of family allowances. Because the vast bulk of the population now pay tax at standard rate, £109 million would have vanished in claw-back. Of the remaining £29 million—that is first cousin to the figure of £30 million which Iain Macleod used—£23 million would go in offsetting the dependency scale of sickness, unemployment and supplementary benefits. By that offset, we would be following every single precedent in increasing family allowances except the second post-devaluation increase in 1968.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: Would the Secretary of State explain what he means by £109 million having vanished?
  Sir K. Joseph: As I explained, the claw-back device invented by right hon. Gentlemen opposite recovers the total increase in family allowances from all those paying the standard rate of tax. That combination of tax on the family allowance increase, claw-back, and the offset on social security benefits, would have left only £6 million out of the whole £187 million in the pockets of the poor, compared with the £8 million which this Bill, subject to a number of points I am coming to, proposes to leave.
  If hon. Members say, as they are entitled to, "Oh, but at least the family allowance increase would be automatic", then I have to tell them that against that a family allowance increase would not be given to the first child or to the households with only one child. That is why we have chosen for the first step to use the family income supplement procedure.
  I will go quickly through the Bill and then deal with the cases against it. Clause 1 provides family income supplement to be payable to certain families whose weekly resources fall below a prescribed make-up level. For this Bill, a family is a couple with a child or children or a single woman with a child or children even, in the latter case, if the single woman is not a householder. The Bill will help households where a single woman with a child or children is living with her parents or relatives.
  Mrs. Lena Jeger: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves this complicated point, Clause 1(1)(b) refers to a man living in a household which includes a woman. Would it also mean a woman living in a household which includes a man? I have in mind a woman with a disabled husband where the woman is the wage earner and is in fact head of the household.
  Sir K. Joseph: My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) raised this point with me last week. The answer is no, because, in that household, the man would be unemployed and on supplementary benefit. His wife would be able to earn a relatively small amount within the disregarded
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  category and therefore the household would not be within the scope of the Bill. However, though important, that is very much a Committee point.
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: May I pursue this point a little further? The Bill is not at all clearly drafted. I would also raise the point about a mother living with her son who himself has children. Would she be brought within the meaning of "family"? I have in mind a woman living with her son who himself is raising children on his own. Clause 1(1)(b) suggests that only a wife would be included as "a woman" in that household.
  Sir K. Joseph: A household is one with children. A grandmother living with a son who himself has children would not be within the scope of the Bill. The son with children might be. I think that that is the position, but I would like to reserve judgment on it. We shall have to define carefully in Committee and in subsequent regulations exactly who is included.
  Clause 2 provides for the prescribed amount—the make-up level—to depend on the number of children in the household. Clause 3 provides that family income supplement shall be half the difference between the family income and the make-up level, subject to a maximum of £3 a week. Clause 4 defines the method of calculating income; this we intend to be a simple test of parental income—not a means test involving an assessment of capital; very rarely will this involve a visit to the home. It will be as simple an income test as we can devise. Clause 5 lays down that claims shall be made by a couple jointly in order that we shall be sure that we know the household income, but received by either. Clause 6 enacts that the determination of whether anything and how much shall be paid as supplement will be for the Supplementary Benefits Commission, and that the supplement shall be payable for 26 weeks unaffected by any change in circumstances since the supplement was awarded. Clause 7 provides for appeals. Clauses 8 and 9 make precautionary provision against serious abuse. Clause 10 ensures that the supplement is inalienable, and Clause 11 provides us with powers to make regulations, two of which—varying the make-up level

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  and the amount of the supplement—would be subject to the affirmative procedure. We shall also have to make regulations to define what is full-time remunerative work.
  The intention here is to provide the exact complement to the requirement which makes a household eligible for supplementary benefit. Anyone not in full-time work is eligible for supplementary benefit. If anyone is in full-time work, we intend that he shall be eligible for family income supplement. We must make sure that we get the frontier right, but that is the intention. We shall also have to define in regulations who is responsible for a child and what, for this purpose, a child is.
  Clauses 12 and 13 cover the issues of false statements and legal proceedings.
  I had better go into Clause 14 in a little more detail. It eases the supplementary benefit wage stop provision by providing that in calculating what a person's net weekly earnings would be if he were engaged in full-time work, the weekly amount of the family income supplement which would be payable should be included as income. This will ensure that the majority of wage stop cases benefit by the introduction of this scheme.
  There have been a number of criticisms of the Bill. I want to try to meet or at least discuss them. First there is the argument that we are reverting to Speenhamland. A number of my hon. Friends who are apt to use this criticism are among those in this House with the greatest familiarity with our social history. They will know that Speenhamland came to affect the majority of rural workers at a time when there was no organised trade union movement. The contrast with this Bill is startling. It will bring help to well under 1 per cent. of working households at a time when the trade union movement is strong. It is highly unlikely that the small extra payment which we are providing will in total enter into wage negotiations or calculations. This will not be the first time that a household with a wage earner in work will have had a benefit. There are rent and rate rebates, introduced by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. There are free meals for those in poor circumstances. There is remission from charges and family allowance increases
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  plus claw-back. These are all methods of bringing help to the working poor. If none of these have damaged the earnings structure of our workers, why should this marginal addition in gross terms be so dangerous?
  Secondly there comes a criticism from the Opposition. Their Amendment says that the Bill will not encourage employers to raise low wages. As a general proposition, I suppose that that is true, but nor would an increase in family allowance plus claw-back in itself encourage employers to raise wages. None of these, in as much as they help the poor, actively encourages employers to raise wages. It could be said that making school meals free to the poor, free milk, rent and rate rebates, remissions of charges and so on, all make it more possible for employers to neglect the interests of the very poor. But this adds only one other strand to what is already a widespread effort to bring help to the working poor. There is a 50 per cent. taper built into the Bill. Those who benefit from it will lose only half of any increase in earnings so they will still be interested in increasing earnings.
  The next criticism is again from the Opposition, who say that the Bill will benefit a tiny minority. I am not clear what they mean. If it is a tiny minority of the people, that is correct. Under 1 per cent. of the working population will benefit. But we are distinguishing those who most need help and, while not forgetting those who need help but cannot be helped in this way, they represent a tiny minority.
  It may be that the Opposition are shifting their ground. When in office, they took the supplementary benefit level as the poverty line. If they are saying that we are helping only a tiny minority of those below the poverty line, they are wrong. We shall help over half the households below the poverty line as defined by the supplementary benefit level. However, I hope that the hon. Lady will explain to what "the tiny minority" refers.
  I must confirm that there are large numbers of working households which are very hard pressed although their incomes are often substantially above the supplementary benefit level. There is one principal reason for this. It is that many

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  of the poorest pay large rents. The people who pay large rents are not helped by the Bill, and that is why the Measure brings help to only between one-half and one-third of working households below the supplementary benefit level.
  However, what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment announced last week—namely, the proposal to provide a national standard rent allowance for all tenants of public and private housing except in the furnished sector—will provide real help to those this Bill cannot help, as well as to those whom the Bill does help. Of course, the House will have to wait to see my right hon. Friend's proposal. [Interruption.]
  The next group of criticisms is that the Bill involves another means test and, moreover, that the help in it will not reach those who need it. It is true that there is another test, but it is an income test and not a means test. I hope that we will make use of the Bill to reduce the number of tests that exist.
  Already we have arranged that payment of a family income supplement will automatically entitle the adults in that family to free prescriptions. I hope to arrange—I cannot yet commit the Government to this—that the adults in families helped by the Bill will automatically be exempt from dental and optical charges as well.
  We must make use of this procedure to, if possible, provide a passport for the very poorest families to all the remissions that there are—and the Bill will give us contact with the very poorest working households. Far too little is known about them. This knowledge will enable us to ensure, so far as we can, that these households apply for rent and rate rebates and any other benefits that are available.
  Then there is the criticism that the Bill will not reach everybody. I agree, and I have already admitted that. However, the alternative—namely, an increase in family allowances—would not have reached the first or only child. We will do our very best, by the most elaborate take-up campaign, on which we will embark early next year, to reach all the households we possibly can; all the two-parent and one-parent and wage-stopped families which come within reach of the Measure. The finances presume that we shall have an 85
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  per cent. take-up. I will do my best to do that, and better.
  Then there is the criticism of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) in The Times this morning that even if the Bill is successful it will not carry to families just above the poverty line. It will not, I agree, but unless we forget the disincentive danger—and there is a small one—and fill 100 per cent. of the gap between a household's income and the make-up level, then automatically we shall be failing to reach the so-called poverty line.
  I do not believe that the Government should be ashamed of that. After all, the Bill will provide up to £150 for the very poorest working households, and if that does not bring them up to the supplementary benefit level, it will be of substantial help and, for some of these households, it will mean the transformation of their lives.
  This is only a first step. We will bring help to over one-half of households below the supplementary benefit level. The House is aware of the next step, which is to help those who are excluded from the help given by the Bill because their gross incomes are above the supplementary benefit level but, owing to high rents, their net incomes are below that level. That next step is the rent allowance, and it is in sight.
  I must also point out to the hon. Member for Oldham, West, who is enriching our debates by the deep knowledge which he brings to this difficult subject, that his analysis in The Times this morning gives a distortion in this case. He calculates the effect of the assumed Government food policy and rent changes and ascribes to them an increase in the cost of living in 1974–75. He assumes, in comparing the cost of living with the incomes of households, that both earnings and family income supplements have remained unaltered at their present levels.
  Mr. Michael Meacher: Would the right hon. Gentleman give a commitment at this stage to increase the supplement in line with average earnings?
  Sir K. Joseph: I was coming to that. I hope, however, that the hon. Gentleman will agree, first, that, as things are, earnings are definitely rising even for most of

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  the very poor. Already the earnings on which we have based our figures in the Bill are sharply out of date.
  The answer to his question is that I think it highly likely that the make-up level will have to be looked at again before the Bill comes into effect. We will have power, which we propose to take under the regulations, to, if necessary, vary the make-up level.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Sir K. Joseph: I must continue. I have already expressed regret at the amount of time I have taken. I do not want to prevent hon. Members from contributing to the debate.
  Once the Bill, assuming it is accepted, is passed, we will embark on making regulations; and I shall try to give as much information as I can to the House about the content of those regulations, perhaps by way of Question and Answer, before the Committee stage. We must make the regulations and then, on the basis of them, we must write the manual of instructions, recruit and train staff and advertise to find the people who will benefit.
  We must carry out the necessary procedures to get the benefits into payment, and I very much regret that it looks as if we will not be able to start until 1st August, and even that will mean an enormous effort on the part of the Department and its offices throughout the country.
  The Bill adds a third, though much smaller, brother to the weapons with which, in one form or another, the tax arrangements in the economic system take account of those who have children. As we know, earnings take no account of a man's or woman's responsibilities. They are the same for a single or married man, a childless couple or a couple with several children. Thus we have the child tax allowances, which attempt to do justice at the same level of income as between those with and those without children, and the family allowance system, now modified by the claw-back operation. To these two we are adding the family income supplement.
  I think it probable that these three brethren will not co-exist in precisely their present form for ever. As I have told the House, we are studying very
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  hard indeed how to tackle effectively the problem of family poverty. This Bill is a first step. Rents—a rent allowance for all but those in furnished dwellings—will be the second step. We are looking at alternative ways forward including, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) mentioned, further use of the family allowance system with claw-back.
  For a first step, and because of the very complicated interactions, which I have tried to explain, the Bill, assuming we are successful in our take-up campaign, which we intensely desire to be, will bring much larger help to the very poorest working households than would have been brought by a 10s. increase in family allowances coupled with claw-back.
  The Bill will give help to those who are most in need. It will provide for the very poorest working households sums of up to £150 per year each. It will improve life sharply for something like 180,000, or well over half, of our very poorest working households, and I hope that the House will find the Measure acceptable.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): I have to acquaint the House that Mr. Speaker has ruled that the Opposition Amendment in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson) and some of his right hon. and hon. Friends is selected.
  I should also like to acquaint the House with the fact that a great many hon. Members desire to speak in the debate. I earnestly hope that hon. Members will feel able to keep their speeches as short as possible.
  4.40 p.m.
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
  "this House, while welcoming measures to help families in poverty, believes the Government's Family Income Supplements Scheme will assist only a tiny minority, further extend the complex system of a means-tested society which is an essential element in the policy of Her Majesty's Government, and will do nothing to encourage employers to improve very low wages in certain occupations."
  The Secretary of State for Social Services produced my speech for me so convincingly that I came to the conclusion that he would perhaps argue his own Bill out of the ring and that it was

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  hardly necessary for me to speak, but although I thought that the right hon. Gentleman put in a very sympathetic and informed way all the objections to the Bill, I felt that his reply to the objections was singularly less powerful.
  I want to refer to something which the right hon. Gentleman dealt with in some detail, and that is the original pledge that was made by his party and by the Leader of that party, the Prime Minister, and I then want to come to the Bill itself.
  Before doing that, I must say that the right hon. Gentleman, whose respect for Parliament I accept and respect, has put the Opposition in some difficulty, because he has asked for the Committee stage to be taken next week on the Floor of the House. Any of my hon. and right hon. Friends, and hon. Members everywhere, will agree that the Bill as it stands is by no means clear. The right hon. Gentleman himself could not fully explain one Clause. In addition, a very great deal depends on the regulations that are made. When he and his party were in opposition they frequently raised very powerful objections to Bills which conducted a great deal of their scope and meaning in the form of regulations that were not laid before the House prior the Committee stage. As the right hon. Gentleman has pointed out, they could not be laid before the House before the Committee stage was taken. His Bill is a very good example of this. Until we, the Opposition, know what is meant by such things as "remunerative full-time work"—and I accept that he has tried to give us some indication—what happens to the child over 16 in full-time education, the method by which the S.B.C. will deal with claims put to it, and what manner and form the application itself will take, it is extremely difficult for us to judge even the right hon. Gentleman's good faith in putting the Bill forward I shall be grateful if he can give the fullest information in Committee.
  It would also be very helpful if, through the Under-Secretary of State when he replies, he would be kind enough to undertake to lay before the House not merely the regulations, and give the Opposition full notice of the regulations but, in addition—and I believe this to be crucial—to lay before the House the
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  actual application form, so that we can judge whether what I must call the right hon. Gentleman's extreme optimism about uptake is likely to be justified in the event.
  I turn now to the point raised by the right hon. Gentleman himself about the commitment his right hon. Friend originally made. Replying to the debate on public expenditure on 5th November, the right hon. Gentleman said:
  "… we expressed our preference for an increase in family allowances with claw-back as our first step in tackling family poverty."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th November, 1970; Vol. 805, c. 1388.]
  I do not make a great deal of this except to say that I accept that when right hon. Gentlemen come to office they may discover facts of which they were not aware before coming to office, but it is valid for us in opposition, to say that right hon. Gentlemen should think very carefully about making sweeping pledges if those pledges may be likely to be refuted by the facts right hon. Gentlemen later discover.
  There is no doubt that the Prime Minister made an absolutely clear pledge in reply to a direct question from the Child Poverty Action Group which dealt with the ambiguity of a manifesto put before the electorate. In response to that direct question about the meaning of the pledge which the late Chancellor of the Exchequer had given, the Prime Minister replied:
  "We accept that the only way of tackling family poverty in the short term is to increase family allowances and operate the claw-back there."
  That statement was not qualified. It was not modified. It did not say, "according to the facts we discover when in office". It was a pledge that the Child Poverty Action Group—and, I must say, the electorate—was urged and encouraged to accept as it stood, and it is a pledge that the right hon. Gentleman has today as good as said it was impossible for his party to carry out when it came to office.
  But there is even more to it than this—though I shall not go on with quotations to and fro. The pledge was accepted by the Child Poverty Action Group and by the electorate not so much, necessarily, as a pledge to a particular method of payment of help to families in poverty as to a particular sum. When the right

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  hon. Gentleman says that had he put through family allowances with claw-back this would have cost £6 million as against the £8·6 million in the Bill, I must say that I would not have thought it beyond the wit of his right hon. colleague the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have found other ways of assisting the poor that would have accounted for the £22 million difference between what the Government are doing and what they were quite precisely pledged to do before the election.
  The right hon. Gentleman himself mentioned that scope for claw-back had been considerably limited by the benefits made in my right hon. Friend's 1970 Budget. I accept that this is true in one respect, but I must point out that in another respect it is not true, because as he will himself recognise—and I certainly trust his fairness in this matter—my right hon. Friend's Budget very considerably increased the number of families which would receive full benefit with claw-back before paying any taxation on it. Before the 1970 Budget, the two-child family would lose part of the increase in family allowances if its earnings were more than £12 3s. Following the increase in tax thresholds by my right hon. Friend, that figure was increased to £14 8s. before any part of the increase in family allowances was lost. This, as the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate, followed from the removal of reduced rates of taxation on those at the very lowest end of the tax liability column.
  I must make another point about the £30 million. It would have been possible for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had he been less devoted to the concept of reducing the standard rate of income tax, to have satisfied the pledge that the Government made. When the right hon. Gentleman was quoting the article in the New Statesman written by Professor Brian Abel-Smith he might have gone on to the sentence following that which he quoted, which pointed out that a partial claw-back or a partially tax-free increase in family allowances could have met this pledge to the extent that the pledge was made.
  Turning from that, though I think it crucial to make it clear that the Government are not obliged to go back on the pledge they made to the poor, I must point out that the £8·6 million
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  involved in the Bill must be compared—and this is the point of our reasoned Amendment—with the £82 million that is being recovered from families under the statement on public expenditure in the shape of extra increases in the charges for school meals, welfare milk, primary school milk, and so on. I shall later point out the extent to which this means that families only a little above the supplementary benefit level will be losing very much more than they gain and will not come within the scope of the Bill. The point of the Opposition's argument is that only a very small number of people are being helped. We might add to that that a very large number of families far from affluent are being reduced to greater hardship by the effect of the Government measures.
  Dealing now directly with the Bill, I at once welcome the right hon. Gentleman's extension to single child families of the help he is trying to give. I accept that this is an advance, and it is one which we in the Opposition welcome. But, having said that, I want to turn to the scope of the Bill. The Bill, on the Secretary of State's own submission, could benefit—and I stress the word "could"—some 190,000 families. That is less than two families in a hundred, and it demonstrates the extreme thinness of the Bill that it amounts to no more than 1 per cent. of the total cost of supplementary benefit which goes to some 3 million people. It is, I am afraid, a very, very small triumph for the right hon. Gentleman in his war against poverty. We know from the Family Earnings Survey of 1968 that at that time there were no fewer than 3·4 million men over 21 earning less than £20 a week. This means that the area of poverty and hardship goes far beyond the 190,000 families whom the Bill may affect.
  But another feature here is the amount of help that the right hon. Gentleman is giving. I do not in any sense hold him responsible for this, but I think that he will not disagree that some of the more enthusiastic newspapers which support his side of the House have given the impression to anyone reading them that the great bulk of families in poverty will benefit to the extent of £3 a week, or something very close to that figure. For instance, on 20th October, 1970, the Daily Sketch gave two examples—carefully chosen examples—of families that

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  would benefit by £3 a week. But the right hon. Gentleman knows that even if the provision in his Bill is fully taken up, the average benefit of the family in poverty will be of the order of no more than 14s. a week—a very small sum indeed.
  Not only that, but the scope of the Bill is bound to be reduced by the uptake under the means test. I want to make it clear that we on this side do not for one moment believe that the estimate made by the hon. Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Dean) that seven-eighths of the families entitled to it will take up the benefit is likely to be anywhere near the truth. All the experience of means-tested benefits up to this time shows that those means tests that are directed towards the poorest families in the land lead to an uptake which very rarely reaches even 50 per cent.
  As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Circumstances of Families Survey shows that two families in five which were entitled to various sorts of assistance were not getting it. We know that in boroughs like Tower Hamlets and Southwark only a tiny minority of poor families receive the rate rebate, although that is a relatively simple means-tested benefit. We know that in 1967 two-thirds of families entitled, and whose fathers were in work, were not drawing free school meals.
  We must therefore ask the right hon. Gentleman, as a test of his own sincerity in the Bill: is he willing to commit himself and his Government to undertaking a major family survey which will demonstrate one year after the Bill has run exactly what proportion of families who are entitled will be gaining benefit from the Bill? We believe that a Bill so complex as this—and it must be freely admitted that most hon. and right hon. Members cannot follow it—will lead to yet a further jungle of complexity, of bureaucracy, of officialdom from the point of view of those who already find society a desperately complicated place.
  I turn now to a point which the right hon. Gentleman himself fairly made. It may be, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that if my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) catches your eye he will be able to talk in rather more detail about it. We, the Opposition, are
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  fearful that one of the consequences of the Bill may well be the establishment of a new poverty line. The prescribed income laid down is in some respects, as the right hon. Gentleman himself admitted, below the supplementary benefit level which has always been accepted as the poverty line. He will not, for example, disagree that there are different rates for children of different ages under supplementary benefit. A child over 11 or under 14 is entitled to a larger sum because the additional commitments involved for the family create extra expenditure, but there is no differential rate in the Bill. Consequently, families with teenage children are likely to find themselves with a prescribed income considerably below supplementary benefit level in the Bill.
  The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned rents, and said that his right hon. Friend's statement would eventually lead to a scheme that would deal with this problem. I must admit that I read the statement of the Secretary of State for the Environment and found it very obscure. What is clear is that a scheme cannot come into operation for at least 18 months—probably two years. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will not disagree that this means that for at least the first year, and possibly the first two years, of the operation of the Family Income Supplements Bill there will be no allowance for rents. I therefore ask him—and we shall press this in Committee—to write into the Bill at least the rent allowance given by supplementary benefit, until such time as his right hon. Friend's scheme comes into operation. Without that, some of the most hard-pressed families in the land will be faced with rents that make a mockery of the family income supplements scheme.
  The right hon. Gentleman dealt as fairly as he could with the Opposition's fear about the introduction of a possible Speenhamland system, but he did not meet our worries. He said that other means-tested benefits do nothing to encourage employers to pay decent wages. Our point about the Bill is that it may possibly discourage employers from doing so. By producing a cash benefit on a new poverty line, below supplementary benefit in many cases, and massive disincentive, it may mean that at least some

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  employers may decide on collusive low wages and persuade their employees to go along with them.
  The right hon. Gentleman said that it was a fair point that, over the two centuries since Speenhamland, trade unions have greatly grown in strength but, alas, trade unions have grown least in strength in the very occupations of the lowest paid workers. The trade unions are not powerful in industries where women are the main employees, such as cleaning, catering and certain parts of the distribution trade. The trade unions are strong but find it difficult to bring their weapons to bear in the agricultural industry and to help male nurses in the National Health Service and the public employees about whom the Government have taken such a strong line in recent weeks.
  We are profoundly sincere in our concern about this matter. If the Government had coupled with the Bill a statement of intention about low-wage earners; if they had coupled with the Bill a statement of their sense of urgency about equal pay; our response to this aspect of the Bill might have been rather less uncertain than it is. Standing on its own, the Family Income Supplements Bill could create an excuse which many people might take and which we on this side of the House fear could lead to a still further depression in the condition of an already depressed group of low-paid workers.
  I come now to the problem of disincentives. I believe that the Government have a deep schizophrenia on this question. One saw it in what one might call their Dr. Jekyll phase in the speech of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the debate on public expenditure when he used this phrase about incentives:
  "… we would seek to reduce the marginal rate of tax whether on managerial salaries or shop floor overtime."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th November, 1970; Vol. 805, c. 1303.]
  But not, apparently, on the lowest-paid workers.
  The right hon. Gentleman must recognise the disincentive which his scheme creates for a low-paid worker seeking a better job, seeking more overtime, seeking better pay. At the absolute minimum, it will be a disincentive of 50 per cent., and in most cases will be considerably more than that. Thus, at one end, we
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  have the view that a disincentive of about 34 per cent. is too high, while at the other end there is the view that a disincentive of 50 per cent. will not stop people from seeking better-paid jobs. It does not stand up. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. What is good for the rich holds also for the poor.
  I come now to a few direct questions to the right hon. Gentleman. I apologise for putting them at this stage, but he will realise that time is short, and he will, I hope, be able to answer them in Committee. First, will he look again at the timing of the scheme? As I have already said, the right hon. Gentleman has in the past been impatient at administrative delays. I cannot believe that it is beyond his power to bring in the Bill at an earlier stage, namely, when the charges are introduced in April, 1971.
  Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Lady is aware, is she not, that the charges will not affect these families? All their children are exempt anyway, and, because of their income, they are entitled to complete exemption. So the Bill is meant to improve their situation, not just to make up for the charges.
  Mrs. Williams: I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman; I should not have used the word "charges" in that sense. I should have spoken of the consequences of the action which the Chancellor is taking on the cost of such things as food, fuel and council rents.
  Will the right hon. Gentleman look again at the possibility of a rent allowance within the scheme? Will he look again at the question of disregards for the earnings of a wife? He will recognise that supplementary benefit permits a disregard of the earnings of a wife whereas this scheme does not, and in that respect it is a direct incentive to working women to cease work altogether. As the Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child has pointed out, it will also drive unmarried mothers cut of part-time work and into either full-time work or total reliance on supplementary benefit. This is a strange part of the philosophy of the Government.
  Will the right hon. Gentleman look again at ratings—he said he would do this—to see if they can be brought

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  more closely in line with supplementary benefit measures?
  Having asked the right hon. Gentleman all those questions, I conclude by saying that they are asked in an attempt to make a bad Bill better, and in recognition of the fact that this is likely to be the best we can hope for in respect of poverty from this Government. The Opposition believe that such a massive extension of complex means testing, in which the burden rests not on the better-off as it does under claw-back but on the worse-off, that is to say, on those least able to cope with this extension of bureaucracy, is an extremely unfortunate start for the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in what they believe and declare to be their war on poverty.
  5.4 p.m.
  Mr. J. R. Kinsey: I am grateful to have caught your eye, Mr. Speaker, but it is with the greatest trepidation that I rise to speak to the House for the first time. I recognise the great traditions of the House as a debating Chamber; it is the finest in the world. We are following in the steps of many famous men of the past and also of many great men of today. I look at them sometimes and I tremble.
  I am sure the House will be pleased to know that I do not view myself as a giant colossus striding the world, but rather as a lesser man who goes between the steps. Nevertheless, I hope that the House will allow me some modest pride in that I have at least managed to reach the ranks of the House, where I hope to give a good account of myself on behalf of the electors of Birmingham, Perry Barr.
  Perry Barr is a swinging division. It is one of the few that has changed hands four times in the last four elections. In 1959 it was Socialist; in 1964 it was one of the few Conservative gains; in 1966 it went back again and now in 1970 it has advanced with the Conservatives once more. I hope that in future we shall not be quite so swinging—a little more Conservative I hope. It would give me great pleasure if the division could settle down with its true partner, a man who has represented the Birmingham City Council for 16 years and has a real affection for his home division.
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  My predecessor, Mr. Christopher Price, was young, personable and very likeable. He was well liked in his constituency, and he was a good constituency man who did a lot for the people in the area. He had a special interest in and knowledge of education. He was consistent in his pursuit of that interest and made many useful contributions to the House. I believe that Parliament will see him again but not, I hope, representing Perry Barr.
  Perry Barr was built between the wars. It has good quality housing and forms a dormitory area to the City of Birmingham, although its people are wide awake. Perhaps surprisingly, there is little industry within Perry Barr, Birmingham being the great industrial city it is. We have no slums, and no acres of modern little boxes dot our countryside. It is an area that has houses of character, with people to match. No rolling beauty am I able to claim for it, as many hon. Members can claim for their divisions. More important, especially in a welfare debate, we are concerned with housing. The majority of people in my division are happily and well housed.
  We should be proud of the Conservative record in Birmingham. Birmingham has been the leading authority in bringing in measures to help the poorer elements in our society. I was pleased to heard my right hon. Friend speak of the rent rebates to be introduced. Birmingham has already introduced rent rebates in the private sector. Once again Birmingham has led the country. Birmingham has also been the leading producer of houses for the people, and built 9,034 in 1967.
  I was a little cross to hear the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Edward Short) say, "You should see a Birmingham Tory to believe." Believe me, Birmingham Tories mean happier families.
  In an interjection recently an hon. Member referred to this side of the House as full of directors and chairmen, "a subsidised minority." I think there was more heat than sense in that interjection. When I recall how my wife and I have struggled to build a family busines, working 16 hours a day seven days a week to achieve a modest success, I resent being labelled as "a subsidised minority". There are many like us on these benches. One ought not to generalise in the House to that extent.

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  I claim to speak on this Bill with some knowledge. My father died when I was 11, I was the eldest of three children, and there was no pension for the family at all. We were fortunate in having a small business—I emphasise that it was small—but, as all hon. Members know, a steelworks and coal mining area in the 1930s was not one of the most prosperous. Quite often, the outgoings of that busines were more than the income, and we had to sell many personal things to make ends meet and to meet our commitments.
  But it taught me a lesson, not a lesson of bitterness but a lesson of understanding. In welfare debates, we need understanding. We need to appreciate that no section of our community is prosperous unless we all are prosperous. There should not be the divisive words which we often hear from this side or that on these matters.
  I welcome the Bill as a progressive step forward. It embodies an entirely new approach, and it recognises the struggle of the less able to help themselves in the first instance, which is what we all want to encourage.
  I must tell hon. Members, if they do not realise it already, that the family allowance is generally disliked, particularly by those who do not receive it, for instance, the elderly who brought up a family without help and who cannot now understand why we subsidise so generously those who they think are able to look after themselves. That is their opinion, and we should take it into consideration. The family allowance is disliked by those who receive it and have it clawed back from them, in a sort of "Now you see it, now you don't" process. That does not commend itself to them, and the dislike would be aggravated if we took the course of increasing family allowances overall, with an extension of the claw-back principle.
  Incidentally, those who cry "Means test" should recognise that the claw-back system carries implications of the means test in any case. This should be clearly understood. It is cleverly disguised, but it is based on an income tax assessment. I feel that there is a pointer here in relation to the new allowances, and I hope that the Minister will look at it in this context. Why should we rely on a proliferation of forms for people to fill in when one ticket, as
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  it were, could do a common job for all Departments? It might overcome many of the objections.
  We all know from practical experience and from welfare work in our constituencies where the Bill will help. The hon. Lady the Member for Hitchen (Mrs. Shirley Williams) agreed that one real advantage of the Bill is that for the first time it includes the first child of a family. We must all welcome that, having seen the disadvantage of the other arrangement in the past. There are many families with just one child who are certainly in need of such help as we can give.
  Moreover, the Bill will, in my opinion, restore the level of incentive which is missing in the present system for helping the family. The social security benefit system is very good, but, when a man has social security benefits, he may not be inclined to take a job with earnings lower than or only as good as the social security benefit itself. The new proposals are not perfect, but they represent a genuine attempt to overcome a problem.
  I am certain that those who will feel the benefit of the new scheme more than anyone else are the widows, single women and deserted wives, those who are striving for independence and who, when they take part-time jobs at a small wage, find that they lose all benefit from social security. This is not right, and we should alter it.
  The Bill will be a help to the married couple with a job problem due to illness or other incapacity, incapacity, perhaps, not known to many or even private only to themselves. I hope also that it will help grandparents who have a child or children to look after from a broken family or from a family in which one or both of the parents have died. I hope that my right hon. Friend will look into this possibility. I have tried to read into Clause 1 provision to cover that circumstance, and I hope that it does. If I am wrong, I ask my right hon. Friend to see that something goes in to help grandparents in that way.
  In every way, the Bill offers a better deal. It offers a better deal for the country, and it offers to a section of our community the opportunity for greater independence, though not fully, for I am certain that, by and large, there are those who, for some medical or physical

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  reason, cannot take advantage of full-time work. Nevertheless, the Bill will be a help to them. It is not a means-test depressive Measure. It is designed to raise family status. All people receiving benefit under it will be able to say, "At least I am trying, and a Government who care are trying to help".
  5.18 p.m.
  Mr. John Smith: The hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey) spoke of the trepidation which he felt in making his maiden speech. I share that trepidation and can only hope that my contribution will be as assured and as confident as his was.
  It is customary for a new Member to refer to his predecessor, and I feel a special obligation to do so because my predecessor was a person uniquely respected both in the House and outside. For 25 years, Miss Margaret Herbison served the constituency of Lanarkshire, North with dignity and found great acceptance both as Member and as Minister among her constituents. She referred to them throughout her long period as a Member of Parliament as her "own people", and this they certainly were. She served the nation, first, as a junior Minister at the Scottish Office in the post-war Labour Government, and in the last Labour Administration as Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, or Minister of Social Security, as her Department later became. Finally, having resigned from Ministerial office, she served the House as Chairman of the Select Committee on Overseas Aid.
  Miss Herbison's career, which covered interests stretching from her native Lanarkshire to the furthest corners of the world, was motivated by the compassion which she felt for her fellow citizens. She recently completed a distinguished period of office as Lord High Commissioner of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Hon. Members will understand the diffidence which I feel in attempting to follow in the footsteps of so fine a predecessor.
  I am aware, particularly in this debate, that when Miss Herbison was Minister of Social Security she provided for one of the largest extensions of our welfare services in Britain's history. It is appro-
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  priate when considering the proposals in the Bill now before us to remember the massive extensions which were made by her and by the then Labour Government, as compared with the proposals which we are now debating.
  The first and most serious criticism which, I feel, must be made of the Government's proposal is directed to the amount involved, a mere £7 million to be distributed to the working poor. That sum should be regarded as insufficient in itself, but in addition one has to bear in mind how unfavourably it compares with the £30 million promised by the Conservative Party before the election.
  If a convincing demonstration were required that it is a very small sum, recourse might be had to the Speenhamland system referred to by the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams). The "Pelican History of England in the 19th Century" notes on page 15 that in 1818, the peak year for poor relief under the Speenhamland system, the sum spent amounted to £8 million. So in 1818 the system of relieving the working poor cost £1 million more than a Conservative Administration propose to spend in 1970. That is a statistic that the Secretary of State should bear in mind when he considers how generous he is to the present-day poor.
  Another argument used by hon. Members opposite to justify the means-testing approach of the Bill is that they believe in selectivity in seeking out areas of need and bringing help to them. We on this side of the House find it difficult to accept that they are genuine in that desire. If in the public expenditure package, all the charges for school meals, health services and dental services and the like had been given to other areas of need, we might be impressed by the selectivity approach. But what happened was that the sum collected from the relatively poor was included in the £350 million dispensed to the relatively well-off. It seems to us that the Conservative Party is committed to selectivity upwards in giving money to the income tax payer, and is not committed to selectivity downwards in seeking out need throughout the community.
  The Secretary of State referred with approval to an article in last week's

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  New Statesman by Professor Brian Abel-Smith. He should also remember another part of that article, where the author pointed out that the Conservative Party was likely to redeem its election pledge to allow children's income to be aggregated with that of the parents, which would mean that £25 million was likely to be given back to the children of wealthy parents. I fancy that when the Conservative Party redeems that election pledge there will be very few administrative difficulties in the way of its fulfilment. It is worth bearing in mind that we are proposing to dispense £7 million to the whole of the working poor of this country and at the same time the Government will probably dispense £25 million to the children of the wealthy and the much better-off.
  Those points reinforce the feeling on this side of the House that the Bill is a niggardly attempt to solve a gigantic problem. We are not impressed by the sincerity of the Government's desire to help the poor, in view of the small amount they are prepared to allocate, especially when we compare it with the large sums the Government have seen fit to dispense to other, much better-off sections of the population.
  Basically, for those reasons, we regard the Bill more as a piece of window-dressing on the part of the Conservative Government than a real and lasting attempt to solve the problems of poverty.
  I thank the House for according me the courtesy of listening to my maiden speech.
  5.24 p.m.
  Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter: I have the privilege of following two exceptionally able maiden speeches, and therefore have the first opportunity of expressing on behalf of the House as a whole our appreciation of the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey) and the hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. John Smith) both came through what we all recall to have been a considerable ordeal when we did it ourselves.
  My hon. Friend said that his division was a swinging one. His speech made it clear that he is a swinging Member, incarnating the robust spirit of the great city of Birmingham. I hope and believe
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  that we shall hear my hon. Friend on many occasions again.
  The hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North struck a chord with us all when he referred in very appropriate terms to his predecessor. Miss Herbison was a Member of the House for whom I had a very special admiration, not unconnected with the fact that she filled with sensitivity and administrative skill an office for which at one time I was responsible before her. I always immensely appreciated the way in which she was prepared to discuss, on a wholly non-partisan basis, some of the problems that arise in a Department of that sort. I am certain that in the hon Gentleman she has a worthy successor. In saying that, I think that I pay him a considerable compliment, because he has a very real standard to live up to.
  The Measure which the Bill is designed to put into law was described somewhat frivolously during last week's debate by its initials as "F.I.S.", which I suppose goes along with "F.A.M." An hon. Member opposite somewhat inappropriately described my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State as a "FIS-kid." Adopting for a moment that somewhat sophisticated approach, I would say that to me the Bill seems highly acceptable as an hors d'oeuvre. It is not, and my right hon. Friend did not pretend that it was, the pièce de résistance of the social menu which, in what I hope will be a tenure of many years in his great office, he will bring before the House. I share very much his regret about the time needed to bring it into effect, but as an immediate measure it seems to have two or three considerable advantages.
  First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr pointed out, it does something for the one-child family. Second, it is a very precise social instrument for helping in an area of very real, highly-concentrated poverty. Every penny spent in benefit will be well spent. There really is, from the point of view of social economics, no wastage at all in it. As an initial measure, it seems to me to amount to a considerable improvement, and I am very glad that my right hon. Friend has brought it forward.
  But I still retain a considerable regard for the use of family allowances as an instrument of social policy. I know that

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  they do not command universal assent. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr had no undue enthusiasm for them, though of course the restraint appropriate to a maiden speech no doubt caused him to restrain that enthusiasm to a greater extent than might be the case when he addresses us again. I believe that some hon. Members opposite concerned with the trade unions are not always as enthusiastic for family allowances as some of us are.
  But family allowances have three great merits. They apply whether or not one is in work, and at all levels of income they do something to shift the balance towards the family with children and away from the single person or the childless couple. It is the experience of the House that at all levels of earnings there is today a very conspicuous difference in standards of life, particularly among young people, between the single person or the childless couple, both of whom are perhaps working, and those with a family. The great advantage of family allowances is that they deliberately, as a matter of social policy, shift that balance. That is consonant with fairness and is much in the public interest, as it is obviously in the public interest that there should be proper provision for children to be brought up properly, fed, clothed and looked after. I was therefore very glad when my right hon. Friend at Question Time, in reply to a supplementary question of mine, indicated that in his future social thinking use of this instrument was certainly not excluded.
  I have less enthusiasm for the claw-back, which is not a saving in public expenditure but is in substance an increase in taxation. At the higher levels of incomes, and levels reached very soon, it mitigates against that shift of resources towards the family and away from single people which seems to me to be one of the merits of family allowance. So when I urge my right hon. Friend to give close consideration to the possibility of progress with the family allowance scheme, as I am sure he will, I do not include in those urgings any reference to claw-back.
  I should like to refer briefly to one major and two minor points on the Bill. I am a little concerned about the £3 maximum laid down in Clause 3(1). My
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  right hon. Friend did not give the arguments for it. The principle of the Measure, as he outlined it, is that, taking a standard £15 a week for the one-child family, and £2 a week more per child, the allowance, the supplement, will amount to half the difference between the family earnings and those standard figures. But the limit of £3 seems considerably to weaken in some cases the effect of that principle.
  A very good example was given in The Times last week. It took three families, each of which has two children and in respect of which, therefore, the standard is £17. The first two-child family, which has a family income of £13 a week, will get a supplement of £2, half the difference between £13 and £17, bringing it to £15. The second family has an income of £11 a week. It will receive £3, half the difference between £11 and £17, bringing the income to £14. The third family, the poorest of the lot, has an income of £9 a week. The difference under the formula would be £8, but the family does not got half that. It still gets only £3, and its income is brought to only £12 a week—12 less than the family with the £11-a-week earnings.
  Some of these families are, in the nature of things, the hardest cases of all. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will tell us a little more about the reasons for the introduction of a limitation which on the face of it—there may be explanations—seems to go against the carefully worked-out principle of the whole Bill and to limit the benefits which the Bill gives to the poorest of all.
  We have only to take the five- or six- child family to see this. We know that some of the large families are examples of the grossest poverty we can find. The £3 limit must very much inhibit the help given by the Bill in those cases.
  Perhaps my hon. Friend could tell me what would be the cost to the Exchequer of abandoning the limit of £3 in Clause 3(1). I am sure that the calculation has been made. It is dangerous, when one does not have the advantage of official advice, to speculate on these matters, but I do not believe that it would involve great extra cost if it were abandoned. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will be prepared to reconsider whether the limit is necessary.

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  My other points are much smaller. Will the supplement be liable to income tax. It is true that in the majority of cases the families concerned are probably just below the income tax level. The House will recall that the Bill as drafted is based on a 26-week period of income at certain levels. As income is assessed annually it is possible, to take the case of a seasonal worker, that a family may be well within the income tax level over the year as a whole although in receipt of this supplement. Is it contemplated in those circumstances that this supplement should be subject to income tax? I very much hope that it is not. I do not think, when we are using these instruments of precision to help real poverty, that we ought to allow the use of them to be distorted by the intervention of taxation.
  Can the hon. Gentleman say whether a war pension will be taken into account as the income of a family in determining the difference between family income and the standard figure? The House knows that war pension is disregarded by the Inland Revenue in respect of the pensioner. It is entirely tax-free If I may say, in parenthesis, it is regrettable that for purposes of rate rebate it is taken into account and I very much hope that that can soon be changed. Dealing with this allowance, I hope my hon. Friend will be able to say that the power under the Regulations will be used to disregard entirely any war pension. It would seem unreasonable that in any generously conceived and well-intended social measure of this sort, the Department of Health and Social Security should treat war pensioners less generously even than the traditionally hard-faced Board of Inland Revenue.
  Mr. O'Malley: I agree entirely with the right hon. Gentleman that war pensions should be disregarded. Does he take the view that other items of income should be disregarded in exactly the same way as they are disregarded in assessing an individual's entitlement to supplementary benefit?
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I should not like to plunge into the complexities of the supplementary benefit disregards in this context. I should guess that, social effects apart, the complications involved here would be very harmful in the case of this
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  allowance. I refer to war pensions because these are disregarded specifically by the Inland Revenue for taxation purposes even though they are not for other purposes.
  I would rather not commit myself to a whole list of complicated disregards now, although I should be happy in Committee to consider with the hon. Gentleman any others which come into the same category as war pensions.
  Although I thought that the hon. Lady the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) was a little ungenerous in her response to the Bill, she had a fair point when she said that it was a Bill much of whose effect will turn on the Regulations which my right hon. Friend makes. She was right to say that the House, when in Committee, is at some disadvantage in discussing a Bill of this character. She will know that when she was in office her Department was responsible for similar Bills. She may have sometimes had this point taken against it.
  I wonder whether, to meet this point, my right hon. Friend could do what has been done on occasions, and that is produce a White Paper or otherwise give the Regulations in draft so that in considering the very important aspects of Clause 1 we will know exactly with what we are dealing.
  This is an interesting Bill and an example, if I may say so, of my right hon. Friend's rapid dealing with specific and definite social problems which has already marked his tenure of office as exemplified by the constant attendance allowance and other proposals. It is an excellent instalment, and I hope the House will be with me in suggesting that he should not weary of well-doing.
  5.40 p.m.
  Mr. Richard Crossman: I follow the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) in congratulating the hon. Members for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey) and Lanarkshire, North (Mr. John Smith) upon their excellent maiden speeches. I was grateful to my hon. Friend for referring to Professor Abel-Smith's article in our paper. By doing so he brought the debate into perspective. We are, after all, discussing a Bill which is an attempt to reduce a solemn election

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  obligation to pay £30 million a year in increased family allowances to the smaller figure of £7 million or £8 million. The Government remain bound, and will undoubtedly carry out in their next Budget, their pledge to the children of the rich. This was to the children of the rich who were deprived by my right hon. Friend the then Chancellor of the very considerable family advantages of having the income from their trusts hived off and for income tax purposes assessed in such a way that their school fees could be paid without undue tax. That wicked man the Labour Chancellor said, "The family must work together on a family tax basis and their income must be accumulated with the parents' income before tax is levied."
  That pledge will cost £25 million a year. We will distribute in the next Budget £25 million exclusively to children of very well-off families—because no one else will have a trust of this kind. It will be only the children whose parents are wealthy enough to give them capital without which they can afford to live. At the same time, the right hon. Gentleman comes to us and says, "We made a little mistake. Iain Macleod and the Prime Minister, when they made their solemn pledges on family allowances, did not know the facts." We all know that. This is not the only issue when they spoke without the facts.
  This Government seem to be discovering fact after fact, having won the election. Of course, if they had known them before the election they could not have made the promises. There was the promise about acting "at a stroke" on prices, the promise about early taxation—all these eager promises they made with such confidence and integrity. Poor things, they are now in Government. They promised £30 million to the children of the poor and now we hear that they must make do with £7 million. They say, "It is not our fault, we have looked at the figures and frankly, it is a better buy for the poor to take £7 million rather than £30 million." We are assured that they will be better off with the £7 million because it will be really concentrated.
  True, of the group upon whom it will be concentrated, the 190,000–200,000 families, half will not get a penny. It is admitted by the right hon. Gentleman
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  that it covers only half of these desperately poor families. Still, they must hope to be in that half. The other half I am sure will be grateful to him for thinking of them, and then excluding them, saying "Sorry our scheme does not reach you. You, lady, are in part-time work, you have got a family and you are looking after the family; you will not go out full time, sorry, you will not get it. You may be much worse off than the lady in full-time work who has a husband and other children working, but still we want a nice complicated scheme which will show how fair and meticulous we are with the taxpayers' money. True, we could have fulfilled the pledge and done what we said, raised family allowances. We could have done that but when we looked at the problem we saw one or two unexpected difficulties."
  The first difficulty was that it cost £30 million and any scheme which costs £8 million is obviously better in the Chancellor's eyes.
  Sir K. Joseph: The right hon. Gentleman is having his little joke, but it would not have cost £30 million. I was laboriously trying to explain, maybe I did not get it through to the right hon. Gentleman, that £23 million would have been offset by reducing the dependency scales. So it would still have cost only £6 million.
  Mr. Crossman: The right hon. Gentleman seems to be saying now that his Chancellor is more generous about this. I was told it would cost £30 million. It all depends how the Chancellor keeps his books and what sort of friendship one has with him. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having the kind of Chancellor who is friendly to him about what he calculated was public expenditure and what was not. Mine was not nearly so kind to me and my Department. I had to fight for my part.
  Still, he says he has a nicer, tighter little scheme and he says that it will get over certain difficulties. The other difficulty, apart from cost, is that he says claw-back will not work. He is quite right about Professor Abel-Smith. He and I worked very closely together when we were in Government and he is now in the London School, working closely with us once again, so we are in cahoots.

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  It is true that the professor wrote, and I approved it before he published it:
  "… the full standard rate of tax starts to be paid on incomes which are now well below the supplementary benefit poverty line. Thus many poor families would gain nothing from a further dose of 1968-type claw-back."
  but he did not read on to see that the professor said:
  "An alternative which Sir Keith has rejected is a straight increase in family allowances with a new allowance to cover the first child and an adjustment of child tax allowances."
  It would have been perfectly simple to have a claw-back scheme which did not operate on this group of people if, instead of giving away a flat rate 6d. off the standard rate, he had concentrated the benefits on the childrens' allowances which went to the poor.
  Then the level of tax would have been raised in such a way that he could operate the claw-back effectively without hurting the poor. This was written by the professor, but I dare say the Department did not give the Minister that bit, it gave him only a short cutting which would benefit him in his speech. It did not want to embarrass him by telling him what the professor was really saying, which was that he could perfectly well, if the Chancellor had not given away the 6d. in income tax, have given that amount in other forms of income tax concessions. Then the £30 million on family allowances could have been paid and the only justification for this inordinately complicated scheme would have been removed at a stroke, by the Chancellor and the right hon. Gentleman.
  It is no secret that this scheme is an old friend of ours. Many a person has put it up to us and said: why not do it? I always felt that the difficulty was that, if it was done in a form acceptable to the Chancellor, it had to be well below the supplementary benefit level. If everyone was brought on to the supplementary benefit level and it had to taper off beyond that, the Chancellor would not give approval. It had to be mean enough to satisfy the Chancellor to work. I costed this both ways and said, "It is no good even putting this up, because the Chancellor will not dream of letting it go. He would not let me bring everyone on to the supplementary benefit level."
  That is what ought to be done, no one should be below that level. It should be
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  a national minimum. We should make the minimum there and say that everyone below that must have his wages brought up by a State payment to the level of supplementary benefit he would get if there were no wages stop. That would be wonderful, because it would mean that there would not be a person at work whose children would not be getting the same amount as they would be entitled to if he were unemployed. However, this could not be afforded. The disadvantage of this scheme is that it will introduce a new standard of poverty. This Bill says "We cannot afford to bring these poor people to the level we regard as the minimum when people are our responsibility, when they are ill or unemployed." When it says this is what they and their children must get, this creates a new minimum they must live on.
  These unfortunate people who work for these miserable and scandalous wages are not to be brought up to the minimum we would give them when they are out of work, if we did not have a wage stop; they must be kept somewhere below that level. That introduces a new standard of poverty. I am alarmed when I hear that this is the first phase of the Tory operation. No doubt the second phase will be to build on top of the first and to start making this the standard of poverty. That is why we do not like the scheme.
  I do not deny that there is one group of people—and the Minister did not put it as narrowly as this because he was making the best of his case—who will genuinely benefit. Broadly, they are unmarried mothers or deserted wives. They form a neglected group. I admit absolutely freely that under the scheme this group is covered—provided the people in it are in full employment. Does the right hon. Gentleman know the numbers in full employment? He says that half the people will not be covered. He is covering in this group only people who are, or are prepared to be, in full employment. There will be a great incentive to be driven into full employment or to have no employment at all. The temptation will be to choose between supplementary benefit and full-time employment. People trying to look after their families and to see something of their families by taking up part-time employment will have a disincentive to be loyal to their family. They will take up full-time employment.

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  This is one of the grave disadvantages of the scheme.
  Much will depend on how "full employment" is defined. In a trade in which there is a lot of casual labour and tips, I am horrified at the potential judicial cases which we are creating. The Supplementary Benefits Commission, which I gather is to judge these matters, will have to adjudicate on thousands of extremely difficult definitions of "full employment", however the Regulations are drafted.
  My first point, therefore, is that this inordinately complicated scheme has grave disadvantages. Half the people the Government say it will help, in fact, it will not help. It will produce an enormous number of anomalies and difficulties of definition apart from creating a new State definition of poverty by saying, "This is the level at which we permit people to live".
  When the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames spoke about the top limit, he was being, not innocent, but wicked and subversive. He was being oppositional. He asked, "Why a £3 limit?" He knows the answer very well. He knew that if the limit were £4 or £5 it would be above the supplementary benefit level. Therefore, the limit must be kept down and a gap must be maintained.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If I were being subversive, may I point out that I learnt subversion at the right hon. Gentleman's knee? He is wrong about the necessity to keep the level below the supplementary benefit level. What he says is simply not correct in the case which I quoted of earnings of £9 a week.
  Mr. Crossman: What the right hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out was that there are cases in which people receive less than they should even though they are miles below the supplementary benefit level. I said that if there were a general allowance at the top where there was no limit or, say, a £5 limit, it would make the scheme inordinately costly and the Chancellor of the Exchequer would say "No" to it.
  Sir K. Joseph: The situation is not as sinister as the right hon. Gentleman is making out. We are attempting to meet
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  the disincentive charge by leaving a substantial incentive to the individual to earn more.
  Mr. Crossman: The question of the incentive is my next point. This scheme imposes a 50 per cent. tax on the very poor. Each extra £1 that a person earns will be taxed 50 per cent. This is one of the worst aspects of the scheme. It introduces an extra disincentive of 50 per cent. on earnings. If a man does overtime, on every £1 extra which he earns he will suffer, not as a result of income tax, but as a result of the scheme. Every earnings means-tested scheme must be a disincentive.
  I give the Minister credit: this is an extremely ingenious scheme. The right hon. Gentleman has taken tremendous trouble to try to reduce the disincentive. He has left a margin for people to earn 50 per cent. extra. But the man at the bottom will be heavily taxed, despite the right hon. Gentleman's ingenuity. The scheme has built into it a formidable 50 per cent. disincentive, which is not disputed by the Minister.
  I wish to mention another disadvantage about which I know something, namely, the administrative disadvantage. I listened with great interest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's statement. He and the Prime Minister say, "Our aim is to cut back the areas of government". Yet this is a brand new and very complicated extra piece of bureaucracy. If the Minister were running a charity—and he is interested in charities—and found that he was paying in overheads 10 per cent. of all the money that he collected he would think twice about the efficiency of the charity. On his calculation, £1 in every £10 for these people will be spent on administration. Our calculation is that it will cost a great deal more in view of the endless judicial disputes which will arise before the Supplementary Benefits Commission.
  The Minister has calculated that only 200 civil servants will be involved. My impression from people I know in the Supplementary Benefits Commission is that the Minister has grossly under-estimated the cost in thinking that it will be 10 per cent. The Minister calculates that only 200 people in Whitehall will be involved. That is quite a considerable force.

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  The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames said that every penny of this scheme will go to people who deserve it. I hope that he is right. But a scheme like this, with these kinds of definition, is a scrounger's paradise. What a paradise it will be for the man or woman who can competently argue his or her case, who can suppress the facts, who can pervert the meaning of "part-time employment". There will have to be very complicated regulations and a very large number of investigators to check how many claims are genuine. Then, at the end of every six months, the situation will be reviewed. People will have to fill in another form and state their income again.
  I do not like to say this, but we were harried by the Government, when they were in opposition, about scroungers on social security. We did not increase means-tested social security benefits thereby creating new fields of operation for scroungers. That is what this scheme is. The Government do not have to implement it. They could have dealt with the matter through family allowances if they had not given the money away by reducing the standard rate of income tax by 6d.
  By introducing this inordinately expensive and totally unnecessary scheme, the Minister has had to delay paying anything until next August. He says that he would love to pay the benefit before then, but he cannot because he has created a lovely Procrustean bed on which he has lain himself. He is nailing himself on it, saying, "Until all the nails are in and until we have all the investigators and trained staff required, this pittance cannot be paid". He could have paid it straight away if he had kept his election promises.
  Sir K. Joseph: Not for the first child.
  Mr. Crossman: There is the difficulty of the family allowances pledge. The right hon. Gentleman did not promise in the election to pay anything for the first child. He promised to pay on the basis of existing family allowances. He therefore has the problem of the first child, which is a genuine problem. I hoped that he would tell us that the first child would be dealt with by family allowances. That would have cost him £80 million, which is only a small proportion of the sum which
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  the Government are giving away by reducing the standard rate of income tax by 6d. He could have done it, but he will not do that. He invents another scheme. He was congratulated by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Thames on his early action for the over-80s.
  That early action has produced an inordinately complicated scheme to pay out £3 a week to about 80,000 old people, at least 40,000 of whom will have it as a pure book-keeping transaction. He has had to advertise this and has spent about £30,000 on advertisements to collect the people. I guarantee that, of the people he has collected, at most 20,000 will get the £3, and that the rest will be getting this already and will merely receive a form saying, "Sorry, if you thought that you were going to get this £3, you were mistaken". He did all that straight away. Like a lion, he rushed in and roared, "This is an injustice: I will remedy it". He will get the kick-back when these people discover how many of them are being defrauded in this way.
  In addition to this inordinately expensive scheme for the over-80s., he backs another scheme to complicate the issue of paying the very poor, which will produce appalling administrative tangles and enormous delays, but which has the advantage of being cheaper. I take his point: one has to keep on good terms with Chancellors, as I know very well.
  He rightly mentioned one advantage of the scheme—that exemptions will apply automatically. I have one word of warning here. For instance, he intends to put up the prescription charges. What always surprised me as Minister was the miraculous honesty of the British people. We had a spot check, and it was staggering that, although the scheme is wide open to corruption—one has only to sign one's name on a bit of paper—the people have remained honest.
  The main reason is that the amount at issue is very small. Honesty is something that one always goes in for up to a certain level and then, like income tax payers, one begins to feel the necessity to practise evasion. This applies up to a certain level, but over, say, £3,000 a year, as we know, the calculation of the money involved enters into it.
  If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that he can sharply increase prescription

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  charges and link them to the cost of the medicine, let me tell him now that there will be widespread corruption and that he will not be able to check it without the most inordinate complication of procedure. I know what I am talking about. So let him be careful and not boast too much about prescription charges, because there will be trouble if he plays with them. The best thing is to get rid of them: if one cannot do so, then keep them, but at a level at which people do not think that it is worth while to defraud the Government. That is just by the way.
  Coming back to "the first phase", we now know what he means. One cuts a thing back, one has an extraordinarily intricate means-tested scheme applied to wage earners which has a maximum disincentive in it. That is the first phase of the great counter-revolution in the social security sector. Could the right hon. Gentleman give us a hint of what the other phases will be? What terrible complications can he invent for not spending money in some other sectors? Will there be some complicated formula for hospital beds, or can he find other intricate devices for using more and more civil servants and spending less and less money through them? That is the declared policy, I gather. That is the Government's policy, and it will be difficult for him.
  Someone sent me the other day a letter which the Prime Minister's Secretary was sending to old-age pensioners who were asking for more money. It is a nice letter, because it says, in effect, "You have had a good increase given you in the last year by the Labour Government and you should be grateful for this increase, which has not all been eaten away by increased costs." Up to a point, of course, it has. We all know that, in this week, when the old-age pensioners get their 8s. and 13s. they will be getting plus 3d.: everything else is just bringing them up to the value of the pension a year ago, and that 3d. will easily go in gas and electricity charges.
  We are told that there is nothing else in future for them—no prospects of anything. I listened with care to the Chancellor and I know that he has not budgeted for an earnings-related increase in the pension. My calculation is that
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  he has budgeted only for a cost-of-living-related pension increase. If the right hon. Gentleman is to be as good as he says, he must get very "eager beaver" with that Chancellor, because next year at the latest, in the Budget, there must be a full earnings-related increase.
  Here is a man who proudly attacked me time after time, saying, "We Tories have always kept pensions moving up faster than wages." I would not ask him to do that at the moment, but I would like them to go nearly as fast. They have two years to catch up and if the right hon. Gentleman does not catch up, he will have cut back and introduced major poverty for the old.
  We want to know something about these "phases" if we are to judge this Bill as the new approach which is changing our comprehensive and universal policies. It is a dirty little Bill, by itself a complicated little Bill. It is a typical civil servants' Bill and I am sorry that the Secretary of State borrowed it. However, since he has borrowed it, let us tidy it up as much as we can and see that it does as little harm as possible.
  6.7 p.m.
  Mr. J. Enoch Powell: It is an unusual privilege to be able to follow the two right hon. Members who perhaps have most authority of any in the House in the area of this debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) has an experience and a knowledge of the administration and the principles which no one else can come anywhere near rivalling. The right hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) has applied his vivid and sharp intellect to these matters over at least 20 years with constant verve and excitement, though with constantly changing results. In his speech, the right hon. Member for Coventry, East dilated principally upon the intricacies which he apprehended in the scheme in the Bill, but I want to refer to considerations more fundamental.
  I have no doubt that this Bill, despite the reasoned Amendment of the Opposition, will receive a Second Reading tonight; but it represents a momentous, if not a fateful, step, which it is well should be recognised before we give it that Second Reading. It is the custom with momentous and fateful steps in

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  politics that they can so easily be represented as only an extension of what has already been in existence for a long time, that they can be so easily represented as very small and minor in themselves; but they are momentous and fateful nevertheless, and this is the case with this Bill.
  We cannot fully appreciate what this Bill does without seeing it in the context of my right hon. Friends' policies for housing—of which, of course, we do not yet have the details—and for exemptions from the new or increased charges in the National Health Service. So although those subjects do not fall within the scope of this debate, it is necessary, as has already been said, to bring them into account in order to get the full picture.
  What will happen in regard to housing is that, for all rented accommodation, there will apply a system of rebates or subsidies on a sliding scale according to earnings and according to size of family: this will be general over the whole field of rented accommodation. We are going to do the same in regard to exemptions from charges under the National Health Service: they will be applied according to a scale related to earnings and related to size of family. And now in this Bill we are introducing cash supplements to the income of those in full employment, again upon a scale related to size of earnings and size of family.
  I recognise that it is possible to argue that we have already had supplementation of wages of those in full employment in the form of housing subsidies and otherwise. As council housing came to cover an ever-increasing area of the total stock of houses, it was possible to say that here was an element of the cost of living of those in full employment which was not covered by wages but was covered by a system of redistribution amongst the ratepayers and the taxpayers. In fact, I remember that some 16 or 17 years ago I gave to an article attacking the then system of housing subsidies the title "Speenhamland in Modern Dress." We have indeed, under the last Administration, come quite close to what is happening in this Bill by their new device of family allowances with claw-back.
  But after allowing for all such implications of the institutions which we have already, the institutions of the welfare state, and for their relationship with wage
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  levels as they stand at present, still I do not think it can be denied that we are taking a decisive new step now by the overt and direct payment—if I may use old-fashioned but significant and appropriate language—of "relief in supplementation of wages". That is the essence of what is new about the Bill.
  We are reminded that
  "there is no new thing under the sun".
  It was on 6th May, 1795, that the Berkshire Magistrates met at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Astor). I do not hold him to blame for this in any way. They were facing a critical situation not unlike that which we are facing today, though they had the excuse, which we have not, of some of the consequences of the Revolutionary War with France. They were facing a rapid inflation and its impact upon the standard of living, and the relations between the classes and the institutions of the country. They met to consider what to do. They took that day a fateful decision: to pay relief in supplementation of wages to able-bodied men who were in full-time employment.
  I took the opportunity today to refresh my memory of the description which Trevelyan gives in his English Social History of the consequences of that step. I will not trouble the House with any long quotation, though, if I may respectfully say so, it would be no bad thing for hon. Members forming a judgment upon the Bill to remind themselves of the story of that generation from 1795 to 1835. But I will ask the indulgence of the House to read two sentences from Trevelyan.
  First, what the justices did:
  "They drew up and published a scale by which every 'poor and industrious person' should receive from the parish a certain sum per week in addition to his wages, so much for himself and so much for other members of the family, when the loaf cost a shilling. As the loaf rose, the dole was to rise with it."
  And the consequences:
  "This payment of rates in aid of wages relieved the large employing farmer from the necessity of giving a living wage to his work-people … while at the same time it compelled the labourer to become a pauper even when he was in full work."
  I would like to quote one further description—a single sentence from an

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  authoritative history of local government in this country—of those consequences in other words:
  "There was a fall in the value of labour in consequence, and in more than one parish the authorities decided that the rate of wages should be nothing and that the pauperised labourer was to be paid from the poor rate."
  There seems to be a mysterious law which governs our affairs, whereby, at a cycle of unhappily indeterminate length, we are fated to repeat the errors of our forefathers, often being prevented from recognising clearly what we are doing by the difference in external and, if I may say so, accidental circumstances.
  Of course, as my right hon. Friend said in his opening speech, there is hardly any comparison between the supply and demand wage of a labourer in 1795—the real value—and its value today. But that does not affect the principle of what is involved and that does not affect what will flow from the consequences of that principle being altered and subverted. Those consequences concern every section of the community and every class of society. But there is no section which they concern so much as organised labour, particularly the organisations representing lower-paid labour. The whole purpose of the organisation of labour—I do not raise the question how far that purpose has been attained or, indeed, could be attained by combination—and much of the impulse through which the party opposite came into existence, has been the determination to secure for the worker, in terms of cash, the full competitive market value of his services. It is that which is called in question, and deeply called in question, by what we are doing in the Bill.
  The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) put a very subtle but pertinent Written Question to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Employment two or three days ago. The hon. Gentleman asked:
  "… what is his estimate of the approximate cost to the national wage bill, respectively, of restoring the differentials between skilled workers and low-paid workers consequent on the effect of a family income supplement scheme?"
  My hon. Friend the Minister of State, replied:
  "I would not expect the family income supplement scheme to have any effect on the national wages bill."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th November, 1970; Vol. 805, c. 466.]
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  I think that my hon. Friend is a bold man to make the assertion that the payment—even initially—to scores of thousands of persons in full-time employment of a supplement to their wages, upon the principle that they cannot be expected, on the wages of full-time employment, to maintain, with minimum decency of shelter and other requirements, even the minimum family unit of man, wife and one child, let alone to take responsibility for rearing a larger family, will have no effect upon the size, not to mention the shape, of the national wages bill. Of course, my right hon. Friend pointed out this afternoon that the wood is still green, that this is just a beginning, only a small percentage. He contrasted the percentage of those in employment who would be affected by the Bill with the percentage of workers in the 1830s—or was it 1818?—who were in receipt of relief under the Speenhamland system. But if this is the beginning, I shall be surprised if it is the end.
  Section 2(2) is, I think, perhaps the shortest subsection in the Bill but, as can happen, it is one of the most important subsections:
  "Regulations may substitute different amounts for those mentioned in this section."
  That is what used to be called a "sliding scale" in the days of Speenhamland system. Which way will it slide? In which direction will the pressure take it? Will it go downwards, so that we find that we can eliminate altogether the payment of cash supplements to persons in full-time employment, or will all the pressure of inflation, of politics, of all the temptations and stresses which we in this House know so well, work the other way?
  The reformers in the 1830s were hard, harsh and, it seems to us, unimaginative men, who were called upon to end the system which had grown from its first beginnings in 1795. But at least they re-established a principle, a principle from which the Bill decisively departs. It is the principle that it is an act of fateful consequence to pay relief—cash supplementation of income—to persons in full-time employment; that it is something which is bound profoundly to distort the wage system and to frustrate the ambition—which seems to me to be almost indissociable from the idea of a free society—that a man should receive as

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  near as may be the full value of his work in cash. Sooner or later, and I fear it may be later, we shall have to return to that principle.
  Candour obliges one to state what is the corollary to that principle. It is not a corollary in which there are any politics; it is a corollary of logic. It is that benefit to those of working age and working capacity who are not in full-time employment is necessarily related to the market level of wages attainable by those at the lower, indeed the lowest, levels of full-time employment; for the "wage stop" is not some diabolical invention that can be got rid of by any kind of dodge—the wage stop expresses a fundamental fact. This does not affect what we do for the disabled, for the long-term sick and for the retired. Between what we do for them and this principle there is only a remote and indirect connection which gives us, happily, a great latitude, of which I believe this party and this Government will continue to avail itself. But in the end we shall ill serve our fellow countrymen by beginning to depart, and I fear thereafter departing ever more, from that fundamental principle—the evil of relief in supplementation of wages.
  We shall no doubt give the Bill a Second Reading tonight, but many of those who vote for it or let it go through will live to regret what we have done.
  6.25 p.m.
  Mr. Frederick Mulley: I am sure that the House has been interested to hear from the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) yet another lecture to his hon. Friends on the Government benches. We can all see that the principle of giving relief to people able to work is a fundamental step. The right hon. Gentleman reminded us of the history of the Speenhamland system. When the magistrates deliberated in May, 1795, they were concerned only to deal with the small problem of that parish in Berkshire, and only over a period of time was this system adopted nationally.
  I am disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman did not say what he would do about the problem which concerns us all, namely, the real poor and the people who will be made poorer as time goes on by the deliberate policies of the party which he supports. It is not good enough for
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  him to attack his right hon. Friends without accepting some responsibility for the policies, or promises, which they put to the electorate in June, and on the strength of which they became the Government, without saying what he would do, as a man concerned about poverty, to relieve the situation.
  We are today in the unusual situation of debating a tiny Bill, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) referred to it, while being concerned with a great principle. Something must be done to meet the problem of poverty, but I am not satisfied that this is the best method, whether it is judged by the standards of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West or by the standards of the people who are in real need. All hon. Members must try to change the attitude of people to the whole question of family provision. Many people, particularly those who are past middle age and have brought up their children without assistance with school meals, and so on, will not like this new system. I am sure that many votes were won for the Conservatives by a whispering campaign on the doorsteps about the Labour Party being soft on scroungers. We must find a way to eliminate the dodges, without being unreasonably inquisitorial. But, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East illustrated so well, the Bill will make it easier rather than more difficult to scrounge.
  We must recognise that there is a need to do something about family provision. I feel strongly that the most effective way would be to increase family allowances, probably by instituting an allowance for the first child. This would be costly, although claw-back comes into this and the point in the income tax scale when the family pays the standard rate of tax. There can be adjustments in child allowances.
  I was disappointed that the Secretary of State talked as though the rules of the Board of Inland Revenue were like the laws of the Medes and Persians and completely immutable. Equally, he grossly exaggerated the difficulty of paying an allowance for the first child. There may well be some three million families which would come within the scheme and which are not in the scheme now. I would have thought it was much easier to get a response from people to fill up

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  forms to claim a child's allowance than to get over the very complicated provisions of this Bill. What is much more germane is that it is fairly easy to check whether someone has a child, and it is a very much easier scheme for people to understand and to administer. We hear of a few families being prosecuted for claiming more family allowance than their entitlement, but broadly it is a pretty simple administrative process and one which I think would go much further to meeting the needs of poverty, with which we are concerned.
  Another reason why we should all rethink our attitude to family provision is that this House, in its last Session, enacted the Equal Pay Act. I believe that it was completely right. My own trade union, incidentally, has been campaigning for it for many years. But it will change people's attitudes to wages and family provision. Although there was unanimity, in the House and outside, on the principle of equal pay, there is still to be found among many people, of both sexes, a feeling that men's wages ought to be higher than women's because the man has to provide for a family in the way that a single person, usually a single woman, does not. It will not be easy to get agreement. I understand the average differential between men's and women's wages is about 25 per cent., and that, as equal pay for work of equal value is implemented over the next five years, there will be increases to women of about 30 per cent. above whatever increases are paid to the men. It will be extremely difficult to get agreement in an atmosphere of difficult industrial relations, again not made easier by actions of right hon. Gentlemen opposite.
  If we are to move, as I think we must, to the concept of the rate for the job being paid to a man or a woman, a single person or married person, clearly we have to make greater provision for the large family, for the particularly difficult circumstances to which the Bill is addressed but which, to my mind, it fails utterly to meet.
  I cannot predict how the negotiations for our entry into the European Economic Community will go. My views are sufficiently well known. I hope that conditions are such that we may become a member of that Community. But, over
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  the whole range of social services and certainly in the context of family provision, most European countries do very much more than we do. Of course, they are doing it with varying degrees of efficiency. In Beleium and France, for example, there are legislative requirements for equal pay for equal work and some form of family provision, either from the State or through an employer's payment, looms quite large in the remuneration of the family unit.
  If the Government are insistent on going through with the Bill, I hope that it will be only a first step. After all, it deals with only half of the really needy and with less than 1 per cent. of families without children. The Government ought to get down to the fundamentals which they were urged to consider by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West and deal with the particular points which my right hon. Friends and hon. Friends have made. I hope that a study will be made by the Department of Health and Social Security, the Department of Employment and the Treasury with a view to making real provision for the family and at the same time dealing with the problem of poverty and easing the important but troublesome transition from the present structure of differences of payment between the sexes to the proper implementation of equal pay.
  I urge the Government to make a study in depth of this matter. I suggest that that could well be one of the early studies of the new unit in the Cabinet Office because this is a fundamental problem.
  6.36 p.m.
  Mrs. Jill Knight: This Bill is perhaps best described as the third of a trilogy from the new Westminster authors. As such, it is not a great tome. It is only a little pamphlet, but in some ways a helpful one, and it is worthy of support. The new principle which underlies the Chancellor's measures, those of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment, and those contained in the Bill, is that benefits can no longer be paid to practically everybody but must be confined only to the really needy.
  It seems to me that the reverse of this is ridiculous. It is ridiculous not only at a time of financial stringency but at

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  any time that the State should pay out benefits in one form to people who could well afford to stand on their own feet.
  It is also a right principle because, to pay out such universal benefits, taxation has to be very high. I am strongly against the principle of high taxation on many grounds. One is that it is such a strong disincentive to hard work, and as such cannot possibly fail to harm the country. Another is that, when we have high taxation, prices go up too and we get into great difficulties when we endeavour to sell our goods overseas. For that reason also, the adoption of a principle which must call for high taxation will harm the country.
  Obviously, of course, under the old principle of benefits for all, the really needy people must receive less, and this is perhaps the strongest reason of all for rejecting it. Some people say the Bill will not help enough needy families. Certainly it will not help all needy families. No one has for one moment pretended that it will. But 110,000 two-parent families will benefit, and 54,000 fatherless families will benefit, and this is much more help than has been available hitherto. The cost, we are told, is £8·6 million per annum.
  The hon. Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) made what I thought was a very unwise move when she attempted to suggest that one of the main things wrong with the Bill was that a promise had been given in the Conservative Party manifesto that family allowances would be increased and that this would be the way in which we should help the poorer families. She would be better advised not to enter into any sort of argument about election pledges not being fulfilled. I could spend the rest of the evening on that point.
  Perhaps I might, instead, remind the hon. Lady of one example which springs to mind instantly. It concerns the promise made in the Labour Party's 1964 manifesto which said clearly that an incomes guarantee would be produced for those already retired and for widows. There was no question that it would not be brought into being. However, that pledge was broken blatantly, as were many others. The hon. Lady would have been wise not to adopt that tack when arguing against this side of the House.
  Mr. John Pardoe: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Knight: No, I will not give way—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]
  The hon. Lady was also wrong in the content of what she said when she instanced the promise made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that poorer families would be helped. At the time, it looked as if the best way of helping them would be by increasing family allowances. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told us that, if the necessary family allowance increase were brought in and the claw-back procedure were used, for every £1 paid out to a poorer family, the gross cost would be £30. Can the hon. Lady seriously suggest that, when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister came into possession of those facts, he could continue to believe that increasing family allowances was the best way of helping poorer families?
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: I was not referring to any statement in the manifesto but to a specific statement by the Prime Minister in answer to a letter in which he said that this was the only way to help families in need. The hon. Lady's point underlines that it is extremely unwise to make pledges about which one cannot know all the facts.
  Mrs. Knight: The hon. Lady emphasises my point. When she talks about a promise made in a letter or in our manifesto, she should remember that to this side of the House a promise is a promise—[Interruption.]—not a lightly-given pledge. The underlying promise made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was that our first care would be to help the poorer families.
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: That is not what he said.
  Mrs. Knight: My right hon. Friend said that he would increase family allowances. When he came into office, he discovered that, for every £1 paid out in family allowances, the gross cost would be £30. That is a strong disincentive for following the principle of family allowances.
  What my right hon. Friend said was that the first care of the incoming Conservative Government would be to alleviate the problems facing our poorer families. That is precisely what the Bill

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  tries to do. Clearly the hon. Lady cannot be in her customary top form if she follows that line of argument. In this Bill, we are giving much more help to poorer families than was available hitherto.
  I am sorry to see that the right hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man) has left the Chamber. He made a much more cheerful and light-hearted speech than we used to hear from him when he was in office. In view of his obvious happiness today, we wish him many years on the back benches opposite.
  The right hon. Gentleman said that the Bill would encourage scroungers. At the same time, the Opposition say that under the Bill there must be a means test or some other proof of need. If proof of need has to be offered, how can this proposal more readily encourage scroungers? It is extraordinary to suggest that the introduction of a means test will encourage scroungers and that getting rid of a means test will get rid of scroungers. The two do not add up. If people scrounge under a means test, clearly they will do so more readily under a scheme in which they do not have to prove need.
  Mr. Kinnock: The hon. Lady is probably aware that anyone referring to scroungers under this scheme is not referring directly to the scheme but to the fact that it is so inadequate as to encourage people not to go to work. That is the point.
  Mrs. Knight: Apparently I have more faith in people than has the hon. Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Kinnock). The fact remains that a means test will not automatically result in a large number of scroungers, but it is quite wrong to suggest that the removal of a means test will result, as if by magic, in no more scroungers.
  It is also clear that we cannot have a system whereby anyone who asks for help is given it automatically. It has been suggested that the Bill obliges poor families to parade their poverty. What other kind of help do those critics suggest whereby no questions are asked with a view to ascertaining the existence of need? As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey) pointed out in an excellent maiden
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  speech, the claw-back system also embodies a means test. That should be understood more clearly than it is, apparently, by hon. Gentlemen opposite.
  I turn now to those who will have their incomes made up under the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) has already indicated the real cause for concern that there is, and I agree with him. Nevertheless, one has also to bear in mind the point of view of the employee. If a man were to be told that he would earn only £X per week and that he would get the rest in the form of a family income supplement, I imagine that he might have considerable doubts about accepting the job. I appreciate my right hon. Friend's point that it rather depends on whether we have full employment. If a man is told that he is to be paid only a small wage but that he will not be affected because it will be made up, he will not necessarily go away happily and apply for a family income supplement and nor would any trade union let an employer get away with it.
  Clause 5 describes the way in which the family income supplement is to be paid. However, I hope that we shall have more information about it. As I read subsection (2), the payment may be received by the man or woman included in the family. At present, family allowances almost invariably are drawn by the mothers. I think that that is right. Unless they are drawn by the mothers, quite often they do not get into the housekeeping purse. I would rather that cash payments of this kind were not paid to fathers, and I hope that this important point will be cleared up tonight.
  A family income supplement may possibly not be the best answer to the problems that face poor families, but it seems a better answer than to increase family allowances. I have more faith than hon. Gentlemen opposite in my right hon. Friend and I have no doubt that if he discovers that the Bill and this method of assisting needy families is not working, he will alter it. Meanwhile this is a simple, economical Bill which appears to make the best use of available resources.
  All sorts of figures are being bandied about as to the sums that will be received by families with one, two, three or four children. These calculations are being

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  made in newspaper articles and by hon. Members. Far more important than the figures are the effects that the Bill will have on solving the problems facing poor families. The conflicting evidence that we have only makes everything more confusing. We shall have to wait and see how this works out in practice and I hope that it will work in the way in which my right hon. Friend explained that it would work.
  The intentions of the Bill are good. It is a little first step forward and I hope that before long we shall see some bigger strides made to solve this problem. Some of the accusations made by hon. Gentlemen opposite in this matter are like accusing a person who is attempting to give warm clothes and shelter to a person who is cold of not going far enough because a full wardrobe and house is not being supplied. The Bill is not a full wardrobe but it is a good first step. It will provide help and it should be supported.
  6.52 p.m.
  Mr. Hugh D. Brown: I am tempted to tell the hon. Lady the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) that I have heard her make better speeches. Perhaps she responds better when she is in opposition. I had better not follow that line, because this is the first speech that I have made in opposition and it presents me with some difficulty. I do not think I am built for opposition, mainly because I prefer to think constructively.
  The electors of Provan are lucky to have a nice, simple, uncomplicated fellow like me as their representative. After listening to the speech of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), I sympathise with the torment that he must go through when called upon to make a decision on this revolutionary Bill. The doom he sees for the country at large is quite frightening. I am surprised that such a mouse of a Measure should have produced those thoughts from someone with the undoubted ability and imagination of the right hon. Gentleman.
  I am always delighted to listen to another instalment in the Cabinet confessions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), who I regret is not in his
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  place. I thought that he was having a hard job trying to build a case against the Bill. I like to think that I can test a Measure of this kind by conducting a simple exercise on behalf of my constituents. Excluding all the wider implications of the Bill—such as its being linked with a package of other provisions, and the consequences that may flow from that, although I agree that they must be examined—it should be reasonably easy to ask, "Does this Bill help anybody? If so, it should be supported. Does it harm anybody? If so, it should be rejected." Perhaps I take too simple a view of testing a Measure of this kind. Certainly I do not take the lofty intellectual approach which some adopt simply to make an appraisal of this, what seems to me, simple piece of legislation.
  Yet the Government have not helped us to take a simple view of the matter. I have the impression that the Bill is likely to have its Committee stage on the Floor of the House. If, through the usual channels, this turns out to be the case, I trust that we shall be supplied with all the necessary information to give the Measure a thorough examination. I say that because although it is a small and apparently straightforward Bill, some of its provisions are quite frightening. I would, therefore, object to its being taken on the Floor of the House without being given the very fullest information about the regulations.
  I assure the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West that I have no objection in principle to legislation simply because it has an income test built into it. However, he was right to draw attention to some of the complications that may arise from that test.
  In Glasgow we have a rent rebate scheme—I am not making a party point; it was introduced when Labour was in control, though it has been amended several times—and one in seven council tenants claims rent rebate, and we have 150,000 council tenants. However, one in seven of those are refused a rebate, which presupposes that it is a complicated system for people to understand.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): So that I am able correctly to pass on to my right hon. Friend the point being made by the hon. Gentleman, may I ask him to say whether he is referring to one

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  in seven Glasgow council tenants applying for rebates, of whom one in seven is refused, or have I misunderstood his statistics?
  Mr. Brown: One in seven applies and of that one in seven, one in seven is refused. In other words, about 20,000 people apply, about 3,000 are refused. This means that it is a complicated scheme, although obviously people are entitled to claim and leave it to the authorities to decide whether they are entitled to benefit.
  In connection with a rent rebate scheme, a model has just been produced by a sub-committee of the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee. The model has not yet been discussed, but after two years of study by a competent group of people, this model scheme will obviously receive much attention. It seems from reading it, however, that if one adds A, B and C and subtracts the amount allocated to D, and then goes on to do the other necessary calculation, first having read the buts, ifs and ands, one is hard put to it to know whether one should qualify for rebate. I do not say this in a modest sense because it was part of my job some time ago to understand something about benefits and allowances. This gives some idea how complicated life is becoming for the ordinary citizen in sorting out the benefits to which he is entitled.
  For example, why is the family allowance included for the purposes of family income under this Bill? The family allowance seems to be excluded as part of the family income in certain of the other tests which I understand the Minister is aiming at synchronising. How does it fit in with the Government's philosophy of trying to standardise or synchronise these various means tests of benefits and allowances, and exemption from various charges? Will the Government compel local authorities to introduce a standard formula of rent rebate? They will obviously compel local authorities to operate a standard rent rebate for the private tenant.
  This is not so far removed from the Bill as the House might be tempted to think, because I am relating it to the need to try to bring in a common level of income below which people will
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  qualify for the various benefits and concessions and family income supplement that might be available. This is the kind of thing that should be looked at in great detail, but in the absence of any Clause of this kind it is difficult to think in constructive terms in relation to what I believe to be one of the major areas of the Bill that requires examination.
  Therefore we need to look at what the Secretary of State promised in the debate on 5th November, reported in c. 438 of HANSARD, when he outlined the various income levels below which people will not pay prescription charges, and will get free school meals, milk, and so on. The House is entitled to much more information than it has had, or than it looks like getting if we have the Committee stage on the Floor of the House.
  The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is right to draw attention to the need to appreciate the repercussions of anything we do. It is odd that the Government should at this time be dismantling the Prices and Incomes Board, although I do not say that that is the right organisation or that it has the right title. Instead, the Government are setting up the high-sounding Office of Manpower Economics.
  The Secretary of State for Employment said on 2nd November:
  "The Government also intend to use the new Office of Manpower Economics to service any ad hoc inquiries which are necessary from time to time to examine in depth particular pay structures and related problems."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1970; Vol 805, c. 668.]
  One of the most urgent examinations was started by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment.
  The Government are setting up this body to look at doctors' salaries, and the salaries of top civil servants, and the chairmen of the nationalised industries, and the pay and allowances of the Armed Forces, but if they want the country to believe that they are genuinely concerned about the low-wage earner why cannot they guarantee that any information from the operation of the family income supplement identifying low-wage earners will be made one of the first specific remits to the Office of Manpower Economics? That would go a long way to convincing me that the Government were really genuine

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  in trying to do something for these people.
  One should not be unduly alarmed about disincentives, but if we are concerned about the lower-paid workers—and I do not care whether we are dealing with the unmarried mother or the fatherless family or any of the other peculiar and tragic problems we meet—I see no difficulty in the Government being asked to give an assurance that they will make good use of the information they get about those in full-time employment who are grossly underpaid, so that we can expose the employers. This is not a party point, because I rather suspect that some of the employers who will be exposed will in some cases be the Government and in others the local authorities. So what I say is not necessarily an attack on the vicious or niggardly employers, although these do exist in some areas. If we can identify some areas in which action could be taken some good may come from the Bill.
  I take up one point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East. I do not see people in part-time employment rushing to take on full-time work in order to get this supplement. It will be the other way round in genuine circumstances. I add my tribute to the tributes paid by many hon. Members to the Supplementary Benefits Commission. I know of one woman, separated from her husband—tragic circumstances, and all the rest—with two children and not receiving any maintenance from her husband. Because she was working full-time the Supplementary Benefits Commission could do nothing for her, but with a little help and understanding she was enabled to do part-time work which, with supplementary benefit, brought in about as much.
  The Government must be careful in defining full-time and part-time work. The woman I have mentioned was encouraged by all of us who knew the circumstances to go on part-time work, which enabled the S.B.C. to make a payment and, at the same time, disregard the first £2 of her earnings. Disregards are not mentioned in this miserable Bill. We do not know what will or what will not be disregarded. If this is not instant Government I do not know what is. One hon. Member opposite had to apologise in this respect for his right hon. Friends, so
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  this angle has obviously not been thought out properly.
  Whilst I am not against the Bill in principle, I hope that we will get much more detailed information. For instance, what facilities will be available in supplementary benefits offices to satisfy the legitimate queries of full-time workers? Will these offices be open at night? If so, have the necessary additional staff been included in the total of 200? Considerable thought must be given to these practical considerations.
  Although I may not have reached the lofty heights achieved by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, I hope that I have been able to indicate to the Government that if and when we deal with the Bill in Committee they can expect serious criticism and comment.
  7.10 p.m.
  Sir Brandon Rhys Williams: I am beginning to be quite sorry for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State: he has been shot at from all parts of the House, by the journalists, by the experts, by the Blue Meanies, who think that the Bill goes too far, and by the bleeding hearts. He has been shot at by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). He is about to be shot at from Kensington.
  Before I launch into my remarks, I want to congratulate our maiden speakers and, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey) who spoke with moving knowledge of the problems of child poverty and with a largeness of spirit and sincerity which I am sure will commend him to the whole House.
  The problem we are now dealing with is nothing new. It is certainly a couple of hundred years old. It arises from the fact that employers cannot be expected to pay more than the market rate for labour to their employees, regardless of their employees' commitments. The House has recently endorsed that principle by adopting the idea of equal pay for men and for women. Formerly, it was thought that employers should pay more to men than to women for work of approximately equal value because there was a social conscience at work which suggested that

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  a man would be likely to have commitments that a woman would not have. By rejecting that thought we have consolidated the principle that the employer pays only the market rate.
  There will, thus inevitably be cases where the market rate is sufficient for single men and women to live in reasonable dignity, but is not sufficient for a married couple to do so even when they have only one child, let alone more. This situation is not new. It is one in which society has felt again and again compelled to intervene.
  I listened, as I always do, with rapt attention to the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. He perhaps knows that on social policies I stand at exactly the opposite end of the spectrum from him. I want the Conservative Party to advance on the lines laid down by Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Disraeli—and perhaps, in this context, one could also mention Stanley Baldwin. My right hon. Friend, as I understand him, wants us rather to abandon Conservatism altogether, and not to advance at all, but rather to go back to the liberalism of John Stuart Mill and Samuel Smiles which, in the nineteenth century, the Conservative Party devoted itself to defeating. But he made a very interesting case when he mentioned the Speenhamland plan, and there is an unfortunate parallel between this Bill and the attempts of those magistrates in 1795. He argued with passion against all cash supplements to wages, but I felt that his passion outran his logic here because he did not deal with family allowances, and what are family allowances if they are not cash supplements paid to people in regular work?
  Mr. Powell: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for giving way. Leaving aside, for the moment, family allowances with claw-back, the essence of family allowances is that they are not related to the income of the recipient except via the tax system, which is a quite different matter.
  Sir B. Rhys Williams: I entirely accept that family allowances are paid regardless of test of means, which is their glory in my eyes, but it cannot be denied that they are cash supplements paid to people in full time work. My right hon. Friend
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  did not allude, either, to child allowances in the tax system. Everyone can calculate for himself that if we require a married man with children to pay less tax than a married man without children, the man with children will have more spending power as a result, through the operation of the tax system. This is a negative supplement to the spending power of men in full-time work.
  My right hon. Friend deployed arguments which, I suppose, if accepted, would be thought to demolish the arguments in favour of negative income tax and all the systems that are grouped together under that generic term. I do not know whether that is what he intended to do, but that is where his argument would lead, and I would be most deeply disappointed if hon. Members on either side were to follow him in that attack. His arguments also led in favour of the wage-stop, which must be the most unpopular of all the aspects of our social service legislation; and in favour, as I understood his remarks, of the national minimum wage. Surely the national minimum wage, in that it places a social obligation on employers to defy the market mechanism, is strictly at variance with all the other teaching which my right hon. Friend has brought to us from the nineteenth century economists of the Manchester school.
  Let us look at some of the solutions which have been adopted over the generations to the problem set by the fact that wages paid by employers will not always be sufficient to maintain a man with a family in dignity. I think that it was in 1798, in the very dawn of the income tax, that William Pitt introduced the child allowances. These wretched negative allowances have been there from the very start. His reason for doing that was that it was necessary to recognise the fact, even if only in this negative way, that a man with children is less able to pay tax than a man without children. However, there is a limit to the amount to which one can differentiate between the spending power of a married man without children and a married man with children through the negative operation of the income tax.
  This same problem of family incomes was behind the repeal of the Corn Laws and the development of the whole policy in Britain of importing cheap food. The

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  cheap food policy and the availability of very cheap textiles made possible at the end of the nineteenth century the very large Victorian family which was found at all levels of society. Now, with our gradual withdrawal from the cheap food era, we are beginning to see a growth of interest in some of the other possible solutions.
  It is worth noting in passing that on the Continent, where the whole concept of cheap food was rejected, there is not this psychological objection to family allowances which still persists in North America and in Britain.
  Let us consider the effect of public education, because this obviously is a supplement to the wages of the married man with children which has very little, if any, effect on a single man or on a married man with no children. It is a nineteenth century innnovation. There is no doubt that the advent of public education was of great benefit to a family man who could not otherwise have met the commitment to educate his children.
  We see too the gradual rise of the concepts of National Insurance, which specifically singles out for higher scales of benefit the man, where he is unemployed or sick, who has children to support. And the council housing experiment was another way indirectly of subsidising the family man more than the single man. Finally, in 1945 the House introduced family allowances.
  Mr. T. L. Iremonger: I am trying to follow my hon. Friend's argument. He will correct me if I am wrong. Is it not a mistake to regard family allowances as being a supplement to wages in their concept? The reason for family allowances, as I always understood them and as Lord Beveridge explained, was that, if there is to be a compulsory national insurance scheme covering unemployment, family allowances must be paid to people in employment, because otherwise the minimum acceptable level of unemployment benefit will be too attractive for the bachelor.
  Sir B. Rhys Williams: There are numerous arguments in favour of family allowances. One of them is that the disincentive effect, which men feel when out of work, is whittled away if, when they return to work, they do not lose the whole of the child allowance which they get
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  when sick or unemployed. Professor Townsend has argued this point lately, I think convincingly, when he said that it is by raising family allowances that we can diminish the disincentive to return to work that a certain number of people in Britain undoubtedly feel.
  In spite of all these efforts to equalise the standard of living of single men and women on the one hand, and married people with children on the other hand, it is obvious, not just from the campaign by the Child Poverty Action Group but from many other signs, that the British public is not satisfied.
  At the time of the Budget I tabled an Early Day Motion entitled "Children of the Lower Paid", which read as follows:
  "That this House notes with concern the rise in the cost of living; and calls on the Government to concentrate help on those with the greatest need by increasing the value of allowances for the children of the lower paid."
  In the last Parliament that Early Day Motion attracted more than 70 signatures from Conservative Members. After the election I again tabled it and on this occasion many newly elected Members signed it and again it attracted more than 70 signatures. I do not think that on either occasion any member of either of the radical parties signed it, which was a great disappointment to me.
  The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), who I know will make a very appreciable contribution to all our thinking on the social services, though I did not entirely accept his argument in The Times today, drew up a somewhat similar Motion and obtained more than 50 signatures to it from among his colleagues. That shows that there is deep concern in the House on the question of child poverty and that it is not confined, as has been suggested, to Opposition Members.
  Faced with this problem, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has produced an oxymoron—something which is partly agreeable and partly extremely sour. He is immune from the attacks of people who say that he has broken faith. He is too well known in the House and in the country for attacks of bad faith to stick. But I cannot pretend that I think that the Bill is the final solution to the problem or is even well on the way to it. I think that it was Sir Max Beerbohm

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  who said that if a thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing badly. That seems to be the spirit in which my right hon. Friend is pluckily advancing down the road to Speenhamland.
  There are a number of points I should like to make, but which I think are Committee points. I sincerely echo the comment of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) to the effect that he hoped that the Bill would be taken in Standing Committee, partly because I shall not be here next week. But perhaps that will be the green light to my right hon. Friend to insist on the Committee stage being taken on the Floor of the House next week.
  Besides the points which are purely Committee ones and which I would want to raise later, there are four or five things which must be said about the Bill on Second Reading. I object to it firstly because it is a major extension of the area of the means test or, being more specific, the income test. I think that it was a bad thing that there were 2·7 million people dependent on supplementary benefits when the Conservative Government went out of office in 1964. It was appalling that at the end of the Labour Government's term of office there were more than 4 million people dependent on supplementary benefits. It seems to be a movement wholly in the wrong direction.
  Mr. O'Malley: The hon. Gentleman, who takes a close interest in these matters, knows full well one of the major reasons for the increase in the number, and that was that the Labour Government increased the poverty scale and increased the real value of supplementary benefits substantially.
  Sir B. Rhys Williams: There are all sorts of reasons why this has happened, but the fact is that there are now 4 million people who have to forfeit their self-respect by accepting supplementary benefits, which is wrong. With the best will in the world, the effect of this Bill will be to rush that figure up I suppose to some 5 million people, who will be dependent on supplementary benefits.
  This is a step decisively in the wrong direction. What has become of the talk of "one nation" if in the course of their
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  lives at least half the population have to submit to the means test—or the income test—and accept help from "the office"? What has become of the ideal of a property-owning democracy? We cannot come to rest on a Bill which at one stroke adds 800,000, or perhaps a million people, to the number that is obliged to go down to the office for help.
  Another thing I do not like about the Bill is that it will not come into effect until next August. A person who, having asked his friends to a party, pours out a glass of fizz for them all does not leave it standing on the side until every one of them has come. The drink might tend to go a little flat if he did. Considering the rate at which the prices of essential foods and other items are rising, if we leave this first payment to anybody under the Bill until next August, in the words made famous by Hermione Gingold the Cliquot will have lost some of its Veuve.
  I do not like the disincentive effects of the Bill. The Secretary of State does not deny that this is putting people in poverty straight on to surtax rates. Here is poverty surtax embodied in a new Bill at a rate of at least 10s. in the pound. The well known fact brought out in his admirable pamphlet by Professor Prest, which was published earlier in the year by the Institute of Economic Affairs, is that in some cases deductions from marginal earnings can go over 20s. in the pound. That cluster of means tests is probably for the most part above the level which will hit the people that will be affected by the Pill, unless the rates of benefit have to rise before the introduction of the first payment of benefit. But I think I am right in saying that the loss of rate rebates at 5s. in the pound would affect many of those covered by the Bill. Therefore, we are immediately putting many of them on to a marginal rate of tax—or on to a marginal loss of benefit—of about 15s. in the pound.
  One of the difficulties about the whole problem of disincentives is that there has been no accurate large scale field work, so it is hard to know exactly what the true disincentive effect is. I entirely reject the American line of thought that where such small numbers of people are involved and their contribution is by definition so small in any event, we need not bother about whether loss of benefits has a disincentive effect or not. It does no

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  good to discourage people from working by the insinuation that it does not matter much whether they work or not.
  We must think much more clearly about the disincentive effect of the withdrawal of marginal benefit or marginal income. Our hearts are stirred at the thought of the average taxpayer who has a marginal rate of 6s. 5d., and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think rightly, promised to reduce the income tax rate by 6d. in the £. Few people can argue themselves into a position where they can actually find that that was a step in the wrong direction, though some hon. Members opposite have almost done so.
  However, the average rate of tax paid by the average taxpayer is not 6s. 5d. It certainly is not 8s. 3d. It is under 4s. If income tax is crushing initiative at an average rate of under 4s. or at a marginal rate of 6s. 5d., how much more will poverty surtax crush initiative at 10s. in the pound or higher.
  I also do not like the Bill because it is only half enough. This is the corollary of the fact that this 50 per cent. marginal tax rate has been brought in, so that it takes people only half-way up to supplementary benefit level. It does not take them the whole way. It cannot. It can go only half-way; and this is why I suppose it will cost £7 million instead of the figure of perhaps £30 million, which was what we had in our minds before.
  I do not like the Bill because it will mean a monumental increase in the amount of case work undertaken by officers of the Supplementary Benefits Commission. The man from the Ministry wants to know this and will want to know that. Indeed, it is not possible to tell from the Bill exactly what the man from the Ministry will want to know, but it will be a whole load of detail. I cannot help wondering whether my right hon. Friend is not showing his delightful optimism rather too markedly when he says that only another 200 staff will be required. At the end of the Explanatory Memorandum we are told:
  "About 200 staff will be needed to administer the supplement".
  I think that there are about 1,030 offices through which the public can conduct their social security business. The suggestion is that in at least 800 of these offices the staff have time on their hands
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  and will be able to take on the additional work involved in this Bill, work which, as has been said, will for a large part have to be done after normal working hours, without needing any increase in their number. I find that incompatible with what I read in the 1969 Report of the Department of Health and Social Security, an admirable and most informative document on which I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend. We are told on page 91:
  "The administrative load of supplementary benefits work continued at very heavy levels; there were some 6·7 million claims resulting in some 1,620,000 continuing awards and 4·2 million immediate payments, over 6 million people were visited in their homes, and there were over 10 million callers at local offices."
  My arithmetic has always been faulty, but it seems to me that that means that the average office on every working day has about 40 callers and organises about 25 visits. If another 800,000 people are to be brought into the system, with all the inevitable fine detail which will be required if the Bill is not to become a scrounger's charter, I can only think that the estimate of a mere 200 more staff in Supplementary Benefits Commission offices is very optimistic.
  Finally, I dislike the Bill because it is imprecise. It is true that in our earlier 28 skirmishes in Standing Committee and on many other occasions, my hon. Friends have complained that it was the habit of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman)—I am sorry that he is not here now—to cut corners and to miss out all the exciting parts of his legislation simply by saying that, when he came to a problem, it would be dealt with by a subsequent issue of regulations. The present Bill has the whiff of instant legislation about it, because it is imprecise on almost every one of the most interesting points.
  The House may be wondering whether I might wish to make specific recommendations regarding what I should have done instead, and I shall be so audacious as to do so. It may have come to the notice of my right hon. Friend and of my hon. Friends, as well as of hon. Members opposite, that I am bent on drawing attention to what I conceive to be the overwhelming advantages of integrating the social services with the income tax, advantages which I believe

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  are overwhelming in terms of administration and also in terms of the political gains.
  We have seen a number of advances in this direction in the last few years. I can point to the family allowances and claw-back, and to the decision that earnings-related contributions to national insurance should be collected through Pay-As-You-Earn. Surely, after we have that, it will be difficult not to integrate income tax and contributions to national insurance altogether. This year, we have seen pensions introduced without any reference to contribution records; we have seen allowances for the disabled without any reference to need and free of tax; and we have seen the ending of the reduced rates of income tax in this year's Budget, something which I regard as a good move. We have seen a policy adopted by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment of subsidising families, not houses. I should like to pay tribute here to the encouragement which he gave me when I was writing a pamphlet on this subject some three or four years ago. We have also had a buzz of interest in the whole subject of negative income tax.
  All those developments I welcome, but I am certain that they are not happening because the guru of South Kensington has some mesmeric power which obliges people, against their will, to adopt his recommendations. It is simply compassion and common sense at work.
  However, one has had two setbacks in the last week or two. One is the suggestion that housing allowances to be paid to families should be governed by means tests conducted by local authorities, not by the Inland Revenue, which seems to me to be a departure from common sense. The other setback is the introduction of the Family Income Supplements Bill.
  Specifically, in this situation, I should like the House to consider the possibility of adopting a course which I have, in fact, laid before my right hon. Friend, namely, of withdrawing the child allowances in the income tax system altogether and, instead, paying family allowances on a scale which would make good all that was lost by people who were paying the 6s. 5d. rate of income tax but which
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  would also concentrate benefit on people below the tax horizon. In order to do that, I calculate, one would have to pay a family allowance for the first child of 18s. a week free of tax, a family allowance for the second child of 24s. free of tax, and family allowances for the third and all subsequent children of 25s. free of tax.
  I calculate that, if we adopted that basis and withdrew the child allowances from the income tax system altogether and cancelled the existing family allowances, too, we should bring virtually the entire population to within a pound or so a year of where they are now; but, at the same time, we should concentrate the whole of the extra benefit on the people at the bottom.
  I do not want to trespass on the time of the House much further but I have been told, through the office of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury in a letter of 19th August, 1970, that the cost of abolishing child tax allowances for children under 11 and replacing them by tax-free family allowances of 18s. a week for the first child, 24s. for the second and 25s. for the third and subsequent children would be about £10 million in a full year. I suggest that my right hon. Friend ought to look again at suggestions of this kind which have the colour of a negative income tax.
  I do not want it to be thought, in spite of all I have said, that I do not welcome the spirit with which my right hon. Friend has introduced his Bill. I recognise his seriousness and generosity of purpose. I hope that there will be very few to vote against a Bill the effect of which is to give £14 or £15 a year to half a million very poor children. Of course, one must accept it; but it is only a first step towards something, I hope, much larger.
  I cannot be altogether happy about the way in which the further studies are being carried out into the whole question of negative income tax. I think that, with one or two shining exceptions, the men engaged upon the study are men who have not convinced themselves that they have the political will to solve the problem. I think, therefore, that, although they may be unconscious of it, they are working on the problem in only a halfhearted way. Also, I feel that it is undesirable that the study of negative income tax and related systems should be

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  conducted in secret. It may be that hon. Members could make little serious contribution here, that we are here to vote and not to think, but I feel that it would be helpful, and public opinion would be more reassured, if it were known exactly what is being studied and how the studies are progressing.
  What is required is a man of outstanding business efficiency, a man with the qualities of a managing director ten times over, with problem-solving ability of the first order, and, moreover, a man of political vision or, perhaps one should say, the statesmanship which can look ahead into the computer age, into the social needs of the late 1970s and 1980s in a civilised community such as ours. My right hon. Friend could well be that man, and I hope that he proves to be so. He must dare the ultimate. He must not be content with catch-penny devices which do not really advance us in the direction in which we ought to travel.
  We in this House also have a job to do in educating ourselves on this whole subject.
  We are still far from certain precisely what is the way in which we shall have to tackle the problem of income support in the long run. I have my set of ideas, and other hon. Members have theirs. I believe that one of the tasks on which we must all engage is to prepare public opinion for a totally new concept of the social contract. Until we have done that we shall not succeed in eliminating the problem of child poverty.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): Order. Before I call the next speaker, may I draw the attention of the House to those who have sat all day hoping to catch the eye of the Chair? Long speeches will not help to make that possible.
  7.40 p.m.
  Mr. John Pardoe: I am very glad to follow the hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams), because I, too, learned much of my social security at his mother's knee. However, I should like to defend one of my greater 19th century heroes, John Stuart Mill, from any link with the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) that the hon. Gentleman may have had in mind, by reminding him that there is as great a difference
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  between the early and the late Mill as there is between the early and the late Beethoven, and while it may be true that the right hon. Gentleman has a connection with the early Mill, I think that I have a connection with the late Mill.
  Poverty policy in Britain is undoubtedly in a shambles. Those of us who have been involved in creating it, those who have been involved in discussing it, must be accused of unbelievable incompetence by any future generation which looks back at the way in which we have conducted matters over the past 25 years or more. We have an extraordinary patchwork, but a very expensive patchwork. There is a feeling in the country that if we are spending so much on solving the problem of poverty, we must already have solved it, and that therefore it cannot exist. But it does exist.
  One illustration of the shambles which is our poverty legislation is that most of us, those that make up the great portion of the population paying three-quarters of the total revenue received by the Exchequer, pay on average one-third of our income in taxes, both direct and indirect, and get half of it back. It is a kind of parlour game called "transfer payments", and it is undoubtedly a madness.
  We assume that the tax system is progressive, but it is not. If we take the regressive nature of indirect taxes and their regressive effect on the poor in particular, we find the poorer section of the community, those who, for instance, in 1964 were receiving below £12 a week, contributing 15 per cent. of the total Exchequer revenue. They were paying considerably more than one-third of their income in tax.
  The whole system was so bad that Professor Merrett of Sheffield University in the August 1966 bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Economics calculated that we could replace all our taxes, except corporation tax, surtax and death duties, by a straight, across-the-board 30 per cent. sales tax, and that the poor would still be better off than they are now because they would pay a lower rate of their income in taxation than today.
  That is the chaos which any Secretary of State inherits, and the present Secretary of State as much as any. The Bill is an attempt to answer one very small part of the problem, but even its

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  strongest supporters would probably not call it much more than a mouse, although I agree with the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West that it may be a mouse with a very long tail which we have yet to see.
  I want briefly to take us back to first principles, to see how we shall judge the Bill and improve the situation for the future. First, in the Bill we are not discussing primary poverty. We have not been discussing primary poverty, the kind that takes place throughout the lifetime of an individual or family, in any of our debates in the past two or three years or more. We are discussing secondary poverty through the decline of income or the increase of necessary expenditure at a certain time in a family's life. In other words, we are discussing income maintenance. Here we are dealing with family poverty, that kind of poverty which comes as a result of increased expenditure through having children and bringing up a family.
  Secondly, we should be quite clear what we mean by the word "poverty". It would take a long time to define it in great detail, and I have no intention of doing so. In some ways it is a metaphysical concept. We all know what we regard as socially acceptable at any one time and in any society. We should not allow anyone or any family to fall below half the national average standard of living.
  Thirdly, we are dealing with family poverty and particularly with the cost of children. The hon. Member for Kensington, South mentioned right at the outset of his speech the basic factor which I think his right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is forgetting, that if we paid everyone enough to bring up a family we should be paying single men a great deal of money, and the whole situation would be exceedingly inflationary. That is one of the problems in our present wage structure.
  What is the cost of a child? I should like the Secretary of State to ask his Department for the calculations on which the supplementary benefit scales which have just been announced were calculated. For instance, if we look at the new scales we find that a married couple will receive £8 10s. a week, and for one child between the ages of five and 11 they will
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  get an additional £1 16s. I should like him to ask his Department how it calculated that £1 16s. I shall tell him how it was done. It was done simply by referring to the ratio that has been with us for ever and anon, or at any rate almost since 1948. The allowance for the child is 21 per cent. of that for the married couple. Why? How was that ratio calculated? I shall tell him again. It is simply because it was there. There are no calculations, even confidential, within his Department that have ever worked on this figure to justify the ratio. I should like him to ask his Department for the confidential evidence within the Department as to how the calculation was made, and then let him compare it with the published material which is available on the West German system, for example. He will find that there is all the difference in the world.
  How do we calculate the ratio and the cost of a child? There are two ways of doing this. Neither has been adopted either in the formulation of the Bill or in the formulation of any recent allowances of this sort. First, we can make a study of family budgets and find out how much is actually spent on a child or on so many children. Second, we can estimate a nutritionally adequate diet, if anyone can define such a thing, and make other estimates of necessary requirement for a child. Has either of these methods been employed? I would bet that neither has been employed.
  I am indebted to Christopher Bagley of the Institute of Psychiatry for his report entitled "The Cost of a Child" which gives some extremely interesting comparisons which fill in some of the points which the hon. Member for Kensington, South made. If we take the income of a married couple as 100, we can compare the provision for children as a percentage income. Beveridge recommended in 1942 that for one child aged seven the allowance should be 31 per cent. of that for the married couple. In fact, in 1948 the National Assistance scheme provided only 22·5 per cent., and we now have only 21 per cent., in the latest, 2nd November, scales. That is the main reason why we still have family poverty with us. If we now had the Beveridge ratio, family poverty would largely be a thing of the past in this country.

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  What is the ratio overseas? In New York in 1966 the allowance for the average single child was 41·7 per cent. of that for a married couple, more than double ours. In Japan in 1965 it was 40·8 per cent., and in West Germany in 1966 it was 40·4 per cent. This is partly because they pay family allowance for the first child, while we do not.
  But let us look at the allowances for larger families and add the whole lot up. Let us take the large end of the scale, the family with six children. Beveridge recommended that a family with six children required an income 285 per cent. of that for a married couple. In 1948 the National Assistance scheme produced a ratio of 235 per cent. We now have about 232 per cent. In New York it is 325 per cent., in Japan it is 342 per cent., and in West Germany it is 308 per cent.
  It is quite clear that our provision for children is ludicrously low, and it has bedevilled all the wage negotiations in this country. That is one of the major factors in wage-push inflation and the major cause of family poverty, which we are debating and trying to solve with the Bill.
  Taken altogether, it seems that a man with three children needs three times as much as a single man to maintain the same standard of living. This has an immense effect on wage-push. If we consider two men on the same work bench or in the same office, one of them single and the other a married man with three children, but both earning the same wage, we see that the single man has a standard of living three times as high as that of his colleague. That is clearly ridiculous. That is the gap which we should be trying to bridge in the Bill. I am not suggesting for a moment that we can hope to bridge the whole gap. There will inevitably be some financial disincentives to having children, but we cannot leave the gap as wide as it is now, particularly as it is very much wider than in most of our major industrial competitors.
  The question we must answer is, how do we bridge the gap? First, can we do it through the wages system, through a minimum income? That would help, but it still would not solve the problem of differentials between the married and unmarried. Can we do it through a marriage allowance, as was once done with universities and particularly in the
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  Armed Services, but which has now been thrown out for both? It would be a piece of splendid disengagement for the Government, landing the whole thing in industry's lap. But it is not practicable or possible.
  Can we do it through family allowances? I have argued often enough in the House that family allowances are the answer, that we should increase them substantially and pay them for the first child, paying for them by dispensing with the, I think, £700 million we now hand out to the middle-income groups in tax allowances. But family allowances have massive disadvantages. First, there is the political disadvantage. A large number of people simply do not like others being paid family allowances. Therefore, Governments have an inbuilt brake on the size of the family allowance which they feel they can politically award.
  So, about 18 months to two years ago, the Liberal Party decided to discard any advocacy of increased family allowances and to go for the concept of the negative income tax. The principle has already been accepted in child allowances, which have been written into the income tax scales for so long. All we need to do is to apply that principle to those whose income is below the level at which they can benefit, the level at which they pay income tax. What we want to do with a negative income tax is first to co-ordinate the income tax and social security systems. That must be done.
  Second, we want to eliminate the whole proliferation of means tests which we have seen grow up over the years and to simplify the system. We must add up the allowances now given in the tax codes and then for a family who, say, fall by £300 a year below the value of those allowances, whether the marriage or child allowances, tax that difference of £300 at, say, 40 per cent. and hand the 40 per cent.—£120—to that family as a tax credit or cash family grant.
  Why not the negative income tax? The Secretary of State did not give any indication that he was committed on its principle. I had hoped that he would give us that indication this afternoon and say that he had instructed his Department to investigate it because he was politically and emotionally committed.

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  I hope that the Secretary of State is politically committed to a negative income tax for I am sure that it is the answer to a large part of the problem. If he is fed with a plethora of objections from his Department, and more particularly from the Treasury, perhaps he would look up another document. Let him ask for the arguments put up by the Treasury in 1944 against the Pay-As-You-Earn scheme. They will be every bit as obtuse, complex and ridiculous as the arguments he is receiving now from the Treasury. This is the only way to solve this basic problem.
  The Bill palpably will not solve the problem. It will not help half the poor and it will only half help the other half. It will certainly mean a loss of incentive, and here I take the point made by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. It takes no account, for instance, of work costs, particularly travel to work. In certain parts of the country, particularly in my constituency, one of the greatest incentives one could give to get people back into work who are now out of work would be to give them a substantial contribution towards the cost of getting to work. Often they have to buy a car as there is no public transport and they might have to travel 20 miles or more to work. That would be a major incentive and would help meet a good deal of poverty. A short-term solution to the problem is the increase in family allowances and their payment for the first child.
  I make the point which many hon. Members have made that this was a promise. Its easy and somewhat slick burial this afternoon does nothing to raise the reputation of this House. I came to the debate with an open mind about supporting the Bill because it seemed that it would give a certain amount of money, if too little, to some very poor people. But the arguments put forward this afternoon lead me to the conclusion that any fair-minded and reasonable being would have to vote against the Bill.
  8.0 p.m.
  Mr. Peter Fry: I should like to comment on two speeches made earlier by two right hon. Gentlemen. The first is the speech of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West
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  (Mr. Powell) who attempted to equate the provisions in the Bill for a cash payment with a major step backwards. It is impossible to distinguish, as he chose to distinguish, between benefits in kind or reduced payments and payments in cash. It is part of our modern social contract that we have to accept that certain classes of society are unfortunate. They may be unfortunate because they are disabled in body or because they cannot command enough money at their place of work. As such they deserve the support of the community at large.
  The point made by the right hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man) about the giving back of the taxation on children's income was typical of attitudes adopted by hon. Members opposite. At least those children who will have the income given back did have it in the first place. The people about whom we are talking today have had little income and we are giving them something extra. We should draw the distinction between what a person has in the first place and that with which he is supplied.
  Apart from those speeches, I have not been impressed, by and large, with most of the criticisms put forward. The first is that the benefits given in the Bill are not sufficient. With the present level of inflationary wage settlements, begun by the previous Government, it is not likely that any figure brought forward today would be completely adequate. But it is an important start. The most significant feature of the Bill is that the wage-stop is varied for the first time. This will be a tremendous help to many of my constituents, among whom there are many lower-paid workers.
  Recently a young man came to see me. He was the father of two children and his wife was in hospital and had been there for some three months before the birth of their third child. He had the choice of either staying at home and looking after his two children, going on to social security benefits, or trying to stay at work and paying for those two children to go to a local nursery. He could not afford the payments for the nursery. Very commendably, although his income was low, he decided that he wanted to work, and the wage-stop prevented supplementary benefits being paid

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  while he was in full-time employment. It was only when he went on to part-time work that he could be given financial assistance. What pleases me about the Bill is that families such as his will receive some assistance regularly until their wages reach a reasonable level.
  Important, too, is the assistance given to the one-child family. I have never been a great believer in the family allowance system although I believe that the principle of the claw-back as exercised in recent years is very unsatisfactory. Benefits collected by the wife at the Post Office which are mainly paid for by her husband in income tax are likely to lead to family friction. It has always struck me that the present system is a rather clumsy and expensive way of giving help. Although many mothers will doubtless disagree with me, I should like to see an end to family allowances in their present form.
  I should like to see an extension of principles of the kind put forward in the Bill. Many mothers have said to me, "Don't take away our family allowances; it is the only little bit we can call our own." I am afraid that I do not agree that it is the rôle of the Government to see that there is a proper division of family incomes between husband and wife. Perhaps hon. Members will agree that marital disputes often arise on this point. If husbands see more and more of their wages going in taxation while their wives are drawing larger family allowances, then it will need all the ingenuity at the command of hon. Members to convince many housewives that their housekeeping should be cut to adjust the difference. In this respect the Bill is of great importance.
  Hon. Members have complained because they feel that this system entails a means test. This is one of those emotive phrases which is posed to conjure up a picture of a hard-hearted Tory. Have not previous Labour Administrations administered means tests through prescription charges and particularly in the assessment of parents' incomes in connection with student grants? I remember only too well how harshly these were administered in the days of the first postwar Labour Administration. What of the rent and rate rebate schemes encouraged by the last Administration? Are not these means tests?
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  I am confident that all thinking hon. Members opposite will know that this phrase no longer has the emotional overtones that some of them and their supporters use. What is a means test today? It is making sure that before other people's money—that is, the money of the taxpayers and ratepayers—is used in supporting an individual family, that family is truly in need. No matter what hon. Members opposite may think, the great majority of people would accept that definition. I suggest that echoing the battle cries of the 1920's and 1930's and the class war that existed then will bring them little support now among the electorate.
  The criticism that is most important is that there will be a disincentive to the lower paid to earn more. It could be argued, as it has been argued that the Bill to some extent runs counter to the Government's policy of cutting taxes to encourage higher real earnings. We have to accept, if there are considerable numbers of the lower-paid who need help, that this is a risk we have to take. Whatever limit of gross income or whatever limit of supplement we fix, some people will always be deterred from earning more, some will always be marginally affected by rates of taxation. It is up to the Government of the day to decide which factor is the most important. I am delighted that the Government have decided to take the more humane viewpoint and to give help, risking the effect on possible earnings.
  I am perturbed that the Bill will introduce yet another factor into what is already a jungle of rebates, benefits and allowances. Recent surveys have shown that a family, with three children, earning approximately £16 a week, entitled to a whole range of social benefits, rate rebates etc., is liable to find that it has a rate of marginal taxation of 165 per cent. on the first extra £1 that the husband earns. For the extra 20s. the family is likely to lose 32s. 6d. in various benefits. Most of these families have not added this up but they have a pretty good idea that if the husband earns more they will be worse off.
  When this Bill becomes an Act we shall be adding another factor to a complex situation. When we come to add the new housng subsidies, as we shall later in this Parliament, I cannot help but feel that the whole framework of social

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  security and taxation will become too intertwined and complicated. I hope that we can see in this Bill a first step towards clearer thinking on the subject, on the principle of seeking to distinguish need and to relieve it. I hope that it is a step towards a much less cumbersome system.
  Like the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) I, too, prefer a system of negative income tax and I hope that we shall move gradually towards this—when all social security payments and taxation are brought together. I appreciate that there are tremendous difficulties in introducing such a scheme and that we shall have to be patient. At least today all those who will benefit from this Bill, no matter how many there are, should be thankful that we have an Administration which has decided to give them a high priority. In view of some of the comments about hard-hearted Tories, the hard-faced Selsdon man, it is very comforting to be able to support this Bill.
  The Bill is all very well as far as it goes. It defines a family to be considered in need as one with a child and earning less than £15 a week. A sum of £2 a week is allowed on top of this for each additional child. From these figures it is clear that any couple which has to subsist on less than £15 a week could be considered to be in need. There are thousands of such couples. A family has been defined in the Bill as including at least one child, but to many people a childless couple is still a family. They have to meet the current price increases in food, heating, clothing and all the expenses of running a home. For such people tax reductions are of little help.
  I end by making a plea to my right hon. Friend not to forget these people. It is not just pensioners who are in this category. Only this week I had a letter from a constituent who said that it always seemed that when benefits were being given out it was the family with children which benefited while the childless couples were left at the back of the queue. We could be in danger of adding insult to the injury of a childless marriage. This is a category of need still not provided for in our modern welfare state. I sincerely welcome the Bill and I hope that my right hon. Friend will remember this category, which can be termed a family.
  8.10 p.m.
  Mr. George Wallace: The hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe) brought back memories to me when he talked about relief on fares for travelling to work. I can remember many years ago having to walk from Mitcham Fair Green to the city to save the tram fare. Those were supposed to be the good old days. The hon. Gentleman made a valid and important point.
  In the London commuter belt there is a great deal of hidden poverty due to the fact that people must pay exceedingly high fares to get to work at a certain time. For many years I have advocated that we should give workers an allowance or, better still, an allowance through income tax. That is not impossible; it can be done. It would bring a considerable amount of benefit to people dealt with by the Bill.
  To some extent, the Bill recognises the principle of a family being given an allowance for the first child. The first child is the most important, because it is the most costly. Therefore, he or she should be the subject of a family allowance. The expenses begin with the arrival of the first child. The perambulator, cot, "potty" and many other things can be used for the second and third children. Some families buy a new pram for each child, but many people I know cannot afford to do so.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) said that this was a simple, little Bill. It is a little Bill, but, my goodness, it is not simple. The more one looks at it, the more involved it becomes. The administration of the Bill will be extremely complicated. The hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) referred to the number of people in the areas who will be involved in implementing the Bill. The Government's estimate of £600,000 as the cost of administering the Bill is, I believe, a gross underestimate. A large number of staff will be required than appears at first sight.
  Certainly the Bill will involve considerable case work. We as Members of Parliament know that we shall have a considerable amount of case work. But that is incidental; it is part of our job and, from the Government's point of

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  view, we shall not be involved in additional expense. My main objection to the Bill in principle is that it is a State subsidy for low wages and an easement of the conscience of employers of workers who are not subject to trade union negotiation.
  I have some experience of dealing with workers not subject to trade union negotiation. As an office manager I have known occasions when towards the end of the financial year a list of suggested pay rises has had to be submitted. Anyone involved in this exercise understands the anxiety and tension which it causes. In many instances it is a question, not of whether a person has earned an increase in pay, but whether his face fits with the governor or the manager. This is a soul-destroying situation which trade union activity has not yet touched. A considerable number of workers are in this position and the Bill will help employers who will be able to use it as an excuse for not increasing the salaries of underpaid workers, particularly if those workers are not subject to trade union organisation. The Bill will merely serve to perpetuate an impossible and intolerable situation.
  The Bill will accentuate social divisions. I agree with hon. Members who say that the Bill will act as a disincentive, especially for the betterment of the individual. But it will also lead to differences in married life. Hon. Members may be a little astonished that I should say that, but I ask them to bear in mind what is happening. The wives of many men whose wages are not too great are going out to work part time. In the area in which I live the bus which runs at a certain time in the evening is called "the budgie bus", because all the women on it are chatting at the same time.
  I wonder what the position will be when husbands find that they will be better off if their wives stay at home instead of working part time during the evening shift. I have an idea that women enjoy getting away from the family and of talking with other women at factories. I believe that the Bill will lead to family friction and I am worried about it. This is, not a major, but a human point which must be borne in mind.
  There is a division in public opinion about family allowances. The wives of many workers do not agree with them,
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  but the dislike is particularly strong among old-age pensioners. The House does not need to be told why old-age pensioners are against family allowances. They feel that young couples in work are receiving benefits when their pensions should be increased. That is the main human reason why old-age pensioners object to family allowances. But, unfortunately, a social stigma attaches to people who receive supplementary allowances. I know that this attitude is wrong, but we must face the fact that it exists. The social divisions will be worsened and extended by the Bill. The legal establishment of a minimum wage which ensures the absence of poverty while in work would be far better for human dignity and, in the long run, cheaper.
  My wife and I were discussing the Bill quite early this morning. She said, "You politicians are very involved. You make all sorts of provisions and introduce legislation. Why do you not provide that when a man is qualified for a job he should get a livable wage. It is very simple. Why do you not do it?" I promised her faithfully that if I had the opportunity I would tell the House what she told me this morning—because we must follow our wives' advice, which often is good for us.
  I ask the House to think about creating a better society, through co-operation with the trade unions, employers, parties and politicians, by laying down a livable wage and getting away from the complicated business of allowances for this and that, complicated legislation and the filling in of forms, which is driving many people round the bend. Let us think again about the Bill. Above all, I ask the Minister to give us some information about it. All that we are doing is guessing very hard and probably coming to the wrong conclusions.
  8.20 p.m.
  Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: As an extremely recent Parliamentary maiden in this House I am filled with diffidence at following in this debate so many illustrious speakers, and I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye. We are debating a Bill containing proposals that most of us on this side of the House welcome most warmly, although one might not have thought so from the latter part of

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  the debate. It is a Bill to deal with family poverty, it is long overdue and its implementation will mean that help will be brought to the most widespread sector of chronic poverty. Naturally, we are all concerned with the welfare of those people.
  I have been more than a little disturbed that so much attention has been given on the Labour benches to whether the Bill provides the last three-halfpence worth of an election pledge, or whether it provides real help for these people. I have been entirely unconvinced by the specious arguments put forward against the Bill. No sooner was it announced, than we heard the parrot cries of "Speenhamland" and "subsidising the employers", mostly from hon. Members on the Opposition benches.
  A great many families who will be receiving the family income supplement are families who cannot seek or obtain higher-paid employment because of the nature of the work they are able to do and the number of hours they are able to work. A large number of those people would become unemployable if the onus were placed upon the employer to raise their wages. For instance, is it subsidising the employer to make a family income supplement to the mother of a fatherless family when the rates of pay for a woman and the number of hours a woman with a young family can work automatically dictate low earnings? We are told that about 54,000 such families will benefit from the family income supplement.
  Is it subsidising the employer to make a family income supplement payment to a family where the presence of a chronic invalid means that the wage earner has to take a certain type of work and is limited in his hours of work so that he can be available in the home if he is needed? There are many families in this category who will not be eligible for a constant attendance allowance because the disability of the invalid is not severe enough, but who will be eligible for and helped by the family income supplement.
  A propos of both these cases, I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for saying that he will let us know in Committee the exact definition of "full-time employment" in the context of the Bill. Is it, for instance, to be more than 21
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  hours a week as defined for the purpose of S.E.T., or is it to be 40 hours a week, as defined by the Department of Trade and Industry?
  The most important thing is that the Bill will bring maximum help to the most necessitous group of all, the large low-wage-earning family and, contrary to what has been said, it adds an incentive to the wage earner in such a family to remain in employment. As things are today he would often be better off unemployed.
  On the other hand, cogent arguments have been put forward that all marginal rates of social security benefits are as much a disincentive to effort as marginal rates of taxation, and it is possible that this is true, but what really matters is the motive in providing such benefits, that the benefits are urgently needed by the majority of recipients and that the possible disincentive to effort is a calculated risk that must be taken to help those in need.
  The two arguments that I advance against the Speenhamland theory—incidentally, my source is also Trevelyan—is that family income supplement is quite different in that it provides a centralised subsidy. It does not rely on a parish or local authority initiative as in the 19th century. Secondly, the provision of family income supplement is less inflationary than would be the provision of higher wages by employers to the 190,000 households who will be eligible for it, even if the employers agreed to do so. If all the lower-paid workers who will be affected by the Bill were given a higher rate of pay, would the craftsmen and the semi-skilled workers accept a lower differential, or would this be one more springboard for wage claims throughout the scales?
  Mr. O'Malley: Is not the hon. Lady bringing herself to the remarkable conclusion implicit in her speech that, because it is less inflationary, she would prefer these families to receive this form of State subsidy wages rather than getting a just wage increase?
  Mrs. Oppenheim: No one has any objection to a just wage increase. The point I am making, which hon. Gentlemen opposite always appear to be conveniently oblivious to, is with regard to

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  the wage cost element in the very inflation they are always complaining about.
  It has been repeatedly asked why we did not increase family allowances with claw-back, and this question was adequately answered by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. He certainly satisfied me. There is the problem of take-up and I intend to see that the family income supplement is fully and frequently advertised in my constituency. I put it to my right hon. Friend that it might be administratively possible for employers to put a slip in the wages packet of those who are earning below the income tax level advising them that they may be entitled to family income supplement. This would further the case of those who are already describing the provision of a family income supplement as the first step in the direction of negative income tax.
  It is difficult to see from their reasoned Amendment what the Opposition object to most in this necessary and compassionate piece of legislation. Sophisticated arguments have been put forward, and elaborate hair-splitting has taken place, but there is only one argument for us to consider. Do these people need help and will they get it? Is it, as the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) suggested last week, that it is not sufficient? This may be so, but, if this is their objection, how was it that when the Labour Government were in office for five and a half years they did nothing of significance for the families who will be helped by the Bill?
  We are told by the Opposition that they are contemptuous of the Bill and are considering voting against it. Many hon. Gentlemen may vote against it, but if they decide to do so they will have to go back to their constituencies throughout the country and face 180,000 families and 500,000 children who will benefit by the Bill and openly admit to them that they have allowed political expediency to overcome their social consciences, whereupon the last vestiges of their credibility as the party of the poor, already worn threadbare by the ravages of five-and-a-half years of Labour Government, will have disintegrated completely. So they have decided to salve these consciences, worn so ostentatiously on their sleeves, with a reasoned Amendment that is no more than a meaningless political form for
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  obstructing a Bill that will provide help which cannot be provided in most cases as effectively in any other way.
  8.30 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Meacher: The Secretary of State in his speech to the House last week made it quite clear that the Bill was not intended to counter the increased health and welfare charges but was designed explicitly to improve the standard of living of the poor—[Interruption.]—of some of the poor, at least. Therefore, I intend to concentrate today on the impact of this Measure on family poverty.
  Overall, the cost of the scheme in take-up has been estimated by the Government to be £7 million. Whilst there are strong reasons, to which I will come, for suggesting that this is gross optimism, nevertheless, even if it proved correct, the effect on 190,000 families with half-a-million children would be to raise their standard of living by an average of 3s. 6d. per person per week. That is hardly a scheme even to begin to make the difference between poverty and adequacy.
  No doubt it will be said—I am sure that the Secretary of State has this in mind—that the extra moneys will be concentrated on those in greatest need. Concentrated they will be, but to such a degree as to be almost invisible.
  A family falling behind at three-quarters of the national average wage—I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that that is a low wage—will not get a penny from the new scheme unless it has at least five children. Even at the very low wage of £12 gross a week before stoppages—there cannot be family poverty more concentrated than that in one household—a family will need at least four children to get the maximum entitlement of £3 a week. Hardly any family with one child and a male breadwinner as the head of the household in full-time work will be able to pick up £3 a week, and such benefits will be almost entirely confined to the fatherless family with one child.
  In view of these exiguous benefits, even at these nightmare levels of poverty, it can surprise no one, though it must shock us all, that scarcely any family whose total income is below the supplementary benefit line, despite the man being in

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  full-time work, will have its earnings raised above this line by the income supplement.
  Sir K. Joseph: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a 10s. increase in family allowances would provide far less help to the families that he is mentioning than the proposals in the Bill and, to the family comprising one parent or two parents with one child, no help whatsoever?
  Mr. Meacher: The point about family allowances, as the right hon. Gentleman made clear in his speech earlier today, is that it would be possible, through this mechanism, to provide more help to the two-child family, and to families with more children, through several other expedients: by providing tax-free allowances up to a certain level, by an extension of the child tax allowances in order that there should be more to claw-back, or by alternative expedients; for example, by the raising of other personal allowances for the purposes of claw-back. I am not recommending any of these, but they would be more efficient as a technique for concentrating relief of poverty automatically without a means test on those who need it.
  Families with a gross income at the low level of £12 a week will still fall short of the supplementary benefit scale rates plus average rent by amounts ranging between 25s. and £5 a week, depending on the number of children, while households at three-quarters of the national average wage—we must remember that we are talking about the current earnings of a quarter of all manual workers at this level—will still be 26s. a week short at the point at which the family income supplement begins to bite.
  Indeed, so paltry are the benefits under the Bill, especially when taken in conjunction with the increased public expenditure charges of various kinds, that the Government must stand convicted either of excessive meanness or, as I suspect more, of tacitly manufacturing a new poverty line several points below the existing supplementary benefit line with the deliberate hope of sharply reducing the amount of public expenditure for the relief of poverty in future. Indeed, there are several ominous signs that that is precisely the intention of the Government,
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  underlying both this Bill and other aspects of the public expenditure package. I would therefore ask the Under-Secretary categorically to deny, if he can, that there is any justification for these suspicions.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean): Would the hon. Gentleman give the House the figures which would apply if he took into account the wage-stop. I do not think that he is taking it into account on these figures which are directly relevant to those families. Equally, he piles on all the likely increases in food costs and all charges in later years, but he takes no account of movements in earnings and other measures which may be taken to deal with poverty. Would he complete the picture, in view of the trouble he took in the article published in The Tunes, today?
  Mr. Meacher: I entirely accept that further measures may be taken. I questioned the Secretary of State about proposals of this kind. But if conclusions of this kind are drawn, the Government have only themselves to blame for not making it clear at this stage that they intend in a certain manner to raise other family allowances or family income supplements. In the absence of a definite commitment we can only go by what the Government themselves tell us.
  In comparison with the Prime Minister's original definite and written commitment to the Child Poverty Action Group to increase family allowances with simultaneous adjustments as "the only way"—these were his words, not mine—of tackling family poverty in the short term. F.I.S. suffers from several heavy disadvantages. Apart from the all-important limitation of the means test, F.I.S will mean a big disincentive for the low paid to seek either overtime or a higher-paid job, because of the large additional earnings which will be lost in terms of benefits forgone.
  It will also, of course, be much dearer to administer, with the large increase in civil servants to run both this and the proposed rent rebate scheme, but, above all, it will disastrously underwrite the philopsophy of one law for the poor, a new means-tested benefit, at exactly the same time that another law for the wealthy, a cut in income tax, is being promulgated.

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  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has attempted, I know, to defend the value of F.I.S. in preference to family allowances, on the ground that the former gives slightly more assistance to those families most in need. My immediate response to this is that, given the preference—which we on this side do not share—for means-tested selectivity, if the former Conservative shadow Chancellor felt that £30 million should be devoted to the relief of poverty out of a rather smaller reflationary public expenditure package at that time, why, now, is a maximum of only £7 million made available?
  Leaving that point aside, the Chancellor has also chosen to ignore the fact that it entails several other draw-backs, and not only the much reduced take-up as a result of the means test. For example, in comparison with supplementary benefits, the value of F.I.S. is severely limited when full account is taken, as it will be with F.I.S., of work costs such as National Insurance contributions and travel and clothing costs, and when it is remembered that valuable extra sources of income which are normally disregarded in assessing entitlement to supplementary benefit scale rates will under F.I.S. not be overlooked.
  These conclusions are unpalatable enough, but they are, of course, only part of the picture, and the more positive side at that. It is dispiriting to realise that, even at lowish wage levels, F.I.S. will not be nearly sufficient to offset the impact of charges simultaneously increased by the Government, which arises especially, as the Secretary of State said, from the shift towards an import levy system for food and towards higher rents, even taking into account the rent rebate scheme, which we have yet to see.
  Making what I believe are moderate and reasonable assumptions from the rather vague premises of much of the White Paper, one can calculate the net balance effect of F.I.S., the income tax remissions and increased charges at the time by which the last will have fully worked through, not taking into account the effects of inflation in the meantime. By that time a family with the very low gross wage of £12 a week will have seen its potential aid of £156 a year reduced to anything between £30 and £99 depending on the number of its children, while at three-quarters of the national average
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  wage F.I.S. will be unable to prevent a net loss of about £75 a year to a family with three children, and of about £65 a year to a family with four children. Yet I am afraid that even this sad catalogue is too optimistic because I have been indulging in my stock feeling of being over-generous.
  All the figures quoted so far have not taken into account the devastating impact of an income test on the number of applications by families eligible to benefit. There is already extensive public antipathy to men at work drawing supplementary benefits, abetted, one is bound to say, by certain hon. Gentlemen opposite. I entirely exclude the Secretary of State from that remark. Against this background I can only conclude that the take-up of the proposed benefit will be almost certainly less than 50 per cent. I suspect that it will be a great deal less.
  Bearing in mind the Chancellor's oral reply a fortnight ago that he had not yet finally excluded the option of an increased family allowance, I ask the Government to state explicitly what percentage take-up they regard as the minimum criterion for the satisfactory operation of the scheme. I ask the Government to monitor the progress of the Bill, supposing that it is passed, by publishing each year the changes in the number of families in family poverty as a result of these measures, paying especial attention to the numbers of low-paid who are eligible for benefits but who, for one reason or another, do not apply, relating as fully as possible the circumstances of those families. Only such an undertaking can fully restore faith in the Government's commitment to tackle seriously the scandal of growing family poverty.
  I seek two further brief clarifications from the Government. One concerns the increase in the national wages bill. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) for the attention which he drew to this matter. I am convinced that there will be an increase in the national wages bill arising from the restoration, totally or substantially, of the former existing differentials between the wages of the low paid and of the skilled as a result of these measures, since the family income supplements will largely assist the low paid whilst the increased charges will substantially hurt the skilled.

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  If such increased costs occur on any scale, as I am convinced will be the case, will the Government accept this evidence as grounds for the abandonment of F.I.S. in favour of the original promise to increase family allowances, so avoiding these consequences? Second, if a widening gap emerges between the wages of the low paid and those of the skilled, since under F.I.S. employers will escape any pressure to push up very low wages, will the Government accept an open-ended commitment to raise F.I.S. almost indefinitely to reduce the gap? If not, what alternative plan have the Government to deal with the problem?
  There are several matters of procedure under the Bill which urgently require clarification before the House can reasonably be expected to pass it. Such matters include the definition of full-time work, to which attention has been drawn, the application of the rule regarding cohabitation, financial support for one-parent families, and the precise procedures under which claims will be considered.
  More significant, however, is the whole ethos underlying the Bill as drafted at present as regards the balance of rights and obligations as between the applicant and the authority. It is significant that details are given in Clause 8(4) of the procedure for the recovery of overpayment; yet no Clause supplies the converse procedure for clients obtaining back payments where under-payments have been discovered. Again as an illustration of the disturbing philosophy underlying the Bill, one wonders whether the threats of prosecution in Clause 12 will not lead inadvertently to unwitting official pressure on a client to refrain from pressing a claim or an appeal. Altogether, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Bill will lead to a deterioration in relations between the poor and officials of the Supplementary Benefits Commission who are recognised already to be grossly overworked. In this sense, the damage to the improvement of the social and legal rights of the poor may turn out to be the most serious casualty of all under this Measure.
  Even given the Government's determination to make changes in the pattern of public expenditure, fundamentally and primarily designed to finance the sixpenny cut in income tax, the Government have
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  yet to devise—at least to let us know—a policy which merits the name. Until that is done, the Government should withdraw their Bill for the mean and pusillanimous bauble that it is, and think again.
  8.46 p.m.
  Mr. John Nott: This has been one of the very best debates in this House that I have ever attended. I will not follow the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) in his remarks. He is a far greater expert on this subject than I. I prefer to devote myself to the more general principles underlying the Bill, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) and, in doing so, naturally I shall do my best to help my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. However, I may not be as helpful as I should like to be.
  I shall return to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton several times in the course of my remarks. He spoke with great impact of the dramatic step that we are taking in this Bill. I agree with his judgment. But, with some diffidence, I differ from his main conclusions, for reasons which I shall outline.
  My right hon. Friend was correct in his major point. This is no little Measure. Inexorably, it must lead to a national minimum income along the lines attempted by the right hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) and as proposed, I believe, in the Labour Party's 1964 manifesto—
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: Not quite.
  Mr. Nott: Not quite, but very nearly—giving the right hon. Gentleman no real cause for claiming that we have broken faith by introducing this Measure.
  If the Bill does not lead by inexorable steps to a national minimum income, it will be necessary to repeal it and replace it with a new and radical approach involving the complete recasting of our supplementary benefits system, certainly for the able-bodied unemployed. As I see it, there is no middle way between the course recommended by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West and that recommended by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams).

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  Whatever views we may hold on this subject, we recognise my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South as the Marharishi of the cult of negative income tax. My hon. Friend has pursued this concent with geat persistence and I admire him for it, remembering that he has inherited a missionary zeal from his talented mother—the scourge of the Royal Commission on Taxation—and has pursued his faith like the first hot gospellers in darkest Africa among the ignorant natives who fail to comprehend the truth.
  The ignorant natives in this case are the so-called experts. I have never met one, whether he came from the Tory Central Office or that other, though lesser, seat of true bureaucracy, the British Civil Service, who does not find reverse income tax an absolute bonanza for the exercise of his most intellectually developed trait—that of supercilious superiority towards any concept he did not invent himself; and when something is proposed by Lobby fodder from the back benches he regards that as coming from anthropological specimens beneath contempt.
  I remember how a little group was set up by the late Mr. Iain Macleod when we were in opposition. In referring to this group I am beaking the official secrets act of the Conservative Party, but that will cause me few sleepless nights. With that enormous perspicacity and that great flair for which he was so well renowned, Mr. Macleod set up the group within the Conservative Party to consider reverse income tax, and I was a member of it.
  The group was so neatly balanced with the opponents and proponents of the scheme that it was a absolute miracle that we managed to agree on the place and time of a meeting let alone on any of the philosophical implications of its effect upon incentives and its cost. I need not add that I believe that Mr. Macleod, for whom I had enormous admiration, was an opponent of the scheme of negative income tax.
  However these philosophical implications are absorbing for they require first a judgment of incentive—of what it is and what it means—and in turn that raises the problem of the motivation of the individual.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West I suppose
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  argues that curates preach harder and more devotedly if the Church Commissioners keep them in abject poverty yet hold out the incentive of a car and gaiters if they are more pious in their faith.
  Mr. Powell: My hon. Friend's speech is so good that I do not want to lose any of it by interrupting. I rise only to assure him that the question of incentive did not in any way enter into the argument which I put before the House earlier.
  Mr. Nott: I naturally accept my right hon. Friend's comment. I must say that for myself I believe that with some minimum security my curates could be more balanced, even harder working individuals, and I have always believed that some savings enhance the motivation of the individual and do not drive him into idleness.
  I speak this afternoon because in many of the speeches which I have made in the House I have consistently remarked that the income tax and contribution system to the State must be considered as one, just as benefits and similar matters must be treated as one as well. I come to see the whole concept of regional development and benefits as being more and more interwoven, to the detriment of both, as the years go by and alas if things progress as proposed in this Measure, the area which I represent will become a depressed area not just materially but psychologically, as well.
  This Bill just adds another complication to our tax and benefits system. It has been agreed that it embraces a jump of 50 per cent. in marginal rates. I see it creating difficult problems for the seasonal, casual and part-time working population in my area, which is primarily the main type of employment involved. Because of the wage-stop, and the hon. Member for Oldham, West might sort out my confusion on this point on supplementary benefits and its lack of application to this supplement; I think, and I say this without any great certainty, that it will now for the first time be better in my constituency to be unemployed than employed, for reasons I shall try to explain.
  Every hon. Member claims that his constituency is poor. The only uniqueness of my claim is that I am right. The take-home wage in my constituency is about £12 or £13 a week. I believe that

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  a large number of the 134,000 working families to whom the Bill applies will be in West Cornwall. As inflation increases and the poor become poorer so the Government will try, as my right hon. Friend said, to relieve their real distress by State assistance, and regulations will be presented to increase the benefits under the Bill. But with inflation the poorer areas of the nation, like the poor, become much poorer, too, and wage rates continue to decline relatively to the national wage. In this way the working wage becomes less than State assistance. So what I believe we are saying is that we have to make a national judgment that the poor in my area need less than do the poor in Wolverhampton. After all, this is what the wage-stop is all about.
  I do not claim that these matters are subject to solution in a mere five months. I am glad that the Government have brought in this intermediate Measure and I fully accept my right hon. Friend's undertaking that further Measures will follow from it. But I do not believe that there is any middle way any longer: either we have to support the beliefs of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West—and he is absolutely logical in all he says; we must grant him that—or we have to go the other way and opt for a national minimum income. I think that at the present time the whole jungle of benefits and taxes is breaking down.
  I am a pessimist, not because I doubt the effervescence of my right hon. Friend—I know that if anyone will really try with all his energy to tackle the problem of poverty it will be he, and I have absolute confidence in his determination—but because I believe that the Bill—and I have to welcome it because of the extreme poverty and the average take-home income in my constituency—is not the answer to the problem. I accept it as an intermediate Measure, but I repeat that we either have to go to a national minimum income or a reverse income tax—and, broadly, they are the same—or we have to revise our whole supplementary benefits system and adopt a more rigorous open market attitude such as that propounded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West.
  8.59 p.m.
  Mr. Brian O'Malley: I am sure that hon. Members on all sides will agree that this debate has been conducted at a very high level, and I know that they will also agree that our two maiden speakers, one from each side, in no way fell from that high level. We had a maiden speech from the hon. Member from Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey), who began modestly and with humour. I might say that modesty is net a predominant characteristic of this House, but, in any case, as the hon. Member went on, so he became more assertive. The longer he spoke, the less modest he became—perhaps he got something of the atmosphere of the House. As he would expect, I disagreed with much of what he said, but I congratulate him on a very successful maiden speech and look forward to contributions from him in future, when we may have an opportunity of interrupting him and of questioning him on some of the views he expressed today.
  The second maiden speech came from my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. John Smith), the successor to Miss Margaret Herbison. It was appropriate, I think, that the tribute paid to Margaret Herbison should have been paid in a debate on the subject of poverty, to which she devoted a great part of her life. Listening to my hon. Friend—and, for that matter, to a number of other hon. Members—I thought that the concept of non-controversiality seems to have become modified a great deal with our present new intake, although it is perhaps a process that has been going on for some years. My hon. Friend, in his non-controversial way, scored a number of telling points and made a vigorous and knowledgeable speech. I congratulate him on it and, again, look forward to his making further contributions on this subject and on other subjects.
  As I listened to the Secretary of State it occurred to me that never had I heard a Minister speak so defensively of his Bill. The reason for his defensiveness has become more and more apparent as the debate has proceeded. Deep apprehension of the principle on which the Bill is based has been expressed not only by all who have spoken from this side but also by hon. Members opposite, including the hon.

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  Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams), who gives a great deal of thought to and puts a great deal of work into this subject, the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott), and notably the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I cannot remember any occasion before today when I have felt myself in any way in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech which was full of foreboding. It was a speech with a strong sense of history. Perhaps it was an historic speech. The right hon. Gentleman may be right in his conclusion, if not in his reasons for it, and in the warning he gave of the possible fateful consequences in giving relief in supplementation of wages. The House ignores at its peril the lessons and verdicts of history.
  It is relevant to consider briefly what happened one-and-a-half centuries ago. Hon. Members need go no further than the reports which are to be found in the corridors of the House of the eighteenth century Poor Law Commission Inquiry and the seventeen volumes of appendices which show in detail, and from specific districts, the consequences which flowed from the Spenhamland system which, in spite of the passage of time, still has relevance in the consideration of this Measure.
  It is relevant to quote the views of the authority on the Speenhamland system—Karl de Schweinitz—who, in his "England's Road to Social Security", page 76, said this:
  "The system was so vicious in its results and met with such cumulative and ultimately almost universal contemporary condemnation that throughout the succeeding century it was cited as the classic of ill-advised planning and administration of public assistance. The effect of the pogrom was to lower the standard of wages and living for the labourer, to destroy the initiative and hope with which he approached his work, and, if anything, to increase the number of those who were either forced or resigned to an acceptance of a measure of outdoor relief."
  My hon. Friend might also reflect on the thought that some things may happen in cycles. The Speenhamland system began in 1795 and not long after its introduction a Tory Government introduced the combination Acts to deal with the trade unions. Perhaps we shall find a similar situation under the present Government in the near future.
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  The Bill has been received with hostility, not only by a large number of hon. Members but also by a vast body of experts outside the House. The Government have introduced the Bill without seeking the advice of the Supplementary Benefits Commission, which will administer the scheme, and which might have been thought to have been an expert body on questions of poverty.
  The Bill is a substitute—an inadequate and undesirable one—for a formal promise. In spite of everything that has been said by the Secretary of State with the complex figures with which the Department no doubt supplied him, the Tory Government have broken their promise. This is the view of the Child Poverty Action Group, to which the promise was given by the late Iain Macleod and by the Prime Minister.
  It was not confined to the Conservative Front Bench. We are told by the New Statesman of 10th July, 1970—we all have a high regard for this publication, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) as its editor—that
  "shortly before the Election the Child Poverty Action Group was being deluged with several pledges an hour from Conservative candiates."
  An undertaking was given that the Conservative Party if in government was willing to spend £30 million on relieving poverty in this sphere. At a stroke the Government have reduced the money available to £8·6 million. The Secretary of State says, after a formal promise has been made in writing by the Prime Minister, that the possibility of a later increase in family allowances is not ruled out. He says that there is a possibility that they might even keep their promise!
  The Government's estimate is that this scheme will run at £8·6 million. There is a great deal of doubt about how much of that will be taken up. A body of expert opinion outside the House believe that the Government are being highly optimistic in their estimate and their hopes that there will be a take-up of seven out of every eight people. I do not comment on Professor Townsend's assertion, but he thinks that the cost might well be less than £3 million for the supplement, notwithstanding the £7 million mentioned in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum. It is clear

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  from all the evidence we have of means-tested schemes that substantial numbers fail to apply for the benefits to which they are entitled. Sometimes more than half of those who are entitled do not apply.
  The same situation will not apply here as applied with the Bill dealing with pensions for the over-80s. There is no one to write to in this case. This is not a simple scheme. It is apparent from the debate that this is a complex scheme and one which is being added to a multiplicity of means-tested schemes which the Chancellor has now extended. [Interruption.] Of course, he has extended them. The Chancellor has been telling us about how many more people would be receiving benefits of one kind and another.
  Even if the take-up is as high as the Government hope, only a small number of people are involved. We recognise that one side-effect, one inherent feature of the Bill, is that a number of families who are at present wage-stopped will be assisted. Also, fatherless families and families with one child will be assisted.
  Mrs. Lena Jeger: Some of them.
  Mr. O'Malley: Precisely—some of them. The Secretary of State is reported to have said before the election that there were seven million to ten million people in this country living on or below the poverty level. Thus, on the best estimates, on the high estimates made by the Government, we see another interpretation of the doctrine of selectivity: the Bill will help one in seven or one in ten of those who, in the right hon. Gentleman's own words, are living at or below the poverty level.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), who made an extremely valuable contribution, showed both in his speech and in his first-class article in The Times today how limited is the aid to be given. Here are some examples. A married man with two children on earnings of £16 a week receives nothing under the Bill. A married man with three children on earnings of £17 a week receives nothing under the Bill. A married man with four children on £18 a week receives nothing, though in fairness one should add that, as a result
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  of the 6d. cut in the standard rate of income tax, he will benefit by 3d. a week, though that will be before taking into account any of the increased charges coming as a result of the changed policy for agriculture and the policy for housing subsidies with the cuts which the Government intend to introduce. A man with five children on £19 a week receives nothing, and a man with six children on £20 a week receives nothing.
  Thus, men with wages slightly below the average will receive nothing under the Bill while at the same time facing increased charges, and they will lose even before the change in agriculture and housing policies comes into effect to redistribute wealth to the better-off.
  As regards the limited number of people who will receive benefit under the Bill, several of my hon. Friends have pointed out already that the effect will be to establish a new level of poverty below the level established on the supplementary benefit scales. One sensed that the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), who has a deep knowledge of these matters and whose views are widely respected in the Chamber, put his finger on precisely that point. This was the nub of it. For those at work who will receive benefit under the Bill we have a new official level of poverty established lower than that for men who are not working.
  For example, a man with a gross wage of £12 a week and with two children—this is without taking into account housing costs—will now, after the Government have introduced a Measure to deal with the problem, be £1 4s. 8d. a week worse off than if he were on supplementary benefit. A man on £12 gross wage with four children will be £2 10s. 8d. below the supplementary benefit level. A man with six children will be £5 2s. 8d. below the supplementary benefit level. That is the way in which it is proposed to deal with child poverty in this country.
  Apparently, what we are seeing with the introduction of the Bill is a new version of the Benthamite principle of least eligibility, that the man at work will be less eligible for benefit than those who are not at work. This will have serious consequences for the social climate and for attitudes in this country on the whole subject of poverty and the receipt of benefits, means-tested and otherwise.

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  Even when the small number of families who are to receive benefits do receive them at the level proposed, there will remain the problem of the bad employer. My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchen (Mrs. Shirley Williams) pointed out that many of those, including many women, on the lowest wages are in precisely those occupations and industries where the trade union movement is not organised. The House must examine a situation where an employer will be able to say, "There is no point in my giving you an increase because if I do there is a 50 per cent. disincentive to start with, and on top of that you can be thrown out of entitlement for F.I.S. completely." It will certainly be more difficult for the lowest-paid workers to get rises when higher wage earners are moving up. It always has been, but the introduction of the FIS principle will make it more difficult.
  On 27th October the hon. Member for Boston with Holland (Mr. Body) told the Chancellor that F.I.S. would
  "… fulfil an urgent need in areas like East Anglia, where wages have been abysmally low …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th October, 1970; Vol. 805, c. 67.]
  Shades of Speenhamland! If wages are abysmally low in East Anglia the solution is not to revert to a situation which proved disastrous in 1795 and the years after that.
  It seems to us on this side of the House that in the Bill the Government are pushing the principle of selectivity beyond reasonable limits. Under successive Governments, to deal with specific aspects of poverty a plethora of means-tested benefits and exemptions have become available. Now the Chancellor is extending the number of people who will be entitled to those benefits. He pointed out proudly that nearly 250,000 more children will be entitled to free school meals and that nearly 200,000 more mothers and children will get free welfare milk. We have a situation in which we are told that men on under £20 a week will be entitled to remission of ophthalmic charges, dental charges and prescription charges. It is becoming a full-time job to be poor.
  Let us just look at the kind of situation with which people without a very good education often have to try to cope. We have the family income supplement,
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  which we are discussing. We can be means-tested so that we can get free school meals. The milk goes, but we can have a means test for welfare milk. If a man on a low wage comes off work through sickness or unemployment he does not get the first three days' benefit any more, under the Government's proposals, but he can go for another means test for those three days' benefit if he is suffering hardship. He can fill in a form to apply for a rent rebate and a rate rebate. He can claim exemption from prescription charges, ophthalmic charges and dental charges, and can obtain school clothing grants, and, in some local authority areas, school maintenance grants. It is a full-time job to be poor.
  The Government are making the situation worse. Many of us in the House have a respect for the humanity of the Secretary of State. Certainly I have. But while we talk about poor people who are entitled to claim such benefits, there are some who will have it that those people are the lame ducks, living in the soft, sodden morass of subsidised incompetence. That is what the Secretary of State's Cabinet colleague, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade, said. I hope the Secretary of State will dissociate himself from that kind of vulgar, unfeeling philosophy.
  Sir K. Joseph: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that my right hon. Friend was talking largely of indiscriminate benefits going to all, whether or not they need them, and also to a large extent of industry rather than individuals?
  Mr. O'Malley: The right hon. Gentleman certainly was not speaking about industry in the paragraph of his speech to which I referred. The House and the country will have noted that the Secretary of State is unwilling to dissociate himself from the objectionable remarks which his Cabinet colleague made.
  At this stage in the history of methods of dealing with poverty in this country, particularly family poverty, any Government, instead of extending a system of complex and inefficient means-tested benefits, should be looking at how to reduce the number of people on such benefits. I know that the hon. Member for Kensington, South agrees with me on that. We have a hotch-potch system

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  which is difficult for politicians and the professionals concerned with it to understand, let alone the poor people who must apply for the benefits, and it is difficult and costly to administer.
  When the Government introduced the Bill other alternatives were open to them, alternatives which could have been brought into operation before August of next year. One of the major advantages of family allowances is that they are almost universally claimed. It is true that there is a limited scope for further F.A.M. with claw-back, as the present tax-benefit structure stands. But the Government had a range of options. They could have considered raising the tax threshold, which would have raised the rate of earnings at which the full F.A.M. increase would be received without being taxed. They could have replaced taxed F.A.M., child tax allowance, claw-back with untaxed F.A.M., or introduced increased family allowances with less than 100 per cent. claw-back. There is already an example of this, because claw-back does not apply to widowed mothers, who get both family allowance and child tax allowance in full.
  If right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite had wanted a version giving individuals the choice of having family allowance or child tax allowance, it would have been possible to devise a scheme giving the heads of families such an option. Family allowances are an effective and humane way of dealing with the problem of the work-shy and preventing disincentive. Instead of that we have this alternative, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East described as a "scrounger's charter" and which the hon. Member for Kensington, South described in identical terms. We have a Bill which contains formidable disincentives for the lowest-paid members of our community at a time when the Government are talking about incentives for the higher-paid members of the community.
  It is interesting that the Economist said, as long ago as 31st May 1969, in discussing a scheme of this kind—and it is the understatement of the year:
  "There would be lots of stories—some of them justified—about the disincentive effect on layabouts."
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  What kind of result can the right hon. Gentleman expect from a system of help of this kind which provides a 50 per cent. disincentive?
  It is also very a very crude measure. The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames noticed that it apparently disregards war pensions. It apparently disregards everything else that is considered for supplementary benefit.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I asked my right hon. Friend whether war pensions were, as I hope they will be, disregarded in the computation of income for this purpose. I am still waiting for a reply.
  Mr. O'Malley: I, too, hope that they are disregarded, but my impression is that they are not. I am sure that the Under-Secretary will deal with this point. Certainly there is no indication that the disregards available in the supplementary area will be available in the generality of cases in the payment of this scheme. It is a system where an assessment is made and then payments are made for 26 weeks, despite any change in circumstances. I can imagine the kind of reaction that there would have been from the Conservative Party if we had introduced such a Bill with this sort of assessment, ignoring changes in circumstances during the period of 26 weeks. There would have been such a cry of "scroungers" in every right-wing newspaper that we should have had a very difficult task in getting it through.
  It is crude because it is unrelated to housing costs; there are no differentials for children of different ages. It excludes mothers doing part-time work who would be better off on supplementary benefits. It apparently excludes the case—and I shall be corrected if I am wrong—of a man whose grandmother is living with him and looking after the children while he is at work. It poses enormously difficult problems of assessment and administration.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East, who has some experience in this matter, pointed out that we shall have a brand-new scheme and will have to start training a new range of civil servants to carry out the job. The administrative costs are high and when the Bill says that 200 extra civil servants will be required, I hope that the Under-Secretary will give some estimates about

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  the number of hours overtime that he thinks local officals will be required to work to implement the Bill.
  These are criticisms of the technical aspects of the Bill. What is most important about the Bill, in the view of my hon. and right hon. Friends, is that it diminishes the status of the poor. There is no doubt that however humanely a means-tested system is carried out, it nevertheless remains a means-tested system. There are still substantial numbers of people who resent the fact that they should be subjected to such means testing. Therefore, wherever possible the emphasis from government should be on universal rather than selective measures, operating a redistribution through the tax system rather than means testing. What is at stake is the quality of society.
  We on this side of the House reject the concept of second-class citizens, of "lame duck" citizens. Other options were open to the Government and yet they chose the £8 million option for the poor kids and the £25 million option, which I have no doubt they will implement, for the rich kids, to pay their school fees. The record of the Government in the four months that they have been in power is not one of which they can be proud. They have broken their promise and have brought in this sordid, mean little Bill which they say will cost £8 million.
  I would point out that when we came into office, family allowances had not been raised since 1956. The cost of family allowances for alleviating precisely this kind of poverty stood at £143 million in 1964–65 and had jumped to £346 million in 1970–71. The best that the Government have been able to do in the four months is to introduce a system of claw-back whereby, by 1974–75, £82 million will be taken from the less well-off in terms of higher school milk, welfare charges and milk for the over-sevens.
  This Bill is being introduced in a background of inflationary, repressive and irrelevant proposals. We on this side of the House reject the philosophy underlying it; we reject the division of the means-tested State and the polarisation of our society which such a philosophy will inevitably bring about. For these reasons I advise my hon. and right hon. Friends to vote for the reasoned Amendment which appears on the Order Paper.
  9.30 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean): The House has had the pleasure of hearing two maiden speakers today—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey), who spoke with humour and as a member of the hard school of experience and knowledge in these matters, and the hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. John Smith), who paid a well-deserved tribute, which I am sure was echoed on both sides of the House, to his predecessor, Miss Margaret Herbison. We listened to my hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman with great pleasure and we look forward to future contributions from them on this subject and on other subjects.
  I will do my best to deal with as many as possible of the points that have been raised, because I appreciate the view of the hon. Lady the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) and many of my hon. Friends that this is not an easy Bill to comprehend and that it leaves quite a lot to regulations. I will do my best to give as much information as I can in the time available.
  May I first summarise the main points of the scheme, the main things that we are trying to achieve through it. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, it is the quickest and most effective way which we could devise in present circumstances of getting more help to the poorest families. My right hon. Friend went on to emphasise that it is a first step in an unfolding policy of dealing with family poverty. It will undoubtedly concentrate help on families whose earnings from full-time work are below the supplementary benefit level.
  All the money will go to where it is most needed. In that sense, it is a highly selective scheme. It will help the one-child families among whom there is poverty which the family allowance system will not help. It will help the one-parent families in which earnings are often very low, particularly among women—divorced women, separated women, deserted wives, single women. It cannot be denied that the scheme will bring very effective help to these people.
  It will help nearly all wage-stop families. It can be fairly claimed that this is the first time that a scheme has

  327
  been introduced which effectively tackles this form of poverty. The wage-stop deduction will be removed entirely in some cases and reduced by the amount of the family income supplement in nearly all others.
  Whatever criticisms the House may have on detail, it cannot be denied that those are solid advantages and that this is an important, albeit the first, step in dealing with the serious problem of family poverty. It will mean that 190,000 households with over 500,000 children in them will receive help which they are not receiving under present arrangements.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Hitchin and a number of her hon. Friends claimed that the Bill sets a new level of family poverty below the supplementary benefit level. But surely she will admit that what we are doing is raising the level of families who at present are receiving less in earnings than the supplementary benefit level but, none the less, clearly have high motivation because they are in full-time work. We can therefore fairly claim that far from creating a new level of poverty we are raising the present level of these people.
  I should like to give the House more information, particularly on the question of definitions. I deal first with the definition of a family. I accept that this is a very important aspect of the scheme. We propose that a "two-parent" family should consist of a man and woman, whether married or not, and any children belonging to the household for whose requirements they are responsible. As for supplementary benefit, children who are temporarily away from home may still count if the connection is close enough to regard them as in the household. Children present in the home will count even if they are not related or adopted if the adults are acting as parents. Where one parent is not in the household, for example where a married couple has separated, the absent parent does not count. Other adults who happen to be present in a two-parent household will not count.
  Similarly, in a one-parent family any adult present in the home does not count unless he or she is living with the parent as husband or wife. This will mean that a woman with a child will qualify as a family even though for supplementary
  328
  benefit purposes she would be regarded as a non-householder because she is living with her parents. It is proposed that children under 16 will count whether or not they are at school. Over this age it is intended to provide in the regulations that they should count if they are still at secondary school. I realise that this is a little complicated, but I hope that it will look less complicated when it appears in HANSARD.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr asked what would be the position of households with grandparents and young children where there are no parents. The answer is that this type of household will qualify for a supplement assuming that the other conditions are satisfied.
  Another important question was asked by the hon. Member for Hitchin and my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim), namely, the definition of full-time work. Here it is proposed that the regulations will broadly follow the same principle as the normal supplementary benefit test, which is, does the person concerned work the normal number of hours for the normal week in his trade? This is clearly a difficult definition, but that is the principle on which we propose it should be based.
  A question which has occupied a great deal of the debate is why this method of helping the poorest has been selected by the Government rather than the method of family allowances with claw-back. It is clear from what my right hon. Friend said and from my introductory remarks that it became evident on study that this is the most effective way in which help can be brought to these needy families. It is perfectly true that in opposition we stated a preference for the family allowance and claw-back arrangement. Equally, we were committed to deal with family poverty, and that is precisely what we are doing.
  Mrs. Shirley Williams rose—
  Mr. Dean: I think I am about to answer the hon. Lady's point. If not, I will willingly give way to her in a few moments. As my right hon. Friend said in opening the debate, the comparison is not simply with the £30 million to which reference has been made. The £30 million for poor families amounted

  329
  only to £6 million when the various offsets were taken into account. So here is a choice between £6 million and £8 million, and I cannot believe that the hon. Lady is trying to suggest to the House that a sum of £6 million for these poorer families is preferable to the £8 million which the Bill provides.
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: Being fond of the English language, I ask the hon. Gentleman whether preferences are normally described by the phrase "the only way"?
  Mr. Dean: As I explained, this was the only way that we knew at the time. But it has now become clear that, far from bringing the most effective help to these families by that method, we can do it in the way which is being proposed. I cannot believe that the House will take seriously an argument that because certain words were written at one time—[Interruption.]—we should accept a scheme which will bring less help than that which we propose.
  Mr. O'Malley: Is it or is it not the case that the Conservative Party in opposition stated that they were prepared to spend £30 million on family poverty and now are spending only £8 million?
  Mr. Dean: I have explained that that is not the case. What matters is that we are committed to deal with family poverty, and that we are doing.
  Let us look at the history a little more carefully. When these changes were introduced by the party opposite in 1968, the intention for family allowance with claw-back arrangement was that people on the standard rate would get virtually no benefit from the arrangement, that people on the reduced rate would get some benefit, and that the non-taxpayer would get the full benefit. That, broadly speaking, was the intention and that was the effect. But it meant, inevitably, a lowering of the tax threshold and, therefore, the earnings at which people begin to pay tax. It brought many additional families into tax with the disincentive effect which that involved.
  The combined effect of the 1969 and 1970 Budgets was to lower the threshold still further, particularly the 1970 Budget, by putting all taxpayers on the standard rate. So what, in effect, happened was that if tax on family allowances plus
  330
  additional tax paid because of claw-back together outbalance the child tax allowance, the man would pay more tax when his wife had another child. This was very nearly the point which had been reached and which has been reached now. In other words, the previous Administration, by 1970, had succeeded in undermining the system which they introduced in 1968 either by accident or by design.
  We are now in the situation where a 10s. increase in family allowances with claw-back would mean that a man with two children would start paying tax on an income as low as £13 4s. and, with four children, on £12 4s. In other words, for every additional child he would be taxed on lower and lower earnings.
  We are entitled to ask whether the previous Administration knew that this was the position or did not realise the precise significance of the Budget figures at that time. It certainly was not stated in the Budget debate. That question certainly was not answered at that time.
  It may be that the arguments that were then put forward were thought by the Government to be the proper ones; but they certainly never put to the House the virtual impossibility of proceeding further through the family allowance claw-back arrangements. Indeed, the arguments which were given from this Box at that time were, first, that the time was not opportune for a further family allowance claw-back and, secondly, that it would be better to wait for an enlarged family expenditure survey and for the Finer Report on one-parent families. There was no indication, therefore, that the then Government realised that the scope for family allowance plus claw-back had virtually disappeared. We are bound to ask: was this voluntary ignorance on their part, or was it deliberate silence?
  The benefit effect of the comparison, therefore, between family allowance and claw-back and the family income supplement is absolutely clear, and the latter wins hands down. As my right hon. Friend said, a 10s. increase in family allowance with claw-back would mean paying out an extra £180 million, of which only £6 million would be a real addition to family income at the lower level. The rest would come back in tax or savings on other benefits. It would

  331
  mean then a big increase in expenditure with a very small impact on family poverty and apart from the problem of taking out of the man's pay packet to put into the wife's family allowance.
  Equally, of course, there is the question of timing. If the family allowance arrangements were to be extended to include a one-child family, it would take a very long time to introduce that and a great deal longer than it would take to bring aid—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"]—because of the great administrative cost which would be involved and identifying the 3 million singleton children who exist in the country at present.
  Mrs. Lena Jeger: Surely mothers know whether they have children or not, and it will be no more difficult to find these families than it is to find the families on this sophisticated and difficult criterion?
  Mr. Dean: There are a great many more involved—something like three million. That is the answer to the hon. Lady.
  Now, may I deal with the question of the take-up? We entirely accept that the take-up campaign for this new benefit is absolutely vital to its success. There will be a publicity campaign starting early next year, probably in May, which will be directed first to individuals, to identify the people eligible, so that a claim form can be sent to them and a leaflet explaining the claim. We have certain information available already in local offices—for instance, people on supplementary benefit returning to work, the register of families in full-time work who qualify for welfare foods, refund of national health charges and the like.
  We also intend to send leaflets with all family allowance books, and we shall have leaflets in post offices, local authority offices and the like. We shall try to enlist the aid of the people in the local authorities dealing with the personal social services and rent and rate rebates. We shall also try to enlist the aid of the voluntary organisations. We intend in addition to have a publicity campaign through newspapers and posters. My right hon. Friend attaches the greatest possible importance not only to getting the maximum take-up for this new benefit but also to making this a passport for
  332
  other benefits to which these people may also be entitled—
  Mr. Charles Loughlin rose—
  Mr. Dean: No. I will not give way: the hon. Gentleman has not been here—
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is asked to give way to three hon. Gentlemen. He decides whether to give way to one of the three or to none.
  Mr. Loughlin rose—
  Mr. Kevin McNamara rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Mere insistence does not mean that an hon. Gentleman gives way.
  Mr. Loughlin: On a point of order—
  Sir K. Joseph: Spurious.
  Mr. Loughlin: The right hon. Gentleman says that it is spurious, but he has not heard it. I am merely submitting to you, Sir, that when a Minister who is winding up and purporting to give information to the House is questioned on procedures or there is a request not on a political issue but to determine the procedures to be adopted in carrying through the information that he has given—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I must know whether this is a point of order.
  Mr. Loughlin: I have been here a lot longer than some.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman will come to his point of order.
  Mr. Loughlin: I am asking, Mr. Speaker, for your guidance as to whether the Minister winding up a debate and purporting to give information to the House, ought to be subjected to some questioning about the procedures to be adopted on the basis of the information that he has given.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That is a point of pure idealism and not a point of order.
  Mr. Dean: The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) has

  333
  not been here during the debate, and, in fairness to hon. Gentlemen who have and hon. Gentlemen who have asked me particular questions, I ought to deal with their questions. The hon. Member for Hitchin, and a number of my hon. Friends asked about monitoring and information generally. We have, of course, worked on the very limited information which was available to us when we came into office, but it is the intention of my right hon. Friend that the estimates should be revised year by year, and he will consider the possibility of publishing them along with current figures of the numbers of family income supplements in payment.
  I turn to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) with regard to the dangers, as he saw it, of Speenhamland. I should like to emphasise, as my right hon. Friend did at the beginning, that this is a modest scheme.
  Mr. Loughlin: Very modest.
  Mr. Dean: It is a scheme which is nothing like as extensive, in the numbers of people who are involved, as the original Speenhamland scheme—[Interruption.] My right hon. Friend made the point that there is a distinction. None the less—Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We have had a placid debate today. I do not know why it should be altered.
  Mr. Dean: Speenhamland started, as my right hon. Friend said, in a very small way. We intend to keep this small. But, equally, there are many examples now of people in full-time work who are getting assistance of various kinds—family allowances, school meals, rate and rent rebates, and student grants. All come into a somewhat similar category, so one cannot fairly claim that we are starting something completely new.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) asked who would receive the payment of the new allowance. The intention is that the claims are to be made jointly by the man and by the woman in the household. Joint signature to claims seems desirable to ensure that full information about income is given. It is envisaged that the regulations will enable the joint
  334
  signature to be dispensed with where it is impractical for both to sign, for example, where the wife is disabled. The regulations will deal with the question of payees. It is proposed that the order book will normally be addressed to the mother, but the orders will be encashable by either parent, as for family allowances.
  Mr. Loughlin rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) must contain his enthusiasm.
  Mr. Loughlin: He must contain himself, not I.
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Dean: I turn now—
  Mr. Loughlin: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Dean: No, I will not give way.
  Mr. Loughlin rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. When the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) speaks, he expects to be listened to.
  Mr. Dean: I turn now to the questions put to me by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), especially that concerning the £3 maximum proposed. The main reason is the incentive that it provides. Equally, we are anxious to make the full time work test as simple as possible and to treat one-parent families as generously as we can. Equally, it is necessary to have some maximum, otherwise anyone who can show that he or she is working full-time will be able to claim.
  I am glad to give my right hon. Friend the assurance for which he asked about tax. It is not intended that the family income supplement should be subject to tax.
  Mr. Loughlin: It is a swindle.
  Mr. Dean: My right hon. Friend also mentioned war pensions and war pension disregards. As the responsible Minister, I am sorry to tell my right hon. Friend, but I hope that he will appreciate, that if we are to keep the scheme simple, as we must, it is very difficult to introduce any form of disregard.
  Mr. Loughlin: The hon. Gentleman ought to stop reading his brief.
  Mr. Dean: Finally, I turn to the Opposition Amendment—
  Mr. Loughlin: On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to read completely from a Ministerial brief about which he knows nothing?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is not reading from a Ministerial brief, and I assume that he knows something.
  Mr. Loughlin: Further to that—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. In a free Parliament, the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West must allow other hon. Members to speak.
  Mr. Dean rose—
  Mr. Loughlin: Further to that point of order. The hon. Gentleman is reading his brief. I accept, as all hon. Members do, that a Minister has the right to resort to copious notes. However, the hon. Gentleman is reading his brief word for word, and the reason why he will not give way to me is that he does not understand it.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West has expressed an opinion. It is not a point of order.
  Mr. Dean: The Opposition Amendment speaks of a further extension to
  "the complex system of a means-tested society …"
  Mr. Loughlin: The hon. Gentleman missed a comma.
  Mr. Dean: When I read that, I asked myself whether it means that means tests are all right under a Labour Government but not all right under a Tory Government. Let us, for a moment, look at the means tests which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite introduce or extended: supplementary benefit instead of national assistance, with bigger and better means tests, and they were proud to ask people to submit to them; the rate rebate scheme, with a new means test; the rent rebate extension, with means tests; prescription charges, reintroduced with means tests. Nearly all of them are covered by the family income supplement and are already subject to means tests introduced or extended by the previous Administration. That shows the humbug of their Amendment.
  My right hon. Friend has not claimed that this scheme is perfect. However, it is a first step in dealing with family poverty in our country. As such, I ask the House to support it.
  Question put, That the Amendment be made:—
  The House divided: Ayes 188, Noes 221.

  Division No. 21.]

  AYES

  [10.0 p.m.

  Albu, Austen

  Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)

  Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Cohen, Stanley

  Fitch, Alan (Wigan)

  Allen, Scholefield

  Coleman, Donald

  Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

  Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)

  Concannon, J. D.

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, Central)

  Ford, Ben

  Ashton, Joe

  Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard

  Fraser, John (Norwood)

  Barnes, Michael

  Cunningham, G. (Islington, S. W.)

  Freeson, Reginald

  Barnett, Joel

  Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)

  Galpern, Sir Myer

  Baxter, William

  Dalyell, Tam

  Gilbert, Dr. John

  Beaney, Alan

  Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)

  Golding, John

  Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

  Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

  Davis, Clinton (Hackney, Central)

  Gourlay, Harry

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Deakins, Eric

  Grant, George (Morpeth)

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund

  Grant, John D. (Islington, East)

  Boardman, H. (Leigh)

  Dempsey, James

  Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

  Booth, Albert

  Doig, Peter

  Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.

  Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)

  Dormand, J. D.

  Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)

  Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)

  Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)

  Hamling, William

  Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)

  Douglas-Mann, Bruce

  Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)

  Buchan, Norman

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Hardy, Peter

  Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)

  Eadie, Alex

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

  Edelman, Maurice

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

  Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

  Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, West)

  Edwards, William (Merioneth)

  Huckfield, Leslie

  Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)

  Ellis, Tom

  Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)

  Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, North)

  Clark, David (Colne Valley)

  Fernyhough, E.

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Hunter, Adam

  Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

  Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)

  Janner, Greville

  Marks, Kenneth

  Sillars, James

  Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'b'n & St. P'cras, S.)

  Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy

  Silverman, Julius

  Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)

  Meacher, Michael

  Small, William

  Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

  Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert

  Smith, John (Lanarkshire, North)

  Johnson, Walter (Derby, South)

  Milne, Edward (Blyth)

  Spearing, Nigel

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Molloy, William

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Jones, Dan (Burnley)

  Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

  Stallard, A. W.

  Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)

  Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

  Steel, David

  Jones, Barry (Flint, East)

  Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)

  Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, West)

  Murray, Hn. Ronald King

  Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John

  Kaufman, Gerald

  Ogden, Eric

  Strang, Gavin

  Kelley, Richard

  O'Halloran, Michael

  Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley

  Kerr, Russell

  O'Malley, Brian

  Swain, Thomas

  Kinnock, Neil

  Orme, Stanley

  Taverne, Dick

  Lambie, David

  Oswald, Thomas

  Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)

  Lamond, James

  Padley, Walter

  Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)

  Latham, Arthur

  Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

  Torney, Tom

  Lawson, George

  Pardoe, John

  Tuck, Raphael

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Parker, John (Dagenham)

  Urwin, T. W.

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Pentland, Norman

  Wainwright, Edwin

  Leonard, Dick

  Prescott, John

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)

  Wallace, George

  Lipton, Marcus

  Price, William (Rugby)

  Watkins, David

  Loughlin, Charles

  Probert, Arthur

  Weitzman, David

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford, East)

  Rankin, John

  Wellbeloved, James

  Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

  Reed, D. (Sedgefield)

  White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)

  McBride, Neil

  Rhodes, Geoffrey

  Whitehead, Phillip

  McCartney, Hugh

  Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)

  Whitlock, William

  MacColl, James

  Robertson, John (Paisley)

  Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)

  McElhone, Frank

  Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br'c'n & R'dnor)

  Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

  Mackenzie, Gregor

  Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)

  Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

  Mackie, John

  Roper, John

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Maclennan, Robert

  Rose, Paul B.

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

  Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)

  Mr. Joseph Harper and

  McNamara, J. Kevin

  Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)

  Mr. James Hamilton.

  MacPherson, Malcolm

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Cormack, Patrick

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

  Costain, A. P.

  Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

  Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

  Critchley, Julian

  Hannam, John (Exeter)

  Astor, John

  Crouch, David

  Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

  Atkins, Humphrey

  Crowder, F. P.

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Awdry, Daniel

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)

  d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. Jack

  Hicks, Robert

  Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)

  Dean, Paul

  Hiley, Joseph

  Bell, Ronald

  Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.

  Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)

  Bennett, Sir Frederi (Torquay)

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  Hill, James (Southampton, Test)

  Benyon, W.

  Dykes, Hugh

  Holland, Philip

  Berry, Hon. Anthony

  Eden, Sir John

  Hornsby-Smith. Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia

  Biffen, John

  Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

  Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, North)

  Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)

  Body, Richard

  Eyre, Reginald

  Hutchison, Michael Clark

  Boscawen, R. T.

  Farr, John

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Bowden, Andrew

  Fell, Anthony

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John

  Fenner, Mrs. Peggy

  James, David

  Bray, Ronald

  Fidler, Michael

  Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

  Brewis, John

  Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)

  Jessel, Toby

  Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher

  Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)

  Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)

  Bruce-Gardyne, J.

  Fletcher-Cooke, Charles

  Jones, Arthur (Northants, South)

  Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N & M)

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith

  Bullus, Sir Eric

  Fortescue Tim

  Kellett, Mrs. Elaine

  Butler, Adam (Bosworth)

  Fowler, Norman

  Kerby, Capt. Henry

  Campbell, Rt. Hn. G. (Moray & Nairn)

  Fox, Marcus

  Kershaw, Anthony

  Carlisle, Mark

  Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford & Stone)

  Kilfedder, James

  Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert

  Fry, Peter

  Kimball, Marcus

  Channon, Paul

  Gardner, Edward

  King, Evelyn (Dorset, South)

  Chapman, Sydney

  Gibson-Watt, David

  King, Tom (Bridgwater)

  Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher

  Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)

  Kinsey, J. R.

  Churchill, W. S.

  Glyn, Dr. Alan

  Kitson, Timothy

  Clark, William (Surrey, East)

  Goodhew, Victor

  Knight, Mrs. Jill

  Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Gower, Raymond

  Knox, David

  Clegg, Walter

  Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)

  Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

  Cockeram, Eric

  Gray, Hamish

  Le Marchant, Spencer

  Cooke, Robert

  Green, Alan

  Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'n C'dfield)

  Coombs, Derek

  Grieve, Percy

  Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)

  Cooper, A. E.

  Grylls, Michael

  Longden, Gilbert

  Cordle, John

  Gummer, Selwyn

  Loveridge, John

  Corfield, F. V.

  Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)

  MacArthur, Ian

  338

  339

  McCrindle, R. A.

  Pike, Miss Mervyn

  Tapsell, Peter

  McLaren, Martin

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)

  McMaster, Stanley

  Pounder, Rafton

  Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)

  McNair-Wilson, Michael

  Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

  Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)

  McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)

  Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis

  Tebbit, Norman

  Madel, David

  Raison, Timothy

  Temple, John M.

  Marten, Neil

  Redmond, Robert

  Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret

  Maude, Angus

  Reed, Laurence (Bolton, East)

  Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)

  Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

  Rees, Hn. Peter (Dover)

  Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Rees-Davies W. R.

  Tilney, John

  Mills, Peter (Torrington)

  Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

  Trafford, Dr. Anthony

  Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Trew, Peter

  Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C. (Aberdeenshire, W)

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

  Moate, Roger

  Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, North)

  Vaughan, Dr. Gerard

  Molyneaux, James

  Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

  Waddington, David

  Money, Ernle D.

  Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

  Walder, David (Clitheroe)

  Monks, Mrs. Connie

  Rost, Peter

  Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)

  Monro, Hector

  Scott, Nicholas

  Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Scott-Hopkins, James

  Warren, Kenneth

  More, Jasper

  Sharples, Richard

  Weatherill, Bernard

  Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)

  Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh & Whitby)

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.

  Shelton, William (Clapham)

  White, Roger (Gravesend)

  Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

  Simeons, Charles

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Mudd, David

  Sinclair, Sir George

  Wilkinson, John

  Murton, Oscar

  Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Nabarro, Sir Gerald

  Soref, Harold

  Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher

  Neave, Airey

  Spence, John

  Worsley, Marcus

  Normanton, Tom

  Sproat, Iain

  Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.

  Nott, John

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Younger, Hon. George

  Onslow, Cranley

  Stewart-Smith, D. G. (Belper)

  Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally

  Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Owen, Idris (Stockport, North)

  Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.

  Mr. Keith Speed and

  Page, Graham (Crosby)

  Stokes, John

  Mr. Paul Hawkins.

  Percival, Ian

  Stuttaford, Dr. Tom

  Main Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 39 (Amendment on second or third reading), and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Humphrey Atkins.]
  Committee Tomorrow.

  FAMILY INCOME SUPPLEMENTS [MONEY]
  Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
  Resolved,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide for the payment of a new benefit for certain families with small incomes, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

  (a) any benefit under the Act;

  (b) any expenses of the Secretary of State attributable to the Act; and

  (c) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other enactment out of moneys so provided.—[Mr. Patrick Jenkin.]

  HOSPITAL ENDOWMENTS (SCOTLAND) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question put (pursuant to Standing Order No. 62 (Public
  340
  Bills relating exclusively to Scotland)), That the Bill be committed to a Scottish Standing Committee.—[Mr. Edward Taylor.]
  Question agreed to.
  Bill (deemed to have been read a Second time) committed to a Scottish Standing Committee.

  EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, now standing committed to a Standing Committee, he committed to a Committee of the whole House.
  10.12 p.m.
  Mr. James Callaghan: The House is faced with a very odd Motion here, and it would be fitting for the Patronage Secretary, were he to care to give us his attention for a moment, to indicate its purpose. As I understand it, the Government having committed the Bill to a Standing Committee, now ask that it be committed to a Committee of the whole House. The Patronage Secretary interrupts, though it may be not for me to hear, that it is normal practice but, with respect, I have never heard of the practice before. The Government having

  341
  committed the Bill to a Standing Committee have now presumably changed their mind—or have they not? Why should they waste the time of the House in this way? I did not ask for the Bill to be committed to a Standing Committee. The Government asked for that, and the obedient, Whipped back-benchers opposite agreed that it should be committed to a Standing Committee. Now, with the same mindless obedience, they are ready to agree that it should be committed to a Committee of the whole House.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I sense in the right hon. Gentleman's remarks a breath of objection to the Motion. If he objects to the Motion in any way, I must put it off.
  Mr. Callaghan: I did not sense anything. All I sensed was that there was a certain insensitivity opposite. I was trying to state the facts as clearly and as objecttively as I could. I thought that it was a reasonable question. Perhaps some of the new hon. Members we have among us will in due course want to ask why the Government Chief Whip should seek to hold them up in this manner by first asking them to walk into the Lobbies, if necessary, to support the committing of the Bill to a Standing Committee and then later, without any argument or speech, with merely the usual bland, friendly smile, completely changing his mind and saying, "No. You were wrong, lads. I misled you last time. I promise you that it is all right now. I want you to agree to the Bill going to a Committee of the whole House".
  Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman is right. I am not expressing objection. I should like to know on which occasion the right hon. Gentleman is right. Is it the first time or is it the second time? [An HON. MEMBER: "Too curious."] I agree that they are the masters now, but even the masters must give some intelligible account of their actions to the House. I hope that no back-bencher opposite would ever allow the Chief Whip to get away with such a change of mind as this without some explanation.
  Far be it from me to raise any objection to this procedure. Nothing that I have said could lead anybody to believe that I was objecting to it. The only comment that I propose to make is that,
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  if the Government intend to go on like this—changing their mind at such regular intervals and after such a short time on such questions as whether a Bill should go to a Standing Committee or should be taken on the Floor of the House—how can we expect them to solve any serious problem with which they may be confronted?
  Therefore, before I make up my mind whether this is a subject on which objection should be taken, it would fitting if the Patronage Secretary would give an explanation. I have a great deal of respect for the Financial Secretary, but it is not for him to do so, because he has not tabled the Motion. The Financial Secretary should not convert himself into an air-raid shelter because the Patronage Secretary has made a mistake. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman is converting himself from the Treasury into an air-raid shelter, I can only say that I have seen very few flimsier structures—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We must come back from the subject of air-raid shelters.
  Mr. Callaghan: I shall have done my job if I have at least cast some doubts into the minds of back-benchers opposite who may not have noticed what the Motion was about—that the Patronage Secretary made a mistake on the first occasion and now seeks to put it right. I would not want to lead them into the Lobby against him. I think that they should probably support him on this occasion, but I suggest that they keep a jolly close eye on him, because if he can make them walk in two precisely opposite directions in three days on a simple issue like this, heaven knows what will happen to them when they get into really deep waters.
  Mr. Speaker: The Question is—
  Mr. Callaghan: Mr. Speaker, I have not quite finished my remarks. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The barrage does not help sane discussion.
  Mr. Callaghan: Mr. Speaker, as you and I know, it does not tend to shorten proceedings.
  Mr. John Wells: On a point of order. Is it in order for the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) to speak twice?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman was of the opinion that I was interrupting him.
  Mr. Wells: Further to that point of order. The right hon. Gentleman had sat down. It was within the eyesight of us all that he had sat down.
  Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman must rely on Mr. Speaker's eyesight.
  Mr. Callaghan: If objection of this sort is to be taken, it will be perfectly possible for others beside myself to continue the debate.
  Hon. Members: No.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I am grateful for the help which hon. Members are giving to the Chair. If objection is taken at all, the Motion will be put off.
  Mr. Callaghan: I thought that I had been very careful in not taking objection so far, but it would be perfectly possible for others to ask questions. All I want to do now is to put a very simple proposition. In order to avoid others of my hon. Friends asking the questions, and pressing them, which I have asked, I suggest that we should have from the air-raid shelter opposite some defence of this change of mind.
  10.18 p.m.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Patrick Jenkin): I am astonished that the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) should have forgotten so swiftly what he must have known when he was sitting on this side of the House. He knows that the question of a Bill going to Standing Committee is automatic and that all the business about my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary dragooning his right hon. and hon. Friends into the Lobby
  344
  on one day and then inviting them to do something else on another day is irrelevant.
  This Motion might have been put down on some day last week. In fact, it has been put down tonight, and I have no doubt that my right hon. and hon. Friends are entirely justified in supporting it. The Bill is nominally a Treasury Bill, although the Home Office debates the details. The Committee stage has always been taken on the Floor of the House, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take no exception to that practice, which was regularly followed every year when he and his Government were in office.
  Mr. Elystan Morgan: It is clear from what has been said by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury that what happened happened per incuriam. Although the Government had not the candour to explain the matter in full to the House, it is clear that they were not on that occasion acting as mindless robots but merely made a mistake.
  Contrary to what the Minister said, I believe that this was the first occasion on which the Bill was sent to a Standing Committee. I am sure that no one on this side, looking back into his experience, can recall any other occasion on which that occurred. It happened by mistake. It was a bungle on the Government's part. They have half-apologised. We accept that half-apology for what it is worth.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, now standing committed to a Standing Committee, be committed to a Committee of the whole House.
  Committee tomorrow.

  NATIONAL UNION OF MINEWORKERS (CONSULTATION)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Humphrey Atkins.]
  10.21 p.m.
  Mr. Roy Mason: The House will no doubt recall—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Will hon. Members please leave quietly? They may have an Adjournment debate themselves one evening.
  Mr. Mason: The House will recall the interchange which took place at Question Time yesterday arising out of a Question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Edwin Wainwright) with reference to the conversion of three power stations, Aberthaw A, Richborough and Northfleet. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, said that these conversions
  "have been the subject of consultation with the N.U.M., as will be any future conversions."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th November, 1970; Vol. 806, c. 20.]
  I questioned that. I asked the hon. Gentleman to reconsider his statement because I felt that consultations had not taken place on that occasion.
  I duly contacted the National Union of Mineworkers, which provided me with a copy of the minutes of the proceedings when representatives met the Minister, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden), on 18th August, three weeks after the hon. Gentleman had publicly announced the conversion of these three power stations. I quote from the minutes of that meeting:
  "The Union's representatives made a vigorous protest at the lack of consultation regarding the decision to convert the Richborough, Northfleet and Aberthaw A power stations. A decision had been made by the Central Electricity Generating Board, the National Coal Board and the Government without any consultation with the representatives of the men in coalmining affected. The Union's representatives requested that in future the Union should be consulted before applications affecting mineworkers are consented to by the Minister."
  The union sent the minutes to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bournemouth, West, saying,
  346
  "Could you please confirm that these minutes are a true record of the meeting between representatives of this Union and yourself?".
  He replied, on 28th September:
  "I have no amendments to suggest."
  Those are the facts. The union was not consulted. In fact, its leaders were staggered at the Minister's announcement in the House on 23rd July, in answer to a Question from my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. Kelley). When I said yesterday that no consultation had taken place, I was right, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take cognisance of the facts and use this opportunity to straighten the record, especially the record in HANSARD showing what he said yesterday.
  While the Government have been in office, they have effected a change of policy regarding power station conversions. On the three to which I have referred, there was not proper consultation with the N.U.M. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not refer to the meeting on 15th July when the unions' representatives themselves raised it and the matter was still under consideration by the Minister.
  What has perturbed Members on this side of the House and the National Union of Mineworkers is that it was not agreed that Richborough should be dual fired but it was switched completely to oil. The miners have lost a market of 500,000 tons of coal a year—in effect, the death of one coal mine. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends now have under consideration three more power stations—West Thurrock, Kirkstall and Padiham. Therefore, I ask first that proper consultation take place with the N.U.M. before the Government decide on the conversion of those three stations. We must bear in mind that if they do convert completely nearly 2½ million tons of coal will be lost to the National Coal Board and the coal industry.
  Many people are under a misapprehension about the rundown of coal stocks. One reason is a policy I initiated when I was in the Ministry of Power. There is a low undistributed stock rate at present, but not by accident. Nor is it totally due to an unforeseen call on the large coal stocks we had a year ago. It is partly by plan, a deliberate act of

  347
  policy initiated when I was in office. Derek Ezra, Deputy Chairman of the Coal Board, made strong representations to me to get the undistributed stocks down. First, that would help the National Coal Board finances, and, second, if we could move during the summer that would overcome the problems of moving in winter when the industry is at the top of the cycle of demand and when, because of snow problems, frozen points on the railways and so on, it is very difficult to move stocks, and they are in more hardened form. This was particularly requested because of a heavy call on British Rail rolling stock.
  Therefore, I then initiated meetings between the C.E.G.B., British Rail and the Coal Board to move more coal in the summer and to have stocks developed at the point of consumption. If there had been a national coalfield stoppage in recent weeks the C.E.G.B. would no doubt have been in worse difficulties, but because of the movement it is better able to cope, and electricity generation is not so easily threatened.
  Allied to this is a third point, that during the past 12 months many of the major power stations burning coal have developed boiler cracks. At least, they have been detected recently; they may have been there for a few years. This has meant a heavy repair programme by the C.E.G.B., taking out of commission major coal-burning stations that are highly efficient and calling upon the less efficient coal-burning stations, bringing them higher in the merit order and consequently burning more coal. This has also applied to the problem in the Magnox nuclear reactors. Because of oxidisation of nuts and bolts, they have been less efficient during this time, and so more coal has been burned in the coal-burning stations. That is a once for-all bonus for the coal industry. As soon as the repairs are effected demand for coal will lessen.
  Besides this, we are worried about the Tory Coal Bill. It is not yet before the House, but we are worried about what will happen if they cut out the proviso we had in our Bill of coal burn being financed by the State equivalent to 6 million to 7 million tons of coal a year.
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  On those two counts, if coal burn is lessened by the State and if the power station repairs are affected, in a year or two years' time there could be a fall in demand for coal of 10 million to 12 million tons. Therefore, we should then get the true demand and supply. They would be put properly in perspective, because the factors I have mentioned are tending to falsify the position now.
  That leads me to my final point—the question of coal imports. I shall not speak at length because my hon. Friends the Members for Dearne Valley, Don Valley and Pontefract (Mr. Harper) wish to contribute briefly to the debate. We shall give the Minister time to reply.
  I gather that talks are taking place between the Minister's Department and the British Steel Corporation regarding coal imports. I must warn the Minister that this is a dangerous trend at this time. A ballot is in the offing in the coalfield and when the ballot takes place I believe the decision will be accepted. Further the fuel problem will be lessened. I would urge the hon. Gentleman not to take this step, let it lie for a while, it may not be necessary. An announcement of coal imports plus the long-term contracts that would ensue from that announcement at a time when demand—after the power station repairs are effected—will fall, will only exacerbate the feelings again between the union and the Board and between the industry and the Government.
  I therefore suggest, first of all to the hon. Gentleman that there has been a lack of consultation on those three power stations and I hope that that has now been totally remedied. I fear that there will be a loss of coal burn in the Bill and in view of the repairs at power stations, and because of this lessening in demand soon, I hope that the Government will discard the question of coal imports on any count until that has happened.
  10.33 p.m.
  Mr. Joseph Harper: I am grateful for this opportunity to make a short intervention. This debate arises from the Question that my hon. Friend the Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Edwin Wainwright) asked yesterday in this House. It hinges around consultation and fears for the future of the coal-mining industry. I want to reinforce

  349
  what my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) has said. It has always been the custom of the two previous Governments for consultations to take place between the miners, this House and the Minister. We thought that when the new Government took office that would still be the case, but apparently someone has slipped up.
  When we were discussing the closures of previous power stations, notably the one at Fulham, on pollution grounds and the other two at Portishead and Brunswick Wharf, we met the then Minister to discuss this. I have a letter in my possession written by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) who was then Minister of Technology. He said:
  "I met them"—
  that is the miners' group—
  "just before Christmas and fixed a seminar in the Department to discuss the things that caused them most anxiety."
  There were a lot of things at that time causing anxiety. The Minister added:
  "I had also cleared the actual conversions with the Chairman of the National Coal Board and the Chairman of the National Union of Mineworkers."
  Shortly after the General Election we met the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden) on 21st July. I thought that things were getting off to a good start and that we would have continued consultations.
  Once the more efficient stations are back to normal the position will revert back to normality. What we are worried about is that if there is any shortage of coal in the near future the Ministry will take it upon itself to lift the ban on imported coal and this would be disastrous on all counts. It would be disastrous not only for the mining industry but for the country and would cause a drop in morale in the mining industry. It would exacerbate an already explosive situation. I hope and trust that after this debate the Minister will have a good look at the position and come to a definite decision, giving us a firm undertaking that there will be no imported coal and that the Government will not lift the ban.
  10.34 p.m.
  Mr. Edwin Wainwright: It appears that the Minister deliberately misled the House the other day on the question of consultation. If
  350
  that is so, he owes the House an apology. A lack of consultation creates dissatisfaction throughout the mining industry and other industries. There has been a lack of communication from management to employees in all industries for years. If the Minister cannot set an example, it is to be deplored, and I hope that he will apologise to the House.
  The mining industry is going through a very difficult time. There is a tremendous lack of confidence in the Government. When the Labour Party was in office, a Bill was almost on the Statute Book. We are still awaiting a decision on that Bill. We are still waiting for the Government to do something about the grey, intermediate zone in Yorkshire. In fact, all the local authorities in the area want the coal mining area of Yorkshire to be declared a scheduled development area. I hope that the Government will do something about this matter in the very near future. The Government's indecision is creating great dissatisfaction, not only throughout Yorkshire, but throughout the country. It is time that decisions were taken.
  I hope that after this debate more confidence will be created by the Government. I remember the meeting which I attended with the Minister for Industry when he promised faithfully that there would be no change of policy, no alterations and no conversions made during the recess. I accepted that what he said was said in good faith. I hope that that good faith will not be undermined by the Government.
  The Minister owes the House and the National Union of Mineworkers an apology for misleading the House.
  10.37 p.m.
  Mr. Richard Kelley: I am obliged to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) for allowing me to make a few observations in this hurriedly arranged but important debate.
  The question of consultation has been a very marked feature in the relations between the parties in the industry during a period of contraction probably unprecedented in the economic history of this country. Because of a lack of confidence by the Government in the National Union of Mineworkers and the National Coal Board, we have this lamentable situation in which no consultation has taken place.

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  I tabled a Question for answer on 23rd July, because we were under the misapprehension that a decision was likely to be made without consultation and announced during the recess. Apparently the decision had been made without consultation, and it was announced the day before the recess.
  There have been reports in almost all the newspapers that the Government are contemplating importing coal. I advise the Minister that that would be a catastrophic step. If coal is imported, it must reach and leave the dockside, which requires the employment of dockers. Transport will be required to move it from the docks, which means the employment of railwaymen and transport haulage workers. There would be introduced into an already delicate economic situation an explosion which would probably lead to a complete shut-down of all industrial activity throughout the country. There would be a repetition of 1926, deliberately promoted and provoked by action of this kind, and I beg the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to have serious thoughts before they take what I regard as a stupid step.
  10.40 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): The debate arises out of allegations made by the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) and the hon. Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Edwin Wainwright) that I misled the House yesterday. They pressed me to make a personal statement, which I have no intention of doing because Erskine May records that objection has been taken to a Minister correcting a previous Ministerial statement by means of a personal explanation. I do not believe that I have any charge to answer in relation to misleading the House.
  The two statements I made in answer to the hon. and right hon. Gentleman have been quoted and I will not repeat them because time is short. At no time did I say when these discussions between the National Union of Mineworkers and my hon. Friend took place, and at no time did I say that the discussions were entirely satisfactory to the National Union of Mineworkers. I will refer to these two points later. I restricted myself to
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  the statement that consultation and discussions had taken place. This was denied by the hon. Gentleman, who referred to the lack of consultation on these conversions, and by the right hon. Gentleman who said that he informed the House during the debate on coal a fortnight ago that in the matter of these three power stations the Government deliberately avoided talking to the N.U.M.
  The facts are that my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry saw the N.U.M. on 15th July before the decision was taken and before an announcement was made to the House. He listened to the representations of the N.U.M., which were fulsome and strong, and I have before me the record of what the N.U.M. said to my hon. Friend. Consultation means listening to what the other person has to say and taking account of it before coming to a decision. The fact that my hon. Friend came to a decision which was inimical to the interests of the N.U.M. does not in any way invalidate the statement which I made that consultations took place.
  Later, on 18th August, my hon. Friend again saw the N.U.M. for a much fuller discussion on this subject. Although I admit that the decision had already by that time been taken, there can be no doubt whatsoever that my hon. Friend did his very best at a time of great pressure to make sure that the views of the N.U.M. were known and that full opportunity was given for discussion on policy. I therefore see nothing at all for me to withdraw in relation to this matter, although perhaps the right hon. Gentleman might feel that there is something for him to withdraw.
  I do not want to waste the time of the House on this, because the hon. Gentlemen who have spoken have raised more important matters. My hon. Friend is not satisfied with the amount of consultation which has taken place in the past. In answer to the question raised by the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Harper), my hon. Friend saw the mining group of hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition side before he took his decision, and he will, I am sure, wish to keep in close touch with them on all matters to do with the coal industry. He agrees with three sentences which I wish to quote from the minutes of the meeting which

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  he held with the N.U.M. on 18th August:
  "The Minister replied that he was keen to have the best possible contact with the Union and would like regular meetings for general discussion. … Regarding power station conversions, the Minister admitted that a case existed for better communications. The Minister promised to let the Union know of future applications and consult them before making a final decision."
  In view of that on the record of the minutes written by the N.U.M., I think that it was churlish of the right hon. Gentleman to bring up the point that the Government had deliberately avoided talking to the N.U.M. either at that time or in relation to the future. My hon. Friend is willing to have the closest possible relations with that union in future. Indeed, that is his wish.
  Regarding future possible conversions, my hon. Friend has already been in touch with the N.U.M., and it will soon be invited to meet him. It has already given him its views in writing at this time. So there can be no doubt about the truth of my hon. Friend's desire to fulfil that obligation.
  The right hon. Gentleman referred to Richborough. The conversion of Rich-borough to oil will simply release 500,000 tons of valuable coking coal which can find markets in the steel industry and in other parts of industry where it is badly needed. Therefore, the market for that coal is probably better now that the coke power station is to be converted than had it been otherwise. So there is no need to fear about the future of the coal which used to go to Rich-borough if it is converted.
  I now turn to future conversions mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman. The C.E.G.B. has applied to convert four power stations: Kirkstall, Portsmouth, West Thurrock and Padiham. Details of these have been sent to the N.U.M. My hon Friend will discuss these with the N.U.M. I can assure the House that my hon Friend has not come to a decision. He is acting, as it were, in his proper statutory position of deciding after he has taken all the factors into account. But circumstances are different in relation to each of these power stations. I understand that some are not opposed by the N.U.M., but others are. Therefore, it would be wrong for me to pre-judge or to attempt to say in advance what my hon.
  354
  Friend will decide about any of these conversions.
  The right hon. Gentleman, referring to stocks, said that they should be in the hands of the consumers. We agree with him. In fact the present position is that there are 26 million tons of coal in stock, 18 million tons of which are in the hands of consumers, and 8 million tons are undistributed. Of that 8 million tons a substantial portion is of low quality which has been stocked for a long time. Therefore, it is true to say that the stocks in the hands of the Coal Board are at a very low level, although distributors have reasonable stocks in hand. Indeed, although there is a tight situation for coal, it is tighter for some types of coal than others.
  The general position, to put the matter into perspective, is that at the end of October the industry as a whole had about four to five weeks' stock in hand, the power stations had nearly seven weeks' stock, and most other groups of consumers had, on average, between three and four weeks' stock. So the situation, although tighter than perhaps we would hope, is by no means as bad as has been suggested.
  Lastly, I must refer to imports. My hon. Friend and I have listened very carefully to what has been said by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. One reason for debate in this House is that the Government should take note of what is said, and take note very carefully. I am sure that my hon. Friend will do this.
  So far as I can help in this matter, the position is no different from that which was announced by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever) who, as Paymaster-General, said:
  "It is possible that the point will be reached when the steel industry will need high quality coking coal beyond the resources available in this country to meet it and it may be possible to get this from abroad. All I can say about that is that, if importation of coking coal is permitted, it will not act to the detriment of our own industry. It will be a necessary support of our own coking coal industry if we have to bring in coking coal of a very high quality to blend with some of our own."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th April, 1970; Vol. 799, c. 876.]
  There is also the question of the Welsh anthracite dust which, as the House

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  knows, has been exported to France and re-imported in the form of briquettes, for the simple reason that there is a surplus of briquette capacity in France, and this helps to provide smokeless fuel. In this whole matter of fuel imports the Government have not departed from the policy of the previous Administration. The position is open, but clearly the Government, in the end, have a duty to make sure that the people of this country are able to keep themselves warm and to keep themselves at work. That must be the overriding duty of the Government.
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  The situation is of concern to all of us. The strike, which is partial at present, obviously makes the stock position more serious. If the shortage becomes more serious, there are possibilities that the policy would have to change. But it is the Government's firm intention—
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at nine minutes to Eleven o'clock.

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

BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE
The Right Honourable Janet Bevan, widow of the Right Honourable Aneurin Bevan, having been created Baroness Lee of Asheridge, of the City of Westminster, for life—Was, in her robes, introduced between the Lord Goodman and the Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, and made the solemn Affirmation.

LORD GEORGE-BROWN
The Right Honourable George Alfred George-Brown, having been created Baron George-Brown, of Jevington in the County of Sussex, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Walston and the Lord Wright of Ashton under Lyne.
Several Lords—Took the Oath.

TRIBUTES TO THE LATE GENERAL DE GAULLE
2.56 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, your Lordships will have heard this morning with a very real sense of shock of the death of General de Gaulle, the former President of the French Republic. I am sure your Lordships will wish to join with me in extending our deep sympathy to that very distinguished lady, Madame de Gaulle, and all her family.
In 1940 I was a young officer of 22, but those days are still vividly etched in my mind, and I have still a very clear memory of that tall, rather Roman figure of the French General who stood firm when all seemed lost in France. For
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part of the war I had the honour to serve with a detachment of Free French troops in the Middle East. This was in 1942 at the nadir of France's fortunes. Those young Frenchmen were brave, indeed recklessly brave, and firm in their determination to prove to us, their English allies, and perhaps to themselves, the fact that the spirit of France was far from dead, with all that this meant for the freedom and enrichment, the lucidity, and indeed the gaiety, of Western civilisation. One thing was clear to me as I got to know those brave and gifted young men, and that was that they drew their strength and inspiration not only from their innate toughness and belief in their country, the belief which almost every Frenchman possesses, but also from the example of their lonely, brave, ruthless and uniquely dedicated leader, General de Gaulle himself.
It would be idle to pretend, even at a moment like this, that there have not been occasions, in war time and in peace time, when we and de Gaulle have differed; but beneath the sometimes rather rough surface storms there was always, I suggest, on our side a deep respect for a man who we recognised had dedicated his life to his country. I think, too—and this emerges from his Memoirs—that there was on his part a similar recognition of the virtues of our land and of our people.
Few of us who heard the Address which the late President of the Republic delivered in Westminster Hall, on his State visit ten years ago in April, 1960, will forget it. May I recall the concluding words of that memorable speech:
"What other countries have, as much as ours and over and above their divergencies such similar aims? What peoples know better than France and Great Britain that nothing will save the world except just those qualities of which they are par excellence capable: wisdom and resolution?"
And may I also recall the significant fact that General de Gaulle issued the text of that Address to the Press before he made it and delivered it, word perfect, without a note.
What are the characteristics by which we remember this great French leader? There was, of course, his enduring physical courage—a courage demonstrated time and time again in total disregard of personal safety. Allied to this courage were his military virtues and his

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understanding of what war meant, which enabled him to talk in those war-time years to Winston Churchill as a full equal. Then, again, as anyone who has heard a speech made or a Press conference given by the General knows, there was his outstanding literary ability. Allied to those qualities was a creative political imagination and a large vision of the world which enabled him to see events which for others were still sometimes concealed beneath the horizon. I would not claim that his vision was perfect. Like all great men, General de Gaulle made great mistakes; but no one can deny his quality of statesmanship.
Finally, there was the most vital ingredient of all in his formidable personality: that belief in France with which he was born and which burned within him like a flame until his death. I can think of no Frenchman who has had so passionate a dedication not only to the land but also to the idea of France. My Lords, our sympathy on this occasion must be extended not only to the immediate family of the late President, but also to that great nation to whose service his life was dedicated. We are all, I feel, in a certain measure the losers with the loss of this great man.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I have seldom, if ever, heard a tribute which could so clearly and fully represent the views of the whole of your Lordships' House. Every word that the noble Earl has spoken finds full agreement, I am sure, in all quarters, and certainly on this side of the House. I would only add, quite briefly, that we all feel a great sense almost of historic loss. One of the most towering figures of an age which has not been without towering figures has been removed, and a man with an extraordinary range of achievement has left us. Not only was he a great military thinker, a very valiant soldier, but possibly, in his way, as important a Constitution-maker as Napoleon. Some may think this an exaggeration, but we shall see how long his Republic lasts. When we recall the problems that he inherited and the real, astounding measure of his achievements, we should certainly wish to put on record that that famous speech to the French from London in June, 1940, was an inspiration to the British and not just to the French.
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There were, of course, during the war periods of unease and discord with allies, and there will be some noble Lords in the House, like the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, who will remember them directly. But I always find it appropriate that a really great man—this I think can be said of Churchill—can be involved in struggles and at times can seem to those with whom he is working to be unreasonable. After all, what was General de Gaulle's position? He had been sentenced to death by court-martial, yet he was the one hope of France. How he has fulfilled that hope! We ought to recognise that the great services he rendered for France he has rendered in fact for us all. When we look back on those days immediately after the war and remember the concern that was expressed about France and her future, and then look at the achievement, the establishment of a firm sense of national pride, we must recognise that that is a contribution not just to France but to France's ally, Britain, and indeed to all the world. I can only say again that any tribute that the noble Earl has paid is fully echoed by us on this side of the House.
3.6 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I have been asked to say a few words on this sad occasion on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, presumably because I was Ambassador to France during the first two and a half years of de Gaulle's second tenure of power, and because I had known him for many years previously and was, I suppose, in so far as this was possible in the circumstances, a personal friend.
In paying tribute to this great man we must all surely first think, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, thought, of the war years, when he raised the flag of Free France in London and began that process of building up the shattered morale of France which resulted in the Resistance and in her re-emergence as a nation. It is a fearful thought that, but for him, France might have been divided and torn in pieces by civil strife after the war, and hence, of course, a danger to all the democracies of Western Europe.
De Gaulle's subsequent long sojourn in the political wilderness and deep meditations confirmed him in political conclusions which some may hold were

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good for France, but others hold were bad for Europe. The result, when he came back into power once more, is well known. What cannot be denied is the intensity of his own conviction and the force which he was able to place behind the effort to attain his ends. To this extent he may certainly be said, along with Churchill, to have been the greatest political figure to have emerged in our generation—and indeed no one perhaps was his equal in, as it were, bending history to his will.
My Lords, many think that his attitude towards this country was inspired by jealousy and resentment. They are wrong. As I know from my own experience, de Gaulle had a real and perfectly genuine regard, and indeed I think an admiration, for this country. His great speech in Westminster Hall, to which reference has rightly been made, on the occasion of his State visit in 1960, which doubtless many of your Lordships heard, was not lip service to our institutions; on the contrary, his great ambition was to establish in France that continuity of policy, that basic co-operation for the good of the nation between the Parties, which he rightly thought was the result of our ancient political wisdom; and of course his immense regard for the Royal Family was perfectly sincere.
That, like all great men, he had also great faults few will deny. That his policy or, rather, his foreign policies were rather more suited to the eighteenth than to the twentieth century is a conviction held by all Europeans in this country and I think indeed on the Continent. But that he saved France, that he gave Frenchmen a renewed sense of purpose and a recognition of the great role that France, happily, can still play in the world, and that, to do him justice, he exploded quite a few untenable myths—all this is surely something that we should admit. So we mourn the passing of a great and formidable figure. Certainly, taking all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has truly said that I had a great and close working life with de Gaulle during the war. Certainly I cannot add anything to the quite admirable tributes which have been paid and with which I entirely agree. Having had that very close asso
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ciation with the General, I should not like his death to pass entirely in silence from these Benches. I worked closely with him, both in London and in Africa. He was an odd sort of colleague in some ways. One could have awful rows with him—we did—but one would have them and then it was all over. One could have a showdown over quite a number of things, but it was always absolutely frank, and there was certainly never the faintest rancour on his side or on mine. What will always remain in my mind of his great qualities were his courage, his sincerity, his love for France; and what is perfectly true also is that his love for this country, though somewhat slightly disguised, was very real indeed. I should like to join in the tributes which have been paid to one of the greatest Frenchmen in all history.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I, as a very humble Back-Bencher add a sentence to the tributes paid to this great man? He will be remembered, perhaps, not so much for the wars he won and came through, but rather for the wars in which he was defeated—the Algerian war, and the war in Indo China—when he threw away pride and prestige and followed a constructive policy.

SOUTH AFRICA: ARREST OF BENJAMIN RAMOTSE
3.12 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, may I just correct the name Benjamin Ramorse, which should be Benjamin Ramotse. The mistake is my fault.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have made representations to the Government of the Republic of South Africa regarding the arrest and trial of Benjamin Ramorse who alleges that he was arrested by Rhodesian troops in Botswana, forcibly abducted to Rhodesia, handed over to South African security police and taken to Pretoria.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN): My Lords, Mr. Ramotse claims to be a Zambian citizen and Her Majesty's Government have, therefore, no locus standi to intervene with the South African Government by reason of his personal status.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask him, first: if Ramotse was a Zambian citizen, was he not also a Commonwealth citizen? Secondly, was there some dispute as to whether he was arrested in Botswana or Rhodesia? Is it not the case that there is no dispute that he was arrested by Rhodesian police, whose authority we do not recognise? In view of the fact that he has been imprisoned since June, 1968, with alleged severe tortures, is it not the duty of Her Majesty's Government to make representations to the Government of South Africa against this illegal arrest by Rhodesian troops, whose authority we do not recognise under an illegal Government?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, there is some doubt as to whether or not Mr. Ramotse was arrested in Botswana. My understanding is that the Government of Botswana have requested the facts of this from the South African Government. It will be for them to take what action they think they should take when they get a reply from that Government. Regarding the question of Rhodesian troops and the arrest, my understanding is that Mr. Ramotse was handed over to the South African police by the Rhodesian police, but, as I have said, until it is clearly established where this arrest took place I cannot give a more definite answer.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, is it not the case, whether he was arrested in Botswana or Rhodesia, that he was arrested by Rhodesian troops, the legal authority of whom we do not recognise, and who are in rebellion against this Government? In view of that fact, have we not the right to make representations to the South African Government against this absolutely illegal arrest?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have no power to control the activities of Rho-
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desian police on the ground. What we have done is to make representations to the South African Government about the presence of their police in Rhodesia, and this we shall certainly continue to do.

ROAD DIESEL EXHAUST STANDARD
LORD ARDWICK: 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 the new standard, the highest in Europe, for road diesel exhausts, and the annual instrument check to enforce it, which were announced in Command Paper 4373, are now to be brought into effect.]
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, a draft regulation will shortly be published requiring all diesel engines installed in new vehicles to meet this British standard. The Department's engineers are developing an instrumented method which could supplement the present visual inspection of exhausts at the annual test of heavy goods vehicles.
LORD ARDWICK: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his reply, may I point out that the word he used is "shortly", and the words in reference to the instrument development are exactly those used in the White Paper six months ago?
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order!

HEAVY VEHICLES AND ROAD HAZARDS
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will forbid the introduction of 44-ton load lorries in view of the danger to following cars caused by the obstruction of vision.]
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, the decision of Her Majesty's Government on the proposals for increase in maximum permitted lorry weights will

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be taken with full regard to safety. Weight increases alone, however, seem unlikely to add to the obstruction of following drivers' vision. No width increases, and only a marginal one in lengths are being considered.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that Answer, may I ask whether it is true that the trade, the manufacturers and the owners, are thinking of what they have on the Continent, namely, a tractor of 38 tons and a following trailer, or articulated trailer, of another 38 tons, which makes 76 tons? If they have it on the Continent, and if we are supposed to be following suit in the interests of our export trade, how will that be affected by our lack of suitable roads?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I do not think the noble Earl's figures tally with our information. I understand that in the case of a combination of rigid lorry and draw-bar trailer the road transport industry have asked permission to go up from 32 tons to 59 tons. It is this figure which they have asked for and which is being considered. As to what is happening in Europe, the fact is that road users there are asking their Governments for very similar figures to those for which our own road transport industry are asking.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, will not the noble Lord agree that this matter must be given very careful consideration before there is any increase either in width or length of vehicles? Is the noble Lord aware that the overwhelming mileage of our roads is totally unfitted to carrying commercial vehicles which are any longer than those at present in operation? If any increase in length is agreed upon, those vehicles must be confined to our motorways and kept out of our towns and cities, because we cannot travel on many roads in our towns and cities even with the present permitted widths.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, there has been no request by the road transport industry for any increase in widths of vehicles used by the road transport industry. With regard to the lengths, they have asked for an extra half-metre, which is 20 inches. That is all they have asked for in increase in length. This subject is still being
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considered by the Government, and I am sure that the points the noble Lord added are also well to the fore in the minds of the Secretary of State and the Minister.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, in giving their consideration, which the Government appear still to be giving, to the proposal to allow greater weight and greater length, will they bear in mind the representations made against these proposals by the Royal Institute of British Architects and, I think, by every amenity society that has considered the matter?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. I can certainly give that assurance.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, before the noble Lord agrees to the extra half metre of length which is being asked for, may I ask him whether he will stand on the edge of the pavement at the corner of Bridge Street and see how long it is before his feet are run over by some existing vehicle which is too long to be driven around that corner without going over the edge of the pavement?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I should not like to do that experiment, but I am sure that Her Majesty's Government are quite well aware of the position.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, will Her Majesty's Government bear in mind that already the immense weight of these juggernauts passing through narrow and ancient streets often causes severe damage, and sometimes destruction, of buildings alongside, which are often of great historic or architectural value? Therefore, is there not a very good case for prohibiting any increase in the weight, as well as in the length or breadth, of these vehicles?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. That is the whole point of what the Government are trying to consider. The road transport industry obviously finds it more economic to have larger loads. What the Government have to do is to weigh the interests of other users of the roads, the safety of the people and the congestion of traffic against that factor. It is a matter of balancing and coming out with the right answer.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, when this matter is being considered by his friends, will the noble Lord bear in mind the question whether there could be classification of roads on which certain types of vehicles would not be permitted, so that certain vehicles would be limited to a particular class of road? We might then avoid many of the difficulties and, equally, get our economies right.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. I am happy to tell the noble Lord that his suggestion about certain routes is one of the proposals which are being considered.
LORD DOUGLASS OF CLEVELAND: My Lords, is the noble Lord now convinced that market forces are not the ultimate in economics?
VISCOUNT ADDISON: My Lords, will the noble Lord not agree that it would save a great deal of difficulty if these heavy loads were carried on the railways? Will he therefore consider giving no further instructions for railways to be pulled up, but rather see that the reverse process takes place so that the roads may be kept more clear?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, we are getting slightly wide of the original Question. As the noble Lord knows, the Government are in no position to dictate to road users or to railway users how they should send goods. They have to use the most economical way. I agree that when the roads are congested one would like to see the railways carrying more traffic. The railways want more traffic, and we know that, too.
LORD BIRKETT: My Lords, will the Government consider that the situation is more urgent even than the question of dimensions, when it is possible in towns like Lewes for pedestrians standing on the pavement to be struck by the wing mirrors of passing lorries, and when the portico of a building, listed as of architectural interest, can be physically demolished nine times in eighteen months by heavy traffic?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I agree that this is very deplorable and very sad, and the Government have every intention of trying to get by-pass roads to meet cases like that. It
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is a question of using the funds as and when they become available.

HEAVY VEHICLES AND VILLAGE AMENITIES
3.24 p.m.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will take steps to bar heavy vehicles from entering narrow village streets bordered by ancient cottages whose windows are penetrated by diesel fumes.]
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, traffic authorities already have the power to regulate the use of roads for, among other reasons, preserving or improving the amenities of the area through which a road runs. In exercising these powers the authorities must of course have regard to the need for vehicles of any particular class to have access to premises.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer. But does he not agree about the need for direct Government responsibility in controlling which roads may be used, and in deciding which routes and narrow market towns are unsuitable, if at the same time they are trying to work with the manufacturers and the owners to get traffic across the Channel and improve our trade with our competitors overseas?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, with regard to the first part of my noble friend's question, I think that under the Road Traffic Regulations 1967, which became law in 1968, control of local roads is in the hands of local authorities. This is not the case with trunk roads, but on local roads local authorities have a power which they can use if they see fit. Of course they have to consider the amenities and access of the people who live in the towns. With regard to the export trade, we are doing our best, as I pointed out, to consider all the pros and cons.
VISCOUNT BRENTFORD: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether in

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considering the classification of roads suitable for these heavy vehicles, his right honourable friend will also take into account the road itself and its suitability and strength for carrying these great weights?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords, I can give the noble Lord that assurance.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, will my noble friend take particular note of the point raised by my noble friend Lord Mansfield? Not only will these poor villagers probably be asphyxiated; they will also be entombed, because the very heavy traffic which is going through these small villages very badly undermines the houses and puts them in a dangerous state.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. My noble friend the Secretary of State will take that point into account. As I have said, most of these small villages are probably not on trunk roads, and in that case it is up to the local authorities.
LORD GRAY: My Lords, in the light of the Report of the Committee on Highway Maintenance, will the Government urgently consider the question of load restriction on a national basis, in order to end the use of minor rural roads by unsuitable through-traffic?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. I think I have already said that the Government are considering proposals to restrict the size of certain traffic on certain roads.
LORD GISBOROUGH: My Lords, can the noble Lord say what are the prospects of limiting the height of vehicles? At the moment it frequently happens that they knock down bridges which are put up in these small villages for pedestrians.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I have no particular information on this subject. But I have noticed that bridges normally have a height sign on them, and I should have thought it was up to the driver to take good care.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is impressed by the opinion of this House on this matter?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. Transport and traffic are one of the greatest problems which, for obvious reasons, we all have to endure these days.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that almost all of these questions would be wiped out if, instead of meeting to consider how much larger the lorries should be, the Government considered cutting them down in size?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I do not think we have had any proposals to cut down their size. But, as I have said, the Government have not pledged themselves to increase it, and we are still looking at the matter. If noble Lords will have a little patience, I think they will have an answer fairly soon.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, will the Government consider whether, in the age of containerisation, it is not more important to make the sort of roads which are needed, rather than to put on numerous additional restrictions?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I think that is a different question from the original one which dealt with fumes in small villages.

POLITICAL HONOURS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, at a convenient moment after half-past three, my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a Statement on political honours.

COURTS BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to make further provision as respects the Supreme Court and county courts, judges and juries, to establish a Crown Court as part of the Supreme Court to try indictments and exercise certain other jurisdiction, to abolish courts of assize and certain other courts and to deal with their jurisdiction and other consequential matters, and to amend in other respects

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the law about courts and court proceedings. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read la.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read la, and to be printed.

RENT (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate in relation to Scotland the Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Acts 1920 to 1939, the Rent of Furnished Houses Control (Scotland) Act 1943, the Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act 1949, Part II of the Housing (Repairs and Rents) (Scotland) Act 1954, the Rent Act 1957, the Rent Act 1965 (except Part III thereof), Part IV of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1969 and other related enactments. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read la.—(Baroness Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie.)
On Question, Bill read la, and to be printed.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
3.33 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That leave be given to the Lord Carrington to advance the Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill from Tuesday the 17th to Thursday the 12th of November; and that leave be given to the Lord Shackleton to advance his Motion on the Government's Economic Measures from Wednesday the 18th to Tuesday the 17th instant.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl to offer a few words by way of clarification? I was always under the impression (the noble Earl will correct me if I am wrong) that this matter was concerned with the numbers in a standing Army, over which this House has no control at all; it is entirely a matter for the other place. I was
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always under the impression that the matter had first to come before the other place. Am I right in this assumption? Moreover, five years having expired since the matter was last considered, ought not a Select Committee to be appointed to consider it? Perhaps the noble Earl will afford the clarification of which I am very much in need.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am always anxious to give the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, any clarification for which he is looking, but I think that at this particular moment it would not be right for me to go into the areas which he has touched on because the Motion which I have just moved is seeking to do no more than rearrange business which has already been tabled; and I understood through the usual channels that these rearrangements commanded general agreement. If I may say so, the point of substance on which the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, has questioned me—the question whether a Bill should be before your Lordships' House or before another place—is one which should more properly be taken on the Motion that the Bill be read a second time, and I should be very glad to go into it at that time. But whatever the merits, my Lords—and I do not wish to argue that either way at the present time—the Bill in question is before your Lordships' House at this moment, and it is for your Lordships, I would suggest, to decide on Second Reading what should happen to the Bill.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, as the noble Earl is apparently in as much need of clarification and information as I am, I am quite prepared to leave it until Thursday.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, if I may say so with all respect, the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, is misinterpreting what I said. I was merely saying that this was not the moment to give the noble Lord the clarification for which he was asking.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

POLITICAL HONOURS
3.36 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, with the agreement of your Lordships' House I should like to repeat the Statement which my right honourable friend the Prime

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Minister is at this moment making in another place. This is the Statement:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement about political honours.
"It is my view that the services of those who work for political Parties, thus contributing towards the functioning of our democratic system, should not be excluded from recognition by the Sovereign. Nor, if there are to be honours for political and public services, do I consider that they should be confined only to members of the Party in power.
"I have therefore made a recommendation to The Queen, which Her Majesty has approved, that the forthcoming New Year's Honours List and future Lists should include a number of awards for political and public services to members of political Parties.
"I have also invited the right honourable gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberal Party, to agree in principle to make recommendations for such honours, which I can then submit for the Queen's approval together with my own recommendations.
"All recommendations for honours for political and public services will be considered by the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee before they are submitted to The Queen."
That, my Lords, is the Statement which the Prime Minister is just making.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I do not doubt for one moment the great value of those who work for political Parties, and I should make it clear that my remarks are in no way a criticism. I believe that such people perform a most valuable and important service—indeed, one member of my former constituency was alleged to have been promised a knighthood if he could get me out. In due course I was got out, and he got a knighthood; and now I am in your Lordships' House. But, my Lords, I am bound to say that I regard what is now proposed, and I think it is likely that those who sit on these Benches will regard it, as a retrograde step. It is not a simple matter. There are quite serious difficulties and objections. I take it (and perhaps I could ask the noble Earl to confirm this) that the arrangements concerning honours for
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local government service, which hitherto have been excluded from this category and, as I understand, continued to be granted even when my right honourable friend Mr. Wilson was Prime Minister, will continue, and that local government service will be rewarded.
May I also ask whether the arrangements for Life Peerages, which are of a political nature but are not political honours, will continue as hitherto? I should like to be assured on that. May I also ask whether it is the intention of the Government to revive hereditary titles, baronetcies, which to-day, however relevant they were in times past, now seem somewhat irrelevant; and, even more so, hereditary Peerages? The fact that we know so many able, competent and charming hereditary Peers in your Lordships' House does not alter the fact that we regard the hereditary Peerage system as a nonsense in this age. This is not just a partisan view, because I know people in all Parties who take that view. It may be that any concern I may have on this matter is unjustified, and that there is no intention of reviving hereditary titles. Generally, however, I would say that this is a retrograde step. I do not know whether the Labour Party will co-operate, but I doubt it.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords—
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, may I reply at once to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, who has put three questions to me? I know the noble Baroness's special position in this matter, if I may so term it, but I should like to answer the three questions put by the noble Lord while I have them in mind. In the first place, as a second-rate, second-generation hereditary Peer, I should like to thank him for his kind references to hereditary Peerages, if not to my right honourable friend's Statement. The noble Lord asked me three questions, the first of which was the position regarding recognition of the services of elected representatives in local government. The position there, as I understand it, will remain as it has been since the then Prime Minister's Statement of October, 1966, when provision for such recognition was made—and, indeed, effect has been given to it. No change is proposed in those arrangements. But as

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noble Lords will be aware, those arrangements made no provision for Members of Parliament, for local Party supporters or workers, or for national or local Party officials.
Secondly, the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition touched on a matter of interest to us all: the position regarding Life Peerages. It is my understanding that my right honourable friend takes the view that Life Peerages should be conferred on the basis of what would strengthen your Lordships' House rather than of their being used as some form of grand or super honour. But, by the same token, I think he also takes the view that he would not wish completely to exclude the possibility that some Members of another place might have it in their power to make a useful contribution to your Lordships' House.
My Lords, on the question of hereditary Peerages, it is my understanding that my right honourable friend will not be recommending hereditary honours in the ordinary course of business; although this is a possibility which he would not wish completely to exclude.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, may I, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, welcome the Statement which has been made? This is not the moment to discuss whether the whole honours system is, or is not, a good thing. Leaving that aside, we see no reason why those who work in the political Parties for the good of democracy should be excluded, We welcome very much the proposals to make this as multilateral as possible; it shows a very distinct improvement on the attitude of the last Conservative Government to these matters. May I ask one question about the minor Parties—for instance, the Scottish Nationalists, who are represented in the House of Commons? As long as we have an unjust electoral system which does not represent the votes cast in the country, it is absolutely right that we should safeguard as much as possible the position of those Parties. Can the noble Earl say whether they will be taken into account? And may I express the pious hope that political honours will be given for real merit and not be just a matter of "Buggins's turn"? I can assure the House that we will do our best to follow that.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for the welcome that he has given to the Statement, and I should like to echo what he said about "Buggins's turn". So far as other Parties are concerned, it is my understanding that although the majority of awards will, normally speaking, go to members of the Party in power, other Parties will be adequately represented. That includes the Liberal Party and other Parties.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I was going to ask the noble Earl whether he would define more closely what he means by "a political honour". He said something in a rather ambiguous way about "by virtue of" my "position"—and presumably he was referring to the fact that I was a member of the Committee that he was talking about. I was under the impression that we had been taking this into account.
LORD REA: My Lords, as another member of that Committee, may I support the noble Baroness? So far as I am aware there has been no suppression of political honours in recent lists. Both the noble Baroness and I have been through long lists of decorations of the Order of the British Empire.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, would the noble Earl also tell us whether his right honourable friend is prepared to take into consideration those Parties in this House which are not Parties in the accepted sense—for instance, the Peers on the Cross-Benches? Would it not be appropriate if they were allowed to submit names? I am sure that they would be able to suggest people who might greatly strengthen your Lordships' House? And my own Benches may possibly be able to do that. Perhaps we could clear up certain doubts; because there are clergymen in your Lordships' House (Lord Beaumont of Whitley and Lord Sandford) and sometimes it is thought that they are our nominees. I think it ought to be made clear when people are nominees of this Bench and when they are not.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I say, before the noble Earl replies, that I am not sure whether we discuss the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee in public. Do we?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I do not think that it is a matter that we should go into in any detail. I made reference to it in repeating the Prime Minister's Statement. Of course, we know that there are distinguished Members of your Lordships' House who are members of that Committee. But I think that this is a matter which we should not go into too deeply. Bearing in mind certain honours that have been conferred in the not-too-distant past, I think one can easily exaggerate the drama of the change now proposed.
I will bear in mind and report to my right honourable friend the views expressed by the right reverend Prelate; but he should remember that we are talking of political honour. He, I think, was distinguishing between political honour, proprement dit (as we are speaking French so much this afternoon) and the reinforcing of your Lordships' House from whatever Bench it may be.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, surely there is a good deal of difference between political honours of the type we are now discussing and membership of your Lordships' House. This is a matter which I think will give very considerable concern to many people in all walks of life and particularly political life. I can understand the difficulties about having a debate, because this question of honours is the prerogative of Her Majesty the Queen, but I wonder whether there is not now a real case for meetings between the two Front Benches in both Houses for this matter to be looked at coolly, calmly and sensibly, not only for the immediate future but for the long-term future. I wonder whether the noble Earl would address his mind to that and ask his right honourable friend the Prime Minister whether the time has not come, in the interests of democracy, that this matter should be carefully looked at, preferably not by question and answer but by means of a proper discussion, informal if you like—a cool and sensible airing of the subject.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I should like to support what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd has said. I have views on Life Peerages, but it did not occur to me to mention them because we were discussing political honours generally. I would echo this question to the noble Earl, the Leader
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of the House, as to whether there cannot be conversations respecting this House.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, arising out of the original reply, may I ask whether Her Majesty's Government realise that a great many of their own supporters and persons in other Parties are in favour of the retention of the system of creating hereditary Peerages? Will they therefore consider the advisability of reversing the lamentable decision of the last Prime Minister that baronetcies should not be given to the retiring Lord Mayors of London; and will they consider the advisability not only of conferring such baronetcies on future holders of the office but also on those who were unjustly deprived of them by this action of the last Government?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I must confess I have some considerable sympathy with the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and echoed by my noble friend Lord Ferrier, that perhaps, with all the inadequacies of question and answer in this House, we should not try to go too deeply into this matter at this stage. I will gladly undertake to bring to the attention of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister the views expressed by the noble Lord and my noble friend, and, indeed, by my noble friend Lord Mansfield.

REORGANISATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
3.49 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE EARL JELLICOE rose to move, That this House takes note of the White Paper, The Reorganisation of Central Government (Cmnd. 4506). The Noble Earl said: My Lords, we are now to debate an important subject, the reorganisation of Central Government. It is, I feel, a subject which has perhaps received too little attention in Parliament, although I recall the very interesting debates initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, I think in 1964, and by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, in 1968.
The White Paper deals not only with the major changes in the structure of Departments and the structuring of the new central mechanism designed to serve the Cabinet collectively; it also deals with the broad principles underlying the Government's decision as announced in

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the White Paper. Because of this I felt that it might be helpful if this afternoon we were to stand back a little and attempt to look at the broad picture—the wood rather than to concentrate too specifically on the trees—of the individual Orders before your Lordships' House. It is my understanding that after this general debate we shall deal with the Orders formally.
My Lords, still by way of introduction, may I say how glad I am that our debate this afternoon will be distinguished by the inclusion of no fewer than four maiden speeches; those of the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale; the noble Lord, Lord Diamond; my noble friend Lord Reigate and the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon. We look forward very much to hearing from them. What I can do is to undertake to listen to those speeches and the other speeches, attentively, and when I wind up—I must apologise for having already spoken too much this afternoon—I hope to try to answer the particular points of doubt or difficulty which noble Lords may have put to me.
May I first make one observation from my Civil Department perch? I notice that although the White Paper was approved without dissent in another place there was some criticism that it made no mention of Fulton, or of the establishment of the Civil Service Department, or of the reforms which have followed from that. Far be it from me, my Lords, to belittle the Report, or the Department, or the reforms; but it must be quite clear to anyone who has read the Fulton Report attentively that the reorganisation of the machinery of Government, far from being a sin against Fulton, is a necessary complement to Fulton. Indeed, the Fulton Committee itself urged that consideration should be given to a general review of the machinery of Government, and the White Paper represents the outcome of just such a review, which, if I may say so, was a particularly searching one. It also, I trust, represents a real attempt to achieve greater stability within that Government machinery.
I think we have all had too much chopping and changing, too great a reshuffling of the Departmental pack, in the last decade or so. I would not, of
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course, claim that the mould suggested in this White Paper will be fixed for all time; or even until the time—undoubtedly many years ahead—when next we have a Labour Government. We know that in certain areas—for example, defence procurement and aerospace—further changes are foreshadowed in the White Paper itself.
The machinery of Government has, necessarily, to be kept under close and constant review. Nevertheless, my Lords, the changes announced in the White Paper, which are really of some quite considerable magnitude, are intended to be the basis for a period of stability lasting certainly through the present Parliament and, I would hope, beyond. Apart from the review, which I have already mentioned, in the defence procurement and aerospace field, I think that the reviews which the Government will be conducting in this sphere, at least within the lifetime of this Parliament, will be concerned more with the organisation inside Departments rather than with the boundaries of the Departments themselves. In any event, my Lords, I am quite certain that we need this plateau of relative stability, and we must try to keep ourselves on it if we are to realise the benefits which I hold to be implicit in the present changes; and if we are to avoid the damage which constant shuffling of the Departmental pack does to Civil Service efficiency and indeed to Civil Service morale.
The first element in the new structure is, I suggest, the new central policy review staff designed to give Ministers in their collective role as members of the Cabinet a degree of staff support which they have, I think, lacked hitherto. There are a great many old Ministerial hands in your Lordships' House this afternoon and they will know that when Ministers exercise their individual responsibility in their Departmental sphere they have the very powerful backing of a very strong and skilful Departmental machine. We all know, however, that to-day many of the most vital Government decisions are increasingly collective ones. They are decisions which straddle Departmental boundaries. And, more than that—and let us frankly recognise the fact—even if we are considering a major programme within the area of a single Department, that programme in itself raises questions of priority between other claims on the

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nation's resources. Increasingly, therefore, my Lords, the determination of priorities, the choice between almost equally attractive options, is a matter for collective decision.
But when Ministers go to Cabinet, or to one of its Committees, and try to exercise their collective responsibility; when they are called on, for example, to pass judgment on affairs outside their own particular Department, then I think most of us would recognise that they very often lack—more often than not in my view—the degree of consistent staff support in depth which is available to them in their Departmental spheres. I think this is one of the main reasons why so many of the big decisions taken by Governments of this country in the last decade or so have been rather hit or miss affairs. They have been taken too hastily, or not taken at all; and very often the options for the Government of the day have been closed without Ministers of the day even realising that those particular options were open to them. I submit, my Lords, that this cannot be right.
We must, of course, all recognise that the present Cabinet Office does its job with quite extraordinary efficiency and devotion. I know that all those who have been served by that Cabinet Office, and who are in your Lordships' House this afternoon, would agree with that view. But in my view it is not equipped to take on the quite different tasks which we envisage for the new unit; and therefore we need a new staff, properly within the Cabinet Office as it will serve Ministers collectively, to give them the support they require so that they can discuss issues and exercise their political judgment in a more informed way than has been possible in the past.
Judging by the comments which I have seen in the Press or heard in the debate—it was a very good debate, I thought—in another place, a number of misconceptions seem to be current about the proposed central policy review staff. It is argued that it will be some sort of secret cabal, taking decisions out of the hands of political Ministers where they properly belong. I can assure noble Lords that there is no question of this staff acting like another Department and superimposing its views on the rest. Nor would it be able to take away from Ministers their responsibility for taking decisions
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and exercising responsibility. It is not a question of substituting the views of experts who are not accountable to Parliament for the judgment of Ministers who are. Rather, my Lords, it is a question of giving Ministers a better base of information and analysis on which to rest their political judgment and exercise their collective responsibility.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl one question arising out of what he has said? I think that probably the answer is plain, but perhaps it should be given. This new unit will operate within the Cabinet Secretariat. Does that mean that the head of the new unit, Lord Rothschild, will come under the authority of Sir Burke Trend, the head of the Cabinet Secretariat?
EARL JELLICOE: As I have already said, my Lords, It will operate as part of, and within, the Cabinet Secretariat; and to that extent the head of the new unit will be responsible to Sir Burke Trend. But I do not think that this will mean that the head of the new unit will not also be reporting directly on occasions—the precise guidelines will have to be worked out—to Ministers collectively or, indeed, to the Prime Minister.
My Lords, if I may go on from that, I would touch on another Aunt Sally which has been put up with respect to the policy review staff and which I should like to knock down. Critics have suggested that the new staff is a further move towards Presidential government. And with this in mind they have summoned up the ghost of the late Lord Cherwell in order to disturb our dreams. I would suggest that this view is bunk. The new staff will be working with the existing grain of Government, not against it. They will be working in co-operation with Departments and reporting to Ministers collectively. The services of the new staff will not therefore be the prerogative of the Prime Minister of the day. They will be common to all Ministers. To liken this new unit to a shadowy figure relying on personal influence with the Prime Minister of the day, without defined responsibilities and having no clear place within the machinery of Government, is, frankly, absurd.
There is a further fear on which I should like to touch—that the new cog

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in the wheel means that the wheels of Government will turn more slowly.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Earl goes further, may I raise a point? He may say that some of the criticisms are absurd, but I am still not clear how this new unit will work. He may say that they will work with the grain. He says that they will report to Ministers collectively. How do they do that? We are not even clear about the head of the unit. We know that in some sense he comes under Sir Burke Trend. It may be that the Government have not thought this one out. What precisely do they mean by "reporting to Ministers collectively"?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that the Government have thought this out, but the noble Lord, who is more versed, or more recently versed, in these matters than I am, knows that it is not customary to reveal the Ministerial structure of Government. I could not give him a precise answer to this question without revealing that, but I should be glad to discuss this matter privately with him at any time. There is a convention here and I think it is one which I must honour in your Lordships' House this afternoon.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, it really becomes impossible to discuss this problem. I am fully aware of the convention, but this is an interesting proposal and I acknowledge its potentiality. However, I will keep that for my speech. But the unit cannot report to Ministers collectively in the abstract; the phrase must mean something concrete. Perhaps the noble Earl will consult with the Secretary of the Cabinet so that revelations may be given to those noble Lords who, by good luck or misfortune, have not been in the Cabinet. It is difficult to know how it is going to work.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord has a point; but I also have a difficulty. I will gladly take advice on this and see whether we can reveal more without doing damage to these conventions, which I think are important.
Before the noble Lord rather mischievously interrupted me, I was dealing with the fear that this new review staff would somehow slow the processes of govern-
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ment. I would only ask your Lordships to suspend judgment here until the new unit is in situ and working. But if the new unit will help us to get decisions right the first time, and I believe it will, a major cause of delay in Government decision-making is eliminated at one blow.
May I summarise my views on the new proposals as follows? It would be foolish for me to make exaggerated claims about the benefits which will flow from any particular new piece of Governmental machinery, particularly one which has yet to be established. I certainly do not see this new unit in any such dramatic terms. Nevertheless, I am confident that this will be a durable part of our machinery of Government over the years and that it will contribute to better decision-making by Ministers, certainly collectively and I would suggest also in their more purely departmental capacity.
In any event, I think that those of your Lordships who know the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, will agree that we have been fortunate to secure him as Director-General of the new staff. His is a particularly distinguished mind, and he has had a distinguished career in a great variety of ways. I believe that he is admirably qualified for this arduous job.
I now turn to paragraphs 49 and 52 of the White Paper, that part of it which is concerned with the rather dry matter of analysis of public expenditure programmes. What we have in mind here is a new system of regular reviews of all departmental policies and programmes on an annual basis, designed to complement the existing annual public expenditure survey—PESC, as its familiars, like the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, know the animal. I believe that PESC is a very valuable adjunct of Government but it has its limitations, not least that it is conceived mainly in expenditure terms and does not always draw out the real objectives behind departmental policies and programmes. Under the new system which we have in mind, which is. I must emphasise, designed to dovetail with PESC, not to replace it in any way, the costs of the various programmes and the objectives of those programmes will be more closely related, and this should enable Ministers to take better informed decisions between all the competing priorities which any Government have to

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face. As we know, "Gouverner c'est choisir".
I would remind your Lordships that there is a general trend towards this type of analysis in most Western countries. It is also rather fashionable of late to criticise P.P.B.S. (programme planning and budgeting system), certainly as introduced in the United States. Only the other day I read an interesting article by a former member of the last Government. I would ask the critics not to jump to the conclusion that we are about to introduce a system on the American model. We hope that we have learned from North American experience. In fact we have made, with the help of the businessmen in the Civil Service Department, a very careful study of their experience, and it is certainly our aim to avoid some of the pitfalls and difficulties that have arisen across the Atlantic. I believe that P.P.B.S. was applied too fast, too rigidly, too comprehensively and too much, as it were, imposed from above in the United States. What we are planning to do here is to build up our system from the grass roots, with the help of Departments, flexibly, pragmatically (to use a hallowed phrase) and selectively.
My Lords, I believe that these changes, together with the changes in Departmental structure which I shall touch on briefly in a moment, offer the promise not only of more efficient and effective government but also of better government; and by better government I very much include more open government. It is not mere words when the White Paper states that these changes will give Ministers the opportunity for greater openness and for more responsiveness to the needs and wishes of the community and of individuals.
The essence of political decision is the choice between alternatives, the response to different voices and the persuasion of the community to accept the choice once it has been made. Ministers in the new unified Departments will to a greater extent than before be able to see their decision and the available choices in the round. For example, patterns of settlement and patterns of surface transport now both fall to the same Minister, the Secretary of State for the Environment, and the decisions that are taken in that field emerge not as a result of co-
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ordination, however close, between two Ministers, each with his separate responsibilities, but from a single Minister whose responsibility will stretch right across the board. The boundaries will of course still remain—as long as there are Departments there will be boundaries between Departments—and it is always at the boundary that difficulties tend to crop up. But I would ask your Lordships to recognise that when we took office there were 19 main Departments of State. Only a few years ago there were a good many more than that. When the changes announced in this White Paper are complete there will be at most 14. The amount of co-ordination that has to extend across into Departmental frontiers will thereby be greatly reduced.
I grant that there is a perfectly respectable corpus of opinion which says that there should be more, not fewer, Departments, but I myself cannot go along with that view, and I shall explain why. I suspect, too, that there are noble Lords present this afternoon who have served in Governments with anything from 25 to 30 full Departments, and they know only too well the problems of co-ordination and the sheer difficulty of getting a decision which that proliferation of Departments entails. We are now, rightly or wrongly—and I hold rightly—treading the opposite path, not as a wholly new departure but taking up and carrying forward the moves already made under the last Conservative Government in the defence and foreign affairs fields, and carried through by the last Government in those two areas. But we do not believe that simply bringing together a large array of functions into a single Department and placing a single Minister at their head can possibly work. To operate—and this is the point—the new Department of the Environment or even the Department of Trade and Industry on that basis would be impracticable and would make everything far too remote.
The problem, as I see it, is to get really effective delegation from the top and at the same time to preserve the necessary accountability of Ministers to Parliament. This is not an easy problem to solve. How do we think it can be achieved? So far as the management of these functions within a Department is concerned, we have ensured that the necessary delegation will take place.

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Under the two Secretaries of State very senior Ministers have been appointed to take charge by delegation from the Secretary of State of whole blocks of functions, with their own official as well as Ministerial command. To preserve the unity of the Department the Secretary of State in charge will have final responsibility for all its work. He will have the strategic oversight of the Department and will, of course, be able to call in (to use the hallowed phrase) any big or politically charged issue which is being handled by one of the Departments under him. He will need a strong policy staff at the centre to advise him on all those matters which run across the Department as a whole. These measures, coupled with the development of the post-Fulton system of accountable management within Departments, with which we are pressing ahead, should, we believe, enable us to realise the advantages of unifying broad fields of policy without paying quite unacceptable prices in size or remoteness.
However, internal organisation and management is only half the story here. As my right honourable friend the Lord President has said in another place, Parliament's own acceptance of and co-operation with these arrangements will be essential if the new unified Departments are to succeed. We need better Parliamentary control, and we believe that the new Committee structure for another place suggested in the Green Paper will help towards that end. But there are other ways in which Parliament can assist. The Minister for Trade and the Minister for Industry in the Department of Trade and Industry, and the three Ministers in the Department of the Environment, under the Secretary of State, will have very real responsibility and real authority within their fields. It is, I suggest, in Parliament's own interest to recognise that and to hold them to account where appropriate, leaving the Secretary of State responsible for the overall strategy of the Department and for those areas where he exercises a direct personal responsibility.
Now, my Lords, for the main changes (I propose to deal with them quite rapidly) in the Departmental structure. I believe that most people think that we have got the new Department of the Environment
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pretty well right. Indeed, the right honourable gentleman the Leader of the Opposition claims it as his own. But more doubts have been raised about the Department of Trade and Industry. It has been suggested that this unified Department will be quite unmanageably large and cumbersome. I suggest that this criticism ignores two factors: first, the Department of Trade and Industry will in fact be much smaller than the Department of the Environment, at least judged by the number of civil servants; secondly, in terms of total staff the new Department will, even at the outset, be considerably smaller than the old Ministry of Technology. It will, of course, have lost the whole spectrum of functions concerned with aerospace research, development and procurement.
That brings me straight away to the new free-standing Ministry of Aviation Supply. I think it fair to say that the range of functions with which that Ministry is concerned, and how they are best fitted into the structure of Government, is something which has vexed and baffled all those who have sought to solve it since the war, and not least the last Administration. I wish to make no bones about the fact—and we have made it quite clear in the White Paper—that we have set up this new Ministry in order to buy time for a thorough review in the next 18 months. The review staff looking into this will be headed by Mr. Derek Rayner, one of the very able businessmen who are now attached to the Civil Service Department. They will look at defence procurement as a whole, and will aim to reach lasting conclusions to end the constant reorganisation in this field which has plagued us ever since the war and which I suggest is one of the factors that has contributed to at least some of the difficulties in which our aerospace industry is placed at the present time. I trust and believe that this review foreshadows a more stable and rational solution of what is admittedly a difficult problem.
I now turn to the transfer of responsibility for primary and secondary education in Wales from the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the Secretary of State for Wales. May I say at the outset that this transfer was a plank in our Election Manifesto—the Welsh Manifesto—and we are entitled to regard it therefore as an act for which we were

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elected. It is not altogether clear to what those who have voiced objections to the transfer are opposed. Some complain that it does not go further and involve the transfer of higher education as well. But there is a general view that polytechnics and universities should be a United Kingdom responsibility, since they are not, and should not be, confined to a local catchment area for their intake. That, I think, would be to make us all impossibly parochial. School education, I suggest, is a different and primarily local matter. This transfer, as my right honourable friend said in another place, is about the education of Welsh children who live in Wales, and this must be of the closest interest for any Welshman. Recognition of this by giving the Secretary of State executive responsibility as a further measure of devolution to the Welsh Office, coupled with the special arrangements that have been made to maintain close co-operation between the Welsh Office and the Department of Education and Science at the point where their responsibilities meet, will, I am sure, be welcomed in Wales.
Finally, I come to the change which was most discussed before the event and has been most criticised since; namely, the integration of the Ministry of Overseas Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I must frankly say that I find many of the criticisms here a little overdrawn, a little over-emotional and somewhat ill-conceived. We have made it clear in the recent White Paper on Expenditure that, far from proposing to cut the aid programme, we propose to continue to maintain its substantial expansion. That, surely, is an answer to those who say that this is an indication of some lack of interest on the part of the present Government in the aid programme itself. We have likewise made it plain in this White Paper that the maintenance within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the autonomous Overseas Development Administration means that the body of undoubted expertise and skill built up by O.D.M. will not be dissipated. I cannot see anything to complain about there.
Nor, my Lords, do I understand the criticism that the move somehow implies a subordination of aid policy—which is looked upon as holy—to the short run, unholy considerations of foreign policy. I do not accept that distinction, though it
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is perfectly legitimate to distinguish, in overseas policy as a whole, between short-run and long-run aims. I can assure the House that there will be no sacrifice of the longer-term interests, either of the developing countries or of the United Kingdom herself. Nor, for that matter, do I regard it as a choice between, on the one hand, the interests of the developing countries and, on the other, our own national interest. The Government's view is that this country's overseas policy can only be looked at as a whole, but this does not imply any subordination of any particular part of it. The fact that aid will now have the powerful support of a senior Minister in the Cabinet to speak for it can be only, in my view, an advantage for those who, like me, believe in a substantial and continuing policy of aid to the developing world from this country.
Before concluding these remarks, I should like to take this opportunity of announcing a decision in the field of scientific research which flows from the departmental changes upon which I have been touching. With the reallocation of functions among Departments, responsibility for certain specialist research laboratories, which were previously part of the Ministry of Technology, has been reviewed. These are the Water Pollution Research Laboratory, the Hydraulic Research Station, the Forest Products Research Laboratory and also the Fire Research Station. The four laboratories will be transferred to the Department of the Environment, with effect from January 1, 1971, together with the responsibility for administering grants to the Water Research Association, the Construction Industry Research and Information Association, the Heating and Ventilating Research Association and the Timber Research and Development Association. These research activities mainly support the functions of the new Department. As regards fire research, the transfer of the Fire Research Station is without prejudice to further consideration of the recommendations of the Holroyd Committee on the Fire Service relating to the future organisation of fire research. The Fire Offices Committee, which shares with Her Majesty's Government the financing of the Fire Research Station, will be associated with this consideration.
My Lords, may I conclude these perhaps overlong introductory remarks by

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saying that I believe that hitherto—and this is no Party point because the situation existed under Government of all political complexions—there has been something missing at the centre of the machinery of Government. I believe that the new structure which we are hoping to build into the centre of the machinery of Government will enable Ministers in the future to discharge their collective responsibility more effectively; and in that I believe that over a period of time there will be gain for us all.
Furthermore, I believe the new structuring of Departments is a more rational basis for the future, and will enable Government business to be handled and dealt with more effectively than in the past. By the same token I believe that the new system of programme analysis and review, which we are hoping to build into the machinery of Government, will enable the Government of the day to see more clearly where the options truly lie, and will help them to choose more wisely than we have all sometimes chosen in the past between those options. I believe that the proposals in the White Paper (though I recognise that there may be those who dissent from this proposal or that proposal), taken in the large, are a considerable step forward and offer a platform for stability for Government organisation which we have not had for quite a long time. With those words I commend those proposals to your Lordships' House.
Moved, That this House takes note of the White Paper, The Reorganisation of Central Government (Cmnd. 4506).—(Earl Jellicoe).
4.26 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, this looks like being rather a weighty debate, both in the length of the speeches and in the heaviness of the intellectual effort that is necessary in discussing subjects which, when one gets down to detail, become rather abstruse. I should like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, on his speech and, on the whole, on his White Paper. I shall have some things to say which are seriously and genuinely meant to search for information. This White Paper provides us with an opportunity to have a serious discussion on a very fundamental question, and we shall no doubt have some very worth-
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while maiden speeches from noble Lords. I hope that it will give rise to the type of debate at which your Lordships are so good.
I shall have a number of questions to ask the noble Earl. If I may say so (if I may have his attention for a moment; I know it is very difficult after he has made his speech, for he no doubt has one or two things to sort out), it is not my intention to approach this debate from a Party political point of view, but I am bound to say that there are some rather Party political noises in Part I of the White Paper—particularly in the underlying flavour of it. There is quite a difference between Part I and the rest of the Paper. There is not very much correlation between some of these rather pious, not to say bombastic, statements, and I wonder whether the first five paragraphs headed: "A new Style of Government: Aims" did not come from the fluent pen of the noble Earl's Parliamentary Secretary. I shall not ask him to answer that question because that is another of the secrets of Whitehall in this new period of open Government to which we shall not be told the answer. I do not think I would disagree with most of the aims at the beginning, but I slightly resent the idea that it is somehow the private property of the Conservative Party—a blinding light which has struck them. I cannot agree that this four month review can properly be described—and I know that a great deal of work was going on at Selsdon and elsewhere—as it is in the Paper in paragraph 5:
"This review differs fundamentally both in the depth of its aims and in the breadth of its scope from previous piecemeal changes in the pattern of departmental responsibilities."
I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, to whom I always look for guidance on the English language, to study some of the language in this White Paper, for some of it is of a positively obscuring kind—I say again, "positively obscuring".
What the new Government have done is only the last in a large number of such reviews and changes, and I am not sure (although if it is a matter of adding up, we do not necessarily want to score more points on this) that what is now proposed is quite as extensive as the changes carried out by the previous Government. It is because of the suggestion

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that this is something much more fundamental that I am critical. I very much hope that the view stated, that the results will remove for a considerable period in the future the need for continual changes, will in the event be fulfilled. I am not very optimistic about this, for I do not believe we have reached, or ever shall reach, a certainty. None the less, I would wholly agree with what is said in the White Paper (I suppose this is a sort of apologia; all Governments say this; we certainly did): that frequent changes are disturbing and damaging to the machinery of Government and the efficiency with which its tasks are discharged. I agree that Governments, and particularly the Government of which I was a member, have placed very heavy burdens on the Civil Service. It is a remarkable tribute to the Civil Service that they have always contrived to take a deep breath, adapt, and make sense out of the many different variations in policy which have taken place. Indeed, I congratulate the Civil Service on managing to keep under control some of the barmier ideas which I know were floating around in the best Conservative circles.
I know that it is beginning to look otherwise, but in fact I am not trying to make a Party political speech, because I know that all political Parties go in for thinking of this kind. But I do not believe that we have yet reached any single, underlying system of organisation which will meet indefinitely the needs of an enterprise so varied as Government. This is also true to a large extent of industry. Noble Lords who are in industry will know the enormous variety of organisation structures and non-structures that exist in parts of industry. I do not think one need worry about this, because I rather hope that we shall gradually improve our techniques. I think that what is now called the central policy review staff, rather than the central analytical capability, really is a bit of a chameleon, and I shall have something more to say about it later. I hope that at some stage, even if not now, the very social scientists will begin to make some contribution in the field of Government. Certainly I doubt whether any of them have been consulted on this.
My second criticism, as I have already mentioned, is about what are styled as the new discoveries the Government have
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made. Most of the principles with which I agree, and which are stated in this Paper to be very fundamental, as new discoveries, have been expressed time and again. The last thing I wish to do is to criticise the civil servants who have written the Paper, who have had to fill it up and have obviously drawn on the best sources (even without acknowledgment), but most of what has been said in Section II on the functional approach, as opposed to the analytical approach which I am sure excites the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, has in fact been said in the Haldane Report, which was published in 1918. I hope the noble Earl has read the Haldane Report. If not, there has been something remiss in the briefing in my old Department, because I read it as soon as I got in. But the headings are the same.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, may I assure the noble Lord that I read it before I joined.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am delighted. I am only sorry the noble Earl has forgotten it, because he might have made some acknowledgment of the Haldane Report. I found that I had completely forgotten it when I read it for the 1964 debate. However, the White Paper states:
"Government departments should be organised by reference to the task to be done or the objective to be attained "—
some people might say that this is again rather a blinding glimpse of the obvious. And:
"… this should be the basis of the division of work between departments rather than, for example, dividing responsibility between departments so that each one deals with a client group."
What Haldane said 52 years ago was that there appeared to be only two alternatives, briefly described as distribution according to the persons or classes to be dealt with and distribution according to the services to be performed. The White Paper continues:
"The one we recommend for adoption is that of defining the field of activity in the case of each department according to the particular service which it renders to the community as a whole"
I congratulate the Government on confirming in 1970 Haldane's principle, for Haldane said it all very well. There is no harm in restating such principles, but

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it is a little ungenerous that so far (and I do not think this is characteristic of the noble Earl) the Government have not made a little more reference to what had been done by their predecessors, particularly in the setting up of the Civil Service Department. This document gives me the impression that the Civil Service has contrived to keep the Whitehall machinery on the rails, and to carry out proposals most of which were already in the pipe-line under the previous Government; and they have also succeeded in confining the businessmen in an area in which they will not do much harm and will almost certainly do some good.
There are great and continuing improvements that can be made within the machinery of Government, but most of these will come, not by apparently striking and sweeping decisions, but by painstaking and detailed improvements in management methods, in grading structures, in the dissemination of new techniques; above all, in the training and the reorientation of attitudes which come after, and not before, the spadework. The Paper makes passing references to subjects such as accountable management, but we shall not get that kind of accountable management without a great deal more work in the fundamental management of the Civil Service. I am sure that the noble Earl, with his responsibilities, will not disagree that this is an essential and parallel activity.
I do not propose to discuss many of the actual changes, because other noble Lords will know of these and will wish to deal with them. The Department of the Environment we support. As is known, this was a decision which in fact the previous Government had taken, although I am bound to say that there are some awkward frictions on the borderlines touching the old Transport Ministry; and some of my noble friends may wish to deal with this question. The setting up of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, again, is open to serious criticism, but I will not go into that. The decision on Welsh education seems to me to be absolutely barmy. It breaks all the rules actually contained in this document, and I am bound to say that the only justification for it is that it was in the Conservative Party Manifesto. It is a great pity they did not take a little
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I longer to deal with it. Again, some other noble Lords may want to deal with that subject, as undoubtedly they will, with regret, with the change with regard to O.D.M.
I should like, however, to turn now to the central analytical capability. which I think has now changed from an abstract into a concrete phrase. Capability, I suppose, can mean a lot of chaps. It is now called, I believe, a central policy review staff. This, of course, has caused a good deal of frivolity, not least within the Civil Service itself. We all know—at least, I hope we all know—that big advances are made in the presentation of options and benefits and, in particular, in the establishment of quantitative yardsticks. We know all I too well that the pressure of events means that Cabinets frequently have to take decisions where much more detailed analysis—and very often it is a matter of time—would have pointed the way out more clearly, or at least identified the different options in a more factual form.
Of course, some real progress has been made. The noble Earl referred to programme-planning budgeting systems, but of course it is an illusion; and again the noble Earl, who has been in the Ministry of Defence, will know that none of these methods, whether they are cost-sensitivity studies or other sophisticated techniques to get at a meaningful cost benefit analysis, can be introduced overnight, or done—and I put this as a serious point to the noble Earl—on a wide range of the sort of issues that come to Cabinet, without a very great enlargement of resources. This is not an objection to making a start. The idea that it will very quickly—I apologise; I know that noble Lords in Waiting have other things to do, but I am on a serious argument and I will either stop for a moment or move to a less interesting part of my speech if the noble Earl would prefer that.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I must intervene, if I may. I apologise to the noble Lord for the fact that my attention was momentarily distracted, but the noble Lord knows perfectly well that the business of the House comes up suddenly and one cannot always pay unbroken attention to what is being said. I really think it was unnecessary for him to make that last crack.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, it was not meant to be a nasty crack and the noble Earl should not be oversensitive. It is rather disturbing when one is expounding an argument. If the noble Earl thinks I was offensive I can assure him that I was not, and if he still thinks that I was offensive I will apologise for it, but I am on a very difficult part of my argument. I do not believe that the technicians are available to carry this out on the extensive scale that the Government appear to have in mind. Cost benefit studies take a lot of skilled manpower, and when one is trying to compare options in the social field—education versus roads—one has to use all the most sophisticated techniques if it is to be at all meaningful. That is not an argument against having this capability and I am sure it ought to be started, but I do not believe it will yield very rapid results, and there are dangers in expecting too much.
Let me echo the noble Earl in paying a tribute to the Cabinet Office. It is a pity, and I think we are in real difficulties at this point, if he still maintains that we are not freer to talk about the system of Government and Cabinet committees and their detailed work. I am sure the noble Earl will agree that the work of Sir Burke Trend and the capacity of the officials who serve him and who make sense out of the sometimes inevitably confused discussions that take place, is very remarkable. Unfortunately, I do not think the country will ever know what we owe to them.
The first Parliamentary reference to the new central review staff and the analytical capability was made by the noble Earl on July 22, when he said:
"One area, among others, where I believe that their assistance can be useful is in helping to develop what central Government has hitherto and rather conspicuously lacked; and that is a serious capability at the centre for analysing programmes and for assessing the longer-term options…."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22/7/70, col. 1055.]
The businessmen appear to have been shuffled off. There is no mention of them in relation to the new central policy review staff. They are now based in the Civil Service Department, developing a system of regular reviews.
The noble Earl really must not be surprised if we say that the Government apparently have not thought this
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out. They have gone out and bought the businessmen—perhaps "bought" is not the right word, because I do not doubt that the businessmen are largely giving their services, and no one would pay a higher tribute than I to the way in which industry has supported Government in lending people, as they did in the days of the previous Government. But, my Lords, where in fact are they going to operate? Are they going to be in this new unit? In any case, are businessmen particularly suited for this? I believe that most of the best analysts in this area are to be found either in universities or actually in Government itself, particularly in the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury and elsewhere. I am all for bringing them in. A greater sophistication will help, but even then it will not remove the area of controversy; and any noble Lord who has had anything to do with the Ministry of Defence, which has the most sophisticated forms of analysis of any Government Department, will know that the controversies go on as much as ever because, fortunately or unfortunately, there will always be—and some noble Lords may say, "Thank God for it!"—a large area which is not susceptible to quantification and where judgment of a subjective kind will have to come in. But that is no reason why one should not have all the best figures possible.
My Lords, assuming that the means are available—and this is really the crucial difficulty which to my mind raises a quite important constitutional point—where in the machine is this to operate? We know that the system of Cabinet committees is supposed to be secret, although we can read about them in countless memoirs. So let us therefore assume that the situation existed, not in the lifetime of this Government but in that of an earlier Government which has been written about. If Departments disagree with some aspects of the analysis, or the conclusions that may be drawn from it, who will argue the central policy for that Paper in Cabinet? The noble Earl talks about reporting to Ministers collectively, but our system of arriving at collective decisions depends to a large extent on the Ministers being responsible.
One could go on at great length in this very difficult area of the extent to which officials and Ministers can mix. I

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believe that this central review staff can be useful, but it would be highly dangerous if the conclusions were not to be disputed in Cabinet and were to be largely settled outside, where the influence of Ministers, and the critical influence, will be diminished.
There are many people who hope to see Governments become much more analytical, and decisions taken much more on a sort of computerised basis. But this is a real difficulty, and already there are controversies as to the exent to which these analytical techniques, valuable as they are, are diminishing the flow of political exchange, the conflict of interest. I am sure the noble Earl will forgive me if I refer to the Schultz-Lindflom controversy: I will not say where I got this information from, because I am not allowed to talk about the briefing I had from officials. But there are quite considerable anxieties in this area, especially among those who think that decisions must, in the last resort, come from the clash of political thought and interest. I admit that I am encouraged by the statement made by the noble Earl's Parliamentary Secretary in the debate in another place, which clearly recognised the importance of, in the end, Ministers taking decisions. I believe that there is more explanation to give on this. I am sceptical as to whether we have reached satisfactory finality on how this is to operate, and I do not doubt that the Civil Service, as much as the noble Earl himself, will be concerned with these problems.
May I conclude by saying that while we welcome anything that improves the analysis and the quantification of options, I do not believe that this has yet been fully worked out. Any explanation the noble Earl can give to the House will be useful, because I really believe that this is a tremendously important subject, and one which, although it contains long words, is really of great significance. I hope that, whatever is achieved in this area, this Government, in a way that previous Governments have not, will contrive to find time for Ministers themselves to talk together. They are all overworked. I know that the noble Earl rushes from meeting to meeting and that he is not able, any more than I was, to finish one meeting he is in. I hope that
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somehow someone will build in moments of peace for Ministers to sit and talk about long-term strategy. They do this when out of Government, when they do not have all the facts and figures, and that accounts, no doubt, for some of the sillier things Governments do when they come into office. But when they are in office they never take time to discuss with their colleagues the fundamental strategy. I know that this is an important subject. I wish the noble Earl success, and I hope that when he comes to reply, he will face some of the dilemmas inherent in the proposals in this White Paper.
4.52 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, in spite of the concluding words of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and in spite of the obvious importance of the subject, I shall be very brief. We on these Benches naturally sympathise with any proposal to simplify Governmental procedures and disentangle the issues, which get ever more confused and complicated. But, though we have great good will towards this White Paper, we rather doubt whether it will achieve the end desired. I must say that I personally arrive at this tentative conclusion the more readily owing to its highly abstract language (which was, I admit, not so much employed by the noble Earl who opened the debate), which makes it a little difficult to understand who exactly will do what.
Another reason for not being too optimistic about efforts to reform the whole Governmental machine is the fate of similar attempts to reform it in the past. Perhaps the present scheme was the result of more profound reflection than the rather ill-fated attempt which resulted in the setting up of the Department of Economic Affairs. At least. I doubt whether Mr. Heath and Mr. Peter Walker devised it in a taxi on the way to a meeting. There was, nevertheless, an intellectual case for setting up the D.E.A., and no doubt it could have worked had it not been for the not unnatural opposition of the Treasury, referred to so graphically in Lord George-Brown's Memoirs, which we are all reading at the present time.
One reason, perhaps, for thinking that the latest scheme will come up against fewer difficulties is that, with luck, there may not be, under this scheme, any great

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continuing inter-departmental rivalry resulting from the present proposed amalgamations. But much will depend, of course, on whether the heads of these vast machines have sufficient stamina and strength of character to make them run smoothly and effectively. If they do, so much the better; then it will work.
I agree that in principle there is reason to have, as it were, a small inner circle of Ministers with really great areas of responsibility. Indeed, I made this one of the central features of the proposals for reform of Government which I advanced in the House over three years ago, in a speech to which the noble Earl was good enough to refer. I sympathise also with the apparent intention of the Government to cut down on inter-ministerial committees. But, of course, the interests of the old Ministries, which have now, as I understand it, been incorporated bodily and with their own Ministers in the new machines, will have to iron out their difficulties with the other "wings", as I think they are now called, so I suppose there will not in practice be any great diminution in what are now effectively inler-departmental meetings. As against this, the total number of Cabinet committees may well be reduced, and no doubt that is in itself desirable. So far so good.
But if we are to be guided in any way by the lessons of the past, perhaps we ought just to have a look at the famous system of "Overlords" devised by the late Sir Winston Churchill, in, I think, 1951. Everybody soon recognised that this system could not work, if only because the Ministers officially "coordinated" by the Overlord were in the Cabinet, too, and in practice, like nation States, they simply refused to sacrifice any of their so-called sovereignty or independence. The same applied, as we all know, to the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence appointed by Mr. Chamberlain just before the war. I take it that a similar difficulty will not arise out of the present scheme—at least, I hope not.
But supposing that, for instance, Mr. Noble has an acute difference of opinion with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, will it be in order for him to have it out in Cabinet on the basis of a brief prepared by his own officials, no doubt on quite contrary lines to the brief prepared by Mr. Davies's officials? I do
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not know the answer to that question. I should be much happier if there were no possibility of such a situation arising, and I would welcome any reassurance that the Government can give us on this essential, if perhaps elementary, point.
It is not quite clear whether the two Ministers who, in the words of the White Paper, will "support" Mr. Davies will have a right of appeal to the Cabinet or whether they will not. Their status, we read in the White Paper, but not their legal position, will be equivalent to that of a Minister in charge of a separate Department not represented in the Cabinet, the same applying to Mr. Walker's "supporters". How is this to be interpreted exactly in practice? It is very important to be clear, and on the answer to this question will largely depend the judgment which we on these Benches shall be inclined to form of the whole new proposed set-up.
I myself, however, should be considerably more doubtful about the wisdom of establishing what the White Paper describes, in its polysyllabic way as
"a capability at the centre for assessment of policies and projects in relation to strategic objectives",
the full nature of which, as Lord Shackleton has said, is revealed in paragraphs 43 to 52, where it is, rather more briefly and graphically, termed
'a small multidisciplinary central policy review staff".
This staff, it seems, will be at the disposal of the Government as a whole but will be under the supervision of the Prime Minister, and its task is quite lucidly set forth as
"to identify those areas of policy in which new choices can be exercised and to ensure that the underlying implications of alternative courses of action are fully analysed and considered."
This is indeed a mouthful. What it all comes down to, I suggest, is in modern parlance, this. First of all, you prepare a "think-tank" and then you drop into it a "whizz-kid". Whether this arrangement works or not depends on whether the "whizz-kid" can swim—politically, that is. This is not so easy as it sounds, and there are indeed some who say that the admittedly brilliant Lord Rothschild (whom I have never met) has not yet learnt!

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Moreover, the experiment has to some extent been tried before. The last Government had its "think-tank", or a think-tank of sorts, at Number 10, but they had not one "whizz-kid" but two "whizz kids", Messrs. Kaldor and Balogh (as they then were). This small review staff was, I suppose, multi-disciplinary—certainly it had no common discipline: that at least can be said. It is arguable that it possessed considerably more economic expertise than the present "whizz-kid" designate. Opinions differ, however, I think I am right in saying, as to its utility, though I have no doubt that it was constantly at work
"analysing and considering the underlying implications of alternative courses of action",
to revert to the splendid language of the White Paper.
But it seems that the new "think-tank" will not confine its activities to economics. This may be where it could be quite an innovation. For instance, it may well be supposed that one of its more urgent tasks will be to think out an alternative course of action in respect of the prospective sale of arms to South Africa. I can well imagine Sir Alec Douglas-Home coming to Lord Rothschild and saying, "Look, we really have got ourselves into rather a mess on this tiresome issue. Would you please devise a scheme whereby we can get out of it without too much loss of face?" Certainly if Lord Rothschild can do this, he will deserve well of the State; but it might tax even his very considerable ingenuity.
What I do rather fear, however, is that. in spite of what the noble Earl, Earl Jellicoe said, if the "think-tank" is successful it may well be too powerful, whereas if (as is perhaps more likely) it is unsuccessful, it will simply get in the way. In the first case it might develop into something equivalent to the famous Lloyd-Georgian Garden Suburb; and in the second case it could, I am afraid, like Lord Cherwell and his team, become a major menace and a distinct clog in the Governmental machine. I know that the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said it was absurd to suggest this possibility. But I do not think it is; I think it is a real possibility that it may so develop if things go wrong. So my concrete suggestion is, why not merge it altogether
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into the Cabinet Secretariat and suppress it as a separate entity under the supervision of the Prime Minister? New blood is always a good thing. I am all for bringing it in. I am sure that Sir Burke Trend would himself welcome the addition of Lord Rothschild to his staff. which ought surely in itself to constitute the co-ordinating body, the evident need for which clearly emerges from the rather nebulous prose of the White Paper.
In conclusion, may I just say how we shall look forward even more eagerly to the promised Green Paper on the Re form of the House of Commons. If any thing wants reforming it is what used to be called, I believe, the Lower House. If democracy is not to perish in this country, two things seem to us Liberals, al any rate, to be necessary. The first is devolution, and on that I suppose we shall have to await the publication of the Crowther Report—
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord to say that my right honourable friend the Lord President has anticipated the noble Lord's anticipation, because the Green Paper has in fact been issued.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I shall then look forward to reading it. I did not know that it had been issued. I thank the noble Earl very much.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, Haldane was on this subject, too, fifty-two years ago!
LORD GLADWYN: Anyhow, two things are necessary, as we see it: first of all, devolution in a general way; and, secondly, the exercise of rather more control over the Government by the House of Commons itself—that is to say, by the intervention of the representatives of the people at a rather earlier stage in the policy-making process. If, as the White Paper says, the Executive, even if pruned and streamlined, is, by becoming more efficient to be greatly strengthened, it is important surely that the Legislature should not be entirely put into the shade. The frequent references in the White Paper to the need to prepare our whole Governmental machine for what will be expected of it when we come into the Common Market are greatly to be welcomed, but this, after all, will also apply presumably to the strengthening of the

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Legislature. So your Lordships will see that we on these Benches have rather ambivalent feelings about the White Paper. We should not like to condemn it hastily, but we are rather doubtful about the usefulness of some of the proposals, and in any case we should like an answer to the various doubts expressed and to the questions we have raised.
5.5 p.m.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, I ask for the indulgence which your Lordships customarily afford to someone who addresses you for the first time. In fact, my voice has been heard here before because, like other speakers whom your Lordships will hear, I made a maiden speech in another place but within these four walls. There is, however, a distinct difference between the two occasions. In 1950, when I made my maiden speech in another place, (here was a sense of urgency which is lacking to-day, because the Labour Government had been returned with an infinitesimal majority, and many of us were very frightened that we might have to return to our electorate without having made a maiden speech at all; and I feel that had that happened I should have lost many votes to my then opponent, who is now my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy. It is fair to say that I beat him five times to another place, but he has beaten me to your Lordships' House.
May I say that I welcome very much the general approach of the White Paper. The sentiments to me are impeccable, even if sometimes I think that the English is not as lucid as it might be. I do not propose to go into too many of the general principles involved, because I am anxious not to detain your Lordships too long in view of the number of speakers. I should like to limit myself to points of criticism and praise of detailed proposals.
May I begin by welcoming the return to the Board of Trade (a Department in which I had the honour to serve) of the responsibility for monopolies and restrictive practices. Quite frankly, I could never understand how on earth that particular subject could ever find an appropriate home in the Department of Employment and Productivity. But secondly and even more, do I welcome the transfer of the Children's Department from the Home Office to the Secretary of State for Social Services. To my mind,
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it never made any sense at all that the care of children should be in a Department mixed up with the police, prisons, fire brigades, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and all the other odd jobs which the Home Office do, not least of which, may I say, arising out of the discussion earlier this afternoon, is the maintenance of the standing roll of the baronetage. It never made any sense to have the Children's Department there. The worst argument of all was that put forward, I think, by a previous Home Secretary, that its right place was there in order to humanise the Home Office. It seems to me that the interests of children should never have been sacrificed in so hopeless a task as that.
May I turn to certain functions and duties of the Department of Health and Social Services, since I also had the honour of serving in a small part of that large Department? When the amalgamation of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance was first put forward in my Party's Manifesto, I must frankly say that I thought it was nonsense. I thought it was a foolish idea—and I knew it was when the Labour Government adopted it. It seemed to me that the merger of those two great administrative machines was a marriage of chalk and cheese and not likely to prove a very fruitful union. I must, however, say to your Lordships that I am now beginning to revise my opinion. The accretion of the Children's Department and the implementation of Seebohm seem to me to mean that that merger is beginning to make sense, since the Department is now developing into a Ministry of Social Welfare in the widest sense. If I may use a perfectly horrible, technical jargon phrase which is creeping into discussions, it is becoming a "policy cluster". I am sure that my noble friend Lord Conesford will share my horror at such a phrase, but it is an extraordinarily appropriate one for this happening.
But now it is time to release some of the bees in my bonnet and, if I may take the senior one, I deeply regret once again the failure to transfer the responsibilities of industrial health from the Department of Employment, as it is now called, to the Department of Health and Social Security. It has seemed to me for many years that it is quite wrong that

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we do not seek to integrate health at work with health at home or in the hospital. I will not enlarge too much on the arguments, but may I remind your Lordships that it is now 22 years, I think, since the Dale Committee reported on this matter, and virtually no action has been taken by any Government at all. I have held views on this matter for some 17 years, and there was a time when I managed to convert a Minister of Health. Indeed, he needed no conversion; he was of the same opinion and he decided to submit a Cabinet paper; but, alas, the worst happened and he was transferred from being Minister of Health to being Minister of Labour, the radical reformer overnight became the empire builder, and nothing more has been heard since of that proposal. But I notice that in March of this year the former Secretary of State—and I am quoting from Hansard—decided to
"set up a small, high-powered body to conduct a general inquiry across the whole field of health and safety legislation."
My Lords, it is really a matter of regret and concern that the terms of reference of that body make no reference to the need for integration with the National Health Service.
I should like to turn for a moment to the duties now assigned to the Department of the Environment. I notice with pleasure that it now takes responsibility for the control of air, water, and noise pollution. I speak with some feeling on this matter, because when I was a Member of another place I was one of the four Members whose constituencies bordered on Gatwick Airport, and my file on this matter at the last time of reckoning weighed about 2½ lb. I have seen that airport grow for 17 years. I have seen it grow piecemeal and overshadow and spoil the lives of many hundreds, and indeed thousands of people, for the worse. There has never yet been a full public inquiry into the manner in which that airport has grown from being an alternative to Heathrow to being our second airport. There has never been anything comparable to the Roskill Commission and, as a result, there has been this haphazard growth, almost unplanned. Those who live nearby are now faced with an extension of the existing runway, and possibly a second runway as well, and I hope that the new Secretary of State into whose lap
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this matter will fall will as soon as possible grant the local request for a full public inquiry.
There is some anomaly to be explained as to what is meant by his "duty of control". There are controls now. If there are complaints about low-flying aircraft, or about excessive night flights, which are all in breach of the regulations, I must remind your Lordships that the necessary monitoring and policing is done by officials responsible to the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade is responsible for airport policy. If ever there was a case of, not a poacher turning gamekeeper but a poacher combining his duties with those of a gamekeeper, this is it; and either the word "control" in the White Paper is meaningless as regards the Secretary of State for the Environment, or else the duties should be changed.
I should like to make one final point. In paragraphs 55 and 56 the Government make it clear that it is their purpose and intention first to reduce the numbers of the Civil Service and, secondly—and I particularly welcome this—to reduce the numbers working in central London. I presume this will mean less strain on accommodation in central London, and perhaps particularly on accommodation in Whitehall. Does this mean that the Government are going to abandon the Whitehall Plan? Will they announce their firm rejection of a proposal which would destroy three buildings of great historic moment in order to build a new Home Office? I hope we shall hear from my noble friend that it is the Government's intention to hold up this plan, and then we should know indeed that they mean business in this particular respect.
5.16 p.m.
BARONESS SHARP: My Lords, it gives me very great pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, on his most distinguished maiden speech. His long apprenticeship in another place has clearly given him a fluency and a competence which those of us who have spent our lives in one of the silent services must envy. In addition to this, he brings a knowledge and an experience to contribute to our affairs which will plainly be of the greatest usefulness. I am sure we must all hope that we shall have the pleasure and stimulus of listening to him on many future occasions.

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May I now turn to the White Paper? I should like, speaking as a former civil servant, to welcome the proposals in this Paper. They seem to me to make a start on trying to achieve a more rational organisation of Government, which is desperately badly needed. Only those who work inside the machine can have any idea of the confusion and duplication, the friction, the wealth of interdepartmental committees—which to some civil servants have become now a total way of life—that exist in certain spheres of Government. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, suggested that the Government had no cause to claim anything very new in what they have done in this Paper. But I think they have, for this seems to me to show an effort to produce considered and objective improvements in the organisation, which is something we have not seen for many decades—and I am not speaking of one Administration rather than another. For decades we have seen so much ad hoc change in the Ministries, quite often related to the personality of individual Ministers who nearly always disappear a few months after this great change has been made. I think all of us in Whitehall have desperately wanted this kind of approach to rationalising the structure of Departments.
Having said that, I want to add that this is only a start. The White Paper itself says that this is intended as the foundation of future changes. There is a great deal still to be done. I do not mean only in spheres which the White Paper has not yet touched; I mean also in the spheres which it has dealt with. I welcome these two great new Ministries, the Ministry for Trade and Industry (I never could see any sense in having two Ministries dealing with trade and industry), and also in the sphere with which I myself was once concerned, a Ministry for the Environment which covers traffic and transport, as well as planning, housing, and local government. All of us who have worked in this field have known for a long time that this is something badly needed.
At the same time, I believe that both these Ministries, as they stand, are too big. That may seem a contradiction, but I do not think it is. The important thing is that in both Ministries there should be, and I think there can be, some shedding
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of the load. Some of the load, some of the work, can be shed entirely, and with no visible loss to the efficiency of Government. Some of it which cannot be shed can be provided for in other ways: by organisations for which Ministers have an overall responsibility, but no direct responsibility for the day-to-day operations—the type of arrangement which is often described as "hiving off". There is certainly scope for that.
I look at my own old Department, now part of the Department of the Environment, and I confess to some concern at the inclusion in it, lock, stock and barrel, of the whole of the Ministry of Public Building and Works. This seems to me to be a pretty large tail to a rather highly strung dog; and I think that, just like that, it will not work well. But then in relation to some, and perhaps much, of the work that is covered by the Ministry of Public Building and Works there can be a good deal of shedding and, perhaps even more, a good deal of arrangement to handle it differently. I think of the whole work of providing Government accommodation, which, incidentally, has almost always been abominably done. We should do better if all of that work were in the charge of a Board for which a Minister, not necessarily the Minister for the Environment, had overall and financial responsibility, but no day-to-day responsibility. I also think that all that part of the Ministry which deals with the building industry needs a long and hard look. I suspect it to be quite unnecessarily inflated. That is only one example.
In looking at the size of a Ministry to consider whether it is unduly big, it is not the total size of the staff that matters; it is, on the one hand, the number of major political issues that must land finally on the desk of the Minister ultimately in charge. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, who asked whether it might happen in these big new Ministries that one of the Ministers responsible for one part of it—say the Minister responsible for local government and development—could, if he was at odds with his Secretary of State, argue the matter out in Cabinet. That seems to me a quite extraordinary idea, and I do not for one moment suppose that the Government can have any notion that the system will work like that. So I think that right across these Ministries

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there are major political issues, and political issues of some diversity, which may in the end land on the plate of the Secretary of State and may prove too much. I think that only time will show this. But it is possible that too much has been brought together—certainly in the Department of the Environment. I am very much less well acquainted with the work of the Department of Trade and Industry.
The other criterion by which one judges whether a Ministry is too big is whether it is too big for efficient management; and here I feel a good deal more sure that these Ministries really are uncomfortably big. Again, I am not quarrelling with the idea of the Ministries: I am urging that they need to be cut down, and I think they can be. When you look at whether a Ministry is too big for competent management, you look not at the total number of staff, but at the number of really senior staff. If this is too big for the management to know individually, or too big for the management to comprehend the work, then there will be difficulty. Therefore, while welcoming these Ministries I want to add that they are in great danger, unless a real effort is made—and I think it can and should be made—to cut them down.
Having said that, I want to come to the central machinery which in the White Paper is labelled "the central policy review staff", and by others the "central capability unit"—of all phrases—and finally, and worst, the "think-tank". To me, this piece of central machinery is, quite simply, an Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet; and a much overdue and badly needed office it is. I know that it is dangerous to call it the Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, because everybody says that this is going for the Presidential system. But there is a lot more in the Presidential system of the United States than competent advice for the Head of the Government; and that, after all, is all that is being talked about here. So there is no reason why we should not go for that, even if it happens also to distinguish the American system.
As I think the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said, there has been some misunderstanding about the function of this office. It has been implied in some
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quarters that its function will be to know better than the Departments what they should be doing, or to criticise the proposals coming up from Departments, or to interfere with the way in which a Department intends to set about its own business. I do not think that is so at all. I do not read the White Paper in that way, and I certainly hope that that will not be so. It seems to me that the function of the Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet is to advise the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on their collective responsibility—and I emphasise the Prime Minister, as well as the Cabinet.
I remember talking to Mr. Macmillan just after he became Prime Minister. I had been with him when he was Minister of Housing and Local Government. I was telling him that he was making far too heavy demands on the then Secretary of the Cabinet, Sir Norman Brook (Lord Normanbrook, as he became), because in the Civil Service, in the machinery of Government, we desperately needed some of his time and capacity and thought. This was part of his job. Mr. Macmillan said to me, "I am the Prime Minister and I also need some help. It is a strange thing that, in the greatest office I have ever held, I have less assistance than I have ever had." I need hardly say that he was not in any way denigrating the assistance he received from Sir Norman Brook and the Cabinet Office; he was relying on it enormously. But that was all he had, and this was not, in fact, their job.
This is what we want now. It is not only advice to the Prime Minister; it is advice to the Cabinet. I think the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, asked: "How will that advice get to the Cabinet?" The noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said that we could not discuss it, but I cannot for the life of me think why not. Nothing is secret about this. The advice may come partly from the Prime Minister, in taking part in Cabinet discussions. He will have had that advice and help behind him. Or I can see no reason why papers and memoranda should not be presented by this staff to the Cabinet. There is no natural law which says that the head of this unit should not, if so requested by the Cabinet, appear before the Cabinet and advise them or answer their questions or tell them what he thinks. I can see no

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difficulty in this. It seems to me that the real function of this Office is, first and foremost, to assist the Government collectively in forming their ideas about priorities and central strategy and then, where necessary, judging the proposals that come forward from Departments against those priorities and central strategy. It will not be concerned with every paper that comes before the Cabinet; perhaps not with the great majority of them. In many cases these questions do not arise at all.
The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, referring to the function of this unit, talked as though it was a tremendously sophisticated affair—cost benefit and all that. I do not see it like that at all. I see these people like any other civil servants in any other Department, advising their particular Minister—in this case the Prime Minister and the Cabinet—on how a thing looks from their point of view; that is to say, from the point of view of the overall strategy of government. Perhaps the most obvious example of the kind of issue on which the Office should be advising is the great debate and struggle as to the priorities between, on the one hand, economic issues—economic needs and the growth of the economy—and, on the other, the growth of the social services.
At the moment, the only central machinery for looking at the totality of what the Government should do lies in the Treasury—and, of course, it is vital to look at the cost and the future rate of expenditure. But this is not the only test—in fact, it is a short-term test. Government needs to look at its functions over the long-term. I think back to my own days in the Ministry of Housing. Ever since the end of the war we were set on getting more houses built, and primarily our concern always was whether we were building houses for those most in need—for the poor, for the old, for the clearance of slums and so forth; because those were our priorities within the Department, though they varied from time to time.
It has always seemed to me, looking right back to the years soon after the war, that the Government might have been very much better advised to say, "That must wait until we get our industry in order, until we have made a real industrial recovery from the war; we
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have to make this our priority." This, I think, is what some other countries did. This, I think, is what Germany did. No doubt she had to; she had suffered so much worse destruction than we had. But, as a result of it, almost all other European countries have now outstripped our housing performance. They, I think, got their priorities right.
This is only one example; there art others in other fields. But this is the kind of field in which I think Government collectively need advising. They will not be quarrelling with any Minister's view of his Departmental priorities, but will only be saying to him, "For our long-term strategy we think there has to be some rather different emphasis."
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Baroness leaves this point, may I say that she is making it all sound very simple and very nice, and for all I know she may have had a hand in thinking this out. But the phrases "central analytical capability" and "new techniques in decision making" are ones which the Government have used, and they surely presuppose the use of some of these more sophisticated techniques. Perhaps I am wrong: but the noble Baroness says that they do not mean that.
BARONESS SHARP: My Lords, I did not mean to imply that it did not entail the use of these techniques at all; but that it is not the whole of it. It is not, so to speak, just a cost-benefit exercise being done for the Government. I think the essential function is to advise the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, as in other Departments other senior civil servants advise Ministers, on what seems to be, from both the political and the economic points of view, their right long-term strategies. They will, of course, be aided by analytical capacity—though I hasten to assure the noble Lord that I had no hand in drafting this White Paper. I am saying only how it seems to me the thing ought to work, and the sort of organisation that I think we have needed for a long time.
My Lords, I do not think there is much more that I want to say about it, except just this. While I have welcomed these changes, as a former civil servant, and have even said that I think a lot more change is still needed in the spheres which are now covered as well as elsewhere. I

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should like to say from my own bitter experience that this sort of change is murder for the Civil Service. It is a really appalling business, because the reorganisation must go right down the line. This is not just a matter of, for example, taking the old Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Public Building and Works and saying, "There they all are, remaining much as they have always been, each under their own Minister, with a central Minister on top". There has to be a great deal of reorganisation as between the Departments right down the line, at every level, and it is an appalling business.
For a time, I do not have any doubt, the confusion, the incoherence and the lack of certainty of purpose in Whitehall is likely to get even worse. I say this for two reasons. The first is to invite your Lordships' charity towards the Departments struggling with this business. The second is to underline what has been said earlier in the debate: that these changes in the machinery of Government, important though they are, need to be made as infrequently as possible, and need to be made (and this has been agreed, I think, on both sides of the House), so far as possible, to last. Of course, they cannot last for ever, because Governments differ in their objectives, in their priorities, in the load of their work, in where they want to put the main emphasis; and this is bound to have reactions on the machinery of Government. But so far as possible it is supremely important for the efficiency of Government, and therefore, finally, for the prosperity of this country, that changes in the machine should be considered, should be objective and, in the words, I think, of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, should give as much promise of stability as possible.
5.37 p.m.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, there must be many reasons why a maiden speaker is wise in seeking the indulgence of your Lordships' House, as I do, with respect, now. In my case there is a very special reason and a grave one. I am asking your Lordships to bear with me for a short time while I pay my short tribute to the memory of a very great man. I should not be able to face myself
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in the mirror to-night were I not to take this, the first public opportunity which has presented itself to me, to say a word about the tragic death of Iain Macleod. I worked with him and opposite him for a great number of years, and the more I came to know him the more I came to appreciate his great ability and his endless patience, particularly in the other place and in its Committees, and the more I came to admire his tremendous, overwhelming, personal courage. It has been a tragic blow to many of us that he should have met his death in such an untimely and unfortunate way, and it has certainly been an enormous loss to our nation.
My Lords, the White Paper which is before us makes a plea for less government—I nearly said "shorter government": my enthusiastic support would have been even greater had that word been used. However, it makes a plea for less government and for better government, and I want to say a word or two in support of the first and to raise one or two questions in relation to the second, and then, if I may, to invite your Lordships to share with me the tremendous entertainment that is to be obtained from a careful reading of the wording of the White Paper itself.
I have a certain sympathy with the point of view of a new Government—any new Government—which is predisposed towards less government in the day-today affairs of the nation than its basic philosophy would indicate, rather than the reverse. I say that because of the pressures that exist which continually tend to drive a Government—any Government—into more and more intervention and into extending the area of government involuntarily. You will have seen that whenever anything untoward occurs the first public reaction is, "What are the Government going to do about it?", and by the afternoon, "What have the Government done about it?". I think it is unfortunate that there should be developing an attitude of mind in which, as soon as the going gets a little rough, either for the individual or for the business man or for the institution, there should be a tendency to call in the Government, to lean on the Government. I take the view that whatever the framework of government is, and of course it will be a different one according to the philosophy of the Party

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in government, whatever be this framework, to the extent that it has been revised or not, it is up to the individual to use his own capabilities and exercise his sense of responsibility to the full. And he should be encouraged to do so. Only in this way will the community derive the greatest benefit—as it needs to—from his work. Only in this way will that individual be able to enjoy that real happiness which comes from a sense of achievement.
So I would regret any tendency which would turn our Welfare State into a Lean-to-State. That would be an unfortunate development and I should be unhappy if that climate of opinion grew. If anybody were to say to me, "How do you reconcile that view with your well-known progressive views on all matters?", I would say, "I have observed that a man may find it extremely difficult to make rapid progress in a leaning attitude." As I have said, what the individual needs, and what we need from him, is his own maximum achievement. Therefore I am in favour of starting any new Government's period of office with a pre-disposition against a greater intervention in day-to-day affairs than their philosphy would require. So much for less government.
My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot summon a great deal of enthusiasm for some of the proposals—I repeat, some of the proposals—for bigger government. The real question I pose—and it follows very naturally from the most interesting and absorbing speech to which we have just listened—is this: Is "bigger" the same as "better"? I have very grave fears that it is not. I do not want to seem to be in the position of someone who has been accustomed to a certain structure of government and is therefore opposed to any variation from it. That is certainly not the case. I can well understand a merger of Departments proving highly successful where an overlapping of duties or a duplication of services has previously been the case and where this is overcome as the result of a merger.
But as far as two of the proposals are concerned—and I say this knowing that my noble friend is listening very carefully and has much more knowledge of this than I—what we are dealing with cannot by any stretch of the imagination be
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called "mergers" they can be called "conglomerates". I do not think that these two are the same thing at all. I want to put on record that at this early stage I have no doubt that the burden on the Secretary of State for each of these two Departments will be too great for him to bear. He cannot—and it is not the Government's intention that he should—divorce himself from his Parliamentary and democratic responsibilities; he cannot divest himself of the final responsibility. He has to come before whichever House is the case, he has to meet fellow-Members in dining rooms and elsewhere, he has to answer important questions, he has to run his Department. If he is a Member of the other place he has to go down to his constituency regularly and he has to deal with all his constituency correspondence. He has to attend every Cabinet meeting and some Cabinet Committees in addition. He has to do all these things.
This I believe to be a burden upon an individual which no one that I know of, or can conceive of, could support and still do his job sufficiently well to be answerable (as a Department head must always be answerable) to Parliament and to the people for his actions. What we shall see will be skimped work; inevitably so, because papers will have to be read. There is no use his saying that a colleague is dealing with this matter or with the other matter: he will have to read all the papers necessary in order to be himself aware of the policies that are being carried out and the way they are being executed. He will have to do all this. Inevitably he will find the paperwork just too much. He will have to do this paperwork in the time left after attending functions affecting members of trade groups for his Department or after other duties, and I am suggesting that he will simply find it an impossible burden. We shall see a succession of errors, of delays, of illness and, finally, of resignations. I cannot conceive of any satisfactory way of giving one person such a responsibility. I have listened carefully to the noble Baroness who preceded me; but what was being suggested was not entirely consistent with my view, that the first responsibility of the Minister is his responsibility to Parliament. I do not think it was entirely consistent with that point of view.

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I should like to say a word about the question of Cabinet rule, which is the basis of our Constitution. Are the—if I may so call them—supporting Ministers, or junior Ministers, in the "conglomerates" going to take up in Cabinet an issue with their chief, even if the constitutional position would allow it? I suggest to every noble Lord who has served in a Government that at all events such an appeal would not be taken twice. In fact, therefore, we know that a difference of opinion between a Minister of a Department within a conglomerate and a Secretary of State (perhaps a difference of opinion of a kind that ought to be settled by discussion in Cabinet or Cabinet Committee, of a kind which might raise important issues and which previously might have been so discussed) will now be settled according to the judgment of one man acting on or being persuaded by arguments about which his Government colleagues know nothing.
I am suggesting that in that case—and I am grateful to the noble Earl for the use of the word—instead of Cabinet government, we should find government by cabal. So, for the reasons that I have given, I feel that these two proposals are in many respects unwelcome. I am, inevitably, speaking from my own experience (as we all speak from our own experience, however much we try to be objective) but in particular I think these proposals impose an intolerable burden on a Minister.
Finally, may I say one or two words about the document itself; and within the limitations which I impose upon myself as a maiden speaker may I say that I am bound to describe it as at least a pretentious document. It pretends to find, for the first time, a set of golden rules, a set of all-pervading principles, which will guide every Government through every difficulty of organising Departments and the structure of government. Every one of us who has had experience of this—and everyone who has not knows it as well—knows that this is utter pretentiousness. Very largely, on many of the issues the arguments are evenly balanced. We have heard from the speeches this afternoon that that is so. There must be enormous flexibility; and, of course, the structure must change in order to keep pace with changing ex-
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ternal circumstances. So I think it is unfortunate that this grand pretence has been put forward. And if you make these pretences you get into trouble very quickly. I want your Lordships to bear with me while I draw attention to some difficulties which have resulted from this.
The first principle which is newly discovered is the functional one. No one will complain about the functional principle being applied so far as is appropriate, or being an element in the consideration; but it has been elevated into a principle which will see one through all the organisation, all the reconstruction, and. indeed, for all time. Well, my Lords, I will not say any more about that.
How long does this functional principle, this permanent principle last? It lasts precisely two paragraphs, because it is proposed in paragraph 8 and then, in paragraph 10, we see: "Well, of course, this functional principle is not to apply to Scotland and Wales." Then, as we go a little further on, we find that the functional principle is applied in an unusually original way so far as overseas aid is concerned. It is made perfectly clear that the management of overseas aid is a totally different function from the operation of the Foreign Office, and therefore the two are to be merged. Really, my Lords, I do not think the arguments there sustain the case.
If I may give one more example before I finish, there is the argument of stability. We have heard from a most reliable and well-informed source how important that is. Of course I recognise its validity, too; and so does the Government. To be fair, the Government say, "We are thinking in particular about future stability." But this same White Paper makes the point that the Civil Service, as we have heard to-day. has already been considerably disturbed and inconvenienced by the changes which have taken place previously, So the argument for stability becomes a present and pressing argument. What does the White Paper say in pursuance of this argument? I will read what paragraph 18 says in support of stability:
"The changes in departmental responsibilities involve re-ordering of responsibility for functions between the departments dealing with trade and industry, aviation supply, the environment, overseas aid, the personal social services, and education and the urban programme in Wales."

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All those changes as a result of the Government's great desire to provide stability! And there is, of course, a further change which is to be a temporary change: the change of the Ministry of Aviation Supply, as I believe it is called. But there the error is compounded because we are now told that that change is to be changed once more in another 18 months' time—and that, again, under the banner of stability. I am bound to say, to be fair to the Government, that they tried to justify that second change, but I doubt whether the argument is very helpful to the Government, because it makes clear that the second change is to take place 18 months later than all these other changes because that second change, in contradistinction to all the other decisions, is to be taken only after full consideration.
My Lords, that is all I wish to say. I have made my views clear, but I hope not offensively so. I permitted myself to do that because I take the view that the structure of Government is of enormous importance; that good structure is a great aid to good Government and, after all, good Government is what we all seek, on whichever side of the House we sit.
5.55 p.m.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: My Lords, it is my good fortune to follow the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, and so it is my happy task to congratulate him warmly on a most sincere, well-informed and interesting maiden speech which I know we have all greatly enjoyed. His contributions in the field of economic policy in the last Administration and his expertise in financial affairs are well known. Perhaps what is not quite so well known, in connection with a field in which I have some personal experience, is the contribution he made to the relations between Government and the defence contractors; in that he initiated the setting up of the Review Board for Government contracts which I believe was a tremendous step forward in the very difficult and important relationship between Government and defence contractors. I know that we all hope that the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, will come to many of our debates and contribute in the splendid way in which he has contributed to-day.
My Lords, overall I warmly support the reorganisation proposals in the White Paper. I have always felt that it was
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wrong—as I think the last Administration did to some extent—to treat technology as something separate, something valuable in its own right. Technology's main purpose, surely, is the support of trade and in this country our export trade; and so I welcome very much the setting up of the Department of Trade and Industry combining the old Board of Trade and the Ministry of Technology. I like, too, the emphasis on the environment which is given by the setting up of the new Department of the Environment. It is no use having a high standard of living from an efficient industry, with huge exports and balance of payments and the like, if we are to live in a drab, dull and polluted country.
I should like to make two comments about the reorganisation. First, in connection with transport. It is true, I think, to-day that transport, all forms of transport, are becoming more and more integrated. This applies particularly in freight transport. For instance, containers are used in road, rail, in air and in sea transport, and it is important that the same standards should be used in each form of transport so that the handling machinery may fit them all equally well to achieve the maximum efficiency. This is a really important point. The exports and imports go to inland clearance depots, for loading, in the case of exports, into containers very often; and for clearance under customs supervision in the case of imports. Some of these inland depots are needed near rail heads; some near convenient road access; some near airports; some near seaports, and the siting and access is very important.
Increasingly, our exports are conveyed on roll-on, roll-off lorries which go to the docks, drive on to the ships and are conveyed across the Channel or the North Sea: they go on railway wagons and on cross-Channel ferries, first by road or rail, then by sea and finally by rail or road to their ultimate destination. If Britain is to become a real part of Europe, and trade with efficiency, surely we have to regard the North Sea and the Channel, not as barriers to trade, but as broad highways for the carriage of our goods abroad. No longer must they be regarded as barriers to the movement of our exports. Again, my Lords, more and more exporters, at least the efficient ones, are searching among the great variety

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of methods for the most efficient means of transporting their goods. Maybe it is a combination of road and air, or rail and ship.
Why then in these proposals do we have air transport in one Department and roads in another, sea transport in one Department and rail in another? Why are seaports in one Ministry and airports in another? The answer, I believe, is historic, because it was thought in earlier times that only the Board of Trade knew about foreign agreements and international negotiation. But nowadays the Ministry of Transport (it is called something else now, but in effect it is the Ministry of Transport) is doing a lot of work in negotiating containers for lorries that pass between this country and Europe and vice-versa. Very difficult negotiations are being carried on with success and efficiency by that Department. I know that these matters are all questions of a balance of advantage. I believe that the shipping industry is against coming under the Ministry of Transport. I do not know why that should be, because if a change were made in that direction no doubt the efficient civil servants would move over and deal with the problems of the shipping industry just as they do now. I believe that there is a cogent case for a rethinking of this policy on the ground of the increasing interdependence of all forms of transport.
But there is another and perhaps even more cogent argument, and that relates to the importance of the environment. Seaports are under the Ministry of Transport and not under the Department of the Environment. They are a minimum problem in connection with pollution or other environmental effect. On the other hand, airports are under the Department of Trade and Industry. Are they not a very much greater threat to the environment than seaports? The same, surely, must apply to airlines. We have great problems to-day with noise at civil airports, particularly at night, with great airliners coming and going. Surely these are a problem for the Department of the Environment, if anything is. To-day great ships, great tankers like the "Pacific Glory", threaten the environment. Ought they not to come under the Department of the Environment? I believe that all
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these arguments point to the need for the Government to rethink this issue. It would not be very difficult to make these transfers of responsibility, and I believe that on further consideration it might be found that this would be a much better arrangement. Certainly it would be much more in line with the principles laid down in paragraph 8 of the White Paper.
My second point relates to research. One of the best jobs that the Ministry of Technology did was to bring together the various Government research establishments and to do their best to ensure that the information available in these establishments was sent out and made available to industry where it would do most good. I would pay tribute to the work that has been done by the devoted staff in the Ministry of Technology in that direction.
There are three types of Government research establishments. There are departmental research establishments like the Road Research Laboratory, which is tied to the Ministry of Transport. We are not concerned with these to-night. There are Government industrial research establishments, such as the National Engineering Laboratory, and defence research establishments, such as the National Gas Turbine Establishment, the Royal Radar Establishment, the Royal Aircraft Establishment and many others. I welcome very much the setting up of the project team on aerospace supply problems. We cannot anticipate the report and recommendations they will make, but it is at least possible that the responsibility for aviation supplies will go under the Ministry of Defence. Then, presumably, the research establishments which are involved will also go under the Ministry of Defence, whereas the Government industrial research establishments, such as the National Engineering Laboratory, will remain outside.
There will be a danger of a big barrier being created between these laboratories, making it much more difficult to get from the Defence research establishments information of value to industry. Enormous sums of money are involved in these research establishments. They do most valuable work, and we have seen how important the fall-out from research is from the great American research effort.

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It would be a tragedy if the reorganisation which the Government now propose led to any increase in the difficulty or any hindrance to the spread of this important knowledge throughout industry. So I would urge the Government to have a serious look at this problem during the course of the next 18 months while the project team is deliberating. Subject to those two matters, I warmly welcome the proposals in the White Paper.
6.6 p.m.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSEN-DALE: My Lords, the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, reminded me that I am in very much the same position as he is, because it was on this exact spot nearly 25 years ago that I craved the indulgence of another place on the occasion of my maiden speech. At that time this place was in another place and another place was here! Once again I crave the indulgence of your Lordships' House, with due humility and with a proper sense of the conventions of the House.
My justification for intervening in this debate is that I have presided as Secretary of State or Minister over three Departments, all of which have been subsequently abolished or absorbed; and two of those Departments—the Ministry of Overseas Development and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government—are covered by the White Paper we are discussing this afternoon.
I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I start with a brief reference to the absorption of the Colonial Office, first into the Commonwealth Relations Office and then into the combined Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I am, I confess, an unashamed and undefeatist believer in the Commonwealth. I suppose that I must declare an interest, as a member of the Board of the Commonwealth Development Corporation.
The point I want to make is that caring for our dependant territories calls for very different qualities from those which are normally required in our overseas relations. The task is very different and it is one which calls for immense and consistent sensitivity. I hope that I shall be forgiven for saying that I do not think that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have so far been conspicuously
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successful in the field of caring for our dependant territories. If I may speak as the father of the Associated States in the Caribbean, I cannot believe that the subsequent handling of Anguilla will go down in history as one of the truly great episodes in the story of the Commonwealth.
I have the feeling that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sees itself, understandably enough, as primarily the advocate and defender of our own United Kingdom interests abroad rather than as the protector of British citizens in those realms overseas which still form a part of the Queen's Dominions. And I hope that I shall not seem unduly cynical if I say that if there was a clash of interests between the United Kingdom, on the one hand, and, say, Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands or British Honduras, on the other, I have a shrewd suspicion that the views of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would prevail. I have made that point because it applies, in a somewhat similar way, to the work of the Ministry of Overseas Development. Everybody accepts that that Ministry has won worldwide acclaim for the way in which it has administered our aid policy.
I was visiting the United Nations and Washington when the rather vague news of this restructuring broke. It is no exaggeration to say that it caused deep dismay among many of our friends in other countries—dismay which I did my best to allay, in so far as I was equipped to do so. It seemed to me unlikely that there would be any administrative economies achieved; and in view of the Government's stated policy on aid, which was repeated a few days later by the Prime Minister in his speech to the General Assembly, it did not seem that there was likely to be any intention to cut our aid programme, although, of course, we shall have to watch and see how things develop.
But what worries me, my Lords, is this—and I say it from my own experience. I believe that the Minister's hand is seriously weakened by the changes that are being made. When I was myself Minister of Overseas Development it was not always easy, even as a Member of the Cabinet, to concentrate attention on the relative developmental importance of rival schemes which came up for consideration. I suspect that the present

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Minister, for whom I have the most profound respect, however autonomous he will be on paper, will in practice be in an even more difficult position than I was as a Member of the Cabinet. The Foreign Office view, I think, is more likely to prevail than that of its subsidiary Overseas Development Ministry. Politics, in fact, will take priority over development, in spite of the assurances of the Lord Privy Seal, which of course I gratefully accept.
The real tragedy, I think, is that this country seems to be moving in the wrong direction. Clearly there is a strong case for some aid to be given on wholly political grounds. If it contributes to the stability of a country or to the stability of a region, then it is money well spent. But there is a strong case, too, for giving aid on purely developmental grounds, regardless of political calculations; and the Overseas Development Ministry has won great confidence in the work that it has done. My own view is that, if the Ministry had to be restructured, I would sooner have seen the Foreign and Commonwealth Office distributing part of the money available for unashamedly political ends, and the rest being administered by an agency whose sole test would be the developmental importance of the schemes submitted to it, with, of course, particular stress on the Commonwealth countries. In fact, if our policy had to be changed, it should have been changed to make it less political rather than, apparently, more political.
If I may now turn to the Department of the Environment, I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has said. My attitude is much less critical, however, to the Department of the Environment than to the change in the Ministry of Overseas Development. But I confess that I am less enthusiastic than some of my right honourable friends. I welcome the fact, as we must all do, that the public and the Press have at last woken up to what so many of us have been saying about pollution for so many years. At the same time, I wish that there was rather more recognition of the progress which has been made in cleaning up our rivers and the air that we breathe, and in giving this country the best planning system in the world. Our new towns alone are evidence of the effort that we
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in this country make to deal with the pressures of an expanding population without doing damage to the environment.
I wish the Secretary of State for the Environment well, but, like the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, I have my doubts about these mammoth Departments: and I listened with great sympathy to what my noble friend Lord Diamond had to say. I am disturbed at the spread of the canvas on which the Secretary of State is expected to paint, and which he will have to know in something more than broad outline if he is to keep his Cabinet colleagues fully informed. After three and three-quarter rewarding years in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, I know how heavy is the responsibility of running that one Department alone: and I count myself fortunate in having had Sir Matthew Stevenson as my Permanent Secretary throughout that time.
Most of the Secretary of State's responsibilities—and it must be remembered that the statutory powers are those of the Secretary of State alone—are clearly defined in the White Paper: they are manifold, they are very grave, and they are politically highly sensitive. I have some doubt in my mind, just as my noble friend Lord Diamond has, whether it is sensible or practicable for one Minister to cover so wide a field. However much the structure provides for devolution, he will find that it is difficult over a wide range of subjects to decline to meet local authorities or his colleagues in another place. For it is he who has the statutory powers; it is he who accepts the ultimate responsibility; and it is he who will be regarded as the final court of appeal.
I think, too, that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will agree with me that the local authorities, even when they have been in political disagreement with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (and most of them, of course, were in disagreement with me), have nevertheless all regarded the Minister of Housing and Local Government as in a very special sense their own Minister, to whom they always had the right of access. I think it will be a pity if there is a growing remoteness between the local authorities and the man who is really at the top of the structure inside the Government.

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I make one last point, my Lords, and it is to lend my support to what the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said in her concluding remarks. It is not really very good for the efficiency of Ministries, or for the morale of civil servants, to whom we owe so much, and who at the upper levels are so over-worked, if the machinery of Government is dismantled, inspected and re-assembled too often; and, moreover, it is extremely confusing to the public as well. So I conclude by saying that I believe the changes in the Ministry of Overseas Development are misconceived and damaging. I hope that the Department of the Environment will succeed, and I shall do what I can in my own small way to help it to do so. But I am afraid, my Lords, that my optimism is qualified indeed.
6.20 p.m.
LORD HURCOMB: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Earl the Leader of the House that I was prevented from hearing his opening speech. My regret at that is to some extent assuaged by the fact that I am able to congratulate the noble Lord who has just spoken on what, under a curious and unnatural use of our language in this place, is called a maiden speech.
I intend to confine myself wholly to the functions of the new arrangements in regard to the environment. I think I can say for all those who are interested in the conservation of Nature, and in natural amenities, that we are very glad indeed that the present Government, like the previous one, have fixed the responsibility for the environment upon the Minister who is responsible for town and country planning. That seems to me, for many reasons, to be completely right. He has the responsibility of taking a great many individual decisions; he has at his disposal a trained staff who are able to see that his decisions are carried through—and I hope that they will be carried through—by the host of subordinate authorities who now deal with these matters. I do not suppose Whitehall itself would admit that everything that happens now is not almost perfect, but I wonder how many members of some remote river board or agricultural committee, whose powers enable them to do a great deal of damage to the environment, if they like to do so, are even aware of the principles on which they
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ought to act. There will now be a Secretary of State charged with that responsibility as one of his major functions. This is a great gain.
It is also a great gain (and there is a good deal of importance in the point that has just been made) that the machinery in that respect has not been changed. It was really a decision of the last Administration, and it has been adopted by the present one. It may be argued that it has been carried too far. One is alive to all the problems of overloading a Department. The Prime Minister himself—not speaking in a political atmosphere—said, very wittily, that when you begin to think about these things there is a lot to be said for going back to the eighteenth century and having only two Secretaries of State—one for the North, and one for the South. We cannot do that; but the present Government, and the White Paper, have been right in making some step forward.
As regards the Ministry of Public Building and Works, with which I have had a good deal to do in recent years, I have found it an admirably managed Department. But surely there is some advantage in giving emphasis to the fact that the care of the natural environment, and the care of the man-made environment in which we live, and which is largely the creation over the centuries of our architects, are both parts of one civilised outlook and process. And if those issues are presented to the Cabinet by the same Secretary of State I should have thought that is a move in the right direction. The size of the Ministry of Public Building and Works is not such as to be an obstacle to administrative efficiency. That part of a new arrangement can be made to work without much difficulty.
When we come to Transport (of which I know more than I do of the Ministry of Public Building and Works) I confess that I have some doubts. I may be prejudiced, because I remember that after I had been made what was called the Permanent Secretary of that Department a few months earlier, Sir Winston Churchill announced his intention to abolish it. He never did so. and the functions of the Minister of Transport, and the interests of transport, grew steadily until it may now have become oppressively large.

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It must surely be right that the Minister responsible for the environment should also be responsible for the layout of new roads and general works of that magnitude which, again, have an enormous effect on the environment. That can be made to work only on one condition: the new Secretary of State ought not to try, and I hope will not try, to act as an overlord over the whole of transport. I think he ought to say that the Minister for Transport is answerable for all things like the Use and Construction Regulations for motor vehicles, and for the finance of the nationalised industries and that the Secretary of State is not going to be occupied by those matters. The risk is that, not in this House but in another place, the Secretary of State will be forced into a position where he has to answer questions on all sorts of day-to-day matters, and indeed on very important matters, which have nothing to do with his main co-ordinating function. It is going to mean a great deal of firmness by the Secretary of State, and some restraint by the two Houses themselves in not pressing him to give his time to things which are best left to the Minister more directly charged with those functions.
I do not feel that we can expect to get transfers of functions of this kind quite right at the first set-off. So far as the associations and bodies with which I am connected are concerned, I am sure they are not going to be unreasonably critical if the new arrangements do not work perfectly from the start. Therefore on this side of the White Paper, and on what has been done, I feel that the Government have been right in establishing the Secretary of State for the Environment, and in extending his functions some distance, but in not going too far, and in not trying to make him an overlord over the whole work of these other Departments of which one—Transport—is pretty vast in itself.
There are one or two other points that I should like to raise because they are also fundamental, although not perhaps soluble at this moment. In a report, for which I was responsible, to the "Countryside in 1970" Conference, my colleagues and I urged that, while in England, Scotland and Wales the respon-
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sibility for the environment should be concentrated on the Ministers responsible for local government and town and country planning, they ought to be advised by an especially qualified officer at the level of the chief scientific adviser. I should be very glad if the noble Earl could say something more on that point at this stage.
There is a Royal Commission on Pollution, set up by the late Administration, and it has scientific advisers. The prevention of pollution is of great importance to the environment. But I think we need as the Secretary of State's adviser on all aspects of the environment someone who is highly qualified, of great public standing, and whose advice cannot be lightly ignored, He need not be a biologist trained only in some narrow aspect of his subject. He might be a geographer, but he must be someone who is familiar with the natural environment, both in the aspect of wild life and in the whole of the problems of land use. I will not say that there is a gap, but there is a place which has not yet been said to be clearly filled.
I have only one other point to make. Being against an overlord, I recognise the necessity for having on great issues of policy some senior Cabinet Minister of great experience and ability who can act as a referee or umpire when clashes arise. It is rather fashionable at the moment to say that all these questions can be solved by a little reasonable give-and-take here and there, and compromise, but I do not think that that is true. There will be some very real clashes between the needs of conservation and other interests—perhaps industrial interests, perhaps agricultural interests, or defence. When those clashes arise we shall surely have to fall back on the well tested machinery of reference to a small Cabinet Committee composed as the Prime Minister of the day thinks fit, under the chairmanship of someone who will look at all the issues impartially and present them without bias to the Cabinet.
There, again, one cannot reasonably ask that everything should be solved and tidied up at once, but I should like to feel that these matters were being considered both at Cabinet level, where decisions will inevitably be difficult, and more immediately at the official scientific level, where I feel the Ministers

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charged with this great new responsibility will need very powerful advice. Having said that, in general, my Lords, I am strongly in favour of the direction in which the Government are moving. They may soon be able to go further without getting into all the difficulties that obviously can arise if too much brigading of Departments is carried out merely on the ground that they seem in some aspect to deal with more or less the same subject matter.
6.34 p.m.
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, in rising to address this House for the first time, I would ask the indulgence of your Lordships in the customary manner. Like the other three maiden speakers this afternoon, I can say that this is not the first time I have made a maiden speech from these Benches. Indeed, it is over twenty-five years since I made my maiden speech from this very Bench when, as my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale said, this place was really "another place". And it is not only the building which is familiar. When I look at your Lordships on the Benches this afternoon and think how many were present here in 1945, I can be forgiven for thinking that I have put back the pages of history some twenty-five years. It is perhaps a sign of advancing years when I feel I know more people in your Lordships' House than in another place. I know that a maiden speech should be short and non-controversial. I am sure my speech will be short; I hope it will be non-controversial and that the noble Earl who introduced the subject this afternoon will think so.
This is a very important debate on the reorganisation of central Government. Anybody who has been a member of the Government realises that the organisation is not perfect. But it probably never can be perfect. As time goes on, changes in society will always mean necessary changes in our Departments of State. In a democracy I do not think we can ever get a tidy, logical organisation. My noble friend Lord Diamond has spoken to-day about the dangers of some of our Departments of State becoming too big. I agree with him in this. We all know from our experience in Government of the position as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. We all know the delays caused by discussions and depart-
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mental consultations. But it is difficult to get clear-cut demarcation lines between Departments, unless of course we go to the ultimate and have one Department for all business of State.
The noble Earl who opened the debate this afternoon hoped that we should deal with the broad outlines of the subject and not go too much into the details. But I sometimes think it is the details which are interesting, and I hope he will forgive me if I deal in detail with two paragraphs in the White Paper which are of particular interest to me. I refer to paragraphs 35 and 37: the decision to transfer responsibility for primary and secondary education from the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the Secretary of State for Wales; and secondly, the decision to transfer the child care services from the Home Secretary to the Secretary of State for the Social Services, while leaving the problems of juvenile delinquency with the Home Secretary.
For the last three years I have been the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, dealing, among other things, with primary and secondary education. Before that I was the Minister of State at the Home Office—as the noble Earl once was—and one of my responsibilities there was the child care services. Because of this I am extremely interested in these decisions, and I make no apology for dealing with them in detail because they affect thousands of children and young people.
I turn first of all to the point about Welsh education. During my three years as Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science I visited Wales on several occasions and met many deputations. At no time did I have any representations for the transfer which has just taken place. I am not denying that there are some people in Wales, and perhaps outside Wales, who would have been in favour of this transfer had it been a matter for discussion; but there was certainly no immediacy about the problem and no reason to take an early decision. What is being suggested in the White Paper, and what has become already an accomplished fact, is that primary and secondary education shall be transferred to the Secretary of State for Wales, leaving other parts of the Welsh education service—further education, the training

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and supply of teachers and the Youth Service—with the Department of Education and Science.
The noble Earl in speaking about this subject to-day said the reason why it had been done was an Election promise. I hope it will not be considered too controversial if I say that even that is no excuse for taking the wrong decision in a hurry and without any consultation. The General Election was on June 18 and that is the day that I left the Department of Education and Science, and up to that time there had been no overtures of any kind. Yet this decision was announced in the Queen's Speech on July 2; on October 19 there was the publication of the Order, and it came into operation on November 5. The noble Earl will know that many bodies have protested about this—The National Union of Teachers, the National Associaton of Schoolmasters, the Association of Education Committees and the Welsh Joint Education Committee.
I know that, as the noble Earl said this afternoon, there are two points of view about the transfer of responsibility for education from the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the Secretary of State for Wales. I should have been against this had it ever been a problem when I was a Minister, but I know equally well that some of my noble friends and some of my honourable and right honourable friends in another place would have been in favour. But we are all united in questioning the wisdom of splitting the responsibility for various parts of the education service. One of the features of our education service in the last few years has been the blurring of the edges between the sixth forms in our secondary schools and the 16 to 19 age group in colleges of further education. Some of our young people take A-levels in sixth forms, other take A-levels in colleges of further education. We have to-day in many local authorities linked courses whereby some young people in sixth forms go to the colleges of further education for some courses that are not available in their secondary schools. There are even some local authorities who, in their plans for the reorganisation of secondary education on comprehensive lines, have combined completely the sixth-form college with the colleges of fur-
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ther education. This is being done in Exeter and in Barnstaple, and it is being looked at with great interest by other local authorities.
It will be difficult in the future for any local authority in Wales to do this because the responsibility for sixth forms in secondary schools will rest with the Secretary of State for Wales and the responsibility for the 16 to 19 age group in colleges of further education will still rest with the Secretary of State for Education and Science. I believe it is impossible to divorce primary and secondary education in this way from the rest of the education service. I think it is difficult to divorce the responsibility for primary and secondary education from teacher training and supply, and I am wondering who is going to organise the in-service training, a great deal of which goes on at the present time. I know that the Welsh people value their education services, and some local authorities in Wales have been pioneers in secondary education. I hope, therefore, that the Government will look at this matter again and will realise that perhaps this has been a mistake and has been done in too much of a hurry to give it the proper and serious consideration which it deserves.
Now I turn to the paragraph about the child care service. Following the report of the Curtis Committee the Act of Parliament of 1948 gave responsibility for the child care service to the Home Office, and having served at the Home Office and been responsible there for the child care service I feel that I cannot let this service pass to another Department without paying tribute to the way in which the Home Office has carried out this responsibility in the last twenty years. Now the building up of the children's service within the Home Office has I believe been one of the success stories of the last twenty years. The great expertise and humanity of Home Office officials and inspectors, combined with the devotion and patience of local authority child care officers, has produced a first-class service. I know that sometimes we see a headline about a child who may have been fostered wrongly, but we must remember the many thousands of children who have been helped to a happier life by the children's service. I have attended many conferences of child care officers and I have always been most

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impressed at the way in which their agenda has never been about their own conditions of service or their pay; their agenda has always been about the children that they have done their best to help.
The Home Office has also led the way in training schemes for its field workers. I recognise that with the publication of the Seebohm Committee's Report and the reorganisation of social services at local authority level there must inevitably be some changes in Ministerial responsibility. I was at the Home Office when the Seebohm Committee was appointed, and our chief concern then was to have some kind of family service at local authority level which would unify the existing social services. We wanted a service which would help particularly in the preventive work with families at risk, and especially where children were likely to get into trouble. We have had two Acts of Parliament, one dealing with local authority social services and the second with juvenile delinquency. But what disturbs me about this paragraph in the White Paper is that while the children's service is being taken from the Home Office to the Secretary of State for Social Services, the problems of juvenile delinquency are still to remain with the Home Office. I can see that there is a point in the juvenile court, so long as it exists in its present form, being under the general jurisdiction of the Home Secretary, but I do not believe we can divorce child care from the problems of juvenile delinquency and I am not at all sure how this is going to work.
In the past few years the children's service has done a great deal of preventive work to try to keep children from delinquency, and the new Bill which has been passed, dealing with children in trouble, is to set up new community homes in which there will be delinquents and non-delinquents. Somebody once coined a phrase about the "deprived" and the "depraved". The deprived can so easily become depraved if no help is available, and it is sheer chance whether help comes before or after a child gets into trouble. I want to know how this proposed change is going to work. How are we going to be able to have the children's service in one Department and the problems of juvenile delinquency in another? It may be that these are
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regarded as minor matters in the White Paper as a whole, but I regard them as very important matters because, after all, the children and the young people are our country's greatest assets.
My Lords, I hope I have not been too critical for a maiden speaker, and I hope that the Government will look at these two matters again, because I fear that if these two paragraphs go through in their present form and these changes are made there will be some dislocation and suffering among the children, whom we so greatly love.
6.50 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I feel very diffident indeed in offering the normal formula of congratulations to such an accomplished, eloquent and attractive speaker as the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon. But I do so on behalf your Lordships' House, to tell her how much we welcome her contribution. We welcome her arrival here in our ranks. We know that her knowledge of the social services and her experience is very great and will be of great assistance to your Lordships' debates on these subjects in the future, and we shall be gravely disappointed if she does not continue to contribute regularly to the proceedings of your Lordships' House.
Perhaps I may also say that I greatly welcome on personal grounds the arrival of three other maiden speakers this afternoon, my noble friend who has changed his name since I knew him, Lord Reigate, the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, and the noble Lord, Lord Diamond. The noble Baroness, Lady Bacon is quite right when she says that if it goes on like this the House of Lords will be indistinguishable from the House of Commons in the early 1950s. But it is very pleasant to have old friends—I speak personally here—in your Lordships' House as colleagues once again.
I am not going to follow Lady Bacon's theme. I am going to precede her by one paragraph in the White Paper, paragraph 34, which deals with overseas aid, and I will, with your Lordships' permission, declare an interest; because I think I am right in claiming that the formation of the Ministry of Overseas Development originated in a proposal which I put forward, I think in 1958, to the then Secretary of State, and which subsequently

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was acted on and produced a development, a small development no doubt but in my eyes an important development, in our governmental machine. I remember very well the reasons why that development took place and why we advocated it strongly at the Commonwealth Relations Office of the day. It was because we believed that aid for development could only be effective in linking this country with independent countries of the Commonwealth and with foreign countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, if it was seen to have no political strings attached to it and if it was seen not to contain any political content.
In those days three Ministers were concerned with overseas aid, and when the provision of aid was increasingly taking the place of direct administrative control by Departments of State over Commonwealth countries, it seemed right that there should be a single authority which would reconcile the often conflicting attitudes of the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office. There is, or was in those days, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, has said, a difference of philosophy in relation to aid between the Foreign Office on the one hand and the Commonwealth Office and the Colonial Office on the other. To the former, aid tended to be—not always, but tended to be—an instrument to serve the political interests of this country. To the C.R.O., aid was primarily a service made available by Great Britain in order to promote development of the Commonwealth and of the then British dependencies. It was not, as some people like to believe, a payment intended to make good the alleged neglect and exploitation and the so-called deficiencies of colonialism. Indeed, I might remark that my recent tour of Africa left me with a strong feeling of pride in what we in Britain had achieved in our colonial rule and in the great legacy we have bequeathed to the peoples of Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi, and equally to other newly independent territories in that part of the world.
Overseas aid, as represented by the Ministry of Overseas Development, and by the contribution made over decades by British colonial rule, to the progress and welfare of millions of people in
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Africa and Asia, will be fully justified by history. And it seemed to me that the pattern of aid which was used in those days is just as important if we are to maintain our relationships with countries in Africa and Asia on a healthy basis to-day. In those days it was, as I say, a service, sometimes given, it is true, with a political objective in view, but far more often with the genuine purpose of ensuring development of underdeveloped territories, in the interests of their peoples, without providing any calculated political advantage so far as Great Britain was concerned.
To-day the atmosphere of politics has in some degree changed, just as the status of our country has changed. It may be right that the criterion to be employed in this sort of thing is how far do the sacrifices made by the British taxpayer in relation to aid serve British interests. It may be right that aid, instead of being a service provided by the greatest of the Commonwealth countries, the old imperial Power, for underdeveloped and dependent territories, is now to be an instrument of foreign policy. It is logical, if that is the case, that it should be controlled in the interests of foreign policy policy by the Foreign Office. Aid is now, therefore, to be related directly to our trade interests, to defence, to political influence, to the manipulation of political relationships in the interests of the people of Great Britain, struggling as they are to hold their own in a difficult world. Charity in future is going to begin at home.
This Order, which my noble friends regard as perhaps just another administrative measure, may appear to some of the older people like myself to mark a further stage in Great Britain's progressive abandonment of the Commonwealth, and its determination to shed the great historic responsibilities which it inherited from the imperial past. "Historic responsibilities", my Lords, "imperial past"—I recognise that I, too, am a voice from that past. Britain to-day, so it appears, is a country purged of sentiment and antique idealism, concentrating on the maintenance and development of its national interests, sensitive about its rights, hard-boiled, materialist, inward-looking, a country being shaped to the needs of a technological, overcrowded, managerial age.

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My noble friend the Leader of the House would say that I am being exaggerating and emotional. I realise that in a Britain of this sort there is no good use for a "do good" organisation like the Ministry of Overseas Development, but I think there are millions of people in Africa and elsewhere who will regret the changed face of Britain and remember with pride the days in which the policies of a great country were able to promote the needs of remote and underprivileged peoples without a demand that in return for the money which they expend there should be either any political advantage or the return of, not 5 per cent. but 5 per cent. over bank rate.
6.59 p.m.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I propose to be as brief as I can and to confine myself mainly to the Ministry of Overseas Development. Many noble Lords have referred to the capability unit, and I should like to congratulate Her Majesty's Government on turning to these Benches when they need a really expert, original and forceful talent to be head of such a unit, and to say that we have an infinity of resources of that kind should they need us again. We wish the experiment a great deal of luck. I must say that if I were a member of the Government I should have some anxieties about whether the ever-resourceful Departments of State might not each think up some scheme of having a capability unit of their own, but maybe that is a little bit cynical.
Before going any further, I should like to say just one word about the remarkable four maiden speeches that we have had to-day. It is always specially delightful when speakers from this side of the House make such particularly distinguished speeches, as our three have done; but it is equally special when we get from the other side of the House such a wise and witty speech as Lord Reigate gave us to-day. I think that the House is particularly fortunate, and we look forward greatly to again hearing these speakers.
If I may, I will turn straightaway to the Ministry of Overseas Development. I was rather surprised that the noble Earl opposite should have said that he felt that the criticism that has been expressed about the Government's proposals over
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this matter was over emotional. Indeed, I feel that he has been more than adequately answered by the splendid words of the noble Lord, Lord Alport. My noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale also turned to this matter of overseas development. I think that the Government ought to listen to the combined experience of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, and of my noble friend Lord Greenwood.
May I turn for a moment to the White Paper? It recognises that:
"It is important to maintain the valuable body of expertise and skill in aid administration that has been developed in the Ministry of Overseas Development."
That is welcome so far as it goes; but we need more clarification of what all this means. I think I shall probably deal more with the "nuts and bolts" of this matter than have previous speakers. Above all, I think that in the House there is a strong feeling that the Government are flying in the face of all expert opinion in what they are doing. To start with, they are turning their back on the advice of the Estimates Committee of 1968, which considered that any such merger would be a retrograde step. Among the evidence was that given, for instance, by the Overseas Development Institute, an independent centre of research and information. They said—and here I quote:
"We believe that Britain has got as near an ideal instrument with a separate Ministry, as any aid donor has."
This view has been echoed by many people abroad. I should like also to quote the view of the then Opposition spokesman for Overseas Development, Mr. Bernard Braine, who said:
"Under that Department's roof is to be found one of the best aid management teams in the world."
My noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale told us about the views that he found abroad, in the United Nations and in New York, about this move; and I am bound to ask the noble Earl, and noble Lords on the Benches opposite, why they want to change this unique machinery for aid and development which the country has built up over the years, only to substitute for it something that is not only less independent but is manifestly so—and manifestly so both to the doner countries and above all to the developing countries themselves.

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I think that one of the troubles we have to deal with is that in this White Paper, as in the mini-Budget, there are no details to tell us just how the thing is going to work out—details which are vital to our understanding of how it is going to work, and indeed to the actual working of the plans themselves. The White Paper states that the Government's decision about the O.D.M. is taken against
"the need to engage the private sector of industry, commerce and finance to a greater extent than before."
But there is absolutely no guidance about how this is going to be done.
Those noble Lords who are concerned with this will know the almost inevitable unpredictability of private finance in developing countries. Have the Government plans to engage private investment and industry in the developing world, especially in those parts whose needs are most desperate and on which there are fewer returns? Are they going to utilise further the experience and the expertise of the Commonwealth Development Corporation? Such plans would be welcome in all parts of the House. But we know now that the great "in" phrase is to "stand on our own feet". Is private enterprise going to stand on its own feet in the remote developing areas? Are the Government going to produce guidance and support? We should very much like to know.
I beg noble Lords opposite to accept that noble Lords in all parts of the House are deeply disturbed that the Ministry is to be subordinate to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Why cannot the Ministry of Overseas Development stand on its own feet? Even if the Minister of Trade and Industry considers them to be webbed feet, why cannot they stand on their own? When your Lordships last discussed aid and development great praise was expressed from all sides for the high quality of the Ministry, and above all for its unique position as the only Ministry of its kind in the world. We agreed that the existence of the Ministry was not only good in itself but good for our image in the rest of the world.
In the past, many regrets were voiced that the Minister of Overseas Development himself was not actually in the
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Cabinet, but could attend only when development was specifically going to be discussed. As my noble friend Lord Greenwood graphically described, we have seen our great complex of overseas departments progressively eating its tail, like Alice in Wonderland's whiting, which, your Lordships will remember, was thrown out to sea. First, the C.R.O. swallowed the Colonial Office; then the Foreign Office swallowed the combined Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office. But all this time the Overseas Development Ministry had its own separate identity and independence. not merely at home but also in the eyes of the world. Now, the combined Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office and Colonial Office are swallowing the Ministry of Overseas Development.
My Lords, I cannot see that this can be anything but retrograde; and if it does not make any difference to its authority and autonomy, as the noble Earl said, then why make the change which is so detrimental to the image of our country in the world elsewhere? We are glad the phrase in the White Paper runs:
"it is important to maintain the valuable body of expertise and skill…"
We find this reassuring up to a point. But there is another point, one that has not been mentioned to-day: is this enough to attract to the Civil Service the kind of brilliant and devoted recruits who up till now have had the confidence to opt specially for this particular Ministry? It would be a tremendous tragedy if these people were lost to the United Nations Agencies, to the universities and elsewhere. I think this is a point that must be safeguarded. I would go further. To maintain that expert staff is not enough. Many noble Lords will remember developmental projects which took more than nine months to prepare. Aid is no good unless it is effective; and aid is much less effective if it takes a long time to produce. We do not need fewer of these men and women, we need more of them.
We were glad to hear that the present Administration are to continue the same amount of aid and development as was proposed by the last Administration, but we should like to know that they are wholeheartedly identified, and growingly

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identified, with the development projects that will inevitably ensue. I think, as the noble Lord, Lord Alport, said, that nobody has any doubt that our kind of aid was specially appreciated by the developing countries precisely because it was not tied to the apron strings of the Foreign Office. It has been, as I say, very difficult to find out exactly what the Government propose, and in another place, when Ministers were asked what was their defence for their actions, the defence put forward was that the present Secretary of State was known to be favourable to overseas aid. We accept that, as indeed he is; but on this side of the House we feel that since we have to co-operate with the United Nations so much in these aid projects, it is the wrong moment that this matter should be put under a Secretary of State who is at the same time defying a resolution of the United Nations on arms to South Africa.
I think we need clarification. I have read very carefully the debate in the other place. I know that noble Lords have the highest respect and regard for the present Minister of Overseas Development. Nevertheless, noble Lords will want to know, as did honourable Members in another place, whether the Minister will be able to present his views with maximum effect when the allocation of resources and the emphasis of policy are being settled at the highest level—by which, of course, I mean the Cabinet. Mr. Wood was only able to reply to this question:
"As I see it, the job of myself and my successors is to convince my right honourable friend and his successors … of the importance of this question."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 3/11/1970, col. 1024.]
Asked further whether the Overseas Development Administration of the future would continue to be represented on interdepartmental Cabinet Committees, the Minister replied (col. 1025):
"I am glad to be able to say... 'Yes'."
But he went on to say (col. 1026):
"This is only my guess, and I give it for what it is worth. I believe... that aid in the future will continue to be based... on the criteria of the need for development in the developing countries. That is my guess, and only time will show whether it is justified by the facts."
Those seem to me to be very sad answers. and I think the whole House would like to take it a little further than that.
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There is one other point which I think has not been touched on, and that is the question of voluntary aid. I know that many noble Lords have been deeply interested and active in this kind of activity. I also think that the United Kingdom clearly has an unrivalled reputation because of the work of our Church organisations, bodies like Oxfam, the Save the Children Fund, large and small trusts, and the rest. But when asked about the aid lobby the Minister in another place was only able to say (col. 1026):
"All I can say is that the future organisation in this respect will increase the alliance between the aid lobby and the overseas aid administration, because it will realise that the Minister for Overseas Development needs pushing very hard if he is going to succeed in convincing his right honourable friend the Secretary of State."
I think the whole House will see what I mean when I say that those replies were rather despairing.
I want to be as brief as possible, and, indeed, as helpful as I can. The House will be most grateful to the noble Earl, if, when he replies, he can give us some reassurance. I have asked him for reassurance on three points, of which I have given notice. They are as follows. First, can he assure the House that the views and needs of the Development Department will have positive access to the basic policy-making machinery of the Government? Secondly, can he assure the House that the Government are committed, not just immediately but for the foreseeable future, to maintaining the present O.D.M. as a domestic Ministry whose members will not be subjected to pressure to accede to the conditions of service of the Foreign and Commonwealth Departments? It is not quite clear from the White Paper. Thirdly, can he assure us that the expert personnel of the O.D.M. will not only not be reduced but will be maintained, and, if necessary, expanded to fulfil the Government's declared aim to expand the present contribution towards aid and development?
I should like to assure noble Lords on the Benches opposite that we do not ask for these assurances in any controversial spirit. Noble Lords in all parts of the House are so deeply concerned with the importance of development that this supersedes Party political points. If we can have these assurances there will be deep relief in all parts of your Lordships'

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House. We need them very badly. I think we all hope that the situation may be better than it appears at the moment, and we look forward to the noble Earl's reply. We need reassurance, first, for the morale of the brilliant and devoted men who are engaged in the work; and secondly, and even more important, for the continuing good name of our country, not only in international organisations but in the whole developing and, to a large extent, non-committed rest of the world.
7.17 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, in the whole of my experience in this House, I think this has been the most remarkable debate that I have listened to or taken part in, not only because of the distinguished speakers that we have had but because of the approach that has been made. There has been no attempt whatever to treat this as a political matter, or to score Party political points. Every speaker has made a contribution according to his experience. Some of the contributions have been critical, but I am sure that everyone will agree that they have been perfectly sincere. We have also had a remarkable series of maiden speeches. I cannot remember four such distinguished maiden speeches as we have heard to-day. Full tribute has been paid to them, and they do not need any further words from me, but I should like to say that this will be a memorable day in the history of this House. It is rather extraordinary that, I think without exception, each one of the maiden speakers had previously made a maiden speech in the same place, and very often from the same seat. That may perhaps explain the excellence of the speeches that they have made; they have had a preliminary experience.
I want to refer to one of the maiden speeches, which is an unusual thing to do in this House, because my noble friend Lord Diamond so very exactly expressed my own views on a major aspect of this debate that it is hardly necessary for me to say much more about it. He was critical of the enormous size of some of the new Departments of State and the effect it would have on the new Secretary. He put his criticism in very graphic terms, which I certainly cannot improve on. I should like to go a little further than even he did. Undoubtedly, if the Secretary of State of one of these large Departments
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is going to do his job properly (without even encroaching unduly on the work of the Minister to whom he has delegated certain functions, but merely to keep himself acquainted with what is going on), and to be able to speak in the other Chamber with some authority, and if he is also going to do his duty to those who want to see him, perhaps local authorities or other public bodies, and generally keep in touch merely with the work of his Department, he will be a very tired man in the course of 12 months. I have seen Ministers gradually deteriorate physically because of the enormous amount of work which they have had to do—and that within a very short time. I pity any of the Secretaries of State who will have to handle enormous Departments of this kind.
But it goes beyond that. These are Cabinet Ministers as well. The number of Cabinet Ministers has been reduced to 17 and, therefore, there is a much greater responsibility on each of them. How on earth can such a Cabinet Minister keep abreast of all the matters that come before the Cabinet, and be able to give a useful opinion on them? He will be so much immersed in the work of his own Department that he will have no time at all even to give proper thought to that, let alone to matters which come before the Cabinet as a whole.
I know that he will have the services of the capability unit and that they will advise him on priorities. I congratulate the Government on having decided to set up such a unit and, equally, on the person whom they have chosen to be in charge of it. I think it is a very good move, and it should certainly help the Cabinet. Nevertheless, there is a minimum amount of thought which a Cabinet Minister has to be able to give to the work of the Cabinet, and even to appreciate the recommendations that he will get from the capability unit.
I feel in my bones that the work of the Cabinet is going to deteriorate, because the members will be so hard pressed, and that in the long run we shall get worse Government than we are getting to-day. I recognise that the amalgamation of these Departments is logical and can be justified on paper, but would rather take a pragmatic view. On the same line of logic, one could perhaps make the Departments even larger and

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bring in other Ministries, but while that may be a logical course to take I wonder whether it would be practical.
I am not asking the Government to change their mind over this. The Government are a new broom. They are entitled to sweep as clean as they think it is right to do, and to carry out their own ideas. But I deplore the fact that they are so self-satisfied about this that they say that this is going to last a very long time. In winding-up in another place, the Minister in charge spoke of at least 10 to 15 years, and the White Paper itself indicates that this set-up is so good that it is going to last a very long time without change. I know that the noble Earl somewhat modified that, because he is an honest man and could not justify those words. He said that the Government will be thinking about this as time goes on, and I trust that they will. I hope that they will regard this as experimental and tentative. My own view is that, probably within two years, if the present Government are still in existence, they will find it necessary to make radical changes in the work of the various Departments and to think again about the whole matter.
I should like to make one more point. The Government have made a very great feature of the fact that they want to cut down the number of functions of Government, and to leave out those tasks which it is not appropriate for a Government to do. But they have not given a single example in the White Paper of what they have in mind. I wish they could tell us what it is that the present Ministries are doing which they ought not to be doing and which could be done by somebody else—by private enterprise, by private initiative or whatever it may be. I cannot think of anything. On the contrary, all the indications, not only from the number of Private Bills which have already been introduced from the Government side, but also from what has been indicated by the Government themselves, are that Government functions are going to expand.
I cannot see that that will result in a reduced amount of work for the Government. I think it is more likely to increase the amount of work, especially as life becomes more and more complicated. If and when we get into the European Economic Community, the
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functions of Government will increase and the Civil Service will increase. It is absurd for the Government to take the view that one of the purposes of this reorganisation is to reduce the size of Government and, I suppose, to reduce the number of Ministers. In fact, the number of Ministers is exactly the same as it was on June 17 this year, although some of them have been demoted and are merely Ministers of Cabinet rank instead of Cabinet Ministers.
All I am trying to do is to make a plea that the Government should not imagine that they have said the last word on the reorganisation of government, as they appear to do. They should not regard themselves as infallible, and they should be very prepared to come to the House again and to say that in this or that respect, "We feel that our reorganisation needs improvement or even radical change"; and, perhaps, "We want to go back to the previous state of affairs." I assure the Government that if they do that they will meet with a very charitable reception, and we shall try not to say, "We told you so." In the meantime, I wish them every success in what they are trying to do. I know that they are trying to do it quite sincerely and in the firm belief that they are working for the best.

BUSINESS: SOUTHERN RHODESIA ACT 19(55 (CONTINUATION) ORDER 1970
7.28 p.m.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it might be for the convenience of the House if I say a word about business for the rest of the day and to-morrow. It had been represented to me by a number of Peers who wished to speak on the Southern Rhodesia Act 1965 (Continuation) Order that, in view of the length of this debate, the Motion for the approval of the Order would really be coming on too late for such an important subject. It has therefore been agreed through the usual channels that the Southern Rhodesia (Continuation) Order should be taken as first business tomorrow, but that the Southern Rhodesia (Matrimonial Jurisdiction) Order will still be taken to-night.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, if that has been agreed through the usual

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channels—and I have the greatest sympathy for the jam which the noble Earl was in—I am bound to say that the decision is very hard on the Metrication debate (I know that that is a Government Motion) and it is likely that more speakers will come in on the Rhodesia debate. The Chief Whip has only recently returned to his onerous duties, and perhaps he does not have quite the sure touch which he had before, but I think this is a little regrettable and there may be some protests from speakers in the Metrication debate. It looks probable that to-morrow evening we shall again sit rather late. It will be the speakers on that Metrication debate who will suffer; and I know that one noble Lord will not be able to speak to-morrow because he will not be here.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, as a private Member who was on the list to speak in the debate on the Order later this evening, may I say that I feel it right to make at any rate some protest against this very sudden change in the business of the House? Your Lordships are not paid Members of the House of Lords or of Parliament: we do our best to attend and contribute to those subjects on which we hope we may help to promote more understanding. We make arrangements specially in order to attend in accordance with the business about which we have been told some days before, and a sudden change of this sort very often prevents Members from carrying out at any rate what they regard, rightly or wrongly, as their duties. In my case this will certainly be so. It is also unfair to some of the younger Members—maiden speakers, for instance, who are all keyed up and ready to make their maiden speech—suddenly to find that the business has been changed, for reasons which I do not understand, with the result that they have to go through all the period of waiting again. Although I understand that this is something which has been agreed to by both the Front Benches, I feel it should not be allowed to pass without a protest, at any rate, from a private Member.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has said, but my task is to try to organise business so that it
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is as convenient as possible for as many Members of the House as possible. Inevitably, if there is a change it is bound to be inconvenient for some Members; but I must be guided by the majority of those affected, and in this case I think I was.

THE REORGANISATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
7.32 p.m.
Debate resumed.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, the painful process of parthenogenesis has taken a new form to-day, when four old colleagues and welcome new colleagues have demonstrated the beauties and glories of a second maidenhood. At more than one point in this debate there has been a reversion to the tradition of the Whig historians to besmirch the record of the Cabal—in which, of course, I have a certain historical interest. But rather than delay your Lordships and talk about the Cabal, I should like to point out that the philosophical origins of the present White Paper go back a lot further than Haldane. Thomas Paine wrote:
"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil".
Wendell Phillips wrote:
"All governing over-much kills the self-help and energy of the governed."
And Pope gave us these lines:
"For forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate're is best administered is best".
So I would first of all welcome the functional principle as leading to the purpose of removing as many functions from government as possible; to make possible the aim to correct the diffusion of economic control that existed before, and to sharpen the distinction between the fiscal management of our economy that one associates with the macro-economic power of the Treasury and industrial policy sustained and supported by a Ministry of Trade and Industry specifically to sponsor that side of our economy. All this topped, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, interpreted the situation for us, by the central review staff.
The sharpening of this very fundamental distinction between fiscal management and industrial planning, if I may

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use that word, leads both to a real embarrassment with regard to regional policy and to the very necessity for the Rothschild staff. Regional development is a critical area of our policy problems. When outbreaks of violence readily attributable to a distorted society demand a fresh balance between development and the conservation of nature's womb-like role for man as a refresher and inspirer of citizens environmentally illiterate; and when the movement anatomy of our society is changing so fast that one expects air travel to multiply four times by 1980 and air freight five times, so that V/TOL sites are needed to be reserved now in some cities, and indeed plans are needed now for 7,000-feet runways for every two million cluster of our population—when these are so, then surely we need land use and physical planning along with the industrial weapons of I.D.C. control, of BOTAC, as we used to know it, and of loans and investment incentives—these weapons to plan the workshops of our country. Surely we need those things brought together.
What we find, as I interpret the White Paper, is that Trade and Industry develops a general picture of the British workshop's economics in terms of trade, both private enterprise and nationalised industry, marine, aviation, power and the rest, while Environment deals with the strategic layout of the British workshop. And if we are not a workshop, my Lords, then we are nothing at all. Out of these things one can at least expect that one of the recent enormities of compartmentalised government, when great pits were dug along the M4 to provide fill for the new motorway at a time when grant-aided colliery spoil could have been brought from South Wales—that sort of thing, one imagines, will now be avoided. Likewise one hopes decisions on, let us say, a Channel Tunnel, which will bring a growth point involving the movement of thousands and thousands of people, since it is a matter for the former Ministry of Transport, will indeed prove to be with the Department of Environment, and therefore under one physical planning hat.
But, my Lords, I should like to echo the reserves expressed by the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, when he drew attention to an abundance of confusion.
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We find that airlines and airports are with Trade and Industry, while transport is with Environment. We find that aircraft noise, for some reason, is with Trade and Industry, but noise otherwise is with Environment. We find from all this that the siting of the third London Airport, which is going to involve the movement or siting of homes for probably a quarter of a million people, is with Trade and Industry, when surely it involves major environmental considerations. We find that Maritime Industrial Development Areas are with Trade and Industry, while ports are with Environment. We find that BATOC, as it used to be, and I.D.C.s, are with Trade and Industry, while physical planning is with Environment. And the White Paper's paragraph 12 refers to the need
"to explore and resolve conflicts... within the line of management rather than by inter-departmental compromise".
But almost the same day we have the Treasury's Bulletin No. 9 of November listing the activities of the two mammoth Departments and referring to the Department of Environment as being in charge of
"Regional development (in co-operation with the Department of Trade and Industry)".
We go further and we find that another White Paper—namely, that on investment incentives—tells us at paragraph 11 that
"a thorough-going study of regional development policy (as recommended by Hunt) has been set in hand".
But it also suggests that this is to be related to
"additional incentives to encourage the location and expansion of manufacturing industry in the development areas,"
This implies that this review of development area policy is again primarily a matter for the Department of Trade and Industry on its own. It does therefore look as if, instead of resolving the dichotomies of October, 1969, between regional policy, on the one hand, and industrial controls, on the other, these dichotomies are simply being deepened and strengthened.
That observation leads me to several questions; and I am sure that if my noble friend Lord Jellicoe cannot answer now (because I have not given him notice) he will be able to write later. I put these four questions. Does Mr. Walker have, as Mr. Crosland did, total control

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of regional strategy within which Mr. Davies (like Mr. Benn before him) simply manages the industrial component? Secondly, if we are not to have interdepartmental committees to settle differences, as seems to be implied in the Treasury Bulletin No. 9 of November, is this reconciliation between Environment and Trade and Industry to be a matter for the Rothschild staff advising the Cabinet? Then, third, since the study of Maritime Industrial Development Areas is now to be with Trade and Industry, and therefore influenced by its conjunction with BOTAC and all those weapons of I.D.C. control, instead of being with ports and planning, will not this distort thinking about MIDA against the Thames Estuary and against the south bank of the Bristol Channel, as well as against the Lune and the Humber, all of them outwith development areas? Perhaps at some stage, if not to-day, the Minister can also tell us what has become, or what will become, of the inter-departmental study group on MIDA hitherto chaired by an officer of the Ministry of Transport and now, presumably, an officer of the Department of the Environment?
It was Carlyle who wrote of the lot of the Governor, that it is:
"Double, double, toil and trouble"
and this was also said by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, just now. Do all these proposals really mean less government by fewer people? Admittedly, there are now four Ministries fewer; but merging Departments does not necessarily diminish problems or the number of civil servants. Indeed I should like to support what was said both by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, on this very point: the burden that there must be on the Ministers of these gigantic Departments. One cannot help remembering that Sir Keith Joseph, in a debate on the same subject in another place little more than a year ago, referred to these great "jelly fishes" of Departments. They will be jelly fishes unless the Fulton principle of paragraph 8 is applied ruthlessly. I refer to the promise that executive blocks of work are to be delegated to accountable units of management—the only way, it seems, that these great burdens can be hived off.
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In an industrial society growing daily more complex we do confront Carlyle's "impossibility of self-government of a multitude by a multitude". All the more suitable, then, as the hiving off process gets under way (or, indeed, as it tends to slacken through time and fatigue) these lines should forever adorn every Ministerial mantelpiece:
"All governments are to some extent a treaty with the Devil."
and:
"That Government is best which makes itself unnecessary."
And finally:
"Nature our father and mother
Gave us all we got …
The State our elder brother
Swipes the lot."
7.44 p.m.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, apart from the memorable four maiden speeches, we have had an uncovenanted bonus in the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, which dissected one part of the problem of the Government's reorganisation—to wit, the environment part—in a masterly fashion which therefore I do not have to follow.
I always find it a daunting thing to address your Lordships on great matters of State because there are always serried ranks among our Members who in one way or another were personally involved in, if not responsible for, these affairs—and who are now responsible. New ideas and new approaches, however much they may be needed, must necessarily be resented by some; and in no field is this more apparent than in the matter of Government machinery. In our ranks both ex-Ministers and ex-Permanent Secretaries abound; and therefore one really speaks between Scylla and Charybdis, not knowing whether the Ministers are Scylla and the Permanent Secretaries Charybdis, or vice versa. The debate on the Fulton Report which was a memorable occasion shows this danger really very interestingly. Still, despite all these dangers and despite the fact that I am sure I shall get a wigging from my side, as much as from the noble Earl, I have to intervene in this debate; because I have, without the panache, occupied for a time—four years—the same role as Lord Rothschild I presume is going to occupy. Therefore I think that some of the remarks I make may be of interest.

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My right honourable and honourable friends in another place, as well as some noble Lords here, had tremendous fun with the language of the White Paper. Who would grudge them this? I must say that I did not find in the presentation the usual reticence and English understatement which mark the true representative of the comprehensive school between London and Oxford. I can understand that. We were told that we shall have a new style of government. Perhaps this is the explanation. I firmly believe that the new idea about this unit (I would call it an "economic planning unit"; but I quite understand the noble Earl's right honourable friends calling it a "capability unit" because, obviously, capability is good and planning is bad) is excellent.
I do not know how they thought it accords with their new credo—this new Whiggish-Tory credo. If you believe in the invisible hand, why do you have the Rothschild finger in the pie? After all, the invisible hand does it so automatically and without very great difficulty—not even criticism from the Opposition Benches. The price mechanism and profit motive will do the job for you. Once you admit that competition is imperfect, that the prices are manipulated and the State must actively intervene, then, obviously, a central co-ordinating agency is needed. This will tell you, for instance, that an expansionary Budget, such as we had, wage inflation and the credit squeeze are not altogether compatible measures. Perhaps we have to regret that this unit was not already in existence; because I am sure that, had the unit been in existence, historians thirty years hence would have had some very illuminating comments to discover—just as we now discover comments made to various Governments before the war.
I think that this capability unit is extremely important, and a very good thing; and I do so for reasons which are slightly different from those of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and from those expressed by the Minister in this House. I think that this capability unit, or planning unit, as I should like to call it, is extremely important because the character of the State has changed; and with the change in the character of the State the characters of Ministries have changed also. The Ministries have become spon-
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sors and they have sponsored interests; and the more concentrated the Ministry are on the subject, the more intimate is the connection and the sponsorship. For Ministers and for civil servants it is obviously good sense not to have too many conflicts. Therefore they want to live amicably with the sponsored interest.
It is very seldom that one sees a Minister of Agriculture who is really savage with agriculture in the Cabinet. Afterwards, outside, he may appear to be savage; but, as happened in our last Government, that attitude has been dictated, either by the Chancellor of the Exchequer or by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, as a Treasury Minister. It was obviously the mouth of the Minister of Agriculture, but the hand, apparently, was the hand of someone quite different. Therefore it follows that one must not entrust Departments with schizophrenic tasks; that is to say, with tasks that conflict with the basic sponsorship interests.
For instance, I understand (I hope that the noble Earl will enlighten us) that the new unit will not have power to analyse matters now under the jurisdiction of the Treasury. I very much hope that this is not so. This was the interpretation put by some of my friends in another place on certain phrases used there by the noble Earl's right honourable friend: that the Treasury's jurisdiction will be inviolate. The Treasury is going to advise the Cabinet. The most important function of this unit, in my opinion, just as it was with the D.E.A., will be to advise how far the Treasury's general policy—called, in the horrible language of the economists, a "macro-economic policy"—really squares with the policy of the Government as a whole.
The Treasury is a sponsoring Deparment with very important and very necessary sponsorships. It sponsors the Budget surplus and low taxation, whatever the Government. It sponsors the City; it sponsors free capital exports and all sorts of things. And very rightly so, because these are important considerations which ought to be taken into account. But they ought not to dominate, and there ought not to be a monopoly of macro-economic advice. The Treasury, as we all know from Hankey's and Jones's diaries and memoirs (and, of course, the situation has not changed much since) is

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a very important sponsor, and therefore has to be checked. So I hope that Lord Rothschild will have a locus standi even in policies put forward by the Treasury.
To come back to this sponsorship and the need not to entrust schizophrenic things to Ministries, one of the examples which I will quote (because this is really a question of non-political discussion of a very important problem), one of the reforms under the late Government which I deplored was entrusting the Ministry of Labour with both prices and incomes. The Ministry of Labour ought to be a concilation Department, and conciliation and arbitration do not go together. And as they did not go together very well, we had all sorts of difficulties. Now neither function is to be done, according to statements which we have seen; the whole responsibility has been passed over. But I think the Government will see in a very short time that this will not do. In that case I hope, again, that a certain balance of discussion will be arranged, because otherwise the Government will be ill-advised.
My Lords, it is no use to pretend that the Departments have the ultimate truth and that if a Department submits a Paper to the Cabinet everything has been said that can be, and ought to be, said. That is by no means so. Departments, obviously, are interested parties as much as anybody else, and we must have a system of Government which is not based upon supermen but on ordinary human beings. In that connecton I must say that I did not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that we want simplification and fewer inter-Departmental committees. In my experience inter-Departmental committees are the only way in which you can get a really honest, savage discussion of problems. Without inter-Departmental committees and without a supra-Departmental planning unit, decisions will get through which ought not to have been let through. It will mean that policies are determined not by the political heads but by the officials, and I do not believe that is a very good thing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, dealt with the Aid-problem so thoroughly that I shall not refer to it, but I should like to say something about the Ministry of Technology.
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I always deplored that the Ministry of Technology, after it was formed, absorbed the Ministry of Power. I. do not believe that the Ministry of Power industries and the Board of Trade and Ministry of Technology industries are compatible. If the Minister comes to the Cabinet about a Ministry of Power industry, either he will favour—for internal reasons; for his own reasons or for Departmental reasons—the supply industry, which is the Ministry of Power industry, or the buying industry which is alimented from there; which buys its energy and steel from the late Ministry of Power industries. If this was so before, how much more complicated a situation has arisen now.
I must very humbly submit to the noble Earl that it is no use telling us how many civil servants there are. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, rightly remarked, it is the higher civil servants who matter. We have 76 Under-Secretaries under the present Secretary of State. I would venture to tell your Lordships that it is quite impossible for a single Minister to oversee 76 Under-Secretaries and it is absolute nonsense to believe that it is. We have no Secretary of State who is a Newton or even a Galileo. Perhaps he is a Ptolemy in the wrong era.
I hope that we shall get the proper staff for Lord Rothschild and I very much hope that when Labour returns to power we shall not merely have a continuation of Lord Rothschild's unit but that we shall term it differently and that the unit will be put under a Minister who will be under the Prime Minister. Because obviously the Prime Minister also is mortal, and the amount of work which he has, compared with the crushing burden of ordinary ministries which was adumbrated by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is far more crushing. I think that the the central unit is essential, but so is a Minister of State for the Civil Service Department—a role which members of this House have frequently fulfilled. I hope that we shall see a vigorous use of this new unit.
8.0 p.m.
THE EARL OF SHANNON: My Lords, I must ask your Lordships' indulgence for a short intervention at this late hour, especially as my name is not on the scheduled list of speakers. I intervene

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because of the small announcement at the end of the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. His speech was one of great weight on matters of high strategy. Then, perhaps slightly incongruously, at the end of his speech he made an announcement in considerable detail regarding the transference of certain research laboratories. I think the House is too well aware of my interest in industrial research for me to declare it further, but that is the reason for my intervention. I had a feeling last July that some step like this was being considered. On July 8 I asked a Question in your Lordships' House to elucidate the situation and was met with a direct, monosyllabic denial from the representative of Her Majesty's Government. Well, Her Majesty's Government have seen fit to change their minds and now we have this announcement.
Arising out of it, I should like to ask the noble Earl one or two questions to elicit a little further information. I hope that the noble Earl's brief runs to answering them. If not, perhaps he will be good enough to let me know the answers later. With reference to research associations, have there been any previous consultations with those research associations, their controlling councils or the members of the industries which supply the major portion—I repeat, the major portion—of the finance of those associations? Will the general grant for research of a comprehensive nature still be continued as has been done in the past? Further, will the existing commitments regarding general and specific grant still continue to be honoured? Is it foreseen that the Department of the Environment will be linking up in any way with the National Environment Research Council now that the Department will have many research functions similar to those of NERC?
In addition, what arrangements are being made so that the new Department can have an appreciation of research philosophy and an understanding of research processes? Are suitable personnel to be transferred from the old Ministry of Technology and the Department of Trade and Industry? In view of the announcement of the policy that publicly financed research should be the responsibility of the Department whose functions it mainly supports, may I
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further ask what other research associations are likely to be similarly affected and to which Department or Departments their responsibility is likely to be transferred? Finally, as research associations are independent, autonomous bodies, owned and controlled by the industries which they serve, may I seek an assurance from Her Majesty's Government that no attempt will be made to violate that independence by using the grant as an excuse to subordinate them to the requirements of an executive Ministry?
I am sorry to face the noble Earl with that list of questions, but he did tuck in that little announcement towards the end of his speech, and I shall be grateful, as I am sure other noble Lords and other people will be, if we can have the answers.
8.6 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I know that your Lordships are anxious to hear the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, and I will not detain you for very long. It falls to my lot to congratulate four maiden speakers, all of whom delighted the House in different ways. I may refer first to the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, who was a good friend of mine at Oxford forty years ago, though we have hardly seen each other since. I am never sure, when one sees an old friend, whether one wants to see him much older than oneself or much younger. If he is much older, one is rather shocked by the idea that that is probably how one looks to other people; and if he looks much younger, one is envious. And envy is my sentiment at the moment, not only of the noble Lord's appearance but also of his speech.
I must congratulate my own three political friends very warmly. My noble friend Lord Diamond made his apologies because he was compelled to leave, and I believe he has offered the same apologies to the noble Earl. He spoke with the authority of someone who has been a Minister in the Treasury for a whole number of years and a Cabinet Minister for some part of the time. I will come in a moment to a point raised by my noble friends Lord Greenwood of Rossendale and Lady Bacon, with both of whom I have collaborated on all sorts of subjects very intimately in the past. But perhaps I may just say, having followed my noble friend Lord Greenwood at the Colonial Office, that I hope that

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in times to come the true value of his work there will be fully recognised. He certainly left a great mark, and that was well understood by those with whom he worked and all those who knew about it from outside. When my noble friend Lady Bacon spoke about the Family Service she was too modest to say so, but the fact is she has done more than any one person to make that Service a reality.
Let me turn briefly to the main issues of the debate. I suppose that the two heads have been the conglomeration of Ministries and the central capability unit. I have a word to say, but not much more, about the principles of conglomeration. I endorse strongly what was said so well by my noble friends Lord Greenwood of Rossendale and Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe about the absorption of the Ministry of Overseas Development. I am quite sure, as the noble Lord, Lord Alport, said, that this represents a weakening of this cause. I cannot say that at the moment it represents any particular loss in pounds, shillings and pence: I am sure that the Government intend no such thing. But over the years I saw the way in which this Ministry was gradually losing ground, even in our own time.
When my noble friend Lord Greenwood and my right honourable friend Mrs. Castle were in charge, they were in the Cabinet and I am sorry to see it moved out of the Cabinet. From my own experience I am sure that this is a corner that has to be fought extremely hard. It is the one really altruistic Ministry we have. Other Ministries may be high-minded, in the sense that they are concerned with large numbers of our population; but this is the one Ministry that is of no direct benefit to the voters. I am not one of those, I may say, who can always make out some crafty argument for overseas aid on the ground that it helps us in the long run. This in my opinion is sacrificing overseas aid. It will always have the hardest task of any Ministry, and I am sure that this is a backward step.
I turn now to a technical but highly important and human point raised by my noble friend Lady Bacon, when she referred to the movement of the Children's Service from the Home Office and its being handed back to the Secretary of
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State for Social Services. I join my noble friend in paying tribute to the work which the Home Office, or many officials in the Home Office, have done, and also to the great work of the child care officers themselves. This is undoubtedly a difficult subject. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and I. and my noble friends, Lady Bacon and Lord Greenwood, all investigated these things intensively together, just before the Government came into power, in a committee over which I presided. There is certainly no easy answer. One answer is to move the whole of the new Family Service into the Home Office, If you do that, then the Home Office becomes too big, and you have to move something away from the Home Office. I personally feel that, on the whole, that would have been the most constructive solution. But if you are going to do that I agree that you are forced towards something like this.
There certainly is language in the relevant paragraph which I hope the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, will at least reinterpret. In paragraph 35 there is the suggestion that this is a fairly easy distinction, because you move the Family Service into one Ministry and that leaves the Home Office with the overriding responsibility for protecting the public. Well it can be put in that way, but I think it is a very old-fashioned and superficial way of putting it. After all, most of us are aware (and the noble Earl himself has in his time done a lot for the Child Care Service in the Home Office) that it is impossible in practice to separate the work (shall I say?) of the Child Care Service from the Probation Service. Therefore, in a sense, there is no perfect answer. I think that the Government have an answer which makes tolerable reading; it is a second-best answer, but at any rate it is their answer, and I hope that they will succeed. But let us at least try to extract from the noble Earl an assurance that it is realised that there must be the closest co-operation between the Children's Service and the Probation Service. Perhaps he will reassure us on that point and relieve anxieties created by this particular paragraph.
With such good speeches it is tempting to try to comment on them. There was the speech, for example, of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about these conglomerate Ministries. In view of the

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time, I am not going to pursue that subject to-day, except to offer my personal thought. I have had a great deal of experience of what might be called the mezzanine levels of ministerial life. In the Attlee Government I was never in the Cabinet, but I was what I might describe as almost everything else. Like my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, I have presided over at least three full Ministries which have now disappeared, and one other where I was the Minister for Germany but not in supreme charge. So I know this kind of world, as one might say, extremely well.
Here again, there is no perfect answer, and one must not be unduly dogmatic. The real problem, if there are to be these conglomerate Ministries, is to ensure that delegation is effective. As has been explained, and as we are all aware, it is extremely hard on you, if you are a top Minister, to delegate something to a secondary Minister who can make a mistake for which you are held responsible. Even in some quite middle-sized Ministry, such as Civil Aviation, when I was Minister for that, years ago, it was easy enough to say, as I might have said, that I would hand over to the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, when he was Parliamentary Secretary, safety, which he would understand much better than I did. Nevertheless, if you are the Minister and some accident occurs you have an uncomfortable feeling that you will be held responsible at some point or other. Therefore this problem of delegation will never be an easy one.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that one should, if possible, delegate to what I call the secondary Ministries. It is not quite clear to me how far this is intended under this reorganisation, although I think it probably is intended. For example, when I was Minister for Germany everybody knew that I was Minister for Germany—in fact they thought that my role was rather bigger than it was. But it was Mr. Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, who enjoyed the supreme responsibility, and therefore I was not likely to take any step which was not approved by him. However, it did enable me to give some kind of leadership; and of course in the Service Ministries equally it had various phases. But the bigger the conglomerations grow, the more we have to work out new con-
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ceptions of delegation. This is a challenge for the Government, and here again I can only wish them well with it.
Before I close, I should like to say a few words about the central capability unit. Of course, we on these Benches are very much complimented that one of our number, if not perhaps our most active Member, should have been selected for this onerous position. It is clearly a tribute to our philosophy, if not to the work in existence here. The noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, is a man of the highest intellectual powers, and no doubt he will fill the bill very well. I should think that here there are several different jobs, but I will mention only two of them. I think they are quite different, but they may be performed by this unit.
In the first place, there is the task of helping individual Cabinet Ministers to do their work much better than they have done it in the past. Like the noble Earl now (though he has a Department, and perhaps he may be more strongly equipped than I was), except for the few months when I was at the Colonial Office I was a Cabinet Minister in the last Wilson Government for a matter of three years, with no Department at all. When a great issue comes along—shall I say the question of devaluation?—a Minister in that position, While other Ministers may have all sorts of experts on education or transport, will not have economic experts for this sort of purpose.
What I say about a Minister without a Department applies, mutatis mutandis, to most Ministers in one way or another. When something like devaluation comes along, the individual Cabinet Minister not in an economic Department wants to make his contribution. In our time, such a Minister might, if he was lucky, gain access for a few moments to the noble Lord, Lord Balogh. That was granted as a supreme concession and as an act of grace on his part. But there was no hope of maintaining any prolonged dialogue with somebody as busy and preoccupied as that. In my time, if one wanted advice on particular issues—and that would really mean all the issues, apart from the business of the House of Lords—while there is a big Cabinet office there, full of brilliant and helpful people, one found they were not there to give the help sought.

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There is one aspect of this, which is not, I think, the most important aspect, but which could be made useful to individual Cabinet Ministers. But if that were all, one could achieve the result simply by doubling the staff of the Cabinet Office. There is no need to work out a new philosophy of government. I treat that as a secondary though not unimportant matter which does not require any far-reaching change. What is really intended here is clearly something wider. It is still very vague, and it may not be a criticism. It may be wisdom on the part of the Government to wait for these discussions before attempting to make their plans final, and then to see how things work out. I do not say anything nasty about that. It is impossible to know what they have in mind. I have read debates elsewhere; we have heard the noble Earl this afternoon, and unless he is going to reveal something just before closing time—which in the circumstances would rather surprise me—I suspect that we shall go away to-night with no very clear idea of what this unit is supposed to do.
May I, therefore, submit one or two thoughts? How is this unit supposed to improve on the kind of work that would be done by a strengthened Cabinet Office? If it is simply a question of more Government officials, obviously you can double the Cabinet Office—many of them are brilliant people—and it can be done in that way. Something new is clearly intended here, something other than that. I rather wonder what fresh contribution to our affairs will be made by this new unit which could not be made by an increased Cabinet Office. I would ask, in the first place, whether it is intended that they will operate under a new authority. I put that question, I hope not impertinently, to the noble Earl. Will they come under the authority of the head of the Cabinet Office? Will he be their master? We assume that they are all gentlemen of extraordinary efficiency, but the time might come when some of them have to be removed, not for misconduct but just for inadequacy. Somebody has to be their chief—I gather that if it is anybody it is the head of the Cabinet Office. Yet there was a hint in what the noble Earl said to me at the beginning of the day that for certain purposes they come under other authorities; they look
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elsewhere. That is a point which I am sure we should all wish to explore further to-day, or on some other occasion.
The noble Lord, Lord Balogh, suggested that they should in some sense be the servants of the Prime Minister. He has already worked them into that position in his mind, because he said that the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, would be in the position which he himself once occupied, and I always understood that he was a personal adviser to the Prime Minister.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I was an economic adviser in the Cabinet Office.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, it was generally understood that the noble Lord enjoyed what is sometimes called a "special relationship" with the Prime Minister.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, will enjoy very special relationships.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, the point I should like to lay before the House is that it is one thing for one particular adviser to have a special relationship with the Prime Minister, but quite a different thing for someone in charge of a large and powerful unit to come under the control of the Prime Minister in practice, whether or not in theory. The danger is that it would make the Prime Minister too powerful. This is something we have to dwell on, at any rate for a passing moment. Many people would say that the Prime Minister to-day, whether it is this Prime Minister, the last Prime Minister or the next Prime Minister-but-two, is too powerful. I do not know that you could say that at the present time; but if he had a large unit like this, which equipped him to stand up to the Treasury in some new fashion and to intervene effectively all over the field, he would be as powerful as Sir Winston Churchill was in the war.
No one, except possibly the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, has quite so high an affection for the late Lord Cherwell as I have; nevertheless, there was a general reluctance to see someone installed in the kind of position which Lord Cherwell occupied. Personally, I do not want to see this new and powerful

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unit brought directly, whether in theory or in practice, under the control of the Prime Minister. One could imagine that he might come under some other Minister—a kind of inspector-general. I do not think that idea would get much support. If we are to ask what this unit is going to do, not just by way of informing individual Ministers but by way of helping to plan and co-ordinate the whole policy of the Government, I submit that we must see it as coming under some Cabinet Committee. We are all entitled to offer our personal views, and I suggest that a; time passes if this is going to be an effective unit of planning and coordination it will have to come under some Cabinet Committee which is especially charged for that task. The other alternatives are for it to come under either no Ministers or under the Prime Minister, and I have suggested that neither course would be satisfactory.
I do not know how this unit will fare; I do not know the kind of people it will consist of. Is it suggested that they are to be more equipped by their training for tasks of planning and co-ordination than those in the Cabinet Office already? I have no reason to think that that will necessarily be so, but I am sure that they will be gentlemen endowed with much experience and intellect. Therefore, speaking for this side, and whether or not everything I say is precisely in the minds of everybody else among my colleagues, I welcome the attempt to work out something new along these lines. At present it is quite woolly, but I do not think we need necessarily condemn it because it is woolly. So to this woolly idea I give a warmish welcome, and in (those words give way to the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe.
8.26 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, in rising to reply to the debate, may I say that I have heard a great many people refer to the fact that this has been a good and useful debate. I sincerely say that I have found this an extremely useful debate. What is more, I am grateful to noble Lords on all sides of the House—not least the noble Lords opposite—for the constructive way in which they have put their views to us this afternoon. I wish to study those views closely and, meanwhile, I will offer some comments on some of the suggestions which have been
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made, the ballons d'essai which have been launched, and so on.
I do not wish unduly to discriminate by singling out for special mention speakers in your Lordships' debate this afternoon. I should like to add my tribute to the others which have been paid to our four very heavily disguised maiden speakers this afternoon. I was particularly glad to hear my noble friend Lord Reigate make his maiden speech; not least because he had the distinction of being the only noble Lord to make it from our own Benches. I enjoyed very greatly the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, who has tendered his apologies for not being able to hear my winding-up remarks. The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, made a witty speech with just the right touch of asperity. I also greatly enjoyed the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, and the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, not least because I had the honour to occupy a post in Government which she filled at one time with great distinction. In all sincerity I can say that this House has been powerfully reinforced by these three former distinguished Ministers, and we all look forward to hearing them again.
Since I am discriminating, I should like to take one step further down that dangerous path and say how much I, like many of your Lordships, enjoyed the quiet, considered, yet compelling, speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. The noble Baroness always intimidates me; she intimidated me when I was a "new boy" in her Ministry; and this afternoon she gave me one of those gentle reproofs of hers, and I find that her power to intimidate is no less than it was seven or eight years ago. I greatly enjoyed her speech, as I think the whole House did, not least because of its studied moderation, and not least because of its general welcome for the White Paper now before your Lordships.
My Lords, we have had a rather long discussion this afternoon and I think it would be wrong if I were to detain your Lordships for too long, bearing in mind too that I made a fairly long speech at the outset of this debate. As I see it, certain common themes have emerged from this discussion. In the first place, I think there has been a general, if in certain quarters rather muted, or indeed

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woolly, welcome for this White Paper, albeit—
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I did not actually say that. I said that it was a warmish welcome to a woolly White Paper.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I was fully aware of what the noble Earl said, and I apologise for misquoting him on purpose. I recognise that that welcome has in certain respects been highly critical. Secondly, I think it right to say (at least this is my impression) that, albeit with qualifications, there has been in most quarters of your Lordships' House a general blessing for the two major items of Governmental restructuring. First, the formation of the Department of Trade and Industry, which to my mind at least has very clear advantages, the bringing together in one large Department of export considerations and export policies and considerations of home industry; the bringing together of the public sector and the private sector, and not least making for once what I think is desirable, a clear and identifiable point of contact for the man in the street, be he a businessman or an industrialist. These are great advantages, and again I think there has been a welcome with qualifications.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Earl leaves that point may I ask him one question, which is in fact meant to help him, although he may not think so? How many buildings will this new Department be spread over? I am sure he cannot answer. I suspect it is about twenty buildings, and I want to give more power to his elbow in getting the resources to house civil servants properly. Has he any idea how many buildings?
EARL JELLICOE: Quite a few buildings, my Lords. I have an idea, but it would be a wild guess. I might just add to that point that right at the end of the White Paper there is a paragraph or two, not unimportant, on dispersal policy. One of the considerations which we have in mind there is that, apart from considering dispersal, it is the aim to consider concentration at the centre as well; that is, not to increase the number of civil servants at the heart of White-
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hall, but to see that those who are there are not fragmented as they are at the present time. This aim will be engaging our most lively attention.
May I go back to where I was diverted, but agreeably diverted, by the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, to describe the advantage which I see in the creation of the Department of the Environment. I feel that there is a great advantage, or a great potential advantage, in unifying all the fields of policy which affect both the natural and the built environment. This is what I understand we are getting at in creating what is of course a very large Department indeed. I think that follows the thought which was expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb—who, again, has told me he had to leave—in his speech. But of course, having said that, I recognise straight away that very understandable doubts have been expressed about the mammoth size of these Departments; and I take the point fairly put by the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, that it is not just the gross number of civil servants in a particular Department which is important, but the functions, represented perhaps by the number of Under-Secretaries. I accept that point.
I remember the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, that bigger is not necessarily better. Of course, I can only say, "Granted". But fewer and smaller is better. We have already achieved fewer Departments, and we have laid the foundations for achieving smaller Departments out of those fewer Departments.
One essential foundation, of course, is the review of functions. The Prime Minister has instructed ail departmental Ministers now to review radically and from the roots all the functions of their Departments to see which functions can be eliminated or amputated—these are the remedies which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, herself advocated; to see what loads can be completely shed—and I am quite certain myself that some can be; to see where hiving off is possible, whether it is hiving off right outside the public sector, or by what I call the post-Fulton system of accountable management units. This review will not be once and for all; there will be a continuing process of review.

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The results of the first review which is now being carried out as a result of a very firm directive from the Prime Minister will be, if not evident, at least coming in fairly soon.
Having said that, I fully agree with the noble Earl, Lord Longford, that these large Departments will not be manageable unless there is a real degree of delegation within them. Perhaps there are new conceptions, to use his phrase, which we must try out here. I should only like to add in that context one further comment. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, asked me what happens in the case of disagreement between one of the Ministers responsible for a department under the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State himself.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, would he have the right to appeal to the Cabinet over his boss?
EARL JELLICOE: No, my Lords. I should like to make this perfectly clear. Final responsibility rests, as it must rest, with the Secretary of State, who will be the sole voice for his Department in the Cabinet. That is the position, and I hope that the answer is quite clear.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, singled out in her disquiet which she was expressing as part of her general welcome of the new Department of the Environment the fact that what was formerly the Ministry of Public Building and Works carries with it a very wide and varied cluster of what I think are technically called service functions. She suggested that, perhaps as part of the process of hiving off, those functions could well be subject to critical examination. I would agree with what the noble Baroness has said, and I would go one stage further and say that that aspect of the functions of the Department of the Environment will be getting just that kind of critical examination.
In this context (and I come on to this in answer to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and a question put to me by him), I was asked by my noble friend Lord Reigate about dispersal. All I can say in amplification of the White Paper is that we really mean business in this respect. We are about to undertake, using modern systems and methodologies (to use the awful jargon
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developed in the Civil Service Department under the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton), a very searching review here; and that review will be completed within the coming year. I do not wish to prejudge what the results of it will be. But this is a more radical examination of the possibilities of Governmental dispersal, coupled with sensible concentration, than has been envisaged in the past. Certainly we intend to do this in a very thorough way indeed.
My Lords, that said by way of introduction, I turn now, if I may, to some of the particular points—areas about which questions have been put to me. My noble friend Lord Caldecote, and my noble friend Lord Lauderdale, were both anxious, as I understood it, about the allocation of responsibilities in the transport field. They asked me why responsibilities for shipping and civil aviation have not been transferred from the Trade and Industry sector to link up with the other transport industries—rail and road—in the new Department of the Environment. Well my Lords, those are very understandable questions. When this whole process of restructuring was under consideration I remember posing exactly the same questions myself, because at first blush it is an extremely attractive idea to group together these four major transport industries.
All I can do now is to assure my two noble friends that this matter was very carefully examined and they are wrong if they think that the present division is the result of history or just of this matter not having been examined. That is not the case. The matter was closely examined and was examined ab initio, and we came to the pattern which is the White Paper because we discerned certain clear linkages between these groups of functions. The dominant linkages of shipping and civil aviation work are international, whereas the dominant linkages of road and rail transport are internal. That is why, in our view, it makes better sense for the Department of Trade and Industry to have responsibility for shipping and aviation and why it makes sense for the Department concerned with our own physical and built-up environment to have responsibility for the road and rail transport industries. However, at first blush I would agree that one might well come to another conclusion.

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As to responsibility for our airports, in our view these clearly go, as a matter of operational necessity, with the main civil aviation responsibilities. That is why airports are to be found in Trade and Industry. On the other hand the analogy with shipping, where responsibility for ports rests with the Department of the Environment and shipping with Trade and Industry, is not one that really stands up to examination. The reason is that, plainly, when we look at it the ports/inland transport link is closer than the ports/shipping link in terms of Government responsibilities.
My Lords, I know this means that airport policy and significant planning decisions, such as the siting of the third London Airport, will rest with the Department of Trade and Industry. These, of course, have massive implications for physical planning, as my noble friend rightly pointed out. But such decisions arise very seldom indeed, whereas the functions which link airports and airlines are continuously and closely related. So in our view it is right to make very careful arrangements for co-ordination between the two Departments concerned on airport planning, but not actually to transfer responsibility for what can only be a fragment of a function. I hope I have made the logic behind these decisions clear to my noble friends. On the basis of one quick explanation I do not ask them necessarily to agree, but all I can say is that these particular decisions were very carefully considered indeed.
My noble friend Lord Caldecote asked me some questions about research and development and whether there was a danger of new frontiers being established between the research and development institutes which are mainly in the defence sphere and those which have been in the sphere of technology. That is my understanding of the question he put to me.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: My Lords, my point was between the Government industrial research and the Government defence research establishments.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, my noble friend has re-phrased the question very accurately. I take the point. My own view is that there have been fron-
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tiers in the past and there are frontiers at the present time, and that those frontiers are more likely to be broken down as a result of the examination which is going to be carried out under Mr. Rayner than under the present situation; but we shall have to wait and see. By the same token, if the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, will excuse me from answering his very detailed questions at this stage I should prefer, if only because of the time, to do so in writing. He accused me of tucking in my statement on research associations towards the end of my speech, but he tucked in his questions rather towards the end of our debate. But I will write to him about them and I shall be very glad to go into them in debate later, if the noble Earl so wishes.
I now turn to three areas of difficulty about which I have been asked a number of not easy questions by noble Lords opposite. First, there is the question relating to Wales and the transfer of certain education responsibilities to the Secretary of State for Wales. I listened most carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, and at this hour I do not wish to go over this whole ground in great detail. What I should like to put to her, however, is this: once the office of the Secretary of State for Wales had been created and once the principle of a certain devolution of functions to Wales had been accepted, there was surely a strong case in logic for saying that sooner or later it should be given education powers. There have been many, not only in this Administration, who have taken this view and who thought it was a matter of real difficulty to Secretaries of State for Wales that they had no more than oversight of educational functions in Wales; and it seems to me that if functions are going to be transferred, primary and secondary education are the obvious choices.
I realise that this again immediately raises problems of what might be called "frontiers". I prefer to leave this subject at this stage of the debate, but I might just add this. The noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, asserted that there had been little or no consultation on this matter, but our intentions were stated very clearly in our Election manifesto, they were reiterated in the Queen's Speech, and, since the publication of the White Paper, the Secretary of State has deliberately delayed the implementation of these

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measures until there has been time for consultation. I would ask the noble Baroness to accept that as my understanding of the position.
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, can the noble Earl say whether or not there was any consultation with either the teachers' bodies or the Association of Education Committees and the Welsh Joint Education Committee before the publication of the Order?
EARL JELLICOE: No, my Lords, I think it was after the publication of the Order; but the implementation of the Order was held up so that that consultation could be undertaken thereafter.
With regard to another difficult area—that is, the transfer of the Children's Department responsibilities to the Department of Health and Social Security—I should only like to say that I very much share the affection and respect which I think anybody who has worked in the Home Office has for the Children's Department and those who work in it. As a result of my experience in the Home Office I have come to the same conclusion as has the noble Baroness about the worth of the Children's Department. But it seems to me that, as the noble Earl, Lord Longford, very fairly said, we were presented by a choice which would be difficult either way. It is quite clear that, following Seebohm, if all the social services are to be integrated at the local level, which I think we all hold to be right, then it is only sensible to integrate their supervision at the ministerial level.
We then have the choice whether the Children's Department should go to the Department of Health and Social Security or whether that side of the Department of Health and Social Security which deals with the personal services should somehow be brought into the Home Office. This is a very difficult area of choice. In my view, the right decision was taken, although as a Home Office sentimentalist I saw it taken with a good deal of regret. But I think it was the right decision; and, that having been done, straight away one runs into the difficulty that this means some fragmentation, admittedly, of responsibility for dealing with children in trouble, the point on which the noble Earl, Lord Longford, rightly dwelt. All I would say to the noble Earl is that this is a point of difficulty which is very much
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recognised by Her Majesty's Government, and it is certainly our intention to ensure that in this area there is the closest possible co-ordination between the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Security. I think I can therefore give the noble Earl the assurance he asked me for.
If I recall correctly, there was one further area of lively criticism of the proposals in the White Paper expressed in your Lordships' debate this afternoon, and that is the proposal to bring the Ministry of Overseas Development within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I do not wish to go over all the ground again. I gave my views on this subject at the outset of our debate. I emphasised that there was no intention on the part of Her Majesty's Government to slacken the momentum behind our aid effort—in fact, very much the reverse. I assured your Lordships that the staff of the O.D.M. would be retained as an autonomous whole within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and I pointed to the advantages which, in my view, would flow from a senior Cabinet Minister being able to speak up for aid within the Cabinet.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I do not want to interrupt my noble friend, but surely in the past when aid was distributed among three Offices there were three Secretaries of State and Cabinet Ministers well able to speak up for aid. Now there is one rather more remote, while the actual responsibility for aid rests with a Minister within the Foreign Office.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, knowing the personal attachment of the present holder of the office of Foreign Secretary to aid, and his belief in development aid, I should have thought it was not fair to categorise Sir Alec Douglas-Home as being remote in that respect.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, may I interrupt for one moment? Surely it is not right that we should be dependent on the personality of the existing incumbent of the Foreign Secretaryship. Foreign Secretaries come and go, and we all know that their personalities are very different. I do not think that that is an answer to that particular point.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think it was a part answer to the charge of remoteness. But the real point is that Her Majesty's Government are committed to an expanding aid programme, and it is therefore inconceivable that one would have in Her Majesty's Government as Foreign Secretary someone who did not hold a strong personal commitment in this sphere. I understand the emotion which this particular transfer of functions has aroused; nevertheless I do feel that there is an undue scepticism about the attitude of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office inherent in that point of view. It has certainly not been my experience, as an old member of the Foreign Service, that my fellow members were uninterested in development aid; indeed, very much the reverse. Moreover, it has certainly been my experience as a merchant banker in the last six years or so that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in many respects—for example, in their preference for multilateral aid, which I hold to be usually desirable—were extremely advanced. But, be that as it may, I do not think I am going at this hour of the night to persuade the noble Baroness or noble Lords opposite, or indeed my noble friend, that this is the right decision. Perhaps I may parenthetically apologise to my noble friend for being necessarily out of your Lordships' House when he was speaking earlier.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the noble Earl is doing his job very thoroughly and we much appreciate it. We do not want to waste time on the Order later to-night, because it is getting rather late; but what really alarms me is that he has failed to understand the points that have been made. I recall my own experience in the field of foreign affairs when I have for political purposes sought to get money out of the Department of Overseas Development which went against their judgment as to its development value. It may well be that we shall return to this subject on an Un-starred Question on some occasion, and then the Minister particularly responsible will be able to deal with it.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I would gladly fall in with that suggestion. The noble Baroness, Lady Llewelyn-Davies, asked me three specific questions of which she was kind enough to give me notice.
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Unless she would like me to reply now, I would, in view of the time factor, send her written replies to those three questions.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, would the noble Earl answer the question about staff?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, again I was out of the House when the noble Baroness spoke, but I think she asked whether Her Majesty's Government will continue to retain the O.D.A. as a domestic office without pressing the staff to join the Diplomatic Service. The answer is Yes; as stated in the White Paper the Overseas Development Administration of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will continue like the Ministry of Overseas Development to be staffed by home civil servants, although the existing provisions for secondment in both directions with the Diplomatic Service will continue. It is an essential part of the change that a separate O.D.A. should continue within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and that the skilled body of aid administrators who have been brought together initially in the Department of Technical Co-operation and then in the O.D.M. should continue to be managed and function as a cohesive unit.
I come in conclusion to the central policy review staff. Although this has been very central to our debate, I shall necessarily be a little cursory in my treatment of the issues. We have had a great deal of fun about the semantics of how this animal has changed its name as it has gone along the road. But I think it is "central policy review staff" now, and I think it is likely to remain "central policy review staff" unless your Lordships can think of a better name.
So far as the scope of the staff is concerned, I would only say this: I see it playing an essential and continuing part in the annual review by Government of their priorities and of their expenditure options. I also see it playing an important and continuing part in the annual exercise in which the Government will be engaging, the Programme Analysis and Review which will be the complement of PESC. These will be two year to year important continuing functions of the central policy review staff as I see it. But,

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of course, it will not be precluded from long range studies; in fact it will be encouraged, ad hoc if need be, to point out to Ministers the options open to them on particular decisions; and of course, as is made clear in the White Paper, it will be carrying out or commissioning special studies itself.
If I may now reply to the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, and to the specific point about its functions which he put to me, I would certainly not wish to see the central policy review staff restricted in its scope in any artificial manner, and I would certainly not rule out its being involved in the area to which he drew attention. But I would not at this stage wish to go further.
So far as the collective responsibilities of the review staff are concerned, I think that perhaps it was my fault that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, made rather heavy weather about that matter earlier in our debate. What I should like again to emphasise is that the services of the review staff will be common to the Prime Minister and to Ministers in their collective responsibility. It will be providing common services, and I do not myself see any particular difficulty in the mode by which those services will be rendered, by which its reports will reach the Ministers concerned. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, pointed out that they could receive them as members of the Cabinet. They could also receive the reports as members of the Cabinet Committees on which they sit. They could receive them in their individual departmental capacities. But the point which I was anxious not to be drawn on was the precise Cabinet Committee structure which might or might not embrace the central policy review staff. This would be going against our normal conventions, and on that I would not wish at this stage to be drawn. But I was most interested in the remarks made in that respect.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I hesitate to prolong this debate in any way, but could the noble Earl explain why the central policy review staff might not be a special section of the Cabinet Secretariat, of course ultimately coming under the Prime Minister through Sir Burke Trend, without being set up as a sort of autonomous unit?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think what is likely to evolve may be very close to that; it will be part of the Secretariat, but a distinctive part of it. I believe it is important that it should preserve its own identity, but it will be part of the Cabinet Secretariat. So far as staff are concerned, the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, expressed the hope that Lord Rothschild will be able, or be enabled, to recruit staff of the highest quality. I can only echo those admirable sentiments. Certainly it will be my desire, with my responsibilities within the Civil Service Department, to do anything I can to further that desirable objective.
As for numbers, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, perhaps being under some misapprehension about the degree to which the central policy review staff will itself develop an independent analytical function, thought that it was going to have a huge number of analysts accommodated within it. I think this is not the case. I think the analytical capability available to Government will be mainly within the Departments themselves, and of course within the Treasury, But this does not mean that there will not be analysts within the central policy review staff itself, but I think they will be quite small in number—very limited indeed.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, if the noble Earl has finished on that point, I should like to correct one matter. I never sought to get from the noble Earl the existing Cabinet Committee structure, and in the sense of his batting me down on that I would merely say that I was asking how it worked. I even suggested relating it to an ancient Cabinet Committee structure. The noble Earl has been most patient, but perhaps I could ask one further question. Are there going to be some businessmen qua businessmen in this? This is how publicly it all started, in his first statement. Secondly, I did not say there would need to be a large number of analysts. I said there are not available a large number of people who are expert in this type of activity, and over a wide area one could run into trouble. But these are merely points of correction.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I entirely accept what the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition has kindly said.

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So far as his specific question is concerned, if there is a businessman or businessmen appointed to Lord Rothschild's staff, the appointment will not be qua businessmen, or if there is an engineer, he will not be appointed qua engineer. I think it is possible—I would not wish to rule out any possibility—that anyone who is appointed to the central policy review staff will be appointed because of his particular personal qualities.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am delighted to hear that.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, we have had a rather long discussion, and I fully recognise that there are a great many points which I have left unanswered. But I should like to say, by way of conclusion, that I think we can fairly claim that during our years of Opposition we engaged in some pretty fundamental thinking about the machinery of government. Moreover, since we took office in the summer, we have, with the assistance of some very skilled and experienced civil servants, done a lot more hard thinking. That thinking is embodied in the changes announced in the White Paper. I know that I shall not carry all noble Lords with me, but it is my belief that these changes, and the principles and thinking on which they rest, are valid, and that their practical effect will be good. But I do not for one moment wish to assert that they could not be improved, and it will certainly be our aim—and we have been helped towards that aim by a very constructive debate this afternoon—to do what we can over the months and years ahead, whatever it may be, to improve this machinery, but on the basis of trying to achieve that stability in government structure which we all wish to see achieved.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS (OVERSEAS AID) ORDER 1970
9.9 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Transfer of Functions (Overseas Aid)
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Order 1970, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 27th October.—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: The said Address be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT ORDER 1970
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Secretary of State for the Environment Order, 1970, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 27th October.—(Lord Sandford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: The said Address to be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

SOUTHERN RHODESIA ACT 1965 (CONTINUATION) ORDER 1970
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN had given Notice of his intention to move, That the Draft Southern Rhodesia Act 1965 (Continuation) Order 1970, laid before the House on 27th October, be approved. The noble Marquess said: My Lords, I understand that this Motion is being postponed until to-morrow, and I therefore do not move it this evening.

SOUTHERN RHODESIA (MATRIMONIAL JURISDICTION) ORDER 1970
9.11 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords. I beg to move that the Southern Rhodesia (Matrimonial Jurisdiction) Order 1970 be approved. I wish to say a few words in support of the Motion and in explanation of it, notwithstanding that noble Lords who are interested in the matter have had to wait a long time for the item to come on for hearing. The effect of the Motion will be to bring into force on November 16 the Order which

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was laid before your Lordships' House on October 23.
Despite its technical nature, which I shall endeavour to explain, the underlying object of this Order is quite simple. It enables individuals who in the normal course of events would petition for divorce or nullity of marriage in Southern Rhodesia to seek matrimonial relief in the United Kingdom without having to meet the normal qualifications of domicile or residence, provided, of course, that they have been residing here for the past six months.
It is notorious that almost nothing that touches the Continent of Africa is uncontroversial, but the modest Order now before the House will, I hope and believe, prove to be an exception. It does not affect, and it has been framed so as not to affect, the political issues surrounding the Rhodesian question. It does aim at mitigating hardship caused to certain individuals in this country who are innocent of any part in the political dispute. The Order is, of course, of a general character. But the problem which gives rise to it is well illustrated by the particular case of Mrs. Adams, which brought it to a head; and the decision has been reported. There are other cases to which it will bring relief. I simply give the facts in an individual case by way of illustration.
Mrs. Adams was, and is, an Englishwoman. She is not a Rhodesian. She married an Australian and went to live in Rhodesia where the Australian husband was, and so far as I know is, domiciled. Since he was domiciled in Rhodesia, by private international law, as it is interpreted in the United Kingdom, the Rhodesian courts have in general an exclusive jurisdiction to decide the matrimonial status of husband and wife. Apart from special legislation, therefore, the wife could not, and cannot, be divorced either in Australia or in the United Kingdom. Of course before the unilateral declaration of independence this circumstance would have given rise to no difficulty. Rhodesian divorce would then have been recognised outside Rhodesia, both in Australia and in the United Kingdom.
In the events as they occurred after the marriage, the Australian husband treated the wife badly. He deserted her and committed adultery against her. So
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she divorced him, or purported to divorce him, in Rhodesia and went back, with her unhappy memories, to live in her own country—which was this country. She now wants to marry again, and I suppose that, unless one holds religious views forbidding completely the dissolution of marriage, there is not a single person who would grudge her the opportunity of doing so.
Unfortunately, it has been decided by the High Court—and in my judgment rightly—that she cannot do so. If she did so she would be committing bigamy. This cruel anomaly which afflicts her is of course no fault of hers: it is the unfortunate, and I would think wholly unintended, result of the unhappy tangle which has taken place as a result of the unilateral açtions taken by Mr. Smith in purporting to declare Rhodesia independent, and of the legislation which we have passed to deal with the situation that resulted.
After the declaration of alleged independence we asked the courts of Rhodesia to continue in operation. That was the act of our predecessors, the previous Government, and this invitation at least met with support in all quarters of, I think, both Houses. We did not intend to disrupt social or family life, least of all for our own citizens. We did not wish to undermine the fabric of law and order. Our quarrel was with the alleged Government and with the illegal Parliament which supported it.
Unfortunately, as matters turned out, the judge who pronounced the Adams divorce in Rhodesia had not been properly appointed. He had been appointed very recently by the illegal authorities and had been dispensed by the illegal Parliament from the oaths of office and allegiance prescribed by the only Constitution we regard as lawful. In law, therefore, as it is recognised here, he was no judge at all, and in consequence the decree of divorce that he purported to pronounce was not an effective decree of divorce. That might have been of less importance had the wife gone on living in Rhodesia. But she had come back here: she had come back to her own country, and now wishes to marry an Englishman. We think that she should be allowed to do so. Since our action, the Rhodesia Order and legislation of 1965, has deprived the

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Rhodesian decree of validity, we think that the English courts should be given jurisdiction in place of the court from which we have taken the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, Mrs. Adams is not alone in her unhappy position. We think therefore that legislation is the answer.
Her Majesty's Government, therefore, now wish to provide an alternative venue where people in the position of Mrs. Adams can seek matrimonial relief in place of that which, on account of political circumstances, is no longer available to them. This the Order does by conferring on the courts in the United Kingdom jurisdiction to entertain proceedings for divorce or nullity of marriage of a person domiciled or resident in Southern Rhodesia, as if that person had been domiciled or resident within the United Kingdom, provided that the petitioner has first spent a qualifying period of six months' residence in this country before instituting proceedings here.
My Lords, it may be suggested that a simpler course would have been to validate divorce decrees granted in Rhodesia, but unfortunately this is not possible, or not desirable, since it would have awarded a degree of recognition to the acts of the illegal régime. It would thus have injected political controversy into a simple humanitarian measure. We have therefore pursued a different course which does not have that consequence. It must be remembered that this situation is one of the consequences of the illegality of the present régime, and although of course I am aware, as I suppose we all are, that the possible invalidity of other acts of the régime and its officials may also cause certain hardship (the quickest way to resolve these problems would be the restoration of normal relations between the two countries) this is the only legal problem so urgent and so simple that it can be dealt with out of hand in this way.
I feel sure that your Lordships agree that the problem of invalid divorces, and the distress necessarily associated with it, demands our sympathy and support. Indeed, the whole problem of what are called, I believe, "limping marriages" is one which I think ought to be dealt with by the Legislature as and when solutions prove possible. If we approve this Order,
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those who, as a result of the Adams case, could not get remarried here will be able to bring proceedings—for which, of course, legal aid will be available, if necessary, on the usual basis. Mrs. Adams herself will have to go back to the High Court, to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, but this time I hope with a reasonable certainty of success. In the present state of the lists she should be free, if I may coin a phrase, within weeks rather than months of the presentation of her petition. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Southern Rhodesia (Matrimonial Jurisdiction) Order 1970, be approved.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
9.21 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his clear explanation of this Order. The first thing I would say about it is that no Government, of course, could have dealt with this matter until the courts had decided what the law was, because your Lordships know that in this country it is for the courts and not the Executive to decide what the law is. But we have now had this case of Adams v. Adams, and I observe from a report of the judgment of the learned President that he said:
"Last March Mr. Stewart, then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, stated that the effect of the changes of status on individuals in Southern Rhodesia would fall to be considered by courts in this country.
"Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the present Secretary of State, had certified for the purposes of the present case that Southern Rhodesia had been and continued to be a colony within Her Majesty's dominions"—
I remember being in some trouble with the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, when I said that Southern Rhodesia remained a colony—
"and the United Kingdom Parliament and Government had responsibility for and jurisdiction over it as to the extent provided in section I of the 1965 Act. The British Government did not recognise Southern Rhodesia (or Rhodesia) as a state either de facto or de jure, and had not at any time since November 11, 1965, recognised any persons purporting to be constituting a government there either de facto or de jure".
The learned President then dealt with the law, and, he having done so, the report goes on:
"The only decree purporting to dissolve the marriage was that of April 9 by Mr. Justice Macaulay. Unless it was effective, Mrs. Adams

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continued to be married to Mr. Adams. His Lordship was compelled to hold that Mr. Justice Macaulay was not a judge de jure of the High Court of Rhodesia".
The learned President then dealt with the argument that the decree could be held to be valid as being one by a judge de facto. The report continues:
"His Lordship held that the doctrine of the validity of the acts of a de facto officer did not entitled him to recognise Mr. Justice Macaulay's decree as valid by the municipal law of Rhodesia".
My Lords, that being the legal position, there is undoubted hardship in the most important and personal aspect of anyone's life, and we on this side of the House are not less ready than the Government to see that hardship disposed of so far as possible. I must say clearly that if the Government had taken the alternative course to which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor referred—namely, of seeking to pass some form of legislation which validated the decree of the court of the illegal régime—we should have opposed it. Apart from anything else, that would have been contrary, of course, to the resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations, to which we were parties. But this Order does not do that. It merely confers jurisdiction on cur courts to deal with the marriage, and cannot be said in any way to be a recognition of the courts of the illegal régime.
This of course leaves open certain questions. There has yet been no decision as to whether the position would be the same if a decree had been granted by a judge who had been appointed a judge before the date of the illegal declaration of independence but who had since announced that he no longer considers himself to be sitting under the only valid Constitution but under a later and illegal one. Nor does this Order touch adoption or other fields of family life, and there are other possible difficulties; but in view of the hour I do not propose to take up your Lordships' time with them to-night. These difficulties may have to be met, if they can be, at a later date. For those reasons my noble friends offer no objection to the making of this Order.
9.25 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I hesitate to intervene in a debate which so far has been graced by the present Lord Chancellor and by an ex-Lord Chancellor; but I should like to put a point which I think is relevant to this particular case. I do not know of any authority which has withdrawn from the judges of the High Court of Rhodesia their de jure jurisdiction in respect of the recognition that their judgments be recognised by the courts in the United Kingdom. It is my impression that all judges who were appointed before U.D.I. by Her Majesty the Queen and who continued afterwards still remain, at law, judges having legal authority in respect of the domestic law in this country where their judgments are made in Rhodesia. If I have put my point obscurely and without technical expertise, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me.
There are five judges in the High Court of Rhodesia at the present moment, the Lord Chief Justice and four puisne judges, who were appointed before U.D.I. It is the practice of the courts of Southern Rhodesia to publish the names of judges sitting on particular days in the High Court and it is open to advocates who are representing petitioners in relation to causes coming before the High Court to request that their cases be heard by a particular judge. In those circumstances, it would have been open for the advocates who represented Mrs. Adams during her divorce proceedings in Rhodesia to ensure that the case was heard by a judge appointed before U.D.I.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has said that there is no case so far to say whether a judgment by such a judge would have been valid in the United Kingdom courts. But I do not think he would argue that there is a very strong; probability that such a judgment would have been invalid. In fact it may be—though I have no evidence of the fact—that re-marriages have taken place subsequent to judgments of that sort given in the courts of Rhodesia since U.D.I. which are legally recognised in the United Kingdom. In those circumstances, if my argument is correct,

723
Mrs. Adams could have had a valid divorce in Rhodesia.
I do not wish in any way to criticise or to stand in the way of a lady who deserves our sympathy and who wishes now to remarry and to resume a happy life here in the United Kingdom. All I am saying is that I am not sure why Her Majesty's Government have taken this particular case as a first step in ameliorating the hardships which are undoubtedly being inflicted upon a large number of individuals in Rhodesia as a result of sanctions following U.D.I.
My Lords, there are many faithful and loyal individuals in Rhodesia who have done their best to support the cause of Great Britain, supported by previous Governments and the present Government, in trying to ensure that Rhodesia remains part of the association of British countries and in the Commonwealth. Those people have suffered—and far more so, if I may say so—than Mrs. Adams. I know, and have represented to the Government, individual cases that relate to passports, to the financial hardships of elderly people whose funds are blocked here and who perhaps have only a very few years to live and are living in Rhodesia in increasing austerity and difficulty. I do not have anything against helping a particular individual like Mrs. Adams, but if this principle is to be accepted, why does it not apply to other far more deserving cases—people who have made far greater sacrifices on behalf of what they believe to be right and what we believe to be right—than this particular lady? Yet I find the Government hurrying through legislation for a particular case, legislation which in fact is the first part of the amelioration—other than the removal of the surcharge on stamps—of individuals who have suffered hardship.
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, rightly said that the way out of our present problems over Rhodesia is to find some political solution, and I have no doubt that the Government will try to do so. Those of us interested in this subject will watch carefully the conditions under which the negotiations which have started are carried on. We shall do our best to ensure that there is no departure from the principles which both Governments have
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laid down as being the prerequisite to any settlement. But we must consider what would be the position if in fact no settlement proves possible. What are the Government then going to do, on the principle of the amelioration of the situation of Mrs. Adams, in respect of other British people in Rhodesia; and, even more, in respect of the African population which has had no part in, or no control whatever over, the existing circumstances, and certainly is not a beneficiary from those circumstances?
I have been greatly tempted, because of the sudden change in the business of your Lordships' House, to put forward ideas on the more general subject which would have been appropriate to the other Order. But I realised, on more mature thought, that this would be against the interests of the House, and certainly against its practice, and so I have no wish to do so. But I want to make the point, with great sincerity and all the force at my disposal, that I think it very peculiar that Her Majesty's Government should take up this particular case as, presumably, the first step towards some amelioration of the impact of sanctions on innocent people, when there are so many other much more important and much more demanding cases which they should have taken up before. However, as I say, I do not want to stand in the way of the passage of this particular Order. I only hope that the Government are doing something which is necessary, though from my reading of the legal situation, and the relation between the Judges of Rhodesia and the High Court here, I do not think that it was really necessary at all.
9.34 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, perhaps I may reply seriatim to the two speeches which have been made, and in, I hope, relatively few words. I am grateful for the general blessing that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, gave this Order from the Opposition Front Bench. I must say to him that if there is any vice in the Order I must accept the responsibility of it myself. And if there is any virtue I am entitled to claim some small credit. It seemed to me there was no reason to delay a modest measure to alleviate hardship which arose out of a question of status when a device (I use the word

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without, I think, and I hope, any pejorative connotation) could be employed to give relief without raising the political questions which were very present in the minds of both the noble and learned Lord and also my noble friend Lord Alport.
I rather suspect that my noble friend Lord Alport made the speech he did because to some extent he was frustrated by the course of events which led to the postponement of the other Rhodesia Order about which, I suspect, he really wished to make his views known. I must tell him that his criticism of this Order is wholly unreasonable. In the first place, made it absolutely plain, in moving the Order, that it does not relate to an individual case, but relates to a limited class of case. I mentioned the case of Mrs. Adams only because the facts of her case were public, and I could dilate upon them without embarrassment to her or to the Government. But I did so solely by way of illustration, and I made that plain. This is not a particular case we are dealing with; it is a group of cases.
Secondly, hardship does not fall on people in Rhodesia at all in this class of case. If a person has been divorced in Rhodesia, the fact that that divorce is not recognised outside Rhodesia is for him no hardship at all because, rightly or wrongly, it is recognised inside his country. The hardship arises when a person who has a Rhodesian "divorce" (I use the word in inverted commas and without prejudice) comes to live somewhere else where it is not recognised and wants to marry again. Then he is faced with the alternative, as in all limited marriages, of committing bigamy in the country where he has come to reside or of living in sin. Personally I think that that is intolerable.
I cannot see why my noble friend Lord Alport sees fit to say that it is unnecessary to deal with it when a perfectly legitimate way of dealing with it is open to the Government.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I did not say that it is unnecessary, but that there are other ways in which it could be dealt with. The fact that the lady in question has been misled by her advocate in Rhodesia should mean that something has to be put right; but what I said was that there are many other cases of hardship far
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greater to which the Government should pay attention.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think that when my noble friend comes to read in Hansard what he actually said he will find that my account of this is more accurate than that which he has just given. In the first place, I think it would have been impossible, in the context of what is happening in Rhodesia, to ask for a particular judge on the precise ground that the other would not have given a decree valid in Great Britain. I think that that is a fatuous suggestion. Secondly, it would have been extremely injudicious of her to do so, from the point of view of English law.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, made it perfectly clear that it has not yet been decided by the courts in this country that a judge who was appointed before U.D.I. but who has now given his adherence to the new Constitution would be delivering a valid decree if he gave a decree of divorce affecting the status of an individual and that individual were then to come to this country or go somewhere else outside Rhodesia. I do not venture to express an opinion, either Aye or No, about that problem because it would have to be decided by the courts, if and when it should arise, and the learned President in the Adams case, though he raised the issue, did not find it necessary to decide it.
All I can tell my noble friend is that there is a formidable number of people who take a view opposite to that which he thought fit to express, and anybody who took his advice on this would be taking the advice of someone who is not qualified to give it. It would be most injudicious to assume that divorces pronounced by judges who have adhered to the illegal régime would be recognised in this country. They may be or they may not be, but if I were in that position I should not like to take the risk, or to assume before a valid decision was made in this country asserting it, that such was the case.
Any form of quarrel between two countries leads to hardship among the persons who reside in either of them. This is common to all disputes of a political character between two nations. Some of it cannot be avoided. Obviously,

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those which arise from financial regulations and restrictions cannot be avoided. We in the Government want to solve the problem, if we can, but if it is going to be solved, it is going to be solved by political means and not by a legal device one way or the other. This is a problem which affects status and not contract, which can be met by a device which does not involve solving the political issues. I must say that I do take amiss my noble friend's criticism of the Government for alleviating a hardship in a way which can be done without offending anybody at all.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

FUTURE BUSINESS: METRICATION
9.40 p.m.
VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: My Lords, I should like to inform the House that following discussions through the usual channels it has been decided, in view of the debate on the Rhodesian Order, which is now to be taken as first business, and of other business which is likely to take some time, that it would be unreasonable to hold the debate on metrication down for to-morrow. It is hoped to arrange a new date for this before Christmas.

TRENT AND LINCOLNSHIRE WATER BILL [H.L.]
The Queen's consent signified, and Bill reported from the Select Committee with Amendments.
BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL
Brought from the Commons, read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL
Brought from the Commons, and (pursuant to the Resolutions of May 20 last, a declaration of the Agent having been deposited in the Private Bill Office) Bill read la and, pro forma, read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
  JUSTICES OF THE PEACE AND STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATES
  JUSTICES OF THE PEACE AND STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATES
  SCOTTISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT: FUTURE STRUCTURE
  SCOTTISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT: FUTURE STRUCTURE
  SUPREME COURT RULES: PUBLICATION OF AMENDMENTS
  SUPREME COURT RULES: PUBLICATION OF AMENDMENTS