Sitting of 4 December 1972

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  TRADE AND INDUSTRY

    North Staffordshire (Area Status)
    Mr. Goldingasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will now designate North Staffordshire as an intermediate area.
    The Minister for Industrial Development (Mr. Christopher Chataway): I hope to reply shortly to the representations put by the hon. Member and his colleagues to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State on 27th November.
    Mr. Golding: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear particularly in mind the fact that the unemployment rate in Newcastle-under-Lyme is 4·2 per cent.? Will he bear in mind also that as South Cheshire has been deemed an intermediate area jobs are being lost from North Staffordshire by my constituents because of the removal of work to Winsford?
    Mr. Chataway: I shall bear in mind what the hon. Genitleman has said, but no doubt he knows that during the last 10 years unemployment in the area has been running at or below the monthly average for Great Britain as a whole. In 1971 and for the first 10 months of 1972 it was again lower than the average for the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Ashley: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that North Staffordshire needs three guarantees urgently: first, that the Shelton steelworks will not be closed; secondly, that its industry will be diversified; and thirdly, that the area will be granted intermediate status in view of the threatened decline of some of its major industries? Will the right hon. Gentle-
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    man give those assurances today in order to demonstrate that he believes that prevention is better than cure?
    Mr. Chataway: The hon. Gentleman will know that I cannot anticipate any statement about steel investment, but I shall bear in mind what he has said. I am sure he will have taken encouragement from the substantial decline in the unemployment figures over recent months.

    German Democratic Republic
    Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement about trade with the German Democratic Republic; how the current year compares with last year; and what proposals he has for expanding trade between the United Kingdom and the German Democratic Republic in the future.
    The Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs (Sir Geoffrey Howe): Our trade with the GDR increased considerably in 1970 and again in 1971, though it has fallen slightly in the first 10 months of this year. The Government will continue to encourage and assist trade with the GDR.
    Mrs. Short: But last year our exports to the GDR were £17 million, while in the same year West Germany's exports to the GDR were about £250 million. Does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman think it is time that he produced some concrete ideas on how to expand trade in this area? Will he perhaps consider suggesting that his right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary should give recognition to the GDR? That might help our trading situation.
    Sir G. Howe: There has been a modest decline in the first 10 months of this year because of a small reduction in GDR imports. As the hon. Lady appreciates, recognition is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary.
    Mrs. Short: Tell him.
    Mr. Jay: Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether it is a fact that after 1st January next immigrants from East Germany will be able to enter this country freely on a level with other Common Market citizens and have priority—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Question has nothing to do with immigration.

    Petroleum Division (Scotland)
    Dr. Dickson Mabonasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will establish a separate office of the Petroleum Division of his Department in Scotland.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Peter Emery): No, Sir. My Department already has three offices in Scotland.
    Dr. Mabon: Will the hon. Gentleman look at this afresh because, in addition to the arguments about the dispersal of Government offices and the fact that Scotland will be a substantial oil-producing European country in the not-too-distant future, there is an obvious dichotomy of view between his Department and the Scottish Office on the question of, for example, a White Paper on North Sea oil? Is it not high time that the Government recognised the importance of having a petroleum section in Scotland?
    Mr. Emery: I immediately reject the concept that there is any dichotomy of view between the Scottish Office and the Department of Trade and Industry. I hope to be able to prove that slightly more substantially during the debate that will take place in, I think, the Scottish Grand Committee which I shall be attending tomorrow.
    Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: Is my hon. Friend aware that the major oil companies are building large headquarters for their operations in the north-east of Scotland, employing between 200 and 300 people each? Is not there some need for the Government to balance this investment of resources?
    Mr. Emery: Yes, Sir. It is important to realise, though, that the offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness are there specifically to assist. The offices at Edinburgh have a specific responsibility to help those oil interests that are in Scotland.
    Mr. Russell Johnston: Is the hon. Gentleman saying, in response to the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson
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    Mabon), that in his view the existing situation is satisfactory? If that is what the hon. Gentleman is saying, I must tell him that that view is not accepted by many people in Scotland.
    Mr. Emery: I am never satisfied with anything, I always want to improve it. If the hon. Gentleman will come to the Scottish Grand Committee, he will find that some things will be debated and announced there dealing with the situation in Scotland which will be helpful.
    Mr. Benn: But is the hon. Gentleman aware that the problem is not just the interests of the oil industry in Scotland but Scottish interests in this matter and the need for a White Paper, so that the House and the country can get a full measure of the policy issues involved?
    Mr. Emery: Not only am I aware of that: I spent a whole week touring Scotland dealing with this. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry has said, a publication will be brought forward dealing with the oil industry and the North Sea, both oil and gas, not only for Scotland but for the whole United Kingdom.

    Prices
    Mr. William Priceasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many people have complained to his Department about price increases since the freeze was introduced.
    Mr. Sydney Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many representations have been made to his Department's special prices unit since 6th November; and if he will make a statement on the action the Government has taken.
    Sir G. Howe: My Department had received 25,000 inquiries, including 4,660 complaints, by the end of the last week. The action taken depended on the nature of the inquiry.
    Mr. Price: Is it not clear from those figures that the Government's prices freeze is at best a joke and at worst an outright fraud? Is it not apparent that, between now and Christmas, there will be massive price increases and that the only effect of the Government's policies will be to reduce the amount of money in the pockets of working people?
    Sir G. Howe: The effect is quite the contrary of what the hon. Gentleman suggests. The great bulk of the inquiries have been from those in trade and industry, seeking advice on what they must do to comply with the standstill. I cannot emphasise too strongly the extent to which that co-operation is forthcoming. Enterprises supplying a variety of goods have been reducing prices as a result of the complaints and inquiries made.
    Mr. Chapman: I appreciate the measures that the Government have taken since these two Questions were put down. Would not my right hon. and learned Friend agree that there is a continuing need to inform the public of how and where to make representations if they feel that they have complaints about price increases?
    Sir G. Howe: My hon. Friend will appreciate that the public have been continuously informed, by Press advertisements and in other ways, of the telephone numbers and addresses to which they can make representations, regionally as well as in London, and a substantial proportion of the representations have been made regionally and not in London.
    Mr. Milne: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman take note of the massive increases being imposed on holidaymakers by the travel and holiday firms, and in particular of the fact that the bulk of these holidays will be booked during the freeze although the holidays themselves will be taken later? Will he examine this point?
    Sir G. Howe: That is one of the points already under examination.
    Mr. Goodhart: Is it not plain that angry housewives would do much better to telephone their local weights and measures inspectorate rather than try to get through to a London number which is often engaged?
    Sir G. Howe: They can obtain a number locally, quite apart from the number in London. The rôle of weights and measures inspectors is something that one must consider, remembering that they have substantial duties laid on them under other statutes.
    Mr. Alan Williams: The telephone complaints procedure is now seen as what
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    it always was—an empty public relations gimmick. Does the Minister realise that what is so worrying about the present situation is the question of how on earth, if the Government's price vetting system is so inept at present, it will cope with the national price rise chaos in April as a result of the Government's own value added tax? If the Government doubt that this will be the case, I would invite the Minister to look at the exposé in yesterday's Sunday Times of the actions—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. This is Question Time.
    Mr. Williams: And this is an important question, Sir.
    Mr. Speaker: Then the hon. Member must ask a question: he must not make a statement.
    Mr. Williams: I invited the Minister to look at a report in yesterday's Sunday Times. Will he comment upon the advice that has been given by Wall's, a member of the vast Unilever group, on how to make profit out of the value added tax?
    Sir G. Howe: On the last point, that report is one that I have read. It is plain that there is no justification for a straight 10 per cent. increase in existing prices, and there will not be, even when VAT is introduced. I repudiate the suggestion that there will be anything like chaos when we come to that point. Advice will be given in relation to a number of matters as to what should be done to maintain price levels properly at that stage.
    I entirely reject the suggestion that the system of telephone complaints and inquiries is unacceptable or is not working. As I have said, enterprises supplying a whole range of products have been reducing prices ranging from things like carpets and knitting wools on the one hand to shoes and hotel accommodation on the other.
    Mrs. Renée Short: What about food prices?
    Sir G. Howe: When that is supported by the overwhelming voluntary support for the policy which is manifestly forthcoming, there is every reason to believe that it is successful.

    Coal Industry
    Mr. McGuireasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what has been the increase in productivity and what change has taken place in absenteeism in the coal industry since the end of the strike.
    Mr. Emery: Output per man since the strike has been below last year's level, but output per man shift is up by 2·3 per cent. It is interesting to note that the absence percentage has fallen from 17·2 per cent. to 16·2 per cent. of the total labour force.
    Mr. McGuire: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that on those figures output per man shift will soon reach new record levels in the industry and that this, coupled with the increased attendance, shows that the morale of the mining industry is very high and that anything that would jeopardise or weaken it, such as unnecessarily delaying the Coal Bill that we are all expecting, would be very foolish?
    Mr. Emery: I am delighted to hear that morale is high; the claim that production per man shift is nearing record levels is correct. I hope that this will continue, because it will be for the benefit of the industry and of the nation.
    Mr. Harper: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the proper way of assessing an increase in productivity is the output per man shift, which on his own figures has risen by 2·3 per cent.? In view of the good faith of the miners, the increase in productivity and the lowering of the absentee rates since the ending of the strike, will the hon. Gentleman ask his right hon. Friend seriously to consider a proper restructuring of the industry in the forthcoming Coal Bill?
    Mr. Emery: The hon. Member will know that the most serious consideration has been given to this matter. Very extensive consultations have taken place between the unions and the National Coal Board and I believe that when a statement is made this will be acceptable to the unions, to the industry and to the country.

    Heathrow (Aircraft Movements)
    Mr. Barnesasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many aircraft movements there were during 1971 in and out of Heathrow; how many he estimates there will be in 1980; and what estimate he has made of the effect that the opening of Maplin will have on traffic at Heathrow.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Cranley Onslow): In the year ended 31st March 1972 there were 253,711 air transport movements at Heathrow. By 1980 the number is estimated to rise to about 325,000. After the opening of Maplin it will be possible to impose stricter limits on air traffic movements both at Heathrow and Gatwick, but it is too early to say what these will be.
    Mr. Barnes: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the view, which is being put forward in certain quarters, that a third London airport is not really needed is very unrealistic? Is it not the case that the problem of aircraft noise will be intolerable enough in the years immediately before Maplin becomes operational, especially for people living around Heathrow, let alone what it will be like if Maplin is not built?
    Mr. Onslow: The Government have made it clear that they see a need for a third London airport, and measures are going ahead to make this available. On the second point, I would not necessarily accept that this increase in movements will bring about a directly proportionate increase in the amount of disturbance. There is much encouragement to be derived from the fact that new, quieter types of aircraft will be coming into service at Heathrow in increasing numbers.
    Mr. Jessel: Does my hon. Friend foresee that any remaining really noisy types of aircraft still in service when Maplin opens can be directed through Maplin instead of through Heathrow, where there is a far larger number of people living in the surrounding area?
    Mr. Onslow: It is too early to take firm decisions about the pattern of air traffic movements in 1980.
    Mr. Mason: Since larger aircraft are being introduced which may necessitate less movement, and since quieter aircraft engines are now being introduced, plus the added development of the RB211 which is under experiment and which will halve the present noise of the RB211 when it is fitted in Tristars, is not the hon. Gentleman aware that technology seems to be advancing far more rapidly than the need for Maplin? Should not the Government reconsider whether it is necessary to embark upon expenditure of at least £1,000 million when technology is rapidly overtaking that development.
    Mr. Onslow: The right hon. Gentleman is getting a little confused between advances in engineering and quitening engines and the need for runways of conventional length.

    Electricity Generating Capacity
    Mr. David Stoddartasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will give details of the total installed generating capacity of the Central Electricity Generating Board on 30th November, 1972, and the percentage available to meet demand.
    The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Walker): The total installed output capacity was 55,130 MW; and 41,540 MW or 75·3 per cent. was available on that day to meet the peak demand of 37,265 MW.
    Mr. Stoddart: Is the Secretary of State aware that those figures reveal a very serious situation? If we have a very hard winter, it could well be that we shall have a third power crisis upon us. The right hon. Gentleman must be aware of the difficulties with nuclear energy and with the 500 MW sets which have been installed, which have not by any means reached the capacity they should. Does he agree that this is a disturbing situation, and will he keep a very careful watch on the position throughout the winter?
    Mr. Walker: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Palmer: Should not the right hon. Gentleman and the Central Electricity Generating Board take the country into their confidence? The CEGB official
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    figures show that even under favourable conditions there is a plant margin of only just over 2½ per cent. and under severe weather conditions there is a large deficit. There should be, on paper, a margin of between 17 per cent. and 20 per cent.
    Mr. Walker: The CEGB is confident that during peak winter demand it expects to have about 80 per cent. availability which, if that is so, should meet any normal peak demand.
    Mr. Benn: Will the right hon. Gentleman give the House the figures broken down by different types of generating plant, so that we may know where the failure is?
    Mr. Walker: If the right hon. Gentleman would like to table a Question about that, I shall certainly see that that is done.
    Mr. Palmerasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he is satisfied that sufficient generating plant will be available on the system of the Central Electricity Generating Board to meet the estimated maximum demand this winter; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Emery: I am advised by the Chairman of the CEGB that, with the continued co-operation of all staff, he hopes to have sufficient generating plant available to meet the estimated maximum demand this winter.
    Mr. Palmer: Do not the hon. Gentleman's reply and the earlier reply of the Secretary of State show a remarkable complacency about a very serious situation? Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to send him the actual figures of plant capacity, because they will add to his store of information?
    Mr. Emery: There is nothing complacent about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. May I give the hon. Gentleman the most recent information, which is dated 30th November? It gives the CEGB output capacity as 55,130 megawatts and the latest CEGB estimate of maximum demand this winter in average cold spell weather is 42,900 megawatts. The required availability would thus be 78 per cent. and with late maintenance coming on flow it is estimated to be 75 per cent. There is nothing complacent about that.
    Mr. David Stoddart: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that his reply to the supplementary question of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) shows just how complacent he is, because the figures given to me earlier today by the Secretary of State reveal a more serious situation in the electricity supply industry than many of us had realised? Will the hon. Gentleman get off his complacent backside and have fresh conversations with the CEGB to ensure that it has the necessary plant capacity? I assure him that the electricity supply situation is balanced on a knife edge, and I hope that lie will take that warning.
    Mr. Emery: I merely underline the points which I have made. My hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and myself are frequently in consultation with the CEGB and the degree of capacity to which I referred in my reply is considerably more than was available during most of the Labour Government's period of office.
    Mr. Benn: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm in simple language that as far as the Government are concerned there is no risk of power cuts this winter?
    Mr. Emery: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, it is quite impossible to answer that question. It depends on the labour position. It also depends on the breakdown position, about which nobody knows anything. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman should try to get away with that sort of question.
    Mr. Ridley: Does my hon. Friend agree that, if the position is balanced rather finely this winter, the blame should be laid at the door of those who administered the investment programme for the industry seven years ago?
    Mr. Emery: I thank my hon. Friend for that question, to which the answer is, of course, "Yes, Sir".

    Steel Prices
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what estimate he has made of the current average disparities between the British Steel Corporation's prices and those of steel producers within the European
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    Community; and if he will make a statement on the outcome of his discussions with the European Commission and with the British Steel Corporation regarding the impact of the standstill on British Steel Corporation pricing after 1st January.
    Mr. Peter Walker: With permission I will arrange for a table of comparisons provided by the British Steel Corporation to be placed in the OFFICIAL REPORT. On the second part of the Question I hope to be able to make an announcement in the course of the next few days.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I am grateful for the latter part of my right hon. Friend's reply. He would agree, would he not, that this is a matter of extreme urgency in view of the fact that, as of 1st January, the British Steel Corporation and the private sector are liable to face prosecutions in Europe if they do not raise prices and prosecutions in Britain if they do? Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance here and now that if there were to be any move to basing point pricing during the period of the freeze, customers in Scotland and elsewhere who had steel cost increases would he allowed to pass on those increases?
    Mr. Walker: I do not envisage any such difficulty. Talks are taking place with the Commission. I hope that my hon. Friend will be satisfied with the announcement which I shall make within a few days' time.
    Mr. Varley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that he will not link this particular aspect of steel with the long-term strategy for production targets in the BSC? Will he also answer this point, which has not been answered from the Dispatch Box? Will he give an absolute assurance that the Counter-Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Act will over-ride the European Communities Act in this respect?
    Mr. Walker: Yes, Sir. Certainly the Government have made it clear that during this period steel prices will not rise. Therefore, we are talking to the Commission about this aspect. The Commission is well aware of the importance to Europe of sensible anti-inflation policies.
    Following is the information:
    The following table compares published home trade prices in the countries of the Six with British Steel Corporation prices at 30th November, 1972.

    (B.S.C. prices = 100)

    Product

    United Kingdom

    West Germany

    France

    Italy

    Belgium

    Netherlands

    Luxembourg

    Billets

    100

    124

    115

    94

    118

    —

    116

    Medium Plates

    100

    129

    124

    119

    112

    102

    134

    Boiler Plates

    100

    143

    141

    124

    129

    132

    —

    Beams Structural

    100

    122

    119

    123

    123

    —

    133

    Steel for Reinforcement

    100

    112

    111

    106

    110

    103

    122

    Hot Rolled Strip

    100

    117

    114

    111

    117

    108

    118

    Hot Rolled Coil

    100

    119

    112

    113

    108

    103

    —

    Converted at rates of exchange ruling during November.
    All prices adjusted to a comparable delivered basis.
    Actual price levels in the Community can be substantially below list prices due to discounts and other arrangements.

    Oil Companies
    Mr. Thomas Coxasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what recent discussions he has had with the oil companies operating in this country.
    Mr. Peter Walker: Both I and my colleagues maintain close contacts with oil companies.
    Mr. Cox: I thank the Minister for that reply, but is he not aware that many people now believe that oil companies which are operating in the North Sea are starting to make very large profits at the expense of the British consumer who has to pay for the product? Therefore, when the right hon. Gentleman next meets oil company representatives, will he call upon them to open their financial accounts for independent inspection so that the British people can start to see just what are the financial returns of these oil companies?
    Mr. Walker: I shall certainly consider the hon. Gentleman's suggestion on that point. It is my objective, with all sorts of oil companies, to see that overall, nationally, we receive the fullest benefit possible from North Sea oil and gas.
    Mr. Millan: When the Minister meets the oil companies, will he get them to give details of prospective orders for equipment, instead of details of what they have ordered in the past, so that we can get more opportunities for British firms to compete for them?
    Mr. Walker: Certainly I intend to do everything possible to see that British firms benefit to the maximum from these very important developments which are
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    taking place as a result of the finds in the North Sea.

    Nuclear Power Stations
    Mr. Eadieasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will ensure that all future nuclear power stations are built underground to reduce the possible safety hazards.
    Mr. Emery: No, Sir.
    Mr. Eadie: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Dr. Edward Teller, known as the father of the H-bomb, said on a recent visit to London that he thinks all future nuclear power stations should be buried at least 500 ft. below the earth's surface and 200 ft. below the surface if they are under water? Does he realise that we are talking about a depth of probably twice that of the deepest part of the London Underground system? Is the hon. Gentleman so complacent that he does not consider that a statement made by such an eminent man requires consideration in relation to the Government's policy considerations?
    Mr. Emery: I never suggested that the statement had not had consideration. The safety of nuclear power stations must depend primarily on the quality of engineering and the materials that go into them. The existing control over their siting and the design, construction and operation are looked at by the Nuclear Inspectorate, the members of which are very highly qualified men in their own right. We attempt to ensure that we have the very best advice on the matter of nuclear safety, which is extremely important.

    Shipping Industry
    Mr. Willeyasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a statement on assistance to the British shipping industry for placing orders in British shipyards.
    Mr. R. C. Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he has yet received proposals from the Chamber of Shipping and the Shipbuilders and Repairers National Association concerning the placing of more orders by the British shipping industry in British shipyards; and what action he proposes to take thereon.
    Mr. Peter Walker: Consultations about the use of my selective powers under the Science and Technology Act and the Industry Act are continuing.
    Mr. Willey: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that this is bitterly disappointing to the shipbuilding industry? I appreciate his difficulties, but is he aware that in Sunderland we have contracts waiting to be signed which simply cannot be signed until the Government take a decision? Will the right hon. Gentleman consider another suggestion of mine: that he should set up a working group representing both industries, perhaps under the chairmanship of his Under-Secretary, to examine continuously the enormous importance of bringing British orders into British yards?
    Mr. Walker: Certainly my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industrial Development is having practical discussions at present with both sides of industry. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the important thing is to see that we do not give aid that results in substantially increased orders for Japanese shipyards. Therefore, talks are continuing on those lines.
    Dame Irene Ward: Although I know that my right hon. Friend has many problems on his hands, is he aware that his answer is not very satisfactory for the industries concerned or for our men who want employment? How much longer will they and the House, and all workers and technicians concerned, have to wait? My right hon. Friend is a very speedy Minister. I hope that on this matter he will put on his skates and speed it up a little more.
    Mr. Walker: We have already put proposals to both sides of the industry regarding high technology ships. In 1969, 69 per cent. of the tonnage ordered by United Kingdom shipping companies was placed abroad. In 1970 the figure was 82 per cent., and there were valid reasons for this. It is important to see that we use the Acts in such a way that we get the advantage of good management producing good ships.
    Mr. Booth: Does the Secretary of State appreciate that the problem of ensuring that orders went to British shipyards rather than Japanese yards was tackled under the shipbuilding industry leglisation of the Labour Government and that the serious decline in orders by the British industry has taken place as a direct result of withdrawing investment grants? In the light of this, will the right hon. Gentleman make an early statement of Government policy in respect of the British shipping industry's ordering?
    Mr. Walker: The fact is that in the last year of the Labour Government—1970—82 per cent. of orders went abroad.
    Mr. Willey: On a point of order. In order to assist the Secretary of State, I give notice that I shall try to raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest opportunity.
    Mr. Boothasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what gross tonnage of ships was ordered by United Kingdom shipping companies from United Kingdom shipyards in the last 12 months for which figures are available; and what tonnage was ordered in the last 12 months in which investment grants were available.
    Mr. Chataway: The two figures are respectively: 0.3 million gross tons during the 12-month period ended September, 1972, and 1·3 million gross tons during the 12-month period ended October, 1970. There has in the same period been a susbtantial decline in world net new orders.
    Mr. Booth: As those figures show that there has been a decline of more than 50 per cent. in the orders placed by British shipping companies with British yards, and as most of the British shipyards are in areas of very high unemployment, does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that it is urgent that measures

    895
    should be taken by his Department, the Chamber of Shipping and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions to restore some of the orders of British shipping companies to British yards?
    Mr. Chataway: The House knows of the discussions which we have had with both those bodies and of the assistance which we have given to the shipbuilding industry. But the hon. Gentleman should take into account that the cost of shipping grants was over £300 million and that in the last year of their operation 82 per cent. of the orders went to foreign yards. Therefore, the scheme did far more good to foreign yards than it did to British yards.
    Mr. Churchill: Will my right hon. Friend say whether the British taxpayer is being called upon to provide subsidies for small ships built for British owners in foreign yards—
    Mr. Kaufman: Yachts.
    Mr. Churchill: —while shipbuilding workers are unemployed in this country, particularly on the Manchester Ship Canal, in my constituency? If so, will he investigate the matter?
    Mr. Chataway: My hon. Friend is probably referring to the scheme for fishing vessels which is administered by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. It is true that a small proportion of the ships for which grants are paid are built in foreign yards. We are subject to the GATT procedures, although there is a procedure which we administer to ensure that foreign competition is fair and that orders do not go abroad unless the competition is fair.

    Isle of Sheppey
    Mr. Moateasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will take steps to encourage industrial development on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, where unemployment was at a rate of 5·8 per cent. in October 1972, since when the closure has been announced of Pilkington's glass works.
    Mr. Chataway: The Government's tax incentives will assist development in this area. The Government also recognise that within the non-assisted areas
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    there will be pockets of considerable difficulty and these will be taken into account when considering IDC applications.
    Mr. Moate: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply and for the way in which a deputation was recently received in connection with the high rate of unemployment on the Isle of Sheppey. I ask him to recognise that a rate of 5·8 per cent. is higher than in many assisted areas, and that it is likely to become even higher as a result of the recent closure. There are particular needs, just as with the assisted areas, to replace major industries. Will my right hon. Friend try to find a way of providing short-term specific assistance to such areas?
    Mr. Chataway: I recognise that the rate of unemployment to which my hon. Friend referred is much too high. It is a full 2 per cent. lower than it was a year ago, but I agree that we have a substantial way to go before we can be satisfied with the situation there.
    Mr. Marten: Is not this an area where the Europeans from the Common Market should be piling in, like the All-Black rugger scrum, to get the take-up of business? That is what we were told. Has something gone wrong?
    Mr. Chataway: No, Sir. I share the expectations and enthusiasm of my right hon. Friend. I am certain that not only this area but many other areas of Britain will benefit substantially from the entry to which we all look forward.

    Rolls-Royce
    Mr. Rostasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when the first annual report and accounts of Rolls-Royce (1971) Limited will be published.
    Mr. Onslow: The first report and accounts for the period up to 31st December 1971 were published on 23rd August. Copies were placed in the Library.
    Mr. Rost: Is my hon. Friend aware that even the auditors of the accounts admitted that they were unrealistic as the payments for the assets acquired nearly two years ago have still not been made, that a suspense account exists on the

    897
    accounts for £77 million towards such payment? Why was the hearing of the independent assessor again deferred?
    Mr. Onslow: My hon. Friend knows that the delays in the hearing have been due to difficulties experienced by the parties involved, and the expert has decided that the hearing should take place at a deferred date.
    Mr. Dalyell: Why was not confidence shown in the independent assessor?
    Mr. Onslow: I do not know what on earth the hon. Gentleman is talking about.
    Mr. Rost: On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, and the extreme public concern, I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest opportunity.
    Mr. Whiteheadasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what has been the cost to date of the winding-up of the operations of Rolls-Royce Limited.
    Mr. Onslow: This is a matter for the joint liquidators.
    Mr. Whitehead: But is the hon. Gentleman aware that there have been major shifts in executive control at the behest of the Government in a firm for which these negotiations are still taking place? In view of the widespread misgivings about the cost of this operation and the length of time involved, is it not time that the Government stopped their flippant attitude towards the activities of the assessor and brought these very expensive negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion?
    Mr. Onslow: I am not sure how the hon. Gentleman draws those conclusions from my reply. However, I assure him that the Government are not being flippant about this matter. Since 4th February the Government have paid £55 million in respect of the assets from the receiver and for working capital. That does not seem to me to indicate flippancy.
    Mr. Rost: Is not the cost of the winding-up influenced by the delay in paying the money for the acquisition of the assets? Therefore, is not that an extra liability on the creditors and shareholders?
    Mr. Onslow: These are matters which must be determined by the expert whom the parties agreed to appoint to resolve the differences between them. It would not be right for me to comment on them.
    Mr. Dalyell: On what criteria do the Government feel justified in interfering in the choice or otherwise of people in Rolls-Royce?
    Mr. Onslow: The hon. Gentleman should not anticipate his later Question on the Order Paper, but the criterion which I apply when answering questions is that it would be wholly invidious to get involved in matters of that kind.

    Tariffs
    Mr. Martenasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what proposals he has for the next round of tariff reductions in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
    Mr. Peter Walker: We shall play our full part in the preparatory work within the enlarged Community which, as agreed at the summit conference, will decide by July next year on a global approach to the 1973 trade negotiations.
    Mr. Marten: Bearing in mind that in four weeks' time Britain loses its independent voice within the GATT, will my right hon. Friend say now, before we lose that independent voice, whether the Government support the American suggestion for abolishing tariffs in industrial trade and whether by contrast they oppose the absurd Common Market attitude that the common external tariff must be maintained merely as a crucial element in holding the Common Market together?
    Mr. Walker: The period over which the discussions will take place comes after we have joined the Community, and it is right that on these matters we should confer with our partners in the Community as to the joint approach of Europe on the topic.
    Mr. Benn: Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that where there are Community talks of that kind, the House should not be told the attitude of the British Government in advance and that the matter is to be left entirely to negotiation with the Common Market partners, or are we to be given the opportunity of knowing what is the negotiating position of the British

    899
    Ministers so that we may have a view before the talks take place?
    Mr. Walker: The attitudes and views of British Ministers on these topics will be known, but on such a matter we shall review with our partners basic patterns of world trade and develop a coherent policy.
    Mr. Jay: As the American proposals are much the most far-reaching and most liberal since the Kennedy Round, cannot the Government say now that they will broadly support them?
    Mr. Walker: It is the Government's duty first to confer and discuss the matter with our future partners in the Community and to develop a coherent policy which is very much in the interests of Europe and Britain.
    Mr. Powell: In what form will the views and proposals of Her Majesty's Government be laid before the House in advance of the discussions?
    Mr. Walker: I shall consider ways in which the House can be kept informed of the discussion we have with our partners in the Community.

    Trading Stamps
    Mrs. Sally Oppenheimasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if, in his forthcoming legislation on consumer protection, he will seek to ensure that where a multiple offer of trading stamps is made, the number of stamps comprising a single unit should be displayed on the same notice as the offer.
    Sir G. Howe: This is one of the matters which it would be open to the Director General of Fair Trading to consider when the provisions of the Fair Trading Bill are enacted.
    Mrs. Oppenheim: I welcome that answer, but does not my right hon. and learned Friend agree that as most garage proprietors do not give prominence to the display of the notice that they must display in compliance with the Trading Stamps Act 1964, which states the basic number of stamps that must be issued with each gallon of petrol, it would be far better for such information to be carried on the advertisement for a multiple offer so that motorists can easily calculate how many stamps they are
    900
    entitled to, especially as more than 2,000 complaints of short-changing in trading stamps have been made to inspectors of weights and measures and the real incidence is probably three times greater?
    Sir G. Howe: I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern about the matter. That is why I gave the answer I did. It still remains a fact that notices setting out the entitlement of stamps have to be displayed at premises where stamps are available. [HON. MEMBERS: "They are not."] They have to be displayed in a situation where they can conveniently be read by customers. Purchasers can always inquire before buying about the rate at which stamps will be given, and they should do so if they are concerned about it.
    Mr. Lipton: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that trading stamps in garages have developed into a real racket and that all kinds of fiddling are going on, which apparently are to continue until at some time or another the new Director General starts operating?
    Sir G. Howe: I appreciate that there are matters giving rise to concern. These can be considered by the Director General of Fair Trading. The establishment of such an official with powers to investigate such questions will represent a large improvement in the rights of consumers.
    Sir R. Cary: Do not green stamps represent all the disadvantages of a monopoly?
    Sir G. Howe: On the contrary, buyers who are not satisfied with the brand of stamps or with the garage offering the stamps can transfer their custom, whether for petrol or other items, to many other trading outlets.

    Aircraft Noise
    Mr. Allasonasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what are the comparable readings of flyover noise for the BAC 1–11 400 and the TriStar.
    Mr. Onslow: The levels in EPNdB, for flyover, sideline and approach, as they would be calculated for noise certification purposes in this country, are:

    Flyover

    Sideline

    Approach

    BAC 1–11 400

    98·9

    106·5

    104·6

    TriStar

    98

    92

    103

    Mr. Allason: My hon. Friend has given me more figures than I require and he has slightly confused matters. What I am interested in are the flyover figures, because those are the figures that interest my constituents. They appear to be virtually identical for the notorious BAC 1–11 and the TriStar, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Minister for Aerospace in June as being much quieter than existing types. How does that square up?
    Mr. Onslow: There are two types of BAC 1–11 flyover noise. For the 400 series it is 98·9 EPNdB and for the 500 series, accounting for 33 per cent. of the movements at Luton, it is 102·4. That compares very adversely with the TriStar figure of 98. My hon. Friend may care to have some further figures. He may like to know that the noise contour of the Lockheed 1011 in operation at Luton for 90 EPNdb will be a mere four square miles compared with 20 square miles for the 1–11.
    Mr. Whitehead: In view of the extremely clear figures the Minister has just given, does not he agree that the success of aircraft powered by the RB211 engine has been made clear by orders received for that aeroplane? Will he make representations to BAC, if it is producing a new aeroplane for the Chinese market, that it might consider the VC10 with RB211 engines?
    Mr. Onslow: That goes slightly further than the Question, but what the hon. Gentleman has said will no doubt be noted.
    Mr. Simeons: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that Luton having rightly been encouraged to use the TriStar, our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in his former incarnation as Secretary of State for the Environment failed to provide sites for it to take off? Will he encourage our right hon. Friend to see that a decision is made about the expansion of the runway at London Airport for the purpose?
    Mr. Onslow: I understand that my hon. Friend is referring to whether there should be expansion at Luton. He will know that there is a planning application on the matter which will be determined shortly.
    Mr. Mason: What is clear from the Minister's reply is that the TriStar is less noisy on take-off, landing and flyover than previous generations of aircraft, and the footprint of the TriStar over the airport is much smaller. Will the hon. Gentleman consider a subsidy to British airlines to see whether it is practicable to retrofit some aircraft with quieter engines or subsidise them to fit hush kits so that we can get quieter aircraft more quickly?
    Mr. Onslow: We are substantially funding research into this matter. Until the results are known, it is too early to give a decision on the matters which the right hon. Gentleman has raised.

    Advance Factories
    Mr. Edwin Wainwrightasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many advance factories have been built in the South Yorkshire area over each of the past four years; how many are occupied; what is the number of jobs supplied; and how many advance factories are planned over the next four years.
    Mr. Chataway: Three were completed in 1972 and a fourth is under construction. None is yet occupied though two have been allocated to prospective tenants. The further needs of the area will be borne in mind when planning further advance factory programmes.
    Mr. Wainwright: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that to build one factory in a district where there is high unemployment and then to sit back and not find a tenant justifies the thoughts of a good many people that the Government are too complacent to look after the unemployed? Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is any truth in the statement from his Department that it is better to build advance factories than provide employment in any other way? If that is so, why are we not building more?
    Mr. Chataway: I have told the hon. Gentleman that two are allocated and that we are considering a further programme of advance factories. I agree that they can be of considerable importance. I think the hon. Gentleman will have been pleased to note the considerable reduction in unemployment figures

    903
    in an area where there is a particular problem.
    Mr. James Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many advance factories are empty in the Bothwell constituency; and when he expects to obtain tenants for them.
    Mr. Chataway: None, Sir. However, one advance factory is empty in the Coat-bridge employment exchange area, which extends into the Bothwell constituency. The Department continues its efforts to find a suitable tenant for this factory.
    Mr. Hamilton: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reply. Will he note, however, that the unemployment situation in Lanarkshire as a whole is one of the worst in the country? Will he also bear in mind the number of redundancies coming forward about which we know but which have not become a reality? Will he particularly bear in mind those people who will become unemployed because of the situation in the steel industry? Jobs in the pipeline are no use to us. We want actual jobs.
    Mr. Chataway: I great deal of what the hon. Gentleman has said is true. He will have been encouraged by the 0·8 per cent. drop in unemployment in the area over the past year. But we recognise that there is a need in this special development area to attract new industry and to expand existing industry.
    Mr. Dempsey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Coatbridge is top of the unemployment league in Scotland? As the advance factory to which reference has been made has been lying unoccupied since March 1971, is it not high time that special, high-powered salesmanship campaigns were organised to find a suitable occupant as soon as possible?
    Mr. Chataway: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. We shall continue to do all in our power to find a tenant for the factory.

    Tyre Industry
    Mr. Milneasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what discussions have taken place between Her Majesty's Government and the Dunlop Company concerning the jobs position in its factories throughout Great Britain,
    904
    following the heavy losses sustained by Pirelli; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Chataway: The problems of Pirelli in Italy have had no adverse effect on employment at Dunlop or Pirelli factories in this country. I understand Dunlop is conducting with Pirelli a special study concerning Pirelli's Italian operations. Officials have been in touch with Dunlop about this.
    Mr. Milne: While thanking the Minister for the latter part of his reply, which indicates that the firms are getting together, may I ask him whether he is aware that his answer to the Question will cause widespread concern in southeast Northumberland and the Northern Region because of the heavy losses sustained by Pirelli, since Italy was paraded to us as an example of regional development within the Six, and the Northern Region is watching with apprehension the outcome of this entry into the realm of multi-national companies? Will the Minister give the matter greater concern than he appears to have given up to now?
    Mr. Chataway: Why the hon. Gentleman should say that my answer will cause considerable concern, when I have said that the problems of Pirelli in Italy will have no adverse effect on employment—
    Mr. Milne: That is precisely why.
    Mr. Chataway: —at the Dunlop or Pirelli companies in this country, I find difficult to understand.
    Mr. Benn: Do the present Government do what the previous Government did, namely, have continuing discussions at ministerial level with multi-national companies to ascertain what are their investment plans and manpower forecasts? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is concern not only about the case cited by my hon. Friend but about the possible effect on employment in this country by the development by Ford of a large plant in Spain and many other developments? Do Ministers keep in touch with the multi-nationals about their future planning?
    Mr. Chataway: We keep in touch with all major companies at ministerial level. We have benefited greatly as a nation from investment in this country by multinational companies, a good deal of which

    905
    the right hon. Gentleman encouraged. What is absolutely fanciful is the suggestion made from the Opposition that a British Government ought to try to get directors on the main boards of multinational companies.
    Mr. Greville Janner: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Dunlop recently closed down St. Mary's Mill in my constituency, causing 850 people to be put out of work? Is it not time that economic profits ceased to be the sole criterion for the closing down of mills and other factories in this country?
    Mr. Chataway: I will certainly look at the consequences of that case if the hon. and learned Gentleman wishes me to do so. He will know that whether a firm is nationalised or not, redundancies very often take place.
    Mr. Milne: On a point of order. In view of the extremely unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I wish to give notice that I shall raise the matter further.

    Law of the Sea (Conference)
    Mr. Laurance Reedasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what part his Department is playing in preparations for the International Law of the Sea Conference.
    Mr. Peter Walker: My Department is participating fully in the preparations for this conference with particular reference to the aspects of sea-bed resources, coastal pollution, merchant shipping and civil aviation.
    Mr. Reed: In those deliberations will my right hon. Friend take special note of the growing danger that ships may collide with rigs and fixed platforms, especially as they are to appear in the Western Approaches to the English Channel? Would my right hon. Friend impress on our friends in the Foreign Office that the 500-metre safety zone around such installations is totally inadequate?
    Mr. Walker: I will look into both those points and convey my hon. Friend's views to the Foreign Office.

    Consumer Protection
    Dr. Marshallasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will seek powers to give protection to
    906
    purchasers of defective goods from retail furnishers who subsequently cease trading.
    Mr. Emery: When an undertaking ceases trading, potential creditors of the kind referred to by the hon. Member are in the same position as other ordinary creditors. I do not believe there is any case for changing this position. Therefore, no special powers appear to be necessary.
    Dr. Marshall: Are not special consumer protection powers necessary to help in cases like the one which I have recently referred to the Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs concerning some constituents of mine who in 1970 spent £175 10s. on a three-piece suite covered in a material called Myskin that started cracking from an early date, the retailers being M. Kletz (Furnishers) of Doncaster and the manufacturers R. A. Jenner Ltd., of Hove, Sussex?
    Mr. Emery: I understand the concern of the hon. Gentleman, and he knows that the Department is looking into the case that he has mentioned. Rather than debate the matter on the Floor of the House, I will write to the hon. Gentleman with specific reference to his case.
    Mr. Alan Williams: Why does the newly published Fair Trading Bill contain no provision for giving compensation to consumers?
    Mr. Emery: That is an entirely different question. It has little to do with this case, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes it answered he should put it down.

    Small Companies (Finance)
    Mr. Ridleyasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what consideration he is giving to the provision of new forms of finance for small companies; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Chataway: As my hon. Friend is aware, the Bolton Committee concluded that there was no case for the provision of new forms of finance for small companies. The full range of regional incentives is, however, available to small firms.
    Mr. Ridley: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that a faster growing small firm sector could be the most important contribution that we could make to long-term employment prospects? In that

    907
    case, would it not be worth making a study of the available forms of finance, whether through the Finance Act or the secondary market, and considering that it is possible that the Bolton Committee under-estimated the gap in this region?
    Mr. Chataway: I agree about the importance of the small firm sector to employment and the long-term health of the economy. I will bear in mind what my hon. Friend has suggested.
    Mr. Redmond: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best source of finance for small firms is their own profits? Therefore, would it not be better to ease the tax burden on small firms?
    Mr. Chataway: By tax reductions and by a range of other measures the Government have done an enormous amount to implement the recommendations of the Bolton Committee to encourage small firms.
    Mr. Alan Williams: Have not the Government by their value added tax imposed an unprecedented work load on the small firms, and, indeed, an unnecessary cost load? How does the right hon. Gentleman reconcile this with the Government's claims during the debate on small businesses earlier this year that the Government would reduce the volume and complexity of paper work for small firms?
    Mr. Chataway: That the Government have done. The hon. Gentleman will find if he talks to the small firms that they have no unlimited enthusiasm for selective employment tax.

    Civil Aircraft (Non-smoking Accommodation)
    Mr. Gryllsasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will give a general direction to the British Airways Board to provide no smoking sections in all British European Airways and British Overseas Airways Corporation aircraft.
    Mr. Onslow: No, Sir. This is essentially a matter for the commercial judgment of BEA, BOAC and the Airways Board. But I understand that BOAC already provides a proportion of seats
    908
    for non-smokers on all its aircraft, and BEA is experimenting with no-smoking seats on its Super 1–11 aircraft.
    Mr. Grylls: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, which is encouraging. However will he draw the corporations' attention to the fact that now that several large cinema groups are providing accommodation for non-smokers at their cinemas, it is time that the airlines proceeded with more vigour to provide it in their aircraft?
    Mr. Onslow: I am sure that the airlines are aware of the growing public demand for more protection for nonsmokers against those who smoke cigarettes or pipes.

    Nationalised Industries (Borrowings)
    Mr. Norman Lamontasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what alterations he is considering in the Government guarantees available for borrowings by the nationalised industries for which he is the sponsoring Minister.
    Mr. Emery: None, Sir.
    Mr. Lamont: I accept that for large capital projects requiring Government approval a Government guarantee of borrowing may be logical, but with short-term and bank borrowing, why should not the public sector be exposed to the same commercial disciplines as other would-be borrowers?
    Mr. Emery: The point is that the ability of nationalised industries to obtain finance does not depend on a formal Treasury guarantee. Therefore, a change would make practically no difference in the position.

    BILL PRESENTED
      HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM
      Sir Brandon Rhys Williams presented a Bill to make provision in regard to the voting rights in the House of Lords of hereditary peers by succession; and for related purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 23rd February and to be printed [Bill 39].
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  3.30 p.m.
  The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Gordon Campbell): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The present structure of local government in Scotland—
  Mr. Alex Eadie: On a point of order. It is customary to be able to get from the Vote Office all the information in relation to the subject of a debate in the House. I found today that there are certainly copies of the Bill there but no copies of the White Paper or the map in connection with this Bill. It would be helpful if hon. Members could get this information from the Vote Office. It was published some considerable time ago, but we cannot go up and down to Scotland like pack mules always carrying all these papers with us. I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that it would be helpful if we could have this necessary information, which would make the debate more meaningful, made available between now and the time the right hon. Gentleman finishes his speech. I apologise to him for interrupting him.
  The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): I have noted what the hon. Member said, and I apologise to him if he has not found the papers available. My right hon. Friend tells me that he gave orders that the papers should be available, and I am now having the matter checked. I hope that by the time my right hon. Friend has concluded his speech any omission will have been put right.
  Mr. Campbell: I can tell the hon. Member that I looked into this matter and made arrangements for the papers to be available. I am sorry if they were not immediately available where he looked for them.
  As I was saying, the present structure of local government in Scotland has existed, with minor modifications, since it was established in 1929, but many
  910
  other things have changed since then and the patterns of modern life are very different from those which existed over 40 years ago, with all the social and economic developments and technological innovations which have taken place. We now have the task of bringing the system of local government up to date to enable it to cope with the demands expected in the years ahead.
  For almost 10 years now reform of local government has been under investigation in Scotland, and since this Government took office we have been engaged in extensive consultations. The Report of the Wheatley Commission was itself the product of a thorough scrutiny of the whole field of local government over three years. Since June, 1970, we have carried out consultations, first on the report itself, leading to the publication of the White Paper on "Reform of Local Government in Scotland" in February, 1971; then another period of consultations followed, on a very wide range of issues, and this was brought to a conclusion by my announcement on 22nd December, 1971, to a number of modifications to the proposals outlined in the White Paper. Since then there have been yet further discussions on innumerable subsidiary matters and points of detail which are now dealt with in the Bill.
  There is very widespread agreement in Scotland about the need for local government reform and about the objectives which we should aim to accomplish. The concept of a two-tier structure of regions and districts, as recommended by the Wheatley Royal Commission and widely canvassed before that, has been generally accepted in local government circles. The Bill presents a new structure with eight regions, three islands areas and 47 districts, each with a well-defined job to do. The greater freedom which local authorities will have to exercise powers, together with the increased flexibility of organisation which they will enjoy, will give them more power, responsibility and standing in relation both to central Government and to the local electorate.
  The Wheatley Royal Commission, which spent three years carrying out its task, published a report nine months before the change of Government took

  911
  place. Four months before the change of Government there was a two-day debate in the Grand Committee, in February, 1970. I was then able to give the general comments of my side in the Committee—then in Opposition—four months before we came into office.
  Points I then put forward were that the Highland region should not be so large geographically and that Orkney and Shetland, and perhaps the Western Isles, should be separate islands authorities. I also suggested that the Borders might be a separate region. This had been something which the Wheatley Commission had pointed out was a practicable alternative. I also expressed our view that there ought to be second-tier authorities, namely district councils, and that they should have the function of housing, which the Wheatley Commission had proposed for the regional councils. Those were general points, and they have all found places in our subsequent proposals as a Government.
  During the nine months between the publication of the Wheatley Report and the change of Government, the Labour Government gave no indication of their views. However, in a debate in the House of Lords on 23rd March last year Lord Hughes said that
  "the White Paper, in much of its detail, differs little from that which would have been in the White Paper prepared by the previous Government."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 23rd March, 1971; Vol. 316, c. 816.]
  He then went on to consider the three or four difficult issues which are still before us and indicated that the Labour Government would have put forward proposals on the same lines as our own. I shall come to two of these issues in a minute.
  We all know that there are at least two important matters of structure on which it is not easy to find solutions which are universally acceptable. I refer to West Central Scotland and to East Central Scotland. It is easy to criticise any solutions put up in these two cases and to knock them down.
  I should now like to outline the points of major significance in the Bill. Part I makes basic provision for establishing and electing the new regional, islands and district authorities. I am naturally going
  912
  to comment on the main issues which remain controversial, but before doing so I should point out that the large majority of these proposals for new councils and their functions have been generally accepted as the appropriate pattern over most of Scotland for the two-tier system.
  We cannot in Scotland attain an even pattern because of the great contrasts in the density of population and because of the geographical barriers and long distances involved in the remoter parts, The aim of all concerned has been to achieve a flexible system adaptable to widely differing conditions.
  I now turn to the problems of finding the best structure for the future in West Central Scotland and in East Central Scotland.
  For West Central Scotland the Wheatley Commission recommended that the whole area should comprise one region despite the size of population involved. Although we have made some changes in the boundaries of the region we have reached the same general conclusion. In order to deal with the strategic needs and services of West Central Scotland a regional authority is needed covering an area such as the Strathclyde region. Most of those who have been putting forward alternatives accept this and the consequent size of the region. If it is to plan effectively such an authority must have executive powers, and, therefore, it must be, we believe, directly elected and accountable.
  There have been suggestions that there should be not just one level of districts such as we propose beneath the top-tier authority but an additional intermediate tier. The possibility of a three-tier solution of this kind has been put forward, together with two other mutually conflicting sets of proposals, respectively sponsored by the Convention of Royal Burghs and the conveners of the present counties. All three of these, together with other possibilities, we have studied most carefully. The three-tier proposition was put, in particular, by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) during the debate in the Grand Committee last July, and we have since closely examined it again. He and others are naturally concerned particularly about the education and social work services.

  913
  Briefly, our findings are that a three-tier structure would create more problems than it would solve. Even with the two-tier structure proposed, some people consider that the second tier will not have enough power or functions to make the councillor's job worth while. If the functions are divided between three tiers, that problem is increased. There would also be confusion as to which authority and which elected representative was responsible for what. The hon. Member for Craigton recognised that it would be desirable to avoid an additional set of elections for an additional third tier. He was, therefore, prepared to consider that the top tier should be indirectly elected from the second tier. The Government's view, however, is that it would be unsatisfactory for those exercising overall powers over the whole region not to be directly elected or directly responsible to the electorate.
  Let us see what the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, had to say about this in the debate in March last year. As reported in column 820, he accepted the need for one region, noting the difficulties of the size of population and of having a single education authority and social welfare authority. The Labour Government were, apparently, then contemplating a Strathclyde region but requiring that an administrative scheme should be put for approval to the Secretary of State. The right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) has since then also spoken of this.
  I have considered this possibility, but it is inconsistent with our general policy, which I think is shared by the Opposition, of giving more discretion to the new local authorities to manage their own affairs within the law. The problem of finding the best solution for the Strathclyde region has exercised many minds. I do not believe that a perfect solution exists. What we are striving for is the best structure that is likely to prove workable. The flexibility provided in the Bill will enable the regional council to arrange its own system of delegation and management to deal particularly with the subjects of education and social work.
  Dr. Dickson Mabon: We were hoping that on this vital point the right hon. Gentleman might announce, even though not within the Bill, the acceptance of a possible model. We have been told by the Convention of Royal
  914
  Burghs that it has produced and submitted to the Government a scheme which, although consistent with the Bill, nevertheless meets the point of criticism of Lord Hughes. Is the Secretary of State willing to comment on that?
  Mr. Campbell: I mentioned that we had had proposals from the Convention of Royal Burghs—
  Dr. Mabon: On this point.
  Mr. Campbell: We have had various proposals from the Convention of Royal Burghs within its own main scheme, cannot pursue this now, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that we have looked at just about every combination one can think of and everything that has been put to us. We have been in constant touch with the Convention as well as with the conveners of the counties, who have put forward a conflicting scheme, as the hon. Gentleman knows.
  Mr. Ian MacArthur: My right hon. Friend speaks about flexibility within the Bill. Has he in this regard considered the representation made, among others, by the Education Institute for Scotland which would provide for a certain degree of delegation of education control without involving the three-tier system which both he and I oppose?
  Mr. Campbell: Yes, indeed. I know that my hon. Friend is particularly interested in the education and social work services. The management and delegation matters to which I have referred are subjects which now need study, but we want to give the top-tier authority the flexibility to reach its own conclusions on how this can best be applied in the Strathclyde region.
  I now move eastwards to consider another situation which has engaged the most careful thought of those concerned for the past three years. That is the question, what is the best structure of local government for the future for the area encompassing Edinburgh, Fife and Dundee?
  Although the evidence submitted to the Wheatley Commission shows that it was at first generally assumed that the new regions would be based on Edinburgh and Dundee, thereby placing part of Fife in each, I was not surprised when there

  915
  later emerged a plea to make Fife a separate region. Feelings of allegiance and tradition are strong, and I respect them. This is another situation, like the west, where there are differing views, for there are also strongly held views in Fife in favour of the division of Fife between two regions. For example, the town councils of Dunfermline, Inverkeithing and Cowdenbeath have formally supported the Government's proposals.
  The Government have made an important change from the Wheatley proposals in transferring—
  Sir John Gilmour: How many authorities have expressed the other opinion?
  Mr. Campbell: Some authorities have not expressed an opinion at all. Others, particularly Fife County Council, have expressed opinions clearly in favour of keeping Fife as one entity.
  Sir J. Gilmour: Will my right hon. Friend please not avoid the question? He knows perfectly well that the large majority hold that view. For him just to mention three authorities and then to say that he does not know of any other opinions is untrue.
  Mr. Campbell: What I said was that, for example, the town councils of Dunfermline, Inverkeithing and Cowdenbeath have expressed the contrary opinion, and I did so because some people have felt that no contrary opinion was being expressed within Fife. I just wanted to make clear that these three authorities have formally expressed their opinion in favour of the Wheatley Commission's proposals. I can supply my hon. Friend with a list of all the views we have received, but I expect he probably has that already.
  Mr. Peter Doig Mr. Peter Doig (Dundee, West) rose—
  Mr. Campbell: I have just given way. Perhaps I had better say more about this question and give way later, so that the hon. Gentleman will hear all I have to say about the Dundee area before he puts his point.
  The Government have made an important change from the Wheatley proposals in transferring the Newport-Tayport area from the Dundee district the North-East
  916
  Fife district. That, incidentally, was advocated by Lord Hughes in the other place.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour) has strongly represented to me at various times the views of many of his constituents against dividing Fife in the future system of local government. Of course, Fife will continue to be a kingdom and there will always be Fifers. Changes in local government, fortunately, will never alter that. I have carefully and sympathetically considered all these views. I would have wished that what the Wheatley Commission unanimously recommended and the Government also conclude to be the best structure coincided with the retention of Fife as a complete entity, but we believe that the Government's proposals provide the best structure for the future, and that is why we are putting them forward.
  I am personally probably in a better position than anyone in the House to sympathise with my hon. Friend and those who share his views because my own county and constituency are also to be split between two regional councils under our proposals. There was a similar reaction some time ago in Moray and Nairn against splitting the county into two, and there were also people who were in favour of that proposal.
  Doubt has been cast during the past year by some people about how the Wheatley Commission reached its unanimous recommendations on the regions in East Central Scotland. We are helped in examining this because the Royal Commission published the written evidence submitted to it, which included a number of memoranda in which responsible bodies and individuals gave their views on the pattern of authorities required to meet future needs.
  A common factor in them all was identification of the need for large regions. The possible number of regions varied, but none of the memoranda contemplated an independent Fife. These were the published views of responsible bodies and people, including the Scottish TUC, the National and Local Government Officers' Association, the Scottish Liberal Party, the District Councils Association, and two hon. Members opposite, together with a number of professional people and bodies concerned with planning. Some of them

  917
  provided maps showing how Fife should be divided. This was a common assumption by those giving evidence.
  Much of this evidence was published in time for persons holding contrary views to make their own submissions. The evidence to the Wheatley Commission by Fife County Council in favour of a single-tier structure, perhaps with some added areas, was published in time for no fewer than seven town councils and St. Andrews district to make contrary submissions to the Wheatley Commission in which, to use their own words, they
  "… dissented in the strongest possible terms from the evidence of Fife County Council."
  It has also been suggested that the Wheatley Commission made up its mind without seeking local views. This is not correct. The Commission held informal meetings with Fife County Council, Kirkcaldy Town Council, Glenrothes, and Fife and Kinross Small Burghs Association, which took place during three days in April, 1967. At these meetings, I have no doubt that the question of dividing Fife was discussed.
  It has also been suggested that the Wheatley Commission did not go out of its way to seek evidence from particular bodies in Fife. What it did was to issue an invitation for the submission of evidence, and the amount of evidence that it received showed that this was effective.
  We accept the view put forward by the Wheatley Commission that, while there are important centres in Fife itself, particularly Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline and Cupar, none has the same significance or influence as the cities of Dundee and Edinburgh, and none acts as a focus for Fife as a whole. Neither the Wheatley Commission nor the Government reached these conclusions merely on superficial impressions. The Wheatley Commission accumulated for all Scotland, and detailed in the appendix to the report, a large amount of information about how people actually live their lives. It was on this that it based its recommendations for the new local government areas. Only the sort of solution now proposed will meet the strategic needs of East Central Scotland, and this Fife County Council has in a way acknowledged in its recent proposals.
  The sentiments which have been expressed of allegiance to Fife as an ancient
  918
  kingdom are understandable and were to be expected but for the purposes of local government, and for making provision for the needs of the area over the years ahead, a new approach is necessary. It is not a question of saving or abolishing Fife. Fife County Council, along with the other 32 local authorities in Fife, will go out of existence, whatever changes we make, but Fife will continue, I am glad to say, to exist, of course, as a kingdom and an area, whatever solution is adopted. Our solution will enable East Central Scotland, including Fife, to develop its future potential to the full, and we know that there is a substantial body of opinion in Fife which agrees with this.
  The electoral arrangements follow the present pattern, but one important innovation is the introduction of a four-year term of office for all authorities. This will allow time for policies to be developed and implemented. There are initial transitional arrangements to bring the timing of elections into phase, and afterwards district elections will take place midway through the regional councils' term of office. Each electoral area will be represented by a single councillor, and the precise number of councillors and electoral areas for each authority will be determined by order after the Bill becomes law.
  Part II of the Bill recognises the need for local government and electoral areas to be kept under permanent review by making provision for a local government boundary commission, with the duty of making regular comprehensive reports at ten to 15 year intervals. One of the shortcomings of the present local government system is the lack of such machinery to prevent boundaries becoming out of date as developments take place.
  Part III of the Bill re-enacts the existing code in relation to members and proceedings of local authorities but it makes two significant changes. First, under Clause 44, members of the public and the Press are henceforth to have access as of right to meetings of local authority committees, as well as to meetings of the full authorities as at present, unless the particular business under consideration makes this inappropriate. This is an important step in relation to the standing of local government and it increases the opportunity for local people to interest themselves in their council's affairs.

  919
  Secondly, a new system of allowances is introduced whereby members will be recompensed as of right for attendance on official duty. The allowance, which will be determined by each authority within a limit prescribed by the Secretary of State, replaces the present "loss of earnings" allowance and opens up the possibility of council membership to a wider section of the population by reducing the financial disincentive.
  Mr. Eadie: It is not true.
  Mr. Campbell: Part IV—
  Mr. Russell Johnston: Has the right hon. Gentleman ruled out the possibility of paying councillors?
  Mr. Campbell: I know that different views exist whether this type of allowance or a salary should be paid. I have not completely closed my mind and I am prepared to discuss the matter. But, having considered the situation and taken views expressed into account, we believe that what we are proposing is likely to prove the best solution in the circumstances.
  Part IV of the Bill sets out the framework for the establishment of community councils, which are to be set up wherever there is a local demand. We see this as a new concept for giving local communities an effective corporate voice. We are not proposing to give community councils specific statutory functions to perform, or statutory sources of finance, because we do not want to create another tier of local government.
  Not being creatures of statute, community councils will be all the more free to express local views and to take action on behalf of local communities, which is their general purpose. I was encouraged by the support which hon. Members showed in the debate in the Scottish Grand Committee in July for community councils, and there are many indications of much interest in the possibilities among communities throughout Scotland.
  Mr. J. Grimond: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He has been very generous about giving way. Apart from many other questions about community councils, has he given thought to the situation in the islands? For instance, in communities such as Orkney and Shet-
  920
  land we are to have one all-purpose authority, which we welcome. But many of the islands are remote from Lerwick and Kirkwall. In the circumstances, should not the community councils of such islands have their own funds and specific powers?
  Mr. Campbell: I believe that the community councils may play an even more significant part in the islands than perhaps on the mainland. It was the wish of the islanders generally to have one all-purpose authority and not to have two tiers, and I think that the community councils in the islands would still be better without statutory powers. But, for the reason given by the right hon. Gentleman, they will probably have a more significant rôle to play in the islands than on the mainland.
  Part V of the Bill is significant for the future methods of work of local government. In dealing with internal organisation and the appointment of staff, it lays down minimum requirements but, by reducing obligations to appoint committees and officials, it opens the way to new flexible arrangements devised to suit the particular needs and circumstances of each area. It sweeps aside most of the rigid committee system and the need for formal delegation. It is relevant in this context to refer to the work being carried out at present by the Central Advisory Unit on Management Structures set up by the local authority associations which are at present carrying out consultations and crystallising the best of management thinking so as to produce guidance which will be of assistance to the new authorities in deciding what form of internal organisation is appropriate to their particular requirements.
  Part VI of the Bill re-enacts existing provisions in relation to miscellaneous local government powers, with some important additions which greatly strengthen local authorities' potential in exercising their functions. In this way authorities are empowered to do anything which facilitates the discharge of any of their functions; they are to enjoy greater freedom to spend money on general purposes; and they are given power to take action over emergencies or disasters in their area, to carry out research and collect information relevant to their area, and to provide facilities for visitors and encourage tourism.

  921
  Part VII of the Bill relates to finance, and to a large extent entails the reenactment of the basic financial machinery which operates at present. I am carrying out further consultations on local government finance with a view to introducing legislation in due course making certain further changes. The House will see that we are now proposing a new system, involving a commission for local authority accounts, to secure more effective audit, by placing on local government itself a greater amount of responsibility for keeping its financial house in order.
  Mr. Eadie: I think that on reflection the right hon. Gentleman may consider that the way that he has framed his remarks about auditing is to some extent insulting to the present local authority structure and to local authority administration. I hope that he will reconsider his comments, which I am sure will be interpreted as being insulting by many local authorities.
  Mr. Campbell: The hon. Gentleman has himself misinterpreted the Bill and what I have been saying. Our object is to enable local authorities to take greater responsibility for keeping their financial houses in order, as I said.
  I was about to come on to rating—
  Mr. Robert Hughes: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Campbell: No. I must get on. I have given way many times already, and I know that many right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak.
  Mr. Hughes: The right hon. Gentleman does not know what he is talking about.
  Mr. Campbell: The new provisions on rating are an improvement on those in operation at present, in that each authority is to determine its own rate, so that local ratepayers will be able to see—for the first time, as far as the greater part of the country is concerned—what each particular authority is demanding from them in terms of rate poundage; for administrative convenience the regional authorities are to collect rates since the major burden of local expenditure will fall on them. We are also providing for an improved and extended system of rate rebates which will apply to a much wider
  922
  section of the population who need help with paying their rates, and local authorities will receive a grant from the Exchequer at the rate of 90 per cent. for this as compared with 75 per cent. at present for a less generous scheme.
  Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne: Before my right hon. Friend leaves these rating matters, can he shed any light on the Government's forward thinking about the desirable proportion of total local authority spending as between that provided through the rates and that provided through the central system of taxation? Is the proportion provided by central taxation likely to go on increasing over the years?
  Mr. Campbell: I cannot give any forecast about that today. The new rate support grant for the coming two years will be brought before the House in the near future. There will be opportunities then to discuss this matter. However my hon. Friend has raised an important point which the Wheatley Commission pointed out, although it was not given a remit to go into financial matters, which is that if central Government supply a larger proportion of the finance there is less control amongst local councillors of their affairs. On the other hand, there is always pressure from both sides of the House when the rate support grant and similar grants come up for even greater percentages from the Government because of the help needed for ratepayers. This is a dilemma which the Wheatley Commission posed and which we shall deal with when we come to consider the rate support grant in some weeks' time.
  Parts VIII, IX and X allocate the whole range of local government functions and follow the proposals outlined in the White Paper of February last year. Both regional authorities, with the responsibility for the strategic, protective and personal services, and district authorities, dealing with the important local and environmental functions, will have a worthwhile job to do and will have considerable scope for exercising their initiative for the benefit of their areas. By comparison with the present system of local government, there are four changes of significance. They are, first, the allocation of responsibility for water and river purification, at present administered by ad hoc boards, to regional authorities as

  923
  a natural part of their responsibility for the strategic and infrastructure services; secondly, the adaptation of existing law on particular functions to suit the new system, involving, for instance, the establishment of education management boards at local level; thirdly, the introduction of flexible arrangements for regional reports on planning, to match the greater size and scope of the planning process which reorganisation on a regional scale demands; and, fourthly, the exercise of responsibility for public transport, co-ordinated with other traffic, roads and transport functions, at regional level, along with the power to provide assistance to public transport operators in the private sector.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what discussions he or the Scottish Office has had with Sir Eric Ashby and other members of the Royal Commission on the Environment concerning river purification boards?
  Mr. Campbell: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have had two conflicting recommendations from Royal Commissions. The recent Royal Commission which reported only a few weeks ago made a recommendation completely in conflict with that received from the Wheatley Commission. We had already decided to adopt the recommendation of the Wheatley Commission. Naturally we are considering the more recent recommendation. But my own view is that what we are proposing in the Bill is likely to be the best for Scotland.
  Mr. Dalyell: My question concerned whether discussions were going on with the Royal Commission on the Environment.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): Order. I am not sure whether the Secretary of State had given way. There appear to be many right hon. and hon. Members who know a great deal about this subject. Most of them hope to speak. I hope that interruptions will not be too frequent.
  Mr. Campbell: I was saying to the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) that we were considering carefully the proposals which had been made
  924
  and that we should be in touch with the Commission. I cannot say off the cuff whether my officials have been in touch with the Commission since its report was published. But if we need any explanation or clarification there will be no difficulty about getting in touch with those concerned.
  Parts XI and XII of the Bill make a number of standard miscellaneous and general provisions. They also set up complete machinery for handling the change-over from the old system to the new, by providing for the establishment of a staff commission to advise on the transfer of staff and to safeguard their interests, by making the necessary compensation provisions, and by setting up a property commission to supervise the transfer and disposal of local authority property. The transition will be a complex operation and will make very heavy demands on all concerned. But with adequate safeguarding provision, local government staff will be able to apply themselves, without undue concern for their personal future, to the many tasks that have to be done in transferring from the old authorities to the new ones.
  I should like to say a few words about the Staff Commission which is provided for in Clause 214 of the Bill. The Wheatley Commission and everyone consulted since agrees that there must be a Local Government Staff Commission for Scotland. Its job is twofold—to ensure that the new authorities have the necessary staff when they start to exercise their duties; and, just as important, to safeguard the personal interests of local government officers. The imminence of reorganisation is bound to cause some uncertainty and apprehension among members of local government staff about their future; and a most important duty rests on everyone concerned to allay these fears and to deal with their substance. The Staff Commission has accordingly a wide and responsible remit, and I shall be looking to it for advice on all staffing problems.
  The need for that advice is beginning to arise now, and I propose to set up the commission in shadow form, as a non-statutory advisory committee, so that it can get down next Spring to examining the problems and consulting the staff organisations without delay. I am very

  925
  pleased to be able to tell the House that a distinguished former Member, Mr. Tom Fraser, has accepted my invitation to be chairman of this body. With his wide experience of public affairs, including membership of the Wheatley Royal Commission, he is particularly well equipped for the appointment. I am certain he will enjoy the confidence of local government employees in Scotland. Mr. Fraser has agreed to continue as Chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board until the end of March, when he will become Chairman first of the Advisory Staff Committee and later, when the Bill is passed, of the Staff Commission.
  I think that it is accepted by the large majority of those interested that reform of local government in Scotland is urgently needed. Much of the Bill deals with machinery and re-enacts provisions, some of them with only small differences for the existing legislation.
  Mr. Edward Taylor: There appears to be no mention of capital debt in Part XII. Has any decision been taken as to what will happen to the capital debt of existing authorities? Will it be taken over by the regions or has no decision been made yet?
  Mr. Campbell: This has still to be worked out.
  As a result of many consultations carried out by the previous Government, as well as by this one, a great deal has already been worked out and agreed by all concerned with local government reform. Nonetheless, there remain a few issues on which opinions differ. While I hope that the amount of disagreement will eventually be reduced to a minimum, I think we all recognise that difficulty in finding universally agreed answers to two or three issues should not delay reform or deprive Scotland of a basic structure most suitable for the rest of this century. I am sure that our successors will bless us if we bequeath a system which means that it will be a very long time before local government in Scotland has to be reorganised again.
  4.12 p.m.
  Mr. William Ross: I hope that the Secretary of State will appreciate the jocularity with which his last remark was received. No one underestimates the value of good local gov-
  926
  ernment to the people for whose benefit local councils have striven and striven well since 1929 when the last major reformation took place. It is as well to appreciate the value of the public service that has been given by those who during that period have operated these services. Not always did they have a popular task and always it was unpaid.
  There is a difference in the change which will be made now from that which was made in 1929. In 1929 a system was being developed from one which had grown up over the centuries. Those changes, with the wiping out of parish councils and with powers being given to county councils and the large burghs, were a logical progression from a system which was already familiar. Any change means disturbance and disturbance leads to certain regrets about the past. We must be careful not to replace knowledge that leads to reform with passion for innovation.
  The Bill will make a complete change from the past. It does not build on the past and we shall have to take into account that the town councils, the burghs that have been in existence and have had functions that have grown up since the beginning of the 12th century, now go out. We shall be wiping out centuries of history. The county councils which have existed since the latter part of the 19th century also go out and a completely new situation comes in.
  Everyone would agree that reform is necessary. That need started more than 10 years. I have here a book written by a very distinguished county council clerk in 1942 urging reform, and I am sure that Lord Kilbrandon would be very annoyed if I did not draw attention to the fact that his father was preoccupied with the subject at that time. We are hoping that the changes will give us stronger and more viable local authorities which are more readily able to bear the burdens of the increasing tasks that Governments have placed upon local authorities for generations. We hope that we shall also get a certain measure of decentralisation with the Government forgoing certain of their powers. I notice that the Secretary of State did not refer to the extent to which holders of his office would be able to forgo certain of their powers. When he mentioned rating he forgot to explain that the new

  927
  rate rebates scheme will be based on a standard scheme drawn up by the Secretary of State. The only discretion that the local authorities will have will be for the 10 per cent. with which we are familiar in another scheme under other legislation.
  There appears to be no time to consider the structure proposed and this was one of the points contained in the Secretary of State's White Paper in February, 1971. On page 25 it said:
  "The structural proposals which it contains are intended as a prescription for action and not a basis for negotiation."
  In other words, the thinking had stopped. As a result of the debate in which my noble Friend Lord Hughes spoke, certain changes were made and the matter was reconsidered and the views of the local authorities were listened to again. But many of those local authorities do not feel that the expensive consultative work that was put into the proposals received all the attention that it deserved. They felt that the Government had made up their mind about what was to be put into the Bill and that everything would be a pure formality thereafter. That may well sound unfair, but by putting that kind of comment into the White Paper people are put off.
  Where does Parliament come into all this? If in February, 1971, the Government had put forward certain proposals and said that they were not the basis for negotiation, parliamentary proceedings would have become a farce. I have always considered a White Paper to be a Government's indication of reasonably firm proposals about which the Government are still prepared to listen and change their mind. An example is the White Paper on social work which was produced when I was the Secretary of State. We said in that White Paper that social work would be the responsibility of the county authorities, but after representations were made we changed our mind and the Bill provided that social work would come under the large burghs and the county authorities.
  Mr. Gordon Campbell: There has been a misunderstanding about these words. It has been proved since then that the White Paper is exactly what the right hon. Gentleman suggests it should be—reasonably firm proposals put forward by
  928
  the Government. However, we had to make the position clear. The right hon. Gentleman says that the subject had been discussed since 1942. Our White Paper was a prescription for action—not one that could not be changed—because we could not go on for another 10 or 20 years just debating the subject.
  Mr. Ross: It is not a question of debating the subject. The right hon. Gentleman should read what was said in another place originally by his noble Friend who was at that time Minister of State. There is no doubt about the Government's ideas; they were firm and there were to be no changes. [Interruption.] There was a predictable and forecast change in relation to the Western Isles—that has been the only change—which have been taken out and made into an all-purpose authority.
  Surely the Secretary of State wants these changes to be made with the minimum of disturbance, with the greatest amount of good will and with the maximum of agreement possible. It is wrong for anybody to think that the main aims which were looked for will be realised by what we have. Let us consider the actual spread of authorities, or even what the Wheatley Commission discussed as the desirable number of population covered by any authority. We have the Highlands with a population of 137,000. The Border region has a population of 96,000. Dumfries and Galloway have 156,000. There are other districts, which are not only in the west, which have greater populations.
  There are 11 districts which have populations of over 100,000 and four with over 200,000. There is Renfrew with 201,000, North Ayr with 197,000, South Ayr with 150,000, Motherwell with 160,000, Kirkcaldy with 138,000, Falkirk with 145,000, Dunfermline with 125,000, Perth and Kinross with 115,000 and Monklands with 107,000, Cadzow with 103,000 and Inverclyde with 135,000. That is apart from the cities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow which have populations respectively of 206,000, 203,000, 489,000 and 1,170,000.
  Thus we have districts all relegated to the same position but with a population of 1,170,000 at one end and at the other of 8,000. There are seven districts with

  929
  populations of fewer than 20,000. There is Nairn, one of the Secretary of State's districts, with 8,000. Skye has a population of 9,000. There is Badenoch and Strathspey with 9,000. Tweeddale has 13,000, Merse 16,000 and Sutherland 15,000. Lochaber has 19,000.
  I hope that we have not come to the end of the financing of local authorities, But the extent to which we may be able to give new powers to the self-financing of local authorities is determined by their strength. The same kind of provision cannot be made for a district authority when district authorities vary in size between 8,000 and 1,170,000.
  We must also face the fact that the Government, and I think rightly, have made special provision for certain areas. In the Government's White Paper the touchstone was
  "requiring substantial population to support acceptable standards of service."
  But the Government have not hesitated to depart from that for reasons of geography and historic unity. For instance, in the Borders and Highland regions, and the island areas, they have granted regional status where population cannot support acceptable standards of service—for example, further education. It is already admitted by the Government that in some areas they will need to rely on outside help for further education. The same thing is true in respect of other smaller regions for some of their services.
  There is a corollary to this. If one is prepared to do that in respect of certain regions, one cannot turn the Nelson eye to the one glaring anomaly of the whole scheme, that there is a region covering half the population of Scotland. As I have said, there are districts which have greater populations than the regions which we already agree are limping regions, because they cannot be so self-supporting. Yet these districts have been massed together. In addition, there have been added to them more remote areas. The connection of those areas with the centre may be fairly tenuous, but their connection with each other is non-existent—for example, Tobermory and Troon, Mull and Maybole, Bute and Biggar. They are all in the same region but their problems and traditions are very different.
  930
  The Secretary of State should have used the time from when he took office until not just the publication of the White Paper but the production of the Bill in trying to prove to the country and the House that it is feasible for a region like Strab to have services as personal as education and social work dealt with on this scale. This is the problem. This is why I did not agree to the West Region—
  Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith (Glasgow, Hillhead) rose—
  Mr. Ross: May I finish my sentence. The Secretary of State had something to say about what Lord Hughes had said. As I was Secretary of State at the time, I think it worth recounting what I thought about it. I could agree to it only if I could see a feasible scheme of administration into which could be woven all the various strands of democratic participation and supervision. That was not forthcoming then and it is not forthcoming now. It is not good enough for the Secretary of State to say that it would be inconsistent with our ideas of autonomy for the regions if they were left to produce their own scheme.
  We are making a change that will affect half the population of Scotland in respect of education. These are not strategic services. They are the sort of services which were supposed to be delineated for the regions. Education and social work are personal services. It is not good enough to make this change and for the Secretary of State to say that it is a matter for the new regional councils. It may be that overall planning, which was the touchstone in respect of the large regions and the estuarial concept of planning could have been achieved without the destruction of efficient local administration in these very personal services, but if we do not watch where we are going we shall get a blueprint for bureaucracy and local frustration. That is one of the greatest dangers.
  Mr. Galbraith: I am interested in what the right hon. Gentleman is saying about the inconsistencies in the Bill. As the right hon. Gentleman has been Secretary of State for Scotland, it would be better for him, as well as being analytical, to tell the House how he feels that the problem should be solved. He may be going to do that, but I did not feel

  931
  that I should wait until the end of his speech before asking him.
  Mr. Ross: That is one of the dangers. We have four or five Bills in one. I hope that the House will bear with me.
  We are to get
  administrative decentralisation which the regional authority can best arrange"
  but this will be useless unless, at these new administrative points, there is democratic control. The Secretary of State is doubtful whether the regional councillor is to be paid and not merely given an allowance. The regional councillor is an amateur and, with the best will in the world, will not be able to provide that supervision and contact with the administration of his constituents that is desirable.
  Nor is it right for the Secretary of State to lean heavily on the community councils. The idea of these councils has been grasped by everybody, because they are essential. Without them there can be no local democracy, but we have not heard very much from the right hon. Gentleman about their workings. They are to have power to influence, to discuss and to act, but in what, in what direction, and how effectively if they have no statutory power? That is a dilemma which the right hon. Gentleman must face.
  Overall planning power could have been retained, together with strategic road powers and the police and fire services—though there are questions even about them—without the need to depart from the two-tier structure. As changes are being made in the powers of the island areas the Government should have recognised the difficulty presented by this unique feature of the western region and made changes there, too. They could have limited the powers in respect of the top structure and virtually adopted super districts for the rest of the region. That would more nearly satisfy the need for local democracy. That is one solution.
  Another possibility is the non-elected third tier for planning, an idea suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan). I do not see why, simply because it is a third tier, we should have turned our minds from it, because we have to face the fact that the difficulty is there with Glasgow with its
  932
  1 million and more, plus Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, Dunbartonshire and Bute, and then, to make things even more difficult, we take in a bit of Ayrshire and lop off Girvan. The right hon. Gentleman ought to think about this again because, if the Government accept the idea of big regions to deal with education and social work, they have a responsibility to say how these services will be administered efficiently, consistent with local democracy.
  There have been plenty of steering committees, both anonymous and selected by the Government, but I am receiving complaints from town clerks, people interested in education, headmasters, teachers and social workers that they know nothing about what is to happen, and that they have not even been consulted. That was the point made recently by the EIS, and the Secretary of State should appreciate the importance of this. We are dealing with something of which we are reasonably proud in Scotland, namely, the progress of education, and we cannot leave it to chance that somehow or other something beneficial will result.
  Some regions will be fairly manageable, but it is time people knew what is likely to happen in the larger regions. I warn the right hon. Gentleman that the administrative changes are revolutionary. They represent such a complete departure from the practice in the past that unless the Government are careful we could finish up with an unholy mess, not just in the west, but in other areas, too, and the right hon. Gentleman did nothing this afternoon to set our minds at rest.
  Local authorities vary to such an extent in size that it is not easy to justify granting them all similar powers. The Government have been flexible in this respect, but there is one thing about which I am concerned. The sizes and financial strengths are so varied that they may frustrate the achievement of autonomy.
  The hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) asked about the financial position. On reading the Green Paper one gets the impression that there will not be very much change in the financial position with regard to Orkney and Shetland and the Highland region. It seems that they will continue

  933
  to be as dependent as they are now on the central authority, and to that extent the achievement of autonomy and freedom from intervention will not be attained. There are to be fewer authorities for the Secretary of State to interfere with, and to that extent there will be less intervention, but there will be just as much intervention as there is now with the power of these authorities. The system will militate against new ways of self-financing by local authorities and granting similar powers to local authorities bearing in mind that Glasgow will have a population of more than 1 million, while Nairn will have only 8,000.
  Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: The right hon. Gentleman is complaining about the lack of provision for additional financial resources, or the possibility of them. What does he recommend?
  Mr. Ross: I have never concealed my view that if the central authority wants uniformity in the provision of education it should support remoter authorities to a greater extent than it does now. If the hon. Gentleman had been in the House for a longer time, he would have heard it suggested that certain aspects of education—for example, teachers' salaries—should be taken away from local authorities. We are deceiving ourselves if we think that by doing that local authorities become more autonomous. This is where we have to be careful, and not set the thing at too high a level.
  There is no doubt that the pattern of travel and attitudes in Fife have changed with the building of two bridges. I am not prepared now to enter into an argument about whether Fife should be divided but, as the Secretary of State was anxious to quote Lord Hughes, let me tell him that Lord Hughes is beginning to change his mind about this kind of thing.
  If the Secretary of State is not prepared to look at regions, he surely must be prepared to look at the number of districts. There are only three districts in Fife, one in Tayside and two in Forth. In Ayrshire there are only two districts—North and South. I do not think that that is adequate to meet local needs. If one goes back far enough, one finds that Ayrshire was divided into three areas with good names which seems to have escaped
  934
  the notice of those who have been given the job of renaming areas. The hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) would not know; he is a newcomer. Cunningham, Carrick and Kyle have been there for a long time. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith) lives in Kyle Stewart. We want sub-divisions, but they are all there, without this proposal for a North and a South Ayrshire. The same is true of Fife and elsewhere.
  Districts are to be given the responsibility of caring for and improving the local environment. The Government see housing as a district service, but why does the Secretary of State push responsibility for the roads and the maintenance of highways on to the regions? I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has thought about this, but he should have another look at Schedule 21.
  Usually, at this stage in my speech, I say how many mistakes I have spotted in the Bill. I will not give a figure today, because we only received this 277-page Bill last Monday afternoon and I have not had time to go through it in detail.
  Mr. MacArthur: Come on.
  Mr. Ross: No. I have not. But I am sure that the hon. Member will himself have spotted that it is difficult to know what to make of Clause 174(4). This says:
  "Consent under subsection (4) above shall be deemed to have been given unless that consent has been refused within three months of the application for consent."
  But this is subsection (4), so there is no such subsection above it.
  Clause 159(3), on page 92 of the hymn sheet, says:
  "For the purposes of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, the local authority shall be a regional or islands council."
  In the application of various provisions, there are five sub-paragraphs, and then subsection (3) contains only the words:
  "The said Act of 1968."
  I defy anyone on the Government Front Bench to make any sense of that. It took me a quarter of an hour of my valuable time.
  One starts from the assumption that the Scottish Office knows what it is doing—
  Mr. MacArthur: That is a paraphrase, not a hymn.
  Mr. Ross: It is not a paraphrase, nor is it ancient or modern; it is just nonsense.
  I could go on. I can at least congratulate the draftsmen on taking refuge in the old Anglo-Saxon word "mere". But the verb is transitive, and they have used it in an intransitive sense. It occurs at the bottom of page 148, in the following passage:
  "Any such boundary defined on the map annexed to any order under Part VI of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1947 by reference to proposed works shall, until such works are carried out, be mered as if the boundary has not been so defined."
  That is a very good Anglo-Saxon word and means "to limit" or "to bound". It is not properly used here, but we should at least congratulate the Scottish Office on its ingenuity and innovation in refurbishing a word which has not been used for centuries.
  I will not deal with any more of these mistakes. Apart from the mechanics of the transition and the changes which were necessary—
  Mr. Norman Buchan: I think that we are all feeling a little like Excalibur suspended above the mere. Where does this word "mered" appear?
  Mr. Ross: I gave the wrong page number. My hon. Friend will find it in fact in Part IV, paragraph (2) of Schedule 1, on page 146. We will certainly return to that in Committee.
  Apart from the mechanical changes and the rest, there is a good deal in the Bill so far as I can see on a first reading, that is completely new. New powers are provided for instance in relation to the transfer of PTAs to the regional councils. Since there is only one PTA in Scotland the regional council concerned will be the Strathclyde Regional Council. Does it mean changes in relation to the powers in the original statute? Also, does it mean a complete change in the PTA areas, as hitherto understood, and will it cover the new Western Council?
  There are other new powers in relation to ferries and the support of ferries by the new local authorities. Could the Minister tell us what is new in the Bill apart from the changes which are essen-
  936
  tial because of the transition? Was it necessary to include in this Bill, for instance, the whole question of water boards?
  It would have been wise to create enabling powers in respect of this and to have left the question of water boards and their areas for a future occasion. This change has been fairly recently made and it is working well, and it would have been better to assimilate those changes before making any new ones.
  We welcome what the Secretary of State said about the Boundary Commission becoming virtually a standing body. But it is to report every 10 to 15 years. I hope that the Secretary of State will have taken powers before then to ask the Commission to make special reviews, because it may be desirable to make considerable changes—at least, so I judge on a first hurried reading of the Bill—in respect even of the boundaries of local authorities.
  We are concerned about this as MPs. Too often, the boundaries in our constituencies follow changes in these boundaries, and we do not want this to hang fire for 10 or 15 years.
  The Staff Commission is to be a purely temporary commission, which will work in an advisory capacity before the Bill becomes law and then will be a statutory commission for a fixed period. No period is fixed in the Bill. How long does the Secretary of State expect its work to last? We are certainly very pleased that someone of Tom Fraser's quality will be its chairman.
  I wish that the right hon. Gentleman had given us the names of the chairmen for the other commissions, such as the Boundary Commission and—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend must not put his name forward right away—at least not before I have a chance to make my own suggestions.
  The Government will appreciate that although we shall probably agree to the Second Reading because we want change and the general principles are right, there is a good deal of scope in the detail for considerable controversy on the Scottish Committee. We are sorry that that Committee will be so small, particularly from our own point of view—[HON. MEMBERS: "Who says?"] In my discussions with

  937
  the Government I have not been able to persuade them greatly to increase the size of the Committee. This means that every Government Member will be on it whether he wants to be or not. All the Conservative interests will be fully represented. Unless we get the Government to change their minds I doubt whether the Liberals will be represented at all, despite the valuable services of the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) on the Royal Commission. On the Opposition side of the House we have the major political party in Scotland. If the Committee is of 30 members, we shall have only 14 representatives upon it. We all want to be there because we are all concerned. This means that the scattered population of Scotland will be very well represented on the Committee, but the thickly populated parts, the industrial areas, will not be so well represented.
  Mr. Galbraith: The right hon. Gentleman suggests that it is a question of party-political division, but surely what counts in a Bill such as this is geographical representation. It has nothing to do with party politics.
  Mr. Ross: That is true. However, if the hon. Gentleman looks into it, I am sure that he will find that certain areas will be very well represented indeed but others will have virtually no representation. What geographical representation will there be for the Border regions, or the islands or the Highlands?
  Mr. Eadie: Or Midlothian.
  Mr. Ross: My hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) is likely to be the only representative from such areas. The Under-Secretary should be concerned about this question of fairness. Every constituency is vitally interested in this matter. I am glad that the Under-Secretary will be serving on the Committee, because he has to defend the Bill on this matter.
  Where larger local authorities deal with education, more and more people will be disqualified from standing as candidates for election to those authorities. It used to be possible for a teacher to work in Lanarkshire and to become the Lord Provost of Glasgow. But that teacher would be disqualified where the education authority covers a very much wider area
  938
  than it did when dealing with his particular area. Such a teacher could still be a district councillor, I admit, but not a regional councillor. To that extent, more and more people will be disqualified. I wonder whether the Secretary of State appreciates that.
  I hate to mention it, but we shall have some heated arguments about those who can stand for election to local authorities. Every member of Glasgow Corporation's transport system is automatically disqualified from standing for either district or regional councils. I do not know whether the Government paid any attention to the number of people who are disqualified at present. It is a matter of concern, especially when we are concerned about not always being able to get candidates to come forward in the numbers or quality we should like. This is an important matter. Equally important is that we go into the question of payments again.
  On the whole, the Bill will take the Scottish Grand Committee the greater part of this Session if we give it the kind of attention that it merits. Let us not underestimate the Bill's importance from the point of view of the future of local government in Scotland. "Local government" is probably a misnomer. It is really local administration, because the powers will still remain, despite all these changes, with the Secretary of State. He was wise not to mention freedom for local authorities, after the kind of record he has in respect of interfering with local authorities over the past years. Although tonight we shall not vote against Second Reading, the Secretary of State can look forward to interesting, heated controversy in Committee.
  4.54 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Noble: I appreciate what the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) says about the duration of the Committee if he is as verbose in the Committee as he was this afternoon.
  I intervene briefly in the debate because I was, perhaps, the parent of the White Paper in 1963 which kicked this particular football into the middle of the field. That was some nine years ago. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock kicked it into touch, where it

  939
  has stayed for a very long time; otherwise, we should have led England instead of following her in this regard.
  I gave evidence to the Wheatley Commission and answered 60 or 70 questions, so most of my views on this subject are on record. Therefore, I can spare hon. Members a long dissertation upon them.
  As I advocated it from the beginning, I am particularly glad that we shall have separate authorities for the northern isles. I thought that right. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State so often during his speech mentioned the word "flexibility". I agree with the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock that a certain amount of flexibility will be the key to getting the Bill through Parliament, if not before Easter at least before Whitsun.
  Mr. Robert Hughes: Which year?
  Mr. Noble: This year. I am always an optimist.
  I do not agree with the argument of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock about the tremendous loss of democracy he sees in the Bill's provisions. It is true that we have fundamentally changed our concept of local government. But every Member of Parliament who has had experience of this subject over the last 10 or 20 years will realise that our constituents have changed dramatically, too. In the old days we got, perhaps, a very large number of letters. Very often now, however, one receives complaints by telephone. In a constituency the size of mine, I am glad to say that a large number of my constituents get into cars and come to see me to discuss points that matter. So the narrow democratic principle on which local government was so often based has widened very considerably. In a great many areas of Scotland, if an hon. Member went around a constituency and asked constituents whether they knew the name of their local authority member, he would find that their member's name would not be known, whereas a much higher percentage—though by no means everyone—would know who was their Member of Parliament. These things have changed fundamentally, too, and it is right to recognise it in the sort of changes that we are making.
  940
  I congratulate my right hon. Friend on having produced this rather large baby, even if it has taken a long time. I give him my best wishes, in the hope that he will be able to bring it up over the next few months to be the sort of baby we all want, difficult though that task might be.
  Mr. Harry Ewing: What about the christening?
  Mr. Noble: I shall come to the christening if hon. Members of the Opposition will provide the refreshments.
  There is a considerable number of detailed points about which I have some strong personal feelings. The particular treatment of Cowal in the district is not one that appeals to me or to almost any of my constituents in that area. However, I shall not make my case at this stage.
  Regarding the problem of payments and allowances, when giving evidence to the Wheatley Commission, I was asked once or twice what I felt should be the right approach if the concept of a two-tier authority were to come about. I feel fairly strongly that there is a good case for the payment to a certain number of people in local authority administration, that is, the elected members.
  If our new scheme is to work, it will inevitably entail a great deal of detailed work, perhaps not throughout the year but for certain periods fairly consistently. If we are not prepared to pay for the services that people give, we shall inevitably debar a large number of potentially useful people from serving the community in this way.
  I should like my right hon. Friend and hon. Members on both sides to think carefully about the matter in committee, because there are problems, particularly perhaps in the more outlying districts, where it is exceedingly difficult for young married women, who can often give a great deal of good service, to do local government work without being away for at least 24 hours, and very often 36. In those circumstances, it is essential to be able to pay for someone to look after the children while the woman is away, and I hope that "flexibility" is a word that can be applied not only by the Scottish Office in the first instance but

  941
  also by the local authorities in their judgment later. We do not want to disbar people from serving simply because it is impossible for them to fit in a reasonable amount of service to the community and make ends meet at home.
  Lastly, I want to say how delighted I am that in future the public will be admitted to local authorities' committee meetings. I hope that my right hon. Friend's proviso will be carefully drawn, because one of the reasons why local authority has from time to time failed its constituent members it that too much has been done behind closed doors, and not enough people have known about many planning decisions as they were going through. The result has been a great deal of frustration, a feeling that things were happening that people had no way of knowing about, things that affected their lives.
  It is the serious hope of us all that when the Bill has been suitably amended in Committee and comes before us for the last time we shall have achieved something that makes people feel that they are part of local government, and that we shall not have tried to divide off government as though it were a separate and distant function which has nothing to do with Mrs. McGregor in her croft or Mrs. MacLoughlin in her street in Glasgow.
  I hope that my right hon. Friend will have a great deal of patience with us, but that his patience will not be over-stretched.
  5.3 p.m.
  Mr. Russell Johnston: Serving on the Royal Commission on Local Government and watching progress from June, 1966, through the three years for which we sat—and I should like to say how grateful I was to the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) for that opportunity—right up through the White Paper to the Bill, has been an exciting political experience.
  Of course, many matters in the Bill will be criticised in Committee, but the most remarkable thing I have noticed is the degree of acceptance of change, which has accelerated throughout that period. When we went out to the local authorities at the beginning and talked to them, which the commission did a great deal, their general line was, "There
  942
  is a great need for reform of local government in Scotland, but our authority does not require any change, except perhaps the taking in of the area round about for its better administration." But that attitude has undoubtedly changed.
  First, there is general acceptance of the concept of a regional structure. There are questions of real concern. The right hon. Member for Kilmarnock rightly, although inevitably without positively suggesting an alternative, dwelt on the problem of the great area of Strathclyde. We spent longer on that than on anything else in the commission, and rightly so, because we could not think of any other solution. There are those who understandably baulk and rear away from the idea of this huge, half-Scotland area. But none of us could see a viable alternative consistent with the general principles that we sought to follow.
  I think that there is also agreement that the structure should be two-tier, although again there is inevitably quite a variety of disagreement about the extent of the powers to be possessed by the second tier, the district, and the number of districts that there should be. That is inevitably an area of disagreement, but it is not an area of absolute principle.
  I agreed very much with the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) about the need for flexibility. In a situation in which there are so many balances of advantage and disadvantage, there is a danger that the Government will say, "This is what we shall do, come hell or high water, and we shall not have it mucked up." That is very understandable, but it is not a course that the Government should follow.
  I still support the view that the hon. Member for Renfrew, East (Miss Harvie Anderson) and I set out in our note of dissent, favouring the concept of large regional authorities for greater efficiency, recognising the changes in population, the greater mobility that has occurred since the last reform of local government, but complemented by a great number of smaller authorities that would genuinely represent the vox populi local feeling on local questions. I still feel that that would have been better than having something in between, in which again and again people have been driven to say, "We must give this local authority, this district

  943
  authority, more work to do, because otherwise it will not be so satisfactory a local authority". That is not a good reason for giving a local authority a function. It is a bad principle, and therefore I adhere to the view that our concept would have been a better solution.
  Mr. William Hannan: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps a mistake was made in taking from the regional authority the function or duty of house-building?
  Mr. Johnston: I note the hon. Gentleman's point, and I am about to come to it.
  I am still concerned about the possible clashes on planning between the regional authority and the district authority. I was interested that the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock said something to the effect that if the Scottish Office produces something we naturally tend to assume that it has been produced by fairly get-up-and-go chaps.
  Mr. Ross: I was talking about drafts. men.
  Mr. Johnston: I think there is general agreement that we have good civil servants in St. Andrew's House, but it was they in the Scottish Development Department who said that the minimum size of authority for planning was one with a population between 150,000 and 200,000, yet now in the Bill the planning function is given to a number of authorities of district level considerably smaller than that.
  Likewise on housing, to which the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. William Hannan) referred, I do not think I can do better than again draw attention to paragraph 459 in the Wheatley Report about the division of housing and the various ways in which it can be done. I do not think the Government, in agreeing that housing should do down, have done this on the basis of improving the operational function of housing but in order to give another function to the districts—simply that and nothing else. Paragraph 464 of the report states:
  "A third possibility would be to give full housing powers to two separate levels of authorities, but to distinguish between the levels as regards the broad purpose for which the powers were given. One level of authorities might be charged with the duty of providing support for broad strategic objectives …
  944
  The other level of authorities would be responsible for dealing with purely local housing needs."
  We concluded that this would result inevitably in friction and
  "The central Government would almost inevitably have to come in to try to straighten out the situation."
  I still feel that this is so.
  However, lacking this kind of structure I would register a little concern about the double standard on which the Government have eventually come down. I am referring to the idea of having different powers for district authorities in the Highlands, Borders and South-West from those in Central Scotland. I accept what the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock said about the vast discrepancies in population and, therefore, resources which these authorities have. Nevertheless, there still remain problems. Inverness is a notable problem, and I am sure the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro), who has temporarily left us, would agree that Dumfries is the other one. Inverness represents 25 per cent. of the whole Highland region which, on the criteria that the Government have established—rather than the criteria that I argued—could well have operated the powers which it is now going to be denied.
  Of the two basic final points which I am going to make, the first is finance. I go along very much with the points which have been raised by the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) when he intervened in the speech of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock. I think that rates are a regressive form of taxation, and I continue to refuse to believe that it is not possible to devise a fairer and less regressive system, even if one were simply to go ahead with a local income tax. I would prefer that to the rating system. It would be fairer for everyone. Also it would be easier to allow the shift in the balance as between central and local government fund raising which is essential if there is going to be any change in the powers of the local authorities.
  Here I refer to the Treasury's evidence to the Royal Commission on Local Government in Scotland. The Treasury is not renowned for being willing to give up any powers. Yet the Treasury, in its evidence—and here I draw attention to paragraphs 1032 and 1033—expressed considerable disquiet to us about the high

  945
  level of grant and the fact that this left little incentive to economy and efficiency. That is a very important point. We went on to say that we agreed with the Treasury and with many other witnesses that
  "it is absolutely fundamental that local authorities should be enabled to raise a much higher proportion of the money they spend. The question should be tackled not from the angle: Can some means be found? but rather: What means can be found? As one financial expert has put it 'Where there is a political will, there is a financial way'."
  That is very basic if we are going to get any change.
  All of us on the Royal Commission believed that what we were trying to do and the changes we were trying to introduce would encourage the existence of local government as opposed to central Government—in this case Scottish government from St. Andrew's House. Without this change we shall not get the strengthening of powers that we want or be able to attract the people of calibre into local government that we wish and to which the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock referred.
  My next point relates to that, and that is the question of finance for the individual councillor. I am glad that the Secretary of State, when I intervened, said that he had not closed his mind to this. I hope it is really in the mind of the Government. The attitude of Conservative back benchers is very important, and it will continue to be very important in the Committee. If I remember rightly, at the last Grand Committee meeting the hon. Members for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) and for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Wolrige-Gordon) said that they believed that it was vitally important that councillors should be paid. We have just heard a speech from the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble), in which lie said the same thing. It is important that in the Committee stage those hon. Members who say these things should stick to their guns. If they do we may get this change.
  May I quote from paragraph 924 of the Wheatley Commission Report:
  "We see no virtue in making elected membership painful and sacrificial, or in arguing that the service given ought to be its own reward."
  946
  We concluded in paragraph 930:
  "We believe that to pay a salary is the simplest, least invidious and generally most satisfactory way of dealing with a real problem."
  There is no doubt that it is a tremendous problem to try to blend efficiency with real local democracy, but this Bill does the best job, broadly speaking, that can be done. It sticks remarkably closely to the original Royal Commission Report and, provided certain things are looked at and changed—the question of finance is basic—it should result in a form and structure of local government which will last us for the next half century.
  I was very disturbed when I heard the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock talk about the size of the Committee. I hope that what he said is not really true. It is not that I think that my presence on the Committee will make any difference, although, having sat three years on the Royal Commission, I do say that it inevitably gives one a certain amount of knowledge. But there is also the question of the islanders. There may well be no Member on the Committee representing the island groups. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) is a Liberal and the hon. Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Donald Stewart) is a Scottish Nationalist. The right hon. Member for Kilmarnock said that the Borders would possibly be unrepresented. Does that mean that the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Mackintosh) will not be on the Committee? If so, it will be a great pity, because initially he did a great deal of groundwork.
  I would regard it as being unfair and unreasonable if certain areas and party viewpoints were not represented. If the Minister is not able to give an assurance that such a situation will not occur, we shall seek to move from the Liberal Bench that the Bill be consigned to the Scottish Grand Committee as being the fairest way of dealing with it.
  5.21 p.m.
  Mr. W. H. K. Baker: I do not suppose that there is an hon. Member who would accept the Bill as drafted without some reservation. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is a fair-minded man, I think that he will accept that it can do with a certain

  947
  amount of improvement. Therefore, I give the Bill a qualified welcome.
  In my view, the whole of Scotland will judge the Bill and what we are trying to do by it on three criteria. First, will the proposed form or structure of the new local government be too remote from the people which the authority is trying to serve? That point has been stressed to me in talking to constituents. Secondly, will the regional and district councils be more effective and more efficient than the councils which they replace? Thirdly, will the new set-up be economic, and will the local electorate be given value for money?
  With the Bill and the subsequent organisation, the Government and, indeed, the House have a golden opportunity of setting the scene and the pace for as long as 40 years. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that he thought that the new form of organisation would last to the end of the century. It may well last even longer than that. Therefore, when the Bill obtains the Royal Assent, it must be seen to be an effective measure because it will affect for a considerable time the lives of all those who live in Scotland.
  I should like to pay tribute to the 11 local authorities in my constituency which will be replaced when the Bill becomes an Act. The county of Banff has been fortunate in being extremely well served by its officials at all levels. I have always received the maximum co-operation, assistance and advice, and I am very grateful to all the councillors and staffs for what they have done to assist me in my job.
  The three points which I wish to make are to be found in Clauses 1, 3 and 161. I do not have to tell my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Development that Clause 1 and Schedule 1 are the worse for what is to happen under the Bill to the parish of Kirkmichael. It is proposed to take it out of the north-east region and to put it into the Highland region. If that were to happen, it would be in the face of opposition from the local people and local opinion and therefore it would be a negation of democracy.
  The County Council Reorganisation Sub-Committee has made its views abundantly clear to me and it has backed them
  948
  up by public meetings, notably a meeting about 18 months ago which 84 members of the electorate from all corners of the parish attended. I have made my views and those of the people concerned known to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State and to the Government, and, after a protracted correspondence and interviews with the Minister, I can only say that he must expect an amendment to be tabled in Committee which I very much hope he will accept. The penultimate act was a canvass of the whole parish which showed that 84 per cent. of the electors were in favour of staying in the north-east, or Grampian, region.
  I received a letter today from the Clerk to the Moray District Consultative Committee which I should like to quote:
  "As you are no doubt aware, the Moray District Consultative Committee is representative of the County and Burghal authorities to be included within the Moray District on the reform of local government".
  The clerk goes on to describe a meeting and then says:
  "In the discussion which followed, it appeared that a substantial number of the members were in sympathy with the views of the people of Tomintoul"
  —for "Tomintoul read "Kirkmichael"—
  "and, accordingly, I have been instructed to inform you that the meeting support the Tomintoul Businessmen's Association as regards the petition they have submitted. In adopting this view, the meeting agreed with the reasons adduced in the petition".
  Secondly, I turn to the question of Clause 3. The word "chairman" is used in it. Historically, the word "convenor" has been used in Scotland. Why do the Government believe this change to be necessary? Possibly more important is the fact that there is no provision for a vice-chairman of the authority. The Local Government Act, 1947, made specific provision in Section 14(5) for chairmen and vice-chairmen. Traditionally the vice-chairman, or vice-chairwoman, is a man, or woman, under instruction. He or she acts as a safeguard for all sorts of things and can act as a long-stop. For instance, if the convenor, or chairman, is away ill, an urgent decision made by an official can, if necessary, be backed up by the vice-convenor, or vice-chairman. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will have another look at this provision.

  949
  Thirdly, it has been strongly represented to me that libraries should be a function of the higher or regional authority and, according to a submission to which I shall refer later, placed under the general umbrella of education—that is, of the regional education authority. I understand that that will be the case in the Border region. Why not in other regions? The schools library service will of necessity come under the regional education authority. It will thus be divorced, as it is now, from the county library service.
  I commend to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary the excellent pamphlet dealing with library services in the proposed north-east region, a copy of which I have with me. I will gladly send my hon. Friend a copy if he has not already had one. It refers to its main submission that libraries in toto should be a regional function—that is, public libraries and school libraries. Its main reason is that there should be a proper career structure for librarians, and another main reason is that the financing of libraries would be very much better carried out if libraries were under one authority. These findings are endorsed in a report of the Joint Sub-Committee on Education comprising all the directors of education in the North-East of Scotland. I would close by quoting briefly from page 4 of its document under the heading "Staffing":
  "If the service is to develop fully it must enjoy the services of an adequate number of qualified librarians and be able to offer an acceptable promotion and career structure. This is especially important today as the range of subject demand is so great that it is essential to adopt a much wider policy of appointing librarians with the training and skills which enable them to specialise in particular subjects."
  No doubt the points which I have made will be raised again in Committee—at least I hope they will. I very much hope that this Bill will be an even better Bill when it emerges from Committee than it is today.
  5.31 p.m.
  Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: I congratulate the hon. Member for Banff (Mr. W. H. K. Baker) on raising those three points particularly when he is obviously recovering from what I hope is a transient physical disability. I can tell him as a recompense that his chances
  950
  of getting on to the Committee are 100 per cent. If what we hear is true almost all of the 18 available Conservative Members will be chosen, while of the 44 Labour Members willing to serve only 14 will be permitted to. That emphasises the fact that we who speak in this debate today ought to be brief, and those of us who may not be on the Committee ought to be demanding—and ought in that to be supported by all other Scottish Members—a very extensive Report stage, of three or four days. That will obviously not be till the summer, particularly if we are to debate as we rightly should Clause 1 and Schedule 1—and what should be done by Kirkmichael and other parishes.
  I have no doubt that there will be many other arguments in Committee, dealing with such groupings, which are of considerable importance, at least locally. I would tell the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) that I have had representations, too, about Inverclyde from different parties, certainly one of my own local parties, and one of the arguments is that a district should not straddle a firth. There are legitimate arguments, even in urban areas, on these boundary changes and we shall want to look at Schedule 1 and Clause 1 very closely in Committee. I suppose that we shall be taking them together.
  I, too, welcome the appointment of Tom Fraser to the chairmanship of the staff commission—one of the important bodies even in its shadow existence, which will reassure those who will be leaving local government that there will be some kind of compensation, particularly for those getting on in years but who are not yet near to retirement.
  The commission also has to look at other essential matters. Members of the trade unions within local government are all keen that this staff commission and all the other bodies set up to safeguard staff interests should look after the proper translation of the Bill into practice, so that it works well, and they will join with us here I am sure in congratulating the Government on choosing Tom Fraser as the commission's chairman.
  I come to some other good points in the speech by the Secretary of State. One was—and I hope I got it right—his telling us that there is now to be 90 per cent. of Government help towards

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  rates rebates. I have always taken the view that it is fair that it should not be 100 per cent. because there is a remaining element of discretion by the local authority, and I accept that. I do welcome the fact that it is now to be 90 per cent.—
  Mr. Harry Gourlay: My hon. Friend may not have read sufficiently the text of the Bill, because the 90 per cent. obtains for only a few years. After three years it reverts to 75 per cent. If I am wrong, perhaps the Under-Secretary of State will correct me.
  Dr. Dickson Mabon: I have no doubt that what my hon. Friend says is true, because he is very careful about these matters. We shall have to debate this in Committee, but that was not the impression which the Secretary of State gave us this afternoon.
  Whether for a short or long spell at 90 per cent. it is very difficult for the Government to maintain the argument that rent rebates should be paid only as to 75 per cent. by the State. There always was a case for having less than 100 per cent. for rate rebates. There never was a case for rent rebates nationally prescribed by the State, where the Government escaped with a share of only three-quarters. The Secretary of State may have done aright in regard to relief of rate rebate but he has weakened his own position, and I hope that he will tell us that by amending legislation rent rebates will be paid entirely by the State and not with one-quarter paid by the community concerned.
  On the question of councillors, I need not add much to what has been said already by right hon. and hon. Members. I am strongly of the view that regional councillors should be paid. Of course there may be one or two regional councillors who may not actually need to be paid because their work will not be onerous—for example, in the Borders—and there may not be a case for paying them a full-time salary, as there would be a case for paying it to councillors in Strathclyde, but since it is difficult to exclude individual councillors by statute, and also so as to avoid any arguments as between individual cases, I would say that as a general rule regional councillors should be paid.
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  In another good part of his speech the Secretary of State made us hopeful because he said he would think about this. I hope that the terms of the Financial Resolution, if we pass it, are wide enough to allow amendments to be moved to pay regional councillors. But that is not enough. What about the payment of district councillors? Certainly, those on the 20 larger authorities mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), and in particular the chairmen of committees of those authorities, ought at least to be considered for salary rather than for allowances.
  Mr. John Brewis: The hon. Gentleman has referred to the Borders. I wonder whether he would take into account the time-consuming nature of the job of a regional councillor, who may have to go 80 or more miles to attend a council meeting. Ought he not, therefore, to be considered for an extra allowance?
  Dr. Dickson Mabon: I accept that. I was trying to avoid arguments about individuals—some going long and others going short distances; I wanted to avoid the ad hominem argument being used against me. That is why I tried to seal that argument up. However, I have, as it were, nailed my colours on this to the mast, and I say that regional councillors should be paid, and I hope that in Committee I will get support for that even from hon. Members on the Government side, as the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) said he expected that one might.
  I welcome the decision about the admission of the Press to meetings. This is in line with what the English did in their legislation.
  I am certainly very pleased about Part V, and all the work done by the central advisory unit on management schemes. We in Scotland have certainly contributed our part in evolving a United Kingdom pattern in this matter.
  I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not here at the moment because I wished to refer him to speeches of his in Committee on the Transport Bill in 1968—of glorious memory. He has undergone an immense conversion. I am very glad that his reference to PTAs includes one for the Greater Glasgow area. Way

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  back in 1968 in Committee I mentioned this and he was most unenthusiastic; indeed, at times he was downright hostile. I notice that discussions are going on for a PTA in the Edinburgh and Lothians area. I had not expected that this would come about as quickly as it has but I welcome this also.
  The question asked by my right hon. Friend for Kilmarnock is therefore very apposite. Within the legislation of the Transport Act 1968 how are public transport authorities to operate? Will they cover the entire local government region? If not, how is the financial burden of the PTA to be carried by a section of that region without causing confusion in the finances within the region?
  I have dealt with some of the good bits in the Bill and I now come on to the bad bits. The central bad bit is Part VII. It simply re-enacts all the financial provisions on which we have legislated for the last 25 years—certainly in detail for the last five years. I am distressed that the Government are not thinking more widely about this. The financial complement of the English Local Government Act is to be brought to Parliament now. We do not have to look at the crystal ball; we simply have to read the English Bill to see what kind of financial changes will be added to this Scottish Bill. The Secretary of State promised this afternoon that the Scottish financial legislation on local government will follow. Let us not deceive ourselves. It will not be different from the English Bill which the House will be discussing this Session. That is sad.
  The Labour Government could not see in the near future the successful computerisation of income tax which would enable a system of local income tax to be introduced. There were and still are innumerable difficulties. Departmental committees have examined this subject many times. Let me make a suggestion. While leaving industrial and commercial rating alone, would it not be possible for the Select Committee on tax-credit set up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to examine this and see how to adapt a local income tax from the new simplified and modernised personal tax structure?
  There is no urgency about the introducing a money Bill, in the sense that Part
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  VII re-enacts the present position. The rate support grant order to come carries us forward to 1974–75, and we shall probably get another one after that, because the new system from next year's Bill will not be operative. I see no reason why the Government cannot look again at the possibility of a local income tax, not allowing themselves to be confused by the argument about shareholders and commercial premises but accepting that for them rating will have to stay, at least for the moment. That is one constructive opportunity that the Government have missed, at least, so far.
  When the Government were in opposition they criticised us by saying that the Wheatley Commission was excluded from discussing finance; we were told that it was our fault, and if a Conservative Government had set up the Wheatley Commission that would not have been so. In opposition the Government said that local government would never be reformed unless the financial arrangements were changed and more responsibility was given locally. That is not reflected in the Bill. Much as I welcome the Bill, that is its big defect.
  Let us look at some matters which are perhaps less bad. We have scored a victory with the community councils. For a long time the Government were not sure whether they should have anything to do with community councils. I agree that they should not be third tier authorities and that they should be opted in rather than a blanket pattern for the whole nation. But what is to happen about financing them? We need more clarification on that.
  What will happen to the common good funds, commonly good for only that area? Should they not be attached to the community councils? If the Government gave an assurance that the funds would be handed to the localities we should not, perhaps, see the profligacy that is occurring, alas, in certain places today. Where a community council does not have a common good fund, is there not an argument for the Government to give sustenance direct to the community council without going through the district council or regional council? Community councils will play an important part in areas of the country where people inevitably feel remote from the local council.

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  The three regional councillors who will serve the Greenock part of Inverclyde will represent one third of a parliamentary constituency. The local councillors have a hard enough job now; how will they be able to serve as large an area as that and keep the local touch? There is a need for the Government to think again about community councils.
  The Government are worried—rightly so, as we are—that no one has so far come up with an acceptable answer to the problem of the structure of the administration of education and social work in the Strathclyde region. Naturally I am disappointed that today the Government themselves have not come forward with any proposal. Had we been in office, it is the least we would have done. We should have insisted on presenting Parliament with an acceptable administrative devolutionary scheme involving education and social work. The two subjects might have been treated differently, but we should not have come to Parliament with a Bill like this without presenting proposals on administration at least for discussion. I ask the Government, even at this late stage, to come forward with something that will make the acceptability of the West region a reality rather than something which is resentfully accepted by people who are unsure of what will evolve.
  I link that with a final suggestion. The Bill refers to a Local Government Boundary Commission. Quite right, I am not objecting to that. But is it not strange that the Bill should contain no reference to a body which will review functions? If the purpose of the commission is to make sure that boundaries do not remain static but move with the flow of population, so that people do not remain unrepresented, why is there not a similar body to deal with the functions of local government? That could be done by the same body, but there is an argument for it being a separate commission which could examine not only the exercise of functions under the Bill but also functions in relation to different areas. For example, it could say to Highland district councils, "At the moment, under the Act, you are not getting full powers, but later we might recommend to Parliament an amending Act so that you are promoted
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  into the first-class district league from the second-class district league."
  The argument about libraries and museums, and their librarians and curators, could be dealt with by a commission which could review the exercise of functions and decide whether or not there should be a change as between one area and another or, indeed, nationally. We may not be able to get the functions right all at once; that may have to be done as a continuing job. I put this idea to the Government as a constructive addition to the part of the Bill which deals with functions.
  Mr. Russell Johnston: What the hon. Gentleman is saying appears in Chapter 37 of the Royal Commission's report, which recommends a review body with powers of recommendation on functions.
  Dr. Dickson Mabon: I may get into trouble with some of my hon. Frends for saying this, but I deplored the hole-and-corner way in which the Conservative Government handled the problem of reforming local government in 1963. The Royal Commssion we appointed was an open-hearted, open-minded body, which took evidence even from the right hon. Member for Argyll when he was in opposition, which is more than he would have allowed of us when he was in power.
  The commission took all the evidence and thought about the matter carefully. We are immensely grateful to all who served on the commission. It did a first-class job. The present Scottish Ministers must take credit for not doing to Wheatley what their compeers did to the Redcliffe-Maud Report. They have stood by the Wheatley Report as it was produced. It was a good report, and this Bill, not fully to the letter, but in principle, deserves to be supported.
  5.50 p.m.
  Sir John Gilmour: Because I disagree with some aspects of the Bill, I would not like it to be thought that I disagree with the reform of local government. I was reminded by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars) in the Scottish Grand Committee last Session of a speech I had made in Galloway, in which I said that I did not like to see units of local government which were too large. I adhere to that view.

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  This was one of the aspects which caused most of the discussion in the Scottish Grand Committee on that occasion. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State spoke then about his own speech on Conservative attitudes towards local government reform after the publication of the Report of the Royal Commission in February, 1970. Most of his speech on that occasion was devoted—I will not call them peripheral areas in any sense of denigration—to the sort of areas where it was fairly easy to see that we should make some alteration or amendment. My right hon. Friend did not address himself to the difficult situation we are faced with in the large, densely populated areas of central Scotland.
  The payment of councillors has been referred to. One who has served in local government, as I did before coming here, and did so on a voluntary basis, tends to say, "I did it voluntarily, so why cannot these others?" But I agree with the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) that if we set up an entirely new conception of local government it is high time to look at the method of financing the local authorities and at whether the councillors should be remunerated. The arguments are more likely to come down in favour of paying them than they are the other way round.
  The same applies to what the hon. Gentleman was saying about trying to find a change in the rating system. Unless we make sonic changes, it seems that we shall again get into very real difficulty in property rating entailing people living in identically rated properties but with different means. We should take the opportunity to tackle that matter in the Bill.
  Where I am in disagreement with my right hon. Friend is in how my own county of Fife is being dealt with. It is being divided. The whole concept of what sort of regions we are to have should be looked at more in the light of the sort of services we are going to provide for the consumers, who are the ratepayers.
  Back in 1963, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) published his White Paper, and when evidence was given to the Wheatley Commission, one of the preoccupations of people in local government was shown to be that, because we had so much
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  fragmented authority between burghs and counties, through boundary interchanges and so on, it was difficult to plan for expansion of industry—a situation demonstrated in the moves to bring the motor industry to Scotland. Once we have accepted, as the majority of people have, that there are to be major changes and large regional authorities, the overall thought, which came largely from Scottish Office officials because of the difficulties they had faced in the planning of industrial expansion, does not stand up to the criterion of the sort of thing we are going to need over the next 15 or 20 years.
  If we have these very large regions for education and social work we shall find it extremely difficult to set up the sort of organisation necessary. Social work is a new department and education a very old one. Both need to be closely linked together.
  Part VIII of the Bill leads to discussing whether it is right that we should continue to keep the fire service and the police among the services controlled by local government. I have often felt that if we were to arrive at a situation in which we tried to give local authorities more autonomy in disposing the percentage of money they were responsible for raising and financing, there would be an argument for saying that the fire and police services should be almost entirely paid for by the national Exchequer.
  Another matter, mentioned by the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), is the question of teachers' salaries. A review published recently by an agency of the central Government forecast that the expenditure on education at the end of this century would be five times what it is at present. Education is the largest spending department in local authorities, and if this great increase is to take place we need to consider whether we could get a fairer distribution of the responsibilities of the authorities if the element of the teachers' salaries were paid 100 per cent. by the Government so that they paid a bigger share of the expenditure on education.
  Page 3 of the explanatory memorandum says:
  "Provision is made that all local authorities are to have a general fund. … A stipulation that capital expenses are not to be incurred

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  without the Secretary of State's consent replaces the present requirement to obtain borrowing consent."
  I find this difficult to understand exactly. It is one of the aspects on the financial side on which it would be helpful to have an explanation.
  I do not want to devote a lot of time to the case of my own county and its division. It can be dealt with much more adequately in Committee. But there has been in the past the concept that planning authorities must have a wide scale. I feel that we have got over so many of these difficulties that there is real point in my county considering itself as being the right size to be a regional authority and that it has clearly defined boundaries. It is, for instance, from the boundary of East Perthshire to Fife Ness some 37 miles along the north shore of the Tay estuary with one crossing. If one goes along the other side of Fife Ness, it is more than 40 miles from Fife Ness to the Forth crossing at the Forth Bridge.
  The people in the area live in an entity which they know and understand. The commission recommends that the boundary should run between the agricultural north-east and the rest of the county. But in the north-east of Fife the greater part of the population live and work in towns. This is one of the things that the county is going to be influenced by more than almost than anywhere else.
  There are 14 burghs in my constituency, most of them royal burghs with very long history. Most of the people who live in them have had as their town councillors people they know on the spot. All this is to be taken away. If we accept that change there must be, then there is a genuine argument for saying that at least we should keep this whole county, which the people know and live with, as a region and divided into whatever districts are necessary. There will be a greater upheaval in local government in my area because of the number of burghs than in almost any other part of Scotland. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will consider this argument seriously. As he knows from the postcards, letters and other communications that I have sent him and his predecessors, this is not just a matter which has been whipped up by a campaign. It is the genuine feeling of my constituents that
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  they are facing great change. They feel that they have the criteria to be a regional authority and that they should stick to it.
  There is another matter about which I am in some difficulty. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has written to me setting out the criteria which are considered necessary for a region to have before it can be accepted as a region. My hon. Friend says:
  "Among the criteria are networks for wholesale distribution …"
  I do not see what that has to do with the way in which we organise local government. He goes on to talk about
  "… patterns of shopping for 'consumer durables' …"
  If it is said, for example, that we must look to Dundee and Edinburgh, I say without offence to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison) that Edinburgh has the worst organised traffic system in the whole country and that it is further behind in any idea of a network of road improvement than almost any other city. Edinburgh has its difficulties, and we all understand them. But can it be argued that people will be enticed to travel from Fife to Edinburgh for their shopping durables? The journey will take two hours there and two hours back and it will be very much more expensive because Edinburgh's shops are more expensive than Fife shops.
  My hon. Friend goes on to say that the circulation of daily and evening newspapers has to be taken into account. What has that to do with local government? In fact, the Dundee Courier circulates in Fife more widely than any other newspaper. On the basis of that argument Fife ought to go in with Dundee. This sort of thinking is quite incomprehensible. What has it to do with education and social work and with having a proper system where councillors are in touch with their constituents?
  My hon. Friend also refers to the pattern of tourism. May I remind him that the Tayside Study talked about the East Neuk o' Fife being an area for the people of Dundee. My hon. Friend used to dig for worms on the beach at Elie when his home was in Stirling. The people digging with him did not come from Dundee. They came from Stirling and Glasgow.

  961
  In the same way, when one travels home at the weekend and comes off the night train at Edinburgh to catch the train back to Kirkcaldy or Coupar, one finds that more people are travelling from Edinburgh to Fife than from Fife into Edinburgh. My hon. Friend says that one cannot possibly get on in Fife without going to Edinburgh. I am at a loss to understand these criteria.
  My hon. Friend goes on to talk about architects and lawyers. But there is only one requirement for which people go to Edinburgh, and that is a divorce. But that applies to everyone else in Scotland. I can see no reason for it at all.
  What annoys my constituents is that they have never had a proper answer when they have asked why it is proposed to divide up the county of Fife. It has never been said that it is essential in the interests of the people of Fife since it will give them better and more efficient local government. If my hon. Friend can say that, the expenses will come down, and that everyone will be happier, I am sure that most people will accept the proposal. But that is the last thing that my hon. Friend says. All that we get from him is that people must see an architect in Edinburgh or in Dundee.
  Any proposal must be based on efficiency and nothing else. All my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench are trying to keep down costs—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] That is what they want to do. Apparently the criterion for this change is to be that one should break up an organisation which can be adapted to a regional structure, with part put into one region and part into another, and to create an artificial dividing line which is crossed daily by people. We must remember that if people living in the Kirkcaldy or Glenrothes area want recreation and places in which to live, they are bound to go in the other direction and therefore all the plans will be made for the wrong regional authority.
  If the division is to be made at all, the present proposal makes it in the wrong place. However, I am certain that the division should not be made. While I am happy to support the Bill on Second Reading, I shall not support it on Third Reading unless Fife is given regional status.
  6.6 p.m.
  Mr. Harry Gourlay: I shall not take up the dissertation of the hon. Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour) about the Under-Secretary digging for worms. However, later in my speech I shall take up the hon. Gentleman's point about social work being a regional function, because I shall strongly protest against such an allocation to the region. When the hon. Gentleman suggests that were Fife to be a region it would be a good area for social work, again I would disagree. In the past, county councils have not been the best types of authorities in administering social work departments.
  I wish to welcome what is the first major reform of local government since 1929. In the 43 years since then considerable changes have taken place in local government in Scotland. Nevertheless the time has come for more far-reaching changes than any so far effected in that period. Local government has become very much more sophisticated. It is now big business involving millions of pounds annually. While the Bill proposes bigger authorities, one does not necessarily accept that larger authorities automatically will mean more efficient ones. Nevertheless, the time has come to eliminate the proliferation of small and often inefficient local units.
  While I welcome the attempt in the Bill to reform local government, there are parts of it of which I am highly critical, though they are not necessarily the same parts as the hon. Member for Fife, East criticised. I have in mind especially the allocation of functions between regional councils and district councils, and I propose to deal with those aspects later in my remarks.
  I wish to refer first to Clause 3, which the hon. Member for Banff (Mr. W. H. K. Baker) discussed. I shall not deal with vice-chairmen or vice-convenors but rather with subsection (5) which says:
  "On a casual vacancy occurring in the office of chairman an election to fill the vacancy shall be held as soon as practicable by the council at a meeting of the council notice of which specifies the filling of the vacancy as an item of business …".
  Those words appear to be very clear to the average individual, and the same words are contained in the 1947 Act

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  However, a small burgh named Kinghorn in my constituency apparently cannot interpret those words simply, with the result that it has been without a provost for five or six weeks. It has been decided to fill the vacancy on the council by an election before going on to consider the filling of the vacancy for a provost. In my opinion, that is not the strict interpretation of the words in the clause and in the 1947 Act. Therefore I appeal to the Secretary of State to look again at the clause to see whether it cannot be more specific than the rather loosely worded form that it takes at the moment.
  Clause 31 deals with the disqualification of members. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) dealt with it at some length. In my opinion the clause is far too sweeping, especially since there are now larger authorities throughout the whole of Scotland than there were hitherto. With the introduction of passenger transport authorities, there will be a larger number of people in Scotland disfranchised than ever before. It ought to be possible to legislate for a more selective form of disqualification. I do not see any reason why a dustman, a gardener of an authority or a typist in the council office should be disqualified from being members of that authority. I suggest that the disqualification could be reduced in such a way that it excluded only chief officers and such other officials of the authority as are concerned with advising the authority on matters of policy.
  In Clause 45, we come to attendance allowances. I am pleased to note that so far practically every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate, including the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble), has indicated support for the payment of councillors. The Secretary of State gave an indication that there was a certain element of doubt in his mind. I hope that in Committee something more direct and positive will be put to the Secretary of State which he will accept. While the attendance allowance may be a slight improvement over the financial loss allowance, I think that the Secretary of State should grasp the nettle and introduce salaries for councillors. The number of councillors will be considerably reduced in Scotland and they will be doing much more work over extended
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  areas. The attendance allowance, like the financial loss allowance, will continue to restrict the availability of good candidates.
  The new structure of local government envisaged in the Bill will require men and women of considerable ability, and many of these people are already in posts of responsibility. They are often the type who find it difficult to be released from employment because they are key personnel in the firms in which they are employed, and this makes it difficult for them to secure leave of absence. Although many good employers have set an example in the past by releasing these people for such duties, there are other employers—local authorities among them—who have been restrictive in giving leave of absence for public duties. Therefore, if adequate remuneration were given to members of the new local authorities they could serve the community independent of the whims of their employers, but sufficient financial safeguard would have to be given to members who failed to secure re-election, just as Members of Parliament are safeguarded in a similar situation.
  Clause 57 extends the practice of co-option. Hitherto education and library committees were practically the only committees where co-option could take place. I regard the extension of the principle of co-option as a retrograde step. There has been co-option of aldermen in England for many years, and it was eventually eliminated in the English Local Government Act. Everyone who is concerned with policy making in the administration of local government must be responsible to the electorate and must, therefore, be elected. That is the only way in which democracy can be served effectively.
  Clause 112 which deals with rate rebates appears to be innocuous at first reading. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) seems to have taken that point of view, and the Secretary of State made a magnanimous statement when he said that rate rebates would be subject to a 90 per cent. grant to local authorities. But I believe that this clause is a subtle and sinister attempt by the Government to transfer the burden from the taxpayer to the ratepayer, with all the inequalities

  965
  which that transfer involves. Many ratepayers who are now receiving rebates will find themselves worse off.
  Substitution of the present rate rebate scheme by the rent rebate scheme in the Housing Scotland Act, 1972, means the substitution of a reasonably generous and simple scheme for a mean and complicated one. The old scheme is explained in a leaflet in a very simple, efficient and effective way. But for it will be substituted a seven-page booklet which explains how the complicated scheme works. In addition, for the first time a means or needs test is introduced. Does the Secretary of State deny that after two years the level of grant will fall back to 75 per cent.?
  The Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office (Mr. George Younger): The hon. Member is mistaken, as he will see from the Bill. The level of grant will be 90 per cent. from 1974 onwards for the rate rebate scheme.
  Mr. Gourlay: I had thought that the same conditions would apply to this scheme as applied to the rent rebate scheme under the Housing Act, but I am glad to hear that that is not so. I hope that once the new rate rebate scheme is introduced those people on social security and who are at present receiving an allowance from social security and who are at present receiving an allowance from social security sources for rates will not be transferred to the responsibility of the local authority under the new rate rebate scheme.
  Mr. John Robertson: Surely the point is that we are all suspicious of some future Government legislation which will probably reduce the rate support grant and substitute a rate rebate grant.
  Mr. Gourlay: My hon. Friend is going further than I wish to go. I am trying to be specific about the Bill. I accept the assurance about the 90 per cent, grant, but am I correct in saying that those who receive an allowance from social security for rates will be transferred to the local authority's responsibility? If they are, the local authority will not be much better off with the new grant.
  Mr. Doig: At the moment the rate rebate scheme is paid for 100 per cent. by the Government. Now more people
  966
  will be brought into it, but the Government will pay only 90 per cent.
  Mr. Gourlay: My hon. Friend is adding to the confusion at this stage. I am assured that only 75 per cent. grant is paid at the moment. The clause is simply an extension of the means test system which is so abhorrent to many people. If the rate rebate scheme which is to be introduced is similar to the rent scheme, widows who have a son living with them will be very much worse off under the new system. Therefore, I trust that my hon. Friends who will lead on the Committee will see fit to put down an appropriate amendment to see that such a thing does not happen.
  Clause 159 which gives social work to the regional councils is one of the greatest mistakes in the Bill. It may sound all very well in theory to tie up social work and education, but in practice social work is more concerned with housing and unemployment than with education. I had 15 years' experience of local government and I took a special interest in the work of the children's committee. I found that even county council areas were too large to enable elected representatives to take the necessary interest in the children who are committed to their care. While we have been blessed in the past, and no doubt will be in the future, with good and efficient social work officials, it is much better if in this highly personalised service the local authority members are much more closely associated with the service than would ever be possible under the regional system. The Government must, therefore, think again about the allocation of social work and give it to the district councils.
  Schedule 1 deals with constituency boundaries. When the constituency boundaries were recently changed by the Boundary Commission, the parish of Auchtertool was added to the Kirkcaldy constituency. But the Government are taking the Auchtertool parish out and putting it into the Dunfermline district. That seems a nonsense, because Auchtertool parish is much nearer to the town of Kirkcaldy, which is the natural centre for the people who wish to go shopping or go to the local authority offices. There is a public transport service direct from Auchtertool to Kirkcaldy, but there is no direct service to Inverkeithing, which

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  would be the appropriate ward in the Dunfermline district.
  I support the hon. Member for Fife, East. Take Largo from Kirkcaldy district and give us Auchtertool, which will be better and more sensible, in more ways than one. Therefore, I hope that common sense will prevail and that this necessary boundary alteration will be made.
  With reference to Fife, which was dealt with at great length by the hon. Member for Fife, East, I have received representations in support of the proposals in the Bill. As a result of the campaign for Fife, I received some postcards and a few letters representing less than 1 per cent, of the electorate supporting Fife's claim for regional status. Opposition to the proposal that Fife be put into the Tay-side and Forth regions emanates largely from the landward area of the county and the small burghs of East Fife which do not wish to be associated with Dundee, possibly for political as well as geographical reasons.
  Provided that the Government see reason and allocate to the district authorities the responsibility of social work, in addition to the present proposals in the Bill, I believe that the electors in the new Kirkcaldy district will be well served under the new scheme of local government administration.
  There are many other points that I should wish to raise, but time does not permit me to do so. Suffice it to say that reorganisation of this magnitude is bound to engender opposition. However, we must deal with the problem not just for 10 years but, possibly, for more than 40 or 50 years ahead. What now appears a tremendous upheaval will be considered a minor change in the years to come.
  6.22 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: There are a number of matters in the Bill which I view with considerable distaste. I have no doubt that there will be many points raised in Committee, and judging from the size of the Bill, I wonder whether we shall ever complete the Committee stage. But that is another matter. Today I want to raise only four short points, three in connection with the regions and one in connection with Clause 123.
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  In my view, the Strathclyde Region is ludicrous. It contains half the population of Scotland. Its characteristics vary in the extreme. It stretches for hundreds of square miles. If it ever comes into being it will be neither government nor local. We need another two regions in that area, and Glasgow should be an all-purpose authority.
  I strongly support my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour) in this battle to retain the ancient kingdom. As far as I know, Fife is efficiently administered. It has adequate funds and, above all, its people wish to retain it as a unit. I have not had one letter or request that Fife should be split, but I have had many going the other way, most of them well reasoned and asking for my support to keep the ancient kingdom.
  Mr. William Hannan: How many representations has the hon. Member received supporting his contention about the West Region?
  Mr. Clark Hutchison: I have not added them up—but quite a few.
  I thought that the present Government were elected on a policy of, among other things, acting in accordance with the wishes and needs of the people, and not to override or ignore them. As Conservatives, we should have regard to tradition and stability. I believe that Edinburgh should remain an all-purpose authority. It should not be down-graded. It has adequate resources in size, population and money to be a region on its own. As the nation's capital, with its long traditions and world fame, it deserves special attention. Other capitals usually look after their own affairs. Canberra, Ottawa, Washington and London do; why cannot Edinburgh? Again, I have not had one request for Edinburgh to be grouped with Fife, West Lothian or any other region. My constituency is solid in wishing Edinburgh to remain as it is, and I believe that to be the position in the constituencies of my hon. Friends who represent other Edinburgh seats.
  Why do not the Government listen? In the representations and discussions leading up to the Bill, I have found the Scottish officials and Ministers more obstinate than I have known them on any other subject in the 15 years I have

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  been in the House. Why? What is behind it all? What does the Scottish Office thinks it will gain? What is the Scottish Office about?
  Finally, I draw attention to Clause 123, which deals with education committees. I note with great satisfaction that the committees will contain at least two people who are interested in the promotion of religious instruction. One will be nominated by the Roman Catholic Church and the other as a result of a meeting of all the other Churches. That is wrong. One representative should be a member of the Church of Scotland, which is the national church, attended by the Queen and recognised in the Constitution. This representative should be appointed in each region by the General Assembly, acting through its own education committee.
  There should also be a representative from the Roman Catholic Church. There should be a third representative for the other churches operating in the area. This proposal has the full backing of the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church. I ask that that amendment be made. The present proposal is an insult to the national church and, unless adjustment is made, we can expect some sectarian strife.
  6.29 p.m.
  Mr. Hugh D. Brown: I do not object to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison) making observations about the West Region, but I have no wish to follow that line by intervening in Edinburgh affairs. At least, I imagine that his speech will not do him any harm in his constituency, and I presume that he needs a bit of help there.
  Mr. Clark Hutchison: Certainly not.
  Mr. Brown: All right. I was just commenting that, while critical of the Government, the hon. Member's speech was controversial in one or two respects only as regards the area which, as far as I can see, is causing us all a lot of trouble, namely, the West Region.
  In my view, we must constantly ask ourselves whether reform is needed. I have always had in mind—the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) touched on this—that when
  970
  the Wheatley Commission was taking evidence the general attitude of most local authority people was, "There is nothing wrong with our authority. We are efficient. We are competent. If only we could get more money from somewhere"—usually, they meant from the central Government—"there is nothing we could not do". In other words, they were very satisfied with their performance.
  Mr. Noble: The point the hon. Gentleman makes is that people in local government were well satisfied with themselves. That I accept—but no wider than that.
  Mr. Brown: That is what I was saying, though I did not put it very well. We agree that it was true of most local authorities. They thought that they were thoroughly competent in the duties which they carried out, and that there was no need for reform. If there was need for it anywhere, it was always in some other local authority.
  There has now been a slight change of opinion, because almost everybody who makes representations on the subject starts by saying, "We know that there is a need for reform in local government", the only difference being that they go on to say, "provided that you accept what we propose—not the Wheatley scheme, or the scheme which the Government are proposing". Therefore, as I say, we should constantly ask ourselves whether reform is needed and whether a good case has been made out for some of the basic thinking which Wheatley put forward.
  I take, first, the inescapable need to bring the burghs and counties together. I think that I can speak here with some objectivity, coming from Glasgow. In the context of Glasgow and the West Region, the argument usually comes down to whether there is force in the basic Wheatley idea of bringing town and country together. Of course there is. Apart from the urban problems of a major city such as Glasgow, no one looking at the West Central area can deny that, for a variety of reasons, it is impossible to look at this area without taking a fairly broad view. For instance, how can we consider the economic and social consequences of Hunterston—or no Hunterston—without looking at the matter in a regional context? I am not

  971
  talking here about the problem of steel; I am talking about the infrastructure, and all the things which go with any major industrial change in Scotland.
  I shall not here go into the arguments for or against Hunterston. All I am saying is that with the big movements of population and the need to provide housing and leisure facilities, strategic or economic planning of this kind must inescapably be done on the scale—or something like the scale—suggested by Wheatley.
  I make no comment now on the Prime Minister's petulant attitude when he got caught in a traffic snarl-up in London, but one of the good outcomes of that incident was that the Tokyo conference was reported at all. It was interesting to note that Mayor John Lindsay of New York spoke of the cities of America having been left to pick up the bill for urban renewal, all the major social problems being encountered in the heavily populated areas. I shall not go into what they are. Everyone knows of the traffic difficulties, the social problems, the need to find leisure facilities for people in congested areas, and so on. All these problems are impossible of solution if we continue to think within the terms of the present narrow local government structure.
  For example, what about leisure facilities and the use of the countryside? Does anyone think that the people of Glasgow will find greater recreational facilities, such as golf courses, within the present city boundary? Of course not. One must have in mind the areas round about, even the coastal areas—I think of Saltcoats, and why not?—
  Mr. David Lambie: All the Glasgow people come to Saltcoats.
  Mr. Brown: I am always willing to give Saltcoats a free plug. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is not the only place."] Exactly. In considering leisure facilities, why should we not look over a bigger area? Plenty of Glasgow money is taken to areas outside. Let us all get together and look at these things in the best interest of all the people living in such an area, without being so parochial as we have, perhaps, been in the past.
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  There is recognition now of the need for change. Hon. Members do not always remember that a fair amount of research was done by the intelligence units used by Wheatley, and one of the striking facts to come out was that in 1967, the last year when elections had taken place which could be taken into account, 63 per cent. of the seats were uncontested. How can it be said that the creation of bigger authorities will destroy local democracy? It is a myth. It is just not true. Who can argue that the present set-up is democratic in face of figures like that? I see that the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) nods in agreement. [Interruption.] It is only retired colonels and, perhaps, retired Members of Parliament who can find the time—[Interruption.] In the main, that is still true in most of the counties, which is where the uncontested seats are largely to be found.
  A further fact to be borne in mind is that, where seats were contested, only 47 per cent. of the electorate voted. I know that the cities have not got a good record in this respect.
  Mr. James Dempsey: Has my hon. Friend classified how many of the uncontested seats were uncontested because they were regarded as safe seats by one party or another?
  Mr. Brown: I do not think that that is necessarily true. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is."] Hon. Members can make their own speeches.
  Mr. Eadie: We may not get a chance.
  Mr. Brown: Some of my hon. Friends may have had an opportunity in July which—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I know of at least 14 hon. Members who wish to catch my eye, so the fewer the interruptions the better.
  Mr. Brown: I am sorry if I have provoked any, Mr. Speaker. I shall give way no more. Whatever the reasons for seats being uncontested, no one can argue that the system is necessarily democratic when that number is uncontested.
  I accept that there is a need for change. On the question of the challenge of size, as I call it, I shall quote from what was said by the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) in 1970. It is an honourable

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  occupation to quote the speeches of others, and, as the hon. Gentleman is now in the Government, I am sure that he will wish to reread his words with interest before the Committee stage. I warn him that I shall refer to them once or twice. This is what the hon. Gentleman said:
  "My fear is that having half Scotland in one region and the rest in all the other regions will produce an unbalanced result which will not be good for the Government of Scotland as a whole."
  I imagine that the hon. Gentleman will wish to retract that now, after a period of reflection, since he has responsibility in the Government and is no longer making opposition speeches. But he will be stuck with it.
  I accept the challenge of size, and I believe that it can be met in two ways. The first is the adoption or improvement of up-to-date management techniques and structures. That might create more efficiency, but it must be matched by democratic control over the sort of body for which we are now seeking.
  At the moment—and I make that qualification because Glasgow Corporation may have changed its attitude, although I do not believe so—Glasgow broadly supports the Wheatley proposals. Although it has so far not given any indication of being likely to change its view, it has not made its voice heard. It appreciates that the opposition to the proposal to establish a West Region has come largely from the surrounding counties and, very fairly, Glasgow has not wished to be seen to be in the forefront of defending the Wheatley proposals, which would be regarded by some opponents as justifying their view that Glasgow wishes to dominate the whole area.
  In terms of sheer size and population, however, that is another inescapable fact. It dominates the whole area in some respects, just as Edinburgh dominates the other side of Scotland. But Glasgow has played its part in a low key because of the political difficulties about the West Region, if and when it is established.
  I quote what the Under-Secretary said about community councils:
  "Last, the question of community councils. Try as I will, I cannot find a good word to say on the proposal for community councils…
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  But the concept of setting up a statutory body, without powers and without real functions, as a local sounding board or talking shop, is most undesirable…it will attract only people whose frustrations in other fields leave them either unable to be elected for the larger authorities or unwilling to do so …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Grand Committee, 12th February, 1970; c. 92–3.]
  If ever there were a warning to an up-and-corning Minister, that is it. It may be that the more extreme and irresponsible the speeches one makes in opposition the greater one's chances of becoming a Minister.
  But this is a respect in which there is a possibility of injecting some kind of democratic content. I refer not just to powers. I do not think that these councils need statutory duties and statutory functions. Unlike the hon. Member for Ayr, I think that we shall get people to serve on these councils, provided that they are not subject to too many rules and regulations and restrictions and requirements. It is not an imaginative approach to say that the approval of the Secretary of State is required to any change. However, that is a matter to discuss in Committee.
  I commend the approach of the Edinburgh Forum of Community Workers, which has just produced a record of some of the representations already made to the Scottish Office. It outlines some imaginative suggestions for part of the work of the councils. I have some ideas of my own.
  One democratic injection must be made. The payment of councillors has been mentioned. In addition the local authorities must be encouraged to provide facilities for councillors at regional and district level. There must be none of this petty stuff of wondering whether a councillor really stayed at a first-class hotel for a night.
  If Scottish authorities are able to spend £300 million or £400 million a year, why cannot we grow up and trust councillors with some responsibility, instead of criticising so-called indiscretions? If councillors are to be given such great responsibility, let us treat them responsibly and provide them with the necessary facilities.
  An increase in election facilities is certainly needed. Why should there not be poll cards and postal votes for local

  975
  elections, for instance? We need the greatest possible help to produce the greatest possible public interest in local elections.
  The eligibility of candidates should be widened. To the best of my knowledge, there is not one civil servant on any big authority in Scotland. That is disgraceful. There is nothing wrong with civil servants taking part in local government. Such work would make them better civil servants—we can discuss the levels at which they should participate.
  Here is a possible source of recruitment. The public authorities have a good record in this respect, although private industry is not noted for its generosity in allowing time off, not even for people at executive or management level. But many employees would be the better for having served a four-year spell on one of the new authorities, and I hope that the Government will use any influence that they have in that direction.
  Nor are we concerned only with the duties laid down in the Bill. I assume that the other calls on local authorities will remain. For example, the official diary lists 82 outside bodies on which Glasgow councillors serve without payment. Many such functions do not qualify as duties, but they include being a member of the board of the Scottish National Orchestra and being a member of the visiting committee to Barlinnie Prison. Not only local council duties are delegated to local authorities. Outside bodies often want some kind of representation, some kind of democratically elected representation.
  With so many duties on councillors, I support the idea—I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) would claim it to be original—of some kind of advisory commission to consider the duties and responsibilities of councils and what changes might have to take place once the Bill's proposals have been effected. There is something to be said for fundamental changes in local government if those changes are made with vision and imagination.
  6.48 p.m.
  Mr. Ian MacArthur: If I may say so, I think that every right hon. and hon. Gentleman
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  would want to pay a respectful tribute to Mr. Deputy Speaker, the hon. Lady the Member for Renfrew, East (Miss Harvie Anderson), for the role that she played on the Wheatley Commission. I think that all of us would also want to congratulate the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) on his work on that body. It was a great benefit to all of us to hear his contribution today.
  I think that all of us, of every party, would want to welcome the great contribution by my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) to the whole process of local government reform that he initiated by his White Paper way back in 1963. As he said quietly and modestly in his speech today, some delay followed thereafter. When the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) was Secretary of State, nothing much happened beyond the establishment of the Royal Commission. The reason was that the right hon. Gentleman and his fellow Ministers were too busy giving urgent consideration to the Hunter Report—[Laughter.] I am glad that my hon. Friends take the point. That penny took a long time to drop.
  The hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown), in his agreeable speech, reminded us that when the proposed reforms were being spoken about originally many people asked whether reform was needed at all. I think it is true to say, as my right hon. Friend said in his interjection, that many councillors thought that there was nothing wrong with them, and indeed there probably was not. What is wrong is the structure in which they have had to work for the last 43 years. As the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock said, what is needed is complete change, and I think that that is right because local government today is very different from the local government of 40 or more years ago. It is now one of the biggest buying and management bodies in the whole of Britain and we cannot expect it to confront the enormous responsibility of local government in the same shape and form as 40 years ago.
  I think there is general acceptance of the need to reform the structure of local government, although there will be no total agreement about the precise way in which that reform should go through. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the

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  Secretary of State on recognising that there cannot be total agreement about these things, on producing a Bill which at least tries to make sense of all the proposals that have been considered, and on producing a pattern of reform which will be generally acceptable. I think that there will be broad agreement with his proposals.
  I was particularly glad that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy Burghs (Mr. Gourlay) pointed out the significance of the reform, and I wish that rather more of that tone had run through the debate this afternoon. This is an exciting Bill. It represents a large step forward for Scotland, involving the whole process of planning and providing new attractions for industrial development and new formulae in local management.
  It would be wrong to suggest that this is a dreary, administrative Bill that we have to plough through in the Scottish Standing Committee. It is much more than that. It is the most important legislation that we have had for Scotland for many years. It will influence the whole shape and future of Scotland for many decades, and we have to get that home. It is not a dreary Bill but an exciting measure and one that will rightly command a great deal of attention in the House. I am glad to see this as yet another star in the firmament of Conservative reform. Here we are, after 2½ years in Government, with the most concentrated period of dramatic reform that there has been in the whole of this century, and the Bill is not the least star in that galaxy.
  Having told my right hon. Friend that there will be broad agreement with these general proposals, I must tell him that there will be a number of questions about the detailed proposals. Many of these should be held back for the Committee stage, but perhaps I may raise just one or two matters which if they can be answered satisfactorily and flexibly tonight will avoid a certain amount of debate later on.
  First, I should like to raise two questions at the regional level. There has been a great deal of talk this afternoon about the size of the West Region, Strathclyde. My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour) said that one criterion of judgment in the reform is what sort of service the newly
  978
  structured local government will be able to provide for consumers, the ratepayers. I confess that when I look at the size of the West Region and realise that it contains half the children of school age in Scotland, I wonder how on earth one local education authority can begin to cope with the problems of the multilevel education of these children. What sort of service can that single local body provide? I know that there is provision in the Bill for some degree of delegation. My right hon. Friend was good enough to answer my intervention on this point, but I hope that when my hon. Friend replies to the debate he will be able to tell us a little more about this.
  I accept completely that one of the great problems about reshaping the West Region is that there is no obvious pattern, there is no single view about how the enormous density of population in the region can be coped with in the new structure, but the germ of an idea for education has been put forward by the Educational Institute of Scotland. In brief, and I hope my brevity does not divert the proposal, this is that there should be a system of board managements—seven of them—which would act as the delegated bodies to control education on a day-to-day basis throughout the region. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to say whether that will come within the provisions of the Bill—whether it will be possible to have some form of delegation within individual regions.
  It is essential that children in the West Region, where so many children have suffered some educational deprivation, should have a first-rate system of education management, and I do not see how that will be possible under the Bill as it stands unless there is some degree of delegation such as that which has been proposed.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Education, Scottish Office (Mr. Hector Monro): I hope that my hon. Friend will study Clause 124 which sets out the idea of management boards at local level.
  Mr. MacArthur: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have seen the clause, but I am not clear whether the proposals put forward by the Educational Institute of Scotland will fall within its terms. If they do, I hope that my hon. Friend will

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  say so when he replies to the debate. I do not think that the intervention can be brushed aside. The education of half the children of Scotland is a matter that concerns me deeply, as I am sure it does all right hon. and hon. Members, and we need a clear answer. If the form of delegation comes within the clause, I shall welcome it. All I am asking for, very courteously, is an assurance about that.
  It is impertinent to stray into a region which is not my own, but it is a neighbour of mine. I am referring to the Kingdom of Fife, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East will forgive me if I make a couple of points about it.
  I do not know whether Fife will be better managed as a single authority, or as a divided authority, but I am still waiting—and I say this with respect to my right hon. Friend—to hear any good reason why Fife should be divided in this way. My right hon. Friend said today—and it was very reassuring—that whatever happens Fife will continue as a kingdom and as an area, but I cannot see what sort of kingdom it will be if it is split in two. It is not much of a king who can proclaim, "I am monarch of only half of what I survey". I do not see how an area can survive as a single administrative area if it is split in two.
  Some time ago there was a suggestion that part of the reason for this change was evidenced before the Wheatley Commission. It was said that the building of the bridge across the Tay would change the whole manner of life of the people in the northern part of Fife, and perhaps in the central part, too. But such evidence as there is to the contrary. It shows that no such change has taken place in the life of the people. What was assumed to be so in good faith has not turned out to be so in fact. If that is so, perhaps that aspect of the proposal should be looked at again.
  It has been said that from a planning point of view this division is necessary because if Fife stays as it is there will be no major conurbation at the centre as a planning headquarters, as a planning centre. But we are, surely, legislating for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ahead, and who can say now that within that scale of time Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes will not
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  continue to grow as they have been doing and become a conurbation in their own right? If a conurbation is essential to a region, where is the conurbation in the Borders?
  I must leave areas which are not my own and move on to one or two local points. What is to be the future of local harbours in the newly structured system? I have in mind, obviously, the harbour in Perth. Will that remain under the control of the local government inheritors of Perth, the Perth district, or will it become a regional responsibility? I hope that the management of harbours will remain a local responsibility, because they are local harbours, serving a local need and they need to be locally managed, and not managed from a regional headquarters which may be many miles away.
  Further, will my right hon. Friend yet again turn to a problem which I have raised with him and his colleagues many times—the future of the style of Lord Provost and Provost? Clause 3(6) says:
  "The title of 'Lord Provost' shall attach to the chairman of the district councils of the cities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow."
  It is good to know that that special provision is made for these ancient offices, but why is Perth not in that subsection? Perth too has a Lord Provost, the only other one in Scotland—
  Mr. Gordon Campbell: I am afraid that my hon. Friend has stumbled into the mistake of overlooking the city of Elgin, which also has a Lord Provost.
  Mr. MacArthur: Then let us have Elgin too. Why are Perth and Elgin excluded? Certainly, the Lord Provost of Perth, the head of this ancient capital of Scotland, should retain his dignity in the new district authority, as will the Lords Provost of the other four great cities of Scotland.
  Similarly, what is to happen to the old style of Provost? I realise that perhaps there is no need to write this into the Bill, although I do not see why it should not be there. Will it be possible in the new structure for the convener of a local district to become the natural inheritor of the most ancient provostship in that district?
  Mr. Ross: And all the chains.
  Mr. MacArthur: Indeed, and all the chains of office. The right hon. Gentleman may laugh about them, but I believe, as I am sure he does, that there is reason to be proud of certain dignities and customs of office in Scotland and it is right that they should be continued wherever possible, so long as they do not get in the way of modernity and progress. If they do not, let us preserve them and provide some continuity between the old system and the new.
  I was trying yesterday, without success, to trace the comment—it might have been made by my right hon. Friend or it might have been in the White Paper—which I applauded at the time, that the proposals in this Bill must have regard for the views of those living in the areas affected. This is a very proper approach, which was borne out during the considertion of the English Bill earlier this year. At least one amendment from another place was accepted here because, although it changed the Government's original proposals, it reflected the view of 90 per cent. of the inhabitants of that area.
  I hope that, in his flexible approach, my right hon. Friend will adopt this same flexibility with regard to the Scottish Bill. I do not want to stray into Committee points, but I am surprised and disappointed that, despite all my representations to my right hon. Friend and to the noble Lady who was Minister of State some time ago, the parish of Longforgan is still to be part of the Dundee district.
  If my right hon. Friend does not recall my making any representations about this, may I now give him some news? It is that a poll of every individual in Longforgan has revealed that well over 90 per cent of the electors wish to remain in the Perth district, which is their natural home and that, in the other part of the parish, Invergowrie, over half the electors wish to remain in the Perth district.
  I know that my right hon. Friend, who has always shown a most careful concern for local opinion—rightly so—will, in the light of this information, want to move an amendment to transfer Longforgan into the Perth district, where it naturally belongs, not only because it makes sense but because it is the overwhelming will of the people, as clearly expressed in the Longforgan end of the parish. I realise
  982
  as many of us do, that my right hon. Friend will have many amendments to propose in Committee, and I want to help him by saying that if he has not time for this one, I certainly have.
  I mention this not just because of the local Longforgan question but because there are many other local matters which will be raised in our debate. For instance, my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyll mentioned Cowal in Argyll, which is where it rightly belongs. There must be many other strong local arguments which my right hon. Friend's flexibility will want to accept.
  Earlier today, the hon. Member for Inverness pulled my leg and those of several other hon. Members on this side, because we had raised the question of allowances or payment to councillors during an earlier debate on the White Paper. I certainly raised the matter. I am flexible too, but only where there is good reason. I still await the good reason, which there must be, for not paying regional councillors at least, but I have not heard the argument yet.
  Regional councillors in particular, in many parts of Scotland, will have very long distances to travel, often with an overnight stop, to attend meetings. Although this may be catered for by allowances, is that adequate recompense in the 1970s for the time and effort required to fulfil a public duty of this kind?
  A system of allowances may have two consequences. First, it may keep out some people because they cannot afford it—often the very people we need in local government today. Second, the payment of allowances might encourage a proliferation of committees and sub-committees. I do not want to cause any offence by saying this, but it is a consideration which my right lion. Friend should bear in mind.
  Soon, this Bill will start its Committee stage, and I look forward to that. My right hon. Friend will then have the opportunity to demonstrate his flexibility of approach, as I know he is anxious to do. This Bill is not controversial in the party sense. I hope that the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock will accept that; if he does, it will spare him and us much trouble.
  I welcome the Bill and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his splendid

  983
  speech at the beginning of this debate. In particular, I welcome, as we shall have cause to do over the coming weeks, the flexible flexibility with which he introduced the Bill and with which, I know, he will approach the amendments which will be tabled from both sides.
  7.9 p.m.
  Mr. Gavin Strang: Although this is the first time I have spoken in the House on the subject of local government reform, I shall be brief, because many of my hon. Friends wish to speak.
  Basically, I support the Wheatley approach in terms of creating regions. From my experience of planning in Edinburgh, it seems only common sense that we should have a top tier which enables proper strategic planning to take place on the basis of travel-to-work areas and on the basis of the large number of people who make use of the facilities in our major centres, such as Edinburgh and Glasgow.
  I thought at the time that the Wheatley proposals, in terms of the number of districts, were too low, and I welcome the fact that the Government have increased the number of districts; although I should like to have seen the Government go further. That may seem paradoxical, but I think that the districts should have obtained more functions. I welcome the fact that to some extent the Government have done this, certainly as regards housing, although there may have been a case for going further.
  I want to make two basic points of criticism. The first is that, as I understood it, the basic case for reforming local government was in order that we should give our local councils more effective powers, that we would be able to have less control from central Government or the Scottish Office. It seems that at the same time as they are reforming the structure of local government, the Government are moving in the other direction in terms of giving powers to local authorities. We have had a housing Act which substantially reduces the powers and discretions of local authorities. Indeed, it is quite outrageous that central Government should seek to lay down the most minute detail of a rent rebate scheme.
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  The Government have been afforded an opportunity to provide a new local authority health structure, to give elected councillors more control over our health service, but they chose to go in the opposite direction. That was a mistaken approach, in my view.
  I understand that the Scottish Office has no plans to rationalise higher education, in the sense that central institutions and teacher-training colleges will become the responsibility of the regional authority. There is an absolutely overwhelming case for taking this opportunity to give the new regional education authority comprehensive control over higher education, with the exception of the universities. I hope that the Government will look very closely at this matter. When these large regional authorities are running higher education, it will not make sense to continue the fragmentation which exists in higher education at present.
  It seems a great mistake that in regard to education and, apparently, to local government finance, the new local authorities will not obtain more powers and will not be less dependent on central Government.
  My second point of criticism—and this is the one concession, the one change, which I hope the Government will certainly make—is that, as I understood it, one of the arguments for the reform of local government was that by giving a better structure and more finance to councils, we could encourage more able people to come into local government work. I was never sure whether that was one of the most important reasons for reform, but we should all be agreed that every effort should be made to encourage and enable as many people as possible to stand for election for the district and regional authorities.
  The worst aspect of the Bill is that it does precisely the opposite. I have never been able to understand why teachers and others were unable to stand for election to councils. I accept that in the past it was possible for a teacher in Edinburgh to stand for election in Midlothian, and so on. But now that we shall have the large regions it will be outrageous if all these employees—teachers, bus drivers and a host of other able people—who could make a great contribution to a regional authority, are

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  denied that opportunity. It is unacceptable that so many will be denied this chance.
  Most of the Government's supporters on these councils will come from the business world and in a sense it is the Labour Party which suffers most under this regulation. However, I hope that this will not become a party point and that the Government will accept the need that as many people as possible should be able to stand for election to the regional councils. It is no use saying that they can stand for the district authority. The major health, education and transport decisions, and so on, will be taken at regional level. These people should be allowed to stand for election and become regional councillors.
  I hope that the Government will reconsider the decision not to provide a salary for regional councillors. One way out of the difficulty would be to provide an option, that is, if a regional councillor were prepared to work full-time he would have a salary, but if he were not prepared to work full-time he would have an attendance allowance. If the Government do not want that sort of optional system, they must go over to a salary.
  I have spoken already to many people who have been very active in local government but who will be unable to continue in the work, particularly at regional level, without more than the allowances. They will be unable to continue in their present employment and do this job as well. They will not survive on attendance allowances alone. I hope that the Government will think again and enable a proportion of councillors, if not all of them, to have a salary.
  7.16 p.m.
  Mr. Patrick Wolrige-Gordon: I shall follow closely the remarks of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Strang). I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will answer the hon. Member's point about the inability or threatened inability of so many people to be able to play a part in the regional councils. As we consider this legislation we should remember that, apart from the potentially large number of people we want to attract into local government, there will be many who will leave it as a result of the Bill. Certainly I, along with the hon. Member for
  986
  Edinburgh, East, cannot understand why teachers, for example, cannot play a full part in their local authority. It is perfectly open to anyone who is directly affected in any decisions of local or national government to declare an interest, when such a step is necessary, and I fail to see why there should be a different rule in this category.
  I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his ability to approach the consummation of this particularly difficult and politically unrewarding exercise with so few issues outstanding as a focus for dissent. That is no mean achievement. I hope that the further stages of the Bill will assist him to pursue this admirable objective even further.
  I hope that my right hon. Friend will forgive me for turning away from all of the things in the Bill which I accept and for tackling the point which I do not find so easy to accept. It has been raised often in the debate. It relates to Clauses 45 to 48, dealing with payments of allowances to councillors. We are in danger of making a mistake here. If this reform of local government is simply a matter of re-drawing the administrative jigsaw in such extremely large pieces that the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) can describe it as revolutionary, I still do not think that the Bill, and the 10-year prelude, has been worth it. If, however, it is designed to bring something wholly new into local government, a new professionalism, drive and sense of urgency and push, I am interested, and I believe that many people in Scotland who are not passionately interested in local government at present will now be interested, too.
  We are told that part of the point of this legislation is to make the regions more independent of the centre. Surely, however, the ABC of an independent region are independent councils. Footling about with attendance allowances and other allowances is hardly the way to do it unless these allowances are very generous.
  Councillors, like Ministers and Members of Parliament, have to deal with strongly entrenched, dedicated and intelligent bureaucracy. In some cases they will be dealing with men and women far better paid than themselves, and there is therefore a psychological element. In my

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  experience councillors are too prone to yield to the official, even in cases of individual injustice, and the official is paid much more than the councillor to do the job. I fear that the effect of this reorganisation, with its large cut in the number of councillors, will strengthen the power of the officials to an inordinate degree. I have nothing against officials, but power must lie with the elected representatives because it is they who have to answer for it if that power is abused.
  Shall we get a more professional approach? In the old days people used to say that British was best and most of the British believed it. Now they tend to say that British is worst, and most of the British believe that, too. I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between the two. But certainly since the "British is worst" feeling became apparent, this country has made great efforts to improve its approach to training of all kinds and to professionalism generally. Politics, including local politics, is about the only area in which the old concept of the amateur remains untouched. It is about the only profession with no retiring age and the only profession for which no qualifications are expected.
  Now we have a chance of making a fresh start in local government. Are these new councillors, who are to undertake formidable responsibilities for their fellow citizens, to be trained in any way? After we have set up the commission to decide what their functions will be, will anyone tell the councillors of their functions? Are they to be paid adequately or is what we are discussing today simply a means of streamlining the present set-up so that it can be run more effectively from St. Andrews House? Personally, I hope not.
  7.23 p.m.
  Mr. James Sillars: I shall seek to keep my remarks as brief as possible because a number of other hon. Members wish to speak. I wish to focus on a continuing point of dissent—the size of the West Region, which concerns many people in my constituency.
  When the Wheatley Commission Report was published more than three years ago it triggered off a fierce debate in local government circles. At first I thought that the reactions were somewhat
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  hysterical and not worthy of the people who made them. That phase quickly passed and in the last three years most of the debate has been useful and worthwhile. After a short while and within a year of the Wheatley proposals being published, I found a number of ordinary individuals starting to talk sensibly about the proposals and about the counter proposals that they had, and I have found the last three years extremely helpful in assisting me to make up my mind on the Bill which has finally emerged after the Royal Commission Report and the White Paper.
  Since Wheatley we have retreated somewhat from some of the concepts enunciated in the report. I always regarded it as a charter for regional and for local government, especially if account were taken of the views of the minority report. But now we have to discuss the Bill purely in the context of the Government's declaration that they will reform local government and simply substitute a new form of local government for the one we have now.
  My postbag has been filled with more mail from the Girvan area in the last month about the local government reform than I have ever known on any subject including the Common Market. The issue is the allocation of the Girvan part of my constituency to Dumfries and Galloway. Paragraph 55 of the White Paper refers to the
  "Girvan district council area of Ayrshire…which appears to have closer links with the South-West region than with the West."
  I have yet to hear from any Government spokesman a statement which gives sound reasons for that allegation. If I am lucky enough to serve on the Committee I shall produce some learned evidence for the Under-Secretary from the Third Statistical Account of Ayrshire produced by Dr. Strawhorn which proved conclusively that that part of Ayrshire always has been part of Ayrshire and has had very little association with Galloway whatsoever.
  Three years have not been wasted in local government but I suspect that they have been wasted in St. Andrew's House. There seems to be there a remarkably obstinate attitude to altering the proposals for the west. Unless all the authorities can unanimously agree to an alternative

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  the Government will not look at the suggestion. The Government should understand the impossibility of getting a unanimous agreement on an alternative to the proposals contained in the White Paper and the Bill. We have one city authority, 12 large boroughs, 37 small boroughs, six county councils, and umpteen district council authorities in the west. In such circumstances it is impossible to get unanimity for one single issue of local government reform. I consider that the Government have failed in their responsibility to answer an argument which is widely accepted, irrespective of the differing views about an alternative. There is wide acceptance in the west that the West Region is far too large to discharge some of the personalised functions such as social work and education which are allocated to it.
  I cannot understand the Government's attitude because they have not shown complete adherence to the Wheatley principles in the White Paper and the Bill. There are important departures elsewhere. In the Highlands and Islands, in the Borders and South-West Region, the Government are prepared to accept joint boards with other authorities, although the cardinal principle in the Wheatley Report was that there should be direct electoral responsibility for the discharge of any function. I do not necessarily disagree with the Government's shift on this matter. If they and the people in the south-west and the Borders and in the Highlands and Islands find it necessary to depart from the Wheatley principle, they should do so. But I cannot understand why there was flexibility for some areas and complete inflexibility in the west which, with due respect to the Highlands, the south-west and the Borders, has problems of a magnitude far outweighing theirs, especially in the discharge of education and social work.
  But before dealing with my concern about the size of the region and the discharge of certain functions I should like to say a word about the meaning of the term local democracy. The Wheatley Report said on page 48, paragraph 151:
  "Local democracy does not consist merely in local administration of functions. Nor does it mean simply having a local councillor, or even a local council, just round the corner. The essential point is that there should be an elected local council genuinely in charge of
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  the local situation, and answerable for its handling of it."
  Many people doubt whether the latter part of the paragraph is met by the Government's proposals. But I wish to concentrate on the first part of that quotation. My experience tells me that it is wrong. I differ from what is said in paragraph 151 and I have some experience of local government.
  I have found that a very important factor leading to the success of local government is that it is built upon the quality of its councillors. It is the degree of day-to-day contact between the councillor and the people whom he represents which helps to produce policies adequate to their needs. The important point is that a councillor is within easy reach of the people whom he represents in any given area. The day-to-day contact provides the councillor with the authentic views of the people. The ability to stop one's councillor on the street, to tap him on the shoulder and have a word about the swimming pool, the community centre, the play park or housing is advantageous to the councillor and to the general body of citizens. It also allows the people to assess the character of the councillor if they have day-to-day contact with him.
  My experience of local government and its committee work—because it is committee work on which it is founded—is that the character of the councillor is the most important point of all. The question of the man's integrity, determination, sincerity and ability to relate to other councillors is what makes a good committee man in local government. Those qualities can only be assessed by the citizens properly when they have intimate contact with their councillors from day to day.
  I return to the main problem, which is the size of the West Region. I think it is true to say that the west has been created principally for a planning purpose. Wheatly almost made it larger. It even considered at one time having a Western Region composed of Dumfries and Galloway, Strathclyde and the Central Region, and examined the region from that point of view. It did so mainly for planning reasons. It seems a pity that because of a planning reason we should try to squeeze every other function into the remit of this gigantic authority,

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  although no reasonable arguments have been produced for showing that positive advantages would accrue to education and social work as a result of so doing.
  It is indisputable that if one takes away the planning aspect in a strategic sense every other function would be better discharged by smaller areas, regional and district authorities in the west. This is especially so in social work and education where remoteness produces a disruptive attitude on the part of everyone. At least, that is my experience.
  The functions would be better discharged by smaller regions, and this is definitely true in relation to the police and fire services. We should never approach a position where we have an almost national police force in operation. There are sound democratic arguments against our going to that extreme. A region and a police force encompassing half the population of Scotland should be opposed. As for the fire service, there are very good arguments for much smaller authorities than we would ever get in the West Region as visualised. The essence of fire fighting is that there are internal communications between the fire master and the lowest fireman manning the fire appliance. We get a much more efficient fire service in smaller units than is proposed for the West Region. However, that is a point which can be discussed in Committee or on Report.
  As for social work, the administrative difficulty of making it work will put greater emphasis on the bureacracy than it will on the social worker who goes out into the field. To make it work we need more clerks than we have social workers on the ground. That goes without saying if one looks at the scale of administrative difficulty involved in a region of this size. Before we reach the Committee stage, which I hope will not be until after the New Year, I hope the Government will consider responding to the appeal, which I understand was made by the County Convenor of Ayrshire when he wrote to the Secretary of State on 29th November, that some alternative proposals might be forthcoming from the West. I ask the Government to reconsider their attitude on this matter, especially in relation to the point made earlier by the Secretary of State that he must reject any scheme which involves
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  at the strategic planning level a joint planning board drawn from constituent authorities in the West because that would negative the principle of direct elected representation in areas of decision making.
  The choice before the Government lies between two non-ideals. These are either the acceptance of the present suggestions within the Bill or the creation of a number of smaller regional authorities which would nominate members to a joint planning board. As to the first, the Bill has a number of faults, of which we are all aware. The second has the defect that it is a non-directly elected body which would make crucial strategic planning decisions which would be worthless unless they were binding on other regional authorities. I would never agree to a joint planning board being established which had mandatory powers, which was not somehow or other directly responsible to the people in the region through which it discharged its functions.
  I believe we can reach a compromise on the matter. If the Government agreed to the creation of smaller regions, then districts operating at a much more local level, and a joint planning board at a strategic planning level, that board could produce a plan and it would then be up to the regions and district authorities to make representations to the Government, and the Secretary of State acting in the national and regional interest could make that plan mandatory upon the lower regional authorities and the district authorities if necessary.
  If we examine that proposal in the light of some of the provisions in the Bill we find that there is not a great deal of difference between them. The Bill gives the Secretary of State in planning function matters a great deal of reserve power over planning. So far as the Strathclyde Region is concerned, he would take an attitude to planning pretty much the same as he had to take in the Hunterston area. In Strathclyde and Hunterston, one is dealing not with a regional issue but with something which has national importance and national implications. Before local government is reformed there will be a strategic plan for the Clyde Valley planning area proposed by a local government organisation sitting at the present time. The new regional authority is unlikely to oppose that plan.

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  So we shall already have a basic plan agreed among the authorities, which can be subject to monitoring and changing by the joint planning board, which, for mandatory purposes, could be operated by the Secretary of State fitting it into his own conception of what a national plan in Scotland would be. I hope the Government will consider that point of view from myself and, if it finally emerges, from the local government authorities in Scotland.
  I have one last important point to make. To some extent this debate has one defect in so far as we are arguing with a large gap in our knowledge of what the Government's final pattern of government for Scotland is to be. We are arguing about the future governmental pattern of Scotland without knowing where the Government's Scottish Assembly fits into this whole scheme. It is important that we find this out before the Committee stage. Local government must relate somehow or other to central government. We have been told that there will be devolution of central government powers to an Assembly in Edinburgh. Where do the present proposals fit in, in relation to that proposed Assembly?
  Before the Government can expect hon. Members seriously to consider all the points which will flow from this Bill, they must give us some tentative outline of the Scottish Assembly which they have discussed, some idea of how wide or narrow its powers are going to be, and where the new local government fits into what will be a three-tier authority—Parliament here in Westminster, an Assembly in Edinburgh and regional government based on the regional principle of Wheatley. We are entitled to a Green Paper before we discuss this Bill in Committee.
  7.39 p.m.
  Mr. John Brewis: I am pleased to speak after the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars) whose speech was, for him, relatively uncontroversial. I shall probably echo a number of the points which he made, such as his point on strategic planning.
  I should like to compliment the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretaries of State on the work which they have done
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  in the last 2½ years in seeking to get the framework of local government right. They have not hesitated to change some of the recommendations in the Wheatley Report, but it is only right to say that that report was a most valuable document and that, in retrospect, the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) was perfectly right to set up the Royal Commission. We shall be reading the report many years hence.
  I, too, wish to start with a constituency point. If reorganisation of local government must take place—and many people in my constituency would not accept that it was necessary—the Government have probably got the South-West Region, Dumfries and Galloway, about right. Dumfries is the county town for most of the area, but Stranraer is about 80 miles away and Girvan is even further away. There is intense local pride in the area, and I agree with the hon. Member for South Ayrshire that we should, wherever possible, maintain local involvement in the administration.
  I am, therefore, in complete disagreement with the Government's decision to remove local planning powers from the districts. It may be all right for a small district like Nairn to be planned from nearby Inverness, but it will cause friction if a comparatively remote area like the new Merrick district must depend for all its local decisions on planners in Dumfries. Planning decisions have always been quite satisfactorily carried out by the county council in Stranraer. Now the district of which it will be the kernel will be 50 per cent. more populous.
  A number of districts in Scotland have smaller populations but have still kept their local planning powers—for example, Argyll, and Kincardine and Deeside. There are many districts in England and Wales with much smaller populations but which have planning powers. If the Secretary of State has been pragmatic about his decision concerning administration in the islands, for example, he should be prepared to be pragmatic about the question of planning powers. There will be friction and trouble if planning decisions are settled 80 miles away in Dumfries.
  The Select Committee on Scottish Affairs received a good deal of evidence

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  about the defects in strategic planning but not so much evidence on the local planning and building control regulations. The Wheatley Report was based largely on the needs of the planners, which are very important, but I wish to deal with a more general point, namely, the organisation of education in Scotland.
  The EIS, with which, as most hon. Members know, I am associated, has been very concerned about how education will be organised under the new regional government. This was one of the subjects which its parliamentary deputation spoke to us about last March. The ideal education set-up is a population of between 250,000 and 500,000 people. Mr. Hugh Fairlie, the Director of Education for Renfrewshire, recently said that 17 educational areas were needed in Scotland, and I do not think that many people would disagree with him. With a region of fewer than 250,000 people, it will be difficult to deal with the question of the provision of further education and the education of handicapped pupils. On the other hand, if it is a bigger region, like the Strathclyde region, there will be considerable difficulties about local control.
  It seems to me that the West Region educationally is far too big. It has concentrated in it counties like Lanarkshire and Ayrshire where the teaching shortage has been most acute. In a region as big as the West Region one must delegate some responsibility to depute directors of education and a sub-regional organisation. There seems to have been very little consultation on this point between the Scottish Education Department and the teachers' organisations.
  As I read the Bill, there is no provision for elected sub-regional education committees. The management boards mentioned in Clause 124 are no doubt an excellent idea for individual colleges or for a comprehensive school with its catchment area of primary schools feeding the school. But I do not see how an ad hoc management board can take on all the responsibilities at present discharged by an organisation like the Ayrshire education committee.
  Why has the requirement in the 1947 Act gone, namely, that education authori-
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  ties are required to delegate all their education functions to an education committee? Clause 123 uses the word "referred". I wonder whether there is any significance in the provision to refer matters rather than to delegate responsibility to education committees.
  I think that there is dissatisfaction among the teachers about the participation offered to them as professionals in the running of education. It became possible to co-opt teachers to education committees some years ago. Most authorities which did so found that they were most useful, but some of the larger authorities did not make this trial. I have no objection to two representatives from the churches being co-opted mandatorily to education committees. It is a pity that the chance has not been taken in the Bill to make the co-option of teachers mandatory as well.
  I wonder whether we should consider again the rule that employees of a regional authority, such as teachers, should not be allowed to stand for election to that authority. I know that there are difficulties, but education is in many respects a national service rather than a local service. Therefore, teachers may be in a slightly different position. In many areas the pool of people with the necessary intellect, knowledge and time to give to regional affairs may be uncomfortably small. Perhaps we should reconsider the position of teachers in connection with the elections to regional authorities.
  7.50 p.m.
  Mr. Peter Doig: The Secretary of State claimed that there was widespread agreement for the Wheatley Report. Many other speakers have repeated this. I would like to know where this widespread agreement is. I have not had a single communication from any one of my constituents about the Wheatley Report. That fact is unprecedented, particularly in connection with a revolutionary change of this kind in the legislalation of our country. There is certainly not agreement by the people of Scotland, and certainty not by the local authority associations, because almost every one is against it. Nor is agreement to be found among individual local authorities. The Secretary of State was able to quote three in Fife which wanted this change. There are 33 local authorities in Fife, and 28

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  have already confirmed emphatically that they want Fife to remain as a region. am surprised that the Secretary of State could give the score of three in favour without mentioning that there were 28 against.
  The Secretary of State, when asked a question about it, would not say whether the regions would take over the present local authorities' capital debt. If those local authorities are to be abolished and the regions do not take over the capital debt, who will take it over and be responsible for it? I would like to know just who is going to pay when there are no longer the local authorities which incurred it. Some one has to take it over. Will the Government take it over? Certainly the Government have no intention of taking it over. The Secretary of State might as well have given us a straight answer and told us that it would be taken over by the new local authorities.
  This is a revolutionary change in local government—and revolutionary changes always create more problems than they solve. That will be the case again.
  Take Fife. The county headquarters at the moment are in a small place called Cupar, with a population of about 6,000. It has no industry, so it depends on the administrative jobs which go with its being the county capital. If we take away the county capital, as we obviously shall if we take away the county council, Cupar will become one of the biggest problem areas in the country. I have no doubt that there are many other places which, like Cupar, will be similarly affected by these revolutionary changes.
  There is an imbalance in population both in the regions and in the districts. The local authorities have been conned by the Government because of the statement that the Government made to them and subsequently repeated in the White Paper, which, on page 5, says:
  "There will be further consultations on the detailed aspects of reform, but on the fundamental questions—the basic structure and the allocation of the principal functions—the Government's decisions are firm."
  The Government conned the local authorities into believing that they could not discuss the principle of the matter at all, that that was accepted fact, and that they could discuss details only. If it had not been for the local authorities believing this, these proposals would not have gone
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  so far as they have, because local authorities are utterly opposed to this change.
  The Bill is largely based on what is called the estuarial principle. This may be all very well for places like London and Glasgow, where there is free access across the river, but in Dundee or Edinburgh there is no free flow of traffic across the river.
  Fife is to be split up, although it has been a very efficient local authority for goodness knows how many years. The county is to be split in half—half across the Forth, where a toll of 3s. is charged every time one goes over, and half across the Tay, where there is a toll of half-a-crown every time one goes over. Of course, one can walk over the Tay if one has enough energy, but I imagine people will not want to do that on a wet and windy winter's day such as this. Yet Fife is to be split between those two areas—one across the Forth and one across the Tay.
  Fife is now performing all the functions of a region, and has the population and rateable value of a region. In population it would rank fifth in the regions in Scotland, and yet it is considered not big enough to be a region, although other regions below Fife in terms of population and rateable value are considered big enough. It is performing all the functions of a region now. Others of the regions are not, and cannot do so. Yet Fife is denied the right to be a region.
  The excuse we had today was that there is not a large enough centre of population. That is utter rubbish. In the Borders the largest urban focal point for population has 14,000 people. In Fife we have two towns—Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline—both with a population of 50,000, and around one of them there is further population which brings the total population up to 100,000. To say there is not a focal point is sheer rubbish. They have some of the finest shopping centres anywhere in Scotland. They have all the facilities; they even have car parking facilities on a scale that one cannot find anywhere else in Scotland. I have found more opportunities for parking fairly close to the shopping centre in Kirkcaldy than I have ever found in Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, or anywhere else in Scotland—[HON. MEMBERS: "Or in London."]—or in London.

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  Orkney, with a population of 17,000, Shetland, with 17,000, and the Borders, with 96,000, can be regions. Some of the regions have rateable values of only £150,000. Fife has a population of 325,000 and a rateable value of £8½ million. Surely it is utter rubbish to say that Fife cannot be a region in its own right.
  It is not a question of Fife's efficiency. The Secretary of State himself, as recently as the end of last year, said that Fife was one of the very efficient local authorities. He praised it for its efficiency. It is sheer rubbish to say that Fife could not become a region on its own.
  What was wrong with local government? The one thing—and almost without exception all local authorities would agree about it—was finance. That was what was wrong with local government, and that is one of the big problems in local government.
  We are still working on an antiquated system of assessments and assessors and valuation of property, and fixed gross annual values, in such a way that if one improves one's house one's gross annual value goes up so that one pays more in rates. In other words, one is penalised for improving one's property. One can leave one's car across the street, perhaps causing an obstruction, perhaps an accident, and it costs one nothing to keep it there. Build a garage at one's house, and its gross annual value increases; one is penalised for removing an obstruction from the road or for improving one's house. It is an antiquated system.
  It is worse than that; some property can be exempt, or its rates reduced—agricultural buildings, for example. Industrial premises pay 50 per cent, of the rates. I do not know why we have all this complicated valuation in the first place when afterwards we make these exceptions. After going through all this complicated procedure for fixing gross annual values—a procedure that is totally unfair in its application—we make exceptions to it.
  We should have abolished this rating system altogether. People ask what is the alternative, and talk about local income tax. If the Government consider that it is unfair to raise all the revenue by income tax, why should it be any
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  fairer to raise it locally? Surely it is sensible to raise money by various methods for local services, just as for national services?
  Young people, who often earn high wages make use of the facilities provided by local authorities but pay nothing towards the rates. If the money were raised nationally they would have to pay. It would save money and be much fairer if the Government, instead of paying anything from 50 per cent, to 90 per cent. of the costs of local authorities, paid 100 per cent. The only thing said against that principle is that the local authorities would lose their freedom. What freedom? What can a local authority do now that it would be unable to do then? If a local authority wants to erect a building it requires sanction. Not only do local authorities need consent to borrow money for capital expenditure; even if they are willing to provide the money out of their own funds they must obtain permission from the Government. There is no freedom now.
  If a local authority has a transport service, it is surely not suggested that the Government would not provide money to pay the drivers and conductors, and to buy diesel oil to keep the buses running? Surely it is not suggested that the Government would not give a local authority money to provide books for the library? Where a local authority already provides a service it is unrealistic to imagine that any Government would refuse to provide the means to run it. Such a system would be cheaper, fairer and more efficient. That is the part of local government that needs to be reformed; that is the part on which the Government should concentrate rather than on the complicated arrangements that are in front of us now.
  8.2 p.m.
  Mr. Edward Taylor: The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) knows that, by and large, I agree with his views on local government finance. There is only one problem that I see in the alternative that he has put forward. If there were a 100 per cent. block grant, what does one do with an authority which after nine months of the financial year says that it has spent all the money and there is nothing left? That is a practical problem which could be solved, because it arises with hospital

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  boards, and it would have to be overcome if the hon. Gentleman's ideas were to be implemented.
  In general, I am happy with the Bill. The proposed authorities are viable and sensible, and I have only three small questions that I wish to ask my right hon. Friend.
  The first question relates to the capital debt of the existing authorities—a point that has been raised by two previous speakers. It is fair to ask the Government not to commit themselves to transferring the capital debt of the existing authority to the larger region which will take its place. I ask for an assurance that the new authorities will all start on a fair and equal basis. If the capital debts of the county councils and the city are to be transferred to the new West Region it will start with an enormous capital debt.
  My second question arises on the viability of the authorities which have been proposed. The hon. Member for Dundee, West spoke of industrial derating. In considering whether the new regions are viable we look immediately at the potential rate poundage that they can raise. Whether industrial derating is continued or discontinued is an important matter in considering whether the regions are viable. Whether or not we continue industrial derating is a matter for the Government, but I should like to ask my right hon. Friend whether the continuance of industrial derating is consistent with the obligations we are taking on in joining the Common Market, or whether in the view of the Common Market Commission it would be a concealed subsidy to industry. It is not adequate to have an assurance from the Government that they see no reason why this is inconsistent with the Treaty of Rome or with the obligations that we are taking on. Have the Government asked the Common Market Commission whether industrial derating is consistent with the EEC regional development policy, and has the Commission given approval for the continuation of industrial derating if we wish it?
  My third point relates to Clause 146(6), which deals with the powers of the weights and measures inspectorate or the trading standards organisations in local authorities. The subsection, which empowers the weights and measures inspec-
  1002
  torate to provide assistance where required to consumers in the locality, appears to be a step forward. Some local authorities provide consumer advice centres or give financial assistance to them, but is it the Government's intention that in the new local government setup there shall be a considerable extention of these powers?
  I should like to see in every centre of population a consumer advice centre to which people could look for advice on the various organisations with which they have dealings. Because of the concentration of decision-making, people who have problems with the gas board, the electricity board, the local housing department or the Inland Revenue are finding it more difficult to get through to the appropriate person to deal with their inquiries. Does subsection (6) allow the new local authorities to spend money on advice centres, and do the Government believe that that would be a step forward?
  8.7 p.m.
  Mr. Robert Hughes: The right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) said that many people know nothing of their local councillor and may know more of their Member of Parliament. That reminds me of the gentleman who came to see me in my surgery and said, "My, you are bearing your years well, Hector". He was referring to my distinguished octogenarian predecessor of the same surname, who, unhappily, is not with us to appreciate the joke and the flattery. It suggests that the people in Aberdeen know their local councillor better than they know their Member of Parliament.
  At the time when the Wheatley Commission Report was published I was a member of the Aberdeen Town Council, which I served for nine years. It is right that we should pay tribute to the local councillors and county councillors throughout the length and breadth of Scotland for the unstinting service they have given. Many have gone without promotion, many have damaged their superannuation prospects, and many have driven themselves to an early grave by the hours they have worked.
  When I said that the Wheatley Report fundamentally approached the reform of local government in the wrong way, many people said that I was far too near the problem, and that if I were

  1003
  further removed from it I might take a different view. Now that I am further removed from the problem, all I can say is that absence makes the heart grow fonder, for I still have a great deal of regard for local authorities and the work they do.
  The theme which has run throughout the debate, rightly, is that what is wrong with local government is the lack of finance and the way in which the money is spent. Many hon. Members have spoken about the method of raising finance; perhaps a more important question is: how is the finance expended? Unfortunately, we have not the time to go into great detail, but we find that apart from wages and salaries the biggest and most important item in local authority expenditure—which will be of even greater importance as time goes on—is interest on loans. The method by which local authorities have to raise their finance—that is to say, by borrowing and paying back over 60 years—means that a great deal of money has to be raised from the rates and the Exchequer and paid to people who contribute nothing, apart from the dubious privilege of lending money to local authorities. If we had tackled the problem of finance first we would have done much to improve local government.
  This is not to say that the Wheatley proposals and the Bill are without merit. There always was a case for strategic planning, but to base the whole idea on strategic planning, the estuarial concept, and the rest, and forget the work done in the localities, is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Over the past 10 years, in terms of the reform of the National Health Service and local government we have seen a move towards bigger and bigger units. People in authority who are interested in and have discussed the problem, and have had to draft legislation, have been conscious of the remoteness of local government. I believe that the Wheatley Commission was wrong in saying that local government was remote from the community, but its answer is to make it more remote. That is not the true answer, because there has been a growing tendency to take people away not from the parish pump but from what the grass roots of politics and government are about.
  1004
  People have looked at methods of trying to preserve community of interest. Community councils are being brought in at the bottom to do unspecified functions. In the reform of the National Health Service, where there is a one-tier system, we now see local health councils. There is an interesting distinction between the approach to local health councils and county councils. In the White Paper on the reform of the National Health Service, specific areas of duty were laid on the local health council. The first was its right to be consulted about changes in the service. It also had a right of access to the hospitals and to information. The legislation did not spell out exactly what was to happen, but I hope that when the regulations come along these points will be spelt out.
  The governing authorities also have definite responsibilities and obligations towards local health councils. It is disappointing that the White Paper on the reform of local government is vague as to exactly what community councils will do. No statutory duties or rights to information will be vested in them, and there will be no obligations by the higher authority towards them. There is nothing about the way in which these bodies will be serviced. I hope that this aspect will be considered, because they are the basis of real democracy.
  It is disappointing that we are taking away the ordinary rights of people to vote. We are replacing them by ad hoc bodies, which can provide a useful service and may in some ways lead to more community involvement, but I still think that the method is the wrong way round. If we give people greater authority and financial responsibility they are likely to respond to the kind of treatment that they are given.
  In some sense, although we are not dealing in absolute principle with the division of responsibility we are discussing the way in which responsibilities are devolved. The Government are giving a sop to district authorities in telling them that they will have housing responsibility where they previously did not. Yet the greatest power which they had—control of rents—has been taken away from them. So has the power of rebates. There is no point in giving people responsibility for

  1005
  housing if, at the same time, one does not trust them to charge rents for the properties.
  Social work is being left with the regional authority. There has been talk about the relationship between social work and education, but there is an even closer link between social work and housing, and if the major housing responsibility is dealt with at district level and the major social work is administered through the regions, one has to rely on some kind of consultation. But rather than consultation one should really have some kind of direct policy-making.
  I ask the Government once more whether they will not allow social work to be devolved down to the districts. Although I welcome in some respects the fact that town and county will come closer together, I think that the policy for social work in a large urban district is not necessarily the same policy that will work in a county area. If a regional authority which, despite all that has been said, is going to be short of finance, has to determine priorities, it is a brave man who will say which is correct—money spent in urban areas or money spent in rural areas. But if we could get it down to the lower tiers, we should perhaps get round that problem.
  On the education aspect, I have no objection whatever to the fact that the churches are again to be represented on education committees. I have had deputations from churches in my constituency, including the Roman Catholic Church, which is very concerned that it might lose its responsibility. I would not want to take away from the churches any responsibilities or rights they have to be co-opted on to education committees, but in this modem age why leave out the secular societies? More and more we live in a society where religion plays no part in many people's lives. As one who is not religious, I believe that I have as much right to have my views as a member of a corporate secular body to be represented in educational matters as the churches have. If outside bodies are to be represented, we should not simply have only the traditional ones.
  There is a small but important point which is not in the Bill. What is to happen to the fisheries boards? Water
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  and transport and many other things are going to the regions. In Aberdeen and the surrounding districts, we have the Don Salmon Fisheries Board. This is a curious body which represents riparian interests—people who own the waters. It has dealt with the method of salmon fishing and with questions of what salmon will be allowed up and the rest. Some of the angling associations feel that they should be represented on the board. They have been told that representatives can be elected, but they are unable to find out when the annual meeting takes place. It is not advertised. They have great difficulty in finding when it is to take place. Although this board has some authority delegated to it by the Secretary of State, he is not answerable in the House for its goings-on. Perhaps it can be incorporated into the regional authority, because fishing is a great tourist asset, and if tourism is to be encouraged by the local authorities it should be included in their responsibilities.
  A very great opportunity has been lost in representation. I was lucky in my employment in being given time off for my local authority work—mostly unstintingly, although with the usual barbed comments about my hobby being my work and my real work being done in the town council. One learns to grow a thick skin. But many people do not get the opportunity to serve on local authorities because their employers are difficult. Indeed, it is not only employers in the ordinary sense who can be difficult. I say this with trepidation, although I do not think that there are many members of the Transport and General Workers Union present, but that union does not allow any of its officials to serve on local authorities. I am not therefore making a partisan point but a real point about local democracy. I hope that something can be included in the Bill guaranteeing that no one can disallow an interested person from serving on a local government body.
  It is a great pity that in this new reform many people who at present, theoretically at least, if not in practice, work for certain organisations within local authorities, can become local authority representatives only in areas where they do not work. Teachers have been mentioned. If they work in one area they can represent another. This

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  may no longer be possible in the reorganisation.
  Although I have been very unhappy about the whole concept of this reform, I have to accept that reform is going to come. I would not go far as Confucius, who is alleged to have said that if rape is inevitable one should relax and enjoy it. Many people feel that they have no alternative but to become reconciled to the reform and to make it work, but they do so reluctantly.
  8.20 p.m.
  Mr. John Smith: I wish to echo some of the points which were made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Sillars) about the problems of the West Region.
  Before tackling some of the problems in the way of reform of local government as it is proposed in the Bill, I might say that every right hon. and hon. Member who has taken any time to study the Wheatley Report must concede that it was a masterly piece of work in pinning down the problems facing local government in the future. We owe a great debt to the work done by the commission in highlighting the problems, even if we do not all agree with its conclusions.
  The problem with the West Region is its size. This has been referred to already by a number of hon. Members. Undoubtedly, as the Wheatley Commission found and as the Government's White Paper recognised, there is an excellent case for treating the Strathclyde Region, as it is to be called, as one unit for the purposes of strategic and economic planning. However, that was the only ground on which the Wheatley Commission found that there was any cohesiveness for the region. It was almost an obsession of both the Government and the commission with the need to have some unit for strategic and economic planning which meant that this was decided on as the size of the West Region. The commission itself at one stage thought of an even bigger West Region than that which emerged eventually.
  As one who represents a constituency which will be included in the Strathclyde Region, I am concerned with two aspects of its work. These are educa-
  1008
  tion and social work. Before going into the detail of both education and social work, it is interesting to read in the commission's report that it emphatically rejected the idea that education and social work should be national services. If half Scotland is to be in the Strathclyde Region, for the people there they axe almost the equivalent of national services. They would feel that they might as well have national services as services encompassing half Scotland.
  The difficulty about the region is that on social work and education not only does it encompass half the population; it encompasses almost all the educational and social work problems of the whole of Scotland. If there were a way in which an area with few social problems could be allied with one which had a great many, there would be some sense in spreading the load. But in the western area there are too many social and educational problems. That is where the shortage of staff is. It is where the problems of the urban environment are. It is where the difficulty of modern living and the stresses and strains are found at their most acute.
  The social work difficulties are compounded by the fact that housing is no longer a regional function but is made a district function. Everyone talks of education and social work running in harness. My own experience is that the social work department in Lanarkshire deals most often with housing problems and with the difficulties of those who have to pay the bills of the South of Scotland Electricity Board. In my view there is much to be said for reconsidering how social work is to be organised. It is important for the director to be in face-to-face contact with the county factor or housing manager. There must be an interlinking of the social work committee in a local authority with the housing committee in that authority, and everyone with experience of social work as it has developed so far must be conscious of these two important aspects. My fear is that there will be a huge social work department in the Strathclyde Region with fragmented housing authorities beneath it and that the social work department will not make sufficient contact with housing policies at district level.

  1009
  In terms of education, the Government attempted to suggest a solution to the problem of the administration of an area with a population of 2½ million. They have suggested an amorphous scheme of educational boards of management. They seem to be harking back to the school boards which once existed in Scotland. I am sure that there are many differences between the two. But it is my impression that we are going back to the individual management of individual schools. I do not think that that will be a sufficient antidote. Parents are very interested in education. Anyone meeting the public, especially at elections, is impressed by the questions that they ask about educational facilities for their children.
  I am pleased to note in my own constituency that every time an education problem affects a school there tend to be letters to and pressure on the Member of Parliament and the councillors. People are becoming more interested in their children's education. They look at areas in terms of educational opportunity as well as the many other factors which make them decide where to live. People are interested more than in just the management of the individual school. They are interested in the education policy followed by the education authority. I do not think that getting parents involved in boards of management with the teachers of individual establishments will give them much say in the formation of the policies that education authorities are to carry out. There will be great difficulties for the man who is to be the director or rather Strathclyde Region in keeping some grip director-general of education for the on the education policy followed throughout the region.
  What would be a solution to this problem, given that there is a need for some strategic and economic planning cohesion for the region? I was attracted by the proposal made to the Secretary of State by the six counties which envisaged, instead of a Strathclyde Region, four sub-regions comprising first the city of Glasgow, second the county of Lanarkshire, third Dumbarton and Renfrewshire, and fourth Ayrshire, most of Argyll and Bute. That proposal has the merit of cutting down the number of authorities in the Strathclyde Region,
  1010
  which are far too many in number at the moment. It also comes with the agreement and at the request of most of the local authorities. One could have some sort of provincial tier to which the sub-regions surrendered part of their power for the purpose of strategic and economic planning, and this could be devised, given the will.
  If the Government set their face against this and their proposal is not amended in Committee, I hope that they will show flexibility in dealing with the administrative problems of the West Region and be willing to write into the Bill some amendments which will allow smaller units in the West Region for the consideration of education and social work policies. Although it is late in the day, I understand that there are still meetings going on between the principal local authorities in the region which are hoping to get a compromise formula which may give them a little more say directly at local level in the decisions which are to be taken.
  I pass from that to the size of the Glasgow district. One of the complications of having such a huge area as that proposed for the Strathclyde Region is that the districts are very large as well. I can see some sense in having a large region if it is counter-balanced by small district authorities. There is then a balance between the authority with the resources and other authorities which pick up the grass-roots feeling. That balance does not exist within the Strathclyde Region.
  It is curious that the region is the only one whose districts were not much amended when the Government issued their White Paper. It was the North that received consideration. There is one district not too far away from the Secretary of State's constituency with a population of only 8,000 people, while in the west of Scotland there are many districts of well over 100,000 people. As both districts perform the same functions, by and large, it is a remarkable size discrepancy.
  The other difficulty about the districts in the West region is that the proposed Glasgow district is far too big. Instead of the existing city of Glasgow, it is proposed to include all the peripheral burghs and parts of the counties surrounding, including the burghs of Bears-den, Clydebank, Milngavie, Rutherglen

  1011
  and Bishopbriggs, parts of Lanarkshire and parts of Renfrewshire, and part of Dunbartonshire. The population of this greater Glasgow district will be almost 1,200,000 people, about six times as large as that of any other district in the Strathclyde region. The next largest is Paisley district, with 200,000 electors.
  It does not seem to me very sensible, when there is already a large unit as comprised in the present city of Glasgow, to add so many more units to make it bigger and more dominant over all the other districts, which are understandably fearful that the Glasgow district will be too big and overwhelming. I have nothing against the city of Glasgow, but when we are trying to keep districts to a reasonable size I do not see any need to add other bits to it.
  The Government's argument is that communities like Bishopbriggs and Milngavie are in a sense part of Glasgow. I agree that in many senses they are, and that if Glasgow were to remain an all-purpose authority they would have to be brought into it. But it has not been made an all-purpose authority. It is to be only a district authority, carrying out the limited functions that a district is allowed to carry out. The major functions of planning, regional development and transport are all done by the region. There is a case for the region being large enough to deal with them, but in view of the limited powers of the district—apart from housing, it does not have much to do, under the proposals before us—there is no sense in making huge districts which make it even more difficult for people to be represented.
  Some burghs will be wiped out and represented instead by one councillor or half a councillor. That is bound to cause dismay to people who have been participating in democratic elections in their communities for some time.
  The proposals to reform local government are worthwhile in many ways. But there is a tendency for the Government to bulldoze them through, to say, "The local authorities must have their heads knocked together, because we cannot get any sense out of them. We shall push the Bill through, using our parliamentary majority, and they can like it or lump
  1012
  it." That is not a desirable approach to a delicate problem like the reform of local government. I hope that in Committee the Government will be prepared to be flexible in their response to the representations made and the amendments proposed, and that at the end of the day we shall achieve a better system of local government. The principle of region and district is sound, but if we can make a number of amendments it can be made much better.
  8.33 p.m.
  Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne: First, I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on bringing this legislation before the House. We have been debating the reform of local government for a very long time. We can argue and discuss for long enough. The time has undoubtedly come for action.
  The Bill deserves a general, overall welcome. I believe that the Wheatley Commission basically did a much better job than did Redcliffe-Maud in England and Wales. What emerged from the commission were on the whole very sound proposals, and I congratulate the Government on the extent to which they have adhered to them. Indeed, the only points on which I might be inclined to take issue slightly with the Government is where they have deviated from Wheatley. The commission produced an excellent report on which to base our work, a far better report than those South of the Border had produced. It is only right that we should pay tribute to those of our colleagues who were so heavily and effectively involved in the work of the commission. I hope that I do not embarrass you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by saying that, because it is sincerely meant.
  I do not want to delay the House for more than a few minutes and, therefore, I will concentrate on two or three brief points. But in parenthesis I must say that inevitably, like other hon. Members, I shall have points of great local importance to raise in Committee. I am not happy about the proposed size and scope of the Dundee district, and the proposal that Monifieth Burgh and Monifieth district should be incorporated in the Dundee district. They want to remain in Angus. When we reach the Committee stage I shall be moving amendments, which I hope will receive a favourable reception from the Government, along

  1013
  these lines. However, these are not matters on which we should concentrate too much tonight as they are essentially of Committee concern.
  I have three points which I wish to raise in ascending order of importance. First, community councils. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State confirmed again this afternoon that the Government do not believe that the community councils should have a specific statutory status and, above all, access to specific statutory boundaries. My right hon. Friend advanced the serious point which I fully take, that there are strong arguments against a three-tier system of local government, and that if we give any statutory authority or funds to the community councils, that is what we shall be creating.
  We need to look at the matter carefully. It seems that there may well be a reasonable case for at least endowing the community councils with access to the common good funds as if right where these arise. There is a real danger, which the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) mentioned, that these bodies, where they are set up, will feel that they lack purpose and authority. We must look in Committee at the scope of the community councils.
  My second point is about the Government's decision to move overall responsibility for house building and housing policy from the upper tier, as recommended by Wheatley, to the lower tier. I have always felt the arguments for that were not very well enunciated by the Government in their White Paper. I have not been convinced by their case. I suspect that there may be something in the proposition advanced by some hon. Members opposite. But basically it is a question of finding work for the lower tier to do, and I do not feel that that in itself is a sufficient argument. This is a matter which we must examine a good deal more closely in Committee. The Government will have to make a better case than they have done so far for making the break with what Wheatley recommends.
  By far and away the most important anxiety which I have about the Bill is that of finance. I do not think that sufficient thought has been given to the allocation of financial responsibility be-
  1014
  tween central and local government under the new local government proposals. Whilst we all recognise that the time is overdue for a thorough-going modernisation of local government, the essential purpose must be to provide units of local government which will have the resources of their own raising under their own control and which will enjoy a far greater measure of autonomy than the local authorities have under the present structure. I do not believe that we have yet achieved that.
  I have a good deal of sympathy with the views expressed by the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston). Unless we can find means of giving great financial autonomy to the new authorities, particularly to the new regional authorities, we shall find it difficult to recruit people of the calibre we need to serve on them.
  I have some sympathy with the argument advanced, for example, by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour) on the question of taking out of local authority finance such items as teachers' salaries, which are now essentially centrally controlled. I agree with the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) that a change of that kind does not of itself change the nature of financial responsibility, and it does not deal with the underlying problem which, I think, is well set out in paragraph 40 of the Green Paper on local government finance:
  "The Government wish to give greater freedom to local authorities, but they cannot evade their own responsibility for management of the national economy, nor can they evade their duty to ensure minimum standards for essential services throughout the country. The problem for central government is how to resolve this dilemma within these constraints ".
  I do not think that my right hon. Friends have resolved that dilemma, and I am not even certain that they have properly tackled it.
  In my view, we should look seriously at possible new sources of local authority finance. There are grave defects in the present rating system. Perhaps we should consider what scope there is for local income tax. The only proviso I should make there is that I should be most dubious about any scheme which attached it to PAYE or the like.

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  The rating system has one advantage and one only, that people know very well when the rate bills come in, and this is a far more effective system for restraining the propensity of public servants and those who control them to indulge in unnecessary expense than the PAYE system by which people find that the resources are deducted from their earnings before they ever receive them. Subject to that proviso, however, I suggest that we look carefully at new forms of finance.
  In Committee, we must try to ensure that we give greater reality than we have given so far to the principle of devolution of real responsibility and authority to the new institutions of local government which we are to set up. With those provisos, I welcome the Bill, and I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on tackling what was bound to be a thorny and uncomfortable problem. We have an opportunity here to achieve a good reform of local government, and I hope that we shall seize it.
  8.43 p.m.
  Mr. Harry Ewing: I am grateful for the opportunity even at this late hour to express some of the views of people in the one region which has not so far been represented in the debate, namely, the very important Central Region of Scotland. My constituency, which lies in that region, is reasonably happy with the proposals now before us, but I think that there is a moral here, which brings me back to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. John Smith).
  The Central Region is a manageable region. It is of a size which can be easily managed. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North made a good point when he said that the West Region was far too big, and emphasised that the proposals put forward by the six counties when they sent representatives here to put their case to hon. Members on both sides raised valid points worthy of consideration.
  I have always argued that there is an optimum size of authority for good local government. In my view, the Central Region is of that optimum size, which means, in effect, that the West Region
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  if far too big, and the proposals of the six counties should be given serious thought.
  I hope that the Government will not on this Bill adopt the attitude which they have taken on so many Bills in the 15 months since I have had the honour and privilege to be a Member and say that the Bill is unamendable. It should be borne in mind that we are deciding the shape and form of local government for probably the next half century, and we ought to get it right. The mere fact that the Government have announced—in advance of the publication of the Bill—the date of the first elections for the new regional and district councils should not be used as an excuse for refusing to accept amendments.
  In 1958, when owner-occupier rates were introduced in Scotland, there was a specific promise that industrial derating would be ended. So far, that promise has not been implemented. I mention that because I hope that industrial derating will be continued, for I know from experience that it is a decided advantage in attracting industry to a country that has long suffered the effects of high unemployment.
  The Secretary of State mentioned rating. One reservation flows from the Central Region and its financial experts—the burgh chamberlains and others who have to deal with finance. The regional authorities are to be the rating authorities while the district authorities are to be the housing authorities, so that the regional authorities will collect rates and the district authorities will collect rents.
  In Scotland there is a traditional connection between rates and rents. The burgh chamberlains who have expressed apprehension have been justified in saying that serious misunderstandings are possible—and I believe them to be very possible—if this proposal is put into effect. I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to reassure us about this arrangement.
  The hon. Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour) mentioned the division of Fife. As hon. Members know, I do not represent a Fife constituency, but my home is there. The hon. Gentleman has been consistent since the publication of the Wheatley proposals and he and I agree that Fife should not be divided. My stance

  1017
  will be to support the hon. Gentleman's attempt to retain Fife as an all-purpose unit.
  He and I have not been assisted in our objective by those now leading the campaign in Fife. According to my recollection, seven or eight years ago one of the prominent leaders of that campaign himself published a plan to divide Fife because the predominantly Tory-controlled eastern section was dominated by the Labour-controlled western section. Now one cannot see into or out of this individual's car because of the "Save Fife" posters. Nevertheless, he published a plan in the local newspaper proposing that Fife should be divided.
  I turn to the subject of community councils. I direct the Under-Secretary's attention to an interesting experiment in the Falkirk-Grangemouth area. There have been set up what are called action neighbourhood groups. These groups are co-ordinated with the social work department, and the Chairman of the Falkirk Action Neighbourhood Group is, by that fact, a member of the social work committee. The social work department is working closely with these action neighbourhood groups in a way that could be a model for community councils.
  The Secretary of State ought to be more forthcoming about the payment of councillors. There is no provision in England and Wales for the payment of councillors, and the Secretary of State is building up false hopes if he tells the House, and through it the people of Scotland, that there is a prospect of councillors in Scotland being paid. Neither this Government nor any other would provide for the payment of councillors in one part of the United Kingdom and not in another. All that we can do is to draw a parallel with what is happening in England and Wales. I repeat that the English Bill contains no provision for the payment of councillors, and I therefore believe that the Secretary of State has done the House a disservice by building up false hopes on this question of payment for councillors.
  The disqualifications surrounding public service employees are minimal by comparison with the disqualifications that are not written into the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Robert Hughes) referred to those
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  who cannot get away from their work to perform public service duties because their employers will not allow them time off. If we are seeking to build good regional and district authorities we can do so only by employing the best people, and they should be made available. The Government ought, therefore, to write into the Bill an obligation on employers to allow their employees off work if they are elected to a regional or district authority.
  8.53 p.m.
  Mr. William Hannan: I underline and re-state the case advanced by Wheatley for these proposals, though I do not, of course, suggest that we should accept them hook, line and sinker in every detail. It seems to be forgotten that in its proposals for the West Region Wheatley made it clear that it was considering a tract more than twice the size of any of the regions that it had hitherto considered and went on to say:
  "One solution we rule out right from the start. However overwhelming its concentration of population may be, we are convinced that the Clyde Valley should not be divided into two or more regions."
  The commission went on to argue what we have known for years, ever since the Clyde Valley Regional Planning Advisory Council was set up, that the whole area ought to be planned at a high level for economic, strategic and planning reasons. That having been accepted, I find it difficult to understand why, at this late stage, even some of my hon. Friends are looking in a rather kindly way upon proposals which would have the effect of retaining the circumstances which the Wheatley Commission was appointed to consider and recommend changes.
  If there is to be another region in Lanarkshire, what is different from the present position? If Glasgow is to become unitary, what becomes of the difficulties that have hitherto arisen when Glasgow has looked for some help in her housing problem or when the city has entered into negotiations with contiguous areas and local authorities for land for houses or roads? Therefore, Glasgow, with no land for houses, has been forced to build up. We thought that this was a strong case in the suggestions to the Wheatley Commission, but the commission went even further,

  1019
  saying that the weight of evidence supported this conclusion and that it also adopted it wholeheartedly. The evidence to the commission was for one area. There were then three parts to the area and the Government made it smaller. They cut off the south-west and gave effect to the proposal mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Ewing).
  If this is to be the function of the regional area, the criticism—I have offered some myself—is in respect of education and social work. On page 95 of the report, having given close logical arguments to the evidence supplied to it, the commission concluded, in respect of education:
  "But we have found no convincing evidence of disadvantages that could not be overcome by a suitable form of organisation, if such were thought correct for other reasons."
  Thus, the Government are at fault themselves in that they have not provided the evidence for the schemes of devolution, whether by administration or in other ways, to support those of us who in principle want to aid the proposals in the Bill. Even in Committee, I hope that my hon. Friends will pursue this.
  I hope that I have as keen an interest in education and social work as any hon. Member, but unlike some of my hon. Friends I hope that, if Clause 174 is to be their form of devolution, they will spell it out more clearly. At the moment, it appears to be only an education board for each school. If it is meant to be an area, let them say so. Let us have more information about this.
  Similarly with social work. I do not accept the talk about grass roots contact with the population, which seems to mean that everyone wants a local councillor around the corner. I do not accept the view that a local councillor has to be a glorified welfare officer—although circumstances force Members of Parliament to take on this rôle.
  In the new set-up, given political power and the responsibility for finance in the future of local authorities, councillors should take responsibility for political decisions and then get out of the hair of those who have to do the work. They should not go on every deputation to decide whether blue or white paint should be used on a school lavatory. They
  1020
  should take the decisions. I believe that people want a branch office of the social works or education department around the corner with which they can make contact rather than a local councillor. Having made their approach to the office, if they are looked at askance by a local officer, then they should go to the local representative or councillor to make representations.
  I am grateful for this opportunity to correct some misunderstandings. Despite what my hon. Friend said about the peripheral areas of Glasgow, whatever happens, areas to which original Glasgow citizens have gone—whether Bishopbriggs, Milngavie or, like myself, Bearsden—should take their responsibility in paying for the services that an industrial area requires, irrespective of whether Glasgow is a unitary authority or part of a larger authority, the Strathclyde region.
  9.0 p.m.
  Mr. David Lambie: I am very grateful to the hon. Members on both Front Benches who are to wind up the debate for giving me the opportunity to make one or two points.
  During my short period as a Member of the House one of my greatest pleasures has been to see the end of consensus politics, in relation to the Common Market, the Industrial Relations Act, housing and rents. But I am sorry that we are not following that path tonight. We are seeing a continuation of consensus politics, with one Front Bench congratulating the other on murdering local government in Scotland.
  I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) made a better case for the Bill than did the Secretary of State. My hon. Friend has been doing that too often recently. He was wrong on such occasions; he is wrong again tonight.
  It is strange that during the whole of the debate we have heard quotations from the older of Members of the House from past speeches from the Front Benches. We have heard statements made by the present Under-Secretary of State for Development, the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), about the need for an investigation into local government finance before the Labour Government could investigate the reform of local government structure. If I had the time, I

  1021
  could quote Tom Fraser, who was the main spokesman for the Labour Party in Scotland, stating clearly in 1963 that we could have no reorganisation of local government structure before we had a reorganisation of local government finance.
  Perhaps I have not been a Member of the House long enough and perhaps the same thing will happen to me at some future date. It seems strange that hon. Members can come here year after year and change their speeches, depending on which Front Bench they sit. I am a little more honest than that. I believe that one should say what one believes, from whatever bench one is sitting on.
  There must be some reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) was forced to change Labour policy between 1963 and 1964. There must be some reason why the Secretary of State and the Undersecretary have been forced to change their policy. The reason is that one can get permission from the Cabinet to discuss the reorganisation of local government structure but one will never get permission from the Cabinet, especially from the Treasury, to discuss transferring an area of taxation from national Government to local government. The Treasury will never give permission for a hand-over to the local authorities of taxes it has been collecting for generations. That is why my right hon. Friend failed, and that is why the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary are failing today. They have been forced by the Treasury—not because they want it—to murder local authorities in Scotland and to murder the local government traditions in Scotland because they have not the courage or strength to extract from the Treasury permission to look at finance.
  At present we are building up bigger and bigger local government units in Scotland but we are not giving them the power or the finance to carry out the services that bigger local authorities should provide. In the West Region we are building up a dinosaur which will become just as extinct as the other members of that species.
  We must examine the matter again. I am very disappointed that the Opposition are not contesting the Second Reading, because we should stick to our policy and
  1022
  state that under no circumstances shall we reorganise the structure of local government without looking at its finance. John Wheatley set about his remit from the wrong premise. I say that with all due respect to the two hon. Members who served on the Wheatley Commission. The first two lines of the report state clearly that there is something seriously wrong with local government in Scotland. But there is nothing seriously wrong with it that money will not solve. I say that with all due respect, too, to former councillors on both sides of the House. The national Government keep drawing more and more taxation towards London and give less and less to the regions.
  If we are to reorganise local government on the basis of the Bill, putting more than half the population of Scotland into one area, we must ask the logical question: why do we not just put the whole of Scotland within one local government area? If we are to have power, we need money, so the next logical step is to say that if we cannot get people from Scotland to exert influence on the English Treasury we must move the Scottish part of the Treasury back to Edinburgh, that that is where we shall have the regional authority, with the Scottish Treasury. The next logical step is self-government for Scotland. We do not want to see all the traditions of local government in Scotland murdered to satisfy the whims of one or two financial experts down in London, when we can save the whole of Scotland's economy and her traditions by saying, "Bring the money and the power back up to Edinburgh." Let us reorganise not only local government but national government, and give back power not only to the local authorities but to the people of Scotland.
  9.7 p.m.
  Mr. Ronald King Murray: I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Lambie) did not mean to imply that there were no party divisions over local government. It is obvious that there will be many points of controversy, and we can look forward to some rumbustious debate in Committee.
  But it is important to note that the true parentage of the legislation is the Wheatley Commission, which was in no sense a partisan body. Indeed, if we had to

  1023
  choose subjects on which it was appropriate to have a degree of consensus across the party barriers local government would surely be one, if not the prime one. If we could not achieve a working agreement on the way in which local government should be reformed without taking up rigid party stances, there would not be much prospect of an enduring reform. In that spirit, I should like to associate the Opposition with the tributes paid to the work of the Wheatley Commission, and to yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston), who were both members of that august body.
  We have had a very useful canvass of views in the debate. I want to take up one or two themes which appear to me to be important—topics that we should pick out as the kind around which controvery is likely to revolve. Many were discussed very well in the debate. It is invidious to leave out any, but I first pick on the problem of payment of councillors. That is a very important issue. The Bill is silent about it. It does not propose, at the moment, that councillors should be paid. I should have thought that the case for paying regional councillors was rather powerful.
  I share the view expressed by one hon. Member opposite who said that the case against this suggestion had not been stated. We should like to hear the case against it because, on the face of it, the arguments for paying regional councillors are very powerful. I go even further than my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) who proposed that payment should be limited to the chairmen or the higher office bearers. I think all regional councillors should in principle be paid unless strong reason can be shown to the contrary. The burden of proof ought to be put that way because a convincing case can be made in terms of the responsibility, the requirement to travel, and so forth.
  We can get dedication without payment, but a combination of dedication and ability is difficult to ensure over a long period without payment of councillors. I do not necessarily reject the argument that district councillors should be paid as well, but the case for paying them is not so powerful as the case for paying regional councillors.
  1024
  The second topic on which I wish to lay stress and on which there ought to be controversy is the question of disqualification of employees from membership of councils. It would be useful if the House were to look at Clause 31, which is the basic provision disqualifying employees, and compare that with Clauses 38 and 68 which deal respectively with the declaration of pecuniary interests of councillors on the one hand and officials on the other. In parenthesis, might I point out that the penalties in the Bill for failure to declare an interest seem to me to be quite derisory. The contrast which one has to make is the contrast between the total exclusion of employees from membership of councils on the one hand, and the requirement—basically a moral requirement—to declare an interest, with legal penalties for failure to do so, which is attached to the other sorts of disqualification which presumably are intended to be based upon the same principle.
  Presumably the principle of disqualifying employees is the same one as requiring a councillor to declare his interest. Presumably one wants the councillor to make a decision on his own judgment and responsibility, and not, as it were, to obey his master's voice—some outside influence or his employer. If this is the basis—and it has never been suggested that there is any other basis—it seems to me that the disparity of treatment is quite scandalous. A teacher employed by an education authority, who is very unlikely to echo his master's voice in the sense of doing exactly what the education committee says, is not likely to be thurled to the view which robs him of responsibility.
  I would think that the same argument applies just as strongly to what one might describe as the more industrial elements of local authority employment. With the existence of trade unions today it is unlikely that employees of a local authority, whose normal industrial loyalty will be to a trade union in the matter with which they are concerned—conditions of employment and the rest—are going to be automata, following their master's voice. The ground for disqualification in the case of employees seems to me to be one which does not stand up to examination in modern conditions.
  Mr. Galbraith: Would the hon. and learned Gentleman be satisfied to have a civil servant in this House?
  Mr. Murray: I do not think I can stray that far from the rules of order, but I would certainly want to consider that very carefully. On the face of it, there is an argument to be stated.
  What we seek to do is to open the door to allow certain people to be members of local authorities. I wish to pursue the argument a stage further. With people who must declare a pecuniary interest, the difficulty is that we do not know until they make a declaration what the interest is. If they fail to make a declaration and are not found out, their true allegiance, which may have influenced their judgment, is not disclosed. With local authority employees, their employer is known. There is no ulterior control. The matter is open from the start.
  I should like to draw attention to another unsatisfactory feature which the Government will perhaps consider amending in Committee. The Bill, I think correctly, proposes to open the proceedings of local authority committees to public scrutiny. The public will be able to attend such committees as of right, which I welcome. However, the public are not to have the right to examine the register of declared interests of councillors. Only other members of the local authority will be permitted to do that. The time has come for ordinary members of the public to have access to the written declaration of councillors interests, which is kept in a register by the local authority. I hope that the Government will keep an open mind on that type of amendment.
  Reverting to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), I do not wish to pursue the argument to the point at which I would be forced to say that all members of local authorities who are employees must be entitled to serve on a local authority. I should like the blanket disqualification to be removed, but perhaps certain qualifications or conditions should be imposed. I hope that the Government will consider this matter in Committee.
  The third important topic is the question of local authorities' accumulated debts. We are entitled to an answer to-
  1026
  night in general terms on this matter. Perhaps the Government have not completely made up their mind, but we are entitled to know before we give the Bill a Second Reading what they have in mind for the accumulated debts of local authorities. They represent a very substantial burden for many, if not all, local authorities. I am not sure that any local authority is free from debts. They are very substantial for some local authorities.
  A problem which is financially closely linked with the question of the accumulated debts of local authorities is the subject of tolls on the Forth and Tay bridges.
  Mr. Norman Buchan: And the Erskine bridge.
  Mr. Murray: There is a slight distinction in the three cases, but I take all of them together. It does not make a great deal of sense to set up large new regional authorities with new and exciting powers and divide them by a tax barrier at a toll bridge. There are many reasons why tolls on these three bridges are unsatisfactory, but since the Bill creates a new local authority which is meant to be a planning and economic entity it is disappointing that it does not at the same time take the obvious logical step of abolishing this gratuitous type of taxation which may well have the effect of inhibiting development at the natural termini of the bridges. The Erskine Bridge is in a somewhat different position from the Forth and Tay bridges, in that it does not have the special feature of having a possible growth point at each end.
  Sir J. Gilmour: In the interests of the development of cities, would the hon. and learned Gentleman not consider it odd that when we have all the difficulty of controlling traffic in cities we should free the motor traffic coming into the cities across the bridges, whereas people who come by railway into the cities pay large sums for their journeys? Kirkcaldy is only 12 miles from Edinburgh, and 50 minutes in the train—and it is a very expensive journey.
  Mr. Murray: The hon. Gentleman certainly has a point, and it seems to me the sort of point which can be properly taken into account only by having an adequate system of regional

  1027
  transportation, which is something for which the Bill provides.
  Mr. Ian Campbell: Surely the Erskine bridge is tied into my hon. and learned Friend's argument, in so far as the bridge links two parts of one region and can contribute to developing industries on both sides of the Clyde?
  Mr. Murray: I accept that. I did not mean to disparage the Erskine bridge. It is really a matter of degree, but the substantive quality of the argument is the same. It is simply a question of degree, which is more obvious in the case of the Firth and the Tay.
  I do not think I need deal with any other aspect of debts though many interesting points were touched on in connection with them, and my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) was one who raised them.
  I would point out that the Bill provides the mechanism for changing the names of the various local authorities. Incidentally, I should be interested to know by what alchemy one region, alone of them all—Dumfries and Galloway—retains the name of a town in it, while the other regions have names suitably objective and detached from local titles. A name is of little importance, but I wonder why the Government did not choose to call that region Galloway or Solway, or by a title which did not require those names—and three words—when they have called other regions the Highland or the Forth or the Tayside, and so on. I wonder whether it is appropriate to give a perpetual distinction like that to Dumfries—
  Mr. MacArthur: It is a splendid town.
  Mr. Murray: Of course it is a splendid town—
  Mr. Gordon Campbell: Perhaps I should make it clear that these names were chosen in consultation with the areas concerned, and that in almost all the cases these were names which they put forward.
  Mr. Murray: I am aware of that, but I still think that it does not necessarily follow that names which are agreeable to the largest number of people in
  1028
  a region are necessarily the most appropriate. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I realise that that is a dangerous statement to make, but I think that hon. Members will see that I put it very carefully in the negative—that it does not necessarily follow. All I wanted to say was that changes of name are provided for, and changes of area, because there is a commission to deal with local boundary areas.
  That is, no doubt, the high water mark of the flexibility which the right hon. Gentleman spoke about, but I hope that this flexibility may be extended in principle a little further because many hon. Members have spoken about the need for some detailed schemes of administration in regard particularly to functions such as education and social work, and I do not think it is really very satisfactory to have the Second Reading of a Bill which deals with these very important factors without the House being given some detailed schemes for delegation of functions as under Clause 124, so that we may see what will be done under the Bill.
  I have mentioned education and social work. Perhaps education is the more obvious instance, because social work is still an expanding field, in which there is not as yet very much beyond experimental knowledge, while in education there is wide experience and much detailed knowledge and structure. It seems to me that it is just not good enough to say that there will be delegation of functions, and to point to Clause 124, which, presumably, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. William Hannan) suggested, is the basis for any delegation. That will not do unless at some stage before the Bill is passed we can be given more detail so that we can see what will happen. It would be unsatisfactory for the Bill to be enacted with the House still in ignorance of the detail of how these administrative schemes are to be operated. There is already a degree of delegation in education, and we want to know to what extent, if at all, it is proposed to elaborate or to extend that.
  Although I imagine legislation would be needed to make substantial changes in the local authority areas proposed in the Bill, I hope that the Government will be flexible in the sense of having an open mind during the first decade or so of experience under the Bill to considering

  1029
  amalgamation between regions if a region which has been in operation for some time does not appear to be viable. For example, substantial changes might be necessary to meet criticism from both sides of the House of the top-heaviness of Strathclyde and the problems of Glasgow. One solution might be to counter-balance this large region with another large region in the east and to combine the Forth, Tay and Central regions. Experience might show that to be a better way of balancing local government control than to go on stubbornly on the basis of what is proposed in the Bill. It is only from experience that one might find that an apparently viable region is not viable. I hope that we shall not be stuck with the regions to the extent that in five or 10 years' time we shall be told that this is the local government reform for 50 years. I hope there will be flexibility.
  Housing is an important illustration of the difficulties that the Bill presents. There is a sense in which housing appears to be given to the district council to give it something to do. That is perhaps an unfair criticism, but there is some substance in it. At the same time, it is clear from the Housing (Financial Provisions) Scotland Act and from the thinking that gave rise to it that housing will be a diminishing function for the local authority. That is the Government's theology. Therefore, it is unsatisfactory that the Government, in appearing to give housing to the district council, should be giving it a wasting asset. The realities are different. I think that the Government will be unsuccessful in pursuing that thinking very far. They will have a problem in trying to reconcile their objectives on housing with giving the district council a substantial function to perform.
  Many hon. Members have referred to the revolution involved in the Bill. Any revolution, if it is to be successfully carried out, involves problems of transition. By solving the problems of transition one produces an effective revolution as distinct from an ineffective one. No doubt in that light we should look sympathetically at Clause 2(6) which continues the title of Lord Provost, at least in the four counties of cities.
  Mr. MacArthur: Perth and Elgin.
  Mr. Murray: I am open-minded on their claims. The wording of Clause 2(6) is unsatisfactory at first sight. I hope that what is intended is that the title of Lord Provost of Aberdeen will continue, but Clause 2(6) appears to say that the title will be Lord Provost of the District Council of Aberdeen. That would mean that the Lord Provost of Glasgow could no longer say, "Glasgow belongs to me". He would have to say "The District Council of Glasgow belongs to me", which would rather spoil the song.
  Mr. MacArthur: It might not make sense as a song, but it is a much better property. Surely the hon. and learned Gentleman agrees that we want to preserve these ancient offices wherever we can so long as they do not get in the way of reform and modernity?
  Mr. Murray: Perhaps I should not have given way to the hon. Gentleman. He reminds me of one difficulty. Clause 2(6) deals with the title of Lord Provost but not with any of his functions. One of those functions is that of Lord Lieutenant of the county and the city, which is a fairly important function, and one which has to be considered in terms of transition. I use that as an illustration of problems which will arise in many other spheres.
  The Bill is singularly silent on the problems of transition. For instance, there is the illustration of the royal burghs. Most of the well-known cities and towns of Scotland became royal burghs by Charter. The Bill does not say that those Charters are removed or are of no legal effect, but Schedule 24 repeals the legislation upon which they appear to stand. I hope that the Government do not intend to abolish entirely the ancient rights of royal burghs, at least to be royal burghs. That would be unfortunate in terms not only of transition but of tourism. If by a side-wind the Bill were to remove from the entrances of some of our nicer seaside resorts the sign "royal burgh", that would be unfortunate and unnecessary.
  In that same category one has to put the kingdom of Fife. Although the Secretary of State strove gallantly to maintain that the kingdom of Fife still

  1031
  exists, that goes flat in the teeth of Clause 1(5), which says:
  "On 16th May 1975, all … counties … shall cease to exist, and the council of every such area shall also cease to exist."
  The kingdom of Fife may always be a kingdom but it will be a kingdom with no crown and no jurisdiction. The death warrant is clearly there in Clause 1(5).
  These units—and the county of Fife may be one such from this point of view, even if the kingdom has no legal entity—have real community existence. The same is true of the royal burghs. They represent abiding communities which have survived under adverse conditions for many years. Communities like this represent abiding interests and abiding realities, geographical, environmental and human. They are continuing communities which are likely to continue in future. They will still be there. They are obviously prime candidates for the status of areas qualifying for community councils. But is that enough? I hope that it will be at least enough. I hope that these areas will qualify to have community councils and that at least they can be given that degree of reality.
  If the Bill is enacted in 1973 it will be exactly 140 years since democracy was brought into local government in Scotland. Up to 1833, local authorities in Scotland were self-perpetuating bodies. There was no element of democracy. We have had 139 years of democracy to the present time and I sincerely hope that in the form that this Bill seeks to re-establish local government it will provide democracy and participation in the future government of Scotland.
  9.34 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office (Mr. George Younger): In this debate we have belied the reputation which we sometimes enjoy. If my calculations are right, I am the tweny-fifth person to speak in it, and I think it would be wrong to let this final speech pass without saying that both the quality of the contributions and their brevity have led us to have an extremely useful debate which has been most interesting for all of us. For once in a while, let us give ourselves a pat on the back for having done a good job.
  I have another pleasant duty—one which I do not suppose will ever come
  1032
  to me again and which I have prayed for for a long time. I have the chance of putting the headmaster—the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross)—right on a point of grammar. It seldom comes to a humble member of the lower fourth to do that. I have pleasure in raising my eyebrows at the fact that the right hon. Gentleman should have been so ignorant of the word, very commonly used—"mered"—which he will remember means
  "defined by use or existing landmark"
  and is habitually used by the Ordnance Survey in the course of its duties.
  The general consideration of the debate is one which we have all been working up to for a long time, and my main task is to try and keep as general a view as I can on the Bill as a whole. Although I must cover the main points of controversy in order to get answers to as many people as possible I will touch only fairly lightly tonight on them, but, of course, we must go into these very carefully in Committee.
  The hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) referred to the size of the Standing Committee. That, of course, is not a matter for me to decide, but as the hon. Gentleman probably knows discussions are still going on through the usual channels on the matter, and I hope that the result will be satisfactory to all concerned.
  The right hon. Member for Kilmarnock made a few general comments, to which I should like briefly to reply. I assure him that we intend to enter the Committee stage in a spirit of give and take, as he asked us to do. We recognise—my right hon. Friend has always felt this—that this is a matter on which there are strongly-held convictions on both sides, and we expect and hope—I think that we shall be proved right—that the Committee stage will give ample opportunity for conflicting views to be expressed and that the Committee will feel free to make as good a job as it can of improving the Bill in the ways it wishes to do. We shall enter the Committee stage in that spirit.
  The right hon. Gentleman asked what new provisions were in the Bill. It is difficult to list them all, because the new structure we have laid out means a considerable number of functional statutes being altered. In rewriting them we have

  1033
  had to rationalise, which has involved introducing a larger or smaller amount of new material in various parts of the Bill. I cannot mention all the changes, but I will give some examples. Clause 124 introduces education management boards; Clause 171 introduces regional planning reports; assistance to public transport operators is in Clause 148; the duty to provide adequate library services is in Clause 161—and I emphasise the word "duty"; the right of public access to committees is in Clause 44; and the power to undertake research and collect information is in Clause 87. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, many new matters are written into the Bill.
  Mr. Ross: Are Clauses 83 and 84 new?
  Mr. Younger: They are in a new form in the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman spent some time on a question on which I did not agree with him. He made great play of inequalities of size between various districts. I do not agree that that in itself is undesirable. We have always felt that this would be necessary. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the obverse of his argument shows how necessary it is. If we had tried—and we would have been wrong to try—to make the size of all districts as similar as we could, there would have been a dreadful situation in remotely populated Highland regions where, to get districts of comparable size to those of the central belt, we would have landed ourselves with huge areas which could not have been called communities. It is open to argument that some are too large or too small, but it is not a fair criticism to say that in general we have failed to equalise the size of the districts, because I do not think that it would have been a desirable thing to do, even if we had wanted to.
  I must briefly comment upon two main areas of controversy which we shall go into in much greater detail in Committee. The first is the proposal in the Bill and in the Wheatley Report for the division of Fife into two areas. I well understand the feelings of those people in Fife who do not agree, and I understand the feelings of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East (Sir J. Gilmour), who has eloquently fought the case for so many months. I can say only that this is and must be a matter of opinion. I do not
  1034
  believe that there is any way of proving that he is right or that we are right. I respect his opinion and I am sure that he respects ours, although he disagrees with it. The object of the lay-out proposed in the Bill and suggested in the Wheatley Commission Report was, as elsewhere, to try to get the new districts and regions to correspond to natural communities, wherever possible. We have argued about what are natural communities, and it is difficult to find conclusive proof either way.
  My hon. Friend mentioned some of the considerations which I said were taken into account. It is, of course, much better to list all the considerations, because in a matter of judgment it is not possible to give a considered view of the whole concept on the basis of only two or three considerations. The object of the exercise was to try to take all the pieces of evidence that could be collected and bring them together to form a single picture. It is legitimate in that case to take such things as the areas in which local newspapers circulate, because they try to circulate in the areas that mean something to the people who live there.
  There is also the consideration of commercial traffic. Operators try to arrange their affairs in a way which corresponds to communities, but that is only one of many pieces of evidence with which a picture must be built up. That is what Wheatley did, and we cannot say that it is right, any more than anyone can say that it is wrong. On reflection, having considered all the views of all these bodies, it is reasonable to put forward the proposition that with the development of new communication links and the changes that occur in the population and the habits of life generally in these areas, this division makes sense in terms of the lives people lead there, and will increasingly lead in the future.
  But, of course, it is a matter of opinion; it is not possible for me to prove that I am right, or for my hon. Friend to prove that he is right—although he may hold strong views.
  Mr. Adam Hunter: What about majority opinion?
  Mr. Younger: What my right hon. Friend was saying earlier was not that there was any majority opinion for his view, against those who do not wish to

  1035
  see Fife split; he was saying that there is an element of opinion that is in agreement with what is in the Bill. I do not believe that the hon. Member would disagree with that. A number of local authorities agree with it, but I am not saying that they are a majority—merely that they amount to a significant body of opinion.
  There is, then, the issue of the West Region and Strathclyde, which is rightly a matter of great controversy. When looked at in comparison with the other regions it is large in terms of its population, but as the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) so rightly said, this is something that is dictated for us not on a piece of paper or by a piece of evidence but by the natural forces working in the whole of the West Region. In the course of my life I have had to split up Scotland six times for the purposes of my commercial activities. Each time I have finished with a different result, and I have been struck with the great difficulty of splitting it up, because it is so unbalanced in terms of population.
  I wish to deal very briefly with some examples of why the alternative Strathclyde solutions that have been put forward, or some of them, must be thought through a lot more carefully than hitherto. Let us assume that we were to have three tiers instead of two. I accept for this purpose the various variations of three tiers which have been discussed. Let us assume that, whether there was delegation to the top from the middle or a delegated tier from the top to the middle, which I think both mean the same, there would be three tiers instead of two. We would then have three authorities which would split the decision-making on any major matter of policy. We would therefore have that much more opportunity for friction and difficulty between the resposibilities of those authorities.
  May I take an example to try to highlight the matter? Let us suppose that there was a proposal to build a new school somewhere in the Strathclyde area. Let us suppose that the top tier had the planning and strategic function, the middle tier had the educational function and the district or third tier had the
  1036
  district function as we expect to see it in the Bill. In the decision-making the middle tier would have to accept the implication of the top tier's strategy for redistribution of population necessitating the new schools in the first place. The difference is that it would then be accepting the view of a different authority, whereas under the proposals in the Bill it would be the same authority that would be making the decision as to the strategic laying-out of the population and the educational facilities involved. [Interruption.] I am trying to spell this out in the way in which I have been asked.
  Secondly, there may well be—[Interruption.] If hon. Members do not like to listen, I hope that they will not complain later and say that they have not been told. I am prepared to desist from doing this altogether. However, hon. Members have been pressing me to do this all day and I am doing my best.
  Secondly, there could well be a difference of opinion over timing. The education authority, the middle tier, might not have the resources ready when required or it might have its own views about education priorities which might be different from those of the upper tier which made the original strategic decision. There might be no place in the local plan or the structure plan for the new school, and there might be an amendment needed to the plan and a public inquiry for that.
  Lastly, the district authority might have difficulty in adjusting the local plan to find a satisfactory site for the new school. [Interruption.] Hon. Members who feel impatient might address themselves to what would happen if there were three different authorities trying to make these decisions, and compare that situation with what would happen if there were only two different authorities, each with its own special sphere of responsibility. With respect to hon. Members who think otherwise, I believe that that two authorities would make for a much better and smoother administration and a more easily understood splitting of responsibilities if we had the two tiers as planned.
  Dr. Dickson Mabon: I agree with the Under-Secretary about the question of two and three tiers. I am sorry that it has taken so long to deal with the example. The question which we put to him is as

  1037
  follows: given the Bill as it stands, what will he do about the administration of education and social work in the Strathclyde region? Will it be administratively decentralised? If so, please may we know how, and in particular, what about education management committees?
  Mr. Younger: I shall never get on to discussing that if we have interruptions all the time. I will do my best to explain very quickly as there are many questions which I have to answer. There is a legitimate difference of opinion between the two sides, and I am being continually asked to spell out what the organisation will be of the new authority. Perhaps hon. Members can understand that, speaking for the Government, I am naturally reluctant to spell out the form of organisation which the new authorities will take for education or anything else. The reason that I am reluctant to do so is that the last thing acceptable to the new authorities would be to feel that they were having a particular form of organisation thrust upon them by central Government. One of our main objects is to give more responsibility to the new local authorities, and let them make their own forms of organisation and draw up their own schemes.
  Mr. Ross Mr. Ross rose—
  Mr. Younger: I must get on.
  Mr. Ross: What do the Government—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. The right hon. Gentleman knows the rule as well as I do.
  Mr. Younger: I am very sorry, but I must press on, otherwise I shall not answer all manner of questions, and one is usually extremely unpopular if that happens.
  The right hon. Gentleman asked what would be the likely life of the staff commission. I expect it to carry on its work till the second half of 1975 or so, but there is no reason why it should not carry on longer if it needs to do so.
  The right hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest—I may have misunderstood him here, and, if so, I apologise—that there should be divided responsibility for roads. I do not agree about that. It would be duplicating the technical facilities re-
  1038
  quired for dealing with roads. Moreover, I could not see any logic, as a motorist or traveller, in suddenly discovering arbitrary divisions of responsibility for various roads. It will be much better to have it under one authority, with one staff, to make a good job of all roads in an area.
  Next, the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) asked whether the Boundary Commission would be able to consider changes within the 10 to 15-year periods. Under Clause 14(2), the Boundary Commission may look at any or all areas at any time, and under Clause 15 the Secretary of State may direct it to conduct a review within the normal interval, that is to say, short of the 10 to 15-year periods. I think that the hon. Member for Greenock was concerned to have that latter point clarified.
  The hon. Member for Greenock asked also about the area of the Passenger Transport Authority and how it would be affected in the Strathclyde area. The area of the PTA will remain as it is at present designated. The PTE, the Passenger Transport Executive, will remain, also. But the PTA will be replaced by the Strathclyde Regional Council, and any deficit financing to which it might succeed would be paid for by all the Strathclyde ratepayers.
  Dr. Dickson Mabon: That is monstrous.
  Mr. Younger: The hon. Gentleman says that that is monstrous, but the principle is no different from that which applies to all rural bus services under the Transport Act. All such services, both now and in the future, may be supported by the local authority, and in that case, too, they will be supported by city ratepayers who may not be using them.
  The right hon. Gentleman asked about ferries. Clause 150 replaces a variety of powers dealing with ferries by an up-to-date code under which regional and Highland councils may operate ferries and make arrangements with other persons to do so.
  The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy Burghs (Mr. Gourlay) asked several questions about rate rebates. I think that I can give him a brief answer. First, I confirm that the rate rebate subsidy is

  1039
  designated in the Bill at 90 per cent. and it will continue at 90 per cent. after 1974. The hon. Gentleman said there were several ways in which, in his view, the new rate rebate scheme would be worse than the present. There is no need for his fears on that score. The new scheme will be much more sensitive to individual needs than the present one is. It will cover a wider range of incomes, and, unlike the present system, it will have no fixed minimum rate payment. I confirm, also, that there is no intention to transfer supplementary benefit recipients on to the local authority rebates. That is what is meant by Clause 113 (1).
  Mr. Gourlay: I am obliged for the latter answer, but I cannot accept as correct that the rebate scheme now proposed will not make people worse off. Under the present system, a single person has a rebate with an income of £12 a week, whereas under the new scheme the level is about £10·50.
  Mr. Younger: The hon. Gentleman is making a mistake in assuming that the details of the rate rebate scheme will be the same as those for the rent rebate schemes. The details of the rate rebate scheme have yet to be spelled out in orders to be put before the House later.
  I was asked by the hon. Gentleman about his own constituency interest in Auchtertool. His views on this subject are well understood and thoroughly appreciated. There is no existing boundary which could have been used, although that is something that the Boundary Commission can consider.
  Many hon. Members mentioned payment for councillors, and I was asked by the hon. Member for Greenock whether that would entail an alteration to the Money Resolution. It would not involve any change to the Money Resolution, because the expenditure would be incurred by the councils and not directly by Parliament, and it would therefore be covered by item (b) of the Money Resolution.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, East asked what would be the difference between controlled capital expenditure and the controlling of borrowing power. Control is still control, but we propose control of a less burdensome kind. At
  1040
  present, consent has to be obtained every time a borrowing power is used for more than £2,000, but under the Bill it will be given for programmes of capital spending as a service on a yearly basis and only exceptionally for single projects. Hon. Members I am sure will agree that that will give local authorities wider scope for using their discretion.
  The hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan asked about improved facilities at local elections and especially about poll cards and postal facilities. Provision for poll cards at local elections could be made in the local election rules to be made by my right hon. Friend under Clause 7. There may be difficulties about introducing poll cards throughout the country at the first elections in 1974. It is a little more difficult to say whether there is a general demand for the expansion of postal voting to local elections, but their provision would add considerably to the administrative cost of local elections.
  The right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and several others mentioned disqualification. This must be the last matter that I can cover. I apologise to those hon. Members whose questions I have not answered, but I will write to them.
  Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman will be kept busy.
  Mr. Younger: I shall.
  I ask those who press for a relaxation of the rules of disqualification applying to those employed by local authorities to think their argument through more carefully. Do we want any employee of a council to be able to become a councillor? Would it be right for the secretary of a town clerk to become a councillor? Would that add to efficiency?
  The examples that the right hon. Gentleman gave were not very good. The Lord Provost of Glasgow would still be able to be a regional councillor, because he would be the head of a district and not of a region. Transport Grades now employed by Glasgow Corporation would be able to be members of the Glasgow District Council, because the Strathclyde Regional Council would be the responsible authority.
  The House has considered the Second Reading of the Bill and I hope that in Committee hon. Members will be able to make useful contributions to improving

  1041
  the Bill. Let us not forget that this is the end of 10 years of consideration and discussion during which every conceivable effort has been made by three successive Governments to consult as many organs of opinion as possible. We cannot please everyone in making a major change of this sort, but the time has come for the Government to make their views known to Parliament and for Parliament to pronounce its judgment on those views.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).
  Ordered,
  That notwithstanding anything in paragraph (2) of Standing Order No. 60 (Constitution of Standing Committees) and Standing Order No. 69 (Scottish Standing Committees) the Bill be considered by a Scottish Standing Committee.—[Mr. Gordon Campbell.]

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered,
  That the Motion relating to Education (S.I., 1972, No. 1124) may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until half-past Eleven o'clock.—[Mr. Rossi.]

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SCOTLAND) [MONEY]
Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make provision with respect to local government and the functions of local authorities in Scotland, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

(a) any expenses incurred by any Minister under that Act;

(b) any increase attributable to the provisions of that Act in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other enactment; and

(c) the expenses of the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland together with any sums payable to persons appointed under that Act to assist and advise that Commission.—[Mr. Younger.]

10.1 p.m.
Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: Paragraph (c) of the Money Resolution
1042
refers to the expenses of the Local Government Boundary Commission together with sums payable to persons appointed to assist and advise it. What I do not understand is that in the Bill there is provision for a commission dealing with audits, and understand that that is covered by paragraph (a) of the Money Resolution.
I have two questions to ask. First, why is paragraph (c) necessary? Is it because this is a special part of the Bill that has to be itemised in this form as it may involve the payment of moneys, not by the Secretary of State but by persons acting for the Local Government Boundary Commission?
Secondly, if in Committee we were to move an amendment to establish a local government commission on functions—I realise that the Minister did not have time to reply to all the points, and I accept that he was not discourteous—should we be covered by paragraphs (a) and (b) and therefore be in order, or would an amending paragraph (d), similar to paragraph (c), be required to enable the body to be called a Local Government Functions Commission, or something like that, which was entitled to pay persons who worked for and advised it?
Why is paragraph (c) there? If we want a commission that is not mentioned in the Bill shall we be entitled to deal with it in Committee, or will the Money Resolution bar us from doing so? I have spoken for long enough to enable the Minister to receive the appropriate advice.
10.3 p.m.
Mr. Norman Buchan: I should have thought that most hon. Members present would be dissatisfied with the Minister's reply. That is an understatement of his analysis of the situation facing the West Region in the event of the establishment of yet another division within it. To choose three of the worst involvements of responsibility in order to show that there is no case for the devolving of structures and functions within the West Region is not good enough.
I understand that the Committee considering the Bill will be a give-and-take

1043
Committee. I hope that all the giving will not be from our side and all the taking by the other. The Committee may decide to establish a commission to investigate the possibility of a three-tier structure within the West Region, particularly for education and social work. Will that be covered by paragraphs (a) and (b)?
We are still not satisfied that sufficient thought has been given to the whole problem of the payment of councillors. I hope we can get it confirmed that the payment of councillors will be covered by the Money Resolution. People in Scotland recognise that unless councillors are paid there will be a one-sided set up. I ask the Secretary of State to tell his right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate that we are discussing paragraphs (a) and (b) of the Money Resolution, and that I am not out of order.
We must get a definitive answer on those two points before we pass the Money Resolution.
10.5 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office (Mr. George Younger): I think that what the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Mabon) was suggesting in his second point was virtually another commission. It would need an amended resolution, which could be done if it were wanted, for another commission to deal with another subject. On his first point, the reason for this requirement is that the Boundary Commission is not on a Secretary of State Vote: thus, it has to be provided by funds provided by Parliament, and that is why it needs to be specified in this case.
Dr. Dickson Mabon: Could it be amended to a Boundary "and Functions" Commission? In that case, would we need to amend the Money Resolution?
Mr. Younger: I would need notice of that. That is a difficult point, on which we would have to check precedent. What the hon. Gentleman wanted to know on his main point was what would be necessary if he wanted to introduce something different. I have given the answer to that.
Mr. William Hannan: Why were all the clauses relating
1044
to this matter included in a Bill of this kind at all? Why not a separate Bill? It would have been big enough, with 12 or 16 clauses—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. That question is out of order.
Mr. Russell Johnston: Is the Minister saying that if, in Committee, the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Mabon) wished to move an amendment to allow this Commission to deal with functions as well as with boundaries, he would be debarred from doing so by the terms of this resolution?
Mr. Younger: I am advised that it would be possible to extend the remit of the Boundary Commission to undertake extra tasks, as the hon. Member has outlined, but, as I am speaking very much off the cuff on this matter, and it is a very brief view, I must make it clear that I have not had a chance to check up on it. But I will do so if the hon. Gentleman wishes.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make provision with respect to local government and the functions of local authorities in Scotland, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

(a) any expenses incurred by any Minister under that Act;

(b) any increase attributable to the provisions of that Act in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other enactment; and

(c) the expenses of the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland, together with any sums payable to persons appointed under that Act to assist and advise that Commission.

MINES AND QUARRIES (VALUATION)
10.8 p.m.
The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): I beg to move,
That the Mines and Quarries (Valuation) (Amendment) Order 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 21st November, be approved.
I should be delighted to explain in detail the meaning of this order, and why

1045
it is necessary to validate the revaluation list, which is coming into operation in 1973, and which will be published on 21st December. But if the House does
1046
not require that explanation, I am sure that I can save it time at this time of night.
Question put and agreed to.

STUDENT GRANTS
10.9 p.m.
Mr. Roland Moyle: I beg to move,
That this House takes note of the Awards (First Degree, &c, Courses) (Amendment) Regulations 1972 (S.I., 1972, No. 1124) dated 25th July 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 4th August, in the last Session of Parliament.
The object of these regulations is to apply the second stage of student grants agreed for the triennium 1971–1974. Obviously, the last thing that the Opposition wishes to do is prevent students from acquiring such crumbs as are to come their way. The main rate of elsewhere grants, which is the main one affecting the bulk of students, is £445, an increase of 3½ per cent. on the first stage.
A great deal of disquiet has been expressed over the Government's handling of the student grant situation and thus we wish to probe their thinking on this difficult question, although it is no function of mine or, I respectfully suggest, the Under-Secretary to negotiate student grants across the Floor of the House of Commons. In any case, it must be apparent to the Under-Secretary, with his experience of the House, that we have no intention of dividing it on this aspect tonight.
The present agreement on student grants is for the period 1971–74, but already the National Union of Students has put in a request for an interim improvement in the currently agreed rate of grant from about the end of last month. It main argument for so doing is the inflationary pressures, of which we in the House are all aware, because the present Government have presided over record levels of inflation since coming to office. It is not entirely the fault of any Government that there should be an inflationary or deflationary situation at any particular time. What is the responsibility of the Government, however, are the policies they adopt to combat the current economic trend at a particular time.
We can all remember the present Government coming to office in 1970 and making a great virtue of demolishing the Prices and Incomes Board, getting rid of the Consumer Council, and so on. The
1048
Opposition said then that the Government were wrong, and we are very happy to see that the Government admit that they were wrong then to do that sort of thing because they are in effect, whatever the various terms used at present, returning to the policies they so carefully demolished in those heady days of victory following the 1970 General Election.
What this all means is that the rate of inflation which the present Government envisaged in 1970 for the years subsequent to that date was much lower than what has subsequently happened. Therefore the burden of proof is on the Government to show where the NUS case is wrong, if it is wrong, rather than for the NUS to establish its case as right.
One of the key factors is that the triennium we are considering runs from 1971 to 1974 but the level of grant agreed for that triennium was based on figures for inflationary trends which were derived from the period 1967–70. The rate of inflation derived from that 1967–70 period was used to project forward the rate of inflation for the current three years, from 1971 to 1974. Obviously the projection of the rate of inflation was grossly out of line in view of everything that has happened subsequently. In particular, there was an added factor, and that is that hostel charges during the 1967–70 period were being religiously held down by the university and other higher education authorities, possibly to some extent artificially held down, and therefore hostel charges were a bad basis from which to calculate the rate of inflation, even from the 1967–70 period.
But even with these factors working in favour of the Government and tending to produce a low rate of inflation, as I understand it, the joint working party which was set up to consider the future of student grants in 1970 and towards the end of 1971 recommended that the basic grant for students outside London, Oxford and Cambridge should be £450 a year, even then. Because of the peculiar way in which the negotiations were carried on, however, and the unusual approach the Government adopted, even this figure was not satisfactorily reached in practice.
The Government allocated £76 million towards the solution of the student grant

1049
problem and one of the things they wanted to do—I do not criticise the Government for this—was to ease the parental contributions of those families with the lowest family income. But as the Government had set themselves a global sum for allocation, the only way they could do this was to take some money from Peter in order to pay Paul. The net result was that the £450, by the time that increases for the third year of the triennium had been allowed, had been reduced to a first-year, 1971–72 figure of £430. I shall use the elsewhere grant figures all the way through as covering the bulk of the students.
But £450 was already too low, because even as the negotiations were going on various university and higher education authorities were being forced to increase the charges for board and lodging at their halls of residence. Even before the triennium had got under way the charges had gone up on average by about £15. By this time inflation was already beginning to surge forward by leaps and bounds, and before the triennium really started a further £15 should have been allowed, to cover the interim cost of inflation. The first-year grant for the present three-year period, for the year 1971–72, was £430, whereas many of the experts and many of those involved in the operations and studies of the joint working party calculated that it should have been at least £50 more.
That is the figure that many university hostels and universities throughout the country are using for their board and lodge charges now. I have letters here from presidents of students' unions saying that in halls of residence students are being charged by their universities about £50-plus for board and lodging in excess of the sum notionally allowed for the purpose in the grant. For example, I have a letter from the president of the Newcastle students' union setting out the figures.
The gap between the real value of what the grant should have been in 1971 and 1972 and what it is seems to have affected particularly the levels of charges being levied for board and lodgings at various universities. It cannot be denied that the general experience throughout the country is of a substantial gap between the notional board and lodging element of the student's grant and the
1050
actual board and lodge charges that universities, polytechnics and other institutions of higher learning are being forced to charge their students.
We have the great advantage that the first year of the student grant was taken as a sort of technical exercise. If students were meant to adopt a certain way of life in the autumn of 1970 based on the results of the joint working party study of the student grant situation, that way of life has been further deteriorated by the rate of inflation over the past 12 months. Whereas the difference between the grant of £430 to cover the first year of the three and £445 to cover the second year of the three is only 3·5 per cent., during that period the General Index of Retail Prices has risen by about 10 per cent.
The Under-Secretary's predecessor, writing to the Chairman of the Vice-Chancellors on 31st July this year, said:
"But I am sure that I do not have to remind you that the board and lodging element in the grant, as with other items, is a notional one based on averages, and that this gives a measure of flexibility within the grant."
So it may seem from York Road and the higher echelons of administration in the Department of Education and Science. But on the ground the flexibility tends to offer itself as a choice between a meal, a pair of shoes, an important textbook or an agreement to pay what the universities want to be paid for residence in a hall of residence. After all, we are dealing with sums of £8-£9 a week, if we regard the grant as applicable over a 52-week year, or possibly £14 a week if we regard it as applicable over a 31-week year. Even with the most generous interpretation being placed on the figures, with the cost of living as it is there can be no margins for the average student to play with in budgeting to cover all the costs he must meet during the university year. When we talk about the underpaid sections of British industry we are usually talking about figures somewhat in excess of £14 a week. We shall come on to that before we finish the debate tonight.
The other problem is that many parents do not pay their contribution, though I think the great majority do. This again affects adversely and to a serious extent the budgeting problems of university students. Yet it is a built-in factor upon which the student is supposed to rely

1051
to cover his survival in the course of an academic year. In the course of the correspondence which the Under-Secretary's predecessor had on this subject he showed a fascination with the operation of the retail price index. I suppose the overall operation of the retail price index may be a good yardstick for dealing with normal industrial disputes about rates of pay. The normal industrial worker these days may possibly go in for television sets, motor cars and all sorts of other things which now form part of the retail price index. But we have met this factor in discussing the problems of old-age pensioners and others on retirement incomes, and that is that the income is so small that it is bound to be spent on the most vital things such as heating, clothing and food, and substantial movements in these particular items of expenditure can have a most drastic effect on people with small incomes.
The National Union of Students has made a suggestion which has often been made in respect of old-age pensioners, that there should be a particular retail price index, or what they call a student needs index. What I should like to know is whether the Government are looking into this suggestion, which could have an application outside the field of student grants to cover other matters. The only other thing that I should like to say about the National Union of Students' claim is that the married women's grant position was fixed in 1965. I shall not argue whether it was right or wrong, but, whether it was right or wrong in 1965, the fact is that the position must inevitably be becoming less correct with every year that passes and separate us from 1965. There is the question of discretionary grants which the National Union of Students suggests should be made mandatory, and it would be interesting to hear the Government's thinking on that topic.
Another reason why the burden of proof is on the Government is that the professional heads of our higher institutions of learning are all on the side of the National Union of Students. I drew this fact to the attention of the Secretary of State on 23rd November at Question time, and she replied:
"We have received a letter from the vice-chancellors. It is very easy for anyone to
1052
demand an increase for which he does not have to pay."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd November, 1972; Vol. 846, c. 1504.]
I thought that did far less than justice to the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and the principals of polytechnics. It is trying to create an impression that the vice-chancellors, now that they are coming under pressure from their students, are running for cover in any direction that they can go and they are obviously turning their guns on the Secretary of State. This is not true. In this matter the vice-chancellors' and principals' hands are completely clean because they told the Under-Secretary's predecessor 18 months ago that the situation now prevailing in our universities in respect of charges for halls of residence in particular was a situation which would develop anyway. They gave 18 months adequate warning of the situation which is at present existing, with a number of rent strikes in about 12 universities.
Far from there being one letter on this subject, there have been several exchanges of correspondence between the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) and the members of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors. Recently the Vice-Chancellor of Brunei University wrote to the Under-Secretary of State's predecesor before he was translated to higher and finer things saying that the university was charging £9·68½p for lodgings. Local lodgings were £9·94½, so that the university was, if anything, charging less than the going market rate. He said that
"These figures compare with the corresponding notional element in the local education authority grant"
for halls of residence
"of £8·88 per week (two winter terms) and £740 per week (summer term, fourth year students only) for thin sandwich students in the London area. You will note that the student in lodgings has just sufficient for lunch on alternate days and three additional cups of coffee per fortnight in the winter terms, but must apparently subsist on breakfast and supper alone (no lunch or snacks) during the summer."
Coming from the head of a university, that must be considered very seriously. It points to a situation of which nobody can be proud.
Another aspect of the student grant situation which is not often mentioned but which I should like to discuss at a little length is the board and lodging services of university halls of residence

1053
which are maintained by a great many humble but worthy people—kitchen porters and assistants, cooks, catering assistants, cleaners, and so on. In effect, their wages are paid out of what students can afford to pay from their grants.
The result is that we not only are developing but have developed one of the most appallingly badly paid groups of people, namely, those who are working in university halls of residence and refectories. For example, in refectories in London kitchen assistants and catering assistants are paid between 39p and 40p per hour. It is significant that in a hall where post graduate students live, with their higher rates of grants, the same grades are paid a little more—42p per hour—because all these services must be, by the University Grants Committee edict, self-supporting. Therefore, the only way in which money can be obtained to pay these unfortunate employees is through the money which the students pay for their halls of residence charges and for their meals.
It is also significant that rates are not paid on a national basis or, as far as I can see, even on a university basis. They are paid hall by hall in some of the worst examples of an economic law of the jungle which I have seen since the Victorian era. It is significant and rather pathetic that the local authority equivalent in the school meals service receives about 49½p per hour for doing similar work. Cleaners in various London halls of residence are paid between 37p and 42p per hour for a 25 to 30 hour week, whereas local authority cleaners are paid 48p per hour for doing similar work.
In summary, it can be said that the employees of local authorities have never been regarded as highly paid people. They have been regarded as low-paid people. The Under-Secretary of State will remember, because he took an interest in these matters, that a few years ago the question of the local authority manual workers was referred to the Prices and Incomes Board for special study because those workers were regarded as exceptionally lowly paid people whose lot should be improved. Yet the dearest ambition of the university manual employees is to be treated as the poorly paid local authority employees are treated. That is a pitiful comment on their situation.
1054
The situation is getting rather worse. Local authorities are committed to equal pay for their staffs—equal pay for men and women doing the same sort of work. Universities are not committed, and so the gap will widen between the local authorities' staffs with their already low rates of pay and the manual staffs in universities.
These grades in universities have not had a general negotiated increase for about 18 months because the only way that limited student money can be made available to some is to sack some of the rest. The most dramatic demonstration of that occurred in Kent University last summer. Kent University was making a loss on its catering service, which, the University Grants Committee told the university, should be brought into balance. I make no complaint about that, but I would point out that in consequence some 27 employees, part time and full time, were declared redundant, although there were a number of other vacancies which could have been filled, I agree, but not for skilled—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. The hon. Member is going a little wide of the regulations. I have been having a good look at them to see whether he could be in order, but I think he is not.
Mr. Moyle: I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I would like it to be borne in mind that the rates of pay of the grades I have been speaking of are directly derived from the sums of money made available to the universities by payments from students from their grants. Therefore I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will properly bear in mind the sort of consequences which any action he might advise the Government to take will have in practice in the universities. I was coming to the end of that point, but would add that so depressed has the industry, if one may call it that, of university manual workers become as the result of the Government's policy on university grants that undesirable labour practices are creeping in. One London hall of residence has been driven to employing au pair girls on split shift working for £7 a week, from which a charge is deducted for living in. This is a Victorian level of exploitation not

1055
heard of for many years and takes us almost back to the match girls of the 1880s, and does not accord with the rosy glow of the Department's advice on the conditions and payment of au pair girls.
The situation I have been speaking about shows discontent by students; it shows a warning of considerable difficulties ahead in running our institutions, a warning which has been delivered by the professional heads of our institutions of higher learning. Behind the glittering academic facade—and we very often pride ourselves, quite rightly, on the way in which we run our institutions of higher learning in this country—behind a Lord Annan delivering an outstanding Dimbleby lecture, there is revealed the way in which we exploit men and women in our university halls of residence by paying them inadequately as one of the direct results of the Government's refusal to make any move on the subject of university grants. This latter problem has now engaged the critical and organisational attention of one of the larger unions, the National Union of Public Employees. It will, no doubt, be particularly interested in what the Undersecretary has to say about the future of its membership. I shall wait to hear—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary may not be the largest audience I have addressed, but he has certainly been the most attentive I have had for a long time. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
10.34 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas): I do not intend to follow the hon. Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Moyle) on his tour d'horizon of the history of the Government's first two years. I remind him—and as a literary man he will appreciate this—of the saying of Emerson that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for not treating this important subject as a party matter. He has made a moderate and constructive contribution to our discussion, probing, as he has every right to do, the Government's intentions and thinking on this difficult subject.
It is more a problem of logistics and priorities than anything else. We all
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want to see that students have a fair deal; we all want them to be relieved of financial anxiety; but we have to make an allocation between competing claims, as the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Edward Short) knows very well from his own distinguished holding of office at the Department. We have to make choices; we have to set priorities. Just as one could spend the entire Budget on the health service and still not meet the need, so one could spend the entire Budget on education and still leave people not fully satisfied. I hope that we can discuss the problem in that context.
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Lewisham, North, but the conditions and pay of those employed in halls of residence and refectories are not matters for me. They may be matters for various of my colleagues. Although the Department is concerned indirectly, because one source of revenue of the refectories and halls of residence is student grants, and although those services are further subsidised by capital grants for buildings, the conditions of the workers are not the responsibility of my Department; nor indeed does it keep detailed information about these matters. It is the problem of the lower paid in general, which my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have considered and will go on considering, but it is not a matter for me.
En passant, may I say that there is competition here. It is not a closed market, and if conditions in local authority service are better, people are free to seek employment there. If the conditions of workers in colleges and halls of residence are poor, some of the responsibility—I put it no higher—rests upon the trade unions that have supported the hon. Gentleman and have never welcoved those people within their ranks.
The primary object of these amending regulations is to prescribe new rates of grant for students taking first degree and comparable courses, and for students in colleges of education, to come into effect from 1st September of this year, in substitution for the earlier date prescribed in the corresponding 1971 regulations. They also make minor changes in or

1057
clarify other parts of those earlier regulations.
It has long been the practice to have a review of student grants once every three years. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced the rates for 1971–72, 1972–73 and 1973–74 at the conclusion of her last review in May. I can say that my right hon. Friend intends to lay a further set of amending regulations before the House next year to enable the 1973–74 grants, which are grants at the higher rate, to be implemented in the final year of the current triennium.
It is important for the House to realise that these rates of grant were arrived at only after an extremely thorough and comprehensive review in which the student bodies—the National Union of Students and the Scottish Union of Students—as well as the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and the local authority associations were closely involved. On this occasion we departed from the normal practice of having an independent review body to make the recommendations and we first set up a working group, consisting of officials of my Department and the Scottish Education Department and representatives of the student bodies, to undertake jointly a fact-finding study of the changes in courses and price levels which have had occurred since the previous review.
I believe that this review was remarkable of its kind. An extremely responsible and helpful part was played by the NUS, under the leadership of Mr. Digby Jacks, and the results of a review of university halls of residence charges, which the student bodies themselves had undertaken independently, was used by the working party in putting forward its findings. Great care was taken to relate the study to students' expenses. That really answers the point raised by the hon. Gentleman about the cost of living index. We did not relate this simply to the retail price index; we took into account the actual expenses and conditions under which students live. So there was working in practice exactly what the hon. Gentleman suggested—a students' cost of living index.
It was those recommendations of the working party—which are being fully implemented in the 1973–74 rates of grant
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—which were ultimately agreed by all the participants—by the student bodies, by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and by the local authority associations. The hon. Gentleman mentioned an extra sum of £15. An additional £15 was added to the rates for students attending provincial universities other than Oxford and Cambridge—that was the chosen ground on which he wished to argue—because of information which came to the Department at a later stage.
What also must be remembered to get the problem into perspective is that certain other improvements on the grants were both needed and asked for by the interested parties—such things, briefly touched upon by the hon. Gentleman, as improvement of dependants' allowances and rates of parental contributions. In order to accommodate these things, the rates of the two earlier years of the triennium had to be slightly lower.
Overall, the package was acceptable. It was an agreed package. I do not pretend that those affected would not have liked more money; we all would. But agreement was reached. This is not a package imposed by fiat of my right hon. Friend, even if it were in her nature to act that way, which it is not. She prefers to proceed by agreement rather than diktat. This was a fully agreed settlement.
The hon. Gentleman made much of the rate of inflation. The burden of his argument was that the rate of inflation had made the settlement out of date. It is a point which has been made by others in this controversy. I cannot accept that it is so. The increases which were agreed last year were considerable. Although the hon. Gentleman dealt with the amount in terms of weeks—in such terms it is only a few pounds and does not sound much—when one looks at it over the whole range of students who have benefited and have to be supported, it amounts to no less than £76 million, almost all going into improvements in the basic grant rates. That is an enormous sum. As a result of the review, the increase in the basic rate of grant in the middle band, which the hon. Gentleman selected, was 22·3 per cent. for the three-year period, 13·1 per cent. being added in the first year. Therefore, bearing in mind that the retail price index increased by just under 26 per cent. in the three academic years from 1968 to 1971 and

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that there was a noticeable slowing down in the rate of increase of inflation between 1970–71 and 1971–72—it fell from 10 per cent. to 7 per cent., which was still too high—I consider that the students have not done too badly in the settlement. I put it no higher than that, and of course students suffer from inflation just like everyone else in the community. The Government have quite rightly put the control of inflation as their first priority.
I want to pass from general considerations to three specific points which are of great concern to all in this matter. The first is the halls of residence charges which were mentioned by the hon. Member. The argument is that it is unfair that nothing should be done to help keep down the cost of halls of residence to the level of the notional element of the student grant allocated for board and residence. The other argument is that the grant should be raised to take account of these increases. I fully appreciate the vice-chancellors' dilemma when they see the need to increase their charges in order to prevent their accounts from going into deficit. From that point of view I suppose they would like to raise their charges, but they know the difficulties that that would make for the students. I appreciate the difficulties that students have in universities where the halls of residence charges are comparatively high. It is not an easy problem to solve. At some universities, however, the charges are comparatively low—lower than the notional element, and the notional element itself is based on average costs.
One solution is to subsidise, but the argument against doing so is that it might lead to the subsidising of inefficient provision. It might even mean subsidising lavish provision, but I do not place great stress on that. On the whole, students live more in conditions of monastic austerity than of Roman luxury. I certainly express the wish that vice-chancellors in universities where rates are high will do everything they can to keep costs down. The University Grants Committee is conducting its own survey into these costs and when it produces the survey, which we await with considerable eagerness, we shall at least be in a position to see what the facts are.
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The second point which was raised concerned discretionary awards. Of course the National Union of Students has advocated that all awards should be at the mandatory rates whatever the level of the course, and they have given that a fairly high priority in their list of demands. But there are good reasons why that should be resisted. The courses involved vary considerably. They vary from GCE O-levels to near-degree courses. If all awards were mandatory in respect of all courses, costs would be prohibitive.
If, on the other hand, the authorities were left with the discretion whether to make the awards but with mandatory rates, it is likely, because of the costs, that they would make very few awards at the lower levels. Although that solution, therefore, might get rid of one shortcoming it would only replace it with another.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned briefly the married women's grant, which I will deal with at greater length. The Department has been asked to improve the married woman's grant, where she is living with her husband at their home, which has remained at £275 since 1965.
Our idea of marriage has changed. It has moved continually this century from the idea of subjection to the idea of partnership. The sexes, if not yet on an equal status in our law, are approaching that status. Women have much improved their status in relation to men, so they are approaching equality. That is a social advance which I welcome. I still think that women get an unfair deal in our society. I do not think we can raise an argument in principle against ending this form of differentiation, but unfortunately there is an argument in practice.
We are faced, as we are with all questions about grants, with the limited global sum which is available for improvements. This particular grant has tended to come low on the list of priorities for the factual reason that in all such cases the student is by definition living at home with her husband. There is, therefore, an additional source of income in the shape of the husband's wages or salary to cushion the harsher effects of inflation which other students, whether male or female, living away from home do not have.
Let us remember that there are many women students who are widowed,

1061
divorced or separated who are given special consideration. When a married woman must live away from home whilst studying, she receives the same rate as any other sudent living away from home. I appreciate the strong feelings which exist about this grant and I am willing to look at it again in the next review.
Finally, we have the difficulty of parental contributions. Again we return to a question of money. If we abolished the parental contribution system it would cost us between £35 million and £40 million a year. We would have to find that money from somewhere else. If we could not get it out of the Treasury—I need not tell the House that getting blood out of a stone is a simple operation compared with getting money out of the Treasury—we would have to find it from somewhere else in the education service. I do not think we can contemplate simple abolition.
It is suggested that we should make the whole thing subject to the law and that we require parents by law to pay their contributions to their children. I could not agree to that. That would bring the blunt bludgeon of the law into the heart of the home. It would destroy the harmony of domestic relations and make the law an aider and abettor in the struggle between the generations, which is difficult enough as it is. Although that suggestion has been advanced, I regard it as a piece of folly.
I remind the hon. Gentleman that in the last review considerable improvements were made in this respect by raising the level of residual income at which payments of contributions start from £900 to £1,100 and by reducing the amount of the contribution at the lower end from £40 to £30. We also made a reduction of £10 in the contribution at all the higher points of the scale up to a residual income of £1,699.
However, I say again, as I said in relation to the position of the married woman student, that in the next review we shall be willing to look most carefully at the question of parental contribution to see whether we can find some adjustment which will ease the problems which occur. Even in the short time I have been at the Department I have seen the problems which individuals, a small minority, face through parents refusing
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to fulfil their moral obligations in this respect.
I have a further observation to make which I think is not entirely out of place in this debate. No body of persons in this country, whether students, trade unionists, clergy or even Members of Parliament, can afford to ignore the public opinion of the nation as a whole. We are an old and mature democracy in which discussion is valued as a means of reaching the truth and when, thanks to radio, television and the Press, we have a public better informed on the political and social issues of the day than we have had at any period in our past, public opinion is more important, more pervasive and more effective than ever.
If students are to gain what they consider justice and a higher standard of living, they will succeed in that object only if they can create a sympathetic public opinion and carry the public with them. I am afraid that, so far, this is something which they have notably failed to do. The hard fact, whether we regret it or welcome it, is that the public are not sympathetic today to the student point of view.
I do not wish to rake up the embers of the Stirling controversy, but no incident in recent years has done more to turn members of the public against students. I quote these words, in the form of a rhetorical question:
"Why did a few students at Stirling offer a gift hostage to those who wanted one? Was the issue of such importance that it was justifiable to obtain hysterically abusive frontpage headlines in the popular Press, to squeeze out of the mind of the public every vital issue on which conference instructed the Executive to campaign?"
Those are not the words of a member of the Conservative Central Office or even of a member of the Monarchist League; they were the words of the President of the National Union of Students, Mr. Digby Jacks, speaking at Margate.
More recently I had a personal experience, at the polytechnic in North London, when on my first official visit I went to deliver a message of good will to the students, not only of the polytechnic but of the country. Before I could even open my mouth, I was howled down by a group of demonstrators who prevented anyone—it was a distinguished audience, of

1063
academics and local authority representatives of all parties—from hearing a word of what I had to say.
For myself I make no protest. I regard that kind of thing as part of the small change of public life. But the public will not tolerate that sort of behaviour towards those who, whatever their limitations, represent the parliamentary tradition and the civilities of democratic life which have been developed in this country over many centuries.
If these incidents continue and grow, it will not be a question of reviewing grants upwards. It will be a question of seeking to resist a remorseless tide of public opinion which will demand a radical reform of the whole system of student support.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: Most unexpectedly, I am intervening in the debate. The hon. Gentleman said that he did not wish to rake over other embers, but he is now doing so and I hope, for everyone's benefit, that he will at once desist. Will he agree—perhaps he will then close the subject—that the incidents to which he refers are created by a very small minority of students and that what he is now saying is quite out of context with the financial provision which we are debating on the regulations?
Mr. St. John-Stevas: I am grateful for that intervention, which was one of the side effects of my remarks. I repeat, I am not raking the embers but seeking to ensure that we do not have further incidents of that kind when the embers will once again burst into flame. I am sorry that the debate is taking place at this late hour so that this warning—
Mr. Spearing: Threat.
Mr. St. John-Stevas: It is not a threat but a warning as to the state of public opinion and what will happen to public opinion if the small minority, and I agree that it is a small minority, is allowed to go on in this way dragging the good name of the vast majority of students into disrepute.
Mr. J. D. Dormand: Is not the hon. Gentleman saying that if the cost of a university year is, say, £500, if students do not behave themselves we will give them only £460? Is not that part of his argument irrelevant?
Mr. St. John-Stevas: No. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to clarify my position. I do not take that view and it would be a totally illogical view. I am merely pointing to the state of public opinion. Every hon. Member is in touch with public opinion, for we are in our constituencies every weekend. The view has been continually put to me—even more since I reached my present position—by people of every party that they are highly critical of these students. The sort of logic that the hon. Gentleman identified is a general attitude that is growing. I am concerned that students should realise the gravity of the situation and should check this development. That is exactly the point made by Mr. Digby Jacks at Margate; we are absolutely agreed about that.
My Department and my right hon. Friend and I certainly wish the students well. We want to do our best for them and we want to help them in the difficulties that face them. But we always have to take two things into account: the state of public opinion, which I have just mentioned, and the educational priorities to which we have set our hand and which will be given new force and clarity in the White Paper to be published later this week.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House takes note of the Awards (First Degree, &c, Courses) (Amendment) Regulations 1972 (S.I., 1972, No. 1124) dated 25th July 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 4th August, in the last Session of Parliament.

STUDENT GRANTS
  ADJOURNMENT
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Jopling.]

HANDICAPPED CHDLDREN
11.3 p.m.
Mr. J. D. Dormand: I add my congratulations to the many that the Under-Secretary will have received on his appointment to the Government and wish him well in this important work. I hope that in his new position he will attempt to correct some of the disastrous mistakes of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. He will know that I do not mean it personally when I hope that his stay at the Department will be short. I say that simply because it is time that the Government were gone.
The hon. Gentleman has a glorious opportunity to make a reputation for himself in his new post by dealing with the serious shortcomings in education that we are to discuss tonight—special education—and I hope that he will grasp it.
The Gracious Speech on 31st October included the words:
"My Ministers will present to Parliament proposals to extend the education service and to set new priorities."
We have yet to learn what those new priorities are, but I hope there can be no doubt that a new priority ought to be given to special education, to the whole field of education affecting those children who are handicapped physically, mentally or emotionally.
If the Minister is not already aware of it, let me tell him that morale among those involved with special education is very low. Indeed, with all the problems which teachers, administrators, organisers and ancillary staff have to face I am amazed that the staff remain so dedicated to their task, because special education really is the Cinderella of the education service. It is the poor relation of education and it is a sad commentary on our so-called compassionate society that so little attention and so few resources are devoted to it.
The situation calls, above all, for a major investigation into the present position. The investigation should produce nothing less than the kind of reports issued by Plowden, Newsom, Crowther and Robbins, and the fact that those committees were concerned with primary education, secondary education and higher education demonstrates quite
1066
clearly that the missing piece of the jigsaw is special education. Indeed, the Plowden and Newsom Reports recommended that an investigation be made into special education. The Secretary of State relies on the Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children, and I am among those who pay tribute to the splendid work that body does, but its terms of reference are much too narrow. The members of the committee would not pretend that they are doing a "Plowden" in their work.
I am always at a loss to understand why the Secretary of State refuses to authorise a major inquiry into special education. She is the only one out of step in this matter. Everyone else demands it. The Guild of Teachers of Backward Children has asked for it for years. The National Union of Teachers, at a special conference on special education a year ago, supported it. The Joint Council for the Education of Handicapped Children—and I remind the Minister that the Council represents no fewer than 10 teachers' organisations concerned with the education of handicapped children—has repeatedly demanded it. The Times Educational Supplement on 5th May this year asked for it in a powerful leading article. One could quote many more organisations and individuals who have made the same call for such an inquiry.
Nor will the Minister, new though he is to his post, need me to remind him that in 1968 the present Prime Minister pledged the Conservative Party to carry through an inquiry into the educational needs of the handicapped, but the Prime Minister has so debased the coinage of electoral promises that it is not surprising he has done nothing about it. For the record, let me tell the House that the Labour Party is totally committed to such an inquiry and it is included in its document "Labour's Programme for Britain". Indeed in 1970, when the Labour Government were in power, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Edward Short) was preparing the terms of reference for such an inquiry when the election intervened and prevented any further progress. I am sure that the conclusion that is drawn from the obstinacy of the Secretary of State by all who work in

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special education is that the Government, dedicated as they are to elitism, are not really concerned about the education of handicapped children.
Whether or not the Secretary of State decides finally to institute such an inquiry, there are a number of matters which ought now to be exercising her mind about special education. Perhaps the most important is the supply of specially trained teachers. The Minister will probably remind me that any qualified teacher can teach in a special school. I accept that. That is not my argument. The whole point of this part of my speech is that the standard of special education should be raised by the special training and qualifications that teachers should obtain.
Why is there a desperate shortage of those with special qualifications? Is it a shortage of training courses, insufficient incentive to enter such courses or a lack of publicity and push by the Department? I think that it is a combination of all three, supplemented by a refusal of local education authorities to release teachers for these specialist courses.
The Secretary of State could remedy this situation, and her task would not be too difficult. Teachers, particularly younger ones, and student teachers are more concerned about handicapped children than ever before. I can speak with some experience of that. It is the Secretary of State's task to harness this enthusiasm, and this she is clearly failing to do.
I hope that the Minister will not simply produce figures to show that the pupil/teacher ratio has improved. I know it has: I follow the figures very closely. It would be astonishing if it had not. But there should be a revolutionary improvement in the statistics. In schools for the educationally subnormal, for example, we should be aiming for one specially qualified teacher to six pupils. We are far from that position, with a pupil/teacher ratio in 1970 of 12:1, and even six years ago the ratio was 12·9:1.
The picture over the last five years, from 1967–68 to 1971–72, is very depressing. In 1967–68 the number of teachers of ESN children being trained was 72; last year it was 85. For teachers of maladjusted children the figures were 75
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in both years. For teachers of children with the special handicap of being both ESN and maladjusted, the figures were 142 and 123. The training figures for all specialist training were 444 and 464. Those figures speak for themselves.
Until last year there were no special courses on which a student could train immediately as a teacher of handicapped children. It was not until 1950 that any specialist training at all was introduced. I do not blame the Government for that: I mention it only to demonstrate once more the low esteem in which specialist education has been held over the years. Serving teachers still have to obtain leave of absence, which causes the difficulties I have referred to. The onus is very much on the Minister to push local education authorities.
The provision for one-year courses is improving but it is far from good enough. In 1971–72 there were 39, covering all types of handicap. That is an improvement, but it is still manifestly insufficent. I am not convinced that the balance of provision to need is as accurate as it should be, and I hope that this is something on which the Minister will keep a close eye.
I cannot be as complimentary about the provision of one-term courses. In 1971–72 there were six courses, catering for a very narrow range of handicap. The Minister must have a closer look at this aspect of teacher training. In present circumstances it could be argued that more emphasis should be placed on the shorter courses, because a total of six courses is woefully inadequate.
The picture concerning specialist training for teachers is a far from happy one. I know the Under-Secretary will say that most of the initiative should come from the local education authorities, but that is not good enough. He knows as well as I do that that the Department can bring great pressure to bear on LEAs where he sees a gap in the service existing. That is how it should be. This is not a question of political philosophy, involving too much central control of local authorities. I hope that the whole question of specialist training will be looked at as a matter of urgency.
Before leaving the subject of staffing, I also draw attention to the need for a much more generous provision of ancillary staff, such as welfare and clerical

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assistance. There is obviously a much greater need for such staff in special schools; but much more important is the fact that these staff allow the teacher to get on with his professional work of teaching. Perhaps the Government could produce a generous formula specifically for such appointments and urge it on the LEAs. Few things raise the morale of the teaching profession more than an adequate establishment of such staffs. I hope that the Government will look sympathetically at that suggestion.
The picture concerning places for handicapped children is equally depressing. The overall picture is that building allocations will rise from £8·1 million in 1971–72 to £9·4 million in 1972–73 and to £10·3 million in 1973–74. In percentage terms that may look reasonably satisfactory but as regards provision in relation to need I repeat my criticism that it is totally inadequate. What is required is a new, revolutionary attitude if handicapped children are to have sufficient places made available.
The figures for January 1972, the latest available, give some idea of the backlog to be met. I give some examples. The number of physically handicapped children waiting for a special school place was 691; educationally subnormal children, 10,761; autistic children, 5,500. It should be of interest to the House to know that only 500 autistic children are receiving the special kind of education they ought to have. The figure for maladjusted children was 1,822. That last figure was given to me in a parliamentary answer, but I suspect that the number is very much larger. Maurice Bridgeland, in his book "Pioneer Work with Maladjusted Children", estimates that 98 per cent. of all maladjusted children are receiving no special education. In my constituency the education committee waits anything up to a year before it is able to place a maladjusted child.
The figures I have given do not indicate the length of time that LEAs have to wait before obtaining places for pupils in special schools, but it is quite evident that immediate placement is rare. I shall be tabling a Question about this, because the latest figures which I have been able to obtain are those in an article by Stanley Segal, who is an acknowledged expert on special education, but they relate to January 1970.
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Taken as a percentage of all children waiting, the figures for those waiting for more than a year—I give four examples—are as follows: educationally subnormal 46 per cent.; physically handicapped 32 per cent.; maladjusted 26 per cent.; and blind children 38 per cent. The figures for the other six official handicaps are equally frightening. Those cold statistics cover the heartbreaks of thousands of parents, the immense problems of teachers and other staffs and the extreme difficulties for LEAs.
In a brief debate such as this it is not possible to deal with other equally important problems. There are, for example, the inadequacy of research, particularly into the problems of autistic, aphasic and dyslexic children; the problem of handicapped children being sent to schools many miles from home; the question of when and how handicapped children should be absorbed into ordinary schools; the shortcomings of the former junior training centres in relation to the school building regulations; the great variation in provision between the regions, and many other problems.
Recent decades have seen great medical advances for the handicapped and a vast improvement in mechanical and other aids, but educational provision has lagged far behind this progress. I choose my words carefully when I say that the position is approaching a national scandal. The Government must act, and act quickly.
11.21 p.m.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: I support my hon. Friend the Member for Easing-ton (Mr. Dormand), because there is great unease in education circles about provision for the handicapped. It is a reflection of the inversion of many of our educational prorities, alas.
My hon. Friend mentioned the Crowther, Newsom and Plowden Reports. They were reports of the Central Advisory Council to the Minister which was set up under Section 4 of the Education Act 1944. On 22nd October last year I had an Adjournment debate with the Secretary of State about the operation of the Central Advisory Council, which, under that section, can advise the Minister on any matter
"connected with educational theory and practice as they think fit, and upon any questions referred to them by him."

1071
The right hon. Lady admitted in that debate that she had not activated that council, which has the power to raise ab initio perhaps the matter of handicapped children if it wishes, and she admitted that she was in breach of the law in that respect. In closing the debate the right hon. Lady said that
"educational issues are not likely to go by default, even during periods when C.A.C.s are not active."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd October, 1971: Vol. 823, c. 1198.]
I suggest to the Under-Secretary that the matter is going by default, that his right hon. Friend is in breach of Section 4 and that that is one of the reasons why the matter has been left so long. Will not the Secretary of State reconsider that question, bring the council into operation and ask it to consider the problem of handicapped children?
11.23 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas): I have very few minutes left in which to reply to the debate, so I am sure that the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand) will understand if I cannot deal adequately with all the extremely important points he has raised. I have noted all his points and we in the Department will study in HANSARD his contribution to the debate. I shall write to him about some of his important points if I do not have time to deal with them now.
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his good wishes. If we go on tackling educational subjects at the present rate it is not the Government that will face their demise but I who will face mine; however short the Government's life may be, mine is liable to be shorter.
I know how much the hon. Gentleman has contributed to the subject. He has said that he will go on putting down Questions. I hope he will. If they have achieved nothing else, the Questions he has already put down have educated me, because I have had to work out the answers. The hon. Gentleman has succeeded in concentrating my interest on the subject, because it is not my direct responsibility. It is the responsibility of my noble Friend Lord Belstead.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman also because he has shown tonight that
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the problem of handicapped children is much wider than the thalidomide case. It is very easy to concentrate the public's attention on a dramatic case like that, and a person would have to be a monster not to be touched by the sufferings of those children, but the whole problem of handicap is much wider.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has a duty under the 1944 Act not only to provide education of a special kind but also to ascertain whether there is a need for it. In contradistinction to the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Spearing), I think that she has discharged her duty conscientiously and well.
The first major point made by the hon. Member was a plea for a major inquiry. I have nothing against an inquiry if it is necessary. He mentioned the pledge given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in 1968 when he was Leader of the Opposition. My right hon. Friend did not commit himself in that pledge to any particular form of inquiry. He certainly said that inquiry was necessary, but he did not commit himself to an inquiry on the scale or after the manner of the Plowden Report. In fact, a great deal of the work that could be done by an inquiry is being done by the Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children whose Chairman, Professor Tizard, is approaching the end of his term of office. That advisory committee at the moment is inquiring into one of the most important categories of handicap. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the multiple handicaps suffered by some children today and the consequent wish by some people to review the existing categories of handicap. This is a controversial matter. It is the sort of thing on which the advisory committee is doing excellent work and will be able to offer positive advice.
There are other activities of that committee. There is a sub-committee which has recently published a report on children with specific reading difficulties. That came out earlier this year. We are still consulting within the Department on that subject. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the whole area of reading and speech development is also under review in a general inquiry under the chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock. Last year we had the publication of the HMI report on slow learners. My right hon. Friend made a special quota of teachers available

1073
to those authorities which might need extra staff for remedial teaching. We had the Vernon Committee on the blind and partially sighted. We are consulting about that. We have had the Quirk Committee on the speech therapy survey. Dr. Rutter has been investigating the treatment of autistic children. That is going on at Epsom Hospital, at the Marlborough Day Hospital and at the National Society for Autistic Childrens centre at Ealing. Work is going on to compare methods of treatment.
A year ago my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who has been so unfairly censured by the hon. Gentleman, received recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Educational Research. She accepted those recommendations in full. Among them is a considerable programme of research by Dr. Kolvin on maladjustment, at Newcastle University. I cite those as examples to show the amount of work that is going on, and it shows that a general inquiry is not necessary.
Let me turn to the problem of providing a sufficient number of teachers for work with educationally subnormal children. Our whole work has been transformed by the transfer of responsibility from the Department of Health and Social Security to the Department of Education and Science. The Department's policy on special education—and this really puts the statistics which the hon. Gentleman produced in some kind of perspective—is that if a child can be adequately cared for in a non-special school, the child should go to an ordinary school and have the benefit of being with other children who are not so handicapped; it is of benefit to those children as well. Therefore, the policy followed by the Department is that special education should be resorted to only when a special need has been established and it has been shown that the child cannot be catered for in an ordinary school.
The transfer of responsibility from the Department of Health and Social Security to us under the Act which came into effect on 1st April, 1971, has led to a lowering of the distinction between the
1074
more severely and the less severely mentally handicapped which previously dominated the approach to this problem. We tend to deal with those children within the ESN category as one category and the subdivision between severe and medium disability is now very much less rigid than it was in the past.
We have two means of tackling the training of teachers. First, there are the three-year courses of initial training to which reference has been made. We have places available for about 400 entrants to the three-year courses in 15 colleges and two polytechnic departments of education. Since the first three-year course began in 1969, 38 students have completed the course. That is not enough but the number is going up very rapidly. In 1973 we hope that the number will be 120, in 1974, 230 and in 1975, 300.
Some of the courses have been slow in building up their numbers, but the situation is improving and we are looking forward to a continually rising number of students completing the courses. We estimate that some 300 new teachers for the severely handicapped ESN students are required each year and that the output from these courses should be about right. But because of the uncertainty as to where they will teach, we are seeking to increase the provision.
The other method of training is the in-service training courses. The number of teachers seconded to such courses has shown a slight increase over the last five years. Excluding the courses designed solely for teachers of maladjusted children, the numbers are as follows: in 1967–68, 369; in 1968–69, 347; 1969–70, 383; 1970–71, 405; and 1971–72, 396. Therefore, the figure is fairly constant.
We have had to try to make a smooth transfer. We have not done enough. We should do more and we shall try to do better. All the points raised by the hon. Gentleman will be of help to us, and we are very grateful to him for his interest in this subject.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes to Twelve o'clock.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY
  Petroleum Division
  Petroleum Division
  Factories
  Factories
  North Sea Oil and Gas
  North Sea Oil and Gas
  Computer Industry
  Computer Industry
  Pre-packed Goods
  Pre-packed Goods
  Hijacking
  Hijacking
  Machine Tool Industry
  Machine Tool Industry
  North East Development Council (Grants)
  North East Development Council (Grants)
  Shipping and Shipbuilding Industry
  Shipping and Shipbuilding Industry
  Company Law
  Company Law
  Aero-engines
  Aero-engines
  Steel Industry
  Steel Industry
  Rolls-Royce
  Rolls-Royce
  Mining Subsidence
  Mining Subsidence
  British Steel Corporation
  British Steel Corporation
  Estate Agents (Licensing)
  Estate Agents (Licensing)
  Rural Areas
  Rural Areas
  Prices
  Prices
  North Shields (Fish Quay)
  North Shields (Fish Quay)
  Gatwick Airport (Soundproofing Grants)
  Gatwick Airport (Soundproofing Grants)
  Trident Aircraft (Pilot Training)
  Trident Aircraft (Pilot Training)
  Regional Development
  Regional Development
  Historic Wreck Sites
  Historic Wreck Sites
  Short Brothers and Harland
  Short Brothers and Harland
  Seismic Research (North Sea)
  Seismic Research (North Sea)
  Heathrow (Runway Usage)
  Heathrow (Runway Usage)
  Coal Industry
  Coal Industry
  Commonwealth
  Commonwealth
  Space Research
  Space Research
  Seahorse Marine Engine
  Seahorse Marine Engine
  Improvement Grants
  Improvement Grants
  Natural Gas (Conversion Procedures)
  Natural Gas (Conversion Procedures)
  Textile Imports (Uganda)
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  Industrial Firms (Movement from London)
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  Post-Apollo Programme
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  Waste Materials (Recovery)
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  Industrial Buildings (Fire Precautions)
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  European Economic Community
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  Concorde
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  "Accountants Weekly" (Conference)
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  International Management and Engineering Group (Report)
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  William Timpson Limited (Acquisition)
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  Training (Scotland)
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FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
  Commonwealth Immigration
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  Spain (EEC Trading Agreement)
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  Gibraltar
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  Security and Co-operation in Europe (Conference)
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  Irish Republican Army
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  United Nations (Resolution 2908)
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  Argentine and Chile (Dispute)
  Argentine and Chile (Dispute)
  Extradition
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  Northern Ireland
  Northern Ireland
  British Passport Holders
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  Ugandan Asians
  Ugandan Asians
  DORMANT FUNDS
  DORMANT FUNDS
  CONTRACTS (EXCLUSION CLAUSES)
  CONTRACTS (EXCLUSION CLAUSES)
  POLICE (PRESS INFORMATION)
  POLICE (PRESS INFORMATION)
  DEBTS (EMPLOYERS' ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS)
  DEBTS (EMPLOYERS' ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS)
CIVIL SERVICE
  Government Offices (Dispersal)
  Government Offices (Dispersal)
  Confravision
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  Employment of Women
  Employment of Women
SOCIAL SERVICES
  Abortion
  Abortion
  Industrial Disputes (Benefits)
  Industrial Disputes (Benefits)
  Coventry Hospital Management Committee (Capital Projects)
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  Thalidomide Children
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  Patient/Dentist Ratio
  Patient/Dentist Ratio
  Immigrants and Aliens (Welfare Benefits)
  Immigrants and Aliens (Welfare Benefits)
ENVIRONMENT
  Major Road Programmes (House Demolitions)
  Major Road Programmes (House Demolitions)
  M42
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  Westminster Hall (Subsidence)
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  Second-hand Motor Cars (Sale)
  Second-hand Motor Cars (Sale)
  Planning Applications and Appeals
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  Water Undertakings
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  Lump System
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  Housing Costs
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  European Economic Community
  European Economic Community
  Water Resources (Reorganisation)
  Water Resources (Reorganisation)
  Fisheries (Pollution)
  Fisheries (Pollution)
  Box Girder Bridges
  Box Girder Bridges
  Polytechnics and Colleges of Education (Teachers)
  Polytechnics and Colleges of Education (Teachers)
  MINISTERIAL APPOINTMENTS
  MINISTERIAL APPOINTMENTS
HOUSE OF COMMONS
  European Delegations
  European Delegations
DEFENCE
  Northern Ireland
  Northern Ireland
  Deceased Service Men (Benefits)
  Deceased Service Men (Benefits)
  Armed Forces (Pensioners)
  Armed Forces (Pensioners)
  Flight Recorders
  Flight Recorders
EDUCATION AND SCIENCE
  Universities and Polytechnics (Teaching Staff)
  Universities and Polytechnics (Teaching Staff)
  School Meals
  School Meals
  Secondary Education (Selection)
  Secondary Education (Selection)
  Breakdown Pensions
  Breakdown Pensions
EMPLOYMENT
  Construction Industry
  Construction Industry
  Gas Workers (Redundancy)
  Gas Workers (Redundancy)
  Pay Increases (Collective Bargaining)
  Pay Increases (Collective Bargaining)
  Local Government Reorganisation (Employees' Compensation)
  Local Government Reorganisation (Employees' Compensation)
HOME DEPARTMENT
  Police Recruitment
  Police Recruitment
  Cheshire Joint Santorium, Loggerheads
  Cheshire Joint Santorium, Loggerheads
  Bail
  Bail
  East African Passport Holders
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  Speed Limit Offences (Prosecutions)
  Speed Limit Offences (Prosecutions)
  Electoral Register (Publicity)
  Electoral Register (Publicity)
  Commonwealth Immigrants (Detention)
  Commonwealth Immigrants (Detention)
  Poisons and Fumigants
  Poisons and Fumigants
  Carlisle State Management Scheme
  Carlisle State Management Scheme
  Sales of Unroadworthy Vehicles (Prosecutions)
  Sales of Unroadworthy Vehicles (Prosecutions)
  Police (Press Information)
  Police (Press Information)
NATIONAL FINANCE
  Value Added Tax
  Value Added Tax
  Capital Gains Tax and Estate Duty
  Capital Gains Tax and Estate Duty
  War Stock
  War Stock
  Mortgage Interest
  Mortgage Interest
  North Sea Oil
  North Sea Oil
  Incomes
  Incomes
  £ Sterling
  £ Sterling
NORTHERN IRELAND
  City Cemetery, Belfast
  City Cemetery, Belfast
  Unsolved Crime
  Unsolved Crime
  Bail
  Bail
  Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve
  Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve
  Fire Services Bill
  Fire Services Bill
POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
  Confravision
  Confravision
  Licence Fees
  Licence Fees
AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD
  Brucellosis
  Brucellosis
  Hill Farming Subsidies
  Hill Farming Subsidies
  Regulations and Directives
  Regulations and Directives
  European Economic Community
  European Economic Community
  Apples
  Apples
SCOTLAND
  Gas Mains (Leaks)
  Gas Mains (Leaks)
  Rents
  Rents
  House Improvements
  House Improvements
  Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1972
  Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1972
WALES
  Autistic Children
  Autistic Children
  Welsh Language
  Welsh Language
  Hospital Beds
  Hospital Beds

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

COLOMBO PLAN MEETING DECISIONS
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what conclusions were reached at the Ministerial meeting of the Colombo Plan for Co-operative Economic Development in South and South-East Asia.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, a main purpose of these meetings is to exchange information and views on the major social and economic problems of the Region, rather than record conclusions. It was however decided to admit to membership the People's Republic of Bangladesh and Fiji, to set up a Regional Centre for Technician Teacher Training in Singapore, and to appoint an Adviser on Drug Abuse, from within the Region.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I appreciate that Answer very much. May I ask: Has not the time now come for a reconsideration of the whole problem of aid to South-East Asia, the most proverty-striken area in the world? Is it not now desirable that there should be some coordination between the Colombo Plan, the economic arm of SEATO (as I prophesied, Australia and New Zealand, will now repudiate the military arm) and the United Nations Special Development Fund?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I would agree with the noble Lord that co-ordination of all these activities is very important. But it seems that both the developing and the developed countries which took part in this conference found it valuable.

COAL BOARD'S ANCILLARY UNDERTAKINGS
2.37 p.m.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the total expenditure incurred by the National Coal Board between the years 1961 and 1971 for the acquisition of ancillary undertakings; what was the return on capital at the last available date; and what is the present position of those undertakings.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords,

3
the National Coal Board have informed my right honourable friend that the amount spent on the acquisition of interests in ancillary undertakings from 1961 to March, 1972, was £43 million, of which some £23 million related to their North Sea activities. As to the return on capital and the present position of the undertakings concerned, I would suggest that in accordance with the usual practice the noble Lord himself asks the Board to supply any information that he would like to have to supplement what is published in the Board's Annual Report.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, regarding the last part of the noble Lord's Answer, may I ask whether he is aware that although it is not customary in Parliament, either in the other place or in your Lordships' House, to ask questions about the day-to-day administration one can ask questions on general policy and the acquisition of a number of ancillary industries? That is a matter of general policy with which we can deal by Questions in both Houses of Parliament and therefore there is no reason why I should go to the National Coal Board for the information. As regards the figures that the noble Lord has furnished, is it not the case that, apart from the North Sea gas and oil undertakings, the return on capital for the other ancillary industries is not only meagre but also that hardly any of the ancillary undertakings have "washed their faces"? In those circumstances, is it desirable that, in spite of the huge losses which are unfortunately, associated with the coal industry, the Coal Board should undertake the administration and ownership of other industries which entail further losses?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, as to policy, your Lordships will be interested to know that my honourable friend the Minister for Industry has been considering proposals put forward by the Board for the future of these activities and hopes to make a Statement in the near future. As to the second part of the noble Lord's supplementary question, if he will refer to pages 2 and 3 of Volume II of the Annual Report, he will see there a comparison of percentage returns on average Board investments for
4
1970 and 1971–72. For the convenience of your Lordships, may I just say that for joint enterprises this shows a profit of £1,808,000 on £16·6 million capital employed which is 10·9 per cent. for 1972.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that what he is doing now is furnishing me with the profits gained in 1970 and up to 1972? I have asked a Question about a period of ten years, from 1961 to 1971. May I put this question and be quite blunt about it? Is it not a fact that the Coal Board made an error of judgment in purchasing these ancillary undertakings (apart from North Sea coal and oil, which is purely speculative but from which we hope to derive a profit) and ought we not to be quite frank and realistic about it and admit that the Coal Board made a mistake?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, with respect, Lord Shinwell's supplementary question indicates how right he was when, in framing the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act, he deprecated such questions and really almost made it impossible for questions of this kind to be answered. I suggest to the noble Lord that he is here producing an argument rather than asking for information. I think that this is a matter for debate rather than something to be answered at Question Time.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, is there not a certain inconsistency in what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, is saying? First he says that he cannot give certain figures. Then he gives figures, contrary to what he said earlier, and now he quotes a statement by my noble friend Lord Shinwell which I thought related to the day-to-day operations rather than an examination of past events. If it is a matter which is suitable for debate, surely it is a matter which is suitable for a Question.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I was replying to a supplementary question that the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, asked about policy. I answered that question in the terms in which I did because I thought it would be helpful to your Lordships. As to the other point, if the noble Lord will look at his Question, I think he will see that he is asking what was the return on capital at the last available date. I should have thought that

5
as the return on capital is related to average earnings over the year in question it can relate only to that year.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that great concern has been shown throughout the whole of the coalfields in the United Kingdom due to the policy of Her Majesty's Government in selling up those profitable parts attached to or under the control of the National Coal Board? Have the Government considered this aspect which is detrimental to the operation of the Coal Board, which was the prerogative of the previous coal owners when they had control of the industry?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am aware of the first part of the noble Lord's question. As to the second part, I suggest that the noble Lord should wait until we get to the Statement.

HOSPITALS: ADMINISTRATIVE AND CLERICAL STAFF
2.45 p.m.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what were the numbers of administrative and clerical staff employed (a) by Regional Hospital Board headquarters in England and (b) by teaching hospitals and hospital management committees in 1967 and 1971 respectively.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): My Lords, in terms of whole time equivalents, the number of administrative and clerical staff employed by regional hospital boards was 2,765 in September, 1967, and 3,981 in September, 1971. The comparable number for teaching hospital groups and hospital management committees was 41,724 in 1967 and 50,194 in 1971.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his statistics vary slightly from mine, which were derived from his Department's own volume of Hospital Service staff statistics? Is he also aware that this represents about a 10 per cent. increase at Regional Board level, as compared with about 5 per cent. at hospital management committee level?
6
Does not this show signs of a substantial degree of centralisation? And if the proposals later to be debated are carried into force yet another tier of authority will be introduced.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I was not aware that my statistics differed from those of my noble friend, but I readily acknowledge that there was an increase of administrative and clerical staff at Regional Board level at an average rate of about 10½ per cent. a year. However, that is quite easily explained by the fact that it was at the Regional level that there was an expansion of various hospital services. Capital building, productivity schemes and development of new Regional supply organisations were mainly responsible for these increases.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, without wanting to denigrate the excellent service of the hospitals, may I ask the noble Lord whether these figures include technical people as well as clerical and administrative people, because the troika of Parkinson's Law is administrative, clerical and then technical. For instance, the number of architects has increased day by day in the hospitals. Do the technical people come into this?
LORD ABERDARE: No, my Lords. These are the figures for secretarial, typing and machine operating grades and those defined by the Administrative and Clerical Staff Whitley Council as special grades—mainly management staff in the catering, domestic and laundry fields.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. It illustrates exactly the point I am trying to make. We have the opportunity now with this Bill of looking into—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Speech!
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: Have we not—I thank noble Lords. Have we not now the opportunity to get a broom to sweep away unnecessary technical and administrative staff and really get down to the health-saving part of the Service?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I am sure that if the noble Lord listens to the debate this afternoon he will find that the new structure proposed by the Government will be well worth his praise and will meet his requirements.

E.E.C.: DAIRY, FRUIT AND VEGETABLE PRICES
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: 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, in informing Parliament of the terms of the provisional agreement on dairy product prices reached with other E.E.C. countries, and of the system now proposed in E.E.C. for fixing fruit and vegetable prices, they will publish a summary text in Hansard.
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, the provisional agreement on transitional measures for milk and milk products was described by my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in another place on November 27. As his statement was long and detailed, it will be reproduced in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
The Community has agreed to amendments to the main regulation of fruit and vegetables but some details remain to be settled.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in thanking my noble friend for that reply, delivered with the charm with which we are familiar, may I ask her whether arrangements can be made so that when agreements of this general character are reached, or proposed, we may be told about them without the need to put down a Parliamentary Question? Would she bear in mind that this is really the tip of an iceberg of a serious general problem?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I perfectly understand what my noble friend has in mind. Perhaps I should say that the arrangements to which his Question refers have only been provisionally agreed by the Ministers of the enlarged Community and they will be contained in Instruments. At the moment, of course, there are no texts to put before the House.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I should like to ask a further supplementary question. Will the arrangements be contained in Instruments that will come eventually before this House?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: Yes, my Lords, I believe so. As I understand it, the suggestion put forward by an ad hoc Committee as to ways in which Parliament should examine draft Instruments is still the subject of consultation through the usual channels.
Following is the statement made by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food [Official Report, Commons, 27/11/72, cols, 33–34] and referred to by Baroness Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie:
"On 21st November the Council of Ministers (Agriculture) reached a provisional agreement on transitional measures for milk and milk products, which will be finalised when agreement is also reached on satisfactory provisions to implement the Protocol on New Zealand butter and cheese, and on the intervention arrangements for butter of the type normally manufactured in the United Kingdom (i.e. salted sweet cream butter of 80 per cent. fat content). The agreement provides for an intervention price in the United Kingdom for butter of 82 per cent. fat content of about £357 per ton on 1st February (rising to at least £428 on 1st April). The intervention price for skimmed milk powder would be at the same level as in the original Community, i.e., about £229 per ton. The compensatory amounts for the other main milk products are derived from those for butter and skimmed milk powder. Conmpensatory amounts for milk for liquid consumption and for fresh cream for direct consumption are established on the basis of the difference between our market prices and those of the original Community.
"The main implications for the United Kingdom are that on this basis there should be no reasons for increases in the average wholesale and retail prices of butter and cheese over the next few months; and that for United Kingdom producers there would be continuing safeguards for the liquid milk market and, for the first time, guaranteed minimum prices available in the milk products sector. It is understood that these arrangements are subject to appropriate adjustments in the event of a change in the sterling parity. The agreement is in my view a satisfactory one for the United Kingdom."

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE REORGANISATION BILL [H.L.]
2.49 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, I should like first, rather unusually perhaps, to pay a tribute to my own Secretary of State and to those who manage the Business in another place for the fact that this major piece of Government legislation is starting its passage in this House. Your Lordships have made it

9
very plain, during the course of the last Session, and indeed in this one, that you found it intolerable to have to sit until very late hours and also late into August and again for two weeks in September, principally because of the imbalance in the legislational programme between the two Houses. My noble friend the Leader of the House made it plain that he was going to do his utmost to see that in future this was not repeated. However, I think that the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, who also tried very hard to achieve this object, will admit that one of the difficulties has often been that for very natural reasons the responsible Minister has been anxious to introduce his own Bill in his own House. I am sure that your Lordships would like me to acknowledge the unselfishness shown by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services in allowing this Bill to be introduced into your Lordships' House.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, one rather sad fact I should perhaps mention before introducing the Bill is the death of the noble Lord, Lord Rosenheim, over the weekend. The noble Lord was universally esteemed, both in his own profession and by the outside world, not least by a host of very grateful patients from all over the world. He would have brought his great wisdom and unrivalled experience to a discussion on this Bill. We shall sadly miss his advice. We shall miss him not only for his professional skill but also for the immense contribution he made to our national affairs. He was President of the Royal College of Physicians; he was the previous President of the Royal College; he was currently chairman of the Medicines Commission; chairman of the Cancer Coordinating Committee; chairman of the Medical Council on Alcoholism, and a leading figure in the campaign against smoking. His record speaks for itself. He was also, I believe, the most deeply respected doctor of our time.
My Lords, proposals for the unification of the three branches of the Health Service—hospitals, general practitioners and local personal health services—date back to the Porritt Report of 1962. Successive Green Papers and Consultative Documents have developed the idea and con
10
tributed to the overall aims of unification and integration. These aims are generally accepted by all political Parties and by most of those working in the Service, although there are differences of opinion about how and when. Following the Seebohm Report, the personal social services have already been reorganised within local government. Now with the Local Government Act on the Statute Book we proceed to the reorganisation of the National Health Service in order that it may take effect on the same date, April 1, 1974.
I think it appropriate to pay a very sincere tribute to all those who have served the National Health Service in its present form from the year 1948 until the present. While it is certainly not unknown for there to be criticism of the Service, on the whole throughout the country there is a deep respect and great gratitude to those individuals who give so willingly of their time and energy to serve the needs of the sick and the suffering. We owe our thanks to the voluntary members of the management bodies, to those who have made their careers in the Service and to the voluntary workers who have supported it.
For most of those working in the Service, reorganisation will have no direct impact on their work, but among the minority whose jobs may change it is understandable that there should be some apprehension about their individual futures and this is bound to remain until reorganisation is complete. We shall do all we can to reduce uncertainty as soon as we can and I hope that the provisions in the Bill will reassure the staff of our anxiety to see justice done to each of them, and will enable them to raise their eyes beyond the immediate horizon and to see the very real benefits that we expect from reorganisation.
The Bill is not intended just to create a more logical administrative set-up. It is designed to restructure the Health Service to enable it to meet the needs of the people it serves. The pattern of the past—and I am certainly not in any way wishing to belittle what has been achieved—has been the establishment of a very fine Service for the acutely ill. This exists and will continue to develop as new hospital building is completed and new equipment installed. But at the same time we have neglected—or if not

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neglected at least done too little for—those who in terms of scale of suffering probably deserve more of our attention: the old, the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped and the physically handicapped and those who suffer from arthritis or epilepsy.
The Bill seeks to create authorities charged with the total health care of a community. It integrates medical and nursing services provided in hospital with medical and nursing services provided in health centres, practice premises, the community and the home. The accent of the integrated service will be on prevention and on treatment in the home or, failing the home, in the community close to relatives and friends. The Bill looks beyond the health services and seeks to establish the closest possible links with other essential services provided by the local authority—the social services, education, housing and environmental health. This is the fundamental reason for establishing authorities for areas which match in boundaries the equivalent non-metropolitan county, metropolitan district, London borough or group of boroughs. The emphasis we have laid on this matching of health and local authorities has created some overlap problems but these are by no means insuperable and will be much less injurious to the whole system than a failure of cooperation between the health and social services. To ensure that this collaboration is as close as possible, a working party drawn from local government and the health services has been studying the problems and has already produced useful recommendations.
The proposed organisation of the new Service is based on three pillars. The first of these is the needs of the patient. Integration of services within each community will of itself bring benefit to the patient. Vast sums of money are already being spent on the provision of health services but we shall never have enough, and if we are to do the most that we can for each person using the Service we must make the best use of available resources. This means good management attuned to the needs of the Health Service and sensitive to public reaction. We believe that we shall achieve this more effectively by the creation of two types of body: one to manage the Service and
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the other to represent the public. We therefore intend, under the Bill, to establish reasonably small area management boards complemented by community health councils which will provide a new and more effective channel of public reaction. And as an additional safeguard against failure of service or maladministration, the Bill establishes a Health Service Commissioner for England and a Health Commissioner for Wales.
The second pillar on which the organisation is constructed is the involvement of the professions in the management of the Service, coupled with arrangements for expert professional advice at all levels. The health care professions will, we hope, play a full part in the district management and health care planning teams which will between them organise the health care of the local community. There will also he members from the medical and nursing professions on area and regional authorities, and at both area and all-Wales or regional level there will be advisory committees, medical, nursing, dental, pharmaceutical, ophthalmic and perhaps others.
The third pillar is collaboration with local government which I have already mentioned. This should be especially effective in a metropolitan district where the local authority is responsible for social services, education. housing and environmental health—in many cases it is in these districts that the most difficult problems arise. But it is equally important to make the best possible arrangements in the non-metropolitan counties for collaboration with the county authority and the district authority.
The administrative framework proposed in the Bill follows closely on the proposals in the White Papers on National Health Service Reorganisation in England and Wales. The order-making power in Clause 5 will be used to establish 14 Regional Health Authorities in England following approximately the same boundaries as the present Regional Hospital Boards (although they will be completely new and completely different authorities). The region will be responsible for major planning decisions and for co-ordination between areas, for the allocation of resources and general supervision of their use, and for the provision of certain services too specialised to be provided by individual areas.

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In Wales, because of its smaller size, there is no need for a regional tier. The Area Health Authorities will be directly accountable to the Secretary of State who will determine national priorities, allocate resources and co-ordinate area plans. Specialised executive services which can only be efficiently provided on an all-Wales basis will be the responsibility of a special health authority—the Welsh Health Technical Services Organisation.
There will be some 90 Area Health Authorities in England and eight in Wales. They will be the main executive bodies for the provision of health care within their boundaries. Where an Area Health Authority contains a medical school it will be known as an Area Health Authority (Teaching) and will have a slightly different composition. An Area Health Authority will consist of about 15 people. In England the chairman will be selected by the Secretary of State, and most of the other members will be appointed by the Regional Health Authority. So important do we consider the link with local authority services that four members of the Area Health Authority will be appointed by the corresponding local authority. Each Area Health Authority will include at least one person representing university teaching interests, and will also have doctors and a nurse or midwife as members. In Wales the Area Health Authorities will have the same composition, but the Secretary of State will appoint the Chairman and members apart from the four appointed by the corresponding local authority.
The Bill does not lay down how the new authorities should discharge their functions, or how areas should be subdivided for management purposes. But the intention is that normally within the area, health care to the community will be organised in districts, the smallest unit that can provide the full range of health services including those of a district general hospital. Steering groups widely representative of the Health Service in England and in Wales have now put forward proposals based on studies of the future management of the Service carried out by smaller groups. These proposals are now under consideration in consultation with the interests concerned, and no decisions have yet been taken on them but I should like to mention just three aspects of them: first, the organisation
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begins from the smallest unit upwards—the district upwards; secondly, the fact that it seeks to involve doctors, nurses and other professional workers in the management structure; and thirdly, the fact that it proposes to lay first emphasis on the patient by the organisation of health care groups made up of a team representing all the necessary professional skills from both the Health and Social Services.
The main contents of the Bill are set out clearly in the Explanatory Memorandum and I do not think I need do more than mention one or two clauses in particular to which I would especially draw the attention of your Lordships. Clause 3 brings within the National Health Service the local education authorities' present responsibilities for the medical and dental inspection and treatment of schoolchildren. A close working relationship with the education services must be maintained, and the Collaboration Working Party has concluded that satisfactory arrangements can be made. We intend that they shall be.
Clause 4 imposes a duty on the Secretary of State to make arrangements for family planning services to the extent that he considers necessary to meet all reasonable requirements. The Bill will not itself result in any change in the scale of services, but will provide a framework for flexible development unfettered by administrative barriers. I have already referred to the establishment of Regional and Area Health Authorities, and the only matter in Clause 5 to which I need draw your Lordships' attention is the establishment of Family Practitioner Committees. Each Area Health Authority is required to establish a family practitioner committee, the constitution of which is provided for in Part II of Schedule 1, and is similar to that of the present Executive Councils. Their work will be defined by regulation under Clause 7(3), and will consist of entering into contract with individual practitioners and administering their terms of service, including remuneration and statutory disciplinary arrangements. On other matters affecting family practitioner services the Area Health Authority will be responsible including planning of health centres and approval, where necessary, of practitioners' own proposals for providing premises and the important arrangements for attaching

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nursing and other staff to general practices.
Clause 8 provides for the statutory recognition of local professional advisory committees in each English region, in Wales, and in each area. Clause 9 imposes a duty on Area Health Authorities to set up community health councils. Their basic function will be to represent the interests of the public in each health district, and in so doing, to make the Service sensitive to people's needs.
The councils will have power to secure information about health services in their districts, will have reasonable visiting rights to National Health Service premises, and will have access to the Area Authority and to its management team in the districts. The councils will be expected to publish reports, and the Area Authorities to publish replies to them. We hope for a continuing and constructive relationship between Health Service management and the community health councils, in which advice is sought and given and views are conveyed and considered in mutually helpful interaction. Half the council's members will be appointed by the local government district councils. The other half will be appointed by the area health authority, mainly on the nomination of voluntary bodies involved locally in the National Health Service, but some after consultation with other locally-based organisations. The councils themselves will appoint their own chairmen from among their own members.
Clauses 10 to 12 are all concerned with collaboration between the Health Service and the complementary local authority services. Clause 10 imposes on health and local authorities a general duty to co-operate and goes on to require Area Health Authorities and the relevant local authorities to establish the joint consultative machinery in which they can get down to the business of making collaboration work—ensuring that plans match, and that the arrangements at ground level for operational co-ordination of the services work satisfactorily. One of the foundations of collaboration will be mutual dependence of local and health authority services. This will apply in many fields and it is expressly recognised in relation to staff
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in Clauses 11 and 12. The Secretary of State through the health authorities will have a duty to make doctors and nurses and dentists available to local authorities, while social service authorities will have a corresponding duty under Clause 12 to make their specialist staff available to the health authorities.
Clause 13 makes clear the Secretary of State's power to use voluntary organisations to secure provision of any N.H.S. service. There is already power to give financial assistance to voluntary organisations, and this will be delegated to the new health authorities to enable them to make grants to voluntary bodies which provide services within the general scope of the authorities' responsibilities. I know your Lordships are well aware of the great importance that we attach to the voluntary services and will welcome the fact that they are to be incorporated in this way in the future. Clauses 14 and 15 abolish all existing authorities with the exception of certain boards of governors of post-graduate hospitals which are listed in Schedule 2. Among the authorities that will disappear under the Bill are the boards of governors of teaching hospitals of worldwide renown. I know that many of your Lordships have served these great teaching hospitals with great devotion, and it is appropriate that we should recognise that there are many Members of this House who have served as chairmen and members and that it is in no sense a criticism of that management if the time has come for a change in the system.
We value as much as anyone the importance of teaching and research in the National Health Service. We are determined to secure the right conditions for both after 1974 and we have proposed a number of safeguards both at regional and at area level. We have also proposed an advisory co-ordinating working group for London, where the problem is particularly difficult. I am afraid it proved impossible to reconcile all the interests concerned with the future of health services in London. We have put forward proposals that in our view go as near as possible to combining the principles of reorganisation with the preservation of the existing framework of services. The London post-graduate hospitals are difficult to fit into an area

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pattern. Many serve as national reference centres for hospitals in the whole of the United Kingdom and they tend to draw many, if not most, of their patients from outside their surrounding districts. The power is therefore being taken to preserve the boards of these hospitals, which are listed in Schedule 2, in the first instance for a maximum of five years.
No part of the Bill is more important than that dealing with the staff and Clause 19 contains important provisions for protection of salary and terms and conditions of service of staff who are transferred from the old authorities to to the new. Clause 20 provides for the appointment of Staff Commissions for England and for Wales, to advise the Secretary of State on arrangements to ensure that staff interests are safeguarded during the reorganisation period. As your Lordships will know, staff advisory committees have already been appointed in both countries to do the necessary preparatory work.
The provisions in Clauses 31 to 39 are concerned with the appointment of Health Service Commissioners in England and Wales. These, like the provisions for community health councils, are designed to strengthen the rights of users of health services. There will be separate posts in each country, although the first holder, Sir Alan Marre, will combine them with the posts of Health Service Commissioner in Scotland and with his existing responsibilities as Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration. The Health Service Commissioner will follow the Parliamentary Commissioner precedent in that his appointment, tenure of office and salary will not be dependent on a Minister of the Crown. He will be appointed by Her Majesty by Letters Patent and may be removed from office only in consequence of Addresses of both Houses of Parliament. This will ensure his independence of Ministers. I am sure that noble Lords who know Sir Alan Marre will agree with me that his experience and his wisdom which he has shown as Parliamentary Commissioner will guarantee that this function of Health Service Commissioner will be discharged with the utmost impartiality and care. For the Health Service the Bill brings an improved—
LORD SLATER: My Lords, will the noble Lord forgive me for intervening for
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one moment in regard to the Commissioner? Is he to operate as the Parliamentary Commissioner has operated previously, in that a constituent has had to contact his Member of Parliament and the Member of Parliament, if he so wills it, passes the communication or the subject matter of it to the Parliamentary Commissioner; or will the Commissioner appointed in this particular case operate so that any individual member of society within this country shall have the door open to him so that he can go direct to the Commissioner, as opposed to the procedure operated by the Parliamentary Commissioner at present?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, if the noble Lord would care to look at the Appendix to the White Paper he will see the full proposals for the Health Service Commissioner. I think that will cover his point, but we will return to it again at Committee stage if he wishes to.
My Lords, for the Health Service the Bill brings an improved and integrated organisation. For the health professions it offers more effective participation in the the day-to-day running of the Service and its future planning. For the patient it promises safeguards for his interests and, above all, better care through better use of resources and better co-ordination of services. For the nation as a whole it builds on the foundations of a National Health Service that is already internationally admired, a new structure that holds promise of even higher standards of health. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Aberdare.)
3.19 p.m.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, may I first, in all sincerity, associate my noble friends and myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, at the outset of his speech about the tragic death of the noble Lord, Lord Rosenheim. It leaves a great gap not only in the medical profession but also in our ranks. We all found his quiet, sympathetic, gentle nature most supportive and attractive and he was not only a very great doctor but also a great human being.
I must also thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for his customary courtesy in explaining so patiently and carefully the

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purposes and provisions of this long awaited measure which the Government have at last brought forward after a protracted period of gestation. A careful examination of its 57 clauses and 5 Schedules reveals that the Bill is little more than an enabling Bill, vague to a degree in many crucial areas and perhaps more important for what it does not say than for what it actually does say. The main result is to give wide discretionary powers to the Secretary of State over almost every sector of the proposed new Health Service.
We also welcome this opportunity to consider the Bill before it goes to another place and I can assure noble Lords opposite that we on this side will assist with its passage: we will scrutinise, we will criticise, we may even oppose certain of its provisions: but we will, together with Peers in all parts of the House, seek to fulfil the traditional role of this House in considering this major measure before the other place. We will certainly seek to put some flesh on these bare bones as it proceeds through its various stages in this House. The light that the noble Lord shed on some of its more shadowy areas this afternoon was particularly helpful at the beginning of our deliberations.
Many of us will recall that this is the third occasion in some two years that we have debated detailed proposals for this impending major upheaval of the Health Service which will affect the health and wellbeing of every single citizen in this country. Now, at last, and in my view a year too late, the noble Lord has introduced a major Bill which is due to give effect in only 15 months' time to the complex organisation proposals which were set out in the two White Papers on the reorganisation of the National Health Service in England and Wales which were published last August. The bare outline that the Bill sketches does not, however, differ appreciably from the basic principles in the earlier Consultative Document and the subsequent White Papers so, as the noble Lord has reminded us, we have already considered much of the ground which the Bill covers.
Nevertheless this is still an historic day for those of us with a deep commitment to the progressive development of
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one of the greatest of our universal social services after more than a decade of public debate, and even longer if we look back, as the noble Lord did, to the Porritt Report, and perhaps indeed to the Dawson Report of 1921. Such is the lengthy process of engineering complex change in a democratic society. Although, as the noble Lord reminded us, this Bill is primarily concerned with organisation and structure, the bare bones of the new legislative framework that he has outlined will undoubtedly determine the future quality as well as the pattern of health care in this country. At this moment it is perhaps salutary to recall the opening words of Aneurin Bevan when he moved the Second Reading of the first great National Health Service Bill in 1946:
"In the last two years there has been such a clamour from sectional interests in the field of national health that we are in danger of forgetting why these proposals are brought forward at all."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 30/4/46; col. 43.]
Following in all humility in the footsteps of so courageous and determined an architect of our National Health Service may I suggest to the House that there is a similar danger to-day, particularly for those who have struggled these last two years to master Green Papers, consultative documents, the "preliminary first tentative hypothesis", Collaborative Working Party reports, White Papers and, finally, this—I nearly said "ghastly" Grey Paper on Management Arrangements in the Reorganised National Health Service. This sets out the rigid and hierarchical McKinsey-type management structure now proposed for an integrated service in such a welter of "management" language and initials that the reader has to be warned in the Foreword that the particular words are used in such a precise management sense that they have to be defined in a special appendix of role specifications. While the Report admits at the outset that success in achieving the stated objective of better health care depends primarily on the people in the health care professions, an appendix then proceeds to mould them into rigid externally designed bureaucratic "occupants of roles" to achieve a completely mechanistic and hierarchical system borrowed from industrial and commercial bodies, but totally

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unsuited to a social service like the Health Service.
This major reorganisation must surely be designed above all to assist those in the Service to develop truly integrated, complementary and community-based health and social care systems, focused first and foremost on meeting the changing needs of individual patients and consumers, flexibly and sensitively, as the frontiers of medical science and our knowledge and understanding of the relationships between the environment and the pattern of health and disease advance. Unless it does, one must most seriously question whether such an upheaval, involving over a million staff and millions of patients and potential patients, is really worth undertaking, especially when many of the opportunities and very real benefits that such a long-awaited and long-discussed change could bring are now being missed. The Government have completely failed to take account of rising public concern. particularly among the younger generation, about the loss of human values and human contact in large sophisticated, impersonal and remote organisations and of the growing movement towards smaller, mere organic and flexible organisational structures which can respond more rapidly and more sensitively to professional and consumer needs. I believe there is a very real danger that in the new management structure there will be more and more people doing less and less directly for patients. I think this was the point that the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, was seeking to underline in his Question this afternoon.
Thinking now of the Service as a whole, I believe it would be fair to say—and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, endorsed this in his opening speech—that in spite of the bitter controversies that surrounded the birth of the National Health Service, no major political Party or professional group now seriously questions the need for such a service. One has, after all, only to cross the Atlantic to the United States, where the cost of health care is escalating beyond the means even of the well-to-do, to appreciate to the full the immense benefits it has brought to millions of people and a whole new generation that has now been nurtured in it. The revolutionary principles which Aneurin Bevan enunciated
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in the great debate of 1946 have stood the test of time and are still valid almost thirty years later. As we have just been reminded, it is primarily the evolutionary tripartite structure which evolved from those prolonged battles that two successive Governments have now agreed must be changed in order to unite the three separate streams of health care.
We on this side of the House therefore still firmly believe that it is only by providing universal health care services free at the point of need and financed through taxation and contributions paid when people are well, that we can remove the fear of ill-health and spread the costly burden of acute or chronic sickness. The doctor must be completely free to prescribe and to give the treatment the patient requires, regardless of its cost, if we are not only to encourage early diagnosis and treatment but also to have a truly preventive service, which I am sure is an objective we seek in all parts of this House to-day.
We were concerned when the present Government introduced cost-related charges for dental and ophthalmic services up to a given ceiling because we regarded it as a serious breach of this principle. Fortunately, their comparable proposal to relate prescription charges to the cost of the drugs supplied had to be dropped because of practical difficulties and because of the opposition of the medical profession. I was, therefore, glad that the much-canvassed suggestion of "hotel charges" which was in the air when the Government first came into office has not seen the light of day in this Bill. I am equally glad that the next Labour Government are now committed to removing the existing financial disincentives to the proper care of eyes and teeth and to phasing out as quickly as possible fiat-rate prescription charges which have been introduced over a period of time by successive Governments of both Parties.
We therefore regard the proposal in Clause 4 as highly retrograde, since it gives the Secretary of State power to recover charges for the family planning services, which the Bill transfers from local government to the new integrated Health Service, especially as it comes at a time when so many local authorities are already providing a free service. I know that my noble friend Lady

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Gaitskell, who is closely concerned with these matters, will be speaking later in the debate about the need to provide a universal, free and comprehensive family planning service. We are also concerned at the potential implications of Clause 43 because we are strongly opposed to any further erosion of the universal nature of the Service through the extention of private practice, if that is what is intended.
My Lords, I turn now to considering the purposes of the Bill as a whole, particularly as they affect England. My noble friend Lady White, who is so experienced in these matters, will be speaking towards the end of this long debate and will be dealing particularly with the Welsh aspects of the Bill, as well as with the provisions for setting up community health councils, and the important proposals which the noble Lord mentioned to appoint Health Service commissioners including the new procedures for investigating complaints.
The House will already know from our previous discussion of the various sets of proposals that we are in full agreement with the major purpose as defined in paragraph 1(a) of the Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill. We are concerned only that the unification on which we are embarking should result in a fully integrated Service and not in a partial one, and that it should be achieved through an organic, open and more democratic structure which will encourage and develop the opportunities for the health professions, Health Service staff and consumers, either as individuals or in groups, to participate and be involved in the various stages and levels of the policy-making process.
We are therefore completely opposed in principle and in practice to the proposals in Part I of the Bill and its corresponding Schedules which set out the composition and membership of the new health authorities which the noble Lord outlined. They create what virtually amounts to a five-tier Service, with the Secretary of State and a reorganised McKinsey-type Department at the top, defining national objectives and standards and once again allocating resources to some 14 Regional Health Authorities appointed entirely and directly by the Secretary of State, albeit
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after consultation with the range of interests specified in Schedule 1.
Under these proposals the Area Health Authorities will clearly be the creatures of the Regional Health authorities, from whom they will receive their resources. The chairman will be appointed by the Secretary of State, after consultation with the chairman of the Regional Authority, and all other members, except for the sprinkling of four local authority members and one directly nominated by the university, will again be appointed by the Region. At least the former representative concept of one-third local authority, one-third health care professions and one-third Ministerial appointees would have increased the potential for active participation in policy-making within the resource allocations coming directly from central Government, from the Secretary of State, as has been the very successful experience of the teaching hospitals in the past. This proposal has been completely abandoned—no doubt a sacrifice to the managerial model which distinguishes sharply and quite unrealistically between the mysterious qualities of "management ability" and the representative role, quite unlike the much more free-flowing democratic structure which the Baines Report commends to the new local authorities that are shortly to come into being and are to be established at the same time as the new health authorities in 1974.
Apparently there is not even to be any provision for at least the chairman of the family practitioner committee to serve on the Area Health Authority as of right, although, as the noble Lord rightly told us, one of the major purposes of this reorganisation is to strengthen the community base of the Service. Let us not forget that it is the 24,000 general pracitioners in this country who provide the essential continuity of health care to each individual patient and each family through some 80 million consultations a year. Surely their close involvement in the development of health centres, of group practices and of the attachment schemes, which the noble Lord also mentioned is an essential part of the overall policy planning of a comprehensive, unified service.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords. I did say that these would be the affairs of the

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Area Health Authority; the family practitioner committee will be dealing with matters of contract.
BARONESS SEROTA: I understand that, my Lords. I was pointing out that I want to see a member link between them; I want to see the chairman or, say, one other member of the family practitioner committee serving on the Area Health Authority to ensure the crucial policy link.
At the fourth tier—the health district, the one below the Area but above the service delivery level—there is to be no member involvement whatever, although the proposed health districts will range in size from populations of 200,000 up to 500,000—larger than many of the new metropolitan districts in local government. Thus, my Lords, to fulfil purposes (b) and (c) of this Bill and provide the means in each area of representing the interest of the community and ensuring that the views of the health professions are given full weight in the planning and management of the Service, we shall have about four local authority members on each Area Health Authority, a few doctors and perhaps a nurse or midwife indirectly elected into managerial roles. For the rest, the professions will be insulated into the proposed regional and area advisory machinery which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, described to us.
Nor, in my view, should this concept of democracy apply only to professional staff. The Bill is singularly silent on the role of the trade unions in all the proposed consultations that are to take place about membership under Schedule 1. There is no mention whatever of joint consultative machinery in an organisation which is, after all, the largest of our nationalised industries. The major means of representing the community and consumer interests is through the creation of what have variously been called "toothless watchdogs" or, by my honourable friend Mrs. Williams in another place, "administrative eunuchs". These fears have been strengthened by the total absence of any specific provisions in Clause 9 of this primary piece of legislation which leaves the membership, powers, staffing and finances of the community health councils entirely to be prescribed by regulation. I have little doubt that many of your Lordships with long experience
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of the health and social services, in both the statutory and voluntary fields, will share the widespread concern that has been expresed publicly about this gap in the Bill.
We shall be seeking to strengthen considerably both local authority and staff participation in the areas and the regions if the Government insist on maintaining this fifth wheel on the coach. We shall also try to persuade the House to provide for member involvement at district level through district sub-committees of the areas, as envisaged in the Green Paper of which the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfelite, was so strongly in favour when she led for the then Opposition when we debated the second Green Paper of the former Administration in March, 1970.
I have little doubt that many noble Lords who will be speaking to-day will be specially concerned with the admittedly very real problems that are posed by the geographical location and concentration of undergraduate and past-graduate teaching hospitals in Inner London. They are far more expert than I am on this subject. The real problem here is how to achieve what the White Paper rightly points out is needed by Londoners, no less than by people living in other parts of the country—namely, an integrated Service. I really cannot see why there is a need to make confusion even worse confounded by perpetuating the four existing Regional Boards, as they are now proposing to do. One Greater London region, or perhaps two—one North of the river and one South of the river, which is the natural boundary—would surely be preferable. The proposals to group all but three of the 32 London Boroughs into Area Health Authorities will undoubtedly lessen even the tiny amount of democratic involvement now envisaged in other parts of the country, unless the size of the Area Health Authorities in London is appreciably increased. The grouping of as many as three together, as is suggested in some instances, produces such complexities in developing the essential direct working relationship between the Area Health Authorities and the London Boroughs, particularly in the fields of geriatrics, psychiatrics and pediatrics (including the School Health Service, where the I.L.E.A. is also involved) is such that the mind literally boggles.

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I had intended to refer to some of the crucial and complex inter-organisational issues which have been the subject of close consideration by the Department's Collaboration Working Party, but I shall merely confine myself at this stage to welcoming the principle embodied in Clause 9 to create the statutory interface, although I have some doubts and reservations about the powers and the purely advisory nature of the new joint consultative committees which we are to have. It would, however, be helpful if the Minister could tell us to-day when he comes to reply at the end of the debate, whether the Government have finally come to a decision about the future of social work in hospitals, which has been the subject of some controversy. I personally failed to find a clear answer in the Bill.
Finally, my Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, rightly paid tribute early in his speech to the staff of this great Service, a tribute with which every single one of us would wish to be associated. When we think of the proposals in this Bill our first thoughts, as were his, must be for the staff, after this long-drawn-out period of anxiety and insecurity, and especially for the medical officers of health and their staffs who have been in limbo for so long and who have contributed so much over this last century or more in local government to the development of preventive health services, particularly for mothers and young children. It is on their shoulders that the main burden of preparing for and implementing change will fall while they still need to maintain the existing levels of service to the community. I very much hope that the Minister, when he replies to the debate to-night, will be able to give them all a firm assurance that there will be no redundancies as the result of this reorganisation in a service which is always short of staff and which needs every man and woman prepared to serve in it.
3.43 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to join in what the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, have just said about the loss we have suffered by the untimely death of Lord Rosenheim. I had known Max Rosenheim for over
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forty years, since the time he was a medical student and I was a junior member of the staff of the hospital to which he came. I shall certainly very much miss his friendship and wise counsel. His is a sad death at such a young age and with such a great deal to accomplish.
My Lords, as has been said, we have debated this subject three times (almost four times, if we include one Unstarred Question on the matter) in the past 2½ years, and therefore I do not propose to go into great detail about the Bill. But there are one or two points which I should like to raise. I am sure that from a great many points of view it is a very good thing to join up the tripartite shape of the National Health Service at the present time. I personally feel that it has worked remarkably well for being a tripartite Service, and as someone who was a worker in the Service I never found any great difficulty arising from its tripartite character. But there is one place where I feel it may do a great deal of good for the patients and for the people the Health Service is designed for, and that is in the provision of community care, because I believe that one of the real shortages in the Service has been the varying amount of community care which the various local authorities have been able to provide. It has appeared almost as though some local authorities were unwilling to spend money from the ratepayers to assist a Service that was funded by the State. One found, particularly in cases where one was dealing with elderly or disabled patients, that it was very difficult to find places in the community where they could be taken care of if they were not fit enough to go back to their own homes and yet there was no need any longer to detain them in hospital. I hope that possibly that will be one of the things that may change when we get the Service unified.
One can see what I mean if one takes as an example the case of an unfortunate Nigerian about whom there was a programme on the wireless—not on television—two Sundays ago. I believe that he was called Mr. David Oluwale. I forget the exact number, but he had been in prison about four times for short periods on some curious charge of "wandering"—whatever that may be—and he had been discharged from prison. He had been

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in a psychiatric hospital about four times also, and had been discharged from there. On each discharge it was recorded that he had no fixed abode and no employment to go to. There were various other factors involved which I do not want to go into now, but finally Mr. Oluwale was found in the river. It does seem peculiar that a mental hospital, or even a prison—and the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, I know is very interested in this sort of thing—should be able to discharge somebody when he has absolutely nowhere to go. That was something which could not have occurred forty years ago because of the Poor Law, and although I do not want to put forward any claim for the Poor Law it was an all-embracing organisation in which nobody who required assistance did not get it. I admit that the assistance was rough, harsh, and uncomfortable and that no one would wish to see it repeated now. But it seems sad that an organisation like that is taken away and nothing is put in its place.
In these days one is told that there are reception centres. That is indeed true. There is one in Camberwell, in South London, and I believe there is one in North London, too. But what is the use of Camberwell for somebody who is in Fulham upon a cold, wet December night? No good at all! I trust therefore that under the current plans it will be possible to provide far more community care for the people who require it. I know that l may be told—I hope that I shall not be told so to-day, although I have been told so in the past—that local authorities have provided a large number of extra beds in the last twenty years. My answer to that is, quite simply: they may have provided a large number of extra beds but they have not provided enough extra beds and people are still suffering and, in some cases, dying because of that.
Secondly I want to mention the curious position of the community health councils, which appear 'to me to be in a very difficult state because they have no money. I do not think that they have any staff and they have no premises. One is not quite sure what they are going to do. I can see that to have a council which has some power, which is going to represent a consumer and
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which is going to have members of the voluntary organisations on it—bodies like the disabled income group and that type of organisation—would be extremely valuable, but they must, surely, have some power. It has been said that they can make representations to the Secretary of State. Well, I think if we have got a good Secretary of State, as I am pleased to say we have at the present time, those representations will be a very good thing. But there must be a little more in order to insist that a bad Secretary of State accepts the recommendations at the present time.
There is another thing about which I am not quite sure. Their function is purely advisory. Is it, therefore, a good thing that they have power of inspection of hospitals, power to question officials of the authorities and so forth? Surely to have power like that, with no responsibility at all, tends to make people behave in a slightly irresponsible fashion, which I am certain is the last thing to be intended. Then I think, too, as indeed the noble Baroness has just said, the hierarchical structure of four or five tiers will be very stifling and bureaucratic; I am not at all happy about the way that is going to work. if you have an enormous amount of goodwill on everybody's part and friendly feelings everywhere, it might work quite well. If you have not, there is nothing you can do to make it work if the people involved do not want it to.
The last point I want to make before I come to one or two questions concerns this extraordinary document produced by Messrs. McKinsey and the staff of Brunel University. I am not quite sure what the purpose of this document is. Does it have legal backing? Is it enforceable? Can we amend it? It goes into an immense amount of detail about things which would be much better left to general principles with the details to be worked out locally by the local people. I was thinking of one or two things as I tried to read it. It is almost impossible to read because it is written in such a strange kind of jargon. In Section 4, Nos. 7, 8 and 10, there is reference to the clinicians on the staff of the hospital taking part in the management. Put generally like that, I am not quite sure whether if you are a clinician in charge of patients you are going to have time

31
to do much on the management side. Then in the third section, at No. 9, there are great details about the way to elect and appoint staff. Surely it is unnecessary to go into that kind of detail in a document of that sort.
Those are the real points I want to make. I saw in the medical Press the other day that although most of the emphasis appears to be on management and not on patients the patients have a curious way of hitting back. I read that it was found in the United States that if you want to build an intensive care unit if you did not put any windows in it it was far cheaper than one with windows. That is a bit of building technique. They built quite a lot without windows, and they found that in the ones without windows 70 per cent. of the patients suffered from delirium, whereas in the ones with windows the proportion was only 25 per cent. So it did not pay to build them without windows. Those are matters you have to think about occasionally.
There are one or two questions I should like to ask the Minister. Am I right in thinking that the whole work of the medical officer of health, with the health inspectors, will be taken over by the community physicians? Will the health inspectors be on his staff? The medical officer of health plus the health inspectors—they were called sanitary inspectors—have security of tenure and cannot be dismissed without the agreement of the Minister of Health, now presumably the Secretary of State. Will that continue for these people? Because it is a great safeguard against the actions of vindictive councillors and persons of that type.
The other question I was going to ask is what is going to be the position of the Social Services Department. I have really got the reply to that now, because I found the document, which apparently was issued last July, in the Printed Paper Office; it appears to have taken from July to December to come across from the Elephant and Castle to the Printed Paper Office. It seems that it is recommended that the medical social workers and the psychiatric social workers should become part of the local authority establishment. I know that is going to cause a great deal of upset among many medical
32
social workers and psychiatric social workers, and I wonder whether the noble Lord could tell me, when he comes to reply, whether that arrangement is really fixed or whether it is capable of amendment in the Bill as it goes through this House. It may not be possible to amend it in this House because there is nothing in the Bill itself about those workers.
I agree with what the noble Baroness, Ludy Serota, said about Clause 4 and the suggestion that charges should be made for some of the family planning advice. That seems to me entirely wrong. I thought we had settled that matter when the Vasectomy Bill became law and the Department of Health and Social Security said that they were going to issue a circular saying that that advice could be given free of charge. I am interested to see from a certain amount of correspondence in the medical Press that many medical students in the country share my apprehension about the functions and duties of the community health councils. I always think it is not a bad idea to take some notice of what the young, coming members of the profession have to say. I do not say that one should be wagged by them entirely; but if they express some strong opinion it is quite a good thing to take some notice, because, after all, they are going to be the future doctors for whom the Service is partly intended as well as for the patients.
Finally, I am very pleased indeed that it is intended to appoint a Health Commissioner. Sir Alan Marre is an old friend of mine, and I am quite certain that he will be a very good Commissioner. My Lords, although I have been somewhat critical of parts of this Bill, I have every intention of encouraging its passage through this House as quickly as possible, though noble Lords on these Benches will probably have various matters to put down when we come to Committee stage.
3.59 p.m.
LORD COBBOLD: My Lords, may I first associate these Benches with the tributes paid to Lord Rosenheim, whose death will be lamented by all connected with the Health Service. I lay no claim to knowledge of other aspects of the Health Service, but as Chairman of the Board of Governors of Middlesex Hospitals

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for the past ten years I claim some experience of practical health administration, and as Chairman of the London Undergraduate Teaching Hospitals Committee I have been closely involved in discussions with the Secretary of State, with the noble Lord, the Minister of State, and the noble Baroness, his predecessor, and their Department.
Your Lordships will appreciate—and the noble Lord has indicated that this will probably be the case—that as successors to generations of boards of governors, who have built up these great hospitals over the centuries, we feel no joy in proposals to dismantle these boards, together with the hospital management committees throughout the country, and to dismiss their members. This is by no means only a question of sentiment or of nostalgia for the "good old days". On the contrary, in my judgment the maintenance of individual boards of governors with direct responsibility to the Secretary of State has played a full part in preserving, during the initial period of the National Health Service, the particular aura of the various teaching hospitals. It is an aura which, as the noble Lord was good enough to indicate in his speech, has given good service to the public and good service to medicine both nationally and internationally.
In the long months of discussion with the Department we have made it clear that the teaching hospitals fully support the objective of integration of the Health Service. Their reservations and criticisms have been directed not at all to the objective but solely to the proposed methods and the timing. The undergraduate teaching hospitals have urged that, especially in the admittedly complex situation in London, an interim period like that arranged for the postgraduate hospitals, or at least a more empirical approach, would give better results; for example by developing existing arrangements for joint consultative committees and district responsibilities, increasing local representation on boards of governors, and intensifying the already close relations between teaching hospitals and other health services. In particular they have stressed the importance to the Health Service in general, and to medical education in particular, of maintaining the intimate relationships which exist be
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tween teaching hospitals and their associated medical schools.
I do not wish to weary your Lordships by repeating all the arguments which I put forward in these matters in the debates in March, 1970, and in November last year, nor do I wish to go again at this stage into all the complications of London, with its difficult location of teaching hospitals. But if I may recall one phrase which I have used in both my previous speeches on this subject, it is a good general administrative rule not to destroy something that works fairly well without being sure that you have something better to put in its place. I think it is proper to put it on the Record to-day that the Teaching Hospitals Association and the great majority of members of boards of governors are not satisfied that, so far as the services which the undergraduate teaching hospitals can give to the community, this condition is fulfilled in the present proposals. They maintain their view that a more empirical and less uniform approach would have led to better service and more efficiency. Having said this much, the teaching hospitals recognise that in the end it is the responsibility of Government, having heard arguments from all sides, to take decisions and to put legislation before Parliament. Whatever is finally decided, the teaching hospitals will do their utmost to make the new arrangements work as efficiently as possible, and to give the best service they can to the public and to medical science.
I should like to put on record our thanks—and my personal thanks—to the Secretary of State, to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the officials for the courtesy with which they have listened to our arguments. We could wish that they had sometimes found our arguments rather more persuasive. Nevertheless, we are grateful for the special provisions made in the Bill for teaching areas, and for assurances given with the object—to use their own phrase—of "the Department escorting the teaching hospitals into the new structure". In particular we welcome the promise in the White Paper of additional safeguards for the teaching hospitals during the early years, and we look forward to further discussion of this matter in detail.
We also welcome the arrangement for endowment funds. In general, there

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seems now to be considerably more recognition, at least in principle, of the importance of teaching and of adequate university and medical school representation at various levels. The detailed application of this principle still needs to be spelled out, and I hope that the noble Lord replying will be able to assure the House that every practical step will be taken to maintain the present position where teaching hospital and medical school generally work as two parts of a single organisation. As I have said before, unless we maintain standards and facilities for teaching doctors for future generations, it is a great waste of time to plan a better health organisation.
My Lords, this brings me to the arrangements for future administration of the Service as it affects the actual management of the hospitals themselves. These matters are under discussion between the Department and various bodies concerned, including representatives of the Teaching Hospitals Association. I will therefore mention only one or two points. As a general point there seems to me to be some contradiction between the White Paper and the recently published Paper on Management in the allocation of responsibilities to regional authorities and area authorities. As I read the White Paper, the regional authority was to be mainly a planning body acting, so to speak, as intermediary between the area and the Department, while the area was to be the effective operating unit. This is certainly the impression we have derived in our discussions with Ministers. The Management Paper, on the other hand, appears to leave with the region much more responsibility for operational control and for monitoring the work of individual officers. This suggests to me, at least in London, a very heavy and expensive duplication of work between the regional authority and the area authority. I assume that the Department have made full costing estimates of this superstructure of area and regional authorities. I hope that the noble Lord, when he replies, can give the House some figures. In any event, it is a subject which will need close examination at later stages.
My other point concerns the actual mangement of hospitals under the proposed arrangements. Little is said about
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this in the Bill, in the White Paper, or in the Management document, though the Secretary of State has been good enough to give us some further information about the intentions. The boards of governors are naturally most concerned that, in being required to hand over their responsibilities for management, they should, so far as possible, ensure that they are handing over to something viable. In particular—and here especially I know that I speak for the chairmen of all London undergraduate teaching hospitals—we are concerned to ensure appropriate status, salary and authority for the person actually managing the hospital, both absolutely and relatively to officers at area and regional level. This at least is a subject on which I can speak with some confidence, having watched for ten years, day in and day out, the load which falls on the chief administrator of a large hospital, and the need for occasional quick and authoritative backing for his decisions. This job can certainly not be done effectively by an administrator not located in the hospital itself, nor can it be done by a junior officer subject to tiers of senior and more highly paid officials. This is a subject which we are discussing further with the Secretary of State and to which we attach the highest importance.
I do not, I am afraid, take very seriously the suggestion in the Management Paper that immediate decisions, often of great difficulty and importance, can effectively he taken by consensus of a team. I may perhaps quote one or two phrases from that Paper, if your Lordships will bear with me. At paragraph 2.42 it is said that the D.M.T.—that is, the district management team—
"will be a group of equals, no member being the managerial superior of another. The team thus brings together, to make decisions and to share in joint responsibility, both clinicians and officers accountable to the AHA for hierarchically-organised services".
Paragraph 2.44 says:
"'Joint responsibility', means that the AHA will expect the members of the DMT to co-operate in order to reach a consensus view and to be bound by team decisions. The officers of the ATO will monitor their counterpart officers in order to ensure that they contribute effectively to the work of the DMT. If the work of the DMT is found unacceptable by the AHA, the DMT will not be held corporately accountable, but the AHA, with the assistance of the Area officers, will assess the performance of each

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team member to determine the source of the difficulty."
I will not labour the point.
There is another phrase in the Management Paper, indicative perhaps of a state of mind, of which I am suspicious. I quote from paragraph 2.11:
"The AHA should avoid establishing standing committees of Members, with or without delegated powers, to deal with particular functions (such as finance) or professions (such as nursing) or with geographic areas (such as Districts). The AHA will be a small body selected for its capability. Its Chairman will act for the Authority between meetings, consulting with the officers."
Freely translated, I take this to mean, "Keep the members out of the way, leave it to the officials, and we can probably 'square' the chairman."
The main purpose of the Bill is to bring about a very desirable integration of the Health Service. I therefore support the Motion for the Second Reading. But Parliament should recognise that, in its present form, the Bill means a thorough disinvolvement of lay participation in direct hospital administration throughout the country. It removes the administration of undergraduate teaching hospitals from boards of governors with their mixture of medical, academic and lay membership, involved in every aspect of the hospitals' life, and with direct responsibility to the Secretary of State. It entrusts it instead to layers of officials and administrators, reporting to statutory bodies too far away to know what is really happening in the hospitals. It may prove over the years to be a more efficient system. I doubt it.
4.11 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I wish to identify myself with the tributes that have been paid to the late Lord Rosenheim. I think nothing finer can be said of him than that he was a great doctor—humane, kindly, knowledgeable, understanding—and I feel that his premature death diminishes us all, particularly the medical group in this House. I shall not follow the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, in detail, but I must admit that his enthusiasm was infectious; and although I cannot agree with him in everything he said about the governors of the teaching hospitals I shall nevertheless speak rather strongly about what I consider the undemocratic method of setting up this particular machine.
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I suppose there is one point on which we all agree: that the Title of the Bill, the National Health Service Reorganisation Bill, is deceptive. Of course it does not directly affect the health, the wellbeing, the cure or the treatment of any individual in the country, and it is in great part concerned simply with the reconstitution of committees. Whether from this very expensive exercise—expensive in terms of money and manpower—there will emerge the comprehensive Service that we desire still remains to be seen. But I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, that the Government have undertaken a great exercise and that if it fails, or even if it is not very successful, it will be a tremendous disappointment to all of us who have waited for many years for this reunification of the Health Service.
The Secretary of State stated in the White Paper that,
"the purpose behind the changes … is a better, more sensitive, service to the public."
The word "sensitive" particularly appealed to me, because I feel that it sums up a service which should be administered by compassionate men and women whose expertise and record of service to the community is beyond doubt. In examining this Bill, I think that every one of us should have that in mind. Nevertheless, the word "sensitive"—which I presume was deliberately picked by the Secretary of State—is hardly descriptive of to method adopted to establish the administrative committees. I am sure that your Lordships have all read the Bill and you have heard my noble friend Lady Scrota, but I want to emphasise what is being done.
It seems to me that the Government are prepared deliberately to sow the seeds of discord by adopting a method of choosing the personnel which savours of nepotism. That is a very strong word, but if one considers what is being done I think it is not overstrong. While it is of course important to promote efficiency, it is more important to keep in mind that human suffering is what the Health Service is all about, and I feel that in their desire to present a neat network of committees those who drafted this Bill were apt to forget the end in arriving at what they considered to be the correct means.

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Undoubtedly the Area Health Authority boards represent the administrative focus. The chairmen of these will be appointed by the Secretary of State and the members will be predominantly appointed by the Regional Health Authorities, who are themselves also to be appointed by the Secretary of State. It would appear to me that the master's voice will echo along the complete administrative chain, from the Elephant and Castle to the North, South, East and West of the country. The question is, therefore: can these proposals be regarded as democratic? Also, am I right in thinking that they may cause some trouble before we arrive at an acceptable arrangement?
I served my political apprenticeship in local government, and I am alarmed by the criticism of the scheme in London by Alderman Shearman. Alderman Shearman is the Chairman of the London Boroughs Association, and everybody here will agree that he devotes his life to matters of this kind, is steeped in local authority work, is a man who really must know what he is talking about, and is also a man who would not, because of his work, frivolously condemn any measure which the Government produced. But he has condemned the Bill as illogical and irrational. That is very strong language coming from a man in his position.
Should we leave officialdom to choose the representatives for what we hope will be a more responsive Service? A recent Answer in this House provided me, at least, with evidence that the official mind is not always attuned to making the right decisions regarding the choice of the appropriate person for a particular function. There were many noble Lords present in the House when I asked that Question, and it will be recalled that a working committtee was, quite recently, established by the Home Office to examine the whole question of bail. With the thought of Holloway Prison and those unfortunate wives and mothers—women who I knew would be longing for bail at Christmas—I listened incredulously to the long list of committee names consisting solely of men. When I asked why not one woman had been chosen to help consider a woman's problem, I was told that the members were chosen only on grounds of merit and use
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fulness. I do not know whether the wives of noble Lords in this House have any merit or usefulness, but the fact is that never before has the whole female population been condemned as lacking a modicum of merit and usefulness for considering women's problems. I quote that as an example of what happens when officials are left to choose a committee. That was not in the last century, my Lords, but only two weeks ago. When I think of the composition of these administrative committees of the Health Service being nominated by like-minded, prejudiced officials I do, if it is possible for me, tremble.
Over the years, as we all know (and many noble Lords here were with me in the other place), we have had frequent debates on different aspects of the Health Service which make depressing reading if one takes into account the repetitive nature of the contributions. Time after time, either noble Lords here or Members in another place have raised similar questions; but the years have passed, there have been yet more debates, and one still feels that no notice has been taken and no action proposed. For my own part, I have asked successive Ministers to provide a comprehensive domiciliary service on the grounds of providing care and treatment for those, particularly the elderly and the disabled, who are anxious to remain in their own homes. This seems to me the very essence of common sense; and having myself been in practice for so many years, I know that one should regard this as a priority in considering the reorganisation of the Health Service. Frankly, my Lords, it has never ceased to astonish me that the Treasury have always failed to recognise that a comprehensive domiciliary service, with its proper quota of home helps and home nurses, not only is a humane concept but would save large sums spent on hospital accommodation. One has only to think of the queues of people waiting to get a hospital bed, and of the people at home whose lives would be more ordered if the sick man or sick woman who was still compos mentis was still in the home, where they longed for them to be. The first thing I should like to learn—because not only am I concerned with the means, but I am thinking of the end—is, will this new form of

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administration provide this full, comprehensive service? That is the one test I shall apply in assessing its value.
In the Health Service, as in other services, key workers are of paramount importance, and I should like to think that more attention is given to the appointment of key workers throughout the country. I have in mind my own borough, the Borough of Camden, where—and I think I have said this before—some of the key workers, including the Medical Officer of Health, possess a high sense of duty and vocation which is reflected in the medical and social services of the borough. As I read this long Bill about these complicated committees I know full well that in certain boroughs, where there is an administration similar to any other, we can get a first-class service with the present administration; yet in another borough one can find similar officials and similar committees but a third-rate service for the people.
Most of the points I had it in mind to refer to have been mentioned, and in the time at one's disposal one must be very limited. It is intended to establish community health councils for the purpose of channelling complaints. Again, these bodies should reflect the public interest; yet they are to be mainly nominated, and consequently will deny the community genuine participation. If we are told that we are to have an organisation set up to protect the community, then surely it is the community that should be represented on these committees. While the Health Service Commissioner will be welcome, I still find it difficult, although I have read the relative parts of the Schedule and the Bill, to define where his powers begin and end.
I am assuming, I hope correctly, that the Commissioner will act as the watchdog of the administration, carefully guarding the quality of the service by exercising vigilance; and I should like to think that this includes the appointment of key officials. He or she—and, my Lords, I am a realist and an optimist—should not wait to receive complaints, for this Bill empowers the Commissioner to initiate complaints concerning those departments which fail to administer in the spirit as well as according to the letter of the law. Now we all know that individuals or committees can be identified
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with some kind of action that should take place, but unfortunately so many of them fail to act with promptitude. I hope that the Commissioner will take prompt action when necessary, and there will be no undue delay. For the success of the reorganisation will depend on the quality of management and on the co-operation of the component parts.
I want to say just one word about Wales, if my noble friend Lady White will allow me, because I know that she is going to speak particularly about Wales; but being married to a Welshman makes me very Wales-conscious. I observe that in the Welsh Grand Committee Mr. George Thomas, a former Secretary of State for Wales, said that one of the curses of Wales was the nominated body. He then referred to what he described as a most disturbing deterioration of the general practitioner service. Undoubtedly the valleys of Wales are not alone in needing more general practitioners, but this does not call for the carrot and the stick to make the existing doctors work: it calls for a policy to augment their numbers. When I said to the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, who has just spoken about the teaching hospitals, that I could not agree with everything he said, I had in mind, of course, the failure of the teaching hospitals to use the brilliant girls who wish to be educated in this country. I have already referred to this point, but I entered Parliament in 1938 and I have probably mentioned it in every Health debate since that year—and still nothing has been done. I am hoping that perhaps, at last, now that the governors, whom I have regarded as the guilty men—
LORD COBBOLD: My Lords, we have several brilliant girls in extremely senior positions.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Several: but we want more than several. We do not want a tiny proportion of the medical student population. I would go so far as to say this to the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold. I believe it may also have been in the Minister's mind that he felt the time had come to take this important power—the power which I believe they have exercised against the brilliant young women of Britain—out of the hands of the governors. I am prepared to sit down if the noble Lord wants to interrupt again.

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I have longed for this moment. I have waited for it for decades; and I am hoping that, as a result of this Bill, there will be a magnificent change.
My Lords, I just wanted to say that the Welsh Grand Committee overlooked the supply of wasted potential in the brilliant Welsh girls who failed to find a place in the medical schools—those Welsh-speaking girls for whom Wales is longing to-day, I understand—simply because a quota system dictated by prejudice has operated against women. May I finally say that if the number of doctors in the Welsh valleys fails to increase in the next few years, then this exercise in reorganisation, although it is armed with the necessary powers, will have failed in producing essential key workers. So the value of the provisions of this Bill will be judged not by the proliferation of committees but by the final bridging of the gaps in the National Health Service which have been emphasised again and again in debates in both Houses.
4.30 p.m.
LADY RUTHVEN OF FREELAND: My Lords, I should like to join with others who have spoken in saying how much I thought of Lord Rosenheim. I was rather a new acquaintance of his, but I fully appreciated his graciousness and his friendliness, even to someone he knew only slightly.
I welcome this long-awaited Bill and I want to speak on two different aspects of it. I have chosen two subjects about which I know a little. I found the greater part of the Bill almost beyond my comprehension as I do not understand Parliamentary language. But first, my Lords, as Chairman of the National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends, may I assure your Lordships that the 920 Leagues of Friends affiliated to the National Association will continue to work for their hospitals, their patients and their staffs, whatever the shape of the organisation which administers hospitals. Our loyalty is to the individual hospitals and to the people who live and work in them and the people who come to them as patients; not to any particular administrative structure. Whatever the Bill does or does not do, there can be no question about the services of the Leagues of Hospital Friends.
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My first point is a very important one. It has been mentioned before but I should like to add my words. I think the most important thing is that the Bill is designed to abolish the artificial administrative barriers between what are now three quite separate parts of the Health Service. In my talks with people in all walks of life I have found that this integration of the whole of the National Health Service into the one structure is welcome. It is not surprising that this is so, especially from the point of view of the general public who, after all, supply the Health Service with its patients, because a patient does not place his medical and nursing needs into watertight compartments and cannot understand why anyone else should want to do so.
Another important part of the Bill which I welcome is the clause which requires health and local authorities to work closely together on all matters concerned with the health and welfare of the people. The 1970 Local Authority Social Services Act did many good things, but one of its unfortunate results was the apparent divorce between the statutory provision of health and of social services. The joint consultative committees which Clause 10 requires the two types of authority to set up should, I hope, help to mitigate the effects of this divorce; particularly if, as I understand is to be the case, the two sets of authorities are to have the same boundaries. Of course, the setting up of the joint consultative committees will not by itself lead to the discharge of a single patient who is being kept in hospital simply because there is nowhere else suitable where he can go. There must also be a full acceptance by both authorities of their responsibilities. But at least the fact that the two sets of authorities have the same boundaries and are meeting together regularly to discuss common problems from, let us hope, the point of view of the patient, will help to eliminate some of the administrative confusion which now bedevils so much effort.
My main worry about the Bill is that the people who are to have the statutory duty to run the Health Service are to be so remote from the patient. The lowest level of health authority is to be the area, which may contain a population of many hundreds of thousands of people; at a

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lower level the administration will have to be done by professionals. I do not want to say a word against the professionals of the Health Service, many of whom are my friends, but I believe that the members of the Area Health Authorities, to whom the Bill gives such very wide responsibilities affecting the lives of so many millions of people, are going to find it very difficult to be other than impersonal in administering what should be a most personal service.
There are, of course, to be the community health councils and Clause 9 confers on them the duty:
"to represent the interests in the health service of the public in its district …"
But I cannot find anywhere in the Bill—and others, I have noticed, have had the same difficulty—that there is to be any duty on the part of the area or any other authority to take any notice of what the community health councils say. This I think is a great weakness in a Bill which otherwise has many good things in it. The statutory authority is to be much further away from the patient than is the case now, and I cannot say that the Bill gives me any great confidence that the community health council will be able to bridge this great gap effectively.
For the quarter century of its life the National Health Service has relied effectively on the principle of public participation. Many thousands of ordinary people have given freely of their time and their talents by serving on hospital management committees and other bodies and they have not made too bad a job of it. Now, apart from the comparative handful of members of the general public who will serve on the new region and area authorities, there is to be no place for the non-professional except on these community health councils. Are the powers of these councils to be effective enough to attract people of the calibre of those now serving on the hospital management committees? I hope so, but I doubt it, and so I am left with the conclusion that the interests of the patient are not going to be served by the new administration with the same intimate knowledge and concern as they are to-day.
My Lords, the Minister, I am sure, will be aware that there is much unhappiness throughout the country about this part of the Government's proposals. I have
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been sent reports from a number of organisations which have studied this question of consumer representation, and no doubt the Minister has seen many more. I do not pretend to agree with every recommendation in all the reports that I have heard, but there is no doubt that much hard and valuable thought has been given to this vexed problem. I hope that in making the regulations under Clause 9 he will remember how important it is that the community health councils should be independent and effective and that they should be seen to be independent and effective so that they will attract as members people of the calibre we need to represent the interests of the public.
My second point is a comment on the wording of Clause 4 relating to family planning which mentions the possibility of making charges for the service. I am concerned at recent reports that there is some disagreement about the benefits of a completely free family planning service. It is my view that a free service is the only way to make family planning really effective. Recent experience in the London Boroughs and elsewhere has proved this conclusively. It is necessary to remind ourselves of the objects of a family planning service. Recent reports by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, by the Family Planning Association and by the Birth Control Campaign have all accepted that little more than half the women in Britain who could become pregnant are protected by reliable contraceptives. As a result there are a quarter of a million unplanned pregnancies in this country each year and a large number of abortions. The aim of a family planning service must be to cut down these unplanned pregnancies drastically.
Under Clause 4 of the Bill:
".… regulations may provide for the making and recovery, in respect of treatment given and articles supplied … of charges prescribed.…"
There is a view that we must provide a full family planning service for everyone, but those who can afford should pay for it. I have much sympathy with that in theory, but unfortunately it has not worked out in practice. Experience has shown that the success of any family planning programme depends very largely on the publicity given to the service. It is obvious that a slogan such as "Family

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planning is free" is the type of thing that one could put across to the public. But, "Family planning is free if you are poor or ill" is not going to have any chance of success at all.
The case for free family planning is supported by the facts. Early in 1972 the Scottish Health Education Unit carried out a 20-week pilot study on family planning publicity, with national newspaper advertisements, and in one area alone, one that I know well, with television advertising as well. Sales of contraceptives rose by 10 per cent. in Scotland as a whole, but in the South-West, where television advertisements had been shown, the increase was nearly double the Scottish national average. Similarly, many of the Greater London Boroughs have started free family planning services this year, and those, such as Islington and Lambeth, which have advertised the service widely have found their attendances at clinics have risen by nearly twice as much as in the boroughs which have done little advertising.
So publicity for family planning is obviously essential. And we can show that we shall not be able to tackle the problem of the quarter-million unplanned pregnancies unless the family planning service is completely free. All the results available from Aberdeen and other local authorities show that family planning attendances soared when the service was free of charge. The London Borough of Lambeth has published some particularly interesting figures which show an increase in new attenders of nearly 70 per cent. Of these new attenders more than one-third had never received any professional family planning advice, and a great many were the mothers of large families. These are the sort of results that must be obtained throughout the country, but they cannot be obtained if the Secretary of State is going to make charges for the family planning service. Both contraceptive advice and supplies should be free of charge.
Finally I should like to say a word on the argument that the free availability of contraception will increase promiscuity. The evidence suggests that this argument is nonsense. The only reasonable indicator is a comparison of the number of illegitimate births with the number of women using contraception. There is
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no doubt that there has been an increase in extra-marital sex since 1960, but the figures show that the increase in the use of contraception has followed a year or two after this trend, rather than preceding it. In Aberdeen, for example, the biggest increase in unmarried pregnancies came in 1967. A free family planning service for the unmarried was introduced in 1968, and the illegitimate birth rate has since dropped from 9·5 per cent. to 7·7 per cent. In England and Wales the steep rise in the illegitimate birth rate started in 1965, while the equally steep rise in attendance in family planning clinics started after the 1967 National Health Service Family Planning Act. Obviously there is a social problem with promiscuity, but there is no evidence that free family planning services increase it.
My Lords, I hope that at a later stage of the Bill the Secretary of State may be persuaded to consider an Amendment to the wording of Clause 4 relating to charges for family planning, or at least to give his assurance that it is the Department's intention to provide the completely free family planning service that is needed.
4.43 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LICHFIELD: My Lords, I did not know the late Lord Rosenheim, so I cannot pay a personal tribute to him; but I know that the members of the Bench from which I speak would like to be associated with the tributes that have been paid to the memory of a very distinguished doctor.
I have presumed to put my name down as a speaker in this debate because I have had the privilege of serving, practically without break since the appointed day, either on a board of governors or on a Regional Hospital Board; so I have had close association with the subject. I should therefore like to say how glad I was to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, plead that with this reorganisation there should be no redundancies among our staffs. This has been a worry to our staffs. It seems curious to ask a man to sit down and, as it were, reorganise himself out of a job. I think it would be grossly unfair if people who have served the country and the National Health Service well for years lost their jobs as a result of this reorganisation. Therefore I wish to be associated strongly with what the noble Baroness said.

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With regard to the situation generally I should like to support the sentiments of this Bill and the aim behind it, because I think it is now generally realised that a closer integration of the various departments of the Health Service is needed. I hope that there will not be any misunderstanding in the country generally, because I too believe that with our National Health Service we have one of the finest examples of service to the community and of social welfare that you could have anywhere. The anxiety that has been removed from people's lives by the fact that they can get this skilled medical care free has undoubtedly been of great benefit to many thousands of our people. I wish therefore to pay a warm tribute to all those who have worked in this great Service up to the present time.
I hope that the closer integration that is to come will not be just on the administrative plane; it must be right through the Service. Presumably, the family doctor will practise the primary health care. He will promote health and prevent disease to the best of his ability; and when possible he will diagnose and treat. The doctor and the community health team will be based on the health centres. Those teams have to co-operate with the consultants and their teams, who are based on the district general hospital in each area, and various teaching hospitals. I hope that we shall have the closest possible co-operation between the family doctor and his team locally and the consultant and his team based on the hospital. The more interchange there can be between them, the better. Therefore I hope that it will not be just on the administrative plane that we shall have this greater interlocking.
My Lords, may I say a word or two, first, about the joint consultative councils, and then the community health councils. The joint consultative councils. I should have thought, would be very important indeed, because obviously there must be the closest possible co-operation between the Area Health Authorities and the local authorities, whose boundaries are going to be coterminous. It therefore appears to me that the joint consultative council will have to perform the vital role of ensuring this co-operation, and will have to resolve disagreements as and when they arise between those two bodies
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as of course they sometimes will. I hope therefore, as is suggested in the Bill, that they will be able so to advise the authorities that these disagreements are eliminated to the maximum extent, because otherwise it is difficult to see how those two authorities, the Area Health Authorities and the local authorities, will be able to achieve co-operation, in view of the fact that they are both responsible to different Ministries.
With regard to the community health councils, I should like to be associated with the remarks that have been made by the noble Lady, Lady Ruthven of Freeland, because I am bound to say that when we think of these similar bodies in other aspects of the national life—perhaps transport—can we say that they have always been as effective as has been hoped for? I do not know. And, as has been said, have the authorities which in the end have to make the decisions really taken much notice of what has been said? They probably have done so sometimes. But I am bound to say that the community health council is something to which the Government ought to give more attention before the Bill finally becomes an Act. I also wish to ask: is it wise that the councils should be staffed by people who are seconded from the Area Health Authority? I cannot help feeling that staff in that position may on occasions feel that they are serving two masters. I feel that the community health council would be in a much stronger position if, as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, said, they had their own resources, their own staff, their own premises and were people who could stand on their own two legs. At the moment, I cannot help feeling that in the end they will not be able to stand up against the Area Health Authority should a disagreement arise.
Nevertheless, I strongly agree with the general idea of the community health council and I would plead with the Government to remember that in this regard the Churches might be given their reasonable representation. I use the word "reasonable"—we do not expect more than that—because, after all, there is an old-age connection between the work of healing and the Churches. During the 25 years of the existence of the National Health Service, a number of

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us have had the privilege that I mentioned just now of serving on boards of governors, Regional Authorities, hospital management committees, and so on, and sometimes executive councils. We welcome that. I should be very sorry indeed if all that seemed to disappear under the new set-up. I do not see that there is going to be much room for the likes of me in this new Area Health Authority, with all the emphasis on managerial expertise and the like; but it seems to me that it would be on the community health councils that we should like to serve and to help to the best of our ability.
In regard to the making of complaints and the proposal for Health Service Commissioners, that also I should like to welcome, because the fact that we now have Health Service Commissioners will give much public confidence in the Service. As I understand it, there is no need for the complainant in these instances to go through his Member of Parliament. I think that this is a wise provision and I am glad that the Government have taken this step. But again I hope there will not be misunderstanding. It should not be thought that up to the present time complaints have just been brushed aside as if they did not matter. I have served for years on a general purposes committee of a Regional Board, and that means that I have regularly seen the complaints that come along and the way in which the staff have dealt with them. I have seen the letters they have written and I have been amazed, time and again, at the patience they have shown and the courtesy with which the matters have been dealt with. I do not want that aspect of it to be forgotten as we think of the new arrangement whereby we shall have the new Health Service Commissioners.
There are only two other points I should like to make, and they concern voluntary work and the work of our chaplains. In regard to voluntary work in the National Health Service, how well I remember the speeches made in this House by, among others, the noble Baroness, the late Lady Reading, with her great record of service for the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, and the way she used to plead that voluntary work
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should never be forgotten! I believe that voluntary service for the community is something that is characteristic of the English way of life, and rightly so; and it is based on sound Christian principles. I therefore welcome the provision in the Bill that there should still be scope for voluntary work in our hospitals and in various aspects of the National Health Service. I believe there is still a considerable pool of people from whom we might get more voluntary service in various ways; and that that voluntary service should continue is what I am sure we all desire. Certainly the Churches would like to feel that they still have scope in a voluntary capacity for their moral welfare work and the like, by means of which they have been able to make a distinctive contribution over the years.
As to our chaplains, we have a bit of a worry here. In the past we have been urging that the chaplains should be invited by their hospital management committees to make regular reports so that the hospital management committees might appreciate and understand the work which the chaplains were doing and realise what was being done by people whom, after all, they had appointed. It is good, too, for the morale of the chaplains that they should have the opportunity of making these reports. I take it that under the new set-up the chaplains will be appointed by the Area Health Authorities. They will be very much more remote, as has already been pointed out in this debate, because not only will they have a bigger area to cover but also much greater responsibilities to assume. Therefore I hope that thought will be given to this matter. It may seem a small one, but it matters a great deal to some thousands of chaplains Church of England, Free Church and Roman Catholic. If thought could be given to the way in which they would be able to have direct personal contact with the people who employ them, I think that would be very beneficial to the work that is done. We, for our part, are trying to see that the work of the chaplains is improved, if it possibly can be. We have appointed a strong committee under the chairmanship of Professor Sir Ronald Tunbridge, which at the present time is surveying the whole of the chaplaincy work and will shortly be making a report. I hope that will help

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us very much in our thinking on this matter.
My Lords, in conclusion, I should like to wish this Service well and hope that the reconstruction will bring about what we all wish for. This Service, as I have said, is something which has done great things for the people of our country for many years, and I hope that with this reorganisation it will go forward still more strongly. Although I know that I shall be one of those who will be phasing out, inevitably—anno domini calls for that—I shall nevertheless watch the Service with great interest and, as I say, wish it very well.
4.57 p.m.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, I should like to say how very much I appreciate the opportunity of following in this debate the right reverend Prelate who has just spoken. For many years he was one of my constituents and I had many opportunities for discussion with him and of hearing during the later stages of my Commons career about his work in the Birmingham region. When he talks about being "phased out because of anno domini", I trust that that is only the kind of little joke that is sometimes made when one is talking like this, and that he will continue for many years to give his valuable services. I say that with strong feeling, my Lords, because he has information and experience at first hand of what the National Health Service means to the rural areas. And, of course, there are many facilities, including communications and transport, which are available in urban areas but do not exist in rural areas. We ought to think more and more of what it means to a man, his wife and family who live in these more remote parts where access to hospital facilities is not so easy.
It has taken 25 years for a revisionary Bill to come before Parliament after the original Act, which started its life in 1946. In parenthesis, may I say that I think I am one of only two members of the original Committee which in 1946 gave its attention to the original Bill then before the House of Commons that eventually led to the establishment of the National Health Service. What the position will be like in another 25 years, none of us here can tell, except that I suppose we shall be in the European
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Economic Community, or something larger; and no doubt we should think a little about the shape of things to come, because we may have to amend further our own National Health Service.
Going back in time to the first Green Paper, which was published in 1968, I should also like to pay a tribute to Mr. Kenneth Robinson, the then Minister of Health, because he did a magnificent job, and a very imaginative one, in seeking ways and means of bringing the Service up to date and rectifying old errors. Although there were criticisms at the time of that Green Paper—most of which were rectified in the second Green Paper of 1970—nevertheless, in the matter of the popular elected representation on the various committees to be established, this Bill is somewhat reactionary in tone. The yardstick of efficiency, as has been said by speaker after speaker, is that a man or woman shall be appointed according to their ability to produce their quota of managerial efficiency. I do not agree with this yardstick, especially in the rural areas. What should be the yardstick is the ability to comprehend the requirements of an area, and to know the needs of the humans involved. That may not always follow 100 per cent. the economic factor.
I believe—and here I want to be careful in what I am saying—that we are missing an opportunity to remove one of the great weaknesses of the position as it is at present; namely, the rather faceless image that we find in the higher echelons of the National Health Service. The people who are on the Regional Boards are largely the people whom the public does not know. The right reverend Prelate is well known in the Birmingham area, but there are many people who are not known. This is a pity because they should have accountability to the public, not merely to the people who appoint them. On the question of the appointment of people to regional boards, and sometimes to the lower levels, I know that this theory of efficiency was met with tremendous resistance by one's advisors on the grounds that you did not want people who would rock the boat too much; you did not want people who were going to be tactless in what they said in public. These things are all true, but in the past we have lost by not having people on

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these various bodies who would go back to a given area, meet the public and account for what they had been saying and doing.
We should pay a great deal of attention to the community health council, and to the equivalent bodies dealing with general practitioners, especially the family practitioner committees, dealing with the community health councils. This should be—in fact this is in the Bill—partly a critical role, but it is not in the nature of human beings to be very critical if they know that the patronage (if I may use that term) by which they have been put on to a board stems from the people who are to pay them. I should have thought that it would be far better that the community health council membership should come from a higher body altogether, from the Minister himself, and the critical role should be protected so far as possible. Nor do I think that the small membership appointed by the local authorities is adequate in this context. I am going to ask your Lordships to be patient with me if I somewhat broaden my horizon by asking this question: are we really getting our priorities right? Is there a need for a Commission to study such questions of whether we are casting our finances in such a way as to give people the optimum scientific benefit which we know is possible if our finances were not prejudicial to the whole set-up as it is now. We still appear to spend far less in this country per capita on social services than is being spent in countries in Europe.
In a Parliamentary Question in another place in February this year, the Under-Secretary of State gave the expenditure per capita on social services in 1968 for the United Kingdom as £91; for France, £146; for Germany, £141 and for Holland, £114. If you translate those figures into the percentage of the gross national product for certain countries—and I must confess that these figures are slightly old because no newer figures are available—we find that as a proportion of the gross national product spent on social services, including all health expenditure, the United Kingdom was 12·6 per cent. in 1966; France, 15·6 per cent. and Belgium, 16·3 per cent. I quote these figures to demonstrate that we are ham
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strung by a political atmosphere in this country; namely, the prejudice engendered in the early days of the establishment of the National Health Service, whereby ever since this country has felt and has been led to believe that it spends far too much on the National Health Service. The fact is that we spend far too little. Although the position is rectifying itself whereby the expenditure on defence is reducing a little proportionately, nevertheless much has to be done to bring ourselves up to date comparable with these other countries. May I ask the Minister of State whether he will pay some attention to the availability of statistics in this matter? It is very difficult to extract strictly comparable figures so that we can judge where we are going.
I ask your Lordships to permit me to put one or two questions to the Minister of State. Clauses 16 and 17 of the Bill deal with the disposal of property. I am not a lawyer, but from the clauses I read that this is property in the possession of hospitals as a result of endowments. I am not certain whether the remarks I have to make are covered by these clauses, and I do not expect the Minister to give me an answer now. But I think it is worth noting that up and down the country there are hospitals with vast acreages of land which is not usefully used. It may well be that things have changed from the time when I had a hand in looking at the figures. I know of a case in East Suffolk, and one in Surrey where hundreds of acres are used as parkland which have great value, and which might well be used for helping in the finances of the National Health Service, and would certainly alleviate the land shortage. We know that all hospitals and all authorities responsible for hospital development must plan for future expansion. Having said that, I think it is a matter that ought to be looked at.
Another question which is implicit in the family practitioner committees' responsibilities is: has anything more been done about assisting general practitioners in a specialist role? I believe that work has been done on this. I am referring again to the deep rural areas where there is a shortage of medical practitioners and a long waiting list of people who want to see consultants. Sometimes

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it is quite possible for medical people who have a knowledge superior to that of the ordinary practitioner, and who have the qualifications which could be useful, to deal with such cases.
Another matter I would raise is this. Under the powers vested in the Regional Health Authority in the matter of available capital there will be the continuing problem of the small local hospital. We all know that there is great sentiment to retain small local hospitals. We all know they are largely uneconomic. We also know that many cases can perfectly satisfactorily be handled by small local hospitals leaving free beds in the big district hospitals for which there are long queues, especially in certain specialties. What is going to be the policy in this matter? During the past two years I have detected a slight change in policy whereby it is said—one hopes it is said seriously—that, so far as possible, small local hospitals will be retained, with all the medical dangers that that involves. There is a case for it, of course, provided that there can be an adequate medical filtering service.
In talking of the wider horizon just now I mentioned the role other countries were playing in the provision of social services, including those for health. But we ought to be most careful not to emulate what has been going on on the Continent recently, where a social insurance reimbursement system has resulted in a thoroughly weak service in most countries concerned. Whereas years ago these insurance reimbursement systems were being lauded to us as examples of careful housekeeping, as opposed to the freedom of expenditure by the National Health Service, this is no longer true, and other countries in Europe are now looking to us as providing 100 per cent. coverage for the population, with efficiency, which is not met with in these other countries in Europe. Indeed, the huge number of prescriptions in Europe in most countries is strictly at variance with the relatively modest number of prescriptions issued in this country.
I have always been someone who thinks that the whole basis of the National Health Service, as the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, said a little while ago, must fundamentally be the general practitioner. He is the basis of the Service. I should have thought that when the Minister
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comes to issue regulations on the duties which the family practitioners' committees will carry out, in collaboration with the associated bodies of a given area, a good deal more attention must be paid to the right of access for general practitioners to hospitals. I do not mean in taking their cases to hospitals; what I mean is what applies, for instance, in certain teaching hospitals in London: general practitioners have a right to go into these hospitals and be briefed and brought up to date on almost what might be called a month-to-month basis. They can spend a day there once a month. It does a lot of good and much can be achieved in this way. Of course, it is always possible that one can gain wrong impressions front short briefing such as this. Nevertheless, I know that certain general practitioners have secured great benefits from the access they have been given in certain, but not all, teaching hospitals in London.
The sciences change so rapidly that one hesitates to call on one's experience of two or three years ago, but I well remember the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield firing a shot across my bows some years ago in connection with the Abortion Act 1967. At that time I was a junior Minister playing an active role in the passing of that Bill. I remember that at the time I thought his fire was misdirected. It is a matter of opinion. The fact of the matter is that one cannot do without public opinion, lay or otherwise, when medical matters are being legislated for. I take the view most strongly, and hope your Lordships will agree with me when I say, that you can have opinions broadcast right, left and centre about various scientific matters; it is when the pendulum centres that you will get some element of efficiency, taking into account all the factors. My Lords, I wish this Bill success—much can be done in Committee—but it is a long time overdue.
5.14 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, at the risk of our tributes to Lord Rosenheim appearing almost too fulsome, I feel that I must add just a few words, for he certainly was a friend of mine for at least 35 years. Like me, the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, was extremely glad when we knew that Lord Rosenheim was to join us in this House and, further, we were

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glad and proud to be his Sponsors on the occasion of his Introduction. I feel that if Max could have known that this was going to happen, he would perhaps have wanted me to say how much he regretted not having spent more time in your Lordships' House since he was created a Peer. But it will be remembered that at that time he was both President of the Royal College of Physicians and Professor of Medicine in one of the greatest teaching hospitals in the world, and therefore was not able also to do his duty by this House as he would have wished. It was always his intention (he said so to me many times) to put in more time here as soon as he was freed from those duties. He was in fact freed from those duties quite recently; but since then he has been abroad, so that the time has never come when he joined us as a regular attender at this House.
Before I start on the few remarks that I intend to make on this subject this afternoon I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood, whether he is right in talking about a general practitioner's "right" to come into a hospital. I think that what he means is a general practitioner's "welcome" to come into a hospital. I myself believe that a general practitioner has a perfect right to come into a hospital. Needless to say, he must be a little careful that he does not interfere with work that is going on there, but he has a perfect right to come and visit his patients whenever he can. Many general practitioners do not make use of this facility; many of the best ones do. But many feel that they are not welcome; and it is really the welcome, rather than the right, which I believe the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood, would like to see given—as indeed I should.
In speaking on this subject I should perhaps say that I speak entirely for myself and not for any particular members of my profession. Indeed, it may be that some of the things I say will not be those that would be the most likely to be said by certain members of my profession. My remarks, of course, are entirely non-political, as is the subject, if only because the intention to reorganise the Service on the kind of lines now proposed has been expressed for many years,
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both by the previous Government and by the present Government.
My Lords, I am one of those who have been wholeheartedly in favour of the National Health Service from its initiation, and concerned to see that it shall be as good as possible, and not concerned in trying to make it not work. I myself believe that what Bevan fought for so hard—and he had to fight hard against certain sections of my profession—in getting his own way in this Service has largely proved right. We have a great deal to be grateful for, both to "Nye" Bevan and also to the noble Lord, Lord Moran, who was here earlier, but is not I think in his place at the moment, and who played an important part in getting the Health Service through at that time. He was able to see the wisdom of a great deal that Bevan was doing. I do not think that our clinical independence as doctors has ever been threatened, as was the fear at that time of many people in the medical profession. Indeed, it seems to me that our clinical independence has at times been treated with even too much respect. In any case, as the doctors say in the United States, the biggest threat to professional clinical independence in the prescription of treatment for a patient is the patient's ability to pay for it.
As a senior medical man nowadays I naturally get opinions from a number of people who, in one way or another, have had personal experience of the Health Service. They fall into two main categories. There are those who tell me (and these are the majority, although good news is never quite so interesting as bad news) of the wonderful treatment they have had, how grateful they are for free treatment, consultations, drugs, with freely available services of specialists and hospitals. So I want to emphasise them first; and of course they nearly always thank the nurses as well, if they have been in a hospital, and they praise their own doctors at home for their care.
On the other side there are, of course, the complaints. What form do they take? One man will say, "My wife has been in hospital for three weeks. They say she is going to have an operation, but nobody tells me when it is going to take place or even what it is all about. We do not even understand the nature

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of the illness and I cannot get to see the consultant"—and so on. I am sure your Lordships have all heard things of that kind. Another one will say, "I am told that I shall have to wait for a year and a half to get my hernia done if I have it done on the Health Service". Another one says, "My doctor is too busy to listen". Another one says, "I went to hospital four weeks ago and my doctor has not yet had a report".
The point I want to drive home this afternoon is that these complaints can be put right only by individuals: not by managers, not by reorganisation, not by administrators but very largely by the doctors themselves; and I think it is time the doctors started reorganising their work on these lines. Fortunately, this does not by any means apply to all doctors; but there are far too many doctors who are tremendously keen on their actual job but try to shrug off any kind of responsibility for making these little improvements in the Service which would make such a difference. It goes down from the doctor, whom I still regard as the head of the team, so far as medical care is concerned, right down in a chain—the doctor, the hospital sister, the nurse, the therapist, secretary, porter, and all kinds of people. As we all know, there are good and bad hospitals, and these are almost entirely matters for individuals to put right.
Perhaps I may give just one illustration to keep your Lordships entertained for a moment. My nephew and his wife were among those who telephoned me and said that their son was in hospital and they could not get to know exactly what was wrong with him. Somebody said he had pneumonia and somebody said he had not. So I telephoned someone I know at the hospital and I said, "By the way you have my great-nephew in hospital". He said, "Oh, have we?" I said, "Yes, a chap called Platt". He gave me an account of what was wrong and was very reassuring. But the sequel to the story is that the next day when my nephew and his wife visited the boy he said, "Mummy, am I very ill? I have had at least ten doctors to see me to-day". I am sure your Lordships will all agree that in an ideal Service this need not happen. It certainly should not happen.
One of the things that worries me most about the Service (and again this comes
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down to individuals) is the difference my influence could make—and it should not.
I believe that some of this spreads from the Porritt Committee—and here I am going to make some more remarks which may not be entirely popular with the profession. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, referred to the Porritt Committee, which was set up by the B.M.A. about ten years ago. Although I have no right to say this, it always seemed to me that the Committee was set up to indicate all the ways in which the National Health Service had failed. To the great surprise (I should not like to say "disappointment") of the members they found that most people, both doctors and the public, positively liked the Health Service. The members of the Committee could not say that the things that were wrong were the fault of the medical profession, so they said that they might be the fault of the tripartite system—and there I think it all started. That is not to say that I do not agree with them to a considerable extent. I believe that in some ways the tripartite system makes things difficult, and in some ways what is proposed in this Bill may be an improvement. But I go a long way with the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, when he said—and I think he was quoting—that you should not dismantle a machine or an organisation which is working fairly well unless you are quite sure that you have something better to take its place.
For all these reasons, my Lords, I greet the Bill with what Gilbert might have called "modified rapture". What was wrong with the Regional Boards? I visited every senior administrative medical officer in England and Wales every year for four years when I was the chairman of the Distinction Awards Committee. I think that magnificent work was done by the Regional Boards, and I should like to ask the Minister to say what was wrong with them. Some of them, of course, had too big a responsibility—too remote a responsibility, unquestionably. For instance, the fact that the Sheffield Regional Board was answerable for Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and so on, involved too big a command, and a certain amount of reorganisation was necessary.
Will the general practitioner be any different if instead of by an executive

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council he is looked after by a family practitioner committee? Is there in fact any real difference between these two bodies? Is the tripartite division of the hospital service from the general practitioner service wrong because of the organisation, or is it because the consultants and the practitioners do not bother to pick up the telephone and talk to each other? Will the position be any different when the practitioner is answerable to the family practitioners service? The only difference is that they now will be under the same authority; but it never really mattered who paid whom. The fact that I was a hospital doctor paid by a university and that a general practitioner was paid by somebody else never prevented me from talking to the general practitioner, or his talking to me. So I have certain doubts as to whether this will create any fundamental difference in the Health Service.
There are certain things on which I feel I might express an opinion. I think the sacrifice of the boards of governors of the teaching hospitals is a difficult and controversial question. There is a good deal to be said on both sides. I see every point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold; but I also hear the other side, concerned with the jealousy and frustration which exists in some of the non-teaching hospitals, which nowadays are doing a great deal of the teaching and who have got neither the status, the facilities nor the money that the teaching hospitals have. They want a little larger share of the cake, even though everyone agrees that the teaching hospital must have a liberal budget, for it is there that a good deal of the research and most of the teaching is done.
I agree in principle with the separation of functions. The boards of governors on which I have sat have been too large and have contained a large number of people who have not really taken any share whatever in the administration. Indeed, so far as I was concerned they need not have been there, except that they were there, for example, to represent Rochdale or something of the kind. It is important that Rochdale should have a representative, but not necessarily on the high-powered governing administrative body, and to that extent the community
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health council is a good idea. It is absolutely right that those at the receiving end—including the people in the localities who know what is going on and who are aware, for example, of the need for better maternity services in, say, Blackburn—should be represented and their point of view known. However, I do not think they should necessarily believe that they are also governing the Health Service at the same time. That is one of the most important matters which the Department will have to re-examine. The Bill is far too vague on this subject and I suggest that the Department reread the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield about the importance of these community health councils.
On the whole I favour nomination after consultation to democratic election. I should have thought that democratic election was much more likely to lead to nepotism, although the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, seemed to think otherwise. Election often means the same old chaps being put in office and this frequently leads to cliques. On the whole, therefore, I am not greatly alarmed by appointments being made by Area Health Authorities or by the Secretary of State after consultation with the appropriate bodies. As for management, I hope that after the frantically interesting excerpts of the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, from the Grey Document, it will be laughed out of phase before it takes root too deeply.
There are only a few other points about which I wish to comment at this stage. I still do not know what the Hospital Commissioner will do, though I agree that it is a good idea to have such an appointment. As I said in the debate on the Queen's Speech, I hope lie will have a preventive function and will, for example, make those who work in hospitals more careful lest they run into the kind of difficulties which will be brought before him. I should like the Minister to give an example of the sort of complaint which will come before him in view of the great many things appearing in Schedule 3 which it seems he will not be able to investigate. I hope that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness who will speak for Wales will tell us what they think about appointments made to senior medical posts in Wales, if it is not to have a

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Regional Health Authority but only Area Health Authorities, because in my view those senior appointments should be made by an authority bigger than an Area Health Authority.
If only to save my being struck off the register, which is quite popular nowadays. for unprofessional conduct for saying things about the faults of my profession, will anyone reporting my remarks—that is, in the newspapers rather than in Hansard—please mention that I also have the greatest admiration for all those in the Health Service who look after these details in addition to doing their proper professional jobs extremely well and that I still believe that British medicine is the best in the world.
5.36 p.m.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, I do not imagine that any members of a hospital management committee will be happy about their dissolution, any more than the monks were happy about the dissolution of the monastries, but the fact remains that the religion of those monks survived, and I feel sure that the Health Service will survive, though in a different form. I have little knowledge of the services other than the hospital services, but I believe that I can talk with some authority about the Bill and certainly as it affects hospitals and those who deal with children and the mentally handicapped. Before proceeding, may I say that although some of us, and I admit that I am one of them, do not feel particularly happy about the Bill, I feel strongly that we should examine its clauses in a most responsible manner, especially as it is the first major Bill to come before this House prior to its consideration in another place. We owe a great debt of gratitude to my right honourable friend Sir Keith Joseph for showing such confidence in my noble friend Lord Aberdare and this House by allowing so important a Bill to be introduced here for our consideration.
Two successive Government have agreed that the health services of the nation should be amalgamated, and I have no quarrel with that. However, I feel apprehensive lest by placing emphasis on management and disbanding so many voluntary bodies we may be taking the humanity out of the Hospital Service. May I illustrate this by quoting some figures, which I believe to be
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accurate as an average throughout the country? There are at present 300 hospital management committees with 20 members each, giving 6,000 persons; there are 34 boards of governors with 25 members each, 850 persons; 15 Regional Hospital Boards with 30 members, 375 persons; 119 executive councils with 30 members, 3,570 persons; 158 local health authorities with 15 members, 2,370 persons, making a total personnel of 13,165. In future there will be 90 Area Health Boards of 15 members each, giving a personnel of 1,340, and I think my noble friend said that there would be 14—in fact, I thought there would be 15—Regional Health Boards with 20 members each, making a total, according to my figures, of 300. This gives a total of 1,640 members. I have not tabulated the community health councils as they have no executive role and I shall be speaking about them later. These figures show that the Health Service of the future will be run almost entirely by professionals, and I am not alone, even among the professionals, in fearing that this will lead to a bureacracy and a loss of that humanitarian touch which, to my mind, has been the essence of the work done by volunteers in the Service.
My Lords, there can be little doubt that, like the proverbial curate's egg, hospital management committees are good in parts; but it is difficult to see how 15 members of an Area Board will be able to carry out the inspections, social functions and hospital visiting which is now carried out by hospital management committees and their house committees, especially in the area in which my group will be situated—Sutton, Merton and Wandsworth, which has a population of some 700,000 and 30 hospitals, apart from the other services which will be welding the Health Service into one entity.
There is little difference between the Green Paper of the previous Government and this Bill except that this Government have, I think wisely, introduced the Regional Health Board in between the Department of Health and the Area Board. The very fact of doing that should enable the Regional Health Boards to have more areas under them. Clearly, if Area Boards were reporting direct to the Department, the Department would wish to see as few Area Boards as possible; but with 15 Regional Health Boards being

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responsible to the Department it is logical to assume that a Regional Health Board should deal with more areas.
May I now say a few words about the district officers. The Grey Book, which we have heard so much about and which sets out the internal organisation, says that an Area Board will have a team of officers and that these officers will be paid more than the district officers. In each district there will be a team of officers similar to the professions represented at the top level, but it is emphasised that the district officers will not be under the Area Board officers but will report direct to the Board itself. Is not this as if in the present set-up the officers of a group hospital management committee did not report to the Regional Board officers but direct to the Board, which, to my mind, would cause great chaos? I hope that my noble friend will be able to explain to me the thinking behind that decision.
My Lords, may I now turn to the community health councils. I am disturbed that they will have no power whatsoever and no executive responsibilities apart from the power of their persuasion in reporting to the Area Board. Naturally, these councils will have more duties than just the hospitals, but I feel convinced that their main task will be to act as a vital link between the patient in the hospital and the Area Board. They will have to work in closely with the district officers and will need young, enthusiastic people on the council. I fear that without a budget or authority it may be difficult to get the best people to serve. The value of these councils will depend very much on the co-operation of the officers and I hope that they will have a great deal more than just free access to the hospitals. For this reason, I would ask my noble friend to do all he can to ensure that the councils have offices within the general hospital around which the district is to be planned, so that they can be part of the hospital set-up and not merely visitors who may, in some cases, be thought of as snoopers. In this way they can plan their visits and, above all, be known as real members of the team, and close to the officers with whom they will be working.
May I turn for one minute to the Leagues of Friends. Their role in the
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reorganisation will, if possible, be more important than it has been up to now. I trust and believe that they will have the full co-operation of and be able to work with the community health councils and the district officers, and will, where necessary, have access to the Area Board. The work they do is beyond praise. We must ensure that they do not feel left out and that they get the full co-operation of all. Without them, indeed, we shall be lost.
My Lords, I have been critical of the Bill, but I hope in a constructive way. The late Lord Norwich called his memoirs Old Men Forget, but it may also be said that "old men remember" and when we who are getting on in years start remembering we are apt to get set in our ways. That is the time to make way for the younger generation. 1974 will be the year of the professional administrator in the Health Service. I am deeply grateful to the officers in my group for their loyalty and sound advice which has enabled me and my hospital management committee to make some small contribution to the welfare of the many patients who have been under our care. I hope that this reorganisation will bring in many more young administrators, and if I could give them some advice I would say "Democracy as we know it in this country breeds humanity. Bureaucracy breeds dictatorship". The next year will not be an easy one, but I will do all I can to ensure a smooth takeover for the new regime in 1974.
5.46 p.m.
BARONESS MASHAM OF ILTON: My Lords, having recently been at a meeting chaired by Lord Rosenheim, I should like to add my name to those who have paid tribute to a very great man. Also, having had the pleasure of taking part in the debate just over a year ago on the Consultative Document on the National Health Service Reorganisation, I feel a sense of great privilege at having the chance yet again to join your Lordships in a debate of such importance. I feel strongly that the National Health Service is of great value to everyone who is fortunate enough to live in Britain, but I hope with all my heart that this united Service will be greatly improved when it is reorganised. Since 1948 the Service has done a wonderful job. Of course there

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have been gaps, but looking back at the health facilities for the ordinary civilian in many countries, even nearer to us than the United States of America, I, for one, am pleased to be British. Having recently visited Germany and seen some of the wonderful new rehabilitation facilities they have, I think that the time is ripe for the reorganisation of our own National Health Service.
My Lords, I hope that everyone concerned will look closely at all aspects and facilities of our country's health and try to bring them up to date throughout the country, with one thing foremost in their minds: what is going to be best for the patient. For surely it is the patient around whom the whole of the National Health Service should revolve, with emphasis on how to avoid people becoming patients. I hope that this will not be left solely to the health care groups.
The voluntary organisations should be pleased that they are being welcomed into the reorganised Service. Unlike the attitude in 1948 when they were discouraged, the present Government know only too well what a mammoth task they have to provide a good health and after-care Service without gaps. In 1948 the Heath Service gave the attitude, "the State will provide". But statutory bodies ever seem to provide only the bare essentials. Many hospitals would be very sparse, uncomfortable places if it was not for the wonderful support and help given by such organisations as the League of Hospital Friends, the British Red Cross Society, the Women's Royal Voluntary Service—to mention just a few. Against adversity, such bodies have battled on, knowing the patient needed them. I hope that they will now feel a sense of satisfaction because they have proved their point that they are needed and will be an accepted part of this reorganised Service. Some hospitals have appointed organisers of voluntary help. If voluntary help in hospitals and the community is to be successfuly and efficiently carried out, surely all bodies using voluntary help ought to follow this example.
One of the biggest challenges of our modern society must surely be to try to combat the loneliness of multitudes of people. There are many very lonely, able-bodied people who lack confidence to help the many lonely elderly and disabled people who become immobile. Somehow
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these two sides of loneliness should be helped to come together and solve each other's problems. All too often people involved in organisation are so busy doing their own thing that they are too busy to widen their own circle and bring in others. I sometimes wonder whether each volunteer does not guard his own job too jealously. There are many various jobs that need to be done and that are vital to the happiness of some families living in the community. These jobs—for example, providing a baby-sitting service for families who have mentally or physically disabled children—might suit special small groups of people. Will the volunteers who are willing to undertake such jobs be able to get the training that they themselves feel they need? Who will finance and organise it?
Then the modern tendency for there to be more elderly and mentally and physically disabled people living in the community will surely mean that more paid people will be needed to look after them. This point was also made by the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill. I think it would be wrong to depend on the volunteer to undertake this task. Does the Minister think it might be possible to have courses to train some of the many young people who are now leaving school with little prospects of obtaining a job? At the moment, the Government are running courses for the less able young person who would otherwise be unemployed. If at the end of the course he or she still cannot get a job, this must lead to frustration. If he or she were trained for the job of a community orderly or community nursing auxiliary, paid as a hospital orderly and able to work as an aid to the community nurse, this should solve two problems. When these young people had completed the courses they would at least have a job to go to, and the people needing care would be catered for.
As stated by many other noble Lords and Ladies, I feel that the duties of the community health councils as set out in the White Paper are too flimsy and vague. It says:
"It will be for each council to decide how best to go about…"
serving the interests of the public. Up to a point freedom and flexibility is excellent, but in this case I believe that more of their duties should be written

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in, so that they know the minimum expected of them. Is it not time that we had some standards set to aim for? Otherwise, the same old story of the good areas and the laggards will prevail. It will be interesting to hear where the community health councils will operate from and what facilities they will have, such as clerical support. So much vital communication which could pass through them may be lost if they are not given a loud voice which can and should be heard throughout the organisational structure. This council could be the vital link which has been missing for so long between the patient in hospital and the home. I am sure that it is beneficial for information to be passed to the patient about hospital life when entering hospital, and on discharge information should be given to him on what is available and who to contact if he needs help when he goes back into the community. When one looks at the vast new hospital palaces, one realises how remote the patient becomes from his usual environment, far away from all those he knows and all those he loves. Unless the social services are closely linked, the patient will suffer. Will social services which are working for one community with the health authorities have regional organisation such as the Regional Health Authorities will have? How will this be organised, if the new local government authorities are not directly linked to the proposed Area Health Authorities?
If to-day the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, can do something to assure the family practitioner that he is a really very important part of the reorganised Health Service, the noble Lord will be doing more than this Bill has done. Also, if the noble Lord can convince this House that the Bill will be democratic in operation, with the consumer at heart, I for one will be more willing to accept it. Many general practitioners have a general feeling of distrust of the term "management", perhaps because of possible loss of medical freedom which might be implied in it—and this Bill seems to have more "management" than anything else. If the general practitioners could be more fully represented on the various committees, they might feel themselves to be a more integrated part of the Service.
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Many doctors who feel general concern for the patient believe in the essential unit of medical practice as the occasion when in the intimacy of the consulting room or sick room the person who is ill, or believes himself to be ill, seeks the advice of a doctor whom he trusts. This is the consultation, and all else in the practice of medicine derives from it. With group practice some doctors fear they may lose this contact. Perhaps they should look at it rather from the angle of a group of practices. This will benefit the doctor and he will still have the crucial patient-doctor relationship. Some general practitioners feel that ancillary workers already have too much responsibility and access to patients without referral from the general practitioner. If they could be chairmen perhaps they would accept the team more readily. If the doctors build up resentment to this new approach to treatment, patients, as always, will be the ones who suffer. It is because of this that I feel so strongly that the general practitioner needs to be given a very big boost in the new National Health Service. They should be the first people patients contact; and their early correct diagnosis can be a matter of life and death. They will be better general practitioners with expert training, and will be happier and more contented if they have good working conditions. They will feel more part of this new Service if they feel that their voice is to be heard throughout the management. I was very pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, in her excellent speech, stress this point.
My Lords, looking at the overall picture of the reorganisation of the National Health Service reminds me of a marriage. The partners must not sit back and lead their own individual lives. As the years go by, if it is to be a successful partnership, they must grow together in united co-operation. Otherwise, jealousy and frustrations arise and breakdown is inevitable. Those who are hurt are the children. If this were to happen with the National Health Service those to be hurt would be the patients.
5.58 p.m.
LORD WATKINS: My Lords, the noble Baroness recently addressed a conference in Wales, and the Welsh voluntary workers applauded her. I am sure

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on behalf of your Lordships I can applaud what she has said to us this afternoon; and we are grateful. All I hope is that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, when replying, will not devote all his time to replying to the noble Baroness, because I too have a few points to raise, but hers was a well-constructed speech which deserves attention by the Minister of State. First of all, I want to declare my interest, as chairman of the Border Counties Wales Hospital Management Committee. I may say to the noble Baroness that I wonder how many hospitals in the country have a seat on the house committee for members of the League of Friends. We in our group have, and I am very glad they are doing such good work.
I am agreeable to the unification of the three branches of the Health Service. I should have preferred to see a review into each of the existing structures, to ascertain whether anything was lacking. The Wales White Paper and the Report on management arrangements give us a great deal of advice, but I should like to ask the Minister what is meant in paragraph 4 of the Foreword, when it says that not all members would subscribe to every idea in the Report. Does this mean that there is a Minority Report? If there is, can we be told what was in that Minority Report? Or is it that the American consultants would not agree? Generally, I agree with the majority of Welsh Members of Parliament that there should have been a separate Bill for the Principality. The Welsh Counties Committee and the County Councils Association would have preferred that the organisation of the Health Service be administered by local government, because we feel that the experience in respect of personal services like education and social services is valuable. I gave evidence to the Crowther Commission on behalf of the Welsh Counties Committee, and we came out in favour of an elected Council for Wales. I still think that that is the answer to the upper tier in Wales, and not the Regional Authorities that we see in England. The Bill asks for control to be vested in the Welsh Office. Why should we have to tolerate civil servants, different from the situation in England, on the question of management? There is now a nominated Welsh Council, and
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I should like to see the concept of receiving advice from that Council safeguarded. If the Commission favours an elected Council, maybe those powers will be laid down.
May I put some questions to the Minister of State about the Welsh position. First of all, we have been accustomed to getting reports from the Welsh Hospital Board on, for example, children in hospital and travelling to hospital. Shall we get such reports in the future? If so, will they be Command Papers, or will they be H.M.S.O. publications? It is a very important point for us in Wales. The recruitment of medical and administrative staff is also important because of the abolition of the Welsh Hospital Board. There are about 700 people in that Service. What is going to happen to them? Some of the senior medical officers, as the noble Lord, Lord Platt, has already mentioned, are disturbed about their future. Do they go to the Area Health Boards, or will they come directly under the control of the Welsh Office? I know that the fact that the Welsh Office would govern the Health Service means less scope for lay influence for Wales than under the English model.
I turn to the White Paper and management arrangements. The new model appears to be derived from industry, involving the concept of line management hierarchy. There are no changes as to the point of contact for the patient; little attention with regard to surgeries, clinics, wards or theatres. Even the nurses pass from one authority to another. The G.Ps. continue as individual contractors, managed and controlled by family practitioner committees. How is this new set-up to tackle the problems of recruitment of medical workers, physiotherapists, social workers, and trained nursing staff in rural areas, particularly in geriatric units? As chairman of a hospital management committee I am always worried when it comes to making appointments, even of consultants, when I am on an advisory committee, because sometimes there are no applicants at all. The strange thing in this society of 1972 is that, with another gentleman, I had to make a short list from 261 people who applied for the post of an assistant National Park warden. Is it not strange that the Health Service cannot get people to come into the Service?

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My Lords, I come next to the Area Health Authority and the Management Report for Wales—and a reputable medical authority has given me this information. The authors of the Welsh document have done their best to press the facts of Welsh life into an English urban world. They have not given sufficient attention to the aspect of management in Wales, itself. As chairman of a management committee I am not only worried about the appointments, I am worried as to why insufficient attention has been given to Central Wales. There are to be eight Area Health Authorities, and they will be more remote from the public than at present. Let us look at the membership. There will be 120 lay people, compared with 230 on management committees. Powys, which is in central Wales, as your Lordships will know, has no district hospital; but I say that if it cannot have a district hospital there should be a sub-area hospital. Let us examine the case for three health districts. There are suggestions that there should be two in the Powys authority, but it is not certain. However, we must get that, because we have had three hospitals which care for mental health.
Now may I come to the community health councils, where the same situation arises. There should be in each county—Montgomery, Radnor and Brecon—a new district or a new community council, not one community council to cover the whole area. There are 15 hospitals in that area at the present time with 109 members, plus 28 H.M.C. members serving on house committees. In future, if this Bill goes through as it is, there will be only 30 members administering that vast territory. It means that there will be a distance of approximately 100 miles from Machynlleth hospital to the Adelina Patti hospital—and not very good territory to travel in the winter months. May I say about the health community council (I am not the only one who has criticised this) that it has no teeth. It is similar to the gas and electricity consultative councils; I am afraid that H.M.V.—"his master's voice"—will be talking all the time.
I welcome Clause 10, which provides for consultation between health and local authorities, and I hope that when the Ministers concerned have consultations
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with the association of local authorities they will remember that the Welsh Counties Committee is a separate organisation, although attached to the C.C.A. We want separate consultations, and we do have a Secretary of State for Wales. Coming to the Health Commissioner for Wales, I welcome this, in one sense, but I hope that what we hear these days, that the English Commissioner may be looking after Wales as well, is completely wrong. We want a separate Commissioner. I go further: why cannot we have one Commissioner for health, local government, and water services? Why not have one Commissioner doing the lot, provided that he is Welsh-speaking? It is important for us to have someone who understands Welsh, because if complaints are made it may be possible to listen to those personally, or to understand them, if they occur in letters. I know that staff are available to translate Welsh letters into English, but for me, as a Welsh-speaking Welshman. I prefer one who has a knowledge of the Welsh language.
I feel that in the documents we have had before us, there has been too much emphasis on management control, creating a rigid, bureaucratic regime as against democratic control. At the same time, I hope that full utilisation of medical knowledge to maintain the best possible standard of health among the community will be carried on as it has been for the last twenty or more years. May I end by saying that I am one of those unfortunate people who have to attend their G.P. practically once a month, a clinic once every two months—and that for the last 42 years. You may guess what I am suffering from. Let me say to the medical service that I should not be here now, speaking as I try to speak to your Lordships, had it not been for the great assistance and co-operation that I have always had all along the line in that regard. I want to express my appreciation to the staffs who are working in the Health Service, for the good work which they have done, to the members of the Welsh Hospital Board, and particularly to a friend of mine, Gwilym Prys Davies, the present Chairman, to the hospital management committees, to the executive councils on which I have served, to the health committees of county councils, on one of which I still serve, and, finally,

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to the voluntary workers who are continually helping us in the hospital service. I join with the noble Baroness who opened the debate from our side, and say, "Let us look to the day when there are no charges on health."
6.11 p.m.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I think my noble friend Lord Watkins will understand if I am not able to follow him into the realms of Welsh nationalism. I listened with great pleasure to the concentrated and expert speech of my noble friend Lady Serota, who seemed to me to shoot the Bill down in flames. There appears to be a great divide on the Bill between the Government and the Opposition. I cannot pretend to understand the Bill and will limit my corn-meats to Clause 4—the family planning service clause. I agree with the noble Lady, Lady Ruthven of Freeland, who spoke on this subject. The noble Lord, Lord Platt, told me that he also intended to speak on this matter, but mixed up his notes and left it out. I should gladly have listened to him. On the other hand, I am rather pleased that he mixed up his notes, because there would then have been nothing left for me to say.
Clause 4 is a very short one, consisting of 89 words in 9 lines. First, let me examine the language, for if the words are scanty the language is distinctly circumspect. For example, it states:
"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to make arrangements, to such extent as he considers necessary to meet all reasonable requirements … for the giving of advice on contraception".
How shall we interpret the word "reasonable" in a legal document? In a recent debate, we learned that what is reasonable for one man is an outrage for another. I am puzzled by the inadequacy of this clause, because until now the Government have shown an enlightened attitude to the problem of birth control. In 1971, Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State, offered Government support for trebled national expenditure on local health authorities' family planning services in 1972. This encouraged certain local authorities to introduce a free family planning service under the National Health Service. Nine London boroughs, and as many in other parts of Britain, have a free family planning service because in their experience where no
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charges were made the numbers seeking contraception advice increased substantially. Clearly, the need was there. But this Bill includes regulations which provide for charges for treatment and for articles provided. Why is there this step backwards, and what is to be done about the local authorities who already have a free service? This is not the first example of the way the Government scorn the cooperation of local authorities, which is so necessary in this field.
This Government are very quick to claim that public opinion is on their side in the measures which they bring forward, and they can now rightly claim that there is public concern about the rate of population growth in this country. There has, indeed, been a tremendous change in the climate of opinion about birth control, but that has not been matched by the spread or take-up of information on contraception. It has taken over 50 years work by organisations such as the Family Planning Association and the Brook Advisory Centres, and the endeavours of voluntary workers, to achieve a more rational attitude to contraception. These organisations have been barred from publicity because of their charitable status, and advertisements were legally limited to the size of a large postage stamp in a quasi-medical paper. But a week ago there were full-page advertisements in several popular Sunday papers, sponsored by the Health Education Council, headed, "How to avoid an unwanted baby." The advertisements were completely unadorned, were full of information, and were directed towards men as well as women. Men have always been careless, irresponsible lovers.
If any noble Lords are under the illusion that publicity is not necessary, they should turn to the objective surveys which have recently been published. There is the one by P.E.P., which is a study of patients' attitudes after an abortion, which concluded that many married and unmarried women are woefully ignorant about contraception, and that modern techniques of communication are needed to get this information across. That survey also pointed out that, usually, it is not promiscuity but romantic love, coupled with ignorance about contraception, which leads to unwanted pregnancy. The study by the outstanding social scientist, Geoffrey

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Gorer, in his book Sex and Marriage in England To-day revealed the same alarming prevalence of ignorance, and carelessness in the taking of precautions against unwanted pregnancies.
I should like to mention the Birth Control Campaign, one of the organisations in this field which is free to campaign among the political Parties, because it does not have charitable status. It has drawn up the draft of a birth control service for Britain, setting out proposals for a full free comprehensive service within the National Health Service, and this draft deserves serious attention by the Government.
I am happy to say that in this debate there has been no loose talk about loose morals in connection with family planning, though I have heard that the Government are anxious not to appear as if they are condoning sexual laxity. I hope that this is only a rumour, and "gone with the wind". Finally, my Lords, the population bomb is ticking away in Britain to-day and the Government have an opportunity to defuse it by spreading a comprehensive free birth control service throughout the whole country.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, as she did me the honour of quoting me at my request, saying that I intended to say something about family planning and so on, may I say that I was going to do so but I should not have done it half so well?
6.20 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I should first like to make an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and to your Lordships, in case I should have to leave before the end of this debate. I should not have put my name down to speak had I not thought that I could stay to the end, but we have not in fact been doing very well so far. I shall do my best therefore to join with the noble Baroness who has just spoken in being rather brief. In case I am not able to stay, perhaps I may say that I am not in fact asking the Minister any questions although I propose to serve notice that there are one or two points which I wish to probe at the Committee stage. My noble friend Lady Seear will be here and will also be able to tell me what happens; and of course
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I shall read what the Minister has to say in Hansard.
My Lords, I want to talk about consumer protection. A number of noble Lords have already done so, but consumer protection is a particularly difficult subject in this field because, on the whole, the consumers are extremely weak. When you are feeling ill you do not feel like making much of a row or a protest; and when you are well the first thing you want to forget is your illness, and you do not really have time to ally yourself with other people into consumer protection groups. Therefore, it is a good thing that nature appears to have looked after this aspect by making it also a field in which the people who are the opposite to the consumers—I suppose in this case the dispensers—are the kindest, and in which one can rely almost entirely on the doctors and nurses, hospital staffs and everybody, to give the very best help and care to everyone under their charge. Nevertheless, human nature being what it is, and in a big outfit like the National Health Service, I think it is very necessary that we get our consumer protection right.
The community health councils, I am sure, are going to be a very valuable innovation, and I certainly should like to welcome them. But I question whether we have gone far enough in, as the noble Lord, Lord Watkins, said, giving them teeth, because they certainly have not got any teeth. Now we know that in fact the Area Health Authorities and the community health councils will work together very much, whatever arrangements we make, but I think we also know from other consumer councils and consumer watchdogs like, say, transport consultative bodies, that what one needs to do is to give the councils some very real powers and some very real independence so that if, in the 999th case out of 1,000, it should become necessary for them really to stand up to the people with whom, for the rest of the time, they will be working extremely well and in an extremely friendly manner, they will do so. That is why I should like to see the community health councils less dependent on the Area Health Authorities for membership and less dependent upon them for money and facilities. I think I should like to see a National Community Health Council, if you can have such a thing, combining the various com

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munities and acting as a national body. I think I should like to see all these councils helped in the way of money and facilities direct from the Department of Health and Social Security, and not being dependent upon their Area Health Authorities. I also think that possibly the local community council should have a right to appear before and to be heard by the Regional Health Authority as well as its local health authority. I think there are probably many ways in which we could strengthen the position of these community health councils, and I do not believe that if we did so it would lead to added friction. I think that it would merely lead to just that much more attention being paid in some rather difficult cases to the local council.
I also welcome the appointment of a Health Commissioner. Again, in Committee I should like to probe his powers. As the noble Lord, Lord Platt, said, if you look at the Schedule which excludes all the things that he may not inquire into it looks as if in fact he will have nothing to inquire into at all; and I wonder whether we should definitely extend the powers of the Commissioner a little. For instance, the great majority of hospitals now have ethical committees, but one or two do not, and I think I am right in saying that only one in five of these ethical committees have any laymen or lay representation on them. I do not see any reason why we should not institutionalise into the law these ethical committees, and I do not see why we should not bring them into the purview of the Commissioner. I think the question of privacy, which as we all know is a perennial problem, not because it is a very widespread one (I hesitate to say that) but because where it crops up it tends to cause difficulty and trouble, is one which may well come under the aegis of the Commissioner. It may be that it does. If it does, I should be very glad to know it; but if it does not, I think we might consider bringing it in.
Those are the two areas—that of the Commissioner and that of the community health councils—where I think we ought to probe a little further; and may I say how much I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Watkins, when he appealed for a Welsh Commissioner who should be Welsh-speaking. I think it is extremely important that, in any area where you are
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dealing with complaints by people, the person whose job it is to do that should be one who people feel is as sympathetic as possible, and certainly someone who can speak the language which, for some of them, may be their first language. I think this is a very real point, and I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, that these are the reaches of Welsh nationalism. I think this is an essential point.
Perhaps I may close by saying that I know that the kind of thing I am saying and the kind of Amendment that I hope may be put down by myself and others at the Committee stage sometimes tend to put up the hackles of doctors, although not sensible doctors like the noble Lord, Lord Platt, and my noble friend Lord Amulree. But this is the fact, and it may indeed tend to put up the hackles of the advisers of the Government on this matter. May I just say that I cannot see how we do any harm whatsoever if we strengthen consumer representation; and we must remember that, good though our Health Service is—and it is very good—and good though our doctors are—and they are very good—when people are ill and when they and their relatives are really helpless, it is not that they need protection so much as that they need all the reassurance that they can get. The building up of consumer protection in this field is therefore a very important factor.
6.29 p.m.
LORD COTTESLOE: My Lords, the purpose of this Bill, as we all know, is the integration—or, as it is now fashionable to call it, the unification—of the administration of the health services in the interests of efficiency. It is a purpose that we all support, and support wholeheartedly. To effect this purpose, it sweeps away ("abolition" is the word used in the Bill, in Clause 14) every existing authority in the Service: Regional Hospital Boards, hospital management committees, executive councils, joint pricing committees, boards of governors, local health authorities and all joint boards under Section 19 of the Act. All will cease to exist on the appointed day, April 1, 1974. The sole survivors in this holocaust are the boards of governors of the 12 specialist postgraduate teaching hospitals set out in Schedule 2. These are, for the most part, small hospitals with international reputations doing

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important specialised work; hospitals that do not conveniently fit into the new structure and whose place has still to be worked out in the light of experience. With this small though important exception, every existing authority in the health services will be swept away and replaced overnight by something different.
The Bill effects a major revolution, let us make no mistake about that. The new organisation will work. There will be a period—possibly quite a long period; perhaps even as much as five years or more—while the new system is settling into smooth working: a period of disorganisation, of muddle, severe at the outset but steadily decreasing. That is the inevitable consequence of an administrative revolution. But the new organisation will work because the devoted body of those who operate the Service, doctors, nurses and laymen alike, are determined to make it work for the benefit of the patient and the public in accordance with the peculiar pragmatic genius of the British people. It will work, but will it work better than the existing system which has, with all its faults—and they are not few—settled down over the years into a reasonable working organisation? Will it work better? That is the million-dollar question.
My Lords, in many fields I am without doubt that it will work better, and we must all hope that it will. In some other fields there must be grave misgivings. So far as integration is concerned, in the unification of the three branches of the existing Service, the hospitals, the general practitioners, the local authority services, it would, I think, be generally accepted that the weakest link is now the general practitioner. Between the hospitals and the local authorities there is in general happy co-operation, but general practitioners tend to be individualists and in many cases they are not close enough to the hospitals on the one hand or to the local authorities on the other. That is the greatest weakness of the present tripartite system.
In Clause 5, and in Schedule 1, paragraph 2, the Bill specifies the composition of family practitioner committees. But if we turn to the so-called White Paper—it is of course blue—in paragraph 186 we find that these committees are to replace the present Executive Councils
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on an area basis; and earlier in the Paper, in paragraphs 66 to 69 we are told that the general practitioners now provide a service as independent contractors and will continue to do so; and that the family practitioner committee will be made up in the same way as the Executive Council that at present administers the general practitioner services and on all matters of its work will deal direct with central Departments. In fact, though appointed by the Area Authority they will not be administered by the Authority but by the Department. They are the Executive Councils all over again, and far from being integrated into the area service the general practitioners will be administered, in matters of contract, terms of service and discipline, direct by the Department through the family practitioner committee. So much for unification; the least integrated Dart of the Service is not to be integrated with the rest of it at all.
What about efficiency? As to the effect of the new arrangements in the field of the local authorities' domiciliary services, I cannot speak. But in the field of the hospitals it seems very doubtful whether the new arrangements will promote efficiency. And in the field of the teaching hospitals, of which I have a particular knowledge and experience, it appears beyond doubt that so far from promoting efficiency they will have precisely the opposite effect. If there is one thing about this Bill that it is possible to predict with certainty it is that the efficiency of the teaching hospitals will suffer. I know that there are those who dislike the teaching hospitals, a dislike founded perhaps on jealousy; because it is thought that they get too big a share of the cake, as my noble friend Lord Platt said; or because they think the boards of governors are undemocratic and object to them on that ground as—I will call her my friend, although she sits on the other side of the Chamber—the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, considers. Those people could not be more misguided. The great teaching hospitals maintain exemplary standards and it is essential for the wellbeing of the whole Service that they should do so. If they do not, the doctors they train will be launched into the Service accustomed to lower standards and it is on the standards they grow up with that the standards

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and the morale of the whole Service ultimately depends. That, I take it, is sufficiently obvious.
It was therefore natural that many of us who are concerned with these hospitals should have been anxious to know who under the new arrangements will manage the hospitals. It was not until August, I think, that the Paper on management arrangements, the pale grey Paper—perhaps appropriately coloured—gave us the answer. We find it on page 99 of that almost unreadable document in paragraph 11(2). It appears that a creature elegantly called the "sector administrator" will replace the house governor of teaching hospitals or the hospital secretary elsewhere. At present the house governor of a teaching hospital manages the hospital, under the direction of a board of governors who deal direct with the Department. This, though perhaps it is inconvenient to the Department, is a short and simple train of command and a highly efficient system.
Under the new arrangements, the sector administrator who replaces the house governor is to manage the hospital under the direction of a district management team, a purely bureaucratic body, apparently—as was pointed out by my noble friend Lord Cobbold—of co-equals without a head but with a district administrator "as a general co-ordinator"—I am quoting the document. This amorphous body is responsible to the Area Health Authority (Teaching), which in its turn looks to the Regional Authority and incidentally, the management Paper extends the functions of the Regional Health Authority much beyond those envisaged in the White Paper. I shall return to that in a moment. The Regional Health Authority is responsible to the Department. And so, in place of the short and simple train of command—Department to board of governors to house governor—we have the multi-tier organisation, Department to Regional Health Authority; Regional Health Authority to Area Health Authority (Teaching); Area Health Authority (Teaching) to district management team; district management team to sector administrator. Can anyone in his senses really suppose that that cumbersome and bureaucratic multi-tier set-up will lead to greater efficiency in the hospital at the end of the chain? To
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use a phrase of the Duke of Wellington, people who will believe that will believe anything. Of course the efficiency of the teaching hospital will suffer; it is bound to suffer, and in the long run the whole of the hospital service will suffer, too.
There are some other features of the new arrangements in so far as they concern London to which I should like to draw attention. In the first place there are the Regional Health Authorities. These bodies were envisaged in the first instance as a new kind of animal, something entirely different from the present Regional Hospital Board. They were to be bodies with very little more than broad planning functions, as is made clear in paragraph 37 of the White Paper. But the Management Paper goes a good deal further in developing and extending the role of the Regional Health Authority, and the Minister has told us that the new regions will approximate closely in their boundaries to the old. It appears that in London (I do not know about the arrangements elsewhere), the Regional Health Authorities will occupy the same offices as the existing Regional Hospital Boards. No-one who has had much to do with public administration can really doubt that this is "asking for it". What will emerge at the end of the day is the same animal: the Regional Boards all over again, with the same powers, or nearly the same powers, but extended over the wider field of the Health Service. If my noble friend, when he comes to reply, tells me that that is not the intention, of course I shall believe him. But while it may not be the intention, everything conspires to ensure that it will be the result; that when it comes to the point the leopard will be found not to have changed his spots.
I now come to the delimitation of health areas in Greater London, which is not specified in the Bill, but has been notified at the same time to those concerned. This is a matter that presents peculiar difficulties, for various reasons that I need not go into now, and a number of attempts to resolve them have been made. The Department first put forward a proposal for 16 areas; the boroughs proposed 19 and so on: various ideas were put forward. After a long struggle, the Teaching Hospitals' Association persuaded the Secretary of State to agree to

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their employing a firm of outside consultants to make an independent and objective assessment, and they came up with a proposal for fewer and larger areas stretching outward on a sector principle. They proposed that there should be eight such areas. Their proposals were warmly welcomed by the London teaching hospitals, and warmly supported by the University, who are of course closely concerned that the facilities for teaching should be adequate and suitable. The Secretary of State has gone back to his original theme, with some minor variations, and, perhaps largely influenced by the boroughs (who are the people the least concerned), has decided on 16 areas, an inner ring of teaching areas and an outer ring of non-teaching areas.
I have no personal axe to grind over this matter. My own hospital, Hammersmith, will, with Charing Cross, be in a teaching area comprising Hammersmith, Ealing and Hounslow, an outward-looking sector that will provide an adequate population of about three-quarters of a million. This will suit us very well; indeed, I am not sure that the sugggestion did not first come from me. In any event, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend. In some of the other areas, however, the difficulties are left quite unresolved. I shall be interested to know the reaction of the University. Apart from the facilities for teaching, how on earth do the Department think they are going to staff the Area Authorities and the organisation in 16 areas in Greater London? I do not believe that individuals of the necessary ability and experience exist in sufficient numbers. It would be difficult to find enough even for eight areas.
There is one particular matter of detail that I would ask my noble friend to consider, and to consider most earnestly. In the area comprising Harrow and Brent there are two hospitals with rather special characteristics, different characteristics, which require, if they are to continue to do their special work effectively, particularly understanding and sympathetic governance. One is the Central Middlesex Hospital, a large district hospital of very high standards that has for many years been closely associated with the Middlesex Hospital in its teaching arrangements. The other is the very im
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portant district hospital at Northwick Park, as yet only two-thirds built, with a large and potentially most valuable unit of the Medical Research Council incorporated into it for purposes of clinical research.
An Area Authority composed on the basis of a teaching authority would certainly have a better and more sympathetic understanding of these hospitals and of their special needs than an ordinary Area Authority; and as under Clause 5 of the Bill the Secretary of State can establish an Area Health Authority (Teaching) if,
"he is satisfied that the Authority is to provide substantial facilities for clinical teaching",
I hope the Minister may be able to tell me that the desirability of establishing Harrow and Brent, in the exceptional circumstances, as an Area Health Authority (Teaching) will be considered. I am sure that if that could be done it would make all the difference to the development of the special and important work of those two hospitals. No doubt the University and the Medical Research Council will be asked for their views. If it cannot be done in that form, perhaps it would be possible for some special link with the adjoining area in which the Middlesex Hospital and St. Mary's are to be established.
In conclusion, my Lords, let me say again that, with all its faults, the new organisation will work, and will be made to work by those concerned. And let me beg my noble friend the Minister to reconsider, before it is too late, the arrangements for the metropolitan regions in the hope of producing Regional Authorities that are in fact the different animal that the Secretary of State encouraged us to expect them to be; areas that are outward-looking sectors which will enable the London teaching hospitals to help to fertilise the outer parts of Greater London.
6.47 p.m.
THE COUNTESS OF LOUDOUN: My Lords, in the 1970 Green Paper on the future structure of the National Health Service, with regard to the sharing of professional skills, the conclusion reached by the Government at that time was stated in paragraph 31 as follows:
"The Government has decided that the services should be organised according to the main skills required to provide them, rather

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than by any categorisation of primary user. Broadly speaking, the decision is that the health authorities will be responsible for services where the primary skill needed is that of the health professions, while the local authorities will be responsible for services where the primary skill is social care or support"
This brings me to Clause 18 of the Bill, dealing with transfers to employment by new authorities and social service authorities. There is a sharp division of opinion upon this within the social work profession. Many hospital social workers and medical authorities have expressed serious concern at any suggestion that social work in hospitals might cease to be provided by a separate group of social workers, with specific training in social work in a medical setting, employed direct by the National Health Service.
I do not share their concern. I personally feel that, taking the broad view, the transfer to local authority responsibility would, first, remove the barriers standing in the way to providing the best possible service for patients and clients over the whole range of their needs; secondly, benefit both the health and local authority services by providing for the best use of scarce resources of skilled professional manpower; thirdly, enable hospital social work to remain in the main stream of professional developments; and lastly, assist the development of inter-relationships between the authorities. This last point I think is most important. The importance of working together relates to the need to consider the person's social and medical needs together for help to be effective.
Local authorities seem to have been given a duty to provide a social work service. I do not see anywhere, but believe there should be, a duty on health authorities to ensure the provision and use of a social work service. Social work support is at present very unevenly spread in the hospital service, and it is understandable that those hospitals with well-staffed departments and satisfactory arrangements at present should be nervous that change might be for the worse, not for the better. But social work teaching is increasingly moving towards a more broadly based approach, fitting students to work in any social work setting. None the less, this trend does not deny the necessity and opportunity for those who wish to continue to specialise to be able to do so. Of course the over-riding con
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sideration must be: what pattern of employment will provide the best service for patients and clients? There must be continuity of patient care between the hospital and the community setting and an integrated organisation of the social work support which the patient needs. I should like to ask the Minister: will there be a statutory duty imposed on local authorities to provide social work support for hospitals and, more widely, for the health services generally? Also, will there be some flexibility from area to area, and guidance as to date of implementation? Will general guidance be made available to the new authorities who will be responsible for operating the new arrangements for 1974 onwards?
I think it would help if the Secretary of State were to arrange for a Working Party to prepare guidance on all aspects of the working of the new arrangements in the period of reorganisation. The Health and Social Services should rely on each other for the skills which each can best provide, and authorities should assume responsibility for social work in hospitals. The needs of the individual in the family cannot always be divided into compartments, and comprehensive care is therefore dependent upon both social and health services being available. I welcome this Bill, however, and feel in the long run it will be of great benefit to the patient. The patient is a person, and the area boards must be sensitive to his needs and feelings as an individual in the care of the Service.
I should like to urge on the Government that whatever area arrangements are made, the continuing need of the psychiatric hospitals and their patients requires a much larger proportion of available money than has been received in the past and that there should be some system of allocation which does not perpetuate the present disparity. I welcome the idea that community health councils might in future assist management in the task of overseeing and improving the wellbeing of patients and staff. In the long-stay wards, the need for patients and staff to feel that their problems are appreciated by management is of paramount importance. Since the mentally ill, the mentally frail and the mentally handicapped make up the larger part of this hospital population I feel the needs of this group must be constantly kept in

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mind. Finally, I should like to emphasise that the end product of the Health Service is the health of the patient, both physical and mental.
6.53 p.m.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Countess, and I hope that I shall say something useful in as short a time as the noble Countess did when making her interesting contribution. May I say also how much I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, and how much I learned from that?
This has been a very fascinating debate. I have closely followed about 90 per cent. of it (unfortunately I had to miss two of the speeches) and a great many points have already been covered. It would be boring to repeat any of them, but I should like to pick up what the Minister said when he produced this White Paper with a blue back. On page vi we see these words:
"The National Health Service is one of the largest civilian organisations in the world. Its staff is growing rapidly. It contains an ever-growing multitude of skills that depend on and interact with each other. It serves an ever-growing range of health needs with ever more complex treatments and techniques. And though the Government has made substantial additions to a programme of expenditure which was already planned to grow at an above-average rate, there is never enough money—and never likely to be—for everything that ideally requires to be done. Nor, despite the great increases since 1948, are there ever enough skilled men and women."
One of the things that particularly interests me, since I have an interest in laboratory work concerned with turning out pharmaceuticals, is that in the National Health Service there must be to-day one of the greatest avenues of employment. The Health Service directly employs probably a million people. But if you take the ancillary occupations and skills, from the electronic engineer who to-day helps in the operating theatre to the biochemist and the research people working on drugs you sometimes miss the importance of the panorama of work done for the Health Service. I should have liked (the Minister just touched on this) the whole gamut of the Health Service to be dealt with in depth.
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For instance, without arguing it in depth this evening, I would say that an occupational health service is one of the things which some of us who have been connected with industry would like to see linked to the problems of industrial diseases. When I was for a short time a Minister one of my concerns was to study the problems of asbestosis and pneumoconiosis. I think the time has come when the nation should look directly at an occupational health service. There is little or nothing linking this with the place of work. I am talking in shorthand because of the time factor. I believe that millions could have been saved on the hospital service if we had insisted on beginning in reality health centres. The prejudice of the general practitioner—God bless him! he is overworked and has for a long time (though people will not believe it) been underpaid—against getting into a health service can be broken down.
One other factor I am rather afraid of here is that we are emphasising management. In the teaching profession, and in chemistry and other spheres, brilliant people too often move into a swivel chair, with the result that their real skills are lost. Nothing is sadder to me than to see a first-class general practitioner in the rough-and-tumble at the base of the pyramid of medicine going into a swivel chair in a local authority and no longer using his skills and know-how to heal the sick and the injured. I must not say that I am completely prejudiced against the idea of men with administrative and managerial ability moving out of the profession, but there is a possibility (and the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, spoke of this from his past experience) that because of the number of managerial committees we shall be looking for manpower. The tendency in the nursing profession, with the general practitioner and in some echelons of medicine, will be to take good men from their alembics and their scalpels and put them into swivel chairs. This demonstrates the point I am trying to make, although I am using a kind of shorthand. But I will not develop it further.
I should like now to mention the essential point of flexibility. In his introductory speech, for which I thank him, the Minister referred to 1974 being a deadline. One of the things about the British system of organised society is that we

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have a genius for—I will not say muddling through, but arriving at answers pragmatically. Why must everything be set down on sheets of paper? Give the medical profession, and those in local authorities who are skilled under this setup, time to arrive at their conclusions and let the organisation, like Topsy, "just grow", rather than say from above, "By April, 1974, this Bill must become an actual fact".
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to mention that under the Act that we have just passed for local government reorganisation the health departments of local government have to be fitted in somewhere? This is the reason for the deadline, in order that the health departments of local authorities can take part in a unified Health Service.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: I thank the noble Lord. My Lords, I do not want to make Committee points (although there are many that we could make) and I do not want to make Party points. I was trying to say: do not let us overemphasise dates in this quarter centenary of the National Health Service. Maybe we can talk about that during the Committee stage.
I have here an article (I will paraphrase it) from the Sunday Times of August 6, 1972. The writer says:
"The consultant's seemingly divine right to establish both clinical and social priorities within the hospital is not challenged by even the politest whisper…"
Further on the article says:
"…G.P.s can no longer be supported indefinitely in sometimes resisting health centres. Clearly, the new regional authorities will be expected to deal with this kind of question. But, dominated by doctors, and lacking a bold lead from the centre, they scarcely promise radicalism."
That is a bit hard from the dear old Sunday Times. Nevertheless, there is more than a grain of truth in that criticism of the situation.
I want to come to a point about the school health service and geriatrics. I should have liked to develop this point, but I will not do so other than to say that at the Committee stage we ought to do our best on both sides of the House to see that the maximum attention is paid to both ends of this scale of human life.
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I am glad to see that the Minister will now have more authority, not only with the schools service and the geriatric service but also in prison hospitals, and also in the areas to which the noble Countess referred, psychiatric areas.
Some 90 per cent. of the sickness we get is first seen by our hard-working general practitioners, and only about 10 per cent. by the specialists. Yet hospitals get 80 per cent. of the money. I believe that there could be a way of distributing this money more usefully. Less might be spent on furniture and more on rewarding the staff, making the nurses and the medical people happy. I know that this is true in particular in teaching and in lecturing. If the place is warm, good lecturers and students can work without having palatial buildings around them. Sometimes hospitals are built to last for ever. A hospital should not be built to last for more than 25 to 30 years, because of the rapidity of the changing society in which we live. Yet we are building hospitals as though they should last for a thousand years. These hospitals will become completely outdated, just as some of the old workhouses are now outdated. There should not be less money spent on hygiene—the operating theatre is where money should be spent—but maybe it is possible to save money in other directions. So far as the family practitioner committees are concerned, I endorse the criticisms made from both sides of the House. It is merely a change in name from the old executive council.
My Lords, I have been speaking for about eleven minutes; I am looking forward to the Committee stage, and I hope that the House will send to the other place a Bill worthy of the experiences that have been spoken about to-night.
7.5 p.m.
LORD BROCK: My Lords, we should all support attempts to improve further the magnificent achievements of the National Health Service which has contributed such benefits to life in this country. This is such a long and comprehensive Bill on which there has been much preliminary exploration and discussion in the form of Green Papers, a Consultative Document and a White Paper that further debate at this time is unlikely to be productive. Important alteration of the basic principles seems

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unlikely to be accepted and it is especially difficult to comment usefully on specific details in such a complex and somewhat technical plan concerned chiefly with administration.
One realises that when the National Health Service was first organised in 1946–48 great reliance had to be placed on the time-honoured medical set-up which inevitably supplied many general patterns of procedure and policy. It is also clear that with the passage of the years, and with increasing experience of this structure and organisation, based chiefly on time-honoured concepts, some readjustment was necessary and that in some; ways this would inevitably be radical, and directed at revision of the administrative structure. This was recognised a decade ago in the Porritt Report. One must welcome many of these changes, but not unreservedly.
It is necessary to consider that changes in the administration, beneficial though they may be, do not necessarily benefit the patient; nor do they lead to substantial improvements in the work, efforts and achievements of the doctors, both specialists and general practitioners, on whose efforts the success of the Health Service must ultimately depend. As the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, commented, the humanitarian touch may be lost.
While accepting the need for the revision of the administrative structure, and the expectation that improvements must follow this, many members of the medical profession are concerned that administrative revision has become an end in itself and that the ability to practice good medicine is impaired. They are concerned that too much control, too much supervision, too much regimentation may not only be irksome and frustrating to those in the profession, but may adversely influence future recruitment. The Government are clearly determined to exercise more managerial control over the National Health Service, but we must hope that the urge to achieve this will not result in blunting professional achievements and promoting inefficiency in the clinical care of patients, as the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, emphasised. In other words, preoccupation with administration may not necessarily achieve better doctoring. The noble
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Lord, Lord Platt, has emphasised that there is much the doctors themselves alone can do to make improvements.
Unless one is to attempt to analyse and to discuss all the long, complicated and important documents that face one, and that seem to concentrate on the pattern of organisational or committee structure, it is only possible to make simple and incomplete general comments. I single out the fear that administrative reorganisation has exceeded itself. Furthermore, that this imposition of a unified bureaucratic heirarchy in the National Health Service will lead to an increasingly rigid and inflexible system of control that becomes more and more impersonal in dealing with patients and with doctors. Of special concern is the policy of control by members of boards and committees who are appointed for what are called their personal qualities or merits, and not elected as representatives. This may be an improvement but it may equally be harmful.
One change that we must regret is the disappearance of the boards of governors of the great teaching hospitals. In this matter the Government seem to be adamant. I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, and others on this matter, and especially his emphasis on the need for retaining the importance and preserving the status of the chief administrative officer of the teaching hospitals. I must come to the rescue of the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, in the attack made upon him by the noble Baroness. Lady Summerskill. The admission of women medical students is not in the hands of the boards of governors of teaching hospitals, but lies with the medical schools. It is especially important that the art and science of the practice of clinical medicine must be shielded from any harmful effects—
LORD COBBOLD: My Lords, might I. to Lady Summerskill's advantage, point out that I am chairman of the Medical School Council too, so she has me both ways.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Hear, hear! And we know. He does not.
LORD BROCK: My Lords, doctors must be fully and solely responsible for the ethical and medical control of how they treat their patients. In spite of

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assurances that this clinical freedom will be preserved, many doctors fear that impairment of their clinical and medical freedom will result from a too rigid bureaucratic control, however desirable this bureaucratic control may be in the non-medical affairs of the organisation and implementation of the National Health Service. I fully support what the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, has said in this matter.
From the many complex matters that might be specifically referred to, I select one which causes disquiet to the Welsh medical community and to the Welsh Council of the British Medical Association: that is the fear already mentioned that in Wales there is no Regional Health Authority and that consultants and equivalent doctors in other branches should be appointed by the new Area Health Authorities. It is hoped that some special arrangement may be devised for an appointing body at a higher level. I hope that the Minister will agree that some appointing body at a higher level than the Area Health Authority may in fact be arranged and thus allay the fears and reservations of our Welsh colleagues.
7.12 p. m.
BARONESS HYLTON-FOSTER: My Lords, I also welcome the linking of the hospital and the community services, but P am frightened by the size of the Regional Health Authorities and in some cases the health areas in London, which may be convenient for administrative purposes but not necessarily for the day-to-day problems of the patients. If I may give your Lordships an example, before the 26 London boroughs were amalgamated into 12, it was possible for a voluntary worker taking round library books or meals or some such thing to an old person, and finding that old person not very well, to be able to report this fact to the town hall; then the borough old people's welfare officer would probably call round either that afternoon or, at the very latest, the next day. What happens now is that it takes at least at week before the message is received or before anything happens at all.
I also welcome that the help given by voluntary organisations is written into the Bill in Clause 13, but it is very sad to see that the Confederation of Health Service Employees are objecting to the
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use of volunteers in the Health Service for the following reasons. They object, first of all, because they say that volunteers are a threat to all staff. They say that volunteers should not talk to patients; they should not help patients with therapy—that is, making rugs or basket work or whatever it is a patient is doing; they should not write letters for patients in case there is something confidential in the letter; they should not do anything that a visitor would not be asked to do; they should not take patients on outings unless a nurse is with them. All this is in case the patient/staff relationship is upset. They also go on to say that volunteers are being used to plug the gaps instead of more staff being employed. They say that volunteers are being employed when really and truly the wards ought to be closed—that is, in some emergency one ought to close the ward instead of using volunteers. I might add that it so happened that in the 'flu epidemic two years ago one of the wards in a London teaching hospital was about to be closed because of the epidemic when the matron contacted the Red Cross and said, "Can you help?" It so happened that we had a trained sister and she volunteered and produced a whole team of Red Cross V.A.Ds. who staffed that ward by rota for a whole week until the nurses could return. I ask your Lordships to consider: what about the patients in cases like that? What happens if one just closes the ward, with all the patients in the ward and nobody to help?
The organisation I refer to also say that some volunteers are not used to working in any capacity at all and will not "muck in". Furthermore, they say that the inexperienced volunteer makes for staff discontent and insecurity. If a volunteer was trained to look after patients—it might be a retired trained nurse coming back into service or a volunteer who was trained or prepared for the job—then they say: Was that person a volunteer except in the financial sense? If a volunteer was not trained, just a pair of hands, they ask: Was she safe to be let loose in the wards?
I must confess that I was the target of this union's displeasure when I was nursing. I was a full-time Red Cross nurse on the duty rota. Because I was a volunteer I was able to volunteer for extra

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duties in times of crisis or at holiday times when there was generally a shortage of staff. The union's representative sent for me and said that I was working too hard and was in fact a bad example to the other nurses. I conferred with my nursing colleagues and they said: "For Heaven's sake, don't pay any attention!" So of course I did not and just went on with the job. This brings home to me that the Confederation of Health Service Employees seem to "have it in" for the volunteer. So I decided to see what the nurses of to-day thought of volunteers. A meeting was held quite recently where nurses in groups were discussing this problem of the use of volunteers, and one of the things they said was that volunteers could pioneer services that later on could be taken over by the State. I could instance district nursing which was pioneered by a voluntary body; then there is meals-on-wheels; there are rheumatism clinics and other clinics that were pioneered by volunteers and have now been taken over. They also said that volunteers had time to be good listeners to patients and to maintain contact with them at home after their discharge from hospital. They said that they were useful in the community services to fill the gaps between the official services and cover the hours when the official services did not work. I find it very interesting that a sister in charge of an intensive care unit found volunteers useful for reading to patients in the intensive care units, as they could concentrate on the job and help patients to relax amidst rather awesome equipment, notwithstanding that when relatives came to see patients they were rather upset by the equipment in those units, and their anxiety was transferred to the patients, which of course was not very helpful. So I hope your Lordships will agree that there is a place for volunteers.
There are two kinds of volunteers: those who want to give service and those who just want occupying. I beg the Government to recognise the difference and insist that those who just want to do something have some sort of preparational training before they are let loose on patients; as otherwise I believe the Confederation of Health Service Employees may be right when they say that an inexperienced volunteer can be a danger to
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patients and may make staff discontented and insecure, and would, I think, lay the Government open to the question as to whether the object is to find work for volunteers or to help the patient.
There are many opportunities for voluntary service in the community, and especially, I think, when the new directors of social services are getting their new departments organised. Some voluntary organisations already work both in hospitals and in the community, and they may be able to help to pioneer this gap-filling in the early stages of the reorganisation of the Health Service.
I hope your Lordships will agree that there is a service to be given by the voluntary organisations and by their volunteers, who do things for the joy of doing them and not for money, and I hope that when the Minister replies he will be able to make it clear that volunteers will be used to support the Health Service, to fill temporary gaps, and perhaps pioneer new services; and that they are there to assist the patients and staff and do not want anybody's job.
7.22 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I propose to limit my remarks on the National Health Service Reorganisation Bill to its effect upon local government. This is not an attempt to sidetrack this debate, but I think it would be a pity if the debate ended without this House having put to it what a disastrous effect some of the present drafting of the Bill before us would have upon the principles and practice of local government in this country. The subject of National Health Service reorganisation covers so wide a field that a speech of tolerable brevity must inevitably be selective, and while making due allowance for the area over which progressive fluxity and constructive thinking must continue to operate one must also stress the points where a critical difference of opinion demands fundamental reconsideration.
Local authorities naturally welcome the devolution of effective responsibility to the lowest possible running level but nevertheless express concern that at district level decision-making will be entirely in the hands of teams of professional officers without any lay involvement. At district level in the National Health Service reorganisation there ought

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be close liaison with local authorities within that district, and it is the hope of local authorities that their own officers could in some measure be involved in the work of district management teams. For instance, the Association of Municipal Corporations, of which I am one of the Vice-Presidents, disagrees with the proposals in regard to membership of authorities. In many areas authorities of around 15 members will be too small and the members themselves will have too limited a background to discharge their responsibilities.
To mention another point before I go on to the main object of this speech, it is also a fallacy to suppose that the needs of the Service can best be met by choosing members (as has been stated in one of the papers) for their personal qualities after appropriate consultations. There is no reliable way in which personal qualities can be assessed, and there is no method of consultation which is effective for this purpose. Members of Area Health Authorities and of Regional Authorities should consist in the main of elected representatives of local authorities who would be in the best position to exercise an independent judgment. The suggestions made in the White Paper not only are unfortunate for the National Health Service but represent a perpetuation in British life of a principle of patronage and self-selection which is outdated and harmful to the fabric of democracy. It is also, incidentally, a process that will tend to place far too much power in the hands of permanent officials, at the expense of lay representatives.
There are four associations whose combined knowledge of every aspect of the practical working of local government is unrivalled and obviously merits serious consideration in discussing the effective success of any such reorganisation as that which is the subject of this debate. I have studied the views of these four associations and venture to recapitulate them for your Lordships' attention. They are, to name them—although they are very well known—the Association of Municipal Corporations, the County Councils Association, the Rural District Councils' Association, and the Urban District Councils' Association. These people, whose knowledge of the actual facts of local government administration is unrivalled, speak
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with one voice on the subject of the effect of this Bill.
The four associations I have mentioned feel compelled to reiterate their opinion that both patients and the public in general would benefit from administrative unification of the National Health Service with local government. Significantly, the English White Paper in paragraph 8 states:
"There are very strong arguments for bringing health and social services under a single administration. This could be accomplished by putting the N.H.S. within local government. But, for reasons accepted and fully explained by both the previous and the present Government, that is not attainable, at least in the foreseeable future."
The decision not to integrate the N.H.S. within local government, coupled with the proposed transfer of water and sewerage to regional bodies, is seen as a major setback and a misfortune for democratic local government at a time when the paramount need is to provide a strong and comprehensive new structure and to reverse the established trend of local government services being lost to the centre or to ad hoc bodies. The weakness of this solution can be seen in the complicated arrangements for collaboration between the Health Service and local authorities. In particular, the associations are concerned to ensure that the satisfactory functioning and development of services, such as the school health service, will continue in spite of the proposed division of administration. It is noted, however, that the possible future integration of the N.H.S. within local government is not ruled out, and the associations believe that the obstacles which are said to lie in the way of this solution should be reviewed from time to time.
Having said that, let me say that in the event of the proposed reorganisation of the N.H.S. being acceptable to Parliament, the associations' objective is to make the proposed reorganisation of the Service as effective and democratic as possible. They are anxious to help in every way they can. Clearly, there must be good joint working relationships between the N.H.S. and local government and, because of this, the associations particularly welcomed the setting up by the Department of Health and Social Security of the Collaboration Working Party—to which reference is made in paragraph 56

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of the English White Paper and in paragraph 6 of the Welsh one—and its various sub-committees. They strongly support the arrangements provided for in the Bill for linking Area Health Authorities and coterminous local authorities in particular by the setting up of joint consultative committees under Clause 10.
Following detailed studies of the Bill, the associations expect to be able to suggest for consideration in Committee a number of modifications aimed at reducing some of the problems inherent in the new system and generally increasing the effectiveness of the reorganisation. In the meantime the associations are particularly concerned about two issues of principle which they trust will be thought appropriate for discussion on Second Reading. Both of these are primarily concerned with the sensitivity of the proposed arrangements to local public opinion.
First, the question of local elected representation on health authorities. If, regrettably, unification of the N.H.S. is to take place outside local government, any element of local democratic control will depend primarily on the constitution and membership of the proposed Regional and Area Health Authorities. The associations have criticised the reorganisation proposals on the ground that they over-emphasize managerial efficiency. This desirable objective need not be impaired and in the associations' opinion would be positively enhanced if there were satisfactory lay representation to ensure that the health services are reasonably responsive to local needs and opinion.
The associations are especially concerned by the lack of adequate democratic safeguards either provided in the Bill itself or apparent in the Government's intentions as set out in the preceding White Papers. In the case of Regional Health Authorities, all the appointments are to be made by the Secretary of State and although there are provisions for consultation, there is no guarantee that the interests of the public will be represented by elected members who have a responsibility to the electorate through the accepted process of democratic local government. Moreover, while there is provision for direct local authority representation on Area Health Authorities—
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this is in Schedule 1, Part 1, paragraph (2)(d)—the function of the representatives is apparently to be confined to providing close decision-making links with the local authority services. Furthermore, their precise number is apparently left to subordinate legislation on which the Bill itself provides no guidance. This is particularly unsatisfactory when criticisms have already been expressed to the Government about the proposals in the White Papers.
The effective responsibility for running the Health Service at local level is properly that of the Area Health Authority, but if this responsibility is not to be bureaucratic and professional, then it will be essential to ensure that a substantial proportion of the membership of an Area Health Authority, preferably a majority, comprises people whose eligibility for service depends on their acceptance by the local electorate—in other words, people appointed by local government. This points to an A.H.A. membership of larger than 15 and certainly to a local government representation well in excess of four. Moreover, there seems to be no reason why the Area Health Authority, if properly constituted, should not appoint its own chairman. For democratic participation in the N.H.S. to be fully effective, however, it should be noted that the local government membership cannot be regarded as being solely for the purpose of representing the interest of specific local authorities and their services. Rather, they should be regarded as representatives responsible for the wellbeing of the people living in their area and of local government services generally. With these principles in mind, therefore, the associations urge that the Bill be amended and the Government's intentions made quite clear.
My Lords, let us consider the community health councils. The associations do not accept the suggestion in the White Papers in paragraph 106 of the English White Paper and in paragraph 19 of the Welsh one—that:
"The expression of local public opinion can be catered for in one of two ways. It can be done indirectly by including in the membership of the health authorities local people serving in a representative capacity. Or it can be done more directly, through bodies specially set up for this purpose, with direct links to the authorities. The Government prefer the second course."

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In their view, the membership of health authorities of local people serving in a representative capacity is a necessary and complementary safeguard. That is the view generally held by local government in order to ensure that the public has a full say in what is done in its name. In addition, the associations believe that the arrangements suggested for the proposed community health councils should be strengthened. The associations consider that the effectiveness of statutory consultative committees depends primarily on their independence from the nationalised service or industry concerned. They also believe that this view has general public acceptance.
My Lords, the associations welcome the Government's acknowledgement of criticisms of their earlier Consultative Document on proposals for community health councils. In particular, it is noted that the English and Welsh White Papers in paragraphs 108 and 20 respectively, envisage that half the members will be appointed by district councils. But as the Bill stands, Clause 9(4) membership of community health councils is to be prescribed by regulations. Surely there should be express provision in the primary legislation that district councils are to appoint members in the same way that it is stated in paragraph 2(1) (d) of Schedule 1 that the specified local authority or authorities are to appoint members to the Area Health Authorities. Furthermore, it should be clearly laid down that each and every district council within the area of a community health council is entitled to representation.
The essential weakness of the councils will remain, however, so long as they are still to be dependent on the Area Health Authorities for the appointment of half their members, for the provision of staff and accommodation and for all their expenses. In particular, the staff responsible for formulating and pursuing community health councils' criticisms of local health services will be National Health Service officials whose professional future will depend on maintaining the goodwill of their National Health Service colleagues and superiors. That is manifestly wrong. On that basis the councils will be insufficiently independent to have an effective and worthwhile role and cannot be expected to enjoy the confidence of the
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public as representative of their interests in the Health Service. The associations believe—
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for a moment? I am wondering whether he is speaking on behalf of himself or whether he is regaling us with the views of the associations because, of course, in our Companion to the Standing Orders it says on page 85:
"When speaking in the House, Peers may indicate that an outside body agrees with the substance of the views that they are expressing; but they speak for themselves and not on behalf of outside interests."
I want to be quite sure that the noble Lord is speaking for himself.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I am sorry if I have not made that clear. I am speaking for myself but I felt that as a person I should carry far more weight if I could say that the associations agreed with these views. I am, of course, as I stated at the beginning, an official of one of the associations in question. In my opinion—and the associations believe this also—these proposals are misconceived and should be reconsidered to serve the interests of patients and the public more effectively. Community health council independence from the National Health Service can be achieved in various ways, but in our view the most satisfactory would be to rely on existing local democratic processes. On that basis, local government could be made directly responsible for the councils' staff accommodation and expenses. Similarly, the appointment of representatives of local voluntary organisations should not be left to the National Health Service but should be settled by local agreement between the voluntary organisations or, in default of agreement, by the proposed joint consultative committees. Clause 9(4) of the Bill provides for the details of these arrangements to be settled by regulations. But the associations trust that the principles involved will be regarded as being of such importance to the future of the Health Service as to justify my stating these views in your Lordships' House.
My Lords, may I emphasise that the critical tone of some of my remarks is in no way meant to detract from appreciation of the hard work, skill and

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thought which has gone into the production of the Bill before this House and which reflects great credit on the authors. But perfect mechanical machine-like efficiency is surely not the be-all and end-all of successful administration in human affairs dealing with the health and happiness of millions of people. It is personal involvement that lends any such scheme as this the vitality that spells public interest and proud personal responsibility. May I then, in conclusion, have the temerity to quote to the Government Front Bench the old motto:
"When workmen strive to do better than well they do confound their skill with covetousness."
And may I end with the suggestion that at the Committee stage of the Bill it can be improved on the lines indicated to-day to your Lordships.
7.47 p.m.
LORD HAYTER: My Lords, the Minister of State will be glad to hear that I am not going to follow the last speaker's train of thought. I am going to speak for myself but I have to admit to the House, as it has heard before, that my thoughts are often coloured by what I hear and discuss in the King Edward's Fund. Like everybody else who has spoken, we support this idea of integration, but for my own part I am worried about the problems of part-time lay personnel. This Bill, in effect—and we do well to remind ourselves of this, as we have done about every hour—is about people. There are 600,000 staff, I understand, in the National Health Service; there are 350,000 patients in hospital tonight; and there are 45 million outpatient visits made a year. But the average man or woman in the street at this particular moment knows nothing of what is impending. I believe that it will come as a great shock to many of them.
May I make just two general points in relation to industrial consultants? I have had my spate of them in my own business, and I should have thought that in the National Health Service we have an example where it is quite impossible to measure the efficiency of the new as against the old in the way one might well be able to do in business. Are we going to get value for money? Who can tell? Only the patient; and even his reasoning is somewhat objective.
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My second point is that since the patient is the end-product of the Health Service, to my mind he has a right to be involved. After all, it is a monopoly, and that is a nasty word these days. I was listening last night to somebody reading out the American Declaration of Rights. Did it not end up by saying that the Government can act only with the consent of the governed? All that, one would have thought, would have led to the involvement of more people, rather than fewer, in the National Health Service. But what has happened? Entirely the reverse, as the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, has told us; and he gave the precise figures. There are going to be far fewer lay members of the public mixed up with the management of the hospital service. Indeed, I have heard an ugly rumour that letters are going out to the chairmen of big companies to see whether they have available people who can sit on Area or Regional Health Boards. That is nonsense when so many people are at this moment doing excellent work on a variety of these boards and management committees.
Then at the district headquarters, there is to be this management team. Here I would bring in the analogy with business. It would seem to me to be ridiculous in my group of companies to have what one might call "group 2 companies" without any board of directors at all, just a management team without any outside breadth of experience and knowledge on which they could call. In this district area, as many of us who are in the House to-night know, there are these disagreements that crop up in hospitals between medical, nursing and administration staff. These disagreements generally arise when people feel a sense of their own importance, of their own value and in the ordinary way at present they are referred first to the chairman, and it is only if he is worried and cannot settle it that it goes to the board. What is going to happen under the new set-up? Each member of this district management team has equal status—it says so quite clearly. Each member of this district management team is a representative for his subordinates. How can be give way on this minor issue that has cropped up? There are many enlightened people in the Health Service to-day who value the boards of management, who

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value the dispassionate chairman, with his tact, his ability to turn up at social functions, and to apply to so many matters in the hospitals a value of priorities.
How has all this—I was going to say gone wrong? How has it all happened? I have, and shall always have for the rest of my life, a very sore place in relation to the Civil Service since the British National Export Council, on which I played a part, was taken over by the Department of Trade and Industry and replaced with something which we had never heard of, called the British Overseas Trade Board. I am not for a moment implying anything sinister here. I think the Civil Service acts with the very best of intentions. But there is an opportunity here for strengthening the position of the professionals. I hope that one day somebody will write a book, rather like the Anatomy of Britain, and call it the Anatomy of Health and will find out what did happen over all these years with all the papers and reports to which reference has been made to-day.
What safeguards have we got? We have got the two that have been referred to so often this afternoon. First, we have the Health Service Commissioner, a good long stop. We were a little late in taking up this idea of the Ombudsman now it is a very popular thing. I have been wondering, as we have talked this evening, what he would say had he been listening to this debate. Your Lordships may refresh your memory, I think from Clause 34, of his ability to intervene when he feels the service is not providing what it should do for the patients. Would he not think it might be considered impertinent to flout the opinions of people like the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, and the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, and others with their vast experience? It will be interesting to see how his services work out in the long run.
Then there is the community health council, which, of course, is exactly where the customer should come into his own. Some time ago the King Edward's Fund sponsored a report called The Integration of the Health Service in the Brighton and East Sussex Area. If it had not been for the fact that so much paper has been inflicted on you, I would willingly suggest that I let your Lordships have it, if you would like it. That report
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was the work of a multi-disciplinary advisory group on the whole subject of integration, but as a separate subject they dealt with the question of the community health councils. If you read their report, while they did not put it like that, they felt that it was one thing to have people sniping from the sidelines and quite another to have them sharing the responsibility.
The conclusions they came to were quite definite. I think the Minister has had a copy of this report, and I shall be interested to know to what extent, if at all, he shares that particular conclusion. They said that if they got no teeth or no money—we know they are going to get some money—it would be better for them not to exist at all. They said that this was an opportunity to have channels of communication with the executive of the National Health Service. If they did not have that, how could they start? They felt it was their duty to disseminate information in a general way about the Health Service to the community. They felt that these community health councils should be the recipients of all the complaints. They felt that they had a part to play in co-ordinating voluntary organisations with the Health Service. Above all, they felt they must have the right to visit all clinics and hospitals to oversee the welfare of patients. And then they added another point, that they felt that they should be consulted at the initial stage of any new project, including the siting of new hospitals. When you reflect on these requests or demands, that they felt should be included in the duties of the community health councils, they are almost exactly what a management committee had. So who can say that they are wrong? I am certain that unless they are given a status which the public can readily understand they cannot be effective, and indeed they will not get volunteers coming forward to serve. In effect they are going to assist the management in the task of improving the wellbeing of patients and staff. They said themselves in this report that they felt that the council members should undergo training, particularly for those involved with the psychiatrically ill and the mentally handicapped. If the King's Fund, as one part, is to undertake this work, it must know the answer to the question: Training for what?

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I wondered what I should be thinking if I were the Minister of State, having listened to this long debate. I felt I had two conclusions. One was that I should be very certain of the many reservations of many people who have been speaking to-night who have been dedicated from the very beginning to the conception of the National Health Service. I think that those same people will be very watchful at the Committee stage, on whichever side of the House they sit, because our National Health Service is not, or should not be, a matter of Party politics, and we should all be voting according to our conscience. Secondly, I would be aware that the public values its National Health Service; we all know that. It will not be at the mercy of bureaucrats, and it will not forgive any Government that allows such a thing to happen.
To end on a friendly, constructive note, the King Edward's Fund has always held itself out to help the National Health Service in whatever form is agreed upon. It is going to help in the training of all those who are involved with the Service; this we shall continue to do with pleasure, because we know that however it is finally formulated it must be a success for the benefit of us all.
7.58 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I must apologise to your Lordships for having had to miss a large part of the middle of the debate due Ito another engagement, and because it is now so late I will make my few points as briefly as I possibly can. The first is that I should like to hear the Minister in his reply say something about the quality of the service as well as the efficiency of the management, particularly because those of us who live in country districts find it difficult to see how sufficient numbers are to be found to man these area and other boards. These appointments cannot just be "Buggins's turn"; they are immensely demanding, not only of time but also of skill and experience, among other things financial experience. Unless really good members are appointed, they will not command the respect of the administrative and medical members with whom they serve. It is really on these voluntary members that the bulk of the responsibility falls at the end of the day. I am
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sure that it is going to be very difficult to find and to maintain the necessary level of talent and ability.
And at the other end of the scale, when it comes to making appointments to these community health councils, it will be hard to find good people who are prepared to give their time to something in regard to which very little responsibility, if any, is going to come their way. I hope the Minister can say something about that, too.
I should like to think, too, that he can tell us something about a shadowy figure who played a bigger part in one of the earlier debates on one of the many Papers—I am not sure which colour it was—produced by the Government. That somebody was called the community physician, of whom I find no mention in the present Bill. He could well be a figure of immense influence for good or for trouble, according not only to his appointment but also to the relations that come to be established between him and the authorities with whom he has to deal. It is a curious appointment. He would appear to be a principal figure not only on the hospital side of the Service but on the local authority side too. I should like to know—and here I am not alone; many people would like to know—to whom he is to be accountable; who is going to appoint him, and who, if necessary, is going to dismiss him? We do not warn shadowy figures of great power accountable to no one, emerging as a result of this Bill.
My next point concerns the question of Parliamentary time. Last year we had a local authority reorganisation Bill and a health Bill, this year we have the same. It would seem simpler to have had two local authority reorganisation Bills in one year, if we must have two; or two health Bills, and then we should not have had to try to master and keep au fait with two difficult subjects not only throughout the whole of last year but again throughout the whole of this year.
Is it really necessary to have two similar Bills for different parts of Great Britain? I know that it is traditional that we often do, but is Parliamentary time really sufficient to allow us to do this? Is it not possible more often to have one Bill, and for it to have separate chapters

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which would affect England only or Scotland only? I know that there are many occasions where it is not possible to have one Bill, but having read both this Bill, and the Scottish Bill, I really wonder whether it was necessary to have two, and for us and another place to go through all these stages twice.
My last point is this: those of us who live near to the Scottish Border can never understand why it is that in many an English or Scottish Bill there is no reference to the "neighbouring country". Instead of a land "frontier" there might well be a wide ocean space, between us. When a clause dealing with co-operation is found in a Bill of this sort it describes co-operating with the authorities North or South of the Border, but never seems to appreciate the importance of cooperation "across the Border". During the Committee stage of the Scottish Health Bill I moved certain Amendments to meet this point. I thought they were dismissed very peremptorily by the Minister, but I can promise my noble friend that I shall move the same Amendments again during the Committee stage of this Bill, to impose the duty of consultation not only between authorities in England but also, where they touch Scotland, with the neighbouring Scottish authorities too. Surely this is most important in the field of public health, because germs do not stop at county boundaries or at the border between England and Scotland.
I would commend to my noble friend the fact that in the field of agriculture, animal health is treated in Great Britain as one, and he has a good precedent. In this particular regard it seems that the veterinary surgeons and the Ministry of Agriculture are far in advance of the doctors and the health departments.
8.4 p.m.
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, I must begin by apologising to your Lordships' House for the fact that it was, unfortunately, quite impossible for me to be here at the beginning of this debate, and that I have been absent from many of the subsequent speeches. My purpose in speaking, extremely briefly, is to draw your attention to one special limited but not unimportant point. I refer to the reorganisation of the social work which is at present undertaken in the hospitals but which in future, as I understand it, with
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safeguards, is to be the responsibility of the local authorities. Plainly there is a great deal of sense behind this proposal. It would seem somewhat ridiculous to have the great volume of social work undertaken by a local authority and to have one very small sector as still the responsibility of the National Health Service. I fully recognise that the proposed change is in line with the dogma—or doctrine, according to your point of view—of the general all-purpose social worker: the generic social worker, as he is called. While I fully accept that there are good reasons for doing this, and that the change must and should go forward, there are also certain disadvantages which should be given further consideration. I recognise that in the supporting document which has come out there are proposed safeguards, but these are not part of the Bill, and it is necessary that we should think a little more about them.
May I refer first to the idea of the all-purpose generic social worker? This concept was introduced and fostered, as the phrase is, by "some of my best friends", but that does not mean that I necessarily accept it totally and uncritically. I have always had some doubts as to whether it necessarily follows that a person who is very skilful in dealing with the sick is equally good with the old, the young and the naughty. It is possible that there are still very great advantages for the specialist, particularly if he can work (and I believe that this is now the practice in some places) in teams allowing for specialisation. But I suggest to your Lordships' House that the all-purpose team, as it is now to be called—and about which we are hearing a good deal because of stories, sometimes rather horrific stories, of the non-success of the all-purpose social worker—is not necessarily the most appropriate way of organising this kind of work all over the country. One can see that it can be extremely effective in a concentrated urban area, but it may well be a great deal more difficult to organise it effectively in a very scattered rural area. I think, too, that from the point of view of the patients—although I admit that most of the time patients are ordinary people in a community who happen to be sick for a short time—there is something to be said for having someone dealing with their problems who is specialising in them.

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Then, of course, there is the fact that the social worker in hospital is, or ought to be, working in a team with the doctors and the nurses who are still part of the Health Service. I do not think it is esential that, because people are part of the team, they should necessarily be employed by the same organisation. But there are disadvantages—not overriding disadvantages, but disadvantages—in having two loyalties of the kind envisaged here. What this means is that there is still room for a great deal more experimentation in the way in which we organise services of this kind, and that we do not need to move swiftly in the direction of transferring the social work in hospital totally into the hands of the local authorities.
I want at this point to put the case (I recognise that it is a subordinate case, but it is not unimportant) of the people who have been doing this work in hospital for a very long period of time. I should be the last person to suggest that a service is run for the people who work in it and not for the people it serves. At the same time, we owe it to people who have been engaged in work of this kind over a long period of years that they should not be forced into a work situation, and a pattern of collaboration in work, to which they themselves are strongly hostile. I know that many of the people who will be affected by this change are very much in favour of it, but I also know that there are some who are greatly opposed to it. I gather it is suggested that safeguards should be given to people employed in medical social work that they will not be forced to change their pattern of working. I want to underline that this should be done, in fairness to them.
I underline this particularly because, as some of your Lordships will know, following the very proper and necessary reorganisation after the Seebohm Report there have been tragedies—and I choose my words carefully—arising from the way in which social work in this country has been reorganised. There have been tragedies experienced by women, in particular, who, overworked and underpaid, have done these tasks for many years yet now often find themselves working under people less experienced and less
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well trained than themselves. In consequence, they are extremely unhappy not only because of the loss of status which they have suffered, but also because of loss in the calibre of the work and in the professional skill which they have put into this work for so many years. In some cases—admittedly, a minority of cases—situations have arisen in which, if comparable situations had arisen on the factory floor, strike action would quite rightly have been taken. Situations have arisen in which changes in work content have been of a kind which would justifiably have demanded substantial redundancy payments. These are the kind of people who do not defend themselves in such situations, and who therefore need all the more to be defended in discussions in your Lordships' House.
8.11 p.m.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, we have been debating a Bill which affects the life—and, I suppose, the death—of almost every person in Britain and at the end of the day, and almost at the end of this debate, one is still left asking oneself: have we really answered the fundamental questions? Because when we have dealt with all the mechanics and bureaucracy, with the structures and the hierarchies, and with everything else which is embodied in the papers and in this Bill—including the doubtful wisdom emanating from McKinsey Limited Inc.—just how much difference will it make at the points where it really matters; at the patient's bedside, in the family doctor's surgery, in the maternity clinic, in the pathological laboratories and in the operating theatre? Will old people have greater hope of easier lives, not just poor lives prolonged beyond the allotted span by the wonders of intensive care? Will the families with children afflicted in mind, in body and, almost inevitably, in estate obtain more help and comfort from a community willing to share their burden? Will the adult disabled person feel that he or she is getting a fairer deal? Will the patients in the National Health Service, as a whole, and the staff at all levels—not only the doctors and, among the doctors, not only the senior medical men—feel that they have some voice and that that voice will be listened to?

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If many aspects of community care are transferred from publicly controlled local authorities to the National Health Service, will community care and day-to-day treatment get more attention, as many people think they should, and as my noble friend Lady Summerskill, for example, emphasised in her wise and well-informed approach to the need for greater domiciliary care, or will the ethos of the hospital-dominated service prevail, in the sense that we get ever larger and more expensive institutions absorbing, possibly, a disproportionate share of limited resources? It is of course all a matter of balance, but it is against this background that we must consider a Bill which, for one which enshrines such a comprehensive reorganisation of such a vast service, is, as my noble friend Lady Serota pointed out, singularly vague. I believe that this is, in part at least, because Ministers themselves are not certain that they have found the right answers and hesitate to commit themselves in Statute. I am far from convinced myself, and I say this in the full knowledge that the preceding Government issued Green Papers which, while certainly not definitive, were in many particulars not very different from what we have before us to-night. But the fact that the two sets of Papers are in many respects similar does not in itself make them right.
My noble friend Lady Serota dealt most ably with the main points of structure in the Bill. She did not touch on Wales nor deal, in any detail, with the grass roots involvement at community health council level, with the patient as consumer, with his relationship with the proposed Health Commissioner and such matters. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, has already left us, but, contrary to his views, there are very strong sentiments in the Principality that we should have had two Bills rather than one. So strong in fact was this feeling that in another place some two weeks ago the Welsh Grand Committee, which includes all Members representing Welsh constituencies, had a full day's debate. Admittedly, they were not formally debating the Bill which is now before your Lordships' House, but they had a first bite. They did so, justifiably, because except for the first Green Paper of 1968, we in Wales have had issued papers which were
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separate from but parallel to those supplied for England. We have had a 1970 Green Paper, a 1971 Consultative Document and a White Paper this year. But in Wales our book on management is coloured red, not grey—no doubt a delicate compliment to the political complexion of the Principality. We, too, had a separate report from McKinsey Limited Inc., which was far from universally welcome.
There has been considerable disquiet in Wales about the kind of consultation which took place preceding our red book, and this disquiet arises partly because of the really rather astonishing admission on page 36 of the red book, that the Steering Committee, which was responsible for its production, did not take views from the Welsh Hospital Board. We in Wales have only one hospital board for the entire country. They were not formally consulted and this seems to me very remarkable indeed. But it is all the more disquieting because the Chairman of the Welsh Hospital Board, Mr. Gwylim Prys Davies, felt so strongly that the Steering Committee was going on the wrong lines that he resigned from membership of it. I have here the public statement which he made on that occasion, and it might be enlightening to your Lordships if I read some extracts from it. He said:
"At a time when people are feeling excluded from the process of decision-making—and as Chairman of the Welsh Hospital Board I have been very conscious of this sense of exclusion—it seems strange that we should be asked to support proposals which will reduce public participation in the planning and management of the Health Service."
He went on:
"Management consultants' goals do not include certain fundamental concerns for democracy and the consumer to the same extent as they include management matters. Continued membership of the Steering Committee would, of necessity, imply agreement with all its basic recommendations. This agreement I simply could not give",
and he accordingly resigned.
There has been a thread of concern underlying so many of the speeches in this debate. We in Wales are particularly concerned at the loss of a lay element in the administration of the Health Service. It is all the more acute in Wales than in England. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, gave some extremely striking

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and remarkable figures for England. In Wales, of course, we are on a very much smaller scale, but because we do not have a regional tier in the new dispensation we suffer even worse from the diminution of lay representation.
At the moment, we have some 258 members of hospital management committees, together with the members of the Welsh Hospital Board. Under the new arrangements, we shall have only 120 people in the whole Principality participating in the Area Health Authorities. We shall not have a regional authority. The family practitioners' committee will remain very much the same as the present Executive Council, so I leave them out of the argument. The members of the proposed community health councils are not, after all, to be engaged in the administration or running of the Health Service, so they do not count, either. Therefore, we have a very strong feeling that we are being deprived, more particularly when one considers that in this integrated Service one will be taking in the whole of the health work now done by local authorities; in other words, supervised by elected councils. We are taking up a very much larger sphere of administration which, as the management papers are at pains to emphasise, will require more sophisticated supervision, but we are being asked to do it with fewer than half the number of persons who are engaged upon it at the present time. So it seems to me that we have very considerable grounds for concern.
It is quite true that the main distinction between Wales and England in the new set-up is, as I have said, that there will be no regional tier: the eight Welsh Area Health Authorities and the Welsh Office will be in direct contact. This was the pattern proposed by the last Government, but, my Lords, with one very important proviso: throughout our Green Paper we stressed that the pattern was subject to Crowther. If the Commission on the Constitution recommend, as we believe they must, an all-Wales Council, preferably directly elected, then significant responsibilities in the Health Service seem to us to follow. The proposal that the Welsh Office should perform all the regional functions plus what one may
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call the Whitehall functions was intended by us to be a holding operation only; and I hope very much that in his reply to the debate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, will be able to say that this is the attitude of the present Government, too.
We did not want an advisory Health Services Council appointed ad hoc—a proposal which was made by the present Secretary of State but which has now been dropped—partly because one of the functions which we envisaged at the all-Wales level is strategic social planning, for which one needs far wider interests than the Health Service alone. It is true, as my noble friend Lord Watkins remarked, that we have in existence at the moment a nominated Welsh Council, serviced directly by the Welsh Office, which covers rather more than the English Economic Planning Councils and includes health in its remit. In the interim, its advice should certainly be sought. But having been its chairman for several years, I know quite well that this Council is neither sufficiently independent nor sufficiently well equipped to undertake continuous work in depth of the kind required. So consultation with it in its present form can be only faute de mieux. Any regional organisation which might evolve could, I would hope, meet the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Platt and the noble Lord, Lord Brock, about senior appointments. This is a matter of detail but an important one which, again, we shall no doubt wish to discuss at a later stage.
Having said this about Wales, I cannot help thinking that possibly England, too, might find lessons at regional level in possible Commission on the Constitution recommendations, if only so that at that level, at least, we could get some measure of true integration of the health and social services, especially at the strategic planning level. So far, this has eluded us. I must admit that I myself have come to the conclusion that we should probably have done better to have had both services based on large local authorities, with possibly some special provision for the teaching hospitals. This would in no way have diminished the personal responsibilities of the individual physician, nor have interfered with his right in matters of clinical judgment. But I believe it might well have resulted in a better deal

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for the patient, and in doing away with the need for this complex apparatus of consultative, collaborative, advisory and other bodies now needed in order to make the dual system work. But I think it was the powerful and, some might think, ominous combination of the Treasury and the medical profession which prevented us from achieving this true integration of both the Health and Social Services. At regional level, at least, I would hope that in our lifetime we might see some improvement; but further than that, I think we shall probably all be dead first.
Now, my Lords, I turn to the other end of the scale, from the regions to the proposed community health councils. This is a subject which has been brought up in, I think, almost every speech which has been made in the course of this debate. I do not think anyone, except possibly the Minister, has been happy about the proposals in the Bill. Everyone recognises the importance of these community health councils; but one noble Lord after another, and one noble Baroness after another, has remarked that, as constituted, or as we suppose they will be constituted under the regulations suggested, they simply will not work. I do not think anyone has supported the proposal that these community health councils should be appointed, staffed or financed by the Area Health Authorities, whose activities it is their job to watch. The gamekeeper has been told to appoint his own poachers, and nobody believes it will work.
The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, in particular, referred to the proposal put forward by the local authority associations, which was that the local district council should take the responsibility for staff, accommodation and expenses. My Lords, I think this should at least be looked at very seriously, particularly as the White Paper (though not, I think, the Bill) suggests that one-half of the community health council members should be district council appointments. I feel very strongly that the community health councils should appoint their own staff. This might be on secondment from local authority services, by appropriate arrangement. This would safeguard career prospects without bringing in a career officer from the Health Service, who needs must be pre-occupied about his future and is unlikely to wish to
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endanger it by producing a report critical of those on whom his promotion may depend. But there should also be room, I feel, for young people who have served an apprenticeship in one of the voluntary organisations, whether old-established or a ginger group like Shelter, the Disablement Income Group, the Child Poverty Action Group and the like, because with such experience behind him or her and increasing maturity I believe that such a person could make a first-class officer serving a community health council.
The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, suggested that the premises of such a council should be in the district general hospital. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I doubt that, because for one thing the community health councils will surely be concerned with a far wider range of health services than the hospital service, important as that is. I myself should have thought that the office might well be on council premises, but certainly not on the premises of the Area Health Authority. Because, my Lords, if on telephoning the watchdog you find that the telephone number is the same as that of the body being watched, you tend to lose faith in the dog's impartiality. And, as the local authorities point out, if there are several districts in a health district area they can agree which would be most accessible and convenient to the public.
I myself, however, would go a step further and query whether it is best that the community health councils should be coterminous with health districts rather than with local authority districts. After all, the functions are quite distinct. It is stated clearly that patients will move across boundary lines but that the health districts will largely be based on the pattern of hospital administration. But if expression of public concern is the object, as it is, for the community health councils, it seems to me that there is much to be said for keeping to the units designed to elicit public opinion in other fields. I hope very much that the Government, and noble Lords who are interested, will think hard about this. I believe it is a matter on which this Bill may be improved.
My Lords, I put forward this idea for another reason, too. There is much heart-searching, as our own debate and many publications outside have indicated,

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as to how an effective community health council should be composed; rejecting, as almost all of us do, appointment by the Area Health Authority, and accepting a strong element of local authority nomination, including, I should hope, someone from county level who is knowledgeable about social services, there is still a good deal of uncertainty about how the rest of the body of some 20 to 30 members should be chosen. The more closely one contemplates methods of voluntary organisational choice, the more dubious one becomes. I speak personally here, but I would favour Ministerial choice from names submitted by voluntary bodies, plus an element of direct popular election—say, three or four members. This could be done at the same time as local council elections. Admittedly it is in the American tradition, rather than in our own tradition, but I do not think that it is necessarily the worse for that. It simply means an extra ballot paper suitably coloured to distinguish it from the main election. If we really want the public to feel that they have a voice, it should be an identifiable voice; and there is no better way to achieve this, to my mind, than by direct election. Again, I hope very much that we shall seriously consider this at a later stage and at least make it possible by the provisions in the Bill for this to be brought about, if it is considered desirable.
If I may revert for a moment to the Principality, in Wales we have community councils under the Local Government Act on a much more comprehensive pattern than is proposed for England. It seems to me that they should have some place in the community health council set-up, especially in the sparsely populated districts of rural Wales. I am sure that the people at my end of Montgomeryshire, for example, have little appreciation of the position in Welshpool, at the other end of the county. Yet in the new local government structure they will all be part of the same district council. But there will be a number of community councils in the area, too, and I feel that in our circumstances, at least, they should be brought in. The essential thing in dealing with these community health councils, whatever the local circumstances, is to make them genuinely responsive to local opinion and local need. I believe
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that we should be willing, and should encourage the Government, to experiment and to innovate at this level and not stick to the bureaucrat's easy way out, as suggested in the White Paper. I hope that we shall all think about this between now and the Committee stage.
I want to refer in a moment to some of the community health council functions, as opposed to composition. But meanwhile I come to the matter of the Health Service Commissioner, this quadripartite being, Sir Alan Marre. Because, of course, as at present proposed, he is not only the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration but is also to be the Health Service Commissioner for England, Scotland and Wales. Well, my Lords, of course in principle we welcome the acceptance by the Government of a proposal which was made by their predecessors; but we have very serious reservations about detail and, particularly so far as Wales is concerned, I would strongly support the proposal that we should have our own Health Service Commissioner. I hope that arrangements can be made to this end. Looking at the Bill it is not easy to amend it in this sense, because in the Bill it is not disclosed that all these people are in fact one person. But I hope that we shall have some assurance from the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that this matter will be reconsidered.
As several noble Lords have emphasised, as the channel for the investigation of complaints the Commissioner will be subject to a very large number of limitations as set out in Part III and Schedule 3 to the Bill. Will he, in practice, prove to be more than a "paper tiger"? This is what we must all be wondering. Will he be more effective as Health Commissioner than perhaps as Parliamentary Commissioner? I say this in no personal sense, but I refer to the limitations of the office, which in fact is very different from the Scandinavian conception of an Ombudsman. What really worries many of us—and this point, too, has been referred to in the debate—is the whole field of complaint procedure. I should like to call it improvement procedure, because in many instances this is what it should be; though, of course, one acknowledges that there are times when "complaint" is the operative word. But if one regards I every proposal made by a patient, or

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other consumer of the Health Service, as a complaint it puts all those in authority on the defensive. It leads to a black mark for both patient and members of the staff who try to draw attention to defects or deficiencies in the Service. It seems to me that the proposed structure outlined in the Bill and the Management Paper will not lessen this attitude but may well enhance it. We are, of course, at a considerable disadvantage in this field because we still are awaiting the report to Ministers of the Davies Committee. What we must do, I suggest, is to make certain that we put nothing in this Bill which would hinder—indeed, we must do whatever we can to help—a better attitude and procedure. There is a very wide range from what are basically attempts to improve the Service through administrative grievances to the much rarer complaints of clinical error, or even gross negligence by a clinician.
I think, my Lords, that we are all agreed that the majority of patients are unwilling to complain. There is often, and dightly, what is known as "the gratitude barrier". But I also believe that we cannot get the best possible service unless at each level of concern we find means of helping patients or relatives adequately to express what seems to them to be wrong. When it comes to formal matters many patients are inarticulate, a fact that middle-class members of committees sometimes find hard to understand. Furthermore they do not know how to set about launching any really serious complaint. Can we not look upon the community health councils as specialised citizens' advice bureaux in this field, with adequate staff to deal with this particular duty? This would give the community health councils, among other things, a direct responsibility in the Health Service at the very point where consumer protection is uppermost. I believe that this would be beneficial both to patients and also to the community health councils.
There is another field which seems to me difficult, but where again possibly the community health councils could help, and that is in the relatively few instances where a patient may have a case at law and is therefore outside the Ombusman's terms of reference. Few people have the courage, or the means, to set about establishing such a case; partly—let us be
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frank about it—because virtually no doctor will give evidence against another doctor; yet medical evidence is often essential. This is a very difficult field, but most of us know of at least one or two cases where gross error or neglect has resulted in damage for life for which in most other circumstances there would be some remedy, but the patient is usually helpless. These cases are few, but I believe that advice and help should be available and that we should make some provision for it in the Bill.
Finally, there is the position of staff who feel that there is ground for complaint. Their position is specifically mentioned in paragraph 180 of the English White Paper. Can they avoid victimisation if they do their duty? One of the very disquieting things in the hospitals which have been subject to formal inquiry under Section 70 is that it was staff who tried to draw attention to what was going on, and who were threatened, and even victimised, for their pains. In long-stay and mental hospitals, particularly, it is the staff who are in the best position to judge. Can we secure a real change in attitude and atmosphere so that reports of defects, if properly based, can be regarded as helpful and not as disloyal conduct to be stamped on hard? These are just some of the matters we must think about in preparing for later stages of the Bill. We cannot do work which properly falls to another place, but if such an important Bill as this undoubtedly is starts in your Lordships' House, our role is surely to bring out into the open topics on which further discussion must be focused if we are to have the quality of comprehensive health care which I know we all desire.
My Lords, I believe that we have had a very high standard of speeches in the debate to-day, and it is no derogation of the admirable contributions from other noble Lords if I say how much I was impressed by the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Cottesloe and Lord Cobbold. The experience that we have in your Lordships' House, if used fully, not only to-day but through the remaining stages of the Bill, will, I hope and believe, make the other place grateful for our help, and not, as seemed at one time likely, slightly resentful of the fact that such an important Bill should be starting in this House rather than in their own. I would indeed echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord

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Aberdare, in which he expressed his appreciation to his right honourable friend Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State, for giving us a chance of being of Parliamentary service on a Bill of this substance and significance. I am sure that we can look forward to a stimulating and, I hope, constructive Committee stage and later stages of the Bill.
8.41 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, ventured to guess what my feelings were in the course of this debate. They are rather mixed: not altogether feelings of despair, but of some sorrow that I evidently failed in my opening speech to put sufficiently forcefully what I believe to be the imaginative proposals in this Bill. I longed on many occasions to be able to reply immediately to some of the speeches that were made, and I find myself at the end of a long debate with inadequate time to answer all the points that have been raised. I think therefore it would be best if I were to undertake to answer in writing any questions of a specific nature that have been asked, and to confine myself very briefly to the major topics that have been touched on in the course of the debate. I should like to say, however, with what great interest I have heard all the contributions that have been made, many of them with constructive criticism. With respect, I thought the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady White, was most constructive, especially on the subject of community health councils. Certainly all that the noble Baroness said will be taken into consideration—and I am sure she herself will make sure it is—on the Committee stage.
The first matter that was criticised was the whole management set-up that we envisage. The regional tier was first of all mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Scrota. We felt that a regional tier was essential. We did not think that it was possible to administer a service of some 90 Area Health Authorities without a regional tier. We felt that there were indeed great advantages in having regional authorities who could reflect the different approaches in different regions of the country. I think it was the noble Lords, Lord Cottesloe and Lord Cobbold, who said that we had changed in some
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way the concept of the region since the White Paper. I cannot agree that that is so. I can only quote the White Paper, paragraph 74, which says:
"The regional task will be in part strategic planning, in part co-ordination and supervision, in part executive."
That is what I believe is reflected in the Bill.
So far as Area Health Authorities are concerned, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, put his finger on the point when he quoted from the White Paper, pointing out that there was never going to be enough money to go round, and how important it was that we should make the best use of what was available. I would couple that with what I tried to say (I think badly) in my opening speech about the need to change the emphasis a little in the Health Service from acute medicine, which is already excellent, to treating those who suffer much more pain over much longer periods of time from the diseases of old age, psychiatric troubles, mental illness and similar long-term, painful experiences. It was with that in view that we put forward proposals that the Area Health Authorities should be relatively small, effective bodies, made up of people who we believe will not take a hard-hearted businessman's view of the whole thing—nothing bureaucratic, which is the word that has been used throughout the debate, but people of breadth of experience, of wisdom, tact and diplomacy, and all, incidentally, potential patients, so that nobody can say that they are not representing the community; people who will be able to take a hard look within their area at the distribution of resources, to be able to take decisions to move resources from one part of the Service to another, if necessary, and to meet what we feel to be the demands of the future. This body of people will be made up of some representatives of the matching local authority—4 of them, which seems to me to be a pretty reasonable quota: it is 4 out of 15 who will be from the matching Area Health Authorities. There will be, as we have said, doctors, a nurse and a representative of the teaching interests. So there will be a fairly broad-based expertise, as well as those who are nominated by the Regional Health Authority on the Area Health Authority.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, if I may interrupt for one moment, can the noble Lord say a word about the nonmedical, non-nursing staff? What happens to them? Have they any chance of being represented?
LORD ABERDARE: Is this on the Area Health Authority?
BARONESS WHITE: Yes.
LORD ABERDARE: Nobody will be represented. There is no representation on the area authority. But there will be doctors, and a nurse or midwife, and there will be other people who are selected for their abilities to take the sort of decisions that I have been trying to explain.
Then, from pretty well everybody who spoke I think we had some form of criticism of the community health councils. In the course of the Committee stage I hope that we may be able to improve on the community health councils. We believe that if you admit that the Area Health Authority is particularly a management body, the community health council is an essential counterpoise to it. I do not accept that they are not democratic bodies. We have sought to make them as democratic as possible by proposing that half their membership should come from the district council or councils, according to the area which they cover. I find it difficult to accept the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady White, that it should be coterminous with the local authority district service, although we did consider this, because one of their important fields of activity is to see that the people who need help get it from the right quarter. In this way they oversee in the district the proper liaison between the services of the hospital, general practitioner, nurse and local health centre. It is easier for them to operate within that health district, which is responsible for providing that kind of care, than it would be if they were available in a local authority district. But again we can discuss that when the time comes. I believe they will be useful.
I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Platt, who suggested that it would need to be the individual doctor who improved his ways if, for example, patients were to be given greater information about what was to happen to them and how long
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they would be in hospital. I should have thought that this was just the sort of matter which could be drawn to the attention of the community health councils. They would probably be well aware that at their local hospital various patients had made just this kind of complaint. Then it would be possible for the community health council to report that matter to the district management team, on which doctors would be represented—we hope there will be a consultant, a general practitioner and a community physician, as was mentioned during the debate. This would represent a channel through which this kind of worry could come to the attention of the district management team and it is a way, one would have hoped, by which some pressure would be brought to bear on the doctors and thereby improve the situation. In fact, we have to get a very positive role for the community health council, if it is going to be effective.
So far as the Grey Paper is concerned—the paper which the noble Baroness, Lady Scrota, called "ghastly"—I think that perhaps we have done this an injustice in the course of our debate this afternoon. It was, after all, approved by a Steering Committee. It is not only a product of management experts but was approved by a Steering Committee made up of representatives from all parts of the National Health Service. Although unfortunately there is a certain amount of jargon in it, it is almost impossible to write an administrative document of this sort without introducing a good many initials and a good deal of jargon. However, I did try to stress the fact that it has considerable merits in its approach to district management. It faces the problem of trying to integrate into one management system a structure of doctors who are independent and who owe no allegiance one to the other, and a structure in the nursing field and in general administration, where people are responsible to the man above them in a hierarchical pattern. It was with a view to trying to solve this fairly difficult problem, to bring the doctors into management while at the same time retaining the hierarchical structure of the other services, that they came forward with proposals which are certainly ingenious and which I believe will work and will bring together the professionals, the doctors,

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the nurses, the lay administrators and the treasurer.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, was anxious about the position of general practitioners in this set-up. I can assure her that they are very fully integrated into the team. Not only is it open for a general practitioner to be a member of one of the authorities in these areas, but he will also participate very fully in the district management arrangements. I do not think I ought to go into all the details now, because there are many of them; but they are fully integrated and in fact the doubts which I have heard expressed rather the opposite argument and concerned the question of whether the general practitioners would be able to find the time to make as big a contribution as we should like them to make in the district management set-up.
I naturally listened with the very greatest attention to what was said by the noble Lords, Lord Cobbold and Lord Cottesloe. I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, how much the Secretary of State and I appreciate his immense patience in continuing to give us the benefit of his advice, together with that of the Teaching Hospitals Association, throughout a very long period in which we had discussed all these issues. As he well knows, and indeed as he has told the House, we have not been able to meet some of his major demands. The noble Lord made a persuasive case for leaving things as they are and having what I think he called "a long-term period". This is an attractive idea, but the difficulty is that when one is integrating this Service in the country as a whole, to exclude London is not easy, and it is particularly difficult when there are local authority health services involved which have to be found a home after April 1, 1974. But certainly, as I tried to say in my opening speech, we value the contribution that is made by the teaching hospitals—no one could fail to do that—and we are anxious that there should be the necessary safeguards which we have put forward in the White Paper to preserve the interests of teaching and research. We are also very anxious that within the management arrangements which we are proposing we should do all that we can to meet the difficulties that the noble Lord advanced. As he knows,
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we are still in discussion with him on that matter. On the Grey Paper as a whole, one noble Lord asked me—was it my noble friend Lord Grenfell?—whether this was a doctrine which had the force of law. Of course it does not have the force of law; it is a document which has been produced for discussion, and we are now in the middle of discussing it.
I do not want to go on too long at this late hour, but perhaps I may mention just one or two other points that have been made. My noble friend Lord Grenfell gave some very interesting figures of the numbers of people serving in the Health Service. Of course, his figures are quite correct if you exclude the community health councils, but I would prefer to include these councils. I see them very much as part of the new set-up and I also see serving on them some of the people who have been giving admirable service on hospital management committees.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way for just one moment? Surely he would agree that there is a complete difference in role, if I may use the fashionable term, between serving on a management committee, where you are involved very much in the policy-making and decision-making process, and being an active, lively—aggressive, if you like—member of the community health council? These are two totally different things and surely it is wrong to compare them.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I do not altogether agree with the noble Baroness. I think there are certain people who serve on hospital management committees who will find that they are doing very much the same work on the community health council. Our view has been that a lot of hospital management committees are made up of two sorts of people—those who are interested in the management of the Service and those who are primarily interested in the more local matters of the comfort of the patients, the painting of the wards, and so on: the more local details. These, I hope very much, will find a place for themselves on the community health councils where, in my opinion, they will be able to exercise very considerable powers of persuasion and influence.

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My noble friend Lady Ruthven and the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, referred to family planning, and I listened to what they said with great interest. Clause 4, the clause in question, provides charging powers equivalent to those which the present health authorities have; and this is in line with the general policy of the Bill on maintaining the status quo on charging powers. But how these charging powers should be used is one of the matters we are considering as part of the current review of family planning services. The charges themselves would require to be introduced by regulations which would be subject to Parliamentary control.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I interrupt for one moment? Are there not some local authorities who have a completely free service?
LORD ABERDARE: Yes, my Lords; I do not deny that. I am only saying that the Bill reproduces the arrangements that exist at present, and if we were to operate the charging side of it, it would have to be subject to regulations.
The noble Lord, Lord Platt, asked about the complaints that the Health Service Commissioner might deal with. The complaints that we should expect the Health Service Commissioner to deal with are points of the nature of excessive waiting times for hospital appointments, bad food (which was a particularly topical one), and various things like the failure of an ambulance to arrive at the right time when required. These complaints, having been referred to the authority, and having produced no satisfaction, or having produced an unsatisfactory reply from the authority, would then be referred to the Health Service Commissioner.
The noble Baroness, Lady Serota, asked about redundancy. We hope very much to keep redundancy, if there is any, to the absolute minimum. I cannot go so far as to say that there may not be any redundancy. We expect the total number of jobs that are to come in the new set-up will be equivalent to the total number of jobs there are at present. There may well be people who feel unable to move, or to take up a job in another area, who may become redundant. There are safeguards in the Bill for compensation, and
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just as we had discussions on the local government reorganisation I am sure we shall be able to discuss these provisions on this Bill.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, is the noble Lord able to give any assurance in regard to the matter he is talking about? Before any new people are brought in will every possible effort be made to absorb those already working in the Service?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, there is a staff commission in existence at the moment, under the title of a Staff Advisory Committee. They are very much seized of that point and will advise on what precautions should be taken to meet that point.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, is the noble Lord able to go further? I raised this when we were discussing local government reorganisation. He will appreciate that the attitude of the Government was not wholly acceptable. One would hope that the argument had been further considered. In regard to this reorganisation of the National Health Service the Government ought to be able to move a little further than they did on local government reorganisation.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, we have a staff commission and we shall take their advice. The noble Baronesses, Lady Scrota, and Lady Seear, referred to the transfer of social workers. I noted what they said. No decision has yet been reached on this matter; but I would draw attention to Clause 18(5) which provides that any staff who are transferred from hospital to a local authority shall not be required to work away from the hospital without their agreement. I do not know what the final decision may be, but I hope this will be some reassurance to social workers at present employed in the hospitals.
The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, asked about medical officers of health and public health inspectors. Public health inspectors have important environmental health responsibilities, and they will not be transferred to the Area Health Authorities; they will continue to work for the local authorities. The community physicians will work closely with them, and this is an example where the local

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authority will look to the area health authority for its medical advice.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, will these officials have the security of tenure which they have now?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I think I am right in saying that they no longer have it because it went under the local government reorganisation Act. They will now be employed by the appropriate health authority, and will have the same safeguards as any other member of the staff. I listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Burnt-wood. I had better answer most of his questions in writing, if I may. I have great sympathy with what he said about the small hospitals and the community hospitals. I have also great sympathy with what he said about the disposal of property. We are also looking into this.
May I end with a few quick words on Wales, as this aspect has been raised? So far as the Welsh Hospital Board and its not being consulted by the management study is concerned, the point I ought to make is that no formal consultations were undertaken in connection with the management study. The management study is now subject to consultation. It was a document produced by a steering committee through various Working Parties and is now open for consultation. But there were joint Working Parties of the Welsh Office and Welsh Hospital Board officials. Apart from the Chairman, Mr. Davis, one other Welsh Hospital Board member, the senior administrative medical officer and the Secretary of the Welsh Hospital Board were members of the management study. The noble Lord, Lord Watkins, mentioned the need for a separate Bill for Wales. We were trying to help my noble friend Lord Inglewood in this respect and to save Parliamentary time on a Bill which is essentially very similar. So far as the future of the Welsh Hospital Board staff are concerned, we take this very much to heart. Perhaps I could refer the noble Lord to the speech of the Secretary of State for Wales in another place on November 21 at column 18. I will not read it out. There is, I hope, some reassurance there for the staff of the Welsh Hospital Board.
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My Lords, I realise that I have been—
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, will the Minister say anything about the Welsh Health Service Commissioner?
LORD ABERDARE: I would rather leave that for the moment, my Lords. The intention is, as I said, to appoint Sir Alan Marre as the Health Service Commissioner for the three countries, and joining that with his present responsibility as Parliamentary Commissioner.
My Lords, I am grateful for all the advice that has been offered to the Government on this Bill. As I say, I hope I can leave you with some idea that we have a forward-looking and exciting possibility in the Bill: first, by joining together, so far as possible, the local authority social services and the health services; secondly, by integrating the three parts of the Health Service; and thirdly, by providing a machinery for consultation with local people through the community health council, with a fallback for complaints to the Health Service Commissioner. I am grateful to your Lordships, and I commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

  HOUSING DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING PERMISSION
  HOUSING DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING PERMISSION
  SOVIET RUSSIA: PROPOSED EXIT TAXES
  SOVIET RUSSIA: PROPOSED EXIT TAXES